These words occur in the course of a most affecting and pathetic prayer which the prophet utters. In the course of his prayer he recalls the wonderful love of Jehovah for His people during their early afflictions, His patience with their waywardness, and His surpassing gentleness and care while on their way to Palestine. He is the same mighty Helper as of old, and His mercy is not restrained. It is an argument from God's own past, an argument which never fails to sustain His suffering saints, and it is no less cheering to us than to the captive Jews; nay, more so, all the records of His dealings with His ancient people are still witnesses to us, and from them we can gather with what manner of Saviour we have to do. The mediatorial office of Christ did not begin in the manger. It travels back to the door of history before the birth of human souls. It is one Person all along the line, and one character of patient lovingkindness and mercy which is revealed to us in both Testaments.
I. Was there not to be between the Son of God and the sons of men some close relationship, which should exist from the very first? Man was made in the image of God; but already there existed an eternal, uncreated image and only begotten Son, in whose likeness ours found reflection. Between that adorable and everlasting Son of God in heaven, and the new-made son of God on earth, there might be some tie of sympathy and condescension on the part of the great Son, and aspiration and trust on the part of the little son.
II. The Son is the face of God through whom God is visible. Of all creatures He is the immediate Head. It follows that whatever of a gracious nature might pass between new-made man and his Maker, must have passed through the Son of God. His was the nature that touched man's spirit. He it was whom the first man heard walking amid primeval woods.
III. Nor is this relationship of God to man upset by man's fall; on the contrary, it grew closer still. What strange meaning does it not shadow back through every page of man's long troubled history, to know that while these countless generations passed along, their condescending Lord, with His mighty hands, touched all life, and said that their sorrow touched His mighty heart, who was one day to be amongst them a simple Child. Scarcely has God made a new covenant than Jehovah, in the guise of man, is found in Abraham's tent, and the Judge of all the earth was there. From that day we grow familiar, as we read, with a form which seems, as it were, to haunt the world, and a form like unto the Son of man a form which comes and goes in fitful glimpses, speaks in Jehovah's name, expects the worship due to the Most High, and yet calls himself the angel of the presence of God. The Messiah, the Messenger, the Angel of the Lord spoken of in the Old Testament, was none other than the Eternal Son, who Himself was keeping up a personal intercourse with humanity, never losing touch of that race of which He was to become the Saviour, and who directed the closer revelation which enlightens all prophecy, and which was irradiated by the wonders of the Cross.
IV. There is instruction to be gleaned from this revelation of Divine love. (1) Such as the Son of God proved Himself to be to Abraham, Moses, and David, such He will prove Himself under His new revealed name of Jesus to those who trust Him. If we serve Him He will bear us and carry us, as He did His people in the days of old. (2) Does not the view of the Old Testament which we have been recording relieve the great fact of the Incarnation from being an isolated event? The Eternal Son had been resident among men from the beginning, had seen His glory reflected in His people, dimmed by human sin before He was born at Bethlehem. He was afflicted in their afflictions, and was the life of their life, before He assumed their form.
J. Oswald Dykes, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 111.
References: Isaiah 63:9. Forsyth and Hamilton, Pulpit Parables,p. 126; T. B. Dover, A Lent Manual,p. 23;R. Thomas, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvi., p. 49.