THE PROGRESS OF THE GOSPEL ASSURED AND ILLUSTRATED
(Missionary Sermons.)
Isaiah 61:11. For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden, &c.
I. The seed. II. The extent of the ground to be brought under cultivation. III. The manner in which the fruit-fulness is produced.—Bishop Wilson: Sermons delivered in India, pp. 395–417.
The vision of the prophet extends from the prosperous state of restored Israel to the ultimate glory of Christian Zion in the universal diffusion of righteousness and praise. We have here a beautiful and suggestive analogy between things natural and things spiritual.
I. The life and sprouting of spring follow the desolation and death of winter. Far deeper is the moral deformity and death which has come upon our race by sin. Man, made in the image of God, has lost the holiness which made him one with God; is now “dead in trespasses and sins,” &c. The curse of evil extends to the whole race in all its generations. The facts that show the moral condition of the mass of mankind, looked at in the light of Divine truth, and judged by the purity of the Divine law, are more appalling than any winter blight and desolation.
II. The “earth,” and “garden” bring forth their precious fruits and flowers under culture. In nothing does man toil more laboriously against the curse than in tilling the ground. There is the same necessity for labour in the moral culture of the world. Corrupted human nature is not made to yield the fruits of holiness without toil. Every conversion represents more labour than can be made to appear to the eye. Wherever the Word of God has had free course and been glorified are found proofs of God’s blessing on labour.
III. The “earth” and “garden” cause the things that are sown in them to spring forth with certainty. As surely as winter passes away and spring returns, seeds germinate, grasses grow, plants and trees put forth new beauty and fruitfulness, and this with a regularity that amounts to certainty (Genesis 8:22). “So,” in like manner, with equal certainty, “will the Lord God,” &c. “Righteousness,” lost to our race by the sin of Adam, is restored by the mediation of Christ. As sin and dishonour were joined together as a twofold curse, so righteousness and praise are joined together as a double blessing. Let the work of righteousness appear in social order and purity, commercial and political integrity; let the people be all righteous, and glory will dwell in the land. The text assures us that God will do all this. Delay is no falsification of His promise (Isaiah 55:10-11).
IV. The “earth” brings forth the things that are sown in it mysteriously as to manner. Beneath the surface are subtle forces and workings of nature by which the seed is made to grow. These hidden workings fitly represent the operation of God in the production of moral results.
V. “The earth and garden” bring forth their fruits universally. There are sandy deserts and miry places that cannot be cultivated, but generally speaking, the earth gives her increase. With more literal truth it may be said the moral world is capable of universal cultivation. The necessity for cultivation is universal, and the Church is God’s husbandry that it might be His husbandman. The Divine covenant that assured success is made with the race, not with any particular portion; and the Spirit who glorifies Christ in the work of human salvation is given to the world. If, therefore, the Church will extend the means which God has appointed, He will accompany them by His sure effectual blessing, and “cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations.”—William Jackson.
Could anything be more incredible than; prophecy of spring in winter time to a man not already familiar with the glory with which summer can clothe the world? Who can wonder that the heathen found this the divinest thing which they could imagine; that the power which drew forth these glorious hoards from the dark treasures of earth, and flung them with such royal hand abroad, was to them the most God-like God? Life rising year by year, nay, day by day, out of death. Just as incredible as spring is to winter, as life is to death, is the summer splendour that shall one day mantle this sad world.
Let us consider—
I. The concords of the natural and the human worlds. The worlds are one; the author is one; the life is one. One living breath breathes through both. The poet, in the highest form, is the man who can disclose the unity. The culture of the spiritual life in man is like the culture of a seed field. “Behold a sower went forth to sow.” This stands as the image of the divinest work ever accomplished in this great universe. Isaiah had a keen eye for this unity. His prophecies are full of imaginative revelations of the likeness between the ways of God in nature and in man. The future of the world unfolded itself before him as the outburst of a glorious spring, a spring which should know no autumn, a dawn that should never darken into night. Yes, hopeless as it may seem, it shall be (Isaiah 35:1-2; Isaiah 35:5-10).
II. The winter of life and of the world. All that we look upon, all that strains our pity, oppresses our sympathy, saddens our heart, and kills our hope, to the prophet’s eye was but as the earth in winter—bare, bleak, stern, cold, dank, dark, tainted with decay, storm-beaten, frost-nipped, snow-wreathed, a wilder ness of desolation, a waste of death. There are times when the wrong, the selfishness, the unholy passion, the bitter misery which fills the world, quite distracts us. We dream of what a home of the sons of God might be like; the life that beings made in God’s image, in His likeness, might live. And we look round, and the heart sinks in utter despair. Where is the trace of it? Isaiah saw it all in his day—world and Church rotten together (Isaiah 1:21). But he saw something which Christ also sees beyond. He saw that it was a winter, out of which the Lord God would bring a glorious period—spring.
III. The certainty of a future everlasting spring. The law reigns throughout all the spheres that light shall burst out of darkness, spring out of winter, life out of death. Does the law range through all the stages of creation, and fail in the highest? Does the Lord cause the earth to bring forth and bud, and fail to touch the coldness and deadness of the winter of our world? Does man break the chain of the victorious purpose that runs through creation, and defy successfully the Eternal Ruler to bring summer, out of His winter, life out of His death? No, a thousand times no, or the world had been dead long ago. The fact that God bears it all is, knowing what we know of God, profoundly significant. It means that He sees already a tint of greenness crisping over the wintry barrenness, and foresees the day when (Isaiah 35:1). But to an intelligent eye winter is not all desolation. There is a prophecy in every shrinking bud and blade, &c. Those see it most fully whose hearts are most attuned to sympathy with the patience and the hope of God. “The Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.” It is a significant collocation. Praise is the voice of joy. To be joyful man must be right—right within, right all round—that is, right with God. Right-doing makes the soul glow, as the blood glows in the rosy morning air; and as it glows it sings. Here is the principle of the reformation, the revival, the restitution, and all are images of spring. It is the turning man’s heart to righteousness, to Gods righteousness, to Christ. The world had once a vision of what life may grow to when man’s heart is turned to righteousness by being made the captive of the Divine love. What outburst of all beautiful things, what joy, what praise was there (Acts 2:41-47). Thus shall it be one day when the Pentecostal fire leaps from heart to heart through the great world, the world which is redeemed, and waits only to be renewed and restored.—J. Baldwin Brown, B.A.: The Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi. p. III, &c.
Isaiah 61:11. I. The wintry aspect of the world. II. The promise of spring. III. The power by which the change is effected.—Dr. Lyth.