In all their affliction He was afflicted
God not impassive
Just as a man may feel pain, whilst in his own person he is raised above it, so God feels pain without His blessedness suffering hurt; and so He felt His people’s suffering; it did not remain unreflected in His own life; it moved Him inwardly.
(F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
“The Angel of His presence”
1. The “Presence” (lit. “Face”) of Jehovah is used elsewhere of His self-manifestation. The fundamental passage is Exodus 33:14-15. But compare also Deuteronomy 4:37; Lamentations 4:16.
2. An “angel of the Presence,” on the other hand, is a figure elsewhere unknown to the Old Testament: the phrase would seem to be “a confusion of two forms of expression, incident to a midway stage of revelation” (Cheyne).
3. The “Face” of Jehovah, however, is not (as the LXX inferred) just the same as Jehovah Himself in person. It is rather a name for His highest sensible manifestation, and hardly differs from what is in other places called the Mal’ak Yahveh (Angel of Jehovah). This is shown by the comparison Exodus 33:14 f with Exodus 23:20-23. The verse, therefore, means that it was no ordinary angelic messenger, but the supreme embodiment of Jehovah’s presence that accompanied Israel in the early days. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
The Angel in whom Jehovah was seen; who was Jehovah Himself in manifestation. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
Not some one of the “ministering spirits,” nor some one of the angel-princes standing in God’s immediate presence (archangels), but the one whom God makes the medium of His presence in the world for affecting the revelation of Himself in sacred history. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
The Angel of His presence
The great majority of men dread affliction more than they dread sin. And yet the two things are related--sometimes as cause and effect and sometimes by more distant connections.
I. AFFLICTIONS MAY BE DIVIDED INTO THREE CLASSES--the physical, the mental, and the emotional. Not that we can ever totally separate these three, but for purposes of consideration it may be practicable to do so.
1. It is very hard to resist a plea from physical disability. It is well that it should be so, for callous indifference to the causes of sorrow and pain found in the lives of others is surely a most unpromising state. Anything which will draw us out of ourselves, and keep us from being self-contained, must surely be, in some sort, a servant of God. Our Lord recognized the physical afflictions of men and entered sympathetically into them.
2. But physical afflictions, though more impressive, are oftentimes more endurable than mental afflictions. Indeed, when we come to the last analysis of the case, we find that the mental region is the region where pain reports itself. If we could totally separate the physical and mental, and keep the mind clear and calm while the body suffered its pains and penalties, affliction would be a very different matter from what it now is. Only that then physical affliction would lose its meaning and purpose, for everything physical is for the sake of the mental. But there are mental sufferings which do not report themselves in physical manifestations. The mind is often so tried with doubt and debate--so cast down by its own inability and decrepitude--that it is in a constant state of unrest, and no report thereof is made in the physical frame--no report anyway of such a nature that all can read it.
3. But back of the intellectual department of the mind is that other profounder realm covered by the word “emotional.” This emotional region is the strangest and strongest of all. It is the realm of love, of joy, of peace--or of hatred, joylessness, discord. Without our emotions we should be not men and women, but stones, or at best animals. Our emotions gather around persons, places, objects, and these become to us of such transcendent worth that all the world seems poor in comparison with them.
II. When we think of these things, HOW WONDROUS, HOW TERRIBLE DOES THIS NATURE OF OURS SEEM! We become afraid of ourselves. To be owners of ourselves seems too great a responsibility. Does it not seem to us that the Creator, in giving us this nature, has taken upon Himself a responsibility so great and so fearful that none but Himself could bear it? We ask ourselves, in amazement, what must His own nature be?
III. Is not this the revelation made by the prophet, that WE ARE NOT ALONE IN OUR AFFLICTIONS.
IV.
As it was with the Israelites, so is it with all the Spiritual Israel; for they and we are not unlike.
“In all their affliction He was afflicted.
” He! Who? The Deliverer.
The One who identified Himself with them.
And His nature has not changed.
We assume that Deity cannot suffer, but we do not know it.
We suppose that Deity means perfection--impassive perfection. But is impassivity perfection? May there not be suffering which has in it more of perfection than imperfection, suffering which does not arise from sin, or from weakness, or from anything outside perfection
V. Anyway, Jesus Christ has come between us and naked, unknowable Deity; He has united in some way the human and the Divine. And He is, in some mysterious manner, identified with us; and in all our afflictions He is afflicted, and inside all the affliction is “the Angel of His presence” to save us. I can’t tell you what this Angel of the presence means. But cherish faith in these unseen forces and powers--ay, in unseen personal ministries. (R. Thomas, D. D.)
The spheres of compassion
I. GOD’S COMPASSION IN THE SPHERE OF HUMAN SORROW. We must not make too much of human sorrow. There is much else in the life of man. There is the joy of youth and the sober delights of age. Does any man really think that God looks down on all this welter and does not care--and, because He does not care, does not prevent it? God would not prevent it if He could, and He could not if He would. A world such as ours, and without suffering, is not possible to God. It is His sovereign will which has made every law under which we suffer, and His holiness which enforces every penalty. This compassion in the sphere of sorrow has been from the “days of old” long before men had eyes to see it. But it reaches its highest manifestation in the life of Jesus our Lord. God’s compassion is still working in the sphere of human sorrow, in the heart of the ascended Christ. Even now in all your affliction He is afflicted, and the angel of His presence is saving you, not from suffering, but from fall and shame.
II. GOD’S COMPASSION IN THE SPHERE OF SIN. The compassion of God has a greater work to do than to transform suffering, by grace, into nobility and strength. It has to go down into the depths of sin. Though the sin of the world lies behind all our suffering, there is much sorrow that is wholly pure. But when we come to sin, to the bondage of evil habit, the riot of wicked passion, to the indulgence of sloth and vanity and pride, ending in defiance of the Almighty and rebellion against His law, then compassion might well be exhausted. And then, indeed, holiness cannot but condemn, and sovereignty cannot but execute the decree; but compassion finds a way even in the sphere of,, sin, and so the prophet continues,” “m” His” love and in His pity He redeemed them. But the compassion needs no words to make itself known. In the thorns on His brow, in the nails in His hands, in the prayer for human forgiveness, compassion proclaims its victory. This cross of Christ, just because it is so unlike man and is so like God, is the greatest mystery in the world. Whatever be your sin, whatever be your shame, whatever may have been your past lack of faith, come to-day again to the Cross, to find that sovereignty, holiness, and compassion have redeemed you.
III. GOD’S COMPASSION IN THE SPHERE OF HUMAN WEAKNESS. Our human needs are not all supplied when our sufferings are borne with us, and our sins are pardoned. Though we cross our Red Sea, we have still the years of pilgrimage: though we lose our burdens at the Cross, we have still our cross to carry. Though we surrender ourselves to Christ, we have our warfare to accomplish. And who is there among us who knows the frailty of his past, the slips and falls of poor human nature, who does not feel the inspiration of the Word when it completes the revelation: “He bare them and He carried them all the days of old.” There is no one so helpless as a disciple of Christ. Before we came to Christ, we could gird ourselves, and walk whither we would. Now we cannot take a step alone. Only by continually casting ourselves upon Him in our prayers, being led, guided, instructed, strengthened by HIS Spirit; only by clinging to Him in faith does our safety lie. (W. M. Clow, B. D.)
Christ with His people in trouble
We remember an old tale of our boyhood, how poor Robinson Crusoe, wrecked on a foreign strand, rejoiced when he saw the print of a man’s foot. So is it with the Christian in his trouble; he shall not despair in a desolate land, because there is the foot-print of Christ Jesus on all our temptations and troubles. Go on rejoicing, Christian; thou art in an inhabited country; thy Jesus is with thee in all thy afflictions and in all thy woes. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
In His love and in His pity He redeemed them
Discipline by chastisement
“In His love and His pity He redeemed them,” says Isaiah. These sharp and tragic punishments where with God visited His people were part of His redemptive work. God punished in order to redeem. He used the sword in order to deliver His people from the curse and doom of sin. It was “love and pity” that prompted even His terrible judgments. God still sometimes inflicts upon His people great and sore troubles, so that we are tempted to think He has forgotten to be gracious. But in reality it is love that sends the trouble; it is pity that prompts the punishment. “God’s wrath,” somebody has said, “is but His love on fire.” A God who never punished sin would not be a loving God. (J. D. Jones, B. D.)
Divine discipline
There can be no government, there can be no Church, save there be discipline. In the natural world we find this law. In the animal kingdom there is ruling and serving. In the vegetable kingdom superior vitality makes the weaker plants give room. Among men we witness this not alone where brute force is displayed and secures mastery. We see it in the intellectual and moral world. Each man has his sphere, his proper position. He must be held in that position, else there is chaos and utter waste--worse than utter waste, of all his power. The work of discipline is to restore and hold man to his proper sphere. We now behold man as fallen. See him in his pristine glory. See him as he falls. Even in his prostration he is not wholly without compensation, for he has gained a knowledge of good and evil. But now the tendency in man, which before was toward God, is downward. We see in fallen man attempts to recover himself a recognition of the necessity of Divine help. In Scripture, more especially, do we find it set forth that God is the Source of that help which can restore man. Here is sovereignty manifested in mercy. Observe the characteristics of this discipline.
I. IT IS JUST.
II. IT IS EQUITABLE (Psalms 85:10).
III. IT IS REMEDIAL--designed, like a righteous, law, for good, not for punishment. -It is paternal, for it brings the wanderer home.
IV. IT IS SPECIAL. It is adapted to each case.
V. IT IS EXHAUSTIVE OF DIVINE HELP. You cannot think of any one thing which God has neglected to do that man might be saved.
VI. IT EXHAUSTS THE GREATEST EFFORTS OF THE HUMAN SOUL. Take away the beneficial effect of this Divine discipline, and the human soul sinks in anarchy and woe for evermore. Rightly improved, it lifts man to more than his pristine glory. (N. H. Schenck, D. D.)