Water for the Journey

(Isaiah 35:1-10, Preaching: Nathan Snyder, December 15, 2013)

Do you ever feel like you are in a spiritual desert?  For Christians, it can sometimes feel like we are spiritually parched.  We have doubts about God or simply feel far from him.  We get discouraged.  We feel helpless against our sin.  Our prayers feel stale.  God’s command that we rejoice in him seems impossible.  We feel condemned to live and die in the desert, like rebellious Israel wandering 40 years in the wilderness until the entire generation that left Egypt died.  Yet we at least take a little comfort in the fact that heaven is coming.  Then there will be joy.  Then there will be victory.  Then we will finally be free of our doubts and fears, discouragements and sin.  “Jesus, beam me up, because my life here is a desert.  I’m just barely hanging on by the skin of my teeth, waiting to leave this world.”  I’m convinced from Isaiah 35 that this thinking is not what God wants us to settle into.  Yes, we experience deserts.  Yes, we struggle with sin and doubts.  Yes, the journey of faith is often hard and trials are par for the course.  And yet God would also have us live with joyful expectation and confidence in his saving work on our behalf, not just once we get to heaven, but even as we make the journey to get there.

Like the Exodus, Only Far Better

In this chapter God promises to redeem his people from the oppression of their enemies and bring them joyfully back to Zion.  God had called Isaiah to be a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah during the eighth century BC.  Isaiah spoke against idolatry and injustice going on in Judah.  He also confronted Judah over their tendency to turn to other nations for help rather than to God.  For instance, when Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel made war on Judah, they turned to the Assyrian empire.  It didn’t work out so well.  Assyria would eventually conquer the northern kingdom of Israel, and then continue south, taking all of Judah’s fortified cities as well.  People were killed.  Others carried off.  Furthermore, Isaiah prophesied that another empire would rise, Babylon, and this would mean even greater trouble and exile for Judah.  All of this was judgment from God for his people’s turning away from him.  Yet because of God’s own faithfulness to his covenant, and because of his lavish grace, he would save his people from their enemies (verse 4).  He would ransom, redeem and restore them, and he would bring them back to Zion (verses 8-10).  Zion was another name for Jerusalem, the capital city of Judah, where God’s king and God’s temple were established.

God speaks of bringing back his people on a highway in verses 8-9.  This highway will be safe and secure from ravenous beasts.  Called the Way of Holiness, nobody who is unclean shall pass on it.  The image of God making a highway is common in Isaiah.  In 11:16 and 43:16-21, God compares Israel’s return from exile to the exodus when he redeemed them from slavery in Egypt, destroyed the Egyptian army in the sea, and led his people across the wilderness to the land he had promised them.  God will do a new thing and bring his people back to that land, again bringing judgment on their oppressors.  This will be like another exodus, yet it will be far more glorious.  When God led Israel through the wilderness in the first exodus, he provided for them.  He even made water burst from a rock.  But this time the entire desert will blossom.  Water will spring from the thirsty ground and the burning sand will become a pool.  The blind shall see and the deaf hear.  The lame shall leap and the mute sing for joy.  Thus God will remedy the spiritual blindness and deafness of his people lamented in 6:9-10.  At the end of this journey will be everlasting joy.  Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.  All this far surpasses the first exodus.

God Has Come!

Has any of this happened yet?  Actually, it is happening right now.  God has come to save his people in the person of his Son.  The name “Jesus” means “Yahweh saves.”  During Jesus’ earthly ministry he physically opened blind eyes and deaf ears, made the lame leap and the mute sing.  All this was a sign that his mission was to heal those who are spiritually blind and lame.  At the cross he defeated the spiritual oppressors of God’s people, the forces of darkness (Colossians 2:15).  Jesus is the Holy One and he sanctifies his people so that they may walk with him on the Way of Holiness.  And he has poured out his Holy Spirit who springs up like a stream of fresh water in the hearts of all trust in him (John 7:37-39).

Strengthen the Weak Hands

Isaiah also made clear in his writings that when the Christ came, he would bring his salvation to the nations beyond Israel, not just to Israel (e.g. 19:23-25; 49:5-6).  All who trust in Christ Jesus have a place in Zion, the city of everlasting joy.  And do not miss this: God does not merely say that our final destination will mean joy.  He has promised the Spirit for our journey to get there.  Jesus opens blind eyes and frees us to worship him in joy today.  Spirit created life springs up in the desert of our parched hearts today.  Jesus leads us in the way of holiness today.  Jesus protects us today from the evil one who like a ravenous lion would seek to destroy our faith and keep us from reaching Zion.  Therefore, Christian, heed the command of verses 3-4.  If your hands are weak, your knees feeble, or your heart filled with anxiety, “Be strong and do not fear!”  Because Jesus has come we can complete verse 4 with these words: “Behold, your God has indeed come to save you and he will finish what he started.”

Yes, we are going to struggle in this life.  Yet we rob ourselves of power and joy, and we dishonor God, when we fail to believe what he is telling us here.  God does not want us to live like the Spirit’s power is unavailable to us, like we can’t make progress in faith and obedience, like joy in the Lord is only for a few spiritual elite, but not for us.  Joy is all over this passage, all over the journey, springing up in the desert.  It is not just at the final destination, although then it will be complete and unstained by the sin and suffering we face in this life.

How do we gain strength and joy when we are not feeling the glory of God’s salvation?  First, cry out for the Spirit.  Jesus has told us that our heavenly Father is good and he gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13).  Second, turn away from sin (Hebrews 12:1-17).  While our experience of the desert is not always the consequence of our own sin, it can be, like Israel and Judah going into exile.  Furthermore, there is always the temptation when our souls feel dry and weary to turn to false gods and false saviors, like Judah turning to Assyria when they should have turned to the Lord.  Psychology might call it self-medicating.  God calls it idolatry, and it always leads to more misery for us.  The highway to the everlasting joy of Zion is the Way of Holiness, and it is only as we are pursuing holiness through the Spirit’s power that we experience joy and fruitfulness in our present journey.  And if we feel defeated by sin, we must realize that God has promised to save us as we trust him.  The desert will blossom.  The lame will leap for joy.  All this because of what Christ has done for us.  All God’s promises are true through Jesus and therefore we can be confident in them regardless of how many times we have failed.  Which leads to a third thing we can do.  Obey verse 4.  Behold your God who has come to save us.  We do so by meditating on Christ and his Word.  We walk by faith, not by feeling.  And we walk by faith in God’s salvation through Christ, not in how well we have been doing.  Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ (Romans 10:17).  Faith clings to gospel promises like Isaiah 35 even when we cannot feel them at the moment.  Hear the Scriptures proclaimed.  Read them.  Ponder them.  Memorize them.  Speak them out loud when your soul feels parched and dry.  What we find is that the more we feed our souls on the gospel, the more we experience the reality of what is promised in the gospel.