SINFUL ISRAEL SELF-RUINED
Isaiah 50:1-3. Thus saith the Lord, Where is the hill, &c.
Those who have professed to be the people of God, and yet seem to be severely dealt with, are apt to complain of God, and to lay the fault upon Him, as if He had severely dealt with them. But, in answer to their murmurings, we have here—bill.
I. A CHALLENGE TO PRODUCE ANY EVIDENCE THAT THE QUARREL BEGAN ON GOD’S SIDE (Isaiah 50:1). They could not say that He had done them any wrong, or had acted arbitrarily.
1. He had been a Husband to them; and husbands were then allowed to put away their wives upon any little disgust (Deuteronomy 24:1; Matthew 19:7). But they could not say that God had dealt so with them; true, they were now separated from Him, but whose fault was that? What evidence could they produce that He had dealt with them capriciously?
2. He had been a Father to them; and fathers had then a power to sell their children for slaves to their creditors; and they were then sold to the Babylonians, as they were afterwards to the Romans; but did God sell them for payment of His debts? When God chastens His children, it is neither for His pleasure nor His profit (Hebrews 12:10).
II. A CHARGE THAT THEY WERE THEMSELVES THE AUTHORS OF THEIR RUIN. “Behold, for your iniquities,” &c.
III. A CONFIRMATION OF THIS CHALLENGE AND THIS CHARGE (Isaiah 50:2-3).
1. It was plain that it was their own fault that they were cast off, for God came and offered them His helping hand, either to prevent their trouble, or to deliver them out of it, but they slighted Him and all the tenders of His grace (Isaiah 50:2; Matthew 21:34; Jeremiah 35:15). He called to them to leave their sins, and so prevent their own ruin; but there was no man, or next to none, that complied with the messages He sent them: and it was for this that they were sold and put away (2 Chronicles 36:16-17). Last of all, He sent unto them His Son, who would have gathered Jerusalem’s children together, but they would not; and for that transgression it was that they were put away, and their house left desolate (Matthew 21:41; Matthew 23:37-38; Luke 19:41-42). When God calls men to happiness, and they will not answer, they are justly left to be miserable.
2. It was plain that it was not owing to any lack of power in God that they were led into the misery of captivity and remained in it, for He is almighty. They lacked faith in Him, and so that power was not exerted on their behalf. So it is with sinners still.—Matthew Henry; Commentary, in loco.
I. A picture of the sinner’s miserable condition! separated from God—sold under sin. II. The occasion of it: not the will of God—but his own love of sin—and his consequent disregard of God’s offers of deliverance from sin and sorrow.—J. Lyth, D.D.: The Homiletical Treasury: Isaiah, p. 69.
THE TEACHER OF THE WEARY
Isaiah 50:2-4. Behold, at my vebuke I dry up the sea, &c.
For the young, this is fresh, beautiful, sunlit life; to the old, it is often what Talleyrand found it, who in the journal of his eighty-third year, wrote “Life is a long fatigue.” The first cry of a soul when Divinely wakened to its true condition is after a Teacher, who in a way suited to its weakness will teach it secrets suited to its wants. Such a Teacher has been found for us all, and the “words in season that He speaks are the ‘words of eternal life.’ ” Listen to this Teacher, for He is speaking to us now. He speaks in the style of God. Beginning, “Thus saith the Lord” (Isaiah 50:1), He at once announces His Divinity. He then goes on to speak of Himself as a man (Isaiah 50:5-6). These words, therefore, could have been spoken alone by the Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. They place before our thoughts—
I. HIS DIVINE POWER AND GLORY.
Power is naturally calm. Yet perhaps a storm will make a child think of power more than the sunshine will. Knowing our frame, our Teacher seeks to impress us with a sense of His power by bidding us think of Him as working by inexorable force certain awful changes and displacements in nature; “I dry up the sea,” &c. One day, with a casual blow of his hammer, Hugh Miller laid open a block in a quarry, and there discovered a fossil fish, supposed to be the first of its own variety ever seen by mortal. There it lay, “dried up” [1526] turned into a thing of stone. Whose work was this? Christ’s name is traced in sacred cypher on the foundations of the lasting hills; He dried up the sea; He made the river a wilderness, &c. It is a joy to think that the power so mighty to destroy is now all mediatorial.
[1526] For חבאש, stinketh, read תיבש, is dried up; so it stands in the Bodleian MS., and it is confirmed by the LXX, ξηρακθησονται,—Lowth.
II. HIS HUMAN LIFE AND EDUCATION.
The Lord not only became a man, but assumed humanity in its humblest form; an apostle says, “He emptied Himself.” Gradually, it seems (Luke 2:40; Luke 2:52), the Divine Spirit, like a mysterious Voice, woke up within Him the consciousness of what He was, and of what He had come on earth to fulfil; morning by morning (Isaiah 50:4) the Voice was ever wakening Him to a higher consciousness and more awful knowledge; nor was His equipment complete until He uttered His last cry from the cross (H. E. I. 858–863).
III. THE MEDIATORIAL TEACHING FOR WHICH HE HAD BEEN THUS PREPARED.
1. It is personal. If His own personal teaching had not been in view, there would have been no need for all this personal preparation. “The Lord hath given Me the tongue of the learned,” &c. The education of a human soul is not to be entrusted to any created being. A million messengers may bring us wisdom, but Christ is the Personal Agent who employs them all. “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man.”
2. It is suitable; “that I should know how to speak a word in season.” Suitable to our weariness
(1.) while we are yet in a state of unregeneracy. Christ knows how to speak to such so as to kindle sympathy and waken response; He knows how to speak a word that gives life, the only “word in season” to men “dead in trespasses and sins.”
(2.) When we are sinking under the burden of guilt. The law of God demands a perfect obedience; you are unable to meet that demand. All the while Christ was on earth, He was learning how to take that burden from you (Hebrews 5:8).
(3.) When we are fainting under the burden of care. When you are ready to learn, Christ is ready to teach (Psalms 55:22). To cast your burden upon the Lord is to cast yourself upon Him—yourself, with all you carry.
(4.) When we are burdened under the intellectual mysteries of theology. Such difficulties form an essential part of the Christian discipline of many. Those who feel them are tempted, on the one hand, to rest in the authority of human reason, and, on the other, in the authority of the Church. But, who can teach us so surely the things that relate to Christ, as Christ Himself? Christ, wise in His speech, and wise in His silence, may not give us all the knowledge we wish for, but He will give us all we need.
(5.) When we are under the burden of mortal infirmity. “The faint old man sits down by the wayside a-weary.” At first he thought within himself—
‘I am a useless hull,’tis time I sunk;
I am in all men’s ways, I trouble them,
I am a trouble to myself.”
But Christ has spoken to his soul, and dispersed those sad imaginations, by the power of thoughts that renew his inward strength (Isaiah 40:29-31). There sits a man who was once an active thinker; but he has just tried to read one of his own books, and could not understand it. When other teachers have gone their way, Christ comes, and says, “Learn of Me” (Matthew 11:28-30).
3. It is minutely direct and particular. The Good Shepherd “calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out;” “the Master is come, and calleth for thee.”
“Thou art as much His care as if beside
Nor man nor angel lived in all the earth;
The sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide
To light a world, or wake an insect’s birth:
They shine and shine with unexhausted store;
Thou art thy Saviour’s darling—seek no more.”
Solomon calls wisdom a “tree of life;” and the heavenly Teacher’s wisdom is like the mystical tree of life, bearing “twelve manner of fruits, and yielding her fruit every month.” You can never go to that tree out of season; you can never go to it seeking fruit and finding none; for as one has said, “you carry with you the season, and make it the season of the tree.”—C. Stanford, D.D., Symbols of Christ, pp. 146–172.
He who speaks is the second person of the ever blessed Trinity; He speaks in that character of a Mediator which He had covenanted from all eternity to bear, and which required that in “the fulness of time” He should be made flesh, and dwell among men. This is the explanation of the mystery that He who in one verse speaks as God (Isaiah 50:3), in the next describes Himself as a learner. How the man Christ Jesus became informed of the nature and obligations of the mediatorial office is a profound mystery; all that we are told is, that it was gradually (Luke 2:52; H. E. I. 858–863), so that morning by morning something new was told, till at last the whole task of labour, ignominy, and death, lay spread before the view of the Surety of our race. But though we may not be able to penetrate the mystery of the process, the result was that our Lord entered upon His mission possessing “the tongue of the learned.” Not according to any anticipation that the “learned” men of the world would have favoured, if this prediction had been made known to them. His was the profounder and more important knowledge of the human heart; and therefore He was able to do what all their wisdom and science would never have enabled them to accomplish, He knew how to speak words in season to the weary. He has been the great Comforter of our race. Millions burdened by sin and sorrow have been helped and strengthened by Him.
In this respect His ministers should strive to be like Him. Intellectual culture they are not to disregard, but their supreme ambition should be to attain to such a knowledge of the heart, in all its varying experiences, and of the adaptation of God’s truth thereto, that they also may know how to speak words in season to the weary—right words at the right time.—Henry Melvill, B.D: Sermons Preached on Public Occasions, pp. 125–147.
The text is a word for the weary from One in whose sympathy the human heart finds its refreshment and strength. In the work of cheering weary hearts, Christ excels immeasurably all others. God, who gave to Moses the tongue of terror, and to Isaiah the tongue of a fellow-sufferer with God’s people, has given to Christ, in a singular and incomparable sense, the tongue of one who has drunk our cup, navigated all the seas of our experience, and become one with us in all that pertains to human suffering and conflict. Christ has the tongue of experience. Robertson strains language when he speaks of the “human heart of God.” But we may speak of the human sympathy of “the man Christ Jesus”—the “Son of God.” His human heart has experienced human woes—toil, weariness, disappointment, sorrow, and curse. He was made in all things like His brethren, to assure us of God’s sympathy. Not that God knows our suffering the more familiarly, or sympathises with us the more tenderly, because He has experienced them in our nature. His omniscience marks the quiver of each heart-pang. His sympathy is as abounding and deep as the ocean, for “God is love.” But we cannot conceive adequately of the sympathy of an abstract First Cause. Roman Catholics are right when they tell us that we can only realise God’s acquaintance and sympathy with human sorrow as we look at a human fellow-sufferer possessing the most susceptible of tender human hearts. Their error is in pointing us to the Virgin Mother instead of the Incarnate Son. Because Christ has the tongue of experience, therefore His sympathy is the more effective. Apply these thoughts to—
1. Physical sufferings. Christ’s experience of hunger, thirst, weariness, pain, &c. (Isaiah 50:5-6). Christ has imparted a new meaning to all God’s assurances in the Old Testament, and given existence and force to all the consolations of the New, since they all are God’s, and God is Christ. Listen to the tongue of experience as it becomes the tongue of sympathy (Psalms 103:13; 2 Corinthians 4:17; Hebrews 2:10; Hebrews 2:14).
2. Temptations. Some say that since Christ could not have yielded, therefore He had no true experience of conflict with evil. But can you say, that because the steadfast Christian is so full of Christ that he cannot allow himself to sin, therefore he has no true experience of conflict? In point of fact, the victor knows the cost of withstanding temptation far more than he who is vanquished by it (Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 2:18). Christ has fought His way to victory all along our path, and the way of holiness is crimson with His blood. Read the answers given by Christ (Matthew 4), and remember that He learnt to speak them in a conflict severer far than yours, that you may hear them clear and sure above the din and clangour of your sharpest contests with self and sin (H. E. I. 866–871).
3. The derision of the world. Many times was He reviled and scorned; while in John’s Gospel we read of six most determined attempts on the part of His foes to do their worst. Realise all the sympathy which Christ conveys when He tells us that we suffer these things “for His name’s sake.”
4. The treachery of friends. Christ’s experience of the desertion of His disciples, and the betrayal of Judas. Let all deceived hearts dwell restfully upon the assurance (Hebrews 13:5).
5. The impenitence of sinners. The praying father or mother, weary of the son’s or daughter’s impenitence. Christ wept over Jerusalem, and then went down into the city to die for her. His heart still melts with tenderness.
6. Bereavement (John 11) In weeping with them, He has wept with us. In raising Himself, He has shown all mourners that He will raise again the dead (John 11:25-26). A word in season for you.
7. Divine sovereignty. How many perplexed brains and weary hearts there are by reason of the mystery of God’s dealings! It seems strange that God’s Son should be called upon to experience this perplexity and weariness, till we hear Him cry, “If it be possible,” & c., and, “O my God! my God! why hast Thou forsaken me?” But His experience only makes God’s word the more assuring, that the Providence that upholds the sparrow, counts our hairs, and attends our every step, will order all things well (Romans 8:28).
The value of the text is not so much that Christ suffered this or that, as that He suffered so deeply (Hebrews 5:7-8; Hebrews 2:18). The thoroughness of Christ’s experience (Isaiah 50:5). No sun ever rose upon His daily path, but it revealed some fresh experience of human toil, conflict, trial, or sorrow. So it is with us. But every sun that rises on our daily path, lights it with a fadeless ray, revealing, parallel with our life, the experience of Him who has tabernacled in our flesh, and who speaks to our hearts in the fulfilment of a ministry of sympathy, in which He has no rival.
CONCLUSION.—Those who go in the way which they light up for themselves can only have sorrow and darkness (Isaiah 50:11). But those whose way is lit up by His love, who obey and follow, trust and love Him, as sheep their shepherd, shall have no darkness, but their sorrow shall flee away and God Himself shall comfort and refresh them.—David Arundell Hay.
GOD’S REBUKE OF UNBELIEF, AND CHALLENGE TO FAITH
Isaiah 50:2. Is My hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver?
It was not because God was unable to deliver them, that His ancient people had been led away as captives, but solely on account of their sins (Isaiah 50:1, &c.) But He wished them to realise the fact that notwithstanding their sins, in virtue of His possession of unlimited power He could easily fulfil His promises of deliverance. We, too, need to realise more distinctly this fundamental truth—God’s almighty and unchangeable power. Know it we do, but we often do not realise it. We often act as though we really believed that the Lord’s power had diminished. Our text rebukes our unbelief, and challenges our faith. It may be used—
I. TO STIMULATE THE CHURCH IN THE PROSECUTION OF HER MISSION. Her mission is to save—instrumentally to save the world. But her success is small when compared with the multiplied agencies employed, &c. Is the Lord’s hand shortened at all? No. His purpose and His power are unchanged. Early triumphs of Christianity—Pentecost, &c. His hand has been with His Church wherever there has been believing prayer and effort. It is this that is lacking: not prayer and effort, but believing prayer and effort. It is unbelief that shortens God’s hand, and it only (Matthew 13:58). [1529]
[1529] There is nothing too hard for God. When we look at the human side of the question, difficulties and obstacles rise on every hand, and hedge our way and hinder our progress; and if our view is only a human view, we sink discouraged and dismayed. But if, on the other hand, we will take a look at the Divine side of the question, how soon our fears vanish, and our difficulties disperse! With God all things are possible, and the faith that takes hold upon His arm partakes of His omnipotence.
There are many things which men have done that seemed impossible at the first. The power of mechanical or chemical forces, directed by scientific intelligence, exceeds by far the bounds of ordinary belief; but when we pass from this sphere into that upper realm where the Almighty rules and presides, surely nothing is beyond the reach of His almighty hand!
Hence, in estimating possibilities or probabilities of success in any course, it is for us to inquire first of all, What is the will of God concerning the matter? Does He undertake the cause? Is He upon the side of its success? Are we doing His will rather than our own? If the work we undertake is His work, and if He has appointed us to do it, we may move on in all the calmness of a living faith, without one doubt or fear, knowing that He “who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will” can give us victory. The thing which God wishes to be done can be done, and, if we will be workers with Him, shall be done, for neither men nor devils can restrain the arm of our wonder-working God. Let us, then, have courage, and banish fear. Let us work the works of God, confident that our labour will not be fruitless, and that our victory is assured by Him before the fight begins.—A. T.
II. TO COMFORT THE PEOPLE OF GOD.
1. In seasons of providential trial. Such seasons are common. But God has engaged to support or deliver His people whatever may be the nature of the trial through which they are passing. He is equal to every emergency. Rely upon the promises of God. He has sustained, comforted, and delivered, and He will. Faith argues from the past to the present and the future (1 Samuel 17:34-37; Psalms 63:7; 2 Corinthians 1:8-10; 2 Timothy 4:17-18). “Walk on the waters of trial by a living faith, and you shall find them solid as marble beneath your feet. Hang upon the simple power and providence of God, and you shall never be confounded.”
2. In seasons of doubt and fear in relation to their final salvation. God’s people are sometimes doubtful and desponding respecting their eternal safety. When they contemplate the difficulties and dangers, the temptations and the snares that beset their path, heaven seems to be an uncertain inheritance, and they are ready to conclude they shall never reach its happiness and glory. Opposed to them stands the power of Satan; the allurements of the world, the forces of evil within, the cares and afflictions of life, &c. But we have promises and examples that are calculated to dissipate every doubt and to banish every fear that we shall not eventually triumph. Abraham, Job, David, Paul, &c. Divine grace has been, and still is, all-sufficient (H. E. I. 1066, 2363–2377).
III. TO ENCOURAGE THE ANXIOUS INQUIRER. Though desirous to be saved, many are full of doubts and difficulties and questionings. There is nothing that appears so difficult to a convinced sinner as his own salvation. But the question is not whether you can save yourself, but whether GOD can save you. You know He can. Every moral difficulty has been removed by His infinite love in the gift of His Son, &c. True, you have broken the divine law, &c., but Christ has honoured and fulfilled it, as your substitute and representative, &c. Therefore the forgiveness of sin is consonant with God’s righteousness as well as His mercy (Romans 3:24-26). Nor can there be any effectual opposition made by Satan to the sinner’s rescue. He is mighty, but Christ is almighty—“Able to save to the uttermost, &c.”—Alfred Tucker.
THE POWER OF GOD
Isaiah 50:2-3. Behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, &c.
There are other declarations of like purport in the prophecies of Isaiah (Isaiah 51:9-10; Isaiah 51:15; Isaiah 63:11-13). They speak to us of Divine power. The mighty works referred to could not be performed by any false god. The deliverance of God’s ancient people from Egypt was attended with such amazing miracles, and with such a sudden destruction of their foes, that none but an Almighty Being could have performed it.
I. Let us attempt with reverent humility to form some conception of the nature of God’s power (H. E. I. 2269–2274).
1. The power of God is that ability or strength, whereby He can do whatever He pleases—whatever His infinite wisdom directs, and the perfect purity of His will resolves (Isaiah 46:10; Psalms 115:3). It is almost superfluous to say that the Almighty cannot do anything which implies or involves a contradiction, nor anything repugnant to His own perfections, either in relation to Himself or to His creatures, &c.
2. The power of God gives activity to all the other perfections of His nature. “God hath a powerful wisdom to attain His ends without interruption, a powerful mercy to remove our misery, a powerful justice to punish offenders, a powerful truth to perform all His promises.”
3. This power is originally and essentially in His nature—underived. “Power belongeth to God.” “He is the Source, Centre, Assemblage of all the might that is; containing in Himself the unfathomable depths of Omnipotence, as of Being.”
4. It follows that the power of God is infinite. Nothing can be too difficult for the Divine power to effect (Genesis 18:14). A power which cannot be opposed (Daniel 4:35).
II. Let us view with reverent astonishment the manifestations of God’s power.
1. In creation. “Examine individuals, systems, worlds beyond worlds, scattered in boundless profusion through the wide realm of space. They sprang forth at His voice, and they are sustained by the hand of God. All are ‘vouchers of Omnipotence!’ ” (Genesis 1:3; Psalms 8:3-4; Isaiah 42:5; Isaiah 42:8, &c.) Pythagoras called those fools, who denied the power of God.
2. In the government of the world.
(1.) In natural government, or preservation. God is the great Father of the universe, to nourish as well as create it (Psalms 36:6). He keeps all the strings of nature in tune, &c.
(2.) In moral government—restraining the malice of Satan and the wickedness of man, &c.
(3.) In His gracious government—delivering His Church, effecting His great and glorious purposes by the simplest means, &c.
3. In the miracles recorded in the Scriptures, and in suspending or reversing the usual laws of nature on special occasions. These are the hidings of God’s power. Submissive nature yields and obeys (Psalms 114:5-7).
4. In the work of our redemption by Jesus Christ. Our Saviour is called “the power of God.” His incarnation, miracles, resurrection, &c.; the publication of redemption by such feeble instruments; the wonderful success of their ministry.
5. In the conviction and conversion of sinners, the perseverance of His people amidst all the temptations and afflictions to which they are exposed.
III. Let us consider with prayerful concern the practical lessons which this subject teaches.
1. The fear of God (Jeremiah 5:22, &c.) If God be against us, it matters not who they be that are for us. “Fear Him,” therefore, “who hath power to cast into hell.” “On this ground, as well as on the ground of His other perfections, we should bow before Him with lowly reverence, and while we tremble to place ourselves in an attitude of antagonism to Him, we should seek His favour, protection, and blessing.” Confidence in God amid all the conflicts and afflictions of this probationary state. All needful assistance and comfort, &c., will be vouchsafed (2 Corinthians 9:8; Ephesians 3:20).
2. The assurance that all His plans and purposes will be finally accomplished (Psalms 37:5).
“Engraved as in eternal brass,
The mighty promise shines;
Nor can the powers of darkness rase
Those everlasting lines,” &c.
—Alfred Tucker.
THE APPEAL OF ALMIGHTY POWER
Isaiah 50:2-3. Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? &c.
Review the circumstances under which this appeal was addressed to sinful Israel of old. The principles of Divine truth and religion the same under all dispensations.
I. The Lord comes and calls sinners to repentance, but they do not regard Him.
1. He does this in manifold ways.
(1.) By the voice of conscience. Representative of the supreme law—inward monitor, &c., ever urging the abandonment of the sinful and the adoption of the true and pure, &c.
(2.) By the events of Providence. The whole system of Providence is in operation for none other than religious ends and purposes. Mercies are sent to allure, judgments to alarm (H. E. I 56–59, 66–70).
(3.) By His Word. The Bible is God speaking to man, &c. Everywhere it calls to repentance, &c.
(4.) By His ministers. He speaks to man, by man. Samuel thought it was only the voice of Eli that called him, but it was God’s voice. The true minister is God’s ambassador (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).
(5.) By His Son. “His servant”—the Saviour, so often introduced in these prophecies with dramatic directness, as speaking in His own name (Matthew 21:37; John 1:10-11; Acts 3:13; Hebrews 1:1).
(6.) By His Spirit. Speaking to the ear of the inner man by the ministries of friendship, or the incidents and intercourse of common life; by sickness, &c., stirring up an unwonted anxiety about the things which belong’ to our peace. Though He has been treated so shamefully, He still speaks, strives, pleads, &c.
2. But sinners do not regard Him. As of old, they heed not the Divine calls, they slight His gracious offers, they reject the messages sent, &c., as unworthy their regard, &c.
II. The Lord gives astonishing proof of His ability and willingness to save, yet sinners do not believe it, and trust in Him. “Behold, at my rebuke,” &c. He who by His mere threatening word has dried up the sea, and turned rivers into a hard and barren soil, so that the fishes putrefy for want of water, and eclipsed the lights of heaven, can with infinite ease come with a gospel of deliverance from sin and punishment. He can perform stupendous miracles of grace—save sinners to the very “uttermost.” No limit can be set to His omnipotent grace.
Yet sinners will not believe it. Like a condemned criminal who will not believe even when he sees the Queen’s pardon. If sinners will not believe God’s Gospel, how can they be saved? We may as well expect a man to be fed by bread that he will not eat, or to be cured by medicine that he will not take, as expect a man to be saved by a Gospel that he will not believe.
Or they neglect it. Like the old miser who is so busy with his ledgers and gold bags that he does not heed the alarm of fire, and therefore perishes. So with the worldling. We tell them of danger and of salvation, but they are so busy, &c., they just leave the matter alone—they neglect it.
Or they despise it. Like a poor but proud man who despises relief when offered, because he must go and receive it as a gift. If sinners could take their little, petty, paltry doings and buy God’s salvation, they would have it, but because they must have it as a gift, they will not receive it.
III. The Lord justly complains that He is thus disregarded and doubted. “Wherefore,” &c.? Not the language of anger, but sorrowful lament, wounded friendship, grieved love, &c. As a faithful father, &c. A just complaint. Such conduct is manifestly unreasonable, shamefully ungrateful, exceedingly sinful, imminently dangerous, &c. (Proverbs 1:26). It keeps back the blessings which God is ready to confer. It is highly dishonouring to God. It disputes the Divine Word, rejects the clearest evidence, limits the Omnipotent One, &c. Think of this. Hear and obey the Divine call. “Repent and believe the Gospel.” If you reject it, the responsibility rests upon you, and you must give account to God.—Alfred Tucker.
THE SOLAR ECLIPSE
Isaiah 50:3. I clothe the heavens with blackness, &c.
If there be sermons in stones, there must be a great sermon in the sun; and if there be books in the running brooks, no doubt there is many a huge volume to be found in a sun suffering eclipse. All things teach us, if we have but a mind to learn. Let us see whether this may not lead us into a train of thought which may, under God’s blessing, be something far better to us than the seeing of an eclipse.
I. Eclipses of every kind are part of God’s way of governing the world. In olden times the ignorant people in England were frightened at an eclipse; they could not understand what it meant. They were quite sure that there was about to be a war, or a famine, or a terrible fire, &c. So it still is in the East. By many an eclipse is looked upon as something contrary to the general law of nature. But eclipses are as much a part of nature’s laws as the regular sunshine; an eclipse is a necessary consequence of the natural motion of the moon and the earth around the sun, &c. Other eclipses happen in God’s providence and in God’s grace. Here, as in nature, an eclipse is part of God’s plan, and is in fact involved in it.
1. Let me invite your attention to providence at large. How many times have we seen providence itself eclipsed with regard to the whole race. God sends a flood, famine, war, plague, &c. It is just the same with you in your own private concerns. When you were rejoicing in the brightness of your light, on a sudden a mid-day midnight has fallen upon you; to your horror and dismay you are made to say, “Whence does all this evil some upon me? Is this also sent of God?” Most assuredly it is. Your penury, sickness, bereavement, contempt, all these things are as much ordained for you, and settled in the path of providence, as your wealth, comfort, and joy. Think not that God has changed. It involves no change of the sun when an eclipse overshadows it. Troubles must come; afflictions must befall; it must needs be that for a season ye should be in heaviness through manifold temptations.
2. Eclipses also occur in grace. Man was originally pure and holy; that is what God’s grace will make him at last. Some of you are in the eclipse to-day. I hear you crying, “O that it were with me as in months past,” &c. You are apt to say, “Is this a part of God’s plan with me? Can this be the way in which God would bring me to heaven?” Yes, it is even so. In God’s great plan of grace to the world, it is just the same. Sometimes we see a mighty reformation worked in the Church. God raises up men who lead the van of the armies of Jehovah. A few more years and these reformers are dead, and their mantle has not fallen upon any, &c. Think not that eclipses of our holy religion, or the failure of great men in the midst of us, or the decline of piety, is at all apart from God’s plan; it is involved in it, and as God’s great purpose, moving in the circle, to bring forth another gracious purpose on earth must be accomplished, so an eclipse must necessarily follow, being involved in God’s very way of governing the world in His grace.
II. Everything that God does has a design. When God creates light or darkness He has a reason for it. He does not always tell us His reason. We call Him a sovereign God, because sometimes He acts from reasons which are beyond our knowledge, but He is never an unreasoning God. I cannot tell you what is God’s design in eclipsing the sun; I do not know of what use it is to the world. It may be, &c. However, we are not left in any darkness about other kinds of eclipses; we are quite certain that providential eclipses, and gracious eclipses, have both of them their reasons. When God sends a providential eclipse He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men for nought. It is to draw our attention to Himself. Doubtless, we should entirely forget God, if it were not for some of those eclipses which now and then happen. Sometimes troublous times tend to prepare the world for something better afterwards. War is an awful thing; but, I doubt not, it purges the moral atmosphere, just as a hurricane sweeps away a pestilence. It is a fearful thing to hear of famine or plague; but each of these things has some effect upon the human race. And evil generally goes to make room for a greater good. God has sent thee providential trouble. He has a gracious design in it. Many men are brought to Christ by trouble. Eclipses of grace have also their end and design. Why has God hidden His face from you? It is that you may begin to search yourself, and say, “Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me” (H. E. I. 1644–1648). God’s people are afflicted in order that they may not go astray (H. E. I. 66–70, 190–194).
III. As all things that God has created, whether they be light or whether they be dark, have a sermon for us, no doubt there are some sermons to be found in this eclipse. What is it that hides the sun from us during an eclipse? It is the moon. She has borrowed all her light from the sun month after month; she would be a black blot if the sun did not shine upon her, and now she goes before his face, and prevents his light from shining upon us. Do you know anything at all like that in your own history? Have you not a great many comforts which you enjoy upon earth that are just like the moon? They borrow all their light from the sun, &c. Oh, how ungrateful we are when we let our comforts get before our God! No wonder that we get an eclipse then.
1. Let the Christian recollect another sermon. The sun is always the same, and God is unchangeable.
“My soul through many changes goes,
His love no variation knows.”
2. A total eclipse is one of the most terrific and grand sights that ever will be seen. If on a sudden the sun should set in tenfold darkness, and never should rise again, what a horrid world this would be! And then the thought strikes me—Are not there some men, and are there not some here, who will one day have a total eclipse of all their comforts? What ever eclipse happens to a Christian, it is never a total eclipse: there is always a crescent of love and mercy to shine upon him. But mark thee, sinner, when thou comest to die, bright though thy joys be now, and fair thy prospects, thou wilt suffer a total eclipse. Can you guess what the Saviour meant, when He said “outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth?” Hear me while I tell thee the way of salvation.—C. H. Spurgeon: The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 183.
HUMAN WEARINESS: THE VARIETY OF ITS SOURCES, AND THE ONE SOURCE OF RELIEF FROM IT
Isaiah 50:4. The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.
There are many causes of weariness and sadness; as many as there are sources of cheerfulness and vigour in body and mind.
1. Wounded affections. When the seat of our pleasant emotions and sweet affections becomes filled with bitterness, we cannot wonder that exhaustion of energy should ensue, and the strong man be bowed down! Few who have advanced far in life, but have been thus attacked in the tenderest part of their being; and the power of resistance decreases as youth is left behind. Many, most dear, have vanished from the scene; former friends have perhaps lifted up the heel against us. We do not know, until the blow comes, how heavily we have been leaning on the staff of friendly sympathy. But amidst all our heart-troubles, the voice of the Saviour—deeply learned in the sorrows of humanity—is heard saying, “Rest!” “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.” The words are words of authority, and of comfort because of their authority.
2. Disappointment of our desires. All are furnished with larger appetites than they have ability or opportunity for satisfying them. Pleasure! Money! Power! Reputation! Desire outruns our slow and pausing faculties. And this is a great cause of fatigue; we cannot keep up with ourselves, one part of our nature lags behind another. Again, the goal of our desire is ever receding. What an interesting picture does Ecclesiastes give of this universal experience! But in this mood, too, we are met by the Divine Saviour; for Christ would fill the soul with the only object of desire that cannot disappear in its grasp; with the Eternal Himself.
3. Vacancy of mind and the sense of monotony. “Nature abhors a vacuum;” the mind cannot endure its own emptiness. Imagine us left alone in a depeopled world, shut up in a room walled with reflecting glass, where nothing but our own image should meet us at every turn,—the very thought is unendurable; and something like this occurs when we fail to obtain diversion from self. But it is Christ’s message to tell us of a new self which it is the will of God to impart to us; a new heart in which it will please God to dwell, and with which He can hold fellowship; the soul comes to rest on an Eternal Power that is not ourselves, yet intimately related to us.
4. The load of a guilty conscience. It may be difficult to forgive another; it is more difficult to forgive oneself. How profoundly Christ meets this guilty dejection of the human heart! The power which He claimed on earth to forgive sins is continued, in a declarative sense, in His Church, and sin-laden souls may be warned that in disbelieving the Gospel of forgiveness they tacitly reject Christ’s authority; in believing it they rely on the promises of One to whom all things are given by the Father, and they are at rest
5. Earnest thought and noble endeavour. Not only the bad use of mind and life, but their right and loyal use, brings its own peculiar experience of suffering. Preachers, philanthropists, strenuous labourers in every good cause, exhaust their energies in ministering to others’ need; and after exhibiting pictures of cheerfulness and animation in public, sink, when alone, into occasional collapse. Instructive examples of such reaction are given in Bible story, e.g., Elijah. In the finest minds, a fretfulness and dissatisfaction with results may be found, where onlookers see a noble success. But to them, as to all weary ones, Christ, who “suffered in the flesh,” says, “I will give you rest;” and to all who trust Him, He gives the rest and re-invigoration they need.—G. Johnson, M.A., Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv. pp. 264–266.
All around us are multitudes of weary people; weary from many causes—poverty, anxiety, spiritual despondency, non-success in Christian labour, delay in the coming of recognised answers to prayer. For all these tried and burdened hearts, Jesus, the relief-bringer, has His word in season. By these words of His, He does not release us from our duties, but helps us to perform them. He teaches us to trust Him, and trust is restful. As the infant drops over on its mother’s bosom into soft repose, so faith rests its weary head on Jesus. He giveth His beloved sleep, so that they may wake up refreshed for their appointed work. It is not honest work that really wears any Christian out [1532] it is the ague fit of worry that consumes strength, furrows the cheek, and brings on decrepitude (H. E. I. 2053, 2057, 2058), and from this destructive temper Christ delivers us (H. E. I. 952–961).
[1532] That giant of Jesus Christ who drew the Gospel chariot from Jerusalem to Rome, and had the care of all the Churches on his heart, never complained of being tired. The secret was that he never chafed his powers with a moment’s worry. He was doing God’s work, and he left God to be responsible for the results. He knew whom he believed, and felt perfectly sure that all things worked together for good to them that loved the Lord Jesus.—Cuyler.
There is another weariness most distressing; that which is called ennui, the disgust and despair which result from the discovery that all the so-called “pleasures of the world” cannot satisfy the soul. But even for this Christ has “a word in season” (Matthew 11:28-30). [1535]—Theodore Cuyler, D.D.
[1535] See the hymn commencing—
“Oh, comfort to the dreary!”
THE GOSPEL A WORD IN SEASON TO THE WEARY
Isaiah 50:4. The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.
Our blessed Lord is here represented as speaking of His own office and ministry. How gracious was that office! How full of condescending pity and love to man was that ministry! (John 3:17; Luke 4:18-19.) In our text we have a true account of the tendency of the Gospel. It brings rest and refreshment to those who are seeking rest in the world, but whose hopes must end in disappointment.
I. THE ACTUAL STATE AND WANTS OF MANKIND. On every hand are evidences of the fact that this is a weary world. On our race sin has laid many burdens of care and sorrow. Our fellow-men sorely need to be cheered and strengthened.
II. THE SUITABLENESS OF THE GOSPEL TO THE EXISTING STATE AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF MANKIND. It has “a word in season,”
1. For those who are weary in the service of sin.
2. For those who are weary under the painful consciousness of their guilt in the sight of God.
3. For those who are weary in striving against sin.
4. For those who are weary under the burden of temporal suffering.
5. For those who are weary under the growing infirmities and inconveniences of old age.
1. Lay hold of its great and precious promises.
2. Pray for all Christ’s ministers, that they, like their Master, may be taught how to speak words of cheer and comfort. This is one of the most valuable forms of the learning which it is possible for them to possess.—James Ford, A.M.: Twelve Sermons, pp. 1–22.
Men need religion as they need bells for the common purposes of human life. The forms of old and effete infidelity, as well as the more subtle and pseudo-scientific scepticism of the present age, all fail just where Christianity eminently succeeds—in adaptation to the common wants of men. The opponents of the Gospel, who marshalled their forces a century ago, made no attempt to supply its place as a religion which met the every-day wants of men. They mined the foundations of the building; they thundered at the doors; they battered its walls; but they never tried to erect a better system in its place. That attempt was left to later ages. It was for Rénan and Strauss to try to substitute for Christianity another theory of religion, and to meet the demand which the mother of Hume made of her son, “Give me something to lean on in the place of the faith you have undermined.”
But our modern theorists find that it is one thing to destroy, another to build up. Does infidelity give anything on which men can fall back for comfort and support amid the common troubles of life, &c.? Does it speak in sweet accents of a rest that remaineth when weariness insupportable creeps over mind and body? We claim for Christianity that it does this very thing. It meets the every-day wants of those who embrace it. It condescends to notice the every-day weariness of tried and troubled souls. It is a Gospel that speaks to the worn and exhausted spirit. The voice like a bell chiming along the ages is, “The Lord God hath given me,” &c.
I. THE SPECIAL CLASS TO WHOM THE GOSPEL IS ADDRESSED. Is not amazement awakened when this text tells us that the Gospel is sent to be a message of comfort to the weary? For this Gospel was the fruit of the tears, and blood, and agony of the dear Son of God. Does it not seem a strangely costly sacrifice, when God’s dear Son drinks to its dregs the cup of condemnation, that He may speak comfort to him that is weary? The weary are everywhere upon this earth of ours. All feel a sense of oppressive fatigue. The consciousness of exhaustion is a thing so common, of such almost universal experience, that it seems one of the lesser ills of life, and beneath the notice of the Gospel. But Christ came to give men a religion which should meet their common wants, their everyday necessities. And hence it is a message to the weary, whatever the cause of their weariness be.
1. Toil. Or
2. Trial. Or
3. Sin. [1538]
[1538] A brave Crusader on the field of battle was always conspicuous in armour richly gilt. Amidst the sombre hues in which others were arrayed, amidst the cold blue light of gleaming steel, his harness shone golden like the sun. There was a gaiety in his very armour that seemed to speak of a light heart within. But when one day he fell, pierced with a Saracen dart, they undid the fastenings of his breast-plate, and to the amazement of his comrades found that the inner surface of his armour was studded with iron points that pierced the quivering flesh. The panoply which gaily flashed back the sunbeams, was all the while an instrument of self-inflicted torture to its wearer. There are more men who wear such armour than we wot of. There are many who wear a gay countenance, but feel within the bitterness of death. For the appetite for sin has palled. The heart has grown weary and sick of sin, thinking of lost purity, and broken promises, and departed self-respect; the very life becomes a burden, and yet they dare not die. “They weary themselves to commit sin.”—Cheney.
II. THE INSTRUMENT WHICH GOD EMPLOYS TO RELIEVE THE SOUL THAT IS WEARY.
“A man of words “is a term of contempt. We tell people that “deeds, not words,” are our test of character. But what a momentous significance for evil or for good one word may have! On yonder hill, outside the walls of Bethany, in the midst of an astonished group, Lazarus stands a living man, though his grave-clothes are still upon him. The dead body on which corruption’s work had begun is thrilled with a new life. One word did that. So, when Christ promises salvation, and comfort, and rest to the weary, it is a word through which the priceless blessing comes. The unquestionable meaning of the text is, that the instrument which God uses to give relief to the weary is Christ’s word, Christ’s Gospel, the message of His love for sinners.
It must be spoken in season. There are, in human experience, chances that exist but for one moment. They come and go like a flash. So are there crises in the history of every human soul. There are times when the heart seems poised upon a pinnacle. Now a breath may turn it one way or the other; and then a word spoken is a word in season. Bereavement, &c. And for that blessed work our Lord gives you “the tongue of the learned.” But no man ever acquired the fruits of ripened knowledge—the harvest of wise words that speak comfort to the weary—without sowing the seed and watching over it with care. He must be learned, not in books of theology and libraries of religious instruction, but learned in the results of a personal experience.—Bishop Cheney: The Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii. pp. 79–82.