Meditation on the Text of the Week

Meditation on Isaiah 55: 10,11

One of the reasons to develop a truly Christian Mind is a pragmatic one. If we think about the world as it truly is we will operate far more effectively and powerfully. The Christian is called to be powerful and influential in the Creation. Adam was a powerful person before the Fall. In Christ, we are to be powerful again as He teaches us to think properly about His world.

In the verses immediately before our text of the week, (Isaiah 55: 8,9) the Lord declares that His thoughts and ways are higher than ours—not just higher and greater in conception, grandeur, glory and wisdom—but also in their primacy and importance. His thoughts and His ways are constitutive. They shape us. Our thoughts and actions do not shape God.

A fundament of proper thinking is to realise that “things are not always what they seem.” We mean by this that the most powerful realities are invisible. Of course, the most powerful of all is the Omnipotent God.

God has a plan for the world—its destiny is prescribed. That plan incorporates God bringing forth the fruit and results that He has intended and decreed for the world. The fruit is produced, comes into being, through His Word which conveys His thoughts and ways.

He employs the analogy of rain to help us grasp the truth. When the rain falls, it has an inevitable effect upon the land. Life, fruit, and sustenance results.

God sends His Word forth from His mouth. Some of these commands we never hear, although we see their result. His commands shape the day to day experiences of all mankind—calling forth all the circumstances of each individual's life every day. Those unheard commands shape the entirety of our lives and circumstances. We call these commands “providence”—meaning, God's provision for us.

Then there is another “set” of commands which God has allowed us to hear. He has revealed these things to us directly and inscribed them in a library we call His Word, the Holy Scriptures. This Word is near us; it is in our language; we can access it; we can understand it. There is no conflict or disagreement between the Word-which-we-do-not-hear, and the Word-which-we-hear. The Word which we hear is for our sake. It enables us to make sense of the entire world. It enables us to understand the content of much of the unheard Word in the same way that a cause can be derived from observing its effect.

In the context of Isaiah 55, the Lord tells us what kind of fruit His Word will produce. It will bring a salvation that is so powerful, so comprehensive, so compelling that the whole creation will celebrate: the mountains and hills will shout for joy, the trees will clap their hands, the cypress and myrtle will replace the thornbush. This is the fruit that His Word will produce. It will be a veritable memorial to the Lord.

God gave this Word to Israel when they were on the verge of going down into a second slavery. We believe that Israel's coming out of Babylon to the Land of Promise, glorious in itself, was but a mere antetype, a pale and weak foreshadowing of the world-wide, global salvation wrought by the Son of Man—even Jesus our Lord. All of creation, all the universe, all the world is now being bent and shaped by this “higher Thought” of God. All circumstances, all events, all Providence is now aligned to bring forth this global redemption that will effect even the cypress and the myrtle tree.

Our duty is twofold: firstly, to believe it; secondly, to work. If we do neither, we will spend all our life kicking against the goads.