THE SIGNS OF A TRUE MINISTRY
Isaiah 61:1-3. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, &c.
This word, in all the beauty and grace of its meaning, was fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ; yet it may be regarded as setting forth the signs of a true service for the Kingdom of God, whether rendered by an individual labourer or by the Church in its collective capacity. Looked at in this light, the text becomes solemn as a judgment-seat, and terrible as the vision of God. It declares—
I. THAT THE TRUE MINISTRY IS ALWAYS INSPIRED AND DIRECTED BY THE HOLY GHOST.
That our service may be animated by the Holy Spirit, and should express Divine ideas and purposes, is clear, from the consideration that ours is not an earthly ministry contemplating earthly matters. In working out religious ideas and Christian purposes, it is not the man who has the longest head that can always do the most good; it is the man who says—and says in reverence and humility—“I am but a vessel, an instrument, an agent; I am not the master, I am but a servant; Lord God, be thou my inspiration, my strength, and the completeness of my power!” (1 Corinthians 2:14). Our service at home, in the school, &c., ought to be more intensely spiritual. Spiritual character, vitality, will exercise a subtle influence, intensify, and extend. Have we the Holy Ghost?
II. THAT THE TRUE MINISTRY IS ANIMATED BY THE SUBLIMEST BENEVOLENCE.
Throughout the statement of the prophet, there is a tone of kindliness, benevolence, sympathy, gentleness, pity for all human sorrow. The keynote of the Gospel is joy; the watchword of the Gospel is liberty. A ministry that interprets human sorrow downward is not of God [1752]
[1752] The great appeal which Christianity makes to the world is this:—“I come to make human life freer, grander, purer; I come to open worlds in which human life can be more perfectly developed; I come to set man towards man in the relation of brother towards brother; to break the chains of human captivity; to dispel intellectual and moral darkness, and to bring in an unending summer day:” and any religion that comes with a profession of that kind, even were it nothing more, will, primâ facie, demand to be heard as possibly for God.—Dr. Parker.
III. THAT THE TRUE MINISTRY, WHETHER PUBLIC OR PRIVATE, NEVER SHRINKS FROM ITS MORE AWFUL FUNCTIONS (Isaiah 61:2).
Without a day of vengeance human history would not be merely poetically incomplete, but morally imperfect. All trampled rights demand a day of vengeance. Peace is impossible so long as impurity is in existence. The day of vengeance will be spiritual [1755]
[1755] You cannot beat a man with rods, and cause him to suffer to the utmost extremity of his capability; you cannot whip a man with cords till you have whipped him enough: every man must be his own scourge. The Spirit of God must be so revealed in a man that he will see himself as he really is, and pronounce his own sentence upon himself, so that he shall turn himself away from heaven, and from life, and from God, and from saints, and say, “Yes, it is right; I ought not to be there.” When a man gives way so, when his heart collapses, when he says to God, “Yes, I am visited with Thy judgments: they are right and true altogether,” that is the day of vengeance.—Dr. Parker.
APPLICATION—Let us often stand before this text as before a judgment-seat. Have we the Holy Ghost, or is ours but a feeble testimony we have learnt from teachers that have no claim to Divine inspiration? Are we a joy to all that mourn, &c.? are we a terror to evil-doers, &c.?—Joseph Parker, D.D., City Temple, pp. 397–404.
THE DIVINE PREACHER “Of whom saith the prophet this?” I. THE SPEAKER. Doubtless Isaiah was called to comfort the exiles in Babylon, But this language is too elevated to apply to him. The speaker is “the servant of Jehovah,” the Messiah. Jesus, when at Nazareth, appropriated the words to Himself (Luke 4:28, &c.) Though to all appearance a poor, unlettered peasant, Jesus was appointed to fulfil so high a function. What an evidence of His divinity! II. IN WHOSE NAME AND WITH WHAT AUTHORITY DOES HE SPEAK?
1. The qualification. The Spirit was given without measure—the Spirit of wisdom, of compassion, of help.
2. The commission. The Lord “anointed Him.” Approved, sanctioned, prospered by the Lord, He must needs possess the attractiveness and the authority ascribed to Him. This is the explanation of His incomparable power. III. TO WHOM DOES HE SPEAK? To the meek, &c. IV. WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE MESSAGE Good tidings, &c.
1. Of the Father’s interest and care.
2. Of His purpose of salvation.
3. Of redemption, as expressing and carrying out Divine intentions of grace.
4. Of spiritual riches, which the poor of this world might possess.
5. Of everlasting life and happiness.
APPLICATION.—
1. Accept Christ’s offers of grace!
2. Publish the compassion of this Divine Messiah!—The Homiletical Library, vol. ii. pp. 123, 124.
I. The moral disease—broken-heartedness.
By the broken-hearted, I understand those who, in the language of Scripture, “sorrow after a godly sort;” whose grief is occasioned by sin, in some one of its endlessly varied forms. It may be best understood by a reference to one or two examples—presenting it in its causes, and in its effects and outward features. Brokenness of heart is often the result—
1. Of the presence of guilt upon the conscience (Psalms 32:3-4; Psalms 38:1-8).
2. Of a continued feeling of sin, in its strength in the nature (Romans 7:23-24).
3. Of God’s dealings with the soul, in order to recover it from backsliding (Psalms 51; Jeremiah 31:18-19).
4. Of seeing sin prevailing in the Church, and among the people of God (Jeremiah 23:9).
5. Of a season of desertion (Psalms 77:1-9).
6. Of the reproaches, and calumnies, and persecutions of the wicked (Psalms 69:20). If broken-hearted, is it through the sorrow of this life, or sin?
II. The Physician.
1. The sympathy which leads to the healing of the broken-hearted is with God. There are other comforters.
2. He who has come to heal is peculiarly qualified, by His nature and by His experience, for sympathising with the afflicted—the Spirit, the “Comforter.”
3. The balm which the Physician applies differs according to the different causes of brokenness of heart.
(1.) If unpardoned guilt—the blood and righteousness of Christ (Hebrews 9:14).
(2.) If unsubdued sin—grace, and strength, and purity, secured in the covenant (Ezekiel 36:25).
(3.) If backsliding—the tokens of reconciliation (Luke 15:22-24). (4,) If desertion and darkness—support of faith (Isaiah 1:10), restoration of God’s presence.
(5.) If prevailing iniquity—the Sovereignty of God. He can vindicate His glory. He will yet do so.
I. The condition of men by nature—they are captives.
1. Men are not now in their original and native country. The captive, though born in bondage, yet looks away to his fatherland. That man is not in his native and original condition is evident.
(1.) This is an historical fact—recorded.
(2.) The evidence of this is to be found in the very nature of man himself—for, He must have a god, and worship. He bears a conscience, recoguising another law than that which he is under. He is still in a state of progression.
2. The expression “captives” has a reference to the manner in which men became foreigners. There are but two ways in which any can pass into bondage—through war and stratagem, or through being sold.
3. The expression of the text leads us to look to the state and character of man for the features of captivity.
(1.) Like the captive and slave, man has lost his freedom. He is in bondage to sin—to the flesh—to the world.
(2.) Like the captive and slave, man has lost his dignity. Of position—as a king’s son. Of character—as Godlike, Of employment—as a worshipper of, and a fellow-worker with, God.
(3.) Like the captive and slave, he has lost his courage—denying God, he dreads man.
(4.) Like the captive and slave, there are given to him hard and unrewarded tasks. He is made to fight against God—to destroy himself—to violate conscience.
(5.) Like the captive and slave, he is miserable.
II. The object and office of Christ.
1. Before accomplishing the actual deliverance of man from his captivity, Christ procures the reversal of his sentence of banishment (Genesis 3:24).
2. Before, &c., Christ had to ransom man as a lawful captive, passive. “Ransomed”—“redeemed”—“bought,” &c.
3. In order that men may be delivered, Christ overthrows the power which has led them captive, and keeps them enslaved (Matthew 12:29; Colossians 2:15; Psalms 68:18).
4. Having crushed the oppressor, Christ leads forth His people from their captivity (Isaiah 35:10; Isaiah 49:25).
5. This He does through preaching (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).
6. That believers are the Lord’s freemen, is manifest in their character and conduct.
I. The time—“the acceptable year of the Lord.”
1. Reference is here made to the sabbatical year of the Jews, and especially to the Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-17) [1758]
2. While this law served important political and religious purposes among the Jews, it was typical of the Christian dispensation (Luke 4:21).
3. As the Jubilee was ushered in by trumpets, so was the Christian dispensation by preaching. Christ is said to have died at the commencement of the last Jubilee observed.
4. We have thus a perpetual Jubilee, and a perpetual sounding of trumpets (Romans 10:15).
[1758] The allusion in these words is to the Jewish year of Jubilee. The evangelical sense of the term, as it is to be here understood, is confirmed by the fact that when the Saviour preached in the synagogue this was His text, and He announced the fulfilment of the prophecy from the advent of the dispensation of the Gospel.
The Jewish year of Jubilee was a political institution intended for wise purposes. It was to prevent the oppression of the poor, to guard against the miserly accumulations of the rich, and to preserve the ancient patrimony of families, notwithstanding personal reverses, as a sort of inalienable entail. As in the year of Jubilee all slaves that had sold themselves, in the liquidation of their debts into bondage were liberated, and all property that had been temporarily alienated reverted to its original owner, there was a sort of equality retained amid the tribes, the balance of society was preserved, and an effectual check was put upon the system of confiscation and bondage, which might otherwise have become an unmitigated feudalism.… With the Jubilee, however, as a political institution, we have not now to deal: our object is to show that like almost everything else in Jewish polity or ritual, it set forth in shadow the deliverances of the new and better covenant. The analogies are plenteous and significant.
If you study the history of the Jewish Jubilee, you will find—
1. That IT COMMENCED AT THE CLOSE OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. Of the solemnities of that day, you are doubtless aware.… It was after these solemnities, after the prostrate knee and afflicted soul, after the ensanguined altar and the banished trespass offering, after the humbled entrance into the holiest and the exulting emergence from it, that the solemnities of the Sabbatical year began. Scarcely had the priest’s voice been hushed, scarcely had the last echoing benediction from his lips reached and thrilled the furthest of the crowd, before the sound of the trumpet, caught up and transmitted through all the Jewish city, proclaimed the commencement of the year of Jubilee. Is not this a type of the way in which spiritual blessings are exclusively introduced to mankind.
There could be no Jubilee for us, a race of lost and guilty rebels taken in arms, traitors convicted of treason, unless an all-prevalent atonement had previously purchased our pardon. A criminal does not rejoice in the interval between the sentence and its execution.… The atonement is the exclusive source of safety and happiness for man. Apart from its reconciling provisions there is a curse upon humanity which no sorcery of the world’s wizardry can charm away. And all complacency which men may feel, and all good of which they may imagine themselves possessed, are but delusive as the midnight dream. There can be no peace, or if there be it is a peace which God hath not spoken, like the treacherous calm just outside the eddy of the maelström, which only speeds the doomed vessel into the cruel eddy of its waves. There can be no hope, or if there be it will have no freedom from the blush of shame, and no steadfast anchorage by which to hold. There can be no joy, or if there be it will be a baseless and fugitive emotion, transient as the dew, but not like the dew, melting into the light of heaven. Peace and hope and joy for renovated man can come in happy jubilee only from the Atonement of Christ.
2. Among the blessings of the Jubilee there was REST FROM EXHAUSTING LABOUR.
By a providential arrangement, similar to that which secured a double supply of manna on the sixth day, the land had unusual fertility in the sixth year, so that in the seventh, which was the ordinary, and in the fiftieth, which was the special Sabbatical year, there was a suspension of the common duties of husbandry. Both the land and the labourers had rest, and yet the supply did not fail, for there was plenty in every barn, and there was gladness in every heart. Profane history tells and confirms what scoffing unbelief might otherwise have regarded as a tale, for we are told by Josephus, an impartial historian certainly, that in the time of Alexander the Great, there was special exemption from taxes during the Sabbatical year, and after the return from captivity the Sabbatical year was reverently and constantly maintained.
3. THE RESTORATION OF ALIENATED PROPERTY.
4. THE RESTORATION OF FREEDOM.—W. M. Punshon, LL.D.: The Penny Pulpit, No. 3397.
II. The circumstances which render this year, or season, acceptable or joyous.
If we advert to the year of Jubilee, these will become apparent.
III. The ground on which this year, or season, has become acceptable.
1. The ground of its being acceptable is suggested in Leviticus 25:9. It commenced on the day of atonement.
2. By His work of atonement Christ has procured—
(1.) The remission of sins (Acts 13:38-39).
(2.) Deliverance from prison and bondage (Galatians 5:1).
(3.) Our lost inheritance (Ephesians 1:13-14).
(4.) He has produced mutual love (John 13:34-35).
3. It is only in Christ that the privileges of this year can be offered—that you can reach them. These blessings are as free to all, as were those of the Jubilee to the Jews.
IV. The acceptable season is limited—a year.
1. The whole Gospel dispensation, which must come to a close.
2. This life, as respects individuals. There are no years in hell. It matters not to those there, that there is grace here.
3. See that it mean not something still shorter—the season of the strivings of God’s Spirit.
Practical lessons.—
1. That we come to God in Christ—immediately.
2. That we sound the silver trumpet of the Gospel, and proclaim the Jubilee of the world.
I. A leading employment of Christ as Mediator—preaching.
1. The grand instrument for establishing this kingdom.
2. Christ still fulfils this inspired declaration variously. By the inspired writings—often alone. By a standing ministry. By the lives of consistent believers, &c.
3. Look to Christ as your teacher.
4. Seek to be an instrument, or mouth to Christ. II. The subject of Christ’s preaching—“the Gospel.” III. The persons to whom Christ preached.—James Stewart: Outlines, pp. 17–28.
The world seems to echo and re-echo with the groans of the suffering. We can form no adequate conception of the widespread misery that exists. Surely, if ever there was a time when Messiah could prove the power of His grace to comfort those who suffer it is now. Has He given such proof? Let facts speak. See the dying who have heeded His story. In our own experience we find no helper in sorrow like the Lord. In health and prosperity we may undervalue His succouring grace; but whenever we are brought into circumstances of sore distress, we find no arm but His can support us.
I. He is an appreciative comforter. Strictly speaking, Jesus is the only appreciative comforter. We wish to be, but fail through incapacity. Let us not say, “No one knows what I feel.” He knows the very degree, &c. II. He is a sympathetic comforter—suffers with us. III. He is a wise comforter. IV. The main truth is, He is an intelligent comforter.
It is He alone that brings to us the true explanation of suffering. The world without Him regard it as a penal arrangement; Christ shows us sorrow is discipline; that those who suffer most should be the best. We had never found this out apart from revelation. Whatever nature shrinks from we deem obnoxious. Take heed lest you miss the blessing of woe. Sorrow is discipline. Those who suffer most become the worst, unless they become the best. The child who is corrected either becomes more obedient or more way ward. Christ shows us sorrow is not misfortune. In the article of sorrow, spiritual prosperity may be as great as at any other time. Amidst the wildest storm the vessel may be borne on a strong current towards the desired haven. The most fertilising rain may descend at midnight. In the seven-time heated furnace the Hebrews walked with God.—Stems and Twigs: second series, pp. 255–257.
CHRIST’S MISSION. I. The great distinction in which our Lord exulted. II. The great message our Lord had to deliver. III. The great work our Lord had to accomplish.—J. P. Chown: Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., pp. 49–52.
I. The anointing of the Lord Jesus. The Spirit communicated. The manner. The measure. II. The object for which He was anointed.—Studies for the Pulpit, Part I., pp. 318–320.
I. The qualification. II. Work. III. Aim of a true minister of Christ.—Dr. Lyth.
I. The auspicious day on which the Jubilee commenced. II. The valuable privileges the Jubilee secured. III. The publicity with which the Jubilee was announced.—J. Rawlinson.