I. Consider the character of those who are visited with the experience described in the text. Two features stand prominently forth the pious mind, the godly, Christlike life. (1) The pious mind. "Who is among you that feareth the Lord?" The fear of the Lord was the sign of the godly character and the strength of the godly life. It describes, under the conditions of the older dispensation, the spirit and the attitude of the man to whom the mind and the will of God were not only substantial, but supreme realities in the conduct of his life the man who set the Lord always before him, and who knew, in his secret soul, that the one great concern of life was to stand right with Him. (2) He will manifest his fear by a godly, Christlike life. "That obeyeth the voice of His servant." He who has an eye for God will also have an eye for Christ. He who feareth the Father obeyeth also the Son, and recognises Him at once as the "Sent of God."
II. The condition of experience described in the text. "Who walketh in darkness and hath no light." (1) The plainest source of this darkness is the seeming frustration of our holiest and most unselfish purposes, a dreary want of success in what seems to us our best and most Christlike work. (2) We may be passing through very heavy pressures of affliction, and missing the comfort, the hope, which we think God should bring to us. We cry that we are forsaken. (3) But the main source of the darkness which sometimes buries the most pious and faithful under its pall is the shadow of their own sinful nature, which at moments it seems to them hopeless even for God to attempt to redeem.
III. The text tells us of the believer's trust and stay. Stay yourselves on God. That is, hold to your duty, the duty next to your hand, in the strength of God. Keep firm in the broad highway, and await the inevitable dawn. Night is not the inevitable thing: "There shall be no night there." The dawn is inevitable; for God lives, and God is light.
J. Baldwin Brown, The Higher Life,p. 205.
I. We must admit that there is wrong somewhere when the mind and soul are not in a state of peace and happiness. Pain is the alarm-bell which tells us something is wrong. If all were perfectly right within us and about us, satisfaction and thankfulness would fill the spirit. But if we are dissatisfied and apprehensive and distressed, then there is something wrong; such a state has a sufficient cause. But suppose people who are restless and suffering mistake the cause of their trouble, suppose they think it comes from something from which it does not come, all their efforts to cure it will be useless. He who takes God's will, as it becomes known to him, and makes it his own, is one with God, is reconciled to God. However dark or uncertain or apprehensive or distressed may be his spirit, that does not in the least interfere with his reconciliation with God, any more than the anguish of neuralgia shakes a man's credit with his banker. But it is quite certain that many of these reconciled souls attribute their perplexities to a wrong cause; they think their sufferings prove that their hearts are not right in the sight of God. Whereas it often happens that their bodies are not right, or their heads are not right.
II. Here comes in the secret of this good text: "Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God." The triumph of Christianity over doubts engendered by disease can only come from a simple, manly confidence in the unchangeable goodness of God. To win this may be the life-discipline for some, and noble is the attainment when such in despondency can say, "Though He slay me, yet will I put my trust in Him."
W. Page-Roberts, Liberalism in Religion,p. 157.
I. To some persons it may seem strange advice to tell them, that in the hour of darkness, doubt, or sorrow they will find no comfort like that of meditating on the name of the ever-blessed Trinity. Yet there is not a prophet or psalmist of the Old Testament who does not speak of the "name of the Lord" as a kind of talisman against all the troubles which can befall the spirit of man. It was for this simple reason, that it is by that name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that God has revealed Himself. That is the name by which He bids us think of Him; and we are, more or less, disregarding His commands when we think of Him by any other.
II. Man may give God what name he chooses. Absolute, Infinite, First Cause, and so forth, are deep words; but they are words of man's invention, and words which plain, hardworking, hard-sorrowing folks do not understand; and therefore I do not trust them, cannot find comfort for my soul in them. But Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are words which plain, hardworking, hard-sorrowing men can understand; and can trust, and can find comfort in them; for they are God's own words, and, like all God's words, go straight home to the hearts of men.
III. Some will tell you, that if you are sorrowful it is a time for self-examination, and for thinking of your own soul. I answer In good time, but not yet. Think first of God. For how can you ever know anything rightly about your own soul, unless you first know rightly concerning God, in whom your soul lives and moves and has its being? Others may tell you to think of God's dealings with His people. I answer In good time, but not yet. Think first of God. For how can you rightly understand God's dealings, unless you first rightly understand who God is, and what His character is? Truly to know God is everlasting life; and the more we think of God by His own revealed name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the more we shall enter, now and hereafter, into eternal life, and into the peace which comes by the true knowledge of Him.
C. Kingsley, Discipline and Other Sermons;p. 75.
References: Isaiah 50:10. W. M. Taylor, Limitations of Life,p. 312 (see also Old Testament Outlines,p. 210); Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 139, vol. v., p. 32; A. Watson, Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, and Fasts,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 113; Preacher's Monthly,vol. x., p. 263.