Isaiah 66:12-13, The God who kneels

1.1 My mother was an independent and strong woman. She devoted her entire life to her family. Although my father did not provide for us, she took on the responsibility of supporting the family while raising her children. Unlike most Korean mothers at the time who relied on their husbands for financial support, my mother made her own decisions and took responsibility for everything. However, she had received no formal parenting training, so her disciplinary approach was harsh. She frequently hit me. While it was common at that time, it is not allowed now. If a parent practices this discipline today, it is a crime. The combination of the disciplinary methods of that era and her difficulty managing her emotions meant that I had a very depressing adolescence.

1.2 As I was preparing today’s sermon, I wasn’t sure what kind of mother I should describe. But one thing was clear: my mother loved my younger sister and me very much. Today is Mother’s Day. On this day, I found myself wondering: What kind of mother did God have in mind when He chose the image of a mother to describe His heart? With this question in mind, we can begin today's sermon. Now, I will read today’s passage, Isaiah 66:12–13, for the sermon. 

Isaiah 66:12–13 ESV

For thus says the Lord: “Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip, and bounced upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

2.1 Before we look at these two verses closely, we need to know where they sit. Isaiah 66 is the final chapter of the book and it is not a quiet ending. It moves through three very different pictures of God.

2.2 It opens with God as King. Heaven is His throne, the earth His footstool. No temple built by human hands can contain Him. He is not looking for a building. He is looking for those who are humble and tremble at His word. 

Isaiah 66:1–2 NLT

This is what the Lord says: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Could you build me a temple as good as that? Could you build me such a resting place? My hands have made both heaven and earth; they and everything in them are mine. I, the Lord, have spoken! “I will bless those who have humble and contrite hearts, who tremble at my word.

2.3 Then, without warning, the chapter shifts. God becomes a mother from verses 12-13. Zion gives birth before labor even begins. A nation is born in a single day. Those who were mocked and pushed to the margins are now held and nursed. The people who seemed to have nothing now have everything.

2.3 Then it shifts again to God as warrior and judge in verses 15-24. He comes with fire and sword. His servants are vindicated. Those who rebelled will face an endless reckoning.

God as: The King. The Mother. The Judge. Absolute power. Intimate gentleness. Final justice.

2.4 Today's passage (verses 12-13) sits right at the center of that structure. This means that the tenderness of the mother described in these verses is not mere theological perspctive. It is not sentimentality. Rather, it is held in place by power on one side and justice on the other.

2.5 Before we go further, notice what the text does not say. It does not say, "As a perfect mother comforts." It does not say, "As a mother who has never failed." There are no qualifiers and  no conditions. Just  as a mother comforts. Any mother. Your mother. My mother. A mother who got everything right, or a mother like mine, who loved deeply but didn't always know how. The image God chose is not an ideal. It is the most ordinary thing in the world: a mother, with her child in her arms.

3.1 Now, we can see two different images of water from Isaiah 66. 

The first is a river. A river doesn't announce itself. It doesn't rise and fall with the weather or with your mood. It simply flows today, tomorrow, next season. This is how God describes His peace: not a feeling that visits you on good days, but something structural. The water is still running even when you cannot see it.

3.2 The second image is a torrent and this word carries a history. Earlier in the book of Isaiah (Isaiah 8:7–8, 28:2, 15, 17-18), the same word appears in reference to something violent: an overwhelming flood that destroys everything in its path. 

Isaiah 8:7–8 ESV

therefore, behold, the Lord is bringing up against them the waters of the River, mighty and many, the king of Assyria and all his glory. And it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks, and it will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass on, reaching even to the neck, and its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.”

3.2.1 The people of Jerusalem knew what it meant. They had lived through it. Now, God takes that same word—the word for the thing they feared most—and turns it inside out. The torrent that once carried armies now carries the wealth of nations toward Zion. The instrument of judgment becomes a channel of abundance. 

God is saying, "The very thing that broke you before, I am now redeeming." The flood that terrified you is now flowing for you.

3.3 Then, without transition, the passage moves from water to a body; Three gestures. Each one more intimate than the last.

3.3.1 Nursing. This is the posture of complete dependence. A nursing child cannot do anything for itself. It simply receives. That is its only task. And the mother gives, not because the child has earned it, but because the child is hers.

3.3.2 The hip. In the ancient world, mothers carried their children on the hip while going about their daily work. Not set aside somewhere safe. Not left behind. Carried along. This is God saying: I am not a God you visit on Sundays. I carry you through the ordinary Tuesday, the unremarkable Wednesday, and the long Thursday.

3.3.3 Bounced on the knee. A child bounced on the knee is not a child being managed. It is a child being enjoyed. There is laughter in this image. There is delight. God does not merely tolerate us. He is not reluctantly fulfilling His obligations. He is playing with a child and enjoying it.

3.4 Now verse 13 and this is where the text moves in a direction we might not expect.

Isaiah 66:13 NIV

As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”

3.4.1 Our instinct is to read it as illustration: a mother's love is the picture, and God's love is the point. We look at what a mother does and say, God is something like that. But the text is moving in the opposite direction. A mother's comfort is not the model that God is trying to match. It is a reflection of something that existed before any mother ever held a child.

3.4.2 The comfort described here runs through the entire Old Testament as one of the most fundamental descriptions of who God is. He is the Comforter, not a role He adopted to explain Himself to us. It is what He is. Which means this: every time a mother has held a frightened child in the dark, she was not inventing something. She was participating in something that was already there. That instinct to reach toward the one who is hurting, it did not originate in her. It came from somewhere upstream.

3.5 When we turn to the New Testament, we find that this is not a metaphor God used once and abandoned. Jesus stands in Jerusalem, looks out over the city, and speaks in the same register: "How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings."(Matthew 23:37) This is the Son of God who is not a king on a throne, not a general commanding armies. He is a hen spreading her wings over her chicks. The same instinct. The same posture. The same direction.

Now, Isaiah's maternal God has taken on flesh. He is standing in Jerusalem, the very city where this comfort was promised. He is weeping over it.

3.5.1 Which brings us to the shortest verse in the Bible. Perhaps the most important verse for today.

John 11:35 NKJV

Jesus wept.

3.5.2 He did not explain. He did not remind us that the resurrection is coming. He wept. God's comfort has a human face. And that face is wet with tears. The God who kneels is also the God who weeps, not standing apart from your sorrow with theological answers, but sitting with you in it.

3.6 Then, we see one word. It is a pronoun placed first in the sentence, which Hebrew doesn't require but sometimes insists on. The additional pronoun emphasizes the meaning of the Hebrew sentence. It's almost an interruption.

I — I am the one comforting you (Isaiah 66:14).

These words were spoken to people in exile. People who had lost everything, their city, their temple, their land, their mothers. And the taunt that followed them into captivity was this: Where is your God now?

This is the answer. Not an argument. Not a theological defense. Just: I am here. I am the one. It was always Me.

4.1 Now, let’s recall the beginning of this sermon. I began today’s sermon without first defining whether a mother is “good” or “bad,” starting instead with a special memory of our mothers, specifically, my own mother. As you listened to this sermon, what kind of mother came to mind?  Because where you land with that question will shape how this passage lands on you.

Isaiah 66:13 NLT

I will comfort you there in Jerusalem as a mother comforts her child.”

4.2 If you have fond memories of your mother, you know what it feels like to be held. To be carried. To be a child sitting on her lap. But what this passage tells you today is this: what your mother gave you was not the original source of comfort and love. It was a reflection of something that existed before she was born. The warmth you felt in her arms, God designed it. It came first from God. We have tasted what God is like. Today, we can enter more deeply into God’s comfort and love. The One who designed what our mothers gave us is now giving us that comfort and love directly. Without limits. Without the imperfections inherent in every human mother.

4.3 If you have memories as complicated as mine, a mother who loved you but also hurt you. A mother who was strong but also harsh. A mother you can neither simply celebrate today nor simply erase. This passage was not written for a greeting card. It was written for captives. For those who have lost everything and ask, “Where is God in all this?” He does not tell you to pretend the hurt never happened. He does not tell you to pretend you have been comforted. The answer is Anoki. I, the One who created you, God, was there. In the turmoil of your adolescence. In that house where love and pain shared the same room. I was the very comfort your mother could never fully give you.

4.4 If you are carrying the weight of your mother’s absence, a mother who was never really there, or a mother you have lost, or perhaps someone sitting here today, finding the sorrow of this day almost unbearable, 

The Nahal (torrent) was an image of destruction. But God turned that meaning on its head. He transformed what had brought ruin into a channel of abundance.

Now, if you wonder whether anyone sees the unique shape of your loss, if you cannot tell whether your grief is too complex, too old, or too nameless to be reached, remember Lazarus’s tomb. Remember that Jesus already knew He would raise him. Jesus already knew the story’s ending. Yet He wept. He did not weep because He did not know what to do. He wept because Mary and Martha were weeping. He wept alongside them because the loss was real. Because grief, even grief that ends in resurrection is worth sitting with. He sat with your grief. The One who wept right there with you, even though He knew the story’s end, is God Himself. He does not ask you to pretend that absence is not real. He fills the very shape of your loss with something flowing from an unfailing spring. You will find comfort in Jerusalem. You are not alone. Here. Among these people. Today.

4.5 And now, as a mother, you know that it is not enough. Every honest mother knows this. Love is real, yet it is also insufficient. There were moments you could not reach. Words you could not find. Hurt you caused without meaning to.

Naham. You are not water. You are the riverbed.

When Naham, God’s comfort, flows through you, Mother, something happens that mothers cannot create on their own. Mothers become the river described in today’s passage. Not because they are perfect. But because the source of the river lies upstream from you. Your inadequacy is not the end of the story. A mother’s inadequacy, our inadequacy, is where the river begins.

5.1 Let me bring you back to where we began. I told you about my mother. She was independent and strong and uneducated in the ways of gentle parenting. A woman who loved fiercely and wounded without meaning to. A woman I cannot simply place in one category, good or bad, celebrated or mourned. I did not know, when I was a child, how to hold all of that together. But I am standing here today because somewhere in that complicated history,  there was a river running underneath it. I did not always see it. I did not always feel it. But it was there. Anoki. I was there.

5.2 But here is the question that might be forming: where is this comfort now? Isaiah spoke it to exiles. Jesus embodied it in Jerusalem. But what about today, in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, on a Sunday morning in May? Jesus answered this before He left.

John 14:16 NIV

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—

5.3 The word He uses, Paraclete, means the one called alongside. The one who comes to stand next to you. Hear it in the context of today's text: nacham, God's comfort, did not end at the cross. The Father sent another who would not leave. One who would be not merely with you, but in you. And when the comfort you need is beyond words, 

Romans 8:26 NIV

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

5.4 He does not wait for you to articulate your grief correctly before He moves. Nacham, the comfort of Isaiah 66, has never stopped. It moved from the Father's declaration, to the Son's tears, to the Spirit's groaning. It is still moving. Now. In you.

5.5 Look again at the structure of Isaiah 66.

The Cosmic King, who fills the universe and needs nothing from us. 

The Nurturing Mother, who carries, nurses, and bounces a child on her knee. 

The Warrior Judge, who comes with fire and does not look away from what is broken.

5.6 The same God. All three. At once. And right there, at the centre, between the throne that spans the heavens and the sword that brings justice is a God on His knees. Playing with a child. Enjoying it. That is not weakness dressed up as tenderness. That is the most powerful being in existence, choosing to kneel.

5.7 I want to leave you with one image. Not an instruction. Not a list of things to do this week. Just  an image to carry.

The God who needs nothing… kneels.
The God who holds everything in this universe… kneels and you are there.

He does not kneel because He must. He does not kneel because theology demands it. He willingly kneels before us, just as a mother kneels, because you are there and because He desires to be close to you. Whatever a mother has given you, receive it with gratitude. Whatever a mother could not give you, there is an inexhaustible source. Whether she gave it as a mother or could not give it, the river of God’s mercy and comfort still flows toward us, beside us, and within us.

You shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

Here. Now. Among these people. In this place.

Anoki. I — I am the one and I am your God.

Reflection Questions

1. When you think of your own mother, what is the first image that comes to mind? And where does that image sit in light of what this text says about God?

2. Which water image speaks to you most today, the Nahar  (the quiet, continuous river) or the Nachal (the torrent that has been reversed)? What does that tell you about where you are right now? 

3. Who in this community has been part of how God's comfort has reached you? And who might need you to be that for them?

4. Is there a grief or a longing you have not yet been able to name, even to yourself? Can you bring that unnamed thing, those "groanings too deep for words"  to God this week?