Coming to Save
Isaiah 12:1-6 (RCL 12:2-6)
Tony’s Overview Video
How to Use
Preparing to teach
- Read the Bible Lesson by Tony Cartledge in this month’s issue of the Nurturing Faith Journal
- Watch Tony’s Video for this session
- Select either the Adult or Youth teaching guide and follow the directions
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Key Verse: Isaiah 12:2 –
Surely God is my salvation;
I will trust, and will not be afraid,
for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might;
he has become my salvation.
If you have a choice between celebration and sorrow, which would you choose? Surely most of us would opt for the happier of the two. The season of Advent began as a period of fasting and penitence leading up to Christmas, but it is much more than a season of sackcloth and ashes.
As early as the fifth century, Advent was observed for 40 days, beginning the day after a feast honoring St. Martin on November 11. By the ninth century, however, the observance had been reduced to four weeks, and they were not all relegated to remorse for sin.
The third Sunday of Advent came to be celebrated as a day of particular joy, often symbolized today by the lighting of a pink or rose-colored candle that stands out from the more somber violet of the other three surrounding the white Christ candle. While the darker candles are associated with penitence in preparation for the coming of the Lord, the happier rose color symbolizes a shift to joy in anticipation Christ’s arrival as the bringer of salvation.
Texts chosen for the day typically emphasize joyful praise, and Isaiah 12:1-6 is no exception. [DD]
Anger and comfort (v. 1)
The book of Isaiah was fashioned as it is for a purpose, with the first 12 chapters forming a unit that focuses on the failure of God’s covenant people to worship God faithfully and practice justice with each other. A period of relative peace and prosperity in the first half of the eighth century BCE had allowed the wealthy to focus on increasing their holdings, often at the expense of fellow Israelites who lacked either the resources or the cunning to ward off their greedy neighbors.
Whether or not it was his initial call, Isaiah was given a vision of God’s majesty – and a commission to preach, even if on deaf ears – “in the year that King Uzziah died,” which would have been around 740 BCE (Isaiah 6). [DD] According to the book’s superscription, Isaiah remained active through the reigns of Jotham (c. 750-732), Ahaz (c. 735-715), and Hezekiah (715-687 – note that some served for a time as co-regent with their father).
During this period, the long peace gave way to conflict as a resurgent Assyria rose to power. This resulted in political turmoil, strife with former allies, economic hardship, and the loss of property to the invading Assyrians. The northern kingdom of Israel was conquered in 722 BCE and its capital city of Samaria destroyed. Many Israelite refugees fled south into Judah, while others were forcibly rounded up and scattered among other conquered nations. [DD]
The Assyrian king Sennacherib swept through the coastal plain of Judah in 701 BCE, destroying many towns and cities, including Lachish, second only to Jerusalem in size and power. Sennacherib threatened and besieged Jerusalem, but withdrew without taking the city. The narrator of 2 Kings attributed the city’s deliverance to a plague God sent to emaciate the Assyrian armies after King Hezekiah prayed for the city to be saved, and Isaiah predicted the enemy would be turned back (2 Kings 19).
Isaiah saw the ongoing troubles as divine judgment for the people’s failure to live faithfully, and made his beliefs clearly known in prophetic sermons such as the “Song of the Vineyard” (5:1-7). There he condemned those who enlarged their estates at the expense of poor neighbors, and who fed their appetites with hedonistic pleasure (5:8, 11). Isaiah predicted a coming exile (5:13) in which God would “whistle for a people at the ends of the earth” to overrun the land like an army of roaring lions (5:26-30).
The prophet was not without hope, however. Isaiah saw past the hard times of discipline to a day when God’s grace would flood the land and a “shoot from the stem of Jesse” would usher in a new age of peace (chapter 11).
Chapter 12 concludes the first section of the book with an appropriate response to the promise of renewed peace and prosperity: it is a hymn, a call for the people to praise God in the light of God’s promise to deliver.
The first verse uses singular verbs, indicating the corporate nature of the people, who should hear Isaiah’s challenge and respond as one. “You will say in that day: ‘I will give thanks to you, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me’” (v. 1).
The image of God’s judgment being replaced by comfort calls to mind a similar passage in Isaiah 40, where a later prophet writing in Isaiah’s name foresaw an end to Judah’s exile and heard God’s call to comfort the people, for their penalty had been paid (Isa. 40:1).
God’s judgment may seem great, but God’s grace is greater yet.
Salvation and joy (vv. 2-3)
Verse 2 sounds like Isaiah’s own testimony, a testimony he would like the people to share: “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.” [DD]
Isaiah’s joy does not derive from his own abilities, but from putting his trust in Yahweh. Deliverance does not come through human efforts, but through God’s salvific work. [DD]
Isaiah’s own name – spelled yesh’ayāhû in Hebrew – means “Yahweh is salvation.” Surprisingly, Isaiah rarely uses other forms of the word for salvation, perhaps to avoid drawing attention to himself. Here, however, he uses it three times in the course of two verses. In v. 2 he declares that “God is my salvation” (yishū’ati), and “he has become for me salvation” (līshū’āh).
In v. 3, he proclaims “With joy you (now plural) will draw water from the wells of salvation” (hayeshū’āh).
Earlier in this section, Isaiah used the names of his own children, as well as the child Immanuel (chapters 7-8), as “signs and portents of the LORD of hosts, who dwells on Mt. Zion” (8:18). Whether he intended it or not, Isaiah’s own name has here also become a sign and portent of its own – a pointer toward God’s promised deliverance.
But the deliverance remained a promise, and singing a song of salvation that one has yet to see requires trust. Thus, Isaiah could say “I will trust, and will not be afraid.” He believed that putting faith in God as “my strength and my might” would lead to “my salvation.”
In v. 3, Isaiah encourages others to follow his example. Drawing water requires intentional effort. God may offer forgiveness and salvation, but only those who reach for it in trust will receive it.
Water is a common biblical metaphor for life. Many parts of Israel receive little rain, and even the wetter northern and central areas endure a long dry season from May to October, when rain is rare and seasonal streams go dry. In those days, for people not living near the Sea of Galilee or the Jordan River, survival depended on strong and dependable springs such as the Gihon Spring in Jerusalem and the ‘Ein-es Sultan (also known as “Elisha’s”) Spring in Jericho.
The unfortunate translation “wells” in the NRSV obscures the intended image, for the underlying word means “springs.” While wells may indeed provide water, they are the result of human labor. The picture here is of life-giving water that bursts from an underground source as the gift of God, waiting only for grateful people to receive it.
Proclamation and praise (vv. 4-6)
Verse 4, like verse one, begins with “And you will say in that day …,” except now the verb behind “you shall say” is a plural form. The shift indicates that all are responsible, in various ways, to not only “Give thanks to the LORD” and “call on his name,” but to “make known his deeds among the nations” in order to “proclaim that his name is exalted.”
Those who receive God’s salvation, in other words, are not just to enjoy it and rejoice, but to testify. They are not to hoard God’s blessing for themselves, as the wealthy had sought to accumulate land, but to share the good news of deliverance with others.
The challenge to testify is expanded in v. 5, as God’s delivered people are to “Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth.”
God’s care and deliverance was not for Israel’s benefit only. Isaiah’s vision was as broad as the known world, and his hope was that all peoples could live together in peace and mutual worship of God (see Isa. 2:1-4).
Isaiah’s audience might still think of “royal Zion” as the heart of Israel and as the most focused dwelling place of “the Holy One of Israel” (v. 6), but God’s power – and the mission of God’s people – stretched far beyond the walls of Jerusalem.
It is easy for modern believers to look askance at the ancient Israelites, thinking of them as provincial and misguided, concerned only with themselves, constantly in need of prophetic challenges to keep them on track.
Think, however, of ways in which contemporary Christians likewise put self before God and selfishness before others. Think of ways in which we compartmentalize worship within the confines of the church building and fail to take the good news of Jesus with us wherever we go.
Who’s keeping us on track? Isaiah might have a word for us, too.
Adult Teaching Resources
Download the PDF of teaching resources for this lesson.
This PDF contains the Teaching Guide, Digging Deeper, and Hardest Question pages.
Read Scripture online: Isaiah 12:1-6
Youth Teaching Resources
Parent Prep
How do you express joy? I don’t just mean when you are happy about something, but joy, that emotion that comes from the gut that rises out of you as you scream in joy. Most of the time joy can’t be contained, think of Scrooge after waking up from his final dream and realizing there is still time for Christmas. How can you create moments of joy for your student? These moments will be remember far longer than anything that is unwrapped under a tree.
Additional Links/Resources
Read Scripture online: Isaiah 12:1-6
Download the PDF for youth teaching resources using the button below. This PDF contains the Teaching Guide for this lesson:
Video
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“Ending” from A Christmas Carol
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