The Isaiah Song

My friend, Josh Gayle, introduced me to a new song a few weeks ago called The Isaiah Song: https://youtu.be/E8jFYJVkjZw. It’s chorus has been hitting repeat in the back of my head ever since:

Sing sing
Oh barren Land
Water is coming to the thirsty
Though you are empty
I am the well
Draw from me I will provide

I thought I’d find which verses in Isaiah the song drew from, and that led to a number of surprises. Search “sing” on your electronic Bible. Apart from the Bible’s central songbook, Psalms, the word “sing” is found far more often in Isaiah than any other book, and very often as an imperative. Isaiah is a Singing Book!

And yet, Isaiah is also a Suffering Book. One can get whiplash reading through Isaiah - at one moment his poetry is capturing the decadence of the nation, its entrenched rebellion against the Holy One of Israel, and the sure judgment that is coming as a result. And then suddenly Isaiah is articulating some of the most lavish expressions of the gracious love of God toward his people.

This tension builds through the book, crying out for a solution to God’s dilemma: his holiness and overflowing affection for his people, and our being stuck in our sins and our selves. The answer unfolds in the later chapters of the book in the form of a suffering servant.

That’s what makes the exhortations to Sing found in Isaiah so different from ones we hear in our culture:
• Don’t Worry Be Happy;
• Shiny Happy People;
• Pocketful of Sunshine.
As most of us have experienced, when one is suffering these declarations are ineffective at best, and caustic at worst:

"Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, and like vinegar on soda."–Proverbs 25:20

So what I find especially interesting in Isaiah, is how “Sing” brackets the glorious Suffering Servant passage:

"The voice of your watchmen-they lift up their voice; together they sing for joy...Break forth together into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem..."–Isaiah 52:8-9

The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 52:13-53:12–

"Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud..."–Isaiah 54:1

The Lord God has met suffering with suffering. He receives our suffering on himself:

"...his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance..." –Isaiah 52:14

This surprising solution to our self-inflicted pain is so awesome, one cannot just nod their head or smile in appreciation. Nothing less than spontaneous joy, praise and song is the delivered soul’s response. No wonder Handel’s Messiah, draws so heavily from the book of Isaiah.

Wherever you find yourself at present in this advent season, whatever your lot has been in this past 2020, Isaiah joyfully and dramatically declares - we have a reason to sing! We have a reason to shout!

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given..."–Isaiah 9:6

If you are hurting, listen to this song, check out Kevin’s message from Sunday, but most of all, cry out to the one who has come to rescue us.