1/10/60

Scripture: Isaiah 55

We pay the water bill once every three months. A man has come in to the basement to read the water meter. And the figure which he writes down in his book determines the amount which we must pay. It is not bad, really, when we consider the great convenience of having plenty of water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, washing, sprinkling and all of the other uses to which it is put. How wonderful to be able to take good water for granted! Did you ever think what it might be like to live where water is not taken for granted in the same way? I remember the story of a soldier in World War I who shaved every day in the trenches. There was no water for shaving, so he hoarded just a little of his morning issue of hot coffee to made enough lather to shave his face each day.

Good water is in short supply in many parts of the world a good deal of the time. It took very careful handling of water to make Palestine the good country it was in Jesus’ time. And I imagine that water is important to the redevelopment of that area in the modern nation of Israel. Many of the Palestinian towns and villages had wells outside the city as the only source of water. Women went out to the wells to draw water in jars, carrying the heavy load back to their house in the city.

It was while resting near such a well that Jesus talked with a woman who came out to draw water. Realizing full well how important water was to her, and to all of the people -- he was thirsty himself just then -- he spoke of the water which he could offer; a quality of spirit that could really quench the thirst of one’s spirit. [John 4: 7-15].

It seems that in some communities water was sufficiently precious that drinking water was peddled on the streets. And the “hawkers” might cry: “Ho, everyone that is thirsty; come and buy.” Water is so precious a possession that it may be bought and sold in that manner in a number of Oriental cities to this day.

And so Isaiah was using a perfectly familiar figure of speech when he wrote, “Ho, every one who is thirsty, come to the waters. And [even] he who has no money, come.” Actually, he was inviting, urging, everyone who was spiritually dissatisfied to come and get true refreshment and nourishment.

“Come, buy wine and milk.” To the thirst of the spirit, Isaiah makes his plea. Water, bread, wine and milk as symbols for the life with God. They infer that this life with God is a necessity. It is no mere luxury or extra. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” The prophet might have been talking to us. For we are largely a dissatisfied people. Time was when most of a man’s efforts were directed to work which would supply his food and shelter and not a great deal else. Now, with the labor of a 40-hour week sufficient to provide quite a bit more than this minimum, people have leisure time to be filled with activity. And they have the means to buy what looks like the pleasure to fill their leisure time. Not only is television quite general, but some studies maintain that as much as one-fifth of an average person’s time is spent in watching television. Is there really enough of good to be gained to make worth-while so extensive a use of one’s time -- even leisure time? I doubt it.

The boat building and distributing industry has become one of the faster growing businesses of the past few years. There is a good deal of thrill in owning and driving a power-propelled boat. And, at any rate, boating is a sport that involves more exercise than sitting hour after hour, letting the TV studios entertain one.

But, except in moderation, do all these things really meet the deepest needs of people? There is more than a little question, in our day, as to the purpose of life. Young folk are asking of themselves, and of their times, “What am I here for?” Even in the midst of apparent plenty, we are not altogether sure that we are buying that which is bread for our lives; drink for our spirits. And the prophet’s call to us is the same as it was to his hearers of centuries ago. “Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live.”

Here is a young lawyer who finds some things about his practice that he dislikes. He feels frustrated and disappointed. Yes, he thinks he can make a fairly good living for himself and his family, but his life is still a disappointment to him. He looks around for something more satisfying -- some place where he can know the joy of service, the freedom of loyalty to God’s purpose for him. He wishes that he had gone into the ministry.

Then he finds that it may be possible to do just that. It will be hard. There will have to be years of further schooling. But he and his family figure out how it can be done. And they make the plunge! He goes to a seminary that encourages a few promising men of serious purpose like him. It means earnest study, hard work on meager resources, and a consecrated kind of existence. But at length he makes the grade, and enters a pastorate with a lot more than academic learning to guide him, because he has had a lot of experience in living. Some of the most effective ministers in God’s kingdom are men who have come to their calling the hard way, moved by their desire for the waters that satisfy and strengthen the spirit -- that make all of life clean.

Among my acquaintances, in the teaching and preaching professions, is a man who was a classmate of mine for some time. He was married when he came to college; and he prepared for secondary school teaching. He has become a useful, and successful, high school principal in a good-sized school. Years after we graduated, I visited him for an hour in his office. Knowing that I had become a minister (though I had not intended to do so while I was in college) He flashed a wistful smile at me and said, “O Bob, I made a mistake! I should have listened to Prexy when he urged me to prepare for the ministry! I thought it would take too long and be too hard! But I wish now that I had done it!”

Well, he did do something about it, though he remains a teacher to this day. First he served as Superintendent of his church school for several years. Then he took on responsibility as a licensed preacher for a small church in a town some 70 miles away. For a dozen years, he went there every weekend to preach on Sunday and to minister as best he could to the needs of those people. And that kind of ministry, coupled with his school work among young people, has proved to be food and drink for his spirit for many a year.

Some people will find in other ways the water that satisfies. But it is not likely that they will find it in feeding their own desires nearly so much as in serving the needs of others as God shows them how to serve. “Harken diligently to me,” says the Lord through the prophet, “and eat what is good. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live.” Then comes a promise: “I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.”

David is among the very greatest leaders of the Hebrew people. He had become their king -- perhaps the greatest of their kings. But it is the religious leadership of David, not the political, that is stressed here. And the covenant with David is broadened to include all mankind. “Behold, I made him a witness to the people, a leader and commander for the peoples. Behold, you shall call nations that know you not, and nations that knew you not shall run to you, because of the Lord your God.” There is the attraction of the godly community! It is because of “the Lord your God.”

One writer has compared the early Christian community to the Roman Empire in which it had to live. The Roman state oppressed, coerced, persecuted people. The people of the Christian church, on the other hand, loved, had compassion on all, and consoled them. And this kind of spirit attracted people to the church faster than the Roman state could stamp out the church.

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.” The prophet stresses God’s activity, sometimes wholly apart from man’s activity and even despite man’s effort. But he knows that man must stir himself to take hold of what God offers. Man’s part in the encounter is subordinate, but indispensable. “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” [Matthew 7: 7-8] There has to be a movement on your part, and mine, toward God to make God’s response possible.

“God does not work without a means. He does not thrust reforms upon a world until its people are ready to receive them,” says William Hyde. “The desires and petitions of individual hearts and united congregations are the signs by which the Spirit recognizes the fullness of time for a spiritual and social advance.”

“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.” Here the prophet pleads for the spirit of repentance. For that is the way to wholeness. The Lord whose ways are infinitely higher than our ways, whose thoughts are as far beyond our thoughts as the heavens are beyond the earth, will abundantly pardon all who turn toward His mercy. And that divine forgiveness makes each one whole again.

In the tenth verse of this chapter of Isaiah, the prophet uses picture language. For “like the rain and the snow coming down from the heavens which does not go right back up, but waters the earth so that it can bring forth and sprout, giving seeds to the sower and food to the eater --- so is the word, or purpose of God. It does not return empty to Him, but accomplishes what He has in mind.” Of course, eventually, the rain and the snow do return to the atmosphere, but only after they have accomplished the natural purpose of watering the earth, and then in the form of vapor.

Such are the purposes of God. When His word has been given, by the words and deeds of his missionaries at home and abroad, it returns to Him in transformed lives and changed civilizations. More than a hundred years ago, willing and intrepid men and women went from New England to the islands of the Pacific to carry the good news of God’s love and Christ’s salvation. They were not alone preachers, but teachers, doctors, printers, agriculturists. The result of their dedicated witness was a great change in Hawaii, where in one generation a pagan people became almost completely Christian in belief and practice. This resulted in laying the foundation for the kind of life there that has eventually brought this newest state into our national union.

Farther out in the South Pacific, working among people who were slower to respond, and some of whom were frankly cannibals, the patient persistence of missionaries and trained native teachers changed that civilization, too, for the better. “The word was prospered in the thing for which it was sent.”

Most of all, there is joy in this matter of being led by a righteous God. The prophet assures his people of that, as they face their emancipation from slavery and return to a promised land. Even not knowing just how they shall fare, they will proceed with joy like that to be found in nature. “You shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace.” And here again he waxes poetic in his utterance. Often poetry expresses a truth better than a statement of scientific or natural or historical truth: “The mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing.” Are there not times when all the natural world seems glad? A summer dawn is sheer joy. A hilltop view is a triumph. A winter snow scene is loveliness to one who has eyes to see. A small river bubbles with happiness.

Some years ago, a young woman who was a student at one of the schools in our city used to come to our home to help with some of the household tasks, to sit with the younger children, and to nurse the invalid grandmother. That cheery girl always found the world beautiful. Almost every day that she came, she exclaimed over the weather, and over what she saw. A sunny day was beautiful. Snow on the ground, or rain in her face, appeared to be sheer joy. She could come through the door having walked a brisk snow storm saying, “Is it ever nice out today” and meaning it! To that kind of buoyant spirit the “mountains and hills clap their hands for joy!”

The professor of Bible and Religion courses whom I knew in college used to make gleeful jibes at the viewpoint of those who insist that everything in the Bible must be taken as literally, exactly true. Chuckling so that he could hardly continue his lecture, Dr. Ortsby would dare us to believe in a mountain that opened a cavernous mouth to sing a song, or in trees that put out hands and clapped them for joy! Such literal foolishness would destroy the truth that the prophet was proclaiming. But the perception of the poet can make one understand the joyful thrill in nature and in the nature of God. All of this has its message not only for the Hebrews of Isaiah’s time, but for us people of today.

A lot of us are thirsty. We have not found refreshment. We are impressed with our problems, and depressed with our burdens. Life’s thorns and briers and brambles are all too evident to us. We feel too torn by the thorns to appreciate the beauty of the rose. And yet we are looking for purpose in life. To all such people, the prophet sings out, like an Oriental water carrier, “Ho, everyone who is thirsty, come for water. Even those without money: come, buy, eat.”

And for all who will hearken, in their hearts, to the Lord; who will repent of every wicked way, who will seek the Lord of Life who seeks us, who will trust His goodness, His purpose, and His direction --- the world becomes a place of confidence, of beauty, of joy.

“Instead of your thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

Years after the prophet, the Savior assured a woman at the well of Jacob near Sychor that he had the water of life that really quenches the soul’s thirst. The same Savior, in one of his last talks with his disciples, assured them that they would have their tribulations, all right. But “be of good cheer,” he said, for “I have overcome the world.” [John 16: 33b] And that is exactly what he is able to help you to do!

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, January 10, 1960

Moravian Church of Wisconsin Rapids, October 20, 1968

Kalahikiola Church, January 12, 1969

Moravian Church of Rudolph, WI, November 8, 1970

Delta, Wisconsin, St. Paul’s UCC, October 17, 1971

Cable, Wisconsin, UCC, October 17, 1971

Spider Lake, Wisconsin, UCC, October 17, 1971

Waioli Hiuia Church, April 9, 1972