ISAIAH 41: 17-20
WHERE VISIONS BECOME REALITY
[Philippians 3:7-11]
God’s desire is to supply His people with every necessity. Even when it seems impossible. Even if our personal situation is parched as a barren desert, it will be supplied with water. As Isaiah 35:7 says, “The parched ground shall become a pool.” Isaiah uses such graphic terms to paint a picture of what God’s workmanship will mean in the lives of His repentant obedient people. It will mean more that physical provision. It means spiritual refreshing, growth and fruitfulness. When God causes the impossible with His creative power, it will be clear that He blesses His people. Then those who truly behold these wondrous events will understand and learn the lesson that He alone is the God who is active and able. He is a God who delivers His people.
I. GOD’S REQUIREMENT, 17.
II. GOD’S RESPONSE, 18-19.
III. GOD’S REASON, 20.
Our FIRST thought is God’s requirement is Man’s readiness. As verse 17 says, “The afflicted and needy are seeking water, but there is none; And their tongue is parched with thirst. I, the Lord, will answer them Myself. As the God of Israel I will not forsake them.
The afflicted and needy denote powerlessness. This powerlessness may be experienced in their inescapable enduring of some hardship which for some may be severe. There condition or circumstance spurs them to look for answers and to call upon God. God uses such conditions or circumstances to cause us to flee to the Him with our whole heart.
Thirst is used here because it is a powerful image of every deep human need - physical, spiritual, and emotional. The use of the participle seeking expresses continued activity, perhaps reflective of our perpetual neediness or the severity of our need. It may also express the thought that at any time the needy, those who thirst, are driven to seek, God promises the seeking that He will answer. He will relieve us, when we are brought to this thirsting condition. God will respond to our cries personally (I, the Lord, I will answer them).
Perhaps the greatest curse of well-being, whether physical, material, emotional, or spiritual, is that it lures us into believing we are self-sufficient. That is, of course, a lie with eternal consequences. We are dependent beings, most of all in spiritual matters. This was what Paul learned, beginning on the road to Damascus (Phil. 3:7-11). It is when our neediness, in whatever realm, has taught us that the Sovereign Lord, on whom we depend absolutely, longs to bless those who bring their needs to Him, that we have learned the greatest lesson of life. (Oswalt, Isaiah, p )
God does not forsake His people who are driven to seek Him. Their lack, their reaping what they sow is only His way of getting their attention. We, His people, are not to lose heart on account of our unfulfilled condition or desperate circumstances as we will see more fully in our second point.
II. GOD’S RESPONSE, 18-19.
God is willing to be actively involved with His seeking people. Those who look to Him in repentant submission will find verse 18 true for them. “I will open rivers on the bare heights, And springs in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, And the dry land fountains of water.
God promises to supply the needs of those who cry out to Him, and to do so in a superabundant manner even should He need to act supernaturally to do so. The language is clearly figurative. There is no indication that the prophet expected these things to come true in a literal sense. As he has done in so many other places in the book, he uses the language of natural impossibility to make the point of God’s limitless ability (Isa. 30:25; 32:14-20; 44:3-5).
When no means of relief are seen, we quickly fall into despair, seeing no ready reason to entertain any hope. Even when we perceive no ways or methods of deliverance, and everything appears to be utterly desperate, trust the Lord. He has ways and methods of supply we know nothing of, for His solutions are not limited current situations or circumstances, no matter how unlikely our human experience may conceive they are. The Lord has abundant channels of displaying His life-giving power and provision that we cannot humanly perceive.
The Lord has sufficient power, and is not confined to the order of nature, which He can easily change, whenever He thinks fit. For He says that he will make life-giving waters to flow on the tops of mountains, and fountains in valleys, and pools in deserts.
Listen to this poem and take hope that He is working in your difficult needy circumstances.
Sometimes life seems hard to bear,
Full of sorrow, trouble and woe
It’s then I need to remember
That it’s in the valleys I grow.
If I always stayed on the mountain topAnd never experienced pain,
I would never appreciate God’s love
And would be living in vain.
I have so much to learn
And my growth is very slow,
Sometimes I need the mountain tops,
But it’s in the valleys I grow.
I do not always understand
Why things happen as they do,
But I am very sure of one thing.
My Lord will see me through.
My little valleys are nothing
When I picture Christ on the cross
He went through the valley of death;
His victory was Satan’s loss.
Forgive me Lord, for complaining
When I’m feeling so very low.
Just give me a gentle reminder
That it’s in the valleys I grow.
Continue to strengthen me, Lord
And use my life each day
To share your love with others
And help them find their way.
Thank you for valleys, Lord
For this one thing I know
The mountain tops are glorious
But it’s in the valleys I grow!
He not only supplies our need, He does so no matter the difficulty of our circumstances. He will give us the resources we need to live productive fruitful lives as verse 19 depicts. “I will put the cedar in the wilderness. The acacia, and the myrtle, and the olive tree; I will place the juniper in the desert, Together with the box tree and the cypress,
Although some of the trees listed here are found in Babylon, the complete list is common to Syria and Israel, which suggests it is a call to return to the Promise Land. Delitzsch suggested that the number of them, seven, was chosen to indicate the perfection of God’s provision for His needy ones. The chief point is simply that God is able to take that which is barren and unproductive and make it fertile and fruitful (5:7; 6:13; 27:6; 3,,7:31; 60:21; 61:3, 11). The human soul is where this great work of God is most needed.
III. GOD’S REASON, 20.
That they may see and recognize, And consider and gain insight as well, That the hand of the Lord has done this, And the Holy One of Israel has created it.
Here God’s purpose in electing and delivering His people is stated as directly as it is anywhere in the book. It is in order that people may recognize who God is by reflecting on His creative, miracle-working power in His people. The nation is called, and cleansed, and empowered, not for its own enjoyment but as a vehicle of God’s revelation. [This emphasis is especially prominent in this section of the book (43:10; 45:20-23; 48:20), but it continues in the following ones as well (49:6; 52:10; 56:6-8; 60:1-3; 66: 18-19). It is as Israel becomes the living evidence of God’s unique deity that the world will recognize Him. Oswalt, Isaiah, p ]
The piling up of verbs is significant here, as is their pairing. See and know or recognize relate to learning that comes from firsthand experience. Take [it to heart] and gain insight denote that reflection which translates knowledge into appropriate action. Isaiah wants to make clear that what God will do in and for His people will be unmistakable, and that its logical consequences will be inescapable. It will point directly to the power (hand) and the character (Holy One of Israel) of God. [Created (Gen. 1:1, bara’) probably reflects the newness and unparalleled nature of God’s activity (43:18-19).] He is the Creator, ever capable marvelous new creations.
Let’s apply these verses to God’s working within us. God gives us a promise from His word which He transforms into His vision for us as we meditate upon it. Generally there is gap between the promise and its reality. When we begin to long for the fulfillment of that promise, we are not yet ready for it. Instead of the promise being immediately fulfilled in us, we need to entered into a valley of humiliation and preparation. It is during this time that Satan comes to us with his temptations, and we are inclined to think that there is no point in even trying to continue.
God has not forgotten His promise. God gives us His promise, and then He takes us down to the valley to break us and mold us into the shape of that vision He gave us. It is in the valley that so many of us get weary and give up. Every God-given vision will become real if we patiently persevere in His will. Just think of the enormous amount of power and creativity God has! And He is never in a hurry. Yet we are always in such a frantic hurry. While still in the light of the glory of the vision, we go right out to accomplish it, but the promise has not yet become effective in us. God has to take us into the valley and put us through fires and floods to hammer us into shape, until we get to the point where He can trust us with the reality of the promise or vision.
Ever since God gave us the promise, He has been at work. He is getting us into the shape of the goal He has for us, and yet over and over again we try to escape from the Sculptor’s hand in an effort to form ourselves into the shape of our own goal.
[Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And battered by the shocks of doom
Into shape and use.]
The promise that God gives is not some unattainable castle in the sky, but a vision of what God wants you to be down here. Allow the Potter to put you on His wheel and whirl you around and remake you as He desires. Then as surely as God is God, and you are you, you will turn out as an exact likeness of the vision. But don’t lose heart in the process. [If you have ever had a vision from God, you may try as you will to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never allow it.]
CONCLUSION
God’s saving work in His people is His testimony to the world that He is real and able. His wondrous blessings are kept for the poor in spirit, who long for Divine enlightening, pardon, empowerment, and holiness. God will pour forth His refreshing power into their barren souls and make them fruitful by the grace of His Spirit, that all who behold and consider it may know of His reality.
