“Rivers in the Desert”
Isaiah 43:16-21
3/28/07 Mid Week Lenten Service
In a way, I’m always sort of glad once the
Lenten season is over with and we’re on to celebrating the
resurrection of our Lord. The Lenten season is a somber
season. Even the liturgy suggests this as the Alleluia’s
are silenced and the Gloria in Excelsis is not sung. Lent is a
season of mourning over sins, contemplating what those sins cost our
Lord, yet also rejoicing that because of our Lord’s sacrifice we
are forgiven our sins and cleansed from all unrighteousness. But
even so, Lent remains a season of prayer, repentance, and
self-discipline. Just as our Lord was forty days and forty nights
in the desert being tempted by the devil, so we find ourselves during
the forty days and forty nights in the desert of the season of Lent
being tempted by the same devil, the world, and our own evil desires,
and we’re parched for the waters of God’s Word. We
echo the words of the psalmist who writes, “As the deer pants for
the water brooks, so my being pants for you, O God. My being
thirsts for God, for the living God.” Here in this text,
God quenches your thirst, giving you water to drink from the rivers
which He has graciously provided you with, in order to keep you from
collapsing as you trek through the desert of this present evil age
where God’s Word and Sacraments are the only oasis in a world
devoid of the water of life.
When Isaiah wrote this book that bears his name, the
people of Israel were enjoying a time of prosperity. Hezekiah,
one of the last of the good kings of Judah, had turned the people back
to the Lord, gotten rid of all the idols, reconsecrated the temple, and
reinstituted the celebration of the Passover. The priests and
Levites were reassigned to their duties in leading the people in
worship, and the Lord blessed His people, and they prospered. It
looked like another golden age for the people of Judah. Yet, only
in a little over a hundred years, they would be attacked by the
Babylonians, and those who weren’t killed would be taken into
captivity for 70 years. There, in Babylon, they would not have
the temple or the worship services or the sacrifices. There it
would seem like living in a spiritual desert as far as the preaching of
God’s Word was concerned. Yes, there would be prophets even
in Babylon, but the chance to hear God’s Word would not be as
easily accessible as it was in Israel, where the temple had been.
God’s Word would be scarce; it would be like a stream in a desert.
All of this happened to them, because they abandoned
God’s Word. Though God had so richly blessed them with His
Word and Sacraments, they grew arrogant, they despised His gifts, they
grew tired of the worship services, the Passovers, and the
festivals. They went after other gods. It wasn’t
everyone, though, who abandoned the Lord. God had always kept for
Himself a remnant of people that never bowed the knee to other
gods. Yet, these few righteous people suffered along with the
unrighteous God’s judgment against the nation. They were
carried off into exile too, into the desert, away from the temple where
God’s Name was, away from the land flowing with milk and honey.
During Luther’s day he was afraid the same
thing would happen to his beloved Germans, that God would remove the
preaching of His Word in its truth and purity from Germany and send it
somewhere else, because the Germans had become so indifferent to
it. Luther writes, “When people become secure, danger lies
ahead. To be sure, they hear the Word but let it go into one ear
and out of the other... There is no limit to the care of the
stomach, to miserable miserliness, usury, and other sins, though God is
warning people through pious, faithful servants and preachers.
All this is a sure sign that God will shortly take away the Word and
pure doctrine and leave the people to the imagination of their own
hearts that they may walk according to their own counsel.
Therefore I shudder and fear that Germany, too, will shortly be visited
and terribly punished because of the great ingratitude and the
blasphemous contempt for the dear Word...” And you can
visit Germany today and see just how this prophecy has come true.
For the most part Germany is dead spiritually. It’s like
they too have entered into a desert period in their history where the
Word of God is scarce, though still can be found among remnant
believers.
That’s true of our country too, though
probably not yet to the extent it is in Germany. But I’m
concerned about our own Synod, let alone the country. In our own
Synod the preaching of the Word of God in its truth and purity and
correct doctrine are being abandoned for other things, things that
promote entertainment and moral living, but not faith. We are
becoming more and more like a desert where the streams are few and far
between.
And the faithful remnant suffers the
consequences. The rivers are drying up. And yet, our Lord
promises that the gates of hell will not prevail against His
Church. He will always provide for His people. He provided
for His people Israel as they wandered in the wilderness. He
provided for them in the desert of Babylon. He provides for you
in our desert. He provides for you living waters, the waters that
flow from the side of Christ, that flow to you through Baptism, that
flow to you from the Spirit through His Word and Sacraments.
Wherever Jesus is, there can be no drought. Isaiah prophesied
this when he wrote, “The desert and the parched land will be
glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom... Be strong, do
not fear; your God will come, He will come with vengeance; with divine
retribution He will come to save you. Then will the eyes of the
blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the
lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water
will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the
desert.” It is Jesus Christ who brings the water of the
Spirit to a parched and dry land. Here in this place we gather,
as it were, at an oasis where there is plenty of water in God’s
Word and Sacraments to quench our thirst and keep us from falling as we
wander in this our own wilderness.
Isaiah tells the people to forget the former
things. He tells them not to dwell on the past. What does
this mean? He certainly isn’t telling them not to remember
how God redeemed them and saved them through the waters of the Red
Sea. Elsewhere he even tells them to remember this. But
here he tells them not to linger on past events as if that’s all
over and done with, as if God delivered once, but He’s not in the
saving business anymore. One exodus has taken place. A new
exodus is coming. God has saved, is saving, and will save
again. God has saved us through the death and resurrection of His
Son from our sins, eternal death, and the power of the devil. We
have been brought out of our Egypt. But now we are stuck in a
desert on our way to our promised land, heaven. The Gospel of the
forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake is not preached much in
churches today. People are thirsting for the Word of God, but
it’s scarce. You find yourself suffering as your Lord did
when He was tempted for 40 days and 40 nights by the devil. Here
in this desert you are tempted to give up and despair. But Jesus
leads you to the living waters He has provided for you. He does
not let you go thirsty, but gives you to drink of the water of His
Spirit from the streams He has placed in this desert.
Here you can drink and never thirst again as Jesus
says, “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never
thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring
of water welling up to eternal life.” Does that mean once
you’ve had a drink you’ll never want more? No!
It means that as long as you’re drinking the water He gives you,
you’ll never thirst. If you stopped drinking water
you’d die. So also, if you stop drinking the water Jesus
gives you through His Word and Sacraments, if you cut yourself off from
the streams He provides for you in the desert, you’ll die
spiritually. But it wouldn’t be as if God had failed.
He has said, “I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams
on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my
blessing on your descendants.” God has given you to drink
of His Spirit through Baptism and continues to sustain you with the
water of His Word and the Supper of our Lord.
The rivers of God are in our midst here in this
oasis in the desert of this world. Here He gives us to drink of
the refreshing waters of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation,
and these wells will never go dry. Yes, men might abandon them or
try to stop them up, but they’ll just pop up somewhere
else. God always provides for His people. Here He does just
that, so that you might not grow weary and fall victims to the
desert. Here your thirst is quenched by the water your Savior
provides. He is the source of these springs. From His body
flow rivers of living water poured out for you and me. Amen.