“On that day it will be said, ‘Look, this is our God; we waited for Him, and He saved us. This is the LORD; we waited for Him. Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.'” (Isaiah 25:9)
In the spring of 1574, a Spanish army surrounded the Dutch city of Leiden and settled in to starve them out. William of Orange asked the people inside to be patient. Cut the dams, let the North Sea in, and float a relief fleet across the drowned farmland right up to the besieged walls.
His men breached the dams in August. Then the water stopped rising. The flat-bottomed boats sat stranded miles out, and the wind was silent for weeks. Inside the walls, people ate leaves and boiled leather while plague moved through the streets, and something close to a third of the city died. When a crowd gathered to demand surrender, the burgomaster stood in front of them and offered them his own body to eat before he would open the gate.
On the night of October 1, a gale came off the sea and shoved the water inland. The Spanish woke to find their trenches filling and retreated. On the third of October the boats reached the walls, and sailors handed herring and white bread over the side to starving city dwellers. That morning, the city walked to the Pieterskerk for a service of thanksgiving. The congregation started to sing, broke down partway through, and then finished. Leiden has eaten herring and white bread on the third of October every year since.
The people of Leiden dug those dikes with their own hands, but the wind came from the hand of the Lord. They spent five months holding out for the one thing they couldn’t control.
This week’s readings set two groups side by side. One crowd waited at the bottom of a mountain and quit after forty days. Another crowd stands on a mountain around a table, stating, “We waited for Him, and He saved us.” The difference between those two crowds is how they respond to the mediator.
Exodus 32:1-14
Forty days is a long time to stand at the bottom of a thundering mountain. The people watched the ridge, decided Moses was gone, and told Aaron to make gods who would go before them (32:1). Aaron collected their gold earrings and shaped a calf, and the people put the covenant name on it, announcing that this was the God who brought them out of Egypt. Aaron built an altar and called for a festival to the LORD (32:5). They rose early, offered sacrifices, ate, drank, and reveled (32:6). They threw themselves a feast and paid for it out of their own jewelry.
God tells Moses to leave Him alone so His anger can burn against a stiff-necked people, and He offers to start over with Moses (32:9-10). Moses stands in the way. He argues on three grounds, and each one concerns God rather than Israel: You already spent Your strength bringing them out, the Egyptians will draw their own conclusions, and You swore an oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel (32:11-13). Then verse 14 gives Israel a future. “So the LORD changed His mind about the disaster He said He would bring on His people.”
Moses offers a trade in verse 32: forgive their sin, and if You will not, blot me out of Your book. God answers that each person answers for his own sin (32:33). Moses stands in the gap, but a greater Mediator stands on the horizon.
Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
Asaph opens with praise and then narrates the family history. “Both we and our fathers have sinned; we have gone astray and have acted wickedly” (106:6). A few verses before our reading picks back up, he offers his diagnosis. “They quickly forgot His works; they did not wait for His counsel” (106:13). The symptom of impatience is idol worship. God moved on His own timetable, and Israel ran on theirs.
So Asaph tells the story as a heartbreaking exchange. “They exchanged their glory for the image of a grass-eating ox” (106:20). They forgot the God who saved them in Egypt (106:21). Here Moses receives his title and position: God’s chosen one, standing in the breach to turn away wrath (106:23).
Read what Asaph petitions for in the middle of all this song. “Remember me, LORD, when You show favor to Your people” (106:4). That is the prayer of a man who recognizes his need for a mediator.
Isaiah 25:1-9
Isaiah reveals the fruit of patient waiting. On this mountain the LORD of Hosts prepares a banquet for all peoples, rich food and aged wine, the best of both (25:6). The host does the shopping, the cooking, and the inviting. Then He clears away two things that ruin a feast. He removes the burial shroud spread over every nation; He destroys death forever, and He wipes the tears off every face (25:7-8). Isaiah says God formed these plans long ago and carried them out with perfect faithfulness (25:1).
Set that alongside Sinai, and their menus tell a story. Israel melted their own gold and threw their own party while they waited. On Zion the King slaughters His own cattle and sends His own servants. Isaiah records the words the guests will say when they arrive: “Look, this is our God; we waited for Him, and He saved us” (25:9).
Matthew 22:1-14
Jesus takes Isaiah’s banquet and tells us it is a wedding feast. A king throws a feast for his son and tells the invited guests that the meal is on the table now (22:4). One goes off to his farm, one to his business, and the rest kill the messengers (22:5-6). They treat the summons as something to be stored away. They make the King wait.
So the king sends servants to the roads leading out of town with orders to bring in whoever they find, and they gather the evil and the good together until the hall fills (22:9-10). Then the king walks through the room and finds a man with no wedding clothes on him. “Friend, how did you get in here?” The man says nothing, and the king puts him outside (22:12-13).
Every guest, evil and good, at those tables came in off the highway. Every guest arrived at someone else’s expense, gathered by someone else’s servants. Despite their moral condition, everyone else in the king’s hall had an answer to his question, “Friend, how did you get here?” Isaiah already revealed it: “We waited for Him, and He saved us.”
Philippians 4:1-9
Paul writes to the church at Philippi where two women, Euodia and Syntyche, have fallen into a disagreement serious enough to name in a public letter, and he asks a coworker to step between them and help (4:2-3). Then he says something about these two women that takes us all the way back to Exodus 32. Their names are in the book of life.
That is the book Moses could not write in. Now Paul says two women from Philippi, quarreling over something we know nothing about, have their names written there. Someone qualified made the trade Moses offered. Christ was cut off, and believers’ names went in the book.
The rest of the paragraph tells us how to wait patiently for His return. “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (4:4). “The Lord is near” (4:5). Bring the worries to God in prayer with thanksgiving, and God’s peace will stand guard over your heart and mind like a soldier at a gate (4:6-7). Keep your mind on what is true, honorable, just, pure, and lovely (4:8). Israel waited forty days and built a calf. Paul hands the church a way to wait for years and remain faithful.
Conclusion
Jesus waited too. He waited thirty years before He spoke a word in public, and He waited in a garden while His friends slept, and Hebrews says He endured the cross for the joy set before Him. Then He walked into a world that had refused every invitation God sent and became the reason for the feast and the way into it. Model Him this week.
Name your forty days. Find the place where you have set a deadline on God and started building your own arrangement. Bring that request to Him in prayer with thanksgiving this week, and say out loud that you will wait for His counsel.
Stand in a breach. Moses argued for Israel on the basis of God’s own promises, and God relented. Pick one person by name this week and pray for that person the way Moses prayed, holding up what God has said about Himself. Then step between two people who have stopped speaking, the way Paul asked his coworker to do, and help them agree in the Lord.
Keep walking the roads. The servants went to the highways and brought back the evil and the good together, and the hall filled up. Invite the person whose presence at your table would surprise the other guests. Isaiah’s banquet is set for all peoples, and his ambassadors send the invitations.
Points to Ponder
- Psalm 106:13 says they forgot His works and moved ahead of His counsel. Where has your own memory of God’s works grown thin?
- Israel put God’s name on a calf they made with their own gold. What have you built during a season of waiting and then asked God to bless?
- Moses argued for Israel on the basis of God’s character and God’s oath. How would your prayers change if you argued that way?
- God told Moses that no man could be blotted out in another’s place. What does it mean to you that Christ made the trade Moses offered?
- Isaiah says the guests will point and say, this is our God. What are you waiting for Him to do, and what will you say when He does it?
Prayer
Father, You have a table set on Your mountain, and You formed plans long ago. We grow tired of waiting for You, and we build things to fill the time. Forgive us. Thank You for Jesus Christ, who stood in the breach our sin opened, made the exchange that saves us, and wrote our names in Your book with His own blood. Teach us to wait for Your counsel. Guard our hearts with Your peace, keep us rejoicing while we watch the door, and send us out to the roads to bring people in. We wait for You, and You have saved us. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your graciousness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.” (Philippians 4:4-5)
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