Isaiah 35:6, “…and the tongue of the mute shall sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.”
The NT understands Isaiah 35:5-6a as referring to the ministry of Jesus (Matt.11:45, etc), but here in Isaiah 35, the miraculous healings that we know are achieved in Christ are attributed to “waters [breaking] forth in the wilderness…” At least one implication we can draw from these connections is that Jesus Christ Himself IS that water in the wilderness.
By entering into the plight of creation through the incarnation—which is of a piece with and inseparable from His crucifixion and resurrection—YHWH God has Himself become the living water in the wilderness, the water who turns the wilderness into a flourishing orchard, who turns the desert into a blossoming garden, who turns the burning sands into flowing streams. Our Lord and our God, He is the River in the Wilderness who flows out into all the world and brings New Creation life…..and He flows into all the world—into all time and place—from the stricken Rock of Calvary, which is Himself.
Yes, the self-outpouring of God through His Son on the cross (a self-outpouring physically imaged in the flow of water and blood from His opened heart)—the self-outpouring of God through His Son on Calvary is the eternal fountainhead of all His self-giving within Creation. It is from this self-giving that He is poured out into Mary and so conceived, and from this self-giving that He gives Himself in the Spirit to all who come after; it is from this self-giving that He stood upon the Stricken Rock in the wilderness and gave water to Israel, and from this self giving that He pours Himself out through the Spirit to the Church at Pentecost; it is from this self-giving that He spoke the Creation into being, and from this self-giving that He pours the river of life out into the New Creation for the endless ages to come…From the foundation of the world, YHWH God has flowed out from the Stricken Rock which is Himself on Calvary, into the wilderness which is not Himself and filled it with the life that is Himself.
