Mark's Blog

After a long trip, there is nothing like coming home! The dogs bark, the kids are peeking out the door; they then attack you with purest joy. Sitting in your chair, lying in your own bed, and eating your own food out of the frig instead of out of vending machines, oh, the joy of coming home!

Isaiah has just put hope back into the heart of his hearers by saying, “He (God) will make a highway for the remnant of his people,” a highway leading home—just as he did for Israel long ago when they returned from Egypt”  (11:16).

And the flashmob erupts in jubilant song! Everybody is singing,

You comfort me . . .You have come to save me

And have given me strength–

And a song, a song of victory! (12:1-2)

Sherrylee and I were in Israel last November—a quite pleasant time of the year, but we have been in Mediterranean countries in June—and it is HOT!  You can’t get enough to drink.

So when Isaiah says that on that great Celebration Day, you will drink deeply from the fountain of salvation, he is drawing on an experience every Israelite must have had.  Dusty, miserably hot, and thirsty—really thirsty—but what wonderful relief and refreshment to drink from an abundant supply of cool, pure water!

Flash forward 700 years and you will hear Jesus using the same words, talking about “living water” to the Samaritan woman in John 4 and water that will quench your thirst once and for all in John 7. 

We have trouble comprehending the power of this image because water is a cheap commodity, everywhere available, but to promise a desert person that they will drink deeply is to promise them life—with its sweetest pleasure!

Of course, praise is followed by the intense desire for proclamation: “Tell the nations what He has done!”  “Make known his praise around the world!”  These passages don’t describe obedience to the Great Commission; they are beyond Paul’s sense of obligation to the Jew first and then to the Greek.

This is pure joy at salvation overflowing the banks! This is so much pleasure at the goodness of God and His leading His people to Zion, to their home, where they belong, that no one could keep from telling the world:

“For great is the Holy One of Israel who lives among you!”

Go grab a big class of cold water and celebrate!