Isaiah 25

He is a “Strength to the needy in his distress,” then when he needs strength and when his distress drives him to God. And as He strengthens them against their inward decays, so He shelters them from outward assaults; He is a refuge from the storm of rain or hail, and a shadow from the scorching heat of the sun in summer. Whatever dangers or troubles God’s people may be in, effectual care is taken that they shall sustain no real hurt or damage. When perils are most threatening and alarming, God will then appear for the safety of His people; and God will be such a shelter to His people that they shall be able to stand the shock, keep their ground, and maintain their integrity and peace. A storm, beating on a ship, tosses it, but that which beats on a wall never stirs it. H.

6. The song of praise now passes on to the days of Messiah. The blessings of the gospel are described under the figure of an ample feast, as Isa. 55:1-6; Matt. 22:1-4; Luke 14:15-20. The Author of this feast is first named, the Lord of hosts. Next, its subjects, or the invited guests, who are “all nations.” Thirdly, the place of the entertainment, “in this mountain;” or Jerusalem, where the Son of God began and closed His public ministry, and suffered without the gate. Lastly, the nature of the banquet, the meat of fatlings and choicest wine, free from dregs, but with the strength and richness of long fermentation. This feast is expounded in the gospel, and is the full provision of mercy in the atoning sacrifice and resurrection of the Son of God. Birks.—By the inspired penmen Zion was exalted from its original geographical sense to be the representative of that Divine state of which it was the centre, and of which the Christian Church is the true heir. It is historically true that from Jerusalem the gospel of Christ went forth to bless all nations, and in this sense the feast was spread for them on Mount Zion. But with a far deeper, grander import the expression, “in this mountain,” teaches us that the feast which God makes for the world is made in the Church, and is furnished to the nations through her instrumentality. E. P. Barrows.

6,7. The deliverance wrought for God’s people in their restoration from Babylon suggested the yet greater deliverance wrought from the Gentile nations in bringing them from darkness to light, from their state of utter want and famine to the fulness and fatness of this rich gospel feast. “This mountain” can be no other than Mount Zion, thought of as a symbol of the gospel Church. The Lord prepares this feast in a very special sense indeed, since Jesus gives His own flesh as the bread of life. With figures of speech, luxuriant, full and rich, the prophet sets forth the fatness and abundance of this feast: “fat things;” wines long kept standing on their lees; fat things full of marrow; wines not only kept long on their lees, but well refined. The Hebrews had no higher ideas of a perfect feast than those which are grouped together here. To heighten the wealth of this prediction, the Lord prepares this feast for all people. So the next verse has it; God removes the vail that has long covered “all people” and has been spread over “all nations.” This therefore is the world’s great jubilee. Correspondingly the same great fact is revealed in Ps. 22. The world’s great sufferer, having borne our griefs and passed through the dreadful agony, makes His thanksgiving feast; His friends partake with Him; “the meek eat and are satisfied;” “all the ends of the world remember and return unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations worship before Him.” The essential ideas are that Jesus, having suffered, provides a most magnificent gospel feast; gathers all nations home around His table and to His heart of infinite love; sees the travail of His soul and is satisfied, rejoicing forever in the fruits unto life and salvation which come of His vicarious death. H. C.

8. The true sense seems to be that all misery and suffering, comprehended under the generic name of death, should be completely done away. It is then a description of the ultimate effects of the influence before described as flowing from Mount Zion or the Church of God. In its highest sense this may never be realized by any individual till after death. Paul says accordingly (1 Cor. 15:54), that when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. A.—To swallow up death forever is to abolish it forever; to wipe away tears from all faces is to remove all sorrows; to take away the reproach of His people is to make them honorable throughout all the earth. These words are applied in the New Testament to the final glory and blessedness of the saints in heaven (1 Cor. 15). Barrows.

The troubles and labors of the present world, and the dissolution of the body, do still take place as warnings and chastisements for sinners; but the sorrows are not comfortless, nor the dissolution final; the dominion of death consisted in this, that it rendered that dissolution final and irreparable; and the devil is said to have the power of death, because, by seducing man to sin, he subjected him to that irretrievable dissolution. That death should be destroyed and men restored to happiness by the Messiah is confessed by very eminent Jewish writers, who therefore apply to him, in the most rigorous sense, these words of Isaiah. Dean Stanhope.

Christ will Himself, in His resurrection, triumph over death; will break its bands, its bars, asunder, and cast away all its cords. The grave seemed to swallow Him up, but really He swallowed it up. The happiness of the saints shall be out of the reach of death, which puts a period to all the enjoyments of this world, embitters them, and stains the beauty of them. Believers may triumph over death, and look upon it as a conquered enemy—“O death, where is thy sting?” When the dead bodies of the saints shall be raised at the great day, and their mortality swallowed up of life, then death will be forever swallowed up of victory; and it is the last enemy. Grief shall be banished, and there shall be perfect and endless joy; “the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces.” Those that mourn for sin shall be comforted, and have their consciences pacified. In the covenant of grace there shall be that provided which is sufficient to balance all the sorrows of this present time, to wipe away our tears, and to refresh us. Those particularly that suffer for Christ shall have consolations abounding as their afflictions do abound. But in the joys of heaven, and nowhere short of them, will fully be “brought to pass this saying,” as that before, for there it is that God shall “wipe away all tears” (Rev. 7:17; 21:4). And therefore “there shall be no more sorrow,” because “there shall be no more death.” The hope of this should now wipe away all excessive tears, all the weeping that hinders sowing. H.

Hear ye how our Lord Jesus Christ, through the victory which He accomplished in Himself, hath overcome sin, death and the devil. The devil He destroyed in His own body, death He drowned in His own blood, and sin He extinguished in His sufferings. This He accomplished alone and in Himself. But He hath not kept it for Himself alone; for He, as very and eternal God and Lord over all, needed not this victory for Himself, still less did He need to become man, and still less again to suffer under Pontius Pilate. That, however, so great and high a person hath done this concerneth me, and thee, and all of us. It is the power and fruit of the sufferings and resurrection of Christ. Therefore, if there were a thousand hells and a hundred thousand deaths, they would be but a spark or a mere drop in comparison with Christ’s resurrection, victory and triumph, which He bestoweth on all who believe in Him. My sin and death are the spark; but the death and resurrection of my Lord Christ are the great sea. For Christ, risen from all suffering, is greater than our sin and death, yea, greater than heaven and earth. Luther.

To those to whom the resurrection of Christ is a fact their own future life is a fact. Here we have a solid certainty, and here alone. The heart says as we lay our dear ones in the grave, “Surely we part not forever.” The conscience says, as it points us to our own evil deeds, “After death the judgment.” A deep, indestructible instinct prophesies in every breast of a future. But all is vague and doubtful. The one proof of a life beyond the grave is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore let us be glad with the gladness of men plucked from a dark abyss of doubt and uncertainty, and planted on the rock of solid certainty; and let us rejoice with joy unspeakable, and laden with a prophetic weight of glory, as we ring out the ancient Easter morning’s greeting, “The Lord is risen indeed!” A. M.

When Christ our God had been offered up as a sacrifice, and the Resurrection followed, our benignant Master took away the names “death and hades,” and introduced into our life a new and strange mode of behavior. Do you see how, thenceforward, death is called “repose and sleep,” and he whose face, before this, was terrible, now, since the Resurrection, has become a thing easy to despise? Do you see how splendid is the trophy of the Resurrection? To-day we are keeping our feast of victory in its splendor; to-day our Master, having set up His trophy against death, and overthrown the tyranny of the devil, has granted us the enjoyment of that path to salvation which lies through the Resurrection. Let us all then rejoice, let us leap and exult for joy. For if it was our Master that won the victory, and set up the trophy, yet we share in common with Him the joy and gladness. For it was for our salvation that He did all. Chrysostom.

Death is merely a change of place or state, an accident affecting locality, and little more. We have had plenty of changes before. Life has been one long series of departures. This is different from the others mainly in that it is the last, and that to go away from this visible and fleeting show, where we wander aliens among things which have no true kindred with us, is to go home, where there will be no more pulling up the tent-pegs, and toiling cross the deserts in monotonous change. How strong is the conviction, spoken in that name for death, that the essential life lasts on quite unaltered through it all! How slight the else formidable thing is made! We may change climates, and for the stormy bleakness of life may have the long still days of heaven, but we do not change ourselves. We lose nothing worth keeping when we leave behind the body as a dress not fitted for home, where we are going. We but travel one more stage, though it be the last, and part of it be in pitchy darkness. Some pass over it as in a fiery chariot, like Paul and many a martyr. Some have to toil through it with slow steps and bleeding feet and fainting heart; but all may have a brother with them, and holding His hand may find that the journey is not so hard as they feared, and the home from which they shall remove no more, better than they hoped when they hoped the most. A. M.

Faith is that looking forward to a future with something like certainty that raises man above the narrow feelings of the present. And therefore it is that faith, and nothing but faith, gives victory in death. It is that elevation of character which we get from looking steadily and forever forward, till eternity becomes a real home to us, that enables us to look down upon the last struggle, and the funeral, and the grave, not as the great end of all, but only as something that stands between us and the end. We are conquerors of death when we are able to look beyond it. Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully—not a word of victory on their lips; but Christ’s deep triumph in their hearts—watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think and to plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs was the completest victory. They came to the battle-field, the field to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy was not to be found. There was no foe to fight with. F. W. Robertson.

Paul does not speak of the fulness of the reward as being ready for him at death, but as being “henceforth laid up for him in heaven.” So he looks forward beyond the grave. The immediate future after death was to his view a period of blessedness indeed, but not yet full. The state of the dead in Christ was a state of consciousness, a state of rest, a state of felicity, but also a state of expectation. To the full height of their present capacity they who sleep in Jesus are blessed, being still in His embrace and their spirits pillowed on His heart, not so sleeping that, like drowsy infants, they know not where they lie so safe, but only sleeping in so much as they rest from weariness, and have closed their eyes to the ceaseless turmoil of this fleeting world, and are lapped about forever with the sweet, unbroken consciousness that they are “present with the Lord.” What perfect repose, perfect fruition of all desires, perfect union with the perfect end and object of all their being, perfect exemption from all sorrow, tumult and sin can bring of blessedness, that they possess in over measure unfailingly. And, in addition, they still know the joy of hope, and have carried that jewel with them into another world, for they wait for “the redemption of the body,” in the reception of which, “at that day,” their life will be filled up to a yet fuller measure, and gleam with a more lustrous “glory.” Now they rest and wait. Then shall they be crowned. A. M.

With the advent of the heavenly city, God Himself steps down into new and dearer intimacy with His children. He is no longer their inaccessible “Sky-Father;” henceforth He tents in the midst of His children. “And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and He will be ‘God-with-them,’ their God.” It is in the heavenly city that the old Immanuel promise comes first to its perfect fulfilling; “and He shall be ‘God-with-them.’” In the beautiful homes that shall throng the glorious city, no twilight hours of sad foreboding, or of lonely remembering, shall intrude upon the glad music of the satisfied and restful spirit; for there shall be no more sorrow nor crying, for God Himself shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. And over its streets of gold, and out through its gates of pearl, no gathering of bereaved ones shall file in still procession, and group around an open grave in service of deep interment and long farewell, for “the grave has been cast into the lake of fire,” “and there shall be no more death.” A city in whose homes there is no pang, and without whose gates there is no God’s-acre! C. H. P.

It would be a great step made in the direction of habitual holiness and caution of living, if we could come to keep the invisible world and its hosts of departed and waiting souls present to our minds as living realities; if we could realize, as a constant thought, the true, present life of all who have been upon the earth, and are no more seen. We should read history with a different and more serious mind; and we should draw directer lessons from it, to our own daily caution and watchfulness of living. We should not feel the dead, who pass away from our sight, lost to our love, but learn to look on them with something of the same tenderness and appropriation (if I may so express it) of feeling with which we regard friends who are gone from us into distant countries, and whom we cannot hope to see again in the flesh. We should come to feel that as our store grows in paradise, by friends who pass, year after year, from the visible to the invisible, our hearts pass thither too in the same degree, and dwell more among the unseen realities than the seen vanities of things. For among the invisible even now is our real life; among them is to be our eternal duration. Bp. Moberly.

9. And they shall say in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is Jehovah; we have waited for Him; let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation. When these gracious promises shall be fulfilled, those who have trusted in them shall no longer be ashamed of their strong confidence, because it will be justified by the event, and they will have nothing left but to rejoice in the fulfilment of their hopes. A.

Here we have the great ceaseless song of Christendom rejoicing beneath the throne of Christ, congratulating Him on His triumphs, on His glorious presence and power, looking back to the ages which preceded His advent and forward to the completeness of His salvation yet to be revealed. Liddon.—We believe that the history of the world is the unfolding of His will, and the course of opinion guided in its channel by the Voice which the depths have obeyed from of old. Therefore we wait for His working, expecting no miracle, prescribing no time, hurried by no impatience, avoiding no task of defence or confession; but knowing that, unhasting and unresting, He will arise when the storm is loudest, and somehow will say, “Peace! be still.” Then they who had not cast away their confidence for any fashion of unbelief that passeth away will rejoice as they sing, “Lo! this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us.” A. M.

Jesus is the way of God to man, the way of man to God. In Jesus man finds God the Father; in Jesus God finds the lost sheep. Man finds in Jesus God, to have God as his portion; God finds in Jesus man, to be His portion for evermore. Blessed be God, He has brought us nigh to Himself. We adore the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh. We rejoice with the joy of broken and healed, of contrite and comforted hearts, because Jesus loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and brought us near to God, into the holy of holies—a royal priesthood. We give thanks for the gift of the Holy Ghost, in whom we now worship the Father, and by whom the light and life has been kindled within our hearts. Herein is love, that, notwithstanding our sin, God has brought us nigh unto Himself. More wonderful and glorious than angelic purity or the innocence of Paradise is the Divine righteousness in which we now stand before God; and high above all hopes and thoughts of the human heart are our union with the Incarnate Son of God, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in our souls. A. Saphir.

If a man but offers himself up trustfully and clear of all hindrance to the love of God in Jesus Christ, saying, though it be in silence, “be it upon me; let it come and do its sweet will in me; this I will trustfully take and tenderly rest in, for it is all the salvation I want”—plainly that is but letting God love him, and yet what is it but faith? Indeed, there is no so good way of describing faith, as to make it convertible at every point into the mere suffering trustfully of God’s love upon us. Yes, O guilty one, let God love thee; yes, believe the love God hath to thee, and rest thy all eternally in it. Bushnell.

10. “In this mountain,” here, as in verses 6, 7, locates these manifestations of God’s presence and power in His Church, the central throne of His gospel kingdom. Here the Lord’s hand (His emblem of power) will abide (“rest”) and here it will reveal itself gloriously over His enemies. Moab, as also Edom, is used comprehensively for the enemies of Israel. Historically both were long the jealous rivals of the Lord’s people, often in relations of bitter hostility. Here Moab is seen in vision trodden down as straw is trodden down by the cattle in the waters of the dunghill. H. C.

11. Having compared the fall of Moab to the treading down of straw in a filthy pool, the prophet carries out his figure here, but with a change so slight and at the same time so natural as almost to escape observation, while it

greatly adds to the life of the description. The downtrodden straw now becomes a living person, struggling in vain to save himself in the pool. A.