Isaiah 8:18, commentary and pictures

Isaiah is the speaker, standing with the children the Lord has given him as signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts who dwells in Mount Zion. He speaks this after resolving to bind up the testimony and seal the law among the disciples and to wait for and look to the Lord while He hides His face, holding to the law and to the testimony as the test of light, seeking God rather than familiar spirits and the dead, and refusing confederacy with the people and fear of their fear in order to sanctify the Lord Himself. The same words show Christ standing before the Father with the redeemed given to Him as His children, presented faultless as the purchase of His blood in triumphant joy. Children are the Lord's gifts and heritage entrusted to parents and teachers to train for immortal life and useful service, so that faithful households may be presented unbroken to God at the gates of the city. In the last days those who wait on the Lord and trust in Him stand distinct from unbelievers without confederacy or worldly counsel, and by the Holy Spirit dwelling with them they are for signs and wonders revealing the transforming power of redeeming love.

Words and Original Setting

The speaker is the prophet Isaiah, and with the children whom the Lord has given him he is for signs and for wonders in Israel, from the Lord of hosts who dwells in Mount Zion. Their standing as signs is sent by that Lord and identifies them as His witnesses within Israel.

This declaration follows the prophet's resolve to bind up the testimony and seal the law among the disciples, and to wait for and look to the Lord while He hides His face from the house of Jacob. It makes the Lord's revealed word and trust in Him the safeguard, calling those who know the truth to hold to God's law. The warning in these verses concerns people who depart from the faith.

The verse belongs with holding to the law and to the testimony as the test of light and the standard of truth. It belongs with seeking unto God rather than unto familiar spirits and wizards and rather than seeking the dead, and with rejecting teaching that contradicts God's word and testing teaching by law and testimony. It belongs with refusing to walk in the way of this people, refusing to say a confederacy where the people say a confederacy, and refusing to fear their fear. Instead it calls for sanctifying the Lord of hosts Himself as fear and dread, fearing Him rather than fearing people who ridicule obedience. The passage of Isaiah 8:11-20 continues the assurance of Isaiah 8:9-10 that God is with us.

Prophecy for the Last Days

The verse supplies the language of God's people as they wait for and trust in Him, declaring that they and the children given to them stand as signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts who dwells on Mount Zion. It belongs to a prophetic message whose events are to be worked out before God's people, with some already visible, and its warning concerns those who depart from the faith and applies to the present days. Those described are the ones who will not walk in the way of this people, who will not call it confederacy where the people call it confederacy and will not fear their fear, who sanctify the Lord of hosts Himself as fear and dread, who bind up the testimony and seal the law among disciples while waiting for and looking to the Lord who hides His face from the house of Jacob. In the remnant of time at the end they are the people represented by the angels upon the earth giving the first, second, and third angels' messages, whose work is the voice of God's people proclaiming the warning to the world with pen and voice, not in a tame indistinct whisper, needing the heavenly anointing of the Spirit to quicken them and give clear discernment of sacred and eternal realities.

In the perils of the last days they are to wait on the Lord and look for Him, to pray more earnestly for the work to prosper, and to stand distinct as His instrumentalities. They must form no confederacy with unbelievers, call no select company to carry things by human wisdom or worldly custom, enter into no alliance with those who know not the truth, and take not the world as criterion, but sanctify the Lord, fear Him, obey orders from above, seek unto their God rather than familiar spirits and wizards, and hold to the law and to the testimony as the test of light. The passage continues the assurance that God is with us and is to be read as a call for everyone to stand in his lot and place when leaders stand in the way of the work and workers lack harmony.

Believers who yield themselves fully to the Lord and accept Christ as a personal Saviour are for signs and wonders in the world through the Holy Spirit dwelling with them as counselor, sanctifier, guide, and witness. That promise belongs to no single age or race but runs from Pentecost to the present, and the more closely believers walk with God the more clearly and powerfully they testify of redeeming love and saving grace. Men and women who through long centuries of persecution and trial enjoy a large measure of the Spirit's presence stand as signs and wonders before angels and men by revealing the transforming power of redeeming love. The instruction to reject the people's fear, sanctify the Lord, and hold fast to testimony and law as the standard of truth applies to those preparing material for publication, urging them to keep sacred teaching distinct from common matter.

Christ and the Redeemed

The verse is fulfilled as Christ stands before the Father with the people given to Him, the redeemed whom He has led to salvation, speaking of them with triumphant joy as His children. At the entrance of the redeemed into the holy city He presents to the Father the people given Him as the purchase of His blood. Then His prayer that those given Him be with Him where He is is fulfilled, as those He kept are brought faultless before the presence of God's glory with exceeding joy.

Then the infinite Father beholds His own image in the ransomed, with sin's discord banished and its blight removed and humanity once more in harmony with the divine in the wonders of redeeming love. The children given to Jesus are the whole human family entrusted to Him as sheep are entrusted to a shepherd. They are His by creation and by the giving of His life for the sheep, bought with His precious blood. They are to be tended with pastoral care and guarded by the faithful Chief Shepherd working through faithful under shepherds, and if they obey the voice of the Chief Shepherd they will not be left to be devoured by wolves.

From His youth Christ Himself was a sign and wonder in strict obedience and integrity. His example was to show children and younger members of God's family that nothing in His life or character could justify wrongdoing. Unlike other children He stayed peculiar and particular, keeping peace and serenity by refusing to enter any plan or arrangement bearing commonness or guilt. He turned from His own brethren to tell them such ways would mislead others and were unworthy of sons of Abraham. He lived this separate obedient life to set an example for little children, the younger members of the Lord's family, so they would see nothing in His life or character to justify any evil deed.

Families Presenting Their Children

Children are gifts given by the Lord and entrusted to parents and teachers as His own property and heritage bought with His blood, and in the coming judgment inquiry will be made of what has been done with that possession, since there is no power in man himself to cleanse the soul from sin. Faithful parents may look forward to standing before God with the children committed to their charge as the reward of perseverance and faithfulness and seeing them receive immortal life in His city. That readiness to present them expresses hope of coming before the Lord with the children He gave, having trained them for useful service in this life and prepared them for heaven. Well-ordered and well-disciplined families are set as an example to the world, requiring wisdom from above, a hold upon God, a good example that does not injure understanding by narcotics, tobacco, wine and liquor, and the gathering of godly hereditary trusts from Abel, Noah and Abraham.

The children so presented include grown sons and daughters in manhood and womanhood still counted as children, standing as overcomers through blessed parental educating, training, patience, prayers and watchfulness. They are not children by birth only but include everyone brought to the knowledge of the truth by faithful parents, and then by their converted children who make the same declaration over those they have won. They include children won to Christ and raised by others, brought as a spiritual family and gathered as sheaves for Christ, souls entrusted to believers as the fruit of labor. They include children entrusted to teachers, whose goal is to bring them faithfully before God prepared for heaven rather than left to drift into the world.

The parental responsibility is to educate and train children for immortal life and for useful service in this life, to bring them up in the Lord by carefully teaching them about God and keeping them from evil. They are to be taught to submit to God's discipline and to treat one another with affection, kindness and tenderness, and to be educated and trained for church work. Faithful instruction and care can prepare them for the heavenly kingdom where they will remain with their parents through eternity, and the greatest riches are a life that measures with God's life. Children thus educated in the faith can stand beside their parents as missionaries helping bring others to Christ, while sinful example warns that it can lead both parents and children away from eternal life.

When the father acts as priest of the household, laying the morning and evening sacrifice upon God's altar while wife and children unite in prayer and praise, and faithfully governing and educating them, Jesus tarries with that family. Through His quickening influence and through His merits parents and children are saved, saved eternally, freed from the corruption in the world through lust and made heirs of immortality. In such a household the family may be saved together, and the father can rejoice that he and the children God has given him belong to God.

Parents who live in close connection with God represent Him in the home, where daily life, words, actions, tones of voice and expressions leave impressions on children's minds that can never be effaced and strengthen them in every right purpose unto life. With sanctified hearts standing in the home as an oracle of the cross, Christ teaches right words and speaks through the parent in the power of His grace, so that home influence mingles with first conceptions as life unto life. They bring heavenly light into the home, speak no hard-hearted wicked word for angels and children to gather up, talk of Jesus and His redeeming sacrifice from His birth in Bethlehem through His suffering and death, and teach that children are Christ's in body, soul and spirit bought at infinite price and wanted in the dew of youth to come as they are to be washed and shine in the courts above. They cooperate with Him rather than expecting Him to work against their home influence, repent daily of negligence, confess to their children and ask forgiveness and help, overcome neglect, sins, errors and anger to seek peace and lead children to be submissive. Those who do not grow faint or weary will have the portals of the heavenly city opened to them and their children, to present them to God and see them crowned with immortal life in the city of God.

Faithful work for the household in love, faith and prayer, with patience, watchfulness and earnest labor, leads to standing as overcomers presenting the household to the Lord at the gates of the city and before God in the heavenly city at the resurrection and the last great day. That declaration as a family for God stands in contrast to letting Satan's standard rule the home, declaring instead that parent and children given by God belong to Him. It expresses joy in coming before God with the children He has given, hope of bringing them in loving service to Jesus, and hope of welcoming the heavenly inheritance together as an unbroken family, seeing them receive immortal life and crowns and praising God for their salvation.