IV. Christ is a Refuge in the day of fear. Sin is darkness, and hence wherever there is sin there is gloom and fear. The wicked man is a slave to fear, and even the Christian at times suffers greatly because of it. The remedy for this gloomy experience is in Christ; and there is a power in the Gospel to lift the soul into a region of perpetual sunshine. In Christian experience, peace, joy, and hope are the ministering angels (Hab. iii. 17, 18).
V. Christ is a Refuge from the torments of an accusing conscience. The day of self-convicted guilt always a day of memorable experiences. Conscience upbraids, justice demands satisfaction; the soul is ready to sink into hell. Whose arm can save you in such an hour? where shall he seek refuge? in that hour none but Christ can save.
VI. Christ is a Refuge in the day of final wrath. The wrath to come—the just, final, and eternal wrath of God—a reality, a fixed fact in thought and experience. Jesus Christ is a refuge from this impending evil. The Cross lifted up on Calvary has received the thunder; God and the believer in Jesus Christ are reconciled. What, then, have they to fear whose life is hid in Christ? Death cannot harm, the judgment-day need not terrify.
Glorious Refuge! it never fails—is never shut against the penitent soul—has never been shaken—and will yet resist the fire and deluge of the great day of wrath. This is the Ark, and they are eternally safe who are therein.—J. M. Sherwood: National Preacher, 1859, p. 217.
Rivers of Water in a Dry Place.
xxxii. 2. As rivers of water in a dry place.
The surface sense of this passage may refer to Hezekiah and to other good kings who were a means of great blessing to the declining kingdom of Judah; but its declarations are too full of meaning to be applied solely or primarily to any mere man. They are never fully understood until they are applied to Christ, the true King of righteousness, who confers the highest blessings upon His people. In Him there is a fulness and variety of blessing such as the varied metaphors of this passage fail to set forth. He is the true Man of whom Isaiah speaks; the man in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and who therefore can be, and is, “as rivers of water in a dry place.”
I. The Metaphor. This implies, 1. Great excellence of blessing. How valuable is a river to the land through which it flows! So Christ is the source and the sustenance of the fertility, fruitfulness, and beauty of His people. 2. Abundance of blessing. Think of the vast floods that flow through the Amazon, the Ganges, the Indus, the Orinoco. So in Christ there is grace sufficient for all mankind. 3. Freshness of blessing.[1] 4. Freeness of blessing. Though individuals may claim peculiar rights in rivers, all creatures drink of them freely, the dog as well as the swan. So may all, however vile, partake of the grace that is in Christ. 5. Constancy of blessing. Pools and cisterns dry up, but the river goes on for ever. So it is with Jesus; the grace to pardon and the power to heal are not spasmodic powers in Him, they abide in Him unabated for evermore.
II. A Special Excellence which the text mentions. “Rivers of water in a dry place.” Only the residents in a tropical country can fully appreciate that phrase. But Christ came to such a place when He came to our race. So He does when with His salvation He visits the individual soul. Were it not for Him, the souls, even of His people under the influence of wealth or of poverty, of the cares or of the pleasures of life, would be always dry. But He refreshes, sustains, and fertilises those who otherwise would utterly faint and fail.
III. Practical Lessons. 1. See the goings out of God’s heart to man, and man’s way of communing with God. God’s heart is an infinite ocean of goodness, and it flows forth to us through Jesus Christ, not in streams and driblets, but in rivers of grace and mercy. These streams we cannot purchase or merit, we have only to receive them; when we drink of the stream, we partake of God. 2. See what a misery it is that men should be perishing and dying of soul thirst when there are these rivers so near. Some have never heard of them; therefore help to the utmost the Missionary Society. Others who have heard of them are smitten with a strange insanity that leads them to turn away from them. 3. Let us learn where, if we are suffering from spiritual drought and barrenness, the blame lies. It cannot lie in Christ. 4. If Christ is ready to be to us as rivers, drink of Him, all of you.[2] Live near Him. Live in Him.[3]—C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 1243.