Evan and Dawn, thank you for choosing this passage from Isaiah for
Fraser’s baptism. This passage is filled with images of hope, of
transformation, images
familiar to a people with a history shaped by wilderness wandering, by
persecution and conquest, by exile, but also by a God who continually shows up
for his people. Isaiah 40 begins a section of Isaiah that focuses on the
restoration of Israel. It begins with a powerful word of hope, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has
been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her
sins. A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be
raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become
level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” Chapter 41 begins by telling Israel that
the Lord has chosen the Persian king Cyrus to end Israel’s exile. The nations
respond with fear and create idols while the Lord reassures Israel that they’re
his people, the ones he’s chosen as his people. The verses you’ve chosen pick
up on the imagery of wilderness and transformation again.
Isaiah, returns to a theme that echoes throughout the prophets, “The poor
and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with
thirst.” The poor and needy are referring mainly to the exiles in
Babylon. This echoes back to before the exile when the poor and needy had been
ignored by the people of Israel, leading to their being in exile, and now they’re
experiencing in a figurative way, the same thing. The people are not literally
going hungry or thirsty, but their souls are thirsting for a renewed relationship
with the Lord again. The image of barrenness points to how life can sometimes feel
like being deserted by God; Israel is feeling deserted by God because it’s been
a long time now in exile, they’ve gone through a time of refining, and now the
Lord answers with a promise, “I will not forsake
them.”
Then comes these
beautiful images of transformation and renewal; images that point to heart and soul
change, to the presence of the Holy Spirit. “I
will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will
turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs. I
will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I
will set junipers in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so
that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the
Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.”
Evan and Dawn, you mentioned how this passage is a visual of the Fraser Valley, of rushing rivers and lush valleys and
farmland, of orchards and vineyards, a feeling of home for your family, and an
image that points ahead to heaven and the renewed earth at Jesus’ return. Water
is all about nourishing life; it brings refreshment, it sustains, and it brings
hope. When scientists and astronomers look into the galaxy looking for new
planets and life, the one thing they look for is the presence of water. The Lord
comes to his people and promises to bring transformation; from barrenness and
desert and drought to rivers and flourishing, images of beauty and wonder and
life. God promises to answer the poor and needy by turning dry deserts into
pools of water, flowing rivers, and planting shade trees such as cedars,
acacias, and myrtles, so the people will know the Lord has created it. These
trees are all water-hungry trees, but provide protection and relief from the
sun, a precious gift in the desert or wilderness.
Throughout scripture we find a garden theme,
a theme that reflects flourishing and life from Eden to Revelation 22 where we
see the river of life flowing from the throne of God and the trees of life
growing along the banks of the river. The Promised Land was described as a
land flowing with milk and honey. Ezekiel 47 shows a river flowing from the
temple down into the Dead Sea,
“When I arrived there, I saw a great number
of trees on each side of the river. He said to me, “This water flows toward the
eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, where it enters the Dead Sea.
When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. Swarms of
living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large
numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh;
so where the river flows everything will live.” For those of you who
have been to the Dead Sea, you’ve seen, and likely even experienced the extreme
saltiness of the sea and the lack of life. Here Ezekiel uses the barrenness of
life in the Dead Sea to show the transforming power of the water of life
flowing from the throne of God; even the Dead Sea will become filled with life.
These images appear a number of times in the psalms, especially the creation
psalms that emphasize God as creator of life, as provider, as restorer and
re-newer of his people.
Then in the New Testament, Jesus comes. He’s the water of life. Jesus brings new
life, brings flourishing even in the barren places, the desert times, he is
with us even in the times we don’t feel his closeness, he promises to never
abandon us. Matthew 28:20, “And surely
I am with you always, to the very end of the age,” echoes God promise, “I will never forsake them.” In Isaiah 43:2, God
returns to his promise of presence,
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When
you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you
ablaze.” What powerful words of reassurance to raise our children to live
into.
The rivers and pools remind me of the sacrament of baptism, the
water of baptism is a symbol of the living water of life, how our sin’s washed
away, pointing to our identity in Jesus, and how the Holy Spirit shows us, the poor and needy, that Jesus is the one whose
sacrifice washes away our sin and is our shade and protection, the one who
cares for his people, who fills us with new life. In a world filled with so
much barrenness where many are parched with a thirst for something more
than what our world promises, Jesus calls us to turn to him for nourishment, fulfillment,
for meaning, for purpose. This
passage from Isaiah is an image of the Christian life, of transformation from
the hopelessness of slavery to sin, to freedom and new life in Jesus through his
sacrifice on the cross and the gift of the Holy Spirit. New life is marked by
joy, by obedience to Jesus, revealed by how we go through hard times confident
in the presence of God. This is an important lesson for our children to learn,
that Jesus calls us to turn to him, that he is always with us, that when we
obey him, we’ll experience joy. This is why it’s important to raise our
children in the hope of Jesus, in the promise of his presence and the promise
of new life that can already be experienced in the here and now through the
Holy Spirit.
God calls himself “the Holy One of Israel,” this is relationship language. The
Lord identifies himself with the people of Israel. This is powerfully
reassuring language for Israel to hear. Exile is hard, but to know that God is
still their God, that all they’ve done hasn’t changed that, renews their hope,
brings strength into their faith, and makes the hope more certain. Our world is
marked by chaos, by violence, by the work of Satan’s hand and the evil he
creates. But Jesus is with us, he’s bringing in a world of peace, a world where
the weapons of war will be destroyed, turned into tools for planting and new
life. The Lord points ahead to a time of peace coming earlier in Isaiah
2:4, “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many
peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into
pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they
train for war anymore.” The tools of war will be turned into tools of
planting and harvesting, into tools of peace.
Your verses this
morning echo forward to the return of Jesus and the overturning of the effects of sin and chaos in our
world. John shows us this in Revelation 22:1–5, “Then the angel showed me the river of
the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of
the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the
river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit
every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No
longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in
the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name
will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the
light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.
And they will reign for ever and ever.”
In Revelation 22 we see
the curse of Eden
overcome by Jesus’ return, we see the presence of God with his people, echoing
his walking with Adam and Eve in the garden. Those who will be with God are his
children. We, as God’s people, created in his image, will once again do the
work we were created to do; serving God by caring for creation in his name,
developing the potential in creation, unlocking all that God has placed with
this amazing universe.
This makes our lives
and what we do important,
why we raise our children to know, love and serve God. We’re engaged in God’s work;
we carry on the work Jesus has begun and then left to us of inviting the world
into a relationship with Jesus. This is why baptism is such a beautiful
sacrament, it points us to Jesus’ return, to the restored creation, washed
clean of sin and brokenness, reminding us of who we are.
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