Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord?
The attributes of God: a reply to unbelief
I. THE UNIVERSAL DISPOSITION TO UNBELIEF. “Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel?” etc.
II. THE ACCOUNT WHICH GOD HIMSELF GIVES OF THE GREATNESS OF HIS ATTRIBUTES. Well to Israel might the Almighty put the inquiry, “Hast thou not known?” He spake to His peculiar people. In Jewry is God known; His praise is great in Israel. How could they but know His attributes, to whom He had Himself manifested His glory? And to us the same upbraiding queries might well be put.
III. HOW THE LORD EMPLOYS ALL HIS MIGHTY ATTRIBUTES FOR THE CONSOLATION AND REFRESHMENT OF HIS PEOPLE WHO CALL UPON HIM. “He giveth power to the faint,” etc.
1. Consider the case of those who are convinced of their own natural sin and helplessness, but who have not as yet sought their Saviour.
2. The consolations of the text belong also to those who, after they have found their Saviour, are mourning under peculiar sin, or walking in peculiar darkness.
3. By temporal sorrows, too, He may sorely grieve thee, but much more mayest thou trust Him in them. (T. Scott, B. A.)
When the way seems hidden
I. THE WAY WHICH SEEMS HIDDEN. “My way is hid from the Lord”--what a common cry! Samuel Taylor Coleridge said he was sure the Bible was the Word of God because it found him at deeper depths than any other book. How surely and how deeply does this cry, “My way is hid from the Lord,” “find” each of us in many a mood!
1. It is into the future that the prophet is looking. Plainly, by the vision-giving Spirit, he discerns the great catastrophe which is to afflict the Jewish nation. The Babylonian captivity is to drag them into exile. By the severe chastisement of the captivity the Jews are to be cured of an almost uncheckable tendency towards idolatry. A human waywardness needs sometimes a bitter medicine to compel it back to paths of loyalty to God. But the prophet not only foresees the captivity, but also the way in which the exiled Hebrews are enduring it. It is as though he heard them talking together there in distant Babylon.
2. But that the way seems hidden from the Lord is not anything peculiar to those ancient captives. How surely and how deeply does that ancient cry” find” every one of us.
(1) Delayed answers to prayer sometimes make our way seem hidden from the Lord.
(2) The strangeness of the way makes our way sometimes seem hidden from the Lord.
(3) Our mistakes sometimes make our way seem hidden from the Lord.
(4) Our moods sometimes make our way seem hidden from the
Lord.
(5) Our sins sometimes make our way seem hidden from the Lord.
II. A GREAT AND ENDURING TRUTH ABOUT OUR WAY WHICH SOMETIMES SEEMS TO US HIDDEN FROM THE LORD. This is that our way is not and cannot be hidden from Him. And there are reasons firm and towering as the mountain peaks for this.
1. Our way cannot be hidden from the Lord because He is everlasting--His purpose cannot fail.
2. Because He is powerful--“the Creator of the ends of the earth.”
3. Because He is actively Lord “He fainteth not, neither is weary.”
4. Because He is actively wise--“there is no searching of His understanding.”
5. Because He is beneficent--“He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.”
III. SEIZE THE PRECIOUS PROMISE FOR YOUR HELP, even though your way may seem hidden from the Lord. “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew,” etc. God is coming to your help. Even while the captive Jews were crying, “My way is hidden,” etc., God was preparing Cyrus to be their deliverer. (Homiletic Review.)
Spiritual despondency
I. ISAIAH’S DESPONDENCY. It arose from a two-fold source.
1. The sense of a Divine desertion. “My way is hidden from the Lord.” It was the necessary result of the prophet’s office that all the nation’s sorrows must press home on his spirit, and must wound with their keenest anguish his sensitive soul. Now, remembering this union of deep sympathy with the people, observe the tremendous power with which, for fifty years, the wickedness of the land, and God’s great judgment upon it, must have pressed on his large and tender heart. It made his very office often seem a vanity. Many men have had the same experience; perhaps all earnest men must undergo it.
2. The absence of Divine recompense. “My judgment is passed over from my God.” The prophet unquestionably spoke these words as a cry uttered only by himself. The people were buried in God-forgetting repose. The priests were dead in formalism. The spiritual life of the land was decaying; and thunders of woe were muttering in the nation’s future. What had his life been worth? Apparently nothing! All great men think that they die in failure. Is it not hard for a man who has given to God his all, and worn out his life in His service, to go out into the eternal silence and see no reward?
II. THE TRUTH THAT REMOVED ISAIAH’S DESPONDENCY. In the verses following our text we perceive that the double manifestation of God’s greatness in Nature, and the tenderness of His revealed will, dispelled the gloom.
1. The greatness of God in Nature. He speaks not only of the unsearchable Creator, but of the everlasting God. Thy recompense is sure--thy work, and conflict, and toil are for eternity; then “why sayest thou, O Jacob, that thy way is hidden from the Lord?”
2. The tenderness of the revealed will. “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might, He increaseth strength.” The revelation of God’s tenderness is far more full for the Christian man, and has, therefore, far greater power to remove our despondency. We know how the Great Shepherd gave His life for the sheep.
III. THE RESULTS OF ITS REMOVAL.
1. Strength in weakness. “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” Feebleness is transformed into power when God has taught His great lesson of “glorying in infirmity.”
2. Immortal youth. “They shall mount up on wings as eagles.” You have heard the old Jewish fable, that the eagle in dying recovered its youthful power. (E. L. Hull, B. A.)
Faith in the living God
I. Isaiah here reaches and rests upon THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF THE FAITH, TRUST, AND HOPE OF MANKIND--the living God. Creation rests on His hand; man, the child of the higher creation, rests on His heart. What His power is to the material universe His moral nature and character are to the spiritual universe. “Have faith in God.” Creation lives by faith unconsciously, and all her voices to our intelligent ear iterate and reiterate “Have faith in God.”
II. WHAT DO WE KNOW OF GOD THAT WE SHOULD TRUST HIM? What aspects does He present to us? We have two sources of knowledge--what He has said to, and what He has done for, man.
1. There is something unspeakably sublime in the appeal in verse 26. It is heaven’s protest against man’s despair. Nor is Isaiah the only sacred writer who utters it. There is something very strikingly parallel in Job (Job 38:1-41.). In both cases God’s appeal is to the grand and steadfast order of the vast universe, which He sustains and assures. God tells us that all the hosts of heaven are attendant on the fortunes of mankind. They all live that God’s deep purpose concerning man may be accomplished.
2. God declares here that we are not only involved inextricably in the fulfilment of His deepest and most cherished counsels, but that we are needed to satisfy the yearnings of His Father’s heart.
III. WE MAY APPLY THESE PRINCIPLES to the seasons of our experience when faith in the living God is the one thing which stands between us and the most blank despair.
1. The deep waters of personal affliction.
2. The weary search of the intellect for truth, the struggle to comprehend the incomprehensible, to know the inscrutable, to see the invisible, which is part, and not the least heavy part, of the discipline of a man and of mankind.
3. Dark crises of human history, when truth, virtue, and manhood seem perishing from the world. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)
The unbelief of the Jews reproved
I. THE TITLES GOD HERE GIVES THEM WERE ENOUGH TO SHAME THEM OUT OF THEIR DISTRUSTS. “O Jacob; O Israel!” Let them remember--
1. Whence they took those names--from one who had found God faithful to him, and kind in all his straits.
2. Why they bore those names--as God’s professing people, a people in covenant with Him.
II. THE WAY OF REPROVING THEM IS BY REASONING WITH THEM. “Why?” Consider whether thou hast any ground to say so. Many of our foolish frets and fears would vanish before a strict inquiry into the cause of them.
III. THAT WHICH THEY ARE REPROVED FOR IS AN ILL-NATURED, ILL-FAVOURED WORD THEY SPOKE OF GOD, as if He had cast them off. There seems to he an emphasis laid upon their saying it. It is bad to have evil thoughts rise in our mind, but it is worse to put an imprimatur to them, and turn them into evil words. David reflects with regret upon what he had said in his haste when he was in distress.
IV. THE ILL WORD THEY SAID WAS A WORD OF DESPAIR CONCERNING THEIR PRESENT CALAMITOUS CONDITION. They were ready to conclude--
1. That God would not heed them. “My way is hid from the Lord.”
2. That God could not help them. “My judgment is passed over from my God, i.e., my case is so far past relief that God Himself cannot redress the grievances of it. (M. Henry.)
A challenge to despondent unbelief
“Why sayest thou,” etc., that all the dispensations of providence and grace with which you are connected appear so intricate and inexplicable that you cannot attain any comfortable acquaintance with them; that God doth not seem to regard your condition, and to manifest this tender care of you, but acts toward you as if your forlorn circumstances were unknown to Him? This mournful complaint is adopted by them that fear the Lord, on one or other of the three following accounts--
I. When they do not perceive THE PROCURING CAUSES from whence their troubles proceed. This perplexing circumstance greatly increases their uneasiness, and induces them to request with Job that God would show them wherefore He contendeth with them.
II. When they do not discover THE IMPORTANT PURPOSES to which they are especially directed. Uncertainty as to the particular ends which afflictions are sent to accomplish augments not a little the pressure of distress, and disposes good people to bemoan themselves in the language of the dejected Church, “He hath hedged me about that I cannot get out.” I can neither see the reason nor the end of my affliction; my way seems to be hid from the Lord.
III. When they do not discern WHAT IS PRESENT DUTY. Notwithstanding the blessed God hath clearly taught in His word what He requires, yet there are particular situations wherein the best of men have been perplexed as to what course they ought to follow. In such cases they have said with the good King of Judah, we know not what to do; and have lamented that their way was hid from the Lord. (R. Macculloch.)
Doubt and encouragement
Israel had suffered inexile so long that there were many who thought that their case had escaped God’s eye, and that their “judgment” (i.e their cause)
had passed beyond His notice: the prophet replies, Jehovah is no local, limited God, as you imagine; His power embraces Babylon not less than Palestine; His strength is not exhausted; “there is no searching of His understanding”--some inscrutable purpose must guide Him in delaying, if He do delay, the redemption of His people; only continue to trust! (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
God the comfort of His people
Sorrow ever brings God nearer to us, if it do not bring us nearer to God; and whilst Isaiah was pondering the greatness of his apparent failure, God was preparing to chase away his darkness and to rekindle his hopes. Above him in the silent vault of night God was bringing out His solemn stars. And from that heaven where God numbered and named and watched over His stars, the eternal chorus swept down into the prophet’s soul--“Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel?” etc. Now, from a like despondency of heart, not one of us is entirely free. But some there are who dwell always in the region of gloom.
The language of their whole life is, “My way is hid from the Lord and my judgment is passed over from my God.” Or, perhaps, it is that the shadow of a long-past grief is upon their life. Or, maybe, it is that they walk in a labyrinth of difficulty. Or, like Isaiah, they mourn apparent failure; they see life’s highest purpose ingloriously defeated.
I. GOD’S POWER THE COMFORT OF HIS PEOPLE. Certain it is that our only true comfort is found in God. Life, when we can turn to God, is never cruel and hard; however full of trial it may be it never seems unkind; for we know that a hand of love appoints what a heart of love designs, and that all things must work together for good. And God has surrounded us on every side with reminders of what He is. When the heart is sad and low go out and be a witness of God’s power; go out in the quiet evening when the gold and fire and purple of the sunset have paled away, and see God bringing out His stars. And as you remember that the infinite mind, your Father, knows their number, calls them all by names, as the Eastern shepherd used to call his sheep, and so follows each with His love, surrounds each by His care, so bathes each in His smile that “not one faileth”--do they not with a loud shout of song pour down upon your soul the same consolation? Not only God’s power as manifested in the sky, but His power as seen on earth may be our hope. God is about you on every side. No star, no bird, no flower is hid from Him. Never, then, can we say, “My way is hid from the Lord,” etc.
II. But a further source of consolation is GOD’S TENDERNESS. “He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.” God’s tenderness is only rightly seen when viewed in conjunction with His greatness. We see the tender in contrast with the mighty. And this is real tenderness. Tenderness is strength in gentle action. When the power that might crush heals, uplifts, and strengthens, then we see tenderness. Gentleness is not weakness, but it is calm, quiet, loving strength. When the wind--which might wrench the oak from its moorings, snap the cables it has thrown around the rocks, and carry it away on its wings--lifts the hair and fans the cheek of the dying child, it is gentle. When the sun--mighty in his strength, pouring his scorching light on far-off worlds--shoots down a golden ray to cheer the drooping plant, or to “increase strength” in the little seedling which a raindrop would almost crush, it is gentle. And such is the God of whom we speak. The great Father has also a mother’s tenderness. “He giveth power to the faint.” He who Himself is never weary stoops to those who have no might, that He may increase strength. The faint and weak, they are the children of the strong and mighty! And to the faint He giveth “power”--power to suffer, to endure. To the weak He giveth “strength”--strength to labour, to accomplish. There is nothing in this world so mighty as the weakness which takes hold of the Divine strength. Yonder the ocean is white with foam. Wave chases wave across the dark surface of the deep as cloud chases cloud across tile blackened sky. No ship could live in such a storm. The mightiest anchor ever forged could give no safety in such an hour. But out, where the storm is fiercest, on those dreadful rocks against which the waves dash themselves into clouds of spray, is a tiny, helpless shell-fish. Its very strength is weakness. It clings simply by its emptiness; but, clinging to that rock, not all the thunders of the ocean dislodge it thence. It is weakness taking hold of strength. Tender and yet mighty is our God, and His tenderness is His people’s comfort. Whilst we bow in reverence before that power which holds untold worlds in their shining courses, we bow in profounder reverence and love before that power when we behold it in gentle exercise, giving power to the faint.
III. There is a further source of consolation open to us--GOD’S WISDOM. “There is no searching of His understanding.” To say merely that man cannot understand God is to say very little; but the language is the statement of an eternal fact. There is no searching of His understanding; not by the brightest intellects of earth nor by the grandest intelligences of heaven. And God’s infinite wisdom is to us the needful complement of His infinite power. Power, uncontrolled by wisdom, is rather to be feared than worshipped and loved. And shall He who has conceived that mighty plan--that plan which embraces all worlds in its grand conception--notunderstand the plan of our short life? Never let us think “our way is hid from the Lord”; to Him every circumstance of our life is known. (H. Wonnacott.)
Providence
I. THE DOCTRINE OF A GENERAL PROVIDENCE. The doctrine of Providence in general is alike supported by reason and revelation.
1. It is necessary to creation. If the world were from eternity, then might it go on self-sustained, as it had ever been: if it were of chance, it might be supported by the same contingency which produced it. If a first cause was necessary to the production of these things, He is also essential to their preservation; and the same voice of nature which proclaims the being of a God, declares His Providence.
2. We must take the testimony of Scripture on this subject.
3. From prophecy.
II. THE DOCTRINE OF A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE.
1. As consistent with the Divine character. The grand objection against a particular Providence has been, that it reduces the Deity to the necessity of superintending such minute concerns as are beneath His dignity--reduces the Deity to a necessity! What necessity can subsist but in His will? The objection proceeds upon principles entirely erroneous. It is an erroneous calculation to call anything great or little in such connection. All affairs are not to us of equal importance--the bursting of a bubble and the ruin of an empire. But, in reasoning thus, we are reducing the Deity to a finite standard, and making Him altogether “such an one as ourselves.” With Him the affairs of an empire and of individuals are equally manageable. The reasoning is false, also, upon the principle of dignity. It deteriorates nothing from the dignity of God to form a mite, with all the vessels and organs adapted to its existence: mere minuteness of operation surely cannot be deteriorating. What it was no degradation to God to create, it can be no degradation to God to preserve and manage.
2. As necessary to the general arrangements of Providence. Here we notice the operations of God, as demonstrating His government. The constitution of nature is of parts: systems compose the universe--worlds compose systems--a conglomeration of particles compose a world. Take the world of waters: seas form oceans--rivers, seas--streamlets, rivers--drops, streamlets--and the atom is infinitely divisible. Take the human frame; made up “of that which every joint supplieth.” Apply this scale of operations to Providence, and then we affirm that no concern can be so little as to be below the superintendence of God; for none can be so small as not to form a part of the grand scheme of Providence. Our ignorance on this subject can be no objection against its reality. I cannot, indeed, trace the link which knits my little concerns with the “ways of eternal Providence”; but neither can I trace the invisible chain which holds all created things together in its remotest parts: some of the larger links I discern, but more are invisible to me. He who admits the doctrine of a general providence and denies that of a particular one, is a being whose obliquity of intellect allows him to conceive of a whole, while he denies the existence of the parts of which that whole is composed.
3. As demonstrated in the course of providential dispensations. Review the circumstances of your separate lives. That life will furnish each of you with the desired evidences on this part of the subject. How frequently have the best concerted plans proved unavailing!
4. As harmonising with our prescribed duties, it is supposed, in the prescription of prayer. Where would be the utility of prayer, or the propriety of prescribing it, if the world was governed by a fate superior to the will of the Supreme Being? The prescription of prayer supposes, on the part of the Deity, a will as well as a power to govern. And this doctrine is reconcilable with the use of means; nay, it requires them.
5. As revealed in the Scriptures.
6. As most consolatory. (W. Patten.)
Unbecoming speech
It is well in times when feeling is strong to say little, lest we speak unadvisedly with our lips, murmuring at our lot, or complaining against God, as though He had forgotten to be gracious, and had shut up His tender mercies in anger. Speech often aggravates sorrow. We say more than we mean; we drown in the torrent of our words the still small voice of the Holy Ghost whispering comfort; we speak as though we had not known or heard. It is wise, therefore, not to pass grief into words. Better let the troubled sea within rock itself to rest. “Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel?” (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
“My way hid from the Lord”
The flower which follows the sun does so even in cloudy days: when it cloth not shine forth, yet it follows the hidden course and motion of it. So the soul that moves after God keeps that course when He hides His face; is content, yea, is glad at His will in all estates, or conditions, or events. (T. Leighton.)