The Great Eruption of Joy Text: Isaiah 12:4-6
Introduction: The Grammar of Gratitude
We live in an age of manufactured grievances. Our entire culture is predicated on the notion that someone, somewhere, is responsible for my unhappiness. We are taught from our youth to nurse our resentments, to cultivate our victimhood, and to present our bill of complaints to the world as though it were a royal decree. The modern man is a querulous creature, perpetually simmering in a pot of his own discontent. And into this gray, grumbling world, the Word of God lands with the force of a thunderclap.
Isaiah 12 is a short chapter, a small song tucked between massive prophetic burdens. But it is a song of pure, unadulterated, high-octane joy. It is a glimpse of the future, a taste of the great reversal when God’s salvation breaks into history in its fullness. The previous chapter, Isaiah 11, describes the coming of the Messiah, the shoot from the stump of Jesse, who will establish a kingdom of perfect peace and justice. And the necessary, reflexive, inescapable response to this reality is an eruption of praise. This is not a suggestion. It is a prophecy. "In that day you will say..."
What Isaiah describes here is the grammar of the redeemed heart. It is the syntax of salvation. When God saves, His people sing. When God acts, His people testify. When God reveals Himself, His people rejoice. This is not an optional add-on, not an elective for the emotionally expressive. This is the very pulse of the new creation. A silent Christian is a contradiction in terms, like a silent explosion or a dry ocean. A joyless Christian is an advertisement for the other side.
These three verses lay out for us the public relations strategy of the Kingdom of God. It is not a strategy of slick marketing, political maneuvering, or cultural accommodation. It is a strategy of explosive, declarative, and infectious gratitude. It is a public and loud affair. It is meant to be seen, heard, and talked about. This is the holy commotion that God intends for His people, and it is the only effective answer to the sullen murmuring of a world in rebellion against its Maker.
The Text
And in that day you will say,
“Give thanks to Yahweh, call on His name.
Make known His deeds among the peoples;
Make them remember that His name is exalted.”
Praise Yahweh in song, for He has done majestic things;
Let this be known throughout the earth.
Cry aloud and shout for joy, O inhabitant of Zion,
For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
(Isaiah 12:4-6 LSB)
The Mandate to Proclaim (v. 4)
The song begins with a fourfold command that defines the outward thrust of our joy.
"And in that day you will say, 'Give thanks to Yahweh, call on His name. Make known His deeds among the peoples; Make them remember that His name is exalted.'" (Isaiah 12:4)
First, "Give thanks to Yahweh." Thanksgiving is the foundational posture of the creature before the Creator. As Paul argues in Romans 1, the root of all pagan darkness is a refusal to honor God as God or to give thanks to Him. Ingratitude is the original sin in motion. Therefore, the first motion of the redeemed heart is to reverse the curse. We give thanks. This is not a feeling; it is an action. It is a commanded declaration. Thanksgiving is a weapon. It is the arrow aimed straight at the central heart of unbelief, which is pride and entitlement.
Second, "call on His name." This is more than just prayer. To call on the name of Yahweh is to align yourself publicly with Him. It is to identify yourself as one of His. In a world that offers a pantheon of false gods, from the Baals of old to the modern idols of self, money, and state, to call on the name of Yahweh is a polemical act. It is to declare your allegiance. It is to say, "This is my God. He is the one who is. All other ground is sinking sand."
Third, "Make known His deeds among the peoples." This is evangelism in its most basic form. What has He done? He has rescued a people from bondage. He has parted the sea. He has sent His Son. He has conquered the grave. Our faith is not a private philosophy or a set of abstract principles. It is rooted in the mighty acts of God in history. We are not sharing our opinions; we are reporting the news. God has acted. And this news is not just for Israel; it is for "the peoples." All of them. The gospel has always had global ambitions.
Fourth, "Make them remember that His name is exalted." The goal of our proclamation is not simply to inform, but to bring about a reorientation of reality in the minds of the hearers. We are to remind a forgetful world that His name, His reputation, His character, is high and lifted up. It is supreme. In an egalitarian age that despises all hierarchy, we are called to be heralds of the ultimate hierarchy. There is God, and there is everything else. He is the Creator; we are the creatures. His name is exalted, and our job is to make sure nobody can claim they didn't hear about it.
The Fuel for the Song (v. 5)
Verse 5 gives us the reason for this commanded praise and broadens the scope of its publication.
"Praise Yahweh in song, for He has done majestic things; Let this be known throughout the earth." (Isaiah 12:5 LSB)
Here the command is to "Praise Yahweh in song." The Hebrew word for praise here is related to making music. This is not a quiet, internal appreciation. This is audible. It has melody and rhythm. God designed us to sing our theology. Corporate worship, the singing of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, is central to the life of the church because it is the natural expression of a heart that has seen the majesty of God. A church that does not sing, or sings poorly, is a church that has forgotten what God has done.
And what has He done? The reason for the song is that "He has done majestic things." The word for majestic here carries the idea of splendor, of excellence, of glorious loftiness. This is not faint praise for mediocre effort. God’s deeds are not just "nice." They are objectively majestic. The creation of the world out of nothing is majestic. The redemption of sinners through the cross is majestic. The resurrection of Christ from the dead is majestic. We sing because the subject matter demands it. To respond to the cross with a shrug is a category error of cosmic proportions.
And the audience for this song is the entire planet. "Let this be known throughout the earth." This echoes the previous verse's call to declare His deeds among the peoples. The vision of Isaiah is not parochial. It is not tribal. The majestic deeds of the God of Israel are headline news for every person in every nation. This is a postmillennial vision, a vision of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord covering the earth as the waters cover the sea. And how will that happen? It will happen when God's people obey this command and get loud about what He has done.
The Joy of God's Presence (v. 6)
The final verse brings the song to its crescendo, identifying the location and the ultimate reason for this explosive joy.
"Cry aloud and shout for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel." (Isaiah 12:6 LSB)
The command intensifies. "Cry aloud and shout for joy." This is the opposite of buttoned-up, respectable religion. This is undignified, David-dancing-before-the-ark kind of worship. It is a holy uproar. It is the sound of a people who cannot contain the sheer gladness of their salvation. The "inhabitant of Zion" is the people of God, the church. We are the ones who have been brought into the city of the living God.
And why this shouting? What is the cause of this uncontainable joy? It is the central truth of the covenant. "For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel." The ultimate reason for our joy is not our circumstances, not our blessings, not even our salvation considered in isolation. The ultimate reason for our joy is God Himself. And He is not a distant, deistic God who wound up the clock and walked away. He is "in your midst." He is Immanuel, God with us.
This is the secret of Christian joy. It is not dependent on external factors. It is dependent on the presence of the great God. He is the "Holy One of Israel." His holiness means He is utterly separate, transcendent, and pure. And yet, this Holy One dwells with His people. This is the miracle of the incarnation and the miracle of Pentecost. The transcendent God has become the immanent God. The great one is "in your midst." If that reality does not make you want to shout, you should check your pulse.
Conclusion: Turning Up the Volume
This song of Isaiah is a diagnostic tool. If the characteristics described here, thanksgiving, proclamation, singing, and shouting, are absent from our lives and our churches, it is not because we are more sophisticated or reserved. It is because we have lost sight of the greatness of God in our midst.
A grumbling Christian is forgetting the majestic deeds of God. A silent church is failing to call on His exalted name. A joyless community has forgotten that the Holy One of Israel is in its midst. The world is not dying for a lack of quiet, respectable, and slightly embarrassed Christians. It is dying for a lack of Christians who have been so overwhelmed by the majesty of God that they cannot help but be loud about it.
The command of this text is to turn up the volume. Give thanks, and do it out loud. Call on His name, publicly. Make His deeds known, to everyone. Sing His praises, robustly. Shout for joy, because the great God is with us. This is the song of the redeemed. "In that day you will say..." That day began at the cross, it continues now by the Spirit, and it will culminate when Christ returns to make all things new. So let us begin the song now.