"In all their affliction he was afflicted"

         If you’ve ever watched someone you love suffer, you know what pain it is in your own heart. Especially when God gives you particularly deep love for the person suffering--your child or grandchild or for your husband or wife. We call this "vicarious suffering" and it is very real and brings "inward pain." But did you ever stop to think that He who created human emotions also has emotions and feels sorrow and grief and compassion for His children. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust." 

          Tucked away in a brief paragraph towards the end of the book of Isaiah is an amazing statement about how God suffers with His people.   Here’s that verse in Isaiah 63:9 "In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them: in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them, and carried them all the days of old." We don’t go through these afflictions alone and God is not just a "disinterested observer." He shares in our sufferings and we are to share in His. Isn’t that what the apostle called "the fellowship of His sufferings"? 

 2 Cor. 1:3 He brings comfort to our souls in the midst of sorrow with a peace that passes understanding. "Surely, He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows." Isaiah 53:4 That’s why we can "Cast [our] burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee." Psalm 55:22

        The context is God’s compassion and mercy to His people: "I will mention the lovingkindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us, and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which he hath bestowed on them according to his mercies, and according to the multitude of his lovingkindnesses. For He said, ‘Surely they are my people, children that will not lie: so he was their Saviour.’ In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old."

        "The angel of His presence" that "saved them" stood between the advancing Egyptian army and the children of Israel to protect His people and to prevent the army from attacking them. The story is in Exodus 14:19-20 "And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them. And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night."

        The marvelous truth for us to hold in our hearts always is that God bears our burdens and carries our sorrows and feels the grief and sorrow that we feel. He participates in our lives with us and He is able to enable us by His grace to go through the trials He sends our way. He is there and He is not unfeeling. He is "the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort." 

         That same God of compassion became "one of us", born of the Virgin Mary. He experienced the privations of life: hunger and thirst, tiredness and rejection by those He came to save. Physical violence against Him. Surely He understands experientially as well as omnisciently what it means to suffer! "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." Hebrews 4:15-16                                                                                                    –Pastor Burnside