Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2787
“Behold, I have given Him for a Witness to the people, a Leader and Commander to the people.” Isaiah 55:4.
THERE is no Gospel apart from our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the essence of it. He is everything in it. There would be no Gospel without Him. In this chapter the Holy Spirit had been speaking, very largely, through the Prophet, of Gospel bounties and privileges. He had bid the thirsty to “come to the waters,” and the penniless to come and “buy wine and milk without money and without price.” When He had commanded men to listen diligently to Him, to eat that which was good and to let their soul delight itself in fatness, you might be quite sure that He would not so speak without very soon mentioning Christ. For if, in His Gospel, there are waters for the thirsty, those waters do not exist apart from Christ! Is not the Gospel that which proceeds out of His lips—no, more—is not Christ Himself—the Water of Life? He still says, “If any man thirsts, let him come unto Me, and drink.” It is true that wine and milk are provided, but out of what cluster comes that wine—and where shall the unadulterated milk of the Word be found but in Him? Christ not only supplies the necessities of His people, but He gives them abundant and superabundant joy in the luxuries of His Grace. You do not really preach the Gospel if you leave Christ out—if He is omitted, it is not the Gospel! You may invite men to listen to your message, but you are only inviting them to gaze upon an empty table unless Christ is the very center and substance of all that you set before them!
Hence, it is not at all amazing that, after the glorious Gospel invitations, expostulations and exhortations of the first three verses of this Chapter, we should come, in the 4th verse, to these words—“‘Behold, I have given HIM.’ I have talked to you about waters, and about wine and milk, and about bread, and about fatness; but, behold, I have given HIM,’ for He is all these—water, wine, milk, bread, fatness. I have spoken to you about ‘an Everlasting Covenant, even the sure mercies of David,’ but I mean HIM, for He is the great Surety of the Covenant and I have given Him for a Covenant of the people.” Beloved, we cannot do without a personal’Christ. The preacher must preach Him and we must trust in Him, even in Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of God, the one and only Savior of sinners!
The first word in our text, “Behold,” reminds us that this is a theme for wonder. It is a matter that calls for attention and admiration. “Behold, I have given Him.” Is not this something that is worth admiring? Is not this the great marvel of time—yes, and the miracle of eternity—that God should so love the world as to give His only-begotten Son? I can understand His giving light to a dark world. I can comprehend His giving life, that men might live—but that He should give His beloved Son to be Light and Life to a dark and dead race—that He should give Him to become Incarnate and to take upon Himself the form of a Servant—that He should give Him to be despised and rejected of men and, at last, should give Him up to die—oh, behold! Behold! Behold! This is a sight to gaze upon forever and we do not wonder that the Apostle wrote, “Which things the angels desire to look into.”
A part of the wonder concerning Christ consists in the fact that His Father has given Him to the people—“I have given Him for a Witness to the people, a Leader and Commander to the people.” Not to you, O kings and princes—not to you, a few aristocrats picked here and there—but, “I have given Him for a Witness to the people.” “I have exalted One chosen out of the people.” He is the people’s Christ, the people’s Leader, the people’s Friend, the people’s King. And the wonder increases when you recollect that the word translated, “people,” might be just as accurately rendered, “nations.”
No doubt the Lord’s intention, here, is to refer to the Gentiles—“Behold, I have given Him for a Witness to the Gentiles, a Leader and Commander to the Gentiles”—not to the chosen people, Israel, alone, but even to us, “sinners of the Gentiles,” who were outside the favored family of the Jews!
The Gentiles seemed to have been passed by and left to perish. But now, behold this wonder—“more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife.” Christ has been given as “a Light to lighten the Gentiles,” as well as “the glory of His people Israel” and now, to us, in these far-off isles of the sea, where our forefathers worshipped gods that were no gods, even to us is Jehovah-Jesus preached! And He has come from the courts of God to be to us a Witness, a Leader and a Commander. All glory be to His blessed name! Well does the text say, “Behold,” concerning the Giver, the Gift and the persons who receive the Gift. Take care that you pass not by without thought and admiration that which the Holy Spirit commends to your notice by the use of the word, “Behold.”