Preached on 03-28-99
THE WATERLESS PIT
A Sermon by the Rev. Patrick A. Rose
""As for you also, because of the blood of your covenant, I will set your prisoners free from
the waterless pit." (Zech. 9:11)
PALM SUNDAY is a celebration of the Lord as King. As He approached Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, a multitude
of people went out to meet Him. They greeted him with palm branches. Many spread garments in the road. And this
huge crowd of people cried out, "Hosanna! 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!' The King of Israel!"
(Jn. 12:13).
The Lord was coming into Jerusalem as their King. This was obvious to them from the fact that He was riding
on a young donkey. To ride this way into Jerusalem was an ancient sign, a sign that He was a supreme Judge and
King (AC 2781, AC 9212).
Now the people who greeted the Lord that day would have had little idea in what sense the Lord really was a
King. They thought that He had come to rule their country as a worldly king. And as a conquered people, under the
government of Rome, a foreign power, they longed for a king who would lead them to freedom as a nation.
The Lord was indeed a King, but He was not a mere worldly King. As He would later tell Pilate, "My kingdom
is not of this world" (John 18:36). He had come to rule, not simply the Jews, but all humankind. And He had
come to rule them, not on a merely worldly plane, but in their spirits -- in their very hearts and minds. He had
come as the King of the church, the King of their souls, and the King of our souls.
And this is what we celebrate today. By riding into Jerusalem on a young donkey, the Lord showed that He is
the King of our spirits. He can rule our minds, rule our feelings and our thoughts, and bring true peace and true
joy, to our minds. This is the message of Palm Sunday. And it is also the message of the original prophecy in the
prophet Zechariah.
A little over five hundred years before the Lord rode into Jerusalem, His triumphant entrance into Jerusalem
had been prophesied in the book of Zechariah. There it had been written, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and
riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey" (Zech. 9:9). It was an clearly stated prophecy, and one
that was specifically fulfilled when the Lord entered Jerusalem (Matt. 21:5). But this is not all that Zechariah
speaks about. Immediately after this prophecy of Palm Sunday, it is said, "I will cut off the chariot from
Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem; the battle bow shall be cut off. He shall speak peace to the nations; His
dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. As for you also, because of the
blood of your covenant, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to the stronghold, You prisoners
of hope." (Zech. 9:10-12).
It is easy, and perhaps only natural, when reading the Prophets, to focus upon those prophecies that are clear
and make sense, and to skim over those that are obscure and puzzling. And yet within these obscure prophecies there
is a great deal for us to learn.
Consider this: that Zechariah not only says that the Lord would ride into Jerusalem as a King, but that He
would then remove from Ephraim and Jerusalem the instruments of war, He would extend His dominion from sea to sea,
and that He would then release prisoners from the waterless pit. Now none of these things seem to have followed
the Lord's entrance into Jerusalem, at least in the literal sense. But these things are not meant to be taken literally.
They are symbolic of what the Lord, as King, can accomplish within our minds. And what is said here in Zechariah
is so important because in speaking of the prisoners in the waterless pit, it is speaking of something we ourselves
can experience. We ourselves can be prisoners in a waterless pit.
Zechariah, in prophesying of the Lord's coming as a King, is speaking about the church, because it is through
His church that the Lord comes to people, and governs them. The church that Zechariah is talking about is not a
church building, nor a church organization. He is talking about the essential church, the church as it dwells within
the heart and mind of an individual. And it is this church that the Lord is most especially to rule. It is in this
church that the Lord is most of all meant to be present. The church within our minds has to be alive, alive with
the presence of the Lord, if it is to bring us joy and peace.
It is strange, in a way, that the truths of the church can, at times, appear very dry. Truth is, after all,
spiritual water. How can spiritual water appear so dry? The fact of the matter is, though, that spiritual water
is never dry. What we perceive to be dry are the vessels of truth: things we know, things we have heard, things
we accept to be true. And the reason the vessels of truth can seem dry is that they can be empty, devoid of the
truth that they are meant to contain.
For example, we can say that we believe in a life after death. We may accept as the truth what the Heavenly
Doctrines say about heaven and hell. But if, in the course of our life, all we do is live for this world, if we
are completely and totally immersed in only worldly things, then any thought we might have about the afterlife
is just that: a thought . . . an empty thought . . . devoid of the life-giving water of truth. Truth, you see,
is a vision. Truth is a living thing. It gives us insights, and a sense of meaning. It refreshes us, it gives us
hope and comfort., and it makes life worth living. Without this truth, though, life is indeed like a waterless
pit. If feels dry and meaningless, and we feel trapped, and hopeless. The Lord's church, as it exists within us,
is unable to help us, because without the truth, without a living vision, it is not really the church.
The Lord, when He came on earth, came as Divine truth. He came to bring light to a world in darkness. He came
to refresh the souls of men and women with the living waters of heaven. At the time of His coming, there was scarcely
any truth left here upon this earth. There was the Jewish Church, but the leaders of this church, the Lord said,
were "making the Word of God of no effect" (Mk. 7:13). The people of that church really had no clear
understanding of truth, and almost no vision of the purpose of life. Their minds were filled with all kinds of
false ideas, and they had no way of defending themselves from these falsities. This is what is meant in Zechariah
by the words, "I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem" (Zech. 9:10). Ephraim
stands for the understanding of truth; Jerusalem is doctrine. The Jewish church lacked the understanding, and lacked
the clear doctrine, to resist and fight against what was false (AE 357:1).
This is why the Lord came. He came to establish His church on earth in a new and living way. This is why it
is said, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming
to you" (Zech 9:9). The daughter of Zion and the daughter of Jerusalem are the affections of good and truth,
and these make the church, the living church. Unless what is good and what is true affect us, the church cannot
be alive within us.
Now before the Lord's coming, there were very many people who had lived here on earth, and had entered the
spiritual world, but had not yet been raised up into heaven. In the Arcana Coelestia it describes the lot of these
people. It is said that "As these could be saved only by the coming of the Lord, and thus could not before
be raised into heaven, therefore they were meanwhile kept in the lower earth, in places there which in the Word
are called 'pits;' which earth was beset about by the hells where are falsities, by which they were then much infested,
and yet were guarded by the Lord. But after the Lord came into the world, and made the Human in Himself Divine,
then He delivered those who were there in 'pits,' and raised them to heaven; and out of them He also formed the
spiritual heaven, which is the second heaven. This is meant by the descent of the Lord to the lower regions, and
by the deliverance of those who were bound" (AC 6854).
It is a wonderful thing to realize that when the Lord came into the world, He established a new heaven, the
spiritual heaven, in the other world, and raised up into that heaven many people who had been kept in the lower
earth ever since they had left this world. They had been confined in pits without spiritual water, without sufficient
truth. Now, the Lord raised them up into heaven, into the light of truth itself. At the same time He established
upon this earth a new church, the Christian Church. In the Christian church people had a much clearer understanding
of the truth than was possible in Old Testament times. They could come far closer to the Lord Himself, entering
into a living conjunction or covenant with Him. This clear vision of the truth, that the Lord made possible when
He came into the world, is called, in the Word, the blood of the new covenant (Matt. 26:28; TCR 730). It was this
vision of the truth, indeed, a vision of the Lord Himself, which freed people from those pits in the other world.
And so we read in Zechariah: "As for you also, because of the blood of your covenant, I will set your prisoners
free from the waterless pit" (Zech. 9:11).
But what of us, today? Though the most immediate application of this prophecy in Zechariah is to those events
which occurred when the Lord came on earth, we can also, as we have indicated, experience pits without water. There
still are pits in the other world to this day. They are places of temptation or vastation where people who have
become attached to harmful beliefs, or to evil habits, but who are nevertheless interiorly in good intentions,
came be separated from such things before they enter heaven (AC 4728, AC 5037). And here on earth, we also can,
in our spirits, experience these pits, these states of temptation.
Temptation is a miserable state. In temptation we feel trapped deep down inside. We are thirsty, because we
have no clear vision of the truth. And in that dry pit of temptation we are, most of all, lonely. We are lonely,
for we miss the presence of the Lord.
What is it that will bring the presence of the Lord? What is it that will invite Him to ride, as our King,
into our lives. In Zechariah it is said to be Divine truth, or the blood of the covenant. "As for you also,
because of the blood of your covenant, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit" (Zech. 9:11).
We must receive this blood, this truth. And, it is said in Apocalypse Explained that, "spiritual Divine truth
is received by a person inwardly, . . . for when a person receives Divine truth inwardly in himself, that is, makes
it to be of his love and thus of his life, truth is known from the truth itself, because the Lord flows into His
own truth with a person, and teaches him" (AE 701:16). To make Divine truth to be of our life. It is this
which will bring us out of states of temptation. It sounds so simple, but it can be so difficult. And it is difficult
for the reason that it requires subordination.
We like to govern ourselves. We like to decide for ourselves what we will do, and what we will not do. We are
free human beings, and we love our freedom, freedom the Lord has given us. But we are also stubborn. We use our
freedom, all too often, to disobey the Lord, to choose our own ways rather than His. And this we can do. This we
are free to do. But until we submit ourselves, freely choose to submit ourselves, to the leading of the Lord, and
to the truths of His Word, we will never escape the pit. We will be prisoners: prisoners to our own desires, our
own misconceptions, our own stupid choices.
The Lord's will must be done. It is so easy to reason ourselves out of doing what we know to be right. It is
so easy to come up with arguments for doing what we ourselves want to do. But as long as we do this, the Lord cannot
come riding into our minds. The Lord, as He entered Jerusalem, rode upon a female donkey, together with its colt.
These animals symbolize our natural inclinations and viewpoints -- the ways we like to behave, and the ways we
like to think. These things must be subordinated to the Lord (AC 2781). In other words, we must subordinate ourselves
to the Lord. We must place Him, and His Word, above ourselves.
Then He can enter. He can ride triumphant into our minds, to raise us out from the misery of temptation, into
the light of heaven itself. He can bring peace to our minds, peace and happiness. Within ourselves, deep within
ourselves, we will rejoice, and feel safe, as the Lord comes to us, as our Savior, and as our King.
Amen.
Lessons: Zech. 9:9-17; Jn. 12:9-19; AE 329:17
© 1999 by the Rev. Patrick A. Rose
