The people of God are represented as a flock of sheep travelling under the care of their good shepherd, in the heat of summer, through a barren and dry wilderness, towards a land of plenty, security, and everlasting rest.
Under such circumstances, what would this flock require? What might they expect from the hand of a faithful shepherd? There are doubtless three things which they would want and might look for--provision, protection, and refreshment. Such are the blessings promised by Christ in the text.
I. PROVISION. “They shall not hunger nor thirst.” Christ will furnish them with all things necessary both for life and godliness; that is, with a sufficiency of all temporal and spiritual blessings.
II. PROTECTION. “Neither shall the heat nor the sun smite them.” His people are exposed to the fire of persecution; but by His almighty power, by providential interpositions, He defeats the purposes, restrains the malice, and wards off the stroke of their persecutors. They are exposed, also, to the fiery darts of the wicked one; but here, again, the Lord protects His people.
III. REFRESHMENT. “Even by the springs of water shall He guide them.” Springs of water would be peculiarly refreshing in the sultry deserts, both as allaying the thirst of the flock, and as also furnishing on their banks fresh and verdant pasture, in which the sheep might repose and renew their wearied strength. Such and similar is the refreshment which Christ vouchsafes to His people. (E. Cooper.)
The love that will not let us go
This chapter is strewn with assurances to the chosen people on the eve of their return from Babylon. Jehovah’s voice takes on a tone of unusual tenderness, and speaks as He only can. Let us heed His successive assurances of comfort and compassion.
I. HE WILL LEAD WITH A SHEPHERD’S CARE.
II. HE WILL MAKE OBSTACLES SERVE HIS PURPOSE. “I will make all My mountains a way” (Isa_49:11). Mountains are prohibitory. The student of the geography of Palestine cannot fail to be impressed with the strong barricade of mountains with which God fenced in the Land of Promise on its southern frontier. Similarly, the mountains of Switzerland have sheltered liberty and those of Afghanistan have made conquest difficult to impossibility. There were great mountains between Israel and home, yet God does not say that He would remove them; but that they should form a pathway, as though contributing to the ease and speed of the return. “I will make all My mountains a way.” We all have mountains in our lives. There are people and things that threaten to bar our progress in the Divine life. Patience can only be acquired through just such trials as now seem unbearable. Submit thyself. Claim to be a par taker in the patience of Jesus. Meet thy trials in Him. Thus shall the mountains that stand between thee and thy promised land become thy way to it. Note the comprehensiveness of this promise. “I will make all My mountains a way.” The promise is in the future tense. When we come to the foot of the mountains we shall find the way.
III. GOD’S LOVE IS MORE THAN MOTHERHOOD (Isa_49:15). Many devout but misguided souls have placed the Virgin Mother on a level with God, and worship her, because they think that woman is more tender, more patient, more forgiving than man. “The love of woman” was David’s high-water-mark of love. And of woman’s love, none is so pure, so unselfish, so full of patient brooding pity, as a mother’s. Such love is God’s. Indeed it is a ray from His heart. Ira mother’s love is but the ray, what must His heart be! But there is sometimes a failure in motherhood. “They may forget.” But God can never so forget.
IV. GOD TREASURES THE THOUGHT OF HIS OWN (Isa_49:16). The Orientals had a custom of tattooing the name of beloved friends on the hand. That is the reference here. Thou art photographed where God must ever behold thee, on His hands, on His heart. Not on one hand only, but on both. Not tattooed or photographed, the marks of which might be obliterated and obscured; but graven. The graving tool was the spear, the nail, the cross. Glass will not give up its inscriptions, nor the onyx stone its seal, nor the cameo its profile; but sooner might they renounce their trust, than the hands of Christ. Not Zion’s ruins, but Zion’s “walls” were ever before Him. Our ideal self; what we are in Jesus; what we long to be in our best moments; what we will be when grace has perfected its work and we are comely in the comeliness He shall put upon us--this is the ineffaceable conception of us that is ever before God. What a contrast between Zion’s wail about being forsaken and forgotten, and God’s tender regard!
V. GOD’S LOVE IS STRONG ENOUGH TO CARRY OUT ITS PURPOSE (Isa_49:24). Such is the question of despondency, asked by Israel, from the heart of the mighty empire, in which she was a helpless captive But Jehovah had well calculated his resources (Isa_49:25).
VI. GOD’S LOVE WILL NOT PUT AWAY (Isa_50:1). (F. B.Meyer, B. A.)
