Isaiah 12:3

Isaiah 12:3

I. Consider what we have to understand by the wells of salvation. We shall not strain the prophet's meaning here, if we take salvation almost in the fully developed New Testament sense, as including negatively the deliverance from all evil, both evil of sin and evil of sorrow, and positively the endowment with all good, good both of holiness and happiness, which God can bestow or men receive. Then if so, God Himself is, in the deepest truth, the Well of Salvation. The figure of the text does not point to a well so much as to a spring. It is a source, not a reservoir. All the springs from which salvation, in any measure and in any form, flow to the thirsty lips of men are in God Himself. For men, Jesus Christ is as the river which flows from the closed and land-locked sea of the infinite, Divine nature. He is for us the only source, the inexhaustible source, the perennial source. "They drank of that Rock which followed them, and that Rock was Christ."

II. Consider what is the way of drawing from the wells of salvation. Christ has taught us what "drawing" is. To the Samaritan woman He said, "Thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water." So, then, drawing is asking. To the crowds in the Temple courts He said, "Let him come unto Me, and drink." So, then, drawing is coming. To the listeners by the Sea of Galilee He said, "He that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst." So coming, asking, drawing, are all explained by believing. Simple faith draws all God's goodness into the soul.

III. Consider the joy of the water-drawers. The well is the meeting-place in these hot lands, where the solitary shepherds from the pastures and the maidens from the black camel's-hair tents meet in the cool evening, and ringing laughter and cheery talk go round. So jubilant is the heart of the man whose soul is filled and feasted with the God of his salvation, and the salvation of his God.

A. Maclaren, The Secret of Power,p. 212 (see also Christian World Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 408).

References: Isaiah 12:3. Contemporary Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 188; H. Allen, Penny Pulpit,No. 1676; J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages from the Prophets,vol. i., p. 23;A. Maclaren, Old Testament Outlines,p. 176.