Day Twenty-One
Movement VII — The Outflow
Springs
Twenty days ago a tired man held a newborn on cursed ground and said something reckless: this same shall comfort us. He had the shape of it right and the timing wrong.
Here is the timing.
He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces. Isaiah 25:8, KJV
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. Revelation 21:4, KJV
Notice what the last act is. Not a throne. Not a trumpet. A hand, on a face.
Today’s morsel
“He will wipe away all tears.”
The last morsel. Say it, and then say the first one again: This same shall comfort us.
Wells
Every comfort in this volume has been interim, and it is worth saying so plainly on the last day.
Lamech’s hope was interim. Isaiah’s messengers carried an interim word to a people who would still go into exile. David walked through the valley, which means he was still in it while he said the psalm. Titus came, and left. The manna fell, and had to be gathered again tomorrow because it would not keep.
All of it real. None of it final. The whole book has been describing a supply, not a destination.
The Greek for wipe away is exaleiphō — to smear out, to obliterate. It is the verb used of blotting out a written record: the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, nailed to the cross; sins blotted out when a man turns. Not tears dabbed and expected to return. Tears struck off the record.
And in Isaiah the promise is universal in scope — from off all faces — and the ground given is the smallest and strongest clause in the verse: for the LORD hath spoken it. Which is where the whole doctrine has rested since Day Five. The measure of comfort was never how much you suffered. It was always what he has finished and what he has said.
And this is why Day Two matters at the end. When the Lord promised another Comforter — allos, another of the same kind — he added four words that we passed over: that he may abide with you for ever.
The being-called-alongside is not a temporary arrangement for hard seasons. It is the permanent condition of a person in Christ, and Revelation 21 is simply what it looks like when there is nothing left to be comforted about.
You have been chewing. And the Hebrew word for taste, on Day Three, turned out to be the word for understanding — ṭaʿam, flavour and discernment in one entry.
So the morsels were never a memory exercise. They were small tastes of a thing you will one day understand completely, because you will have had the whole of it in your mouth.
Lamech was not wrong. Comfort did come as somebody born. He simply had the wrong baby, and a very long wait.
Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort.
Aquifer
Follow the blotting-out verb. Exaleiphō appears at Acts 3:19 (sins blotted out), Colossians 2:14 (the handwriting of ordinances blotted out and nailed to the cross), and Revelation 21:4. The same verb does all three jobs. Whatever is done to the record of our debt is what is done to the tears — not managed, not soothed, erased.
Isaiah 25:8 in Paul’s mouth. Paul quotes the first half of the verse at 1 Corinthians 15:54, in the resurrection chapter, joined to Hosea 13:14. Read Isaiah 25:6–9 whole: a mountain, a feast of fat things, the veil destroyed, death swallowed, tears wiped. Then read Revelation 21:1–4 and note how much of Isaiah is standing in it. The last chapter of the Bible is largely Isaiah’s vocabulary, kept.
A parallel worth setting beside it. Revelation 7:17 says the Lamb shall lead them to living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes — the same promise, made earlier in the book, with a shepherd doing the leading. The Lamb who leads is the shepherd of Psalm 23, and the rod and the staff are finally set down.