His Word, Isaiah 55

It's odd to think of the Word as having magical properties. The secular word magical gives me the creeps but thinking it through, isn't magical among the synonyms for supernatural? And as a Christian, I am admittedly reluctant to make room for the supernatural---I hold the supernatural at arm's length, inspecting it long and hard.

Here's one of my favorite passages about the Word, from Isaiah:

"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it." -Isaiah 55:10-11

This is from the Cambridge Commentary:

This purpose of salvation is embodied in the word which goes forth from Jehovah’s mouth. The “word” is conceived as endowed with a self-fulfilling energy (see on ch. Isa_9:8); and its silent but irresistible efficacy is set forth by a beautiful comparison from nature. The same idea was expressed in ch. Isa_40:8.

I love the phrasing "silent but irresistible efficacy; " the momentum of the Word is a spiritual cycle as certain as the more physical cycles. Water flows from the mountains to the seas, evaporating into the air and cycling back through cloudy rains. His Word has this same certainty in its course.

From the Biblical Illustrator, I like the way his commentary captures the actively working nature of the Word in our spiritual lives. It becomes a piece of the fruit of our lives:

Yet another word that I have taken separately, because I think it really is separate. It is a stronger word than the former—“maketh it bring forth, and bud.” I feel inclined to use here the literal Hebrew word, “and sprout.” That is to say, the rain and the snow not merely touch the dust into generation, but come again in the grass, the flowers, the fruit-age. And the Word of God has come from Him to touch the failure of human life, and it has been returning to Him laughing with the harvest of ransomed souls. The Word was incarnate in the Christ supremely, and in a less and different degree, but nevertheless as truly, God’s Word has been re-incarnate in human lives in all the passing centuries.

Also:

That the Word of God is prosperous. The word “accomplish” means it does something, it makes something, it realizes something; and the Hebrew word “prosper” literally means it “pushes forward.” It is a great dynamic force.