ONE LORD AND SAVIOUR
(Missionary Sermon.)
Isaiah 43:11. I, even I, am the Lord; and beside Me there is no Saviour.
I. This is a declaration that is now needless in many parts of the world. All the civilised nations are convinced that, if there is a God at all, there is only one God. What an intellectual advance! In Isaiah’s time, the monotheists were in a miserable minority. All the great nations had their god or gods. The depressed condition of the worshippers of JEHOVAH seemed to most people a sufficient proof that He was only a god, and a god inferior to others. Sennacherib’s estimate of Him (2 Chronicles 32:10-15, “How much less!”) seemed to have been ultimately justified. The men for whom this prophecy was intended knew that He had not delivered Jerusalem from the power of the worshippers of the Assyrian gods, who ascribed their victories to those gods. Hence it was necessary for them to protest against the belief that JEHOVAH was at the most only a god; to proclaim Him as the only living and true God (Isaiah 43:12). This proclamation was not made in vain. Belief in Him as the only God and Saviour has been spreading ever since. Cured during their exile of their passion for idolatry, the Jews have ever since been His faithful and successful witnesses. The testimony first of those Jews to whom God had revealed Himself in Christ, and then of their converts, consigned to oblivion the gods of Greece and Rome, and has rendered idolatry impossible among the leading races of mankind. What a glorious intellectual advance! And what inestimable moral advances have been its results!
II. But it is a declaration that is still needful in many parts of the world. The world is not merely the particular portion of it in which we dwell. We are apt to think so. But we should look beyond the circle in which we are living. When we do so, what do we see? Idolaters—millions of them. Polytheists still outnumber Monotheists. To this fact we must not be indifferent. For us, it is a call to duty. Knowing God, we must make Him known. It is for this purpose that He has mercifully revealed Himself to us (Isaiah 43:10-12). Shall we be silent concerning Him? Zeal for His glory forbids it. Compassion for our fellow-men forbids it. No greater benefit could we confer upon them. If we have no zeal for His glory, no compassion for our fellow-men, how dare we call ourselves God’s people? how can we hope to dwell with Him in blessedness for ever when this short life is over?
Mission work is our duty. It would be our duty, if it were as hopeless an enterprise as was Isaiah’s in his own day (Isaiah 6:9-10). But faithful witness-bearing for God has been in this century prolific of glorious results. Results of mission work in the South Seas, Madagascar, &c. So it will be. The task has the allurement of certain success. Let us address ourselves to it vigorously and with glad heart.
III. It is a declaration which we may make with even more confidence than did our fathers. The unity of God is being more and more clearly revealed to us. Science is the friend of religion. By it how wonderfully has our conception of the vastness of the universe been enlarged! How completely we have been convinced that it is in a universe we find ourselves, in an immense empire over which one Power rules. Marvellously varied are its provinces, but in each and all the same laws are in operation. Behind all these laws there is one Will (H. E. I. 2222, 3174). Nothing can oppose or evade it with success. The attempt is madness, and ends always in misery. Throughout all the revelations of science, God speaks to us precisely as He does in this chapter: “I, even I, am the Lord, … and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who will turn it back?”
Being so much more fully instructed than our fathers were, we should also be more clearly, confidently, and fervently witnesses for God.
IV. It is a declaration which we should not only make to others, but should lay to heart ourselves. Wonderful and glorious is the revelation given us in our text.
1. On one side, it is an awful revelation. It is an assertion of absolute authority, under which we must live and act: “I am the LORD!” Science bears especially this testimony, that we are in an empire where law is universally and indiscriminately administered (H. E. I. 3171). In God’s kingdom there is no border-land, such as the strip that divided England and Scotland before the days of the Stuarts, where men may do very much as they please, without fear of government penalties; no realm of lawlessness such as the Highlands of Scotland were in the days of the Stuarts. God’s authority is maintained everywhere; there is not one physical law of His which can be violated or disregarded without mischief. The testimony of Science and of Scripture is one and the same: Sin and suffering are inseparably united. This is as true in the moral and spiritual realm as in the physical; one Lord rules over all! (Numbers 33:23; Proverbs 10:29; Proverbs 11:21; Romans 2:6-9; H. E. I. 3188, 4603–4610.)
To this revelation of God let us give heed. Let it govern our conduct. So will temptation be stripped of all its allurements and seductions (H. E. I. 4673–4676, 4754–4757). So we shall travel life’s journey safely.
2. To this revelation there is another side which is indeed a Gospel. Were there no other voice than that of Science to address us, we should shudder as we listened; we are surrounded by so many possibilities of transgression, we are so prone to fall into them, and their results are so disastrous! Conscience would then be only an alarming force; it would haunt us with its testimony that we have already sinned against the Ruler who administers justice so inflexibly, and punishes transgression so relentlessly. But Scripture had another word to add; it reveals Him to us as the SAVIOUR: “I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no Saviour!”
1. He is a Saviour. By His very nature. “God is love”—practical love. He cannot behold His children in need, and sit idle; cannot listen unmoved to their cries for help (Exodus 3:7-8; H. E. I. 2303). In every time of trouble let us remember this, and be comforted and strengthened.
2. There is no other Saviour. Experience had been teaching this lesson to the captives in Babylon. When the power of Assyria and Babylon had begun to loom up before them and their fathers, and threatened to enslave and destroy them in their fear and unbelief, they had sought help from human powers, but had sought it worse than in vain (Isaiah 30:1-5, &c.)
Is not this a lesson we need to learn! In the time of temporal trouble or of spiritual conflict, how apt we are to look elsewhere than to God! But we look in vain. In neither kind of necessity can we do anything for ourselves (John 15:5; H. E. I. 2358). Nor can our friends help, further than God pleases (Psalms 146:3-4). Nor even in sacred things, apart from God, is there help for us (H. E. I. 3438–3442). In every time of need, let us trust in God only (Psalms 62:5; H. E. I. 172–176.)
3. We need no other Saviour, for He is an all-sufficient Saviour. This was the lesson the poor captives in Babylon needed. Not easy for them to learn it. Their case appeared hopeless. Think how the power of Babylon must have seemed to them (they were far weaker in comparison with it than is Poland now in comparison with Russia); how impossible that they should ever be set free from it! What they needed to be taught was, that in comparison with God, Babylon was nothing, and less than nothing; that when JEHOVAH was pleased to set them free nothing could withstand Him (Isaiah 43:5-6; Isaiah 43:13-17). How completely and gloriously these promises were fulfilled, we know.
We also need to learn this lesson. Sometimes our distress is so great, that we are ready to believe that there can be no deliverance from it. But this despair and distrust in God is foolishness (Jeremiah 32:17). The wiles of the devil are so subtle, his assaults so overwhelming, that we are disposed to cease from the conflict as a hopeless one. But again our fear is foolishness (2 Corinthians 12:9; Ephesians 6:10; Romans 8:37; H. E. I. 3363–2376.)
In God our Saviour let us rejoice with great joy, and let us hasten to make Him known to our fellow-men, whose needs are as great, whose conflicts are as severe, and whose perils are as terrible as our own.