Jottings

by J. Miller | Category: Jottings | Oct 1966

Great indeed are the thoughts and ideas that Isaiah presents to the reader from verse to verse and paragraph to paragraph. Take the section of his book from chapter 50 to chapter 53. In chapter 50 the LORD asks, "Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, wherewith I have put her away? or which of My creditors is it to whom I have sold you?" The LORD wrote her no bill of divorcement, nor had He any creditors that He sold His wife (speaking of Israel figuratively) to pay His debt. It was for their transgressions that they were put away. So when the LORD came to deal with His people there was no man, as Moses had been in the wilderness when he turned away God's wrath from Israel and from Aaron also (Deuteronomy 9.15-20). Later, Isaiah says, "He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore His own arm brought salvation unto Him; and His righteousness, it upheld Him" (59.16). And later still, He says, "And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore Mine own arm brought salvation unto Me" (63.5).

This paragraph in chapter 50 is followed by one of the delightful glimpses of the suffering Saviour that we see time and again in the Old Testament, for the Old Testament speaks of the sufferings of the Christ and of the glories which should follow. Here we see the Lord in the character of a disciple, as One that is taught. My mind has sometimes travelled to the humble Nazareth home of Joseph and Mary, and I have thought of Mary in the early morning stealing into the room where the Lord and others slept, and, when she looked at Him, He was awake, and His eyes, which were like doves beside the water brooks, deep and liquid, looked out on His lowly mother. He had been listening to the voice of God, for He says through the mouth of Isaiah, "He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth Mine ear to hear as they that are that are taught. The Lord GOD hath opened Mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away backward." Here are two results of His hearing the voice of God in the morning; He Himself was not at any time rebellious, nor did He turn backward, and He was taught how He should sustain with words him that is weary. What a gracious ministry this was to sustain with words the weary!

The time came when in the morning He heard words which told Him what He should do, and He says again through Isaiah,

"I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that

plucked off the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting."

How did this affect Him? It bowed Him down in the black shadows of the olive trees in the garden of Gethsemane, and in His anguish He sweat the blood-like sweat. In that very Passover day He would suffer the meaning of the words of Isaiah here, and later on of what is said in Isaiah 53. Though His anguish was great beyond words to describe, yet He said at the same time that He would be helped by God, He would not be confounded; He set His face like a flint to go through it all, and He would not be ashamed.

Then at the close of chapter 50 we have a short paragraph teaching such as fear God what to do; if they are in darkness and have no light, they are to trust in the Lord and stay upon their God, but woe to such as walk in the light of the fire that they have kindled.

Isaiah 51 begins with:

"Hearken to Me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the

LORD: look unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged."

Whether this looks back to Abraham because of what the following verse (2) says, or whether it looks back to Adam, it makes little difference: it looks back to a sad origin. Adam was the first of the race and the first sinner of the race. From that view, none of us has anything to boast of in our origin. And if it is the Israelites that sought after righteousness who were to look back to Abraham, they too have little cause of gratulation of themselves. Abraham belonged to a family of idolators and no doubt was an idolator himself (Joshua 24.2).

The origin of Jew and Gentile is viewed as a hard rock and a pit of miry clay, of "tumult or destruction". This is as God views us in the state in which He found us (Psalm 40.2). Such indeed is the contrast that the Spirit of God draws between the Church which is the Body of Christ, "the fulness of Him that filleth all in all" (Ephesians 1.22,23), and those who were to become members of that Body when He found them. He says, "Ye were dead through your trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2.1). In ourselves we have everything to deplore, but as finding a place in Christ we have everything to rejoice in through divine grace.

Abraham's greatness was in the fact that the God of glory appeared to him in Mesopotamia, and He said, "Get thee out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and come into the land that I shall shew thee" (Acts 7.2,3). This is what Isaiah says, "When he was but one I called him, and I blessed him, and made him many." This is ever the way of God. He calls men alone, when they are but one, whether we think of the call in the Gospel or the call to a path of separation and to a place where they can serve God.

Then God refers to Zion, but it was a long time from Abraham's conversion and call to the time Zion was reached in the days of David, somewhere in the region of a 1,000 years. God has plenty of time to wait till men are aroused and exercised to seek the place in which God wished to dwell. David said:

"The LORD hath chosen Zion;

He bath desired it for His habitation.

This is My resting-place for ever:

Here will I dwell; for I have desired it" (Psalm 132.13,14).

Both purposes of God in the conversion and the call of Abraham, and the choosing of Zion in David's time have, through the disobedience of Israel and their resurrection of Christ, fallen on dark and evil days, so far as Israel occupying e land which was given to Abraham and his seed, and Zion being the place of the Name, are concerned. But a portion of the Jews are back in their land and the Jews have a section of Jerusalem, which are portents of coming greater events. For Isaiah's words will have fulfilment:

"For the LORD hath comforted Zion: He hath comforted all her waste places, and hath made her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody" (Isaiah 51.3).

J. Miller | Oct 1966
Jottings