Isaiah 51:1 - Meaning and Application

Notice, first, how the people of God are described here, the ones to whom this word of comfort is sent, and who are told to listen to it (Isaiah 51:1). They are people who pursue righteousness, who deeply desire both to be made right with God and to be made holy. They are pressing hard toward having God’s favor restored and his image renewed in them. These are the ones who seek the Lord, for only in the way of righteousness can we seek him with any hope of finding him.

Notice also how they are told to look back to their beginning and to the smallness of their start. “Look to the rock from which you were cut,” the idolatrous family in Ur of the Chaldees from which Abraham was taken, and the slave people from whom the heads and fathers of their tribes came in Egypt. “Look to the quarry pit from which you were dug,” as clay was formed into a people by God. It is good for those who have been given new birth to remember what they were by their first birth, how they were conceived in sin and shaped in sin. What is born of flesh is flesh. How hard was that rock from which we were cut, so unwilling to take shape, and how miserable was the pit from which we were dug. Thinking about this should give us humble thoughts about ourselves and high thoughts about God’s grace.

Those who are now lifted up would do well to remember how low they began (Isaiah 51:2). “Look to Abraham your father,” the father of all who believe, all who follow after the righteousness that comes by faith, as he did (Romans 4:11), and to Sarah who gave birth to you, and whose daughters you are as long as you do what is right. Think how Abraham was called when he was alone, and yet was blessed and made into a great nation. Let that encourage you to trust God’s promise even when everything seems dead and hopeless. In a special way, let it encourage the captives in Babylon. Though they have been reduced to a small number, and only a few remain, they still have reason to hope that they will grow again and fill their own land. When Jacob is very small, he is still not as small as Abraham was, and yet Abraham became the father of many nations. Look to Abraham, see what he gained by trusting God’s promise, and follow his example by trusting God fully.

They are also assured that their present season of sorrow will one day end in a harvest of joy (Isaiah 51:3). The church of God on earth, even gospel Zion, has often had its deserts and waste places. Many parts of the church, through corruption or persecution, have been made like a wilderness, unfruitful toward God or uncomfortable for the people living there. But God will find a time and a way to comfort Zion, not only by speaking kindly to her, but by acting graciously for her. God keeps comfort ready even for the waste places of his church, for the parts of it that seem unnoticed or unimportant.

He will make them fruitful, and so give them reason to rejoice. Her wildernesses will take on a new look, pleasant as Eden and full of good fruit like the garden of the Lord. The great comfort of the church is to be useful for God’s glory and to be like his garden, the place where he delights to dwell. He will also make them cheerful, and so give them hearts that rejoice. Where there are the fruits of righteousness, there will also be joy and gladness, for the more holiness people have and the more good they do, the more gladness they have. And where there is gladness for our own good, there should also be thanksgiving for God’s honor, because whatever gives us reason to rejoice should also give us reason to give thanks. When God restores his favor, it should be celebrated with songs of praise, and those songs become even sweeter when God gives songs in the night, songs in the desert.