And I will strengthen them in the Lord
Further and continuing grace
This prophecy is closed with a promise concerning their way and carriage for whom the Lord doth all this, that they shall be encouraged and strengthened to be a holy people, and to persevere in faith and obedience, which is to be understood of the elect and truly godly among them, who yet at that time will be very many.
1. When the Lord hath done greatest things for Him people, it is yet a new gift to give them the use thereof, to encourage and strengthen them thereby, for it is a new promise. “I will strengthen them.”
2. I As God can easily encourage the most feeble and faint hearted, so their Sure grip of it is to have it laid up in God for them, and by faith and depend once draw it forth as there is need.
3. Encouragement in God is only well improven when it is made use of to strengthen unto holiness and perseverance, which is the only sweet fruit of all mercies, rendering them comfortable to the receiver, when he is led nearer God by them. “They shall walk” in their duty.
4. Holiness is then rightly set about, when we are constantly in it, when we adhere close to the rule, when by faith we drag furniture out of God, and aim at His glory, and give Him the glory of all our performances.
5. The Lord needs not be hindered to show Himself gracious, by the unworthiness and unholiness of His people, but when He is about to do them good, He can be surety to Himself, that the fruit thereof shall be forthcoming to His glory, and can make them He doth much for, to be such a people as His dealing toward them obliges them to be, therefore, after all the former promises, the Lord Himself undertakes to make them holy.
6. The sweet comfort and refreshment of the promises will only be felt by those who dwell much on the study of God the Promise Maker, and consider how all-sufficient He is, and how worthy to be credited for the performance of what He promiseth. Therefore doth He subscribe His name to all this prophecy. “Saith Jehovah.” (George Hutcheson.)
Strong in God
Speaking of “England’s Forgotten Worthies” of the sixteenth century, Mr. Froude says, “Wherever we find them, they are still the same; whether in the courts of Japan or China, fighting Spaniards in the Pacific, or prisoners among the Algerines, founding colonies that were by and by to grow into enormous Transatlantic republics, or exploring in crazy pinnaces the fierce latitude of the Polar seas, they are the same indomitable, God-fearing men, whose life was one great liturgy. ‘The ice was strong, but God was stronger,’ says one of Frobisher’s men after grinding a night and a day among the icebergs; not waiting for God to come sown and split the ice for them but toiling through the long hours, himself and the rest fending off the vessel with poles and planks, with death glaring at them out of the rocks. Icebergs were strong, Spaniards were strong, and storms, and corsairs, and rocks, and reefs, which no chart had then noted--they were all strong, but God was stronger, and that was all which they cared to know.”
Walking in God’s name
The Rev. John McNeil says, “I owe more than I can tell to my father. He had a habit of which he never spoke to us, nor we to him. He was a quarryman, and I used to hear him going downstairs in the dark mornings, and, standing on the threshold before passing out, he would say aloud, ‘I go today in God’s name.’ Then, strong in that strength, would trudge off to the quarry, the blasting and risks of the work. I can never forget the impression this made upon me, and thankfully say today, ‘My father’s God is mine.’” (Christian World Pulpit.).