For the Lord God will help Me
Messiah neither ashamed nor put to shame
The verse is better rendered thus: “But the Lord Jehovah helps Me, therefore I was not ashamed” (i e.
, felt no shame)
; “therefore I made My face like flint” (figure for determination, Ezekiel 3:9), “and knew that I should not be put to shame” (Isaiah 42:4). (Prof. J. Skinner, D.D.)
Messiah the courageous Champion
The Redeemer is as famous for His boldness as for His humility and patience; and, though He yield, yet He is more than a conqueror. Observe--
I. THE DEPENDENCE He hath upon God (Isaiah 50:7; Isaiah 50:9). Whom God employs He will assist, and will take care they want not any help that they or their work call for. Nor will He only assist Him in His work, but accept of Him (Isaiah 50:8). By His resurrection Christ was proved to be not the man that He was represented; not a blasphemer, etc.
II. THE CONFIDENCE He thereupon hath of success in His undertaking (Isaiah 50:7).
III. THE DEFIANCE which, in this confidence, He bids to all opposers and opposition. God will help Me, and “therefore have I set My face like a flint.” (M. Henry.)
Temptation to shame in religion
One and the same Divine Person speaks in all this section of the prophet Isaiah. One and the same Being is He, throughout this section, who speaks as “I;” “I came,” “I called:” One who asks, “Is My hand shortened that it cannot save?” and then, without break, without transition, speaks of His meritorious obedience, His sufferings, and His shame. Our Lord Himself, when prophesying of Himself the specific humiliations which are here spoken of by the prophet, speaks of them as foretold (Luke 18:31-32). But how then as to the words which follow? Our Lord came into the world to suffer; His human spirit was straitened until those sufferings were accomplished; His daily sufferings in doing the will of His Father were His daily bread. How then to Him belong those words which seem to speak of human struggle, as well as of victory: “I have set My face like a flint, and I know that I shall, not, be ashamed”? It is perhaps best explained by that great rule of St.
Augustine: The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the Body. For He willed to speak too in us, who vouchsafed to die for us. He made us His members. Sometimes therefore He speaks in the person of His members; sometimes in His own Person, as our Head;” “and the whole He speaketh, as though it were one Person.” The words of prophecy seem to be tempered, so as to include us His members, nay rather to speak of our victories in Christ, and of our strength supplied by Him, the Christian’s unashamed boldness in the cause of Christ. Those holily unashamed of God now, God will keep from shame: on those ashamed of Him, He will bring the shame they shrink from. It is startling to see how, in the account of the last severing off of those who are cast out for ever from the sight of God, the first place is occupied by cowards (Revelation 21:7-8). There must, then, be something far more malignant, far more offensive to God, and more destructive to salvation, than men think of, in this false shame before men. And yet no one scarcely gives it more than a passing thought; few question earnestly their own consciences about it; few repent of it towards God, or ask His forgiveness of it. It is of moment to know the intensity of the first temptation. First, men cowardly disavow what they know to be right; then they profess what they know to be wrong; then, having disavowed God, they are open to temptation, from whatever quarter of occasion, or surprise, or passion, the impulse may come. They have kindled their fire: they have despised the grace which would quench it: it remains, that it should consume them. And yet, while its influence is so subtle, that it escapes men’s observation, unless they are declaring war against it, it is the earliest, the latest, the most infectious, the most universal, the most overspreading, the deadliest disease of the soul. It antedates passion, and it outlives it; it occasions countless sins, but itself is hid under the sins which it occasions; it destroys the goodness of all which seems good, hut is unfelt like paralysis; it nips all wakening good, but is unseen like the frost-wind; it pleads a hatred of hypocrisy and of profession, and is itself the worse hypocrisy of the two, a hypocrisy of evil; to the young, it puts on the appearance of good-nature; to the elder, of courtesy; to the saint, of charity: nothing is too low, nothing too high for its attacks. The senselessness of the sin aggravates its enormity. What is it, of which man is ashamed? It is (and this is a yet deeper aggravation), it is uniformly some gift or grace of Almighty God. In childhood, it was some early habit of piety, which God had vouchsafed to teach, which others had not been taught or had violated. The phases of the sin change with changing years; its essence is unchanged. It is the law of God, or the truth of God, or the friendship of God, and God Himself in all, of whom man stands ashamed before man. And what is this world, before which a man stands ashamed of the Infinite God? Away with such cowardly thoughts of worshipping God, as a sort of Penates, a household god who is to be owned in private and set up within doors, to receive his lip-homage there, and be forgotten or ignored in the face of men. Accustom thyself to the thought of the ever-present Presence of thy God; look to that Eye which recalled Peter to Himself, and which rests on thee; be ashamed to be ungrateful to thy Redeemer, a recreant to thy God; and another fear will displace human fear, another shame will dispel human shame, a shame which maketh not ashamed, a shame which is the earnest of everlasting glory, the shame to be ashamed of thy God. (E. B. Puscy, D. D.)
Therefore have I set My face like a flint
I set My face like a flint
I set My face like a flint “the holy hardness of perseverance” (Stier)
;--words, too, which doubtless have a special reference to the historic fulfilment. “When the time was come that He should be received up, He Steadfastly set His face (as a flint) to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). (Michaelis.)
The strong will
The happiest of gifts for a man to be born with is strength of will; not that a man can by it avoid suffering and sin; but for this--that suffering especially raises and heightens the strong will; that when itforsakes sin it forsakes it without a sigh. Happiness within, attractiveness towards others, ease of repentance and amendment, firmness against opposition, are the splendid dower which the strong will brings to the soul. It is our wisdom then to ask, How shall we keep or make our wills strong?
1. We cannot do this merely by persisting in having our own way, as we call it. Our own way may be wrong; and no one ever uses the strength in connection with crime or fault--never calls a sinful, a wilful, a violent man a strong man. The reason is evident, namely, that wilful sinning is only using a will in the direction in which it is easiest to use it. And this cannot make the will stronger, any more than a mind would grow strong, which employed itself only on intellectual work which presented no difficulty to it. The will must make progress by avoiding things to which it is prone, and by aiming at things which it simply knows in any way to be good, although for the time being it may be that they are not fully desired.
2. There are times when there rises before us a noble ideal of what we ought to be, and we feel an impulse to believe we might be. What is that ideal? It is the “will of God concerning us.” It is what we may each become by the power of the Spirit of God. Into this ideal we cannot at once pass. But we can be ever approaching it. It is not in human nature to make that sudden change, but it is perfectly possible to make a beginning. And for this purpose we must call in the aid of that very will itself to act upon our will; for there is no power in us higher, more primary, than the will. If the will is to be affected, the will itself must do the work. Suppose one resolve be made; then here at once our will begins to be of constant use to us, and to grow stronger in itself. Our will is not really acting at all when it is working out, however strongly, a natural inclination. The will is only strengthened when it is set to active work, something which we have clearly seen to be our duty, although when we come to do it we find the pursuit of it tax our strength exceedingly. (Archbishop Benson, D.D.)
The Redeemer’s face set like a flint
I. HOW HIS STERN RESOLVE WAS TESTED.
1. By the offers of the world. The populace wanted to take Him by force and make Him a king.
2. By the persuasions of His friends. Christ’s kinsmen said that He was beside Himself, and they would have laid hold of Him, and confined Him if they could. They thought His zeal had carried Him beyond the bounds of reason; and when He told His disciples about His approaching death upon the cross, “Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall not be unto Thee;” and all the disciples would fain have persuaded Him to choose an easier path than that which led to Calvary, and the grave.
3. By the unworthiness of His clients. “He came unto His own,” etc.
4. By the bitterness which He tasted at His entrance upon His great work as our substitutionary sacrifice. The first drops of that awful tempest which fell upon Him in Gethsemane were hot and terrible.
5. By the ease with which He could have relinquished the enterprise if He had wished to do so.
6. By the taunts of those who scoffed at Him.
7. By the full stress of the death-agony.
II. HOW HIS STEADFAST RESOLVE WAS SUSTAINED. According to our text and its connection--
1. Our Lord’s steadfastness resulted from His Divine schooling (Isaiah 50:4).
2. It was sustained by His conscious innocence (Isaiah 50:8).
3. It was maintained by His unshaken confidence in the help of God (Isaiah 50:7).
4. It was sustained by the joy that was set before Him (Hebrews 12:2).
III. CHRIST’S STEADFAST RESOLVE IMITATED.
1. If there is anything right in this world, be on the side of it.
2. If you have a right purpose that glorifies God, carry it out. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Courage in danger
Leonidas being told that the Persian archers with whom he had to fight were so numerous that their arrows would darken the sun, said, “So much the better; we shall then fight in the shade.” (R. Macculloch.)
Fixed determination: Joan of Arc
It was in vain that her father, when he heard her purpose, swore to drown her ere she should go to the field with men-at-arms: it was in vain that the priest, the wise people of the village, the captain of Vancoulers doubted and refused to aid her. “I must go to the king,” persisted the peasant girl, “even if I wear my limbs to the very knees. I had far rather rest and spin by my mother’s side,” she pleaded, with a touching pathos, “for this is no work of my choosing; but I must go and do it, for my Lord wills it.” “And who,” they asked, “is your Lord?” “He is God.” Words such as these touched the rough captain at last; he took Jeanne by the hand, and swore to lead her to the king. (J. R. Green.)