A CALL TO MORAL HEROISM
Isaiah 51:7-8. Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, &c.
A beautiful description of God’s people. They know righteousness. His law is in their hand.
I. The people of God must expect to be assailed by reproaches and revilings. There is a perpetual antagonism between the Church and the world. Their spirit and aims are diametrically opposed. Light is not more opposed to darkness, truth to falsehood, love to hatred, the bitterness of gall to the sweetness of the honeycomb, than the spirit of the world is to the spirit engendered by real religion. Hence the violent hatred and opposition that have been maintained towards the righteous from age to age. You see it in individual cases. Cain hated Abel, and slew him. Haman hated Mordecai, and sought his destruction, &c. Thus it has been with communities. The heathen nations—Egypt, Philistia, Assyria, Babylon—persecuted the Jewish Church, and hated it in proportion as it was holy. The degenerate Jews abhorred the Christian Church. Not content with putting its Founder to death, they sought to destroy His servants. Live Christians are still objects of aversion to the world. For several reasons they are exposed to reproach and revilings:—
1. Because of the doctrines they believe. These embrace all that is peculiar and fundamental in the Gospel. Infidels mock at those who hold them as the victims of a miserable deception.
2. Because of the profession they make as Christ’s followers. Their obedience to His command to confess them before men is reviled as pride and vain glory; their exclusive adherence to the truths He has taught them, as bigotry; their earnestness in propagating them, as fanaticism.
3. The influence they exert. It renders the men of the world uncomfortable; and so they rail at the Christian’s separation from the world as austerity; his attachment to Christian ordinances as superstition.
II. Of the reproaches and revilings by which God’s people are assailed they are not to be afraid. By our text they are summoned to the exercise of moral courage. They are to show that courage is an essential element of Christian character (H. E. I. 1042–1045).
1. “Fear ye not,” for yours is a just cause.
2. “Fear ye not,” for God will strengthen you. Whatever the nature or amount of opposition you are called to endure, God will uphold you (H. E. I. 3667, 3668).
3. “Fear ye not,” for in meeting undeserved reproach you will have an inward approbation of conscience.
4. “Fear ye not,” for the endurance of such reproach will assimilate you to the tried and good. Think of the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs. Think, above all, of your Saviour.
5. “Fear ye not,” for such endurance will be rewarded in the final day. Then it will be seen that the power of the revilers, like the revilers themselves, was evanescent, while the salvation, of which those who have the courage to endure reproach are made partakers, shall endure for ever.—George Smith, D.D.
A PRAYER FOR THE FORTH-PUTTING OF DIVINE POWER
Isaiah 51:9. Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old.
The simplest exercise in which man can engage is also the sublimist. It is the exercise of prayer. Human helplessness may cast itself on Divine Omnipotence. Nothing is too insignificant to interest the Heavenly Father (H. E. I. 3756). There is ample instruction in His Word as to things respecting which petitions may be addressed to Him. Whatever He has there promised to His Church, may be included in her prayers. This idea animates the text. The prophecy proclaims the deliverance of the captive people, and then the triumphs of the Gospel in the latter days. Under the influence of these cheering announcements, God’s people are represented as breaking forth in the earnest entreaty of the text. It is the Church’s continual cry. We ask that the power of God’s Spirit may be exerted for the accomplishment of the great things He has taught us to expect. And such prayer is justified by several considerations.
I. BY THE FACT THAT THE EXERCISE OF THE POWER OF GOD’S SPIRIT IS NECESSARY.
As the deliverance from Babylon could only be effected by Divine power, so can only the spiritual deliverance of the world from the dominion of sin. It requires the removal of impediments, the opening of fields of labour, and the provision of suitable instruments for the work. In the case of the individual, it requires a change of heart, because of the depravity that characterises all mankind. When you remember the resisting power of the human will, and that its natural inclinations are adverse to the Divine supremacy, you will not deem the metaphors of Scripture, such as the new birth and the quickening of the dead, too strong to represent the change that must occur within the heart. It is a change to which nothing less than Divine power is equal (H. E. I. 4106–4113).
II. BY THE FACT THAT THAT POWER HAS BEEN EXERCISED.
“As in the ancient days, in the generations of old” (Isaiah 51:9-10). The wonders of Egypt and the Red Sea, which the Jews never wearied of reciting, could be pleaded when seeking new interpositions of the Divine hand. We can plead the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, when asking for an enlarged manifestation of the Spirit’s work; because that which occurred then was not a transaction complete in itself, but rather the beginning of a work. The resources of the Gospel under the ministry of Paul and others can be pleaded, when it came to the people “in power and the Holy Ghost.” There are instances in the history of modern missions equally significant. Times of revival of religion may be pleaded similarly. Perhaps our own experience as Christian labourers supplies us with ground of encouragement to intercede for a repetition and continuance of the usefulness with which we have been favoured.
III. BY THE FACT THAT IT IS PROMISED.
1. Let us establish the fact. The prophecy connected with the text, which emboldened its petition, involves the exertion of whatever power is necessary to its fulfilment. In this light all prophecies may be read. Therefore the prophecies which foretell the glory of the Church, when the Gentiles and the Jews shall be converted, imply such exertion of Divine power, as well as the full provision of all other means and influences tributory to the results predicted. How long shall the spectacle of moral desolation presented by the present state of the world continue? The answer is given in chap. Isaiah 32:15. Who is to accomplish that great work within the soul which is represented by an operation within the body which no surgery can ever perform? Answer: Ezekiel 36:26. Jesus promised to baptize His Church with the Holy Ghost and fire. The dispensation of the Gospel is the ministration of the Spirit. The Spirit of God is in the Church and with the Church, and under the requisite conditions may be so to a much larger extent than has hitherto been experienced. The first fruits have been gathered. They are the promise of the harvest.
2. Let us see how the fact bears on the offering of prayer for the Spirit. If every promise is a warrant and directory of prayer, then, even were there nothing directly on the subject in the Bible, this would fall under that principle; it would become the duty of the Church to pray for it. But there is a constant reiteration of the truth that the power of God’s Spirit must be sought in prayer (Isaiah 62:6-7, &c.) After the great promise of the Spirit in Ezekiel, you have this statement: “I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them.” “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The parable of the friend at midnight. The argument from the readiness of parents to give good things to their children. During the ten days of waiting for the power of the Holy Ghost, the disciples met daily for prayer. And then the Spirit came. Is not the history of the Church filled with illustrations of the truth that religion has flourished and extended largely as the Church has valued and sought the power of the Spirit?
Pray for the Spirit, therefore, to come on yourselves, on the Church, on the world. What will be the effect? More good accomplished. Personal influence deepened. Your own soul quickened.—J. Rawlinson.
This language is both natural and figurative. What more natural than that the Church, in times of trial, suffering, and yet expectation, should look upwards, and seek deliverance from Him who is “mighty to save?” The way in which the petition is urged is in no sense artificial, the “arm” of the Lord is invoked as the symbol of a powerful interposition.
I. A FACT: The Lord has a mighty arm. The Scriptures lend no countenance to the childish notion that the Creator is indifferent to His own handiwork, that He withdraws from all interference with the creation, with His intelligent subjects. Often mentioning the “right arm” of Jehovah, they presume that He is not only almighty, but accustomed to assert His authority and exercise His power.
II. A MEMORY: The Lord has been wont to interpose on behalf of His people. It was characteristic of the religion of the Hebrews that it was indissolubly connected with their national history. Their songs of praise recorded the signal interventions of Omnipotence on behalf of their forefathers; their prayers pleaded memorable instances of compassionate and effective interferences for their safety. They based their pious hopes, not only upon their convictions as to God’s attributes, but upon their recollections, and their national records of God’s doings. “We have heard with our ears … what great things Thou didst,” &c. It is well thus to recall the proofs of God’s power and pity which have in the past abounded towards mankind, and especially to base all our hopes and petitions upon His memorable redemption of mankind effected by Jesus Christ.
III. A PRAYER: Awake, awake! This does not suppose that God is indifferent to His people’s need and sore distress. But it presumes that the exercise of Divine mercy, and helpfulness, and protection, is, by His wisdom, made contingent upon our readiness to receive what the Lord is ever ready to bestow. He will be inquired of by His people. He is not like Baal, of whom the prophet Elijah tauntingly said, “Peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.” The sleepless eye of God is ever upon His people’s circumstances; the sleepless heart of God is ever conscious and sensitive with regard to His people’s needs. But He will answer those who honour Him. Call upon Him in the day of trouble and He will deliver. It is not faithlessness, but faith, that cries, “Awake, awake, O arm of the Lord, put on strength!”—The Homilectical Library, vol. ii. p. 69.
I. The arm of God is almighty. II. Prayer can move it. III. It is our privilege in every emergency to cry, “Awake,” &c. IV. There have been given to us great encouragements to believe that this appeal will not be made in vain: God’s care of His Church in past times; His unchangeableness; the promises recorded.—J. Lyth, D.D.: Homiletical Treasury, Part I. p. 70.
THE CRY OF THE CHURCH, AND ITS LORD’S RESPONSE
Isaiah 51:9. Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old.