Isaiah 26: looks forward to the time when God will bless His earthly people Israel. It will be a time for singing, and the song in the land of Judah will be, “We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks” (verse 1). The individual saint of the remnant of Israel, waiting for that day, has the blessed assurance, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusts in Thee” (verse 3). Before the Lord’s reign of righteousness is introduced there will be a time of judgment and the faithful remnant are exhorted to hide themselves “for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast” (verse 20). It will be a time when God punishes “the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity,” when “the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain” (verse 21).
While waiting for the Lord to come and put things right, the upright, the godly remnant, say, “Yea, in the way of Thy judgments, O Lord, have we waited for Thee; the desire of our soul is to Thy Name and to the remembrance of Thee” (verse 8). It was while the godly among the children of Israel in Egypt waited for God’s intervention for their deliverance that the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and when Moses asked what he would say to the children of Israel God said, “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me unto you: this is my Name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generation” (Ex. 3:13–15). The words of Jehovah are recalled by Isaiah as he speaks for the godly remnant of Israel, and they are also recalled in Psalm 102:12, and Psalm 135:13.
Waiting for the Lord to Come
The godly remnant for whom Isaiah spoke realised that their deliverance would mean judgment for their enemies, just as the deliverance out of Egypt of their fathers meant judgment for Pharaoh and his people, for they say, “Yea, in the way of Thy judgments, O Lord, have we waited for Thee.” It was for the Lord Himself they waited, but they knew it involved judgment for others. When the Lord comes to deliver the godly remnant in the coming day, it will mean judgment for the false king, the antichrist, and for those who follow him, as also for the enemies of Israel, the nations who seek their destruction.
Like the godly remnant of Israel, the church also waits for the coming of the Lord. Jehovah came down into the burning bush to deliver Israel out of Egypt, and the Lord will come in Person for the salvation of the remnant of Israel, “And His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east…and the Lord shall be King over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and His Name one” (Zech. 14:4, 9). Before this great event takes place, the Lord will come for His church to take it to be for ever with Himself.
Although the church waits for the same day as Israel waits for, the day when Israel will be blessed on earth under Messiah, and the church will be displayed in glory with Christ, the rapture of the saints to heaven will take place in secret, and for this the Lord Himself will come, even as it is written in 1 Thessalonians 4, “For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16-17). It is for the Lord Himself that we wait, to take us to heaven, to change us into His likeness, and to deliver “us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10).
This last verse that we have quoted tells that if there is salvation for the saints who compose the church, there is also wrath for those who are left behind, so that we can also say, “Yea, in the way of Thy judgments, O Lord, have we waited for Thee.” This is also brought out in 2 Thessalonians, for when the Lord Jesus “shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels,” it is to take “vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ…When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believed…in that day” (2 Thess. 1:7–10).
The Name of the Lord
Speaking for the godly remnant of Israel in his own day, and in the different generations, the prophet says, “the desire of our soul is to Thy Name.” Amidst the nation that had forgotten all that Jehovah had done for them in His sovereign goodness, there were those who found their desire in the God who had made Himself known to Moses, and to Israel, as “The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex. 3:15). This blessed Name spoke of the God who had chosen Abraham, and had called him from the midst of idolatry, to be for Himself, and had blessed him, and had given him the promises, which He renewed to Isaac and to Jacob.
The Name of the Lord also spoke of all that Jehovah had done for the nation, delivering the people from the hand of the oppressor, bringing them on eagles’ wings through a waste howling wilderness, and settling them in a land flowing with milk and honey. What pleasure there would be for Jehovah in finding a little remnant whose desire was towards Him as they contemplated all that He had been to their fathers in spite of all their waywardness and the idolatry that had corrupted the nation.
How much greater should be the desire of the saints of God in this day towards the Name of the Lord Jesus, who has made known to us the Father’s Name, and who, through His death upon the cross has enriched us with such wonderful riches. In the Lord Jesus we have the full revelation of God in His nature of love, and the eternal life manifested in which there are brought to light the new relationships and affections that belong to heaven. The Name of the Lord brings to us also all the sweetness of the grace of His holy life in Manhood here, all that the Name of Jesus holds to charm His own, and all that the Name of Father brings for the delight of His children. There is also the fame belonging to Jesus as Son of God in all the varied aspects presented to us in the holy Scriptures.
It is to the Name of the Lord that the saints are privileged to gather together, and it is as gathering in such a way that the promise of the Lord’s presence is realised. Is it any wonder that the desire of the hearts of the saints of God is to the Lord’s Name when so much is secured by it. When gathered together to the Lord’s Name, He is the centre of the gathering and the Object of every heart. It is then that we are privileged to worship Him, and to draw upon all the resources that abide in Him as the Head of the body, the assembly.
If the remnant in Isaiah’s day desired the Name of the Lord, it was the same in the days of weakness that marked the remnant in Malachi’s prophecy. They feared the Lord, “spake often one to another” and they “thought upon His Name” (Mal. 3:16). This brought pleasure to the Lord, so that He said, “They shall be mine…in the day when I make up my jewels” (verse 17). So that if there is joy for the saints to think upon the Name of the Lord, there is joy for the Lord in having them occupied with Him when all around others are occupied with their own interests.
The Remembrance of the Lord
When the Lord made Himself known to Moses, and to Israel, as Jehovah, the God of their fathers, He not only said, “This is My Name for ever,” but added, “and this is my memorial unto all generations” (Ex. 3:15). Israel were ever to remember this wonderful occasion when God came down in the burning bush to announce that He would deliver them out of the bondage in which Pharaoh, king of Egypt, held them. Jehovah had seen all their affliction, and would not only deliver them out of it, but said He would bring them into “a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex. 3:7-8).
To ensure that Israel would remember what Jehovah had done, the passover feast was instituted as a memorial of His coming down to deliver them out of the house of bondage. Israel had other memorials such as the stones on the banks of the Jordan, but the greatest of all their memorials was surely Jehovah’s coming down to the burning bush, to make His Name known to them, and to declare His purposes for their blessing. How delightful for the heart of the Lord to have a remnant of Israel, down the generations, recall how He came down to make Himself known as Jehovah in sovereign goodness towards them.
For Christians another memorial of the Lord was instituted so that we might have Him ever in remembrance, and it was on the night that He was delivered up that He took bread, and broke it, and gave to His disciples, saying, “This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). How very touching this is to the hearts of those who love the Lord Jesus. The holy body that He took in becoming Man, and in which He glorified God in every step of His earthly sojourn, He laid down in death as an expression of love for His own. It was love for us that caused Him to come down from heaven, infinite love that sustained Him when “made sin for us” and enduring the awful judgment for sin, yea, for our sins, upon the tree.
Besides the loaf that the Lord broke, and gave to His own, there was also the cup, of which He said, “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (verse 20). The precious blood of the Lord was shed to secure all the will of God, to meet all the claims of His throne, and to bring to God the glory of redemption. The blood of Christ answered to all the types of the Old Testament, and laid the basis for the introduction of a new creation in which God will rest for ever, but in the Lord’s Supper the Lord directs our hearts to this touching aspect of His death that it was for us. It was in the giving of Himself, and in the shedding of His blood, that He showed towards us His love which passes knowledge (Eph. 3:19).
The blood of the old covenant bound Israel to the law and its sanction of death, the blood of the new covenant announces the wonderful blessings that have been secured for God’s people in sovereign grace. If the love of Christ is seen in the giving of Himself, the love of God towards us is expressed in the new covenant secured by the death of His Son. In the coming day, both the houses of Israel will be reunited under the new covenant, when God’s law will be written in their hearts and minds, but even now the spirit of the new covenant belongs to the Christian, which ministers to us divine righteousness and the Spirit of God (2 Cor. 3).
As we come together to remember the blessed Lord the Supper of which we partake is eaten that we might express to Him our thinking of Him in a scene where He is still rejected. It is for the delight of His own heart that “the desire of our soul is…the remembrance of” Him. There is indeed fellowship and joy for the saints as we partake of His supper, and there is the showing forth of His death in testimony in the scene where once He was, but it is the memorial of Him in His pathway of love, and especially in the giving of Himself in death, that engages the hearts of His own, and to express responsive love to Him who gave Himself in love for us.
R. 13.1.70