“the bathing of the water in the saying”
(Eph 5:26, YLT)
When Jesus prays in the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:13), He asks, “but deliver us from Evil”. In the original Green the word deliver literally means to be pulled from a stream of water. Within this element lies a great mystery.
In Eph 5:26 Paul states that we are washed clean “with the washing of water by the word”. The fact that the capital Word is not used here, is correct, as the word here refers to the rhema word, and not the logos word. Logos is the Word, the Scripture, which is also the transcribed Yashua. Rhema is the different parts of the totality of Logos. (We will discuss this matter in more detail at a later stage.) The GW-translation then rightly speaks of us being washed by “spoken words”. YLT aptly describes it as “the bathing of the water in the saying”.
Rom 10:14 rightly asks – “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? … And how shall they hear without a preacher?” Every preacher washes you with the water (rhema) of his word, his interpretation of the Word (logos).
Obviously not everyone divides the word of truth in the correct manner (2 Tim 2:15), and thus many people are ministered to with murky water.
There is thus on the one hand people who minister because God has laid the words in their mouths (Ex 4:15; Num 12:8; Isa 51:16; Jer 1:9). A good example of this is someone like Necho, of which is said in 2 Chron 35:22 – “Nevertheless Josiah would not turn his face from him, but disguised himself so that he might fight with him, and did not heed the words of Necho from the mouth of God.” The words of Necho from the mouth of God …
But on the other hand the reverse is also true – in Ezek 13:7 these preachers are judged as follows – “Have you not seen a futile vision, and have you not spoken false divination?” In Ezek 22:28 an amplified accusation is heard – “Her prophets plastered them with untempered mortar, seeing false visions, and divining lies for them, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord God,’ when the Lord had not spoken.”
In Ezek 32:2 there is interestingly enough a reference to Satan (here prototypically represented by the king of Egypt) as a dragon soiling the water – “And you are like a monster in the seas; bursting forth in your rivers; troubling the waters with your feet, and fouling their rivers.” In Rev 12:6 we read of how the Dragon spews a river in an attempt to drown a church.
The important insight we need to garner is this – Satan’s primary sphere of influence, and the most important manner in which he damages believers, is that he drowns them with false teaching and a ministry of contaminated Word. It forms a covering of idolatry, a covering of darkness.
- Sela: The last paragraph has immense implications for you. Ponder it.
- Read: 1 Sam 4-6
- Examine how this has been fulfilled: 1 Sam 5:2-4 (Tip: Rom 14:11; Phil 2:10).
