Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1947
“Behold, the Lord has proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say you to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your salvation comes; behold, His reward is with Him and His work before Him. And they shall call them, The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord, and you shall be called, Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken. Who is this that comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? This One who is glorious in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength? I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” Isaiah 62:11,12; 63:1.
ISRAEL was often in great trouble, frequently oppressed by neighboring nations. It would not have been so if they had been faithful to Jehovah. But as a chastisement for their idolatry, they were given over into the hands of adversaries. One nation, near akin to them, was very jealous of them. The Edomites, the seed of Esau, were always watching against Israel and whenever the nation fell on evil times and powerful kingdoms invaded them, Edom was always in alliance with the enemy, ready to profit by Israel’s sorrows. Hence Edom was the typical adversary of Israel and is, in that manner, mentioned here with Bozrah, its capital city.
The Lord God of Israel often interposed to rescue His people. I need not go over the history, but any one of these appearances for the overthrow of Israel’s enemies may be represented in the language now before us in the commencement of the 63rd Chapter. God coming forth in the glory of His strength overthrows Israel’s enemies and is seen in vision returning from their slaughter. I take the text as a representation of those marvelous victories which the Lord worked for His chosen people when He put forth His power on their behalf. The first verse represents the astonishment of the Prophet and of the people, as they beheld the Lord glorious in power, when He had vindicated the cause of His oppressed people and had crushed the power of their adversaries.
As in God’s immediate dealings with men we usually see the Son of God most manifest, this passage may fitly represent the glorious appearings of our Lord Jesus Christ whenever He has come forth to vindicate the cause of His people and to overthrow their enemies. This vision will be astoundingly fulfilled in the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The 14th and 19th Chapters of the Book of Revelation give us parallel passages to this. What astonishment there will be among the sons of men when He shall appear in His vesture dipped in blood, smiting the nations with His iron rod—yes, dashing them in pieces as potters’ vessels! In those last tremendous times, when the day of vengeance shall have arrived, then shall the winepress be trod outside the city, even the great winepress of the wrath of God. No tongue can fully tell the terrors of that day when our Lord shall say, “Ah, I will ease Myself of My adversaries.” While He shall give victory to the cause of peace, purity, truth, righteousness—and shall save all those who believe in Him, He shall bruise Satan under His feet, and crush the powers of darkness. Then shall these words of the Prophet be more fully understood—“Who is this that comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? This One who is glorious in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength?”
The commentators and expositors almost universally deny that this text may be used as referring to our Lord’s passion. They tell us that to do so would be to wrest the Scripture from its obvious meaning and, at any rate, at the best, it would be a mere accommodation of the passage. Now, I take up the gage of battle and deny the assertion! The Church, by a holy instinct, has referred the passage to our Lord’s First, as well as His Second Coming, and she has not been in error. The very first reference of this text is to the Lord’s passion in its spiritual aspect as a battle against the enemies of our souls. I grant you that the text does not speak of our Lord as trampled upon and crushed in the winepress blood which stains His garments is not said to be His own blood, but that of His foes. Such a representation might have been expected had it been the Prophet’s design to describe the sufferings of our Lord. He does not describe the sufferings, themselves, but he does most clearly depict their grand result. If we take a deeply spiritual sight of our Lord’s passion, such as a Prophet would be likely to have before him in vision, we see upon His garments, as the result of His sufferings, not so much His own blood as the blood of the enemies whom in death He overthrew.
The passage is poetical. The battle is a spiritual one. The conflict is with sin and with the powers of darkness. And the Conqueror returns from the fight having utterly destroyed His foes, of which His blood-dyed garments are the surest evidence. Our Lord’s passion was the battle of all battles, upon which the whole campaign of His life turned—and had He not then and there vanquished all our adversaries and had He not at the Resurrection come back as One who had trampled down all His foes—then there had been no glorious appearing in the latter days! That first combat is the cause of the ultimate triumph! I look upon this 63rd Chapter of Isaiah as the prophetic statement of the event described by Paul in Colossians 2:15—“And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” On the Resurrection morning it would have been poetically correct to have used the language of our text. Unseen spirits, viewing our Lord after a spiritual manner, might have exclaimed as they beheld the risen Savior—