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ThirstyIn my first entry I shared a bit of my testimony, and briefly made mention of how meaningful this passage was to me for my turning to the Lord:

…forget all that—
  it is nothing compared to what I am going to do.
For I am about to do something new.
  See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
  I will create rivers in the dry wasteland…
Yes, I will make rivers in the dry wasteland… (Isaiah 43.18-20, NLT)

It’s been 10ish years since God first refreshed me with these living waters. So with this post my goal is to take you to the riverbank with me, to taste the ever-growing sweetness of the reality mentioned in this passage.

My First Sip

When I first happened upon this passage, what I thought God was saying to me was:

Adam, forget all of that life without me in it. I’m going to do a brand new thing for you! I’m going to bring you home to me, and I’ll take the wasteland of your life and cause my abundance to bubble up and overflow in and through you with refreshing living waters!

I still think that’s the gist of what God was saying to me, even though now I realize that this isn’t exactly what this text says. God is not hindered by lack of exegetical skill in wooing unskilled readers to himself. He knew how I would read this, and he used the meaning or significance I would draw from it (or add to it) to gladden me with himself. Where I was in my ability to read his Word, that’s the significance God knew I would get out of it–even though a more thoughtful reading reveals even deeper truths.

I hope that’s encouraging. We are not ultimately saved by our ability to read. Jesus said, ‘They shall all be taught by God!’ (John 6.45, 63). Even when we don’t know how best to read the Bible, God knows how to get us the Truth we need to believe! Biblical scholars and theologians are not necessarily more holy than a pastor in a 3rd world country who is not as literate. So read, repent, and believe, and enjoy what you understand, praying for greater understanding! But don’t stop learning how to get bigger and better mouthfuls of this living water!

Taking Another Drink

Let’s kneel down before this watercourse and fill up our cups with a reading that’s a little more faithful to Isaiah’s original intentions. (I say ‘a little more faithful’ because I’m still trying to figure out what God is saying here through Isaiah.) To do so I’ll use a little more literal translation (The ESV) and see how our passage fits into the flow of his thoughts. Chapter 43 begins with God encouraging his people about his presence with them. ‘Fear not,’ he says, ‘for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you…’ (vv. 1b-2a) Passing through waters should remind God’s people of the way he led their ancestors in the past. He led his people through the Red Sea on dry ground. So the beginning of this chapter makes it seem like God is saying that’s just the way he operates with his people. It’s like he’s saying, ‘Remember how I’ve been with you to rescue you in the past? Don’t be afraid in the present. I’m the same God who is with you and rescues you.’

He points to that past rescue operation again as we approach our passage.

Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: (Isaiah 43.16-17)

Notice the colon. God is introducing himself before he says what’s in our passage (and, as we’ll see, our passage points back to what God says about himself here in this introduction). He introduces himself as the God who saved his people from Egypt, making a path through the sea for them.

Then this God says the following:  Forget all that. ‘Remember not the former things.’ In effect he’s telling his people to forget their Exodus from Egypt.

WHAT?!!! This is what God reminds them of over and over throughout the Bible. This is the good news that precedes the ten commandments, the indicative revelation of God’s sovereign grace that motivates obedience. And he’s telling them to forget that?! Why in the world is God saying this? [Note: He’s not telling them to forget their past life of sin in light of all the good he’s got in store for them–as I originally took it to mean. He’s actually telling them to forget his good works for them in the past in light of… Well, just wait and you’ll see.]

Why is he telling them to forget what he had done for them? Because, he says, ‘Behold, I am doing a new thing.’ Something new is coming up over the horizon that will somehow effectively eclipse God’s past work of redemption. What could it be? What could possibly eclipse God’s work? No one is greater than him! God alone has the power to effectively leave past works of God in the shadows of new works of God.

He describes it. It will be like ‘rivers in the desert.’ The contrast is striking: Whereas in the past God cut a dry path through a wet sea, in the future God will pour out a watery path in the middle of a dry desert. To the people of God who first read this, the meaning would be clear: Just as God had led them out of Egypt into the land he promised them, so he would lead them–in even greater glory–out of their exile back into their homeland.

Even Greater Glory

But as great as it was for Israel to return to their land, it really wasn’t all that great. Now, don’t get me wrong. It was a good gift God gave them. It just wasn’t the ultimate gift he had in store. You see, although they eventually returned to the land, they had arid hearts, like parched earth in desperate need of water. There was a longing for their true homeland deep within their hearts, a thirst that returning to a plot of dirt simply did not satisfy. So although they came back to the land, they still found themselves far from God in sin.

They found that the deepest need of their souls was not real estate. Their deepest, most profound need was God himself. Ah, but that was the problem. They were estranged from him. Although freed from exile, they found that there was an even more ancient exile still in effect. God had pronounced it after mankind first rebelled in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 3.23-24 records this:

…the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

This is the sad situation of all mankind now. We live with death in our relationship with our Maker (and therefore in our relationships with everything he’s created). We are exiles. We are alienated from him. We are rightly godforsaken because God was wrongly forsaken by us.

But there is reason to believe that Isaiah was not oblivious to this ancient exile. In fact, he addresses it with the same breath that seems also to refer to their liberation from their exile in Babylon. Maybe more accurately, one could say that God was using their upcoming release from exile to paint a picture of a truer, deeper, ultimate rescue that he had in the works.

God was planning on renewing his chosen ones by pouring out his Spirit into their dry hearts. He continues this water-in-the-desert theme in the next chapter, saying:

I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. (Is. 44.3)

This outpouring of the Holy Spirit is what the prophet Joel talks about. And the apostle Peter quoted his words to explain what was happening at Pentecost, when the Spirit came to clothe and fill the church. As the people from different ethnic groups stood in wonder at the church telling of the wonders of God in their own languages, Peter explained what was happening:

This is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:

‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’  (Acts 2.16-21)

So God has already begun pouring out his Spirit in anticipation of ‘the day of the Lord’ when the Lord will be revealed in glory at his return. God the Spirit has come. This means that God has set his chosen exiles free, and they have found their true homeland again in God himself! (If you want to see other prophets combining return-from-exile and water imagery to point ahead to New Covenant realities check out Ezek. 28.25-26, 36.22-38 <–This passage portrays God as filling cities with ‘flocks’ of people. This is significant because he had said through Ezekiel that he would give them the Son of David as a shepherd for God’s flocks (34.23-24). The Lord Jesus is our Shepherd! See also Jeremiah 31; 32.36-33.26.)

But this Spirit-outpouring did not begin with the church at Pentecost. The church received the Spirit only because her Lord received him before her and for her, as her Forerunner and Head. Like an anointed priest, if you see oil that has dripped onto his body and onto the hem of his garments, it’s only because his head was anointed first (‘It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion’ (Psalm 133:3)). If you see Christ’s church baptized with the Holy Spirit, it’s only because Christ was plunged into and anointed with him first.

Jesus is the Messiah:  The Anointed One

Jesus is the anointed one, the Messiah. The Spirit was poured out upon him for the church before the church. Any refreshing waters of life that God’s people now find poured out upon them is only theirs because it was his first. It’s nothing we deserve in ourselves; it’s only what he deserves–and thus, we receive the Spirit derivatively insofar as we are united with him. We participate in Christ’s Spirit-anointing. Any good that we received from God should never be thought of as something separate from Jesus and his Scriptural and historical incarnation, living his life of righteousness, clothed with his own gospel, obedient unto death on a cross, and exalted in ‘life after life after death’ in his resurrection, ascension, and session at the Father’s right hand.

This is not something merely imported from the New Testament and forced upon the Old. It is a mystery, revealed in clarity in the New Testament; but we now can see (‘now’ that Christ has risen, cf. John 2.22) that this mystery was already tucked away even here in Isaiah. Our passage is situated within sections in Isaiah that have come to be known as ‘The Servant Songs.’ And before chapter 44’s assertion that God would pour out his Spirit on Israel’s descendants, he spoke in the first song of a servant who would be anointed with God’s Spirit:

Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. he will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.  (Isaiah 42.1-4)

It is this servant God chose to lead his people out of the exile of being banished from his blessed presence for their sin. How did he accomplish this liberation from exile? By his death and resurrection.

Freedom From Exile Through Jesus’ Death and Our Homeland in His Resurrection

The servant came and took the penalty of exile, that all of God’s elect ones deserve, upon himself. The last servant song speaks to this:

Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted… Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  (Isaiah 52.13; 53.4-6)

Verse 8 puts this servant’s plight in exilic terms: ‘By oppression and judgment he was taken away…cut off out of the land of the living…’ The next chapter speaks of the effect this servant’s suffering has on God’s people. They are being freed from their ancient exile! Let me point out passages that particularly make this plain:

…your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities… (54.3) For the LORD has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the LORD, your Redeemer. (54.6-8)

So this Servant, this Son of David who is the Son of God, stepped out of his heavenly homeland at his Father’s right hand. He suffered the judgment God’s chosen ones deserved for their sins. He participated in their ancient exile to the max on their behalf. We were ‘cast off’ but now God ‘will gather’ us with everlasting love and compassion, because Jesus was ‘cut off’ for us, in our place, in our exile.

Jesus participated in our godforsakenness (especially on the cross, crying ‘My God?! My God?! Why have you forsaken me?!’) so that we could participate in his everlasting loving relationship with his Father, as adopted children of God in Christ.

At the cross Jesus took our abandonment. And at the resurrection we get to share in Jesus’ acceptance. For he ‘was delivered up [on the cross] for our trespasses and raised for our justification’ (Romans 4.25). Jesus’ death and resurrection was the ultimate wedding, joining two parties in an indissoluble covenant bond. What once was ours is now his. And what was his is now ours. He took what was ours with him to the tree: our sins, our sufferings, our illnesses, our shame, our demons, our nails, our judgment and death, the wrath and estrangement of God due to us. And we take what is his as he emerges from the grave: his new creation life, his relationship in God with God, his vindication, his sonship, his victory, his restoration, his ‘every Spiritual blessing’ (Ephesians 1.3). Christ has been freed from exile and so now have we been already freed in him. Christ has entered the true homeland, and so now have we, seated with him in the heavenlies.

Past, Future, and Present

So what Jesus did in history has ushered in the beginning of God’s new creation, our forever home with God. And we have already begun living in and with him there by his grace. If anyone is in Christ Jesus, she or he is a new creation! This is already true for us. Already, but not yet.

Jesus married us in his death and resurrection, but we still await an everlasting honeymoon. And, oh, what bliss awaits those that are Christ’s when he returns! We will be ‘blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy’! (Jude 24), as he presents ‘the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing’ (Eph. 5.27) as he loves, ‘nourishes and cherishes’ us because ‘we are members of his body,’ ‘one flesh’! (Eph. 5.28-32). Everlasting union and communion with God in and through Christ in grace and glory in exponentially ever-increasing measure together! Ever-increasing desire for God in and through Christ, and ever-increasing satisfaction in him! No more tears. Only joy. No more evil. Only love for God and neighbors. All wrongs will be made right, and we will love God all the more for experiencing the wrongs and then experiencing restoration. No more lies. Only God’s truth. No more murder. Only everlasting life sharing in Christ’s relationship with his Father and Spirit.

That great hope awaits us. An eternal weight of glory! But we’re not there yet. Christ’s kingdom has come, but it awaits fullness of revelation and consummation when he returns. In the meantime we live in a dying world. All creation–including ourselves–groans. We are justified in Christ, but we are sinners still. We live in the overlap of ages where we have and love Christ, but we haven’t seen him yet. For now our praises are mixed with laments until he returns. For now we share in Christ’s sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. He has done a brand new thing, but we await the completion of that adoption at his return: Our own bodily resurrection and the regeneration of the cosmos.

Until then let us steady ourselves on this shaky planet knowing that a bright future has been secured for us in the past that we have already begun to enjoy. With one foot firmly planted in Christ’s first coming and the other established in his second coming we can find the assurance that we have found freedom from our exile and that our home awaits us with God forever.  We don’t have to wear ourselves out trying to free ourselves. Christ has done it. So we don’t have to look out for ourselves anymore. Instead we can, in the security he has purchased for us, freely take risks to love the hard to love, even if it means we die for them. Our tears will flow until he comes. But he has poured out his Spirit on us, so that we are already united to him and can already drink of his everlasting ever-satisfying water. So let us pour ourselves out for the lost, the needy, the broken, the exiles who are dying of thirst though they may not even know it. But if they only knew who Jesus was, they would ask him and he would give them living water (John 4.10). For he says,

Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:14)