An Oasis in the Desert, A Strong Song in the Present

Introduction

If you have been watching the news recently, you have probably seen headlines about the crisis facing America because of Lake Mead. Lake Mead is located in Nevada and Arizona in the west, 24 miles east of Las Vegas, and is the largest man-made reservoir in the United States, providing water to 25 million people in Arizona, Nevada, California, and Mexico. And due to the ongoing mega-drought gripping the western United States since the year 2000, the water level of Lake Mead has dropped nearly a thousand feet and is dangerously close to reaching what is called deadpool level. If it reaches this point, water in the reservoir can no longer flow downstream from the dam, and will be unable to provide the water necessary to power electricity for hundreds of thousands of people living across the area. Life will be unsustainable.

America is facing a crisis because its source of life-sustaining power is failing. And its people are left with feelings of helpless, with worries about what the future may hold, and whether or not this drought will end and life will flourish again.

Have you ever felt that way? Have you like your source of strength is failing? Worried about the future? Helpless? Whether or not the troubles you face will end, and whether life will flourish again?

We’re going to look at a very similar situation in our passage for today. It’s about the Israelite’s facing a crisis, and includes their response to receiving more bad news until God provides a word of hope. And I believe that God includes this in Scripture because God wants to use passages like this to comfort, console, and encourage us here today, so that we may be able to respond in joy and praise. So if you’d open your bibles or bible apps with me we’re going to look at a very short passage and ask a few questions as we hear from God’s word to us.

Today we’ll be looking Isaiah 12, and as you turn there, we want to spend a moment to take a look at the Context before the Content to get an understanding of the author intends to communicate, which helps us see what God is saying to us today.

The Background & Context

We’re in the Old Testament, looking at section of history dealing with Israel, the people God chose as His own to reveal His character and offer salvation to the world. Israel has always had a sawtoothed history of ups and downs, and the book of Isaiah is written during the chapter of God’s story during a declining period of Israel, which has found itself split into a civil war between the North and South, and is in the shadow of Assyria—the big threat to the country of this time period.

The Book of Isaiah contains many warnings fo looming disaster, and that the sins of the people would bring God’s judgment, yet he also declared that God is sovereign and would return His people from exile. It also contains prophetic announcements of a “servant,” a “man of sorrows,” who would be “pierced for our transgressions” and accomplish God’s purposes of salvation, pointing to a time of a new creation in which God will rule as King, destroy wickedness, and establish eternal peace. He writes all this around 700 years before Christ is born and fulfills these passages.

Leading up to our text for today, Isaiah has been speaking to the royal court in Judah (the southern kingdom), and has prophesied that Assyria would Invade and conquer Israel and send them into exile (chapter 8).

For them, who have been hoping for good news, this would probably go over like pork rinds at a bar mitzvah. It is not good news, and Assyria would indeed invade and conquer in the following years.\

God’s people are in a crisis.

But that’s not where the story ends. Isaiah proclaims that God’s people will be sent hope through a child born to them, that those who oppressed and invaded them will be judged, and that the remnant of Israel will return. And that one day, the coming Messiah will rule. After a description of what creation will be like on the day that the Messiah comes in chapter 11, we come to our text for today in the poetic song response of the people in chapter 12.

Before we begin lets open up with prayer for the Lord.

Would you please stand for a reading of God’s Word if you’re able?

Isaiah 12

English Standard Version (Chapter 12)

12 You will say in that day:“I will give thanks to you, O LORD,for though you were angry with me,your anger turned away,that you might comfort me.2  “Behold, God is my salvation;I will trust, and will not be afraid;for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song,and he has become my salvation.”3 With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. 4 And you will say in that day:“Give thanks to the LORD,call upon his name,make known his deeds among the peoples,proclaim that his name is exalted.5  “Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously;let this be made known in all the earth.6  Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion,for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

That is the wonderful word for God’s people this evening, and all God’s people said “Amen.” You can have a seat.

The Text Breakdown

This passage, which is a song, shows that God gives us mercy, gives cause to our praise, and that He is our salvation and strength. Before jumping into the content, I want to point out an important element of the structure that helps us to understand what’s happening here. And the way the text is grouped, we can identify two different types of responses that occur on the day that the Messiah reigns.

First, Notice that Verses 1-2 show an individual realization and response with the singular use of “I” and “my”, showing that this is a state of individual conviction that the speaker comes to.

The second type of response is seen in the sense of a community—where the speaker is calling others to act and encouraging them to respond to God because of what He’s done.

And the key verse that binds these two types of response is found in verse 3.

And so I’m going to identify three things in this text that God says will happen when Christ is ruling in our lives, and then we’ll wrap up with some questions for us to bring to God.

Now, the first thing the text says we experience as a people under Christ’s rule:

God’s people experience God’s Mercy

V1 “You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me.”

I want to draw your attention to this word, “THAT.” It is so small, but it indicates an answer to “Why?”, a question you ask when you want to know the reasoning or heart of a matter. This word answers the question, “Why would you turn your anger away?” and shows “THAT” you might comfort me. The text shows us that God’s heart, His driving factor for turning His righteous anger away from us, was so THAT He might comfort us. He loves and cares for us, and that love for us moves Him to action. And this is an individual recognition—others may not give thanks to God, but I will. You were angry with me—it was my sin and evil that prompted your desire to protect what is good and destroy what is against it. Were there no Holy One, there would be no need for salvation, because then the Creator would be just as wicked as the rest of us. However, since His wrath on the tresspasses of man has been reconciled through the person of christ, we have assurance of salvation—for “He became my salvation.”

But we also see that His Action moves us to respond—His comfort prompts us to give thanks to Him who has comforted us.

Where there was anger towards me, there is a comforting hand. I know that God is for me, and that He Himself has become my salvation—it’s not dependent upon me. And since He is my salvation, nothing can happen to me, and no situation can overtake me, that He cannot save me from.

Looking at verse 2, we begin to understand the implications of this mercy.

Isaiah 12:2 ESV

“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.”

Immediately, the Jewish audience would notice something striking about this line, as they would recall the similarities between this and the song from the Exodus when the Israelites were freed from Egypt in Exodus 15:2

Exodus 15:2 ESV

The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.

This is supposed to immediately call our attention to the fact that the salvation experienced at the reign of the Messiah described here will have effects as miraculous and proportionate as the might that God displayed when He redeemed His people by crossing the red sea.

God himself has become my strength and my song. Something interesting to note however, is that the Hebrew word translated here for “strength and song” is one term: “Zimrat.” This is understood generally as meaning both song and strength. So the Lord Himself has become my “strong song” or my “song of strength” or “strengthening song.”

As God’s people, we take comfort in His mercy and are moved to praise and to trusting Him. God Himself has become our song, when we sing of Him we are strengthened and encouraged.

This leads us to the next Key Point:

God’s people receive strength through God’s Story

Isaiah 12:3 ESV

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

In the Bible, the theme of physical thirst is often used as a picture to describe spiritual need in a tangible way that we can understand and relate. Isaiah is speaking to a people from the Middle East, a people very familiar with desert landscape, and where access to water was given a high value in society. There are many biblical records that make reference to the importance of wells to the daily lifestyle of people, going so far as to even having physical fights, threats, and quarrels over them, such as Isaac’s story in Genesis 26.

Rather than a physical well with physical water to quench our physical thirst, this verse describes how God’s people will draw water from the wells of salvation.

Drawing water from the wells of salvation means that we draw upon resources that bring forth refreshment from that which contains salvation. For the Jewish and Christian faith, these are the stories of God’s salvation found in Scripture and History. We draw refreshment and nourishment, drinking from the mighty acts of salvation in history that show us we can depend on the God who saves, to be faithful to us and save us again. When we remember His salvation experienced in the past, we are reminded of Who God is, and that we can, with joy, reach into the deep wells of God’s Word to be encouraged in our present day. We find refreshment in the knowledge that we can trust God to accomplish what He has declared, that the pain and troubles of this world that we are experiencing will not last, and that our joy is dependent upon a well that never goes dry, for God’s character as the Savior can never be revoked. And while the acts of salvation are the water and content of these wells, it is not the source. For the source of these waters and wells of salvation is the wellspring of Life, the Person of Christ. Jesus points to this spiritual reality when he speaks to the woman at the well in John 4.

John 4:13–14 ESV

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but 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.”

God has given His people a strengthening song in the person of Christ, access to the the wells of salvation through the person of Christ, which finally brings us to our last observation.

God’s People Worship with Overflow

Isaiah 12:4–6 ESV

And you will say in that day: “Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted. “Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth. Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

The salvation we experience and drink from, like filling a teacup with a fire hose, ends up rushing through us and overflowing—we cannot contain the entirety of His good news within ourselves! Our cup runs over, and this overflows into the people and world around us. We find ourselves and our words reaching into the world around us, prompting them and encouraging them to give thanks to the Lord, to call upon His name, to make His deeds known, to shout this good news of how great the Holy One in our midst is.

We see this paralleled in history from the woman at the well. When she lays hold of who Jesus is, and what He’s done for her, she runs throughout the whole town telling people about Jesus, and it says that many people in that town believed in Him because of that woman’s testimony.

When God redeems His people, He has the salvation of the entire world in view. That’s one reason we can’t help but praise and magnify and make the Lord’s name famous—to run through towns and cities to a nation of spiritual thirst and say “There is a fountain, there is a savior.”

Recap

So we’ve seen that God’s people experience His mercy, are strengthened by God’s Story, and worship with overflow. But there’s an old saying that says “People don’t read the Bible to understand the Bible, people read the Bible to understand themselves.” So, now we have to ask “So what?” How does this apply to us?

Similar to the people of Israel and those of Lake Mead, we too find ourselves facing a crisis. These last few years have had so many ups and downs, so many unprecedented events, whether political, national, wars, global, natural or manmade—like the Israelites, we experience division and discouragement, and have a saw-toothed history of ups and downs with the God who has called us and set us apart. Our souls long for a world that experiences unity because all creation knows of the greatness of God. So God speaks through this passage to us today to offer comfort, consolation, and encouragement.

Do you need assurance that God has offered you mercy or uncertain about the future? God is offering you comfort and assurance that He is not angry with you—your sins are removed as far as the east is from the west in Christ.

Are you spiritually thirsty, feeling apathetic, far from God? Then come and drink freely, draw from the wells of salvation, and remember the mighty acts of the God who is great in Your midst.

Are you experiencing seasons of joy and drinking deeply from the Living Waters of Christ? Then give thanks, and encourage those around you—remind them of our strong Song, remind them to give praise, shout for the goodness of God for He is great. And finally, we all experience thirst on this journey through life. But where are you going in this season for a drink?

What do you run to when you thirst?

The strength of an oasis is in the quality of the wellspring. No oasis is any stronger than the wellspring at its heart. A strong wellspring means a large, luxurious, living. A diminishing or failing wellspring, and the oasis will soon disappear. If Lake Mead, the largest man-made reservoir, a testament of human ingenuity and accomplishment, dries up, life in the west will be unsustainable, and society will collapse. We ourselves may have many Lake Meads in our lives—areas in our life that we rely on for sustaining our way of life that seem impossible to lose—positions, jobs, careers, key relationships, seasons of youth or prosperity. Or we may be in the wilderness desert ourselves like the Israelites, looking for relief, hoping for a good word, and only hearing more bad news on the horizon. But in either case, we are invited to drink from a well that is dependable, inexhaustible, and that never runs dry. No oasis is any stronger than the wellspring at its heart, and Jesus stands at the door of our hearts and knocks, offering us living water and for us to ourselves become an oasis to the world around us—a source of His luscious and fruitful life in a world of deserts.

Let’s pray.