Isaiah 41:17-18

CONSOLATION FOR THE DESPONDING

Isaiah 41:17. When the poor and needy seek water, &c.

I. IN WHAT EXTREMITIES GOD HERE PROMISES TO HELP HIS PEOPLE.

1. In case of outward want. This is a trying exercise to many, though little understood by those who have all things richly to enjoy. It is compared to an armed man carrying tribulation and terror in his looks (Proverbs 6:11). The body is an essential part of our constitution, and hath wants of its own, numerous and urgent, and to have little or nothing to answer its cravings in a severe trial. But God can easily help us in such a trial, and out of it. Examples: Hagar (Genesis 21:15); the widow (1 Kings 17:12). There is no exigency of man beyond the power of God. Though creature succours fail, and all the cisterns of earth should be dried up, there is enough in God to support our faith (Habakkuk 3:17).

2. In case of inward trouble and distress from sin. This is still more grievous and insupportable. Though most men think that if they had nothing but sin to trouble them they could be happy, some know that one sin set home upon the conscience by the Spirit of God is a terrible experience (Psalms 38:3; H. E. I. 1334–1341). But when the poor soul is ready to give up all for God, God comes to His relief (Psalms 31:22). In the Gospel He has provided a sovereign cure for the wounded spirit (Psalms 130:3).

3. In the case of approaching death. A trial from which there, is no escape. Is often very terrible. Yet even here God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. By His presence He not only reconciles us to dying, but makes us wish for it, makes us smile at it, makes us triumph over it (1 Corinthians 15:57). Though death be a king with respect to us, he is but God’s servant, and entirely at His command; he comes to us only when and as God pleases. And God knows how to support and comfort while His servant is taking down the earthly house of flesh (H. E. I. 1642, 1643).

I have witnessed only these three cases, but you may apply it to every distress. Whenever the poor and needy cry for help, God engages to hear them. In their misery there is a silent and affecting voice which hath great power with God, and poverty venting itself in prayer hath an amazing force (Psalms 106:44).

II. WHY HE HAS MADE THIS GRACIOUS PROMISE.

1. For the glory of His own perfections (Psalms 7:15). It is for the honour of His wisdom that He knows how to bring help when the skill and contrivance of all His creatures is nonplussed; of His power, that He is able to deliver the godly out of temptation when the ability of second causes cannot accomplish it; of His mercy and free grace, to afford help when the poor creature is in the worst and least deserving condition. Should God favour us only when we are in prosperity, and there is no difficulty in the way, His hand would not be so visible, nor His perfections so glorious; but to help the poor and needy, and that, too, in their greatest straits and necessities, declares His superlative goodness and excellency, that He can and will do what none else can. He therefore chooses such seemingly desperate cases to appear in, for the manifestation of His own glory (Deuteronomy 32:36).

2. Because of the special relation God has to the poor and needy. They that are most neglected and forsaken by men are nearest to God and more particularly taken care of (Psalms 68:5). “The poor committeth himself to Thee” (Psalms 10:14). But will He stand to their choice and act for them? Yes (Psalms 12:5). Which of you, being a father retaining the affections of a parent, if you saw a child in distress, would sit by and take no notice of it? Would you go out of the room and think no more about it? No! You would rather seem fonder of that child than of all the rest, and be more tender of it than ever. So will your Heavenly Father have a special regard to His poor and needy children when they seek water and there is none (Isaiah 63:8).

III. WHAT WE ARE TO DO WITH THIS PROMISE.

1. Let us praise God for making it to us. What amazing condescension that there should ever be any such thing as a promise from God to His creatures! Will earthly kings thus voluntarily bring themselves under obligation to their subjects? But with a kindness and generosity peculiar to Himself, God makes a covenant with His people, by which He binds Himself in the most solemn manner to be a Father to them, that is, to be watchful and tender to them, and keep them from all evil, and to withhold no good thing from them that walk uprightly.

2. In the time of affliction let us plead this promise in prayer, for that is the surest and speediest way of procuring relief. It may be the design of God, in blasting earthly comforts, to drive us to our knees. By bringing us into trouble, and showing us the insufficiency of creatures to help us, He may intend to lead our thoughts up to Himself, the fountain of living waters (Psalms 142:4; H. E. I. 69).

3. However great and prolonged our affliction may be, let us not look upon this promise with doubt or distrust. It is God’s promise; and having passed His word, we must be infidels if we doubt the performance (Numbers 23:19). To doubt the accomplishment of anything He hath engaged for were to question His wisdom in promising what He had not properly considered; or His love, as if He would not be as good as His word; or His power, as if He had promised more than He was able to perform. An affront this which even a man who values his character would highly resent. Let us take care, then, how we offer it to God.—Samuel Lavington: Sermons, Supplementary Volume, pp. 414–432.

In its primary sense, the text is an encouragement to the Jews to trust in God; in its spiritual meaning it extends to the Church of God in all ages. It describes—
I. A DISTRESSING CASE.

1. The people of God are often in a low and afflicted state. All men, if they knew it, are poor and needy; but very many think themselves “rich and increased with goods.” “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up.” Soul and goods; as if the soul had tongue and teeth! God’s people feel their poverty and need.

2. They strive after holiness and comfort. Water, as cleansing and refreshing, may be understood to mean holiness and comfort. They long to be delivered from the body of sin and death; they desire to walk in the light of God’s countenance. They try hard for these; but,
3. They often seem to labour in vain; they “seek water, and find none.” They strive for victory, but the conflict remains; deadness and darkness return upon them.

4. They become dejected; “their tongue faileth,” &c. “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” They turn faint, like disappointed travellers on the outlook for water; they begin to lose confidence in God (Psalms 42:1; Psalms 42:9; Psalms 88:14).

II. FITTING CONSOLATION.

1. In the words used about God. God is “the Lord,” i.e., JEHOVAH, the Eternal, Immutable, “will hear them;” He is “the God of Israel, ELOHIM, the Mighty One, with whom nothing is impossible.

2. In the promises made. “I will hear.” Let them be encouraged to continue in prayer. “I will not forsake them.” Have courage, then, fainting soul!

3. Those who continue trusting shall certainly be consoled (Isaiah 41:18; Psalms 34:6; Psalms 30:8).

APPLICATION.—

1. Most men know but little of spiritual troubles. These are not to be envied. Let them seek to know their spiritual wants and obey Christ’s gracious invitation (John 7:37; Revelation 22:17).

2. Let those who are fainting under their troubles believe that none ever waited upon God in vain. From these promises, as from wells of salvation, you may draw water with joy (Psalms 36:8; Psalms 16:11).—C. Simeon, M.A.: Skeletons, pp. 318–321).

The poor and needy must ever command the sympathy of those more favourably situated. They will probably never cease to exist. The text primarily encourages the captive Jews in Babylon. But it also represents all human need and Divine help.
I. THE EXIGENCY.
“The poor and the needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth them for thirst.” It is the dryness of the sandy desert which produces distressing thirst. The traveller seeks water in vain. His throat becomes dry; his tongue is disinclined to speech; he sees only a miserable death before him. It is a picture of suffering, destitution, and necessity.
The distress may arise from external causes, as bodily disease or pecuniary privation. Or it may be entirely in the mind. All suffering is really there. It is a matter of personal consciousness. The onlooker may see no adequate cause. Yet the sufferer feels. You look at the outside of a splendid house, and it seems to you that no deep sorrow can be there. Yet within there may be anxieties and cares which make the owner indifferent to his splendid surroundings; and in many cases there is biting poverty and want which cannot be revealed.

The temptations of such a time are serious (Job 1:9; Job 2:9).

1. Impatience. The sufferer does not readily submit to his impoverishment. His spirit may be that which says, “Not Thy will, but mine be done,” rather than the Saviour’s prayer in Gethsemane.

2. Complaining. When privation presses we are tempted to assume that we are wiser than our Father, and therefore to withdraw our trust and criticise His plans.

3. Despair. And when faith and hope are displaced by despair, there will be prayerlessness. We shall ask, “What profit shall we have if we pray unto Him?” There will be sinfulness. Many plunge into sin to rid themselves of care. There will be recklessness. The temptation is to say, “Things cannot be worse, and can never be better, therefore we may as well lie down and discontinue effort.” Some imagine they escape by terminating their lives.

II. THE CRY.
Better than yielding to such temptation is to cry to the Lord when poverty and sorrow appear. It is here supposed that God’s people do so. It is their privilege and duty to lay all their sorrows before Him and to leave them with Him, as children entirely dependent on their fathers (H. E. I. 176–178).
III. THE PROMISE.
Two things are promised.

1. Divine attentiveness. He is not unmindful, even though He may seem so. He listens for and listens to the cry of distress. “I, the Lord, will hear them.” He heard Hagar in the wilderness (Genesis 21:17). He heard Israel in Egypt (Exodus 3:7). He heard Hezekiah when he spread forth Sennacherib’s letter, and when he was sick. He is the hearer of prayer. Thousands of testimonies to this. Your own experience attests it. Can you not say with the Psalmist (Psalms 116:1)?

2. Divine helpfulness. “I, the God of Jacob, will not forsake them” (Hebrews 13:5). Sad indeed to be forsaken by a friend when trouble and poverty come. God does not forsake. His love is a guarantee. He is the God of Israel. He is our Father in Christ. He is interested in us. His faithfulness is a guarantee. He has bound Himself by the word of promise. Contrary to His nature to fail. His power is a guarantee. “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” Unbelief says it is impossible to overcome this difficulty. But He provided manna in the wilderness and brought water out of the smitten rock. Often by the most unlikely means and in the most unlikely places (Isaiah 41:18). “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

IV. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF THIS PRECIOUS PROMISE.

1. There may be some one here who is passing through a season of affliction. God’s children sometimes seem to suffer more than others. You need a message that may help to lift up your drooping spirit. Satan may be pressing his advantage through the depression your trouble has caused. Listen to the declaration of the text. Fall back on the simple representations of the Bible. Repair more confidently to the Lord for help.

2. There may be some one to whom this subject applies as to his spiritual impoverishment and necessity. You have recently discovered that you are spiritually poor. Like a merchant who has imagined that he was accumulating a princely fortune, but who makes the discovery that he is insolvent, you have found out that you are a ruined sinner. But you are not content to perish. Your tongue faileth for thirst. You desire salvation. Now, the Lord pities you in your low estate. He has opened a fountain in the wilderness. Jesus died. In His perfect righteousness, His atoning blood, and His quickening Spirit there is all you need. If you seek your restoration in Him, you cannot be disappointed. If your soul is impoverished, go to His fulness. He invites you. His compassionate love ever looks down on weary and footsore and thirsty travellers in the wilderness of this world, with infinite readiness to supply their wants (Isaiah 55:1; Revelation 22:17).—J. Rawlinson.

GOD’S PROMISE TO THE POOR AND NEEDY

Isaiah 41:17. When the poor and needy seek water, &c.

In Isaiah 41:8 the Lord is declaring the relation in which He stands to His people Israel, and then He proceeds to encourage His people in the prospect of trial and difficulty by an assurance of His presence to strengthen and support them (Isaiah 41:10; Isaiah 41:14). The Lord’s people are in themselves but feeble; but in the power of God they shall triumph over their most formidable enemies; as a consequence of their triumph, they shall “rejoice in the Lord and glory in the Holy One of Israel.” Then follows the encouraging language of the text. Consider—

I. WHO ARE MEANT BY THE “POOR AND NEEDY.” Not those who are poor and needy in a temporal sense, but in a spiritual,—those who feel themselves to be so in a spiritual sense.

1. The life of the Christian may be compared to a waste and barren wilderness leading from this world to that which is to come. In their journey, the Lord’s people often feel themselves to be “poor and needy,” without the cheering presence of their God, destitute of the usual manifestations of His love and the consolations of His Spirit. Water is an emblem frequently employed in Scripture to represent Divine influences, which refresh, gladden, and cleanse the soul, as water does the body. The children of God are sometimes reduced to straits; they seek water, and there is none, and “their tongue faileth for thirst.” They realise the feeling of David (Psalms 42:1).

2. The Lord’s believing people may be represented as “poor and needy” when they are anxiously desirous of larger measures of grace and knowledge, increasing holiness and spirituality of mind, more complete superiority to the world with the affections and lusts of the flesh, and a growing conformity to the precepts of the Gospel. Here is the difference between nominal and real Christianity, between the religion of form and outward appearance, and the religion of power and inward experience; between a dead and a living faith. It is impossible to stand still in religion.

II. THE CONSOLATORY PROMISE AFFORDED IN THE TEXT. The Lord assures His people that they shall not be disappointed in the objects of their desire: in their extremity of distress, and when they are almost without hope, He will hear their cry.

1. Prayer, that is, the earnest expression of the desires of the heart, shall never be offered up in vain. He can and will do for His own “far more abundantly than they can either ask or think.”

2. He is represented as the “God of Israel.” Israel was taken into covenant relationship with Him; and on condition of their obedience, He engaged to favour them with His constant presence, to preserve them in danger, to protect them from their enemies, and at length to put them in full and undisputed possession of the earthly Canaan. And so it is with the spiritual Israel of God. They stand in covenant relationship with Him as their “reconciled Father in Christ Jesus.”

III. WHAT ENCOURAGEMENT THERE IS HERE TO PRAYER! God is a God of faithfulness and truth; He will not turn a deaf ear to the supplications of His obedient people (Psalms 50:15; Matthew 7:7). The history of the saints in all ages will bear testimony to the truth of that Scripture, “He giveth power to the faint,” &c. (Isaiah 40:29; Isaiah 40:31). Prayer to God, therefore, is, under all circumtances, a great and solemn duty (Luke 18:1; Philippians 4:6; 1 Thessalonians 5:17).

CONCLUSION.—

1. To the unconcerned about the blesssings of salvation.

(1.) Men can be active enough in the prosecution of their worldly schemes of gain, honour, or advantage; they will take any trouble and submit to any sacrifice; but it is usually quite otherwise in the vastly important business of religion; here all is coldness, apathy, and indifference. But “I say unto you, labour not for the meat which perisheth,” &c. (Matthew 6:33; Mark 8:36; Luke 10:42; Acts 3:19).

(2.) Ignorance of spiritual troubles and necessities is by no means desirable. The pathway to Zion is not always cheered by the sunshine of hope and joy; cloud and tempest will sometimes rest upon it (Acts 14:22). If real religion has its peculiar joys, it is not without its peculiar sorrows.

2. To those who are fainting for want of Divine consolations. Remember, and take encouragement from the thought, that “all the promises of God are yea and amen in Christ Jesus” (Hebrews 10:23; Hebrews 13:5; Isaiah 49:15).—Charles Rawlings, B.A.: The Pulpit, vol. xlix. pp. 181–184.

The redemption of our souls is precious; it originated alike in our extreme misery and in God’s great mercy (Isaiah 59:16). But even the people of God are often reduced to dreadful straits. The ultimate perfection of their natures and the unbounded felicity of their future state are the objects of their firm and delightful hope; but the same Book which reveals what is laid up for them teaches them to expect various troubles and trials by the way (Acts 14:22). Yet under all their troubles they shall be well supported; all their wants well supplied. Isaiah received a commission to minister to the consolation of the saints (Isaiah 40:1). The text alone is sufficient to elevate the souls of true believers with good hope and everlasting consolation.

I. THE ACCOUNT HERE GIVEN OF THOSE TO WHOM THE PROMISE IS MADE.

1. Their exigencies are very great. They are poor and needy, and even in want of water. Many of the saints of God have been literally poor. Even when the Lord had brought the seed of Jacob where, generally speaking, “there was no lack of anything,” it was still His sovereign pleasure that, in the midst of abundance, some should be in want (Deuteronomy 15:11). During the captivity in Babylon the number of such persons must have greatly increased. Under the Christian dispensation, poverty has ever been the lot of many who are dear in God’s sight (James 2:5; 1 Corinthians 1:26; Luke 4:18; Luke 7:22; Mark 12:37, &c.) All the “rich in faith” are still, in one sense, poor, because completely dependent. Knowing and feeling this, they are “poor in spirit.” Unlike the self-righteous Laodiceans, who boasted of being “rich,” they are ever ready to acknowledge that they are in themselves “wretched and miserable and poor,” &c. (Revelation 3:17). To begin with, they found themselves in want of the most essential spiritual blessings; and afterwards, in proportion as they even partially forsook “the fountain of living waters,” their spiritual necessities became great.

2. Their consequent sufferings are very distressing. The evils of extreme poverty are great, though God supports His people under them, and gives the sanctified use of them. The people of God are not unfrequently subjected to the severest troubles of a temporal kind (Hebrews 11:37; Hebrews 12:6; Hebrews 12:11).

3. They earnestly desire and endeavour to obtain relief. They seek water; they cry to the Lord to give it. They who will not work when it is necessary cannot expect to eat when their wants are great. Spiritual supplies are, in every sense, the gift of God; but they are promised only to such as earnestly desire and diligently seek them from Him (chap. Isaiah 55:1). The case, indeed, appears pitiable, when bread and water are sought and there is none; but faith is only thus put to the test. God has pledged His faithfulness for your ultimate success.

II. THE PROMISE GIVEN FOR THEIR ENCOURAGEMENT. “I, the Lord,” &c. What is the import of this promise? It implies—

1. Great compassion and kindness on the part of the Promise-maker. How tender are His words! Truly in Him compassions flow (Exodus 34:6; Jeremiah 31:20; Hosea 11:8). Not only does He forbear to destroy His people, but He returns to pardon their sins and to load them with benefits (Isaiah 66:9; 1 John 4:10; Romans 8:32).

2. That the prayers of God’s people are heard and accepted. “I, the Lord, will hear” (cf. chap. Isaiah 66:2). One of His names is the Hearer of prayer (Psalms 65:2); all who seek shall find (Isaiah 45:19); as certainly as they pray shall they be heard (Isaiah 58:9); He Says yet more (Isaiah 65:24).

3. That all their wants shall be supplied. What else can be meant by the promise, “I the Lord will hear”? (Psalms 107:6; Psalms 37:19; John 14:13; Philippians 4:19). Can anything be too hard for the Lord? He is the God of Israel, who has pledged Himself, both by His covenanted love and faithfulness greatly to bless His people (1 John 3:1; Hebrews 10:23; 1 Samuel 15:29).

4. That the Lord will be immutably gracious to His people. “I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them” (1 Samuel 12:22; Hebrews 13:5; Isaiah 42:16).

CONCLUSION.—

1. Let not the people of God be discouraged and impatient, though their circumstances be low and their distresses great.

2. Let all their trust be in the Lord (Isaiah 26:4).

3. Let them distinguish themselves as a praying people (Psalms 62:8; John 6:68).

4. Let them walk worthy of His kindness (1 Corinthians 15:58).

5. Let sinners see their misery and their hope (Isaiah 29:8; Revelation 22:17).—Adam Thompson, D.D.: Outlines, pp. 214–220.