It Shall Not Return Unto Me Void Is a Promise About the Words Themselves

He gave it a fair try and then he stopped, and he thinks that was reasonable.

Six weeks. Every morning, before work, at the table, and he did not skip. He is not a man who skips things. He read, and he understood most of what he read, and he closed the book and went to work and by nine he could not have told you what it said.

Six weeks of that. And at the end of six weeks he made an assessment, which is what a reasonable man does with a practice that is producing nothing, and he stopped.

He did not stop believing. He stopped doing a thing he had no evidence for, which is a completely defensible decision and one he has made about several other practices in his life with good results.

The trouble is that the assessment was based on a measurement he did not know he was taking, and there is a promise attached to those words that is not about him at all.

The picture, before the promise

Here it is, in the King James Version, and He starts with weather:

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater. (Isaiah 55:10)

As the rain cometh down, and the snow.

Notice what the picture has in it. Rain and snow are two speeds. Rain lands and is absorbed within the hour. Snow lies on a field for weeks and goes in slowly and nobody watching can tell it is doing anything.

Both are in the sentence and both are doing the same job.

And the chain He describes is long: watereth, bring forth, bud, seed to the sower, bread to the eater. That is not an event. That is a season, and every stage of it looks like nothing while it is happening.

You are inside a process with a long chain and you were never watching a thing that reports as it goes. Isaiah 55:10 puts rain and snow together and runs the chain out to bread on a table, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a visible result who does the work between the stages.

The promise, and who it is about

Then the sentence.

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)

It shall not return unto me void.

Read the subject of every clause. My word. It shall accomplish. It shall prosper.

The reader is not in the sentence. Not once. The guarantee is attached to the word, about what the word does, and the standard it is measured against is that which I please rather than anything the reader can detect.

Which means the assessment the man made at six weeks was an assessment of the wrong party. He was measuring himself, correctly, and concluding something about the word, which the verse says is not how the arrangement works.

It shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. Sent, past tense, with a purpose already assigned. The purpose is not published to the reader.

You have a promise attached to the words rather than to your response and you were never the party under guarantee. Isaiah 55:11 makes His word the subject of every clause, and it is His Spirit who administers a promise a man cannot see the working of.

The parable that says the same thing about not knowing

Jesus tells a short parable that is about exactly this and it is the only one He tells where the farmer has no idea what is going on.

And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. (Mark 4:26-28)

He knoweth not how.

That is stated as normal. Not as a failure of the farmer's attention. The not knowing is a feature of the arrangement being described.

First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn. Three stages, and the first one is a green shoot that looks like grass and would not convince anybody of anything.

A man measuring at six weeks is measuring somewhere before the blade.

You have growth described as happening without your knowing how and you were never expected to track it. Mark 4:27 says he knoweth not how as a plain description, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a detectable change who does what that parable describes.

Who is responsible for which part

Paul divides the work up in one sentence and the division is the whole answer to a man who has assessed himself out of the practice.

I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. (1 Corinthians 3:6)

God gave the increase. Two men did things they could see and one party did the part nobody could.

And Ecclesiastes, on what to do when you cannot tell which effort is working:

In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good. (Ecclesiastes 11:6)

For thou knowest not whether shall prosper. That is written as a reason to keep going rather than a reason to stop, which is the exact opposite of the conclusion a reasonable man draws from an absence of evidence.

You have a share of the work that is visible and a share that is not, and you were never assigned the second one. 1 Corinthians 3:6 says God gave the increase and Ecclesiastes 11:6 says to keep sowing because you cannot tell, and it is His Spirit who does the part that does not report.