For all the comfort and encouragement granted to the Old Testament saints by Isaiah’s prophecies concerning the Messiah, the remnant people were not to imagine that the coming gospel age would be a time of blessing without trial. The gospel must go to all nations, and the Lord’s elect will be gathered from the ends of the earth, but the growth of the church would not be trouble-free. Each generation of God’s people have their peculiar blessings and their distinctive difficulties as we shall see in this and the coming chapters. When God speaks Isaiah opens this prophecy with a ‘Thus saith the LORD’. It is our privilege to be always listening for the word of the Lord God while seeking opportunity to follow in…

In chapter 53 we were taught about the person of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and how He represented, suffered and died for His people. In Ch. 54 we learned that Christ’s reward was His Bride and of the success and enlargement of the church of whom it had been said, in Ch. 52, ‘all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God’. In today’s passage we have the unfolding of Christ’s gifts to His church under the gospel call and the Lord’s encouragement to His people to partake, eat and be satisfied with His goodness. How to holler! The word ‘Ho’ is a public shout to gain attention, it carries a sense of pity, concern, even danger…