“And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne in his father’s house. And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons.” (Is. 22: 23, 24.)

This is the fourth picture of the Messiah in the book of Isaiah. He is presented here under the name of Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, to whom is to be given the key of the house of David, and he is “fastened as a nail in a sure place.”

The old painters used to heighten the effect of their visions of beauty by putting in the foreground some hideous picture of a reptile or a toad so that by the effect of contrast the picture itself might be made more striking through the effect of antithesis.

In front of this picture of our Lord the prophet puts in contrast another figure. It is that of Shebna, the treasurer of the king’s house, a prominent official in the service of Hezekiah, who seems to have been puffed up with such egregious vanity that he had actually prepared for himself a splendid sepulcher in some prominent place, perhaps among the tombs of kings, that he might be buried with great honor. Isaiah is sent to him with a terrific message of rebuke and judgment. “What have you here, and whom have you there,” he asks, “that you have hewed for yourself a sepulcher here, as he that hews out a sepulcher on high, and that sculpts an habitation for himself in a rock? Behold, the Lord will carry you away with a mighty captivity, and will surely cover you. He will surely violently turn and toss you like a ball into a large country; there you shall die, and there the chariots of your glory shall be the shame of your Lord’s house. And I will drive you from your station, and from your state shall He pull you down.” (Is. 22: 16-19.)

It is in the place of this corrupt and selfish official that Eliakim, the faithful one, is to be appointed, and to exhibit in his character and public administration qualities so different and so lofty that the picture of Eliakim soon passes into the higher vision of the Son of God Himself, of whom he becomes the honored type.

Shebna is a fearful example of official corruption, of personal vanity, and of that sordid earthliness that would even make the grave itself the means of exploiting its ambition and its pride. The judgment of God is revealed from heaven against the spirit of worldliness and selfishness in every form.

Some of our Lord’s most solemn parables were intended to show the fearful doom of the man that lives only to amass money and win success in this world. One of these parables is the story of the rich man who added to his barns and storehouses and kept saying to his soul: “Soul, you have much goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.” But God said: “Fool, this night they require your soul of you; then whose shall these things be that you have provided?” “So,” the Master adds as He points the heart-searching moral, “is he that lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Another of these solemn parables portrays the doom of the selfish worldling on the other side of death. It is the picture of Dives and Lazarus. There is nothing said against the character of this rich man. He was not a bad man, so far as we know, but he simply lived for himself, and this is what we are told of him: “The rich man died and was buried.” He had a funeral, as Shebna planned to have, and doubtless it was a splendid one. But oh! the sequel: “In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment,”and begged that Lazarus, the wretched beggar that had often lain at his door, might be sent with a drop of water to cool his burning tongue. The only fault uttered against him by Father Abraham was: “Son, remember that you in your life received your good things and likewise Lazarus his evil things, but now he is comforted and you are tormented.”

Dear friend, are you meeting the great responsibility which increased wealth brings to every man? Are you recognizing your means as a sacred trust? Are you “laying up in store against the time to come” and investing your wealth “where no moth corrupts, where thieves break not through and steal?”

Over against this hideous character of vain glory and selfishness arises the lofty figure of Eliakim.

I. His name is very suggestive. It means “whom God raised up.” Just as Shebna stood for death and the grave, Eliakim stands for the Resurrection, for a life that seeks its portion not in the natural world, but in the new creation which Christ has ushered in. In keeping with this is his father’s name, Hilkiah, which means “God is his portion.” This also leads our minds to that higher world of which Shebna knew nothing, and to which Jesus Christ is ever opening our faith and hope.

II. His administration is described in beautiful terms : “He will be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.” Just as we are accustomed to call Washington “the father of his country,” so this good man was a paternal governor over the people, and finely represents our blessed coming King,

“Who rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness
And wonders of His love.”

III. The girdle with which he was to be clothed represents our blessed Lord in His life service. The girdle always stands for service, in contrast with the loose robes that express self-indulgence and ease. While Shebna was living for pleasure, Eliakim was girded for work. Our blessed Master is always represented, even in heaven, as a girded priest, busy in His high offices of intercession and dominion. No sinecure of luxury or selfish glory has He set yonder, but a place of unceasing and faithful ministry as He bears our iniquities, sympathizes with our sorrows and there represents us before the Father, while at the same time He directs all the wheels of Providence from His mediatorial throne in the interests of His people and His kingdom. Like Him, Christian life is strenuous toil and holy activity.

No time for trifling in this life of mine;
Not thus the path the blessed Master trod,
But strenuous toil each hour and power employ,
Always and all for God.

IV. The key of David was given to him. Our Lord applies this to Himself in the third chapter of Revelation, in His message from the throne to the church in Philadelphia : “Thus says He that has the key of David that shuts and no man opens.” There can be no doubt, therefore, about the application of the figure to the Lord Jesus Christ. He carries this key upon His shoulder, which is quite customary in Oriental countries for officials entrusted with the care of some great household. The reference to His shoulder reminds us of the former picture of Jesus Christ in this book: “The government shall be upon His shoulder.” Jesus Christ holds the keys of heaven and earth and hell. How many things He opens for us! the gates of heaven, the gates of prayer, the closed pathway of difficulty, the doors of service, the hearts of men. And how many things He shuts for us; the blessed hand of God which holds us so that none can pluck us out of His hand; the blessed ark of safety, like Noah, of whom it is said, “The Lord shut him in;” the mouths of lions, and the tongues of wicked men and women, which He alone can shut and keep shut.

Blessed Prince of the house of David! Let us give Him all the keys of all the chambers of our being, of all the treasure houses of our life, and we shall find that He is able to keep that which we have committed to His trust against that day.

V. A nail in a sure place. This is a very striking figure, and may refer either to the pegs by which the Arab secures his tent or the iron spikes which they were accustomed to fasten in the masonry of their buildings, at once securing the walls of the building and at the same time becoming a bend on which they hung their valuables inside the house.

1. This is a nail in a sure place. The Lord Jesus Christ is not a guess, a possibility, a theory. He is a mighty certainty. All the assaults of scepticism have only succeeded in establishing Him more firmly in the sure place which He holds in the Word of God, in the hearts of His people and in the plan of redemption. When we trust Him we know that we are resting on a solid rock, and that all else “is sinking sand.” His kingdom is the only certainty of the future. Our best systems of government, our highest forms of civilization, will all pass away, but “His kingdom shall never be removed, and His dominion endures throughout all generations.” The only stable investment for our lives is there.

2. On this nail the prophet said, should be hung “all the glory of his Father’s house.” This does not merely refer to His inheritance in the throne of David, but rather to His heir-ship to all the glory of His heavenly Father. Truly He could say, “All things are delivered unto Me of My Father;” and again, “The Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment unto the Son.” The apostle says of Him: “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in Him.” All the glory, all the power, all the authority of the Father has been handed over to the Lord Jesus, so that in receiving Him as our portion we are joint heirs with Him of all the glory of His Father’s house.

3. He is the Head of a new race. “The offspring and the issue” referred to here signify what our Lord Jesus Himself has expressed in one of His last messages in the Apocalypse: “I am the root and offspring of David.” He is the real head of David’s house, and at the same time the heir of David’s throne. David sprang from Him quite as truly as He sprang from David. Still more the truth is implied which the apostle expresses so forcibly in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, where he speaks of the Adam race and the Christ race: “As all that are in Adam die, even so all that are in Christ shall be made alive.” There are two races of men in this world: one is the race of humanity born from Adam and inheriting his curse and his doom; the other is the Christ race born from the loins of the Lord Jesus, the second Adam, and inheriting His righteousness and His glory. It is only this new race that can ever enter the kingdom of heaven. The old race is doomed and must pass away under the penalty of sin, but the Christ race shall dwell forevermore and inherit all the glories of Christ, its Head.

To which of these do you and I belong, dear friend? Has your life been reborn from the heart of Jesus Christ, and through Him are you the heir of God and the joint heir of Jesus Christ?

4. Still further we are told that they shall hang upon Him all vessels, both large and small, the cups and the flagons, the vessels of the kitchen and the vessels of the feast, the vessels of commonplace need and service and the vessels of high and holy joy and ministry.

A very deep and practical truth is here expressed. Jesus Christ is the source and the supply of all our needs. These vessels represent the needs of our lives, the temporal and spiritual supplies for which we must go continually to Him. The idea is that we do not have the blessing within ourselves. We are not self-contained depositories of grace, but we come to Him moment by moment and hang upon Him our every need; the little vessels of commonplace life and testing, the flagons of higher and holier joy that stand for the hours of rapture and the moments of blessing. The whole weight of our need hangs upon Him, and all our future hopes are dependent likewise upon our Lord and Head.

How blessed to know that there is nothing which we cannot bring to Him!

“There’s no time too busy for His leisure,
There’s no task too hard for Him to share,
There’s no soul too lowly for His notice,
There’s no need too trifling for His care,
There’s no place too humble for His presence,
There’s no pain His bosom cannot feel,
There’s no sorrow that He cannot comfort,
There’s no sickness that He cannot heal.”

“Behold a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” (Is. 32: 1, 2.)

We have here Isaiah’s fifth picture of the Lord Jesus.

I. The King.

“Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness and princes shall rule in judgment.”

In this land of freedom it is hard for us to realize the cruel horrors of ancient despotism. The traveler who gazes with admiration on the splendid architecture of the cities of the past, can scarcely believe that these magnificent ruins were cemented by the blood and the tears of millions of toiling slaves, who spent their lives in unrequited drudgery to adorn the palaces and tombs of cruel tyrants. But an object lesson has just been presented to the world, even in this enlightened age, which gives a touch of realism to these nightmares of history. In the public squares of St. Petersburg we see a multitude of men, women and children assembled to plead at the footstool of their king for liberty and protection, in words so pathetic as to move a heart of stone, and met by squadrons of cavalry, batteries of artillery and a rain of murderous bullets, drenching the snows beneath their feet with streams of innocent blood.

Such a king was the cruel Ahaz of Judah. After years of wickedness and oppression, he at last sold his country to Assyria for an alliance that would protect him from his northern neighbors; and finally crowned the wickedness of his life by setting up a heathen altar in the temple of Jerusalem, and making his own children pass through the fire as living sacrifices to the hideous idol of Moloch. The epitaph he left on the page of history is like a great black note of exclamation, “In the time of his distress he trespassed yet more and more; thus did that king Ahaz.”

Out of the darkness and sorrow of such times rose Isaiah’s vision of the King of righteousness and peace. Like a burst of sunlight or a rainbow arch, after a dark stormy cloud had passed, our text shines with celestial benignity, “Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness and princes shall rule in judgment.” While, doubtless, the immediate reference of the prophecy was to the good king Hezekiah, who succeeded Ahaz; yet, remotely and supremely, it points to the coming Messiah. He is the only One that can completely fulfil the prophetic ideal. Solomon could draw the picture better than he could live it. The seventy-second Psalm, which probably he wrote, is God’s portrait of earth’s true King, coming, we rejoice to believe, before very long, when it shall at last be true, “He shall judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with judgment. He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. In His days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace so long as the moon endures. All kings shall fall down before Him. All nations shall serve Him; for He shall deliver the needy when he cries, the poor also, and him that has no helper. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence, and precious shall their blood be in His sight.” (Ps. 72: 2, 4, 7, 11, 12, 14.)

Let us notice some particulars concerning this glorious King.

1. He will be a righteous ruler. Righteousness is the only true foundation for any throne. Selfishness, injustice, political corruption, the prostituting of political influence and high position for ambition or gain can bring only demoralization and ruin to any people. The declension of the world’s decaying nations, as they have been well called, can all be traced to the corrupt fountains where the processes of demoralization began; and all history is but a commentary on the sacred words, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people,” or, Isaiah’s own significant words, “The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever.”

2. He will have a righteous court. “Princes shall rule in judgment.” The officers of His kingdom shall be as upright as their King. These officers He is choosing and training today from all the ranks of His redeemed ones. The princes who are to share with Him that coming kingdom are being saved and sanctified, and educated in the church now. As David gathered about him, in the years of his exile, the refugees, who flocked to his standard from all the land, and had but one merit amid all their sins and crimes, namely, that they were true to David, and whom he welcomed, trained, and afterwards appointed as the princes and rulers of his kingdom; so Christ, today, our King in disguise, and almost exiled, is gathering around His standard the sinful men who accept Him as their Captain and Lord, and who are fighting the battles of His militant kingdom. But these shall, by and by, sit down with Him upon His throne and be the princes and rulers of the millennium, and He shall say to one and another, “You have been faithful over a few things, be a ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”

3. His will be a reign of love. “A man shall be a hiding place from the tempest, and a covert from the storm; as rivers of water in a dry place, and as a shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”

4. He will establish proper standards of character and conduct. Verses 3-8 describe a condition of things in which the masks of our present social system shall be turned away, and men and women shall stand out in their true character. “The vile person shall no more be called liberal, nor the knave bountiful.” All disguises will be removed, all counterfeits will be detected and truth as well as righteousness shall evermore prevail. Today almost everything is false and the world is waiting for its true King to turn society upside down and put things in their true places.

5. The fruits of the Spirit will fill this blessed age with beauty and blessing. “Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest, then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field, and the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever” (Is. 32:15-17.)

II. The Man.

Human life is not all politics. We need more than a king and a good government. We need sympathy, love, help and a human heart to which we can go and on which we can lean with our sorrows and our needs. Back of this throne there is a Man, and His heart is as human as His nature is divine. How real and perfect that humanity appears in the gospel story of the Christ! Look at Him in the gradual development of His infancy, childhood and youth — a real child! Look at Him in His boyhood as His mind begins to open to the light of truth and the knowledge of His Father’s word and will like any other growing intelligence. See Him in the workshop at Nazareth, a working man like His toiling brothers! See Him as He sits upon the stone at Jacob’s well, or sleeps in the “hinder part of the ship” worn out with weariness! Behold the Man as He weeps at Bethany, as He struggles in Gethsemane, as He dies on Calvary! Watch Him as He comes forth from the tomb, in His interview with Mary, in His walk to Emmaus, in His tender treatment of Peter and Thomas, and it will help you to realize how much we owe to the humanity of Jesus Christ. We have indeed in Him “a Daysman, who can lay His hand upon us both.” He is bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, heart of our heart, brother of our race.

But the prophetic picture is even stronger than this. In the original it is “the man.” There is but one Man who fully represents the race; one Man who has made it acceptable to God, and forever shall sit upon the throne of the universe in our likeness and our nature. He is the Son of Man, the Man above all other men who has met our obligations, paid our debts, settled our liabilities, worked out the problem of our salvation, and redeemed, and restored, and glorified the human race.

Three things are predicated of this wondrous Man in the prophet’s vision.

1. He is a “hiding place from the wind and a refuge from the storm.” He is a refuge from our guilt and sin. He saves us from the wrath of God and the penalty of our guilt. As a man He bore for all men the punishment of sin, and by accepting His atonement we are free. This is the old gospel of substitution. But there is no other way to escape the tempest which is surely gathering against all unforgiven sin, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men” and the sentence is “tribulation, anguish, indignation and wrath upon every soul of man that does evil.” But this Man has come between us and our sins. For every soul that will receive Him, He offers a shelter, not only from the judgments of God but from the accusing of Satan, and the very memory of our own heart and the condemnation of our own conscience.

He is a “hiding place” from temptation, “a way to escape” into which we may run and hide while He meets the devil for us as our conquered foe.

He is a “hiding place” from our sorrows, a refuge from the storms of life, and a comforter and deliverer in every hour of trial and of need. Is there any one who reads these lines in a place of difficulty, perplexity or extremity, where all other help has failed? where you have lost confidence in yourself and no human hand can save and no human heart may care? There is One who loves, who understands, who pities, who can take us at our worst, and turn the curse into a blessing, and change the shadow of death into the morning of hope and victory.

Indeed, Christ cannot do much with us until we reach the end of ourselves. The greatest victories of His grace come to us when we reach the end of self.

A writer tells of the origin of the chrysanthemum; that the first chrysanthemum sprang from an abortion in the vegetable world. A little plant, that bore only leaves, failed through some blight to bring a leaf to perfection, and instead it grew into a tinted form half way between a leaf and a flower. A gardener caught the freak of nature and developed it until it became the glorious autumn flower which almost rivals the rose itself in variety and splendor. It was out of its failure that the new life was born. And so it is when we come to the place of despair we often emerge on the higher plane of resurrection life and victory. The same writer tells of a beautiful trailing plant that also owes its beauty to a similar cause. In its former life it was a stout and self-contained shrub, but under the stress of a storm its roots were almost washed away; and it was left trailing and perishing on the ground. Then it began to lean upon a supporting trunk, and gradually crept up its side until it developed into a trailing plant, slender and unable to support its own weight, but trained into forms of rich beauty and delicacy.

Even so, when we lose our strength, and are unable to stand alone, we grow into new strength by learning to lean on Him. Let us bring to Him our weakness, our sin, the things that no one else will take, and we shall find a friend who will do for us what no other friend could do, and turn life’s failures into heaven’s triumphs.

2. “As rivers of water in a dry place.” Christ is the fountain of refreshing. These rivers of water represent the blessed influences of the Holy Spirit which all spring from Him. We know something, perhaps, of that heavenly Comforter. Perhaps He led you to the Savior and brought you the sense of His forgiveness and acceptance. But there is much more for you. Perhaps He has come to abide in your heart as a personal indwelling presence. But there is still much more for you. There are rivers of living water. It is one thing to receive the Spirit. It is another thing to be filled with the Spirit in every avenue of our being and in every attribute of His being. It is still another thing to have these rivers of water in a dry place. We expect the Holy Spirit to come to us in the high places of life, in the closet, in the sanctuary, in the hour of holy ecstacy. But life is largely made up of very different places, hard places, places of toil, failure, conflict, desertion, discouragement. These are the dry places where the rivers of water are promised to flow. Do we need them? Have we received that blessed Comforter, who gives zest to drudgery, joy in sorrow, and enables us even to glory in tribulation? Have we, with Achsah learned to claim not only the upper springs of heavenly communion and high achievement, but the nether springs that run through the streets of toil, the marts of trade, the monotony of the kitchen and the pain and agony of sickness, bereavement and wrong? All this is for us in the friendship of the Man of sorrows, the Man that not only knew what sorrow was Himself, but still comes to be with us in our sorrows too.

3. The “shadow of the great rock in a weary land.” This speaks to us of quietness and rest. Life is not all in the open. It needs its quiet hours, the place of retreat, silence and shade. Have we found and proved this promise? “The Lord is your shade upon your right hand. The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.”

The figure of a great rock is beautiful and expressive. A little rock becomes heated in the burning sunshine and only heats you the more. But the great rock absorbs the heat on one side, and has on the other the cool shade where you can sit down and be refreshed and rested. So human friends are like the little rock, filled with their own troubles, and with little leisure or sympathy for us. But He is always at leisure to hear our complaint and bear our burden. In that night when the shadow of the cross was hanging heavily over His heart, not one word escaped His lips about His troubles, but His own message was, “Let not your heart be troubled.” It is not until we reach the dry place and the weary land that we ever know the preciousness of Christ and the sympathy of this blessed Man.

In conclusion let us not forget that if Jesus has been all this to us He expects us to be all this to others. Are we places of refuge to whom poor sinners come? Are we rivers of water refreshing the sad lives that are all around us? Are we as a shadow of a great rock in a weary land to the fainting pilgrims who need our sympathy and help? Lord, help us to know this blessed Man and to minister Him to a broken-hearted world.

“In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength; and you would not.” (Is. 30: 15.)

The historical setting of this chapter furnishes the key to its spiritual meaning. In the days of Isaiah two great empires were contending for the control of the world, Assyria on the east and Egypt on the west. When they met in conflict, the battleground was frequently the Mediterranean coast, and the small states in that region were the chief sufferers in the clash of arms, and were often ground to powder between the two millstones as they came together. The result of all this was a constant diplomacy on the part of these small states, aiming to combine against their formidable oppressors and to join forces with one or the other as it might seem most politic.

The kingdom of Judah had suffered much from these alliances. God does not love human politics and His prophets ever protested against these compromises with the arm of flesh.

At this time the Jewish’ politicians were advocating an Egyptian alliance against the increasing power of Assyria, whose invading armies loomed large in the vision and the fears of the people. Isaiah used all the energy and force of his glowing tongue to prevent this move which was both bad politics and bad religion. So far he had failed and already the ambassadors of the court had gone down to Egypt to arrange for an alliance with Pharaoh. The prophet was commanded to hold this up to ridicule and say that Egypt should help in vain. To give more emphasis to his warnings, he had a great sign made and wrote upon it in the public view as a sort of epigrammatic caricature of Egypt, “Blusterer that stands still and does nothing.” He told them that the Egyptians would fail them and that the compromise would only bring them into deeper trouble. All this really came to pass. Pharaoh had more than he could do to take care of himself. An Ethiopian invasion came down from the upper Nile, defeated the armies and burned the king alive, and the ambassadors of Judah returned humiliated and disappointed. Meanwhile, the Assyrians, provoked by all this temporizing, as soon as they got through with their eastern troubles, swept down upon the Mediterranean coast and were soon encamped about Jerusalem. All that Isaiah’ had prophesied had come to pass.

How vividly these texts stand out in the light of history. “For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; in returning and rest shall you be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength, and you would not, but you said, No; for we will flee upon horses.” They refused to take counsel of God and quietly rest and trust in Him, and they said that they would turn to the cavalry of Egypt. With bitter sarcasm the prophet answers, “We will flee upon horses; therefore shall you flee: and, we will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue be swift. One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall you flee; until you be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain and as an ensign upon a hill.” (Is. 30: 16, 17.) The help of Egypt was to fail them and the Assyrians to pursue them until they had learned no longer to lean upon the arm of flesh.

But in their distress, God would not forsake them. Beleaguered and besieged by a cruel enemy, His presence would still be with them, comforting, teaching, guiding, cleansing, and at last delivering them. “Therefore will the Lord wait,” he says, “that He may be gracious to you; therefore will He be exalted that He may have mercy upon you.” (Is. 30: 18). How tenderly will He comfort them in the hour of their distress. “He will be very gracious unto you at the voice of your cry; when He shall hear it He will answer you.” (Is. 30: 19.) He will not keep back the suffering. “The Lord will give you the bread of adversity and the waters of affliction,” that is, the scant fare of a besieged garrison, but He will make all this the means of deepest teaching, for he adds, “Your teachers shall not be removed into a corner any more, but your eyes shall see your teachers.” (Is. 30: 20.) And so near will He come to them that they will learn to know His voice and follow His direction now instead of their own fleshly counsel and self-sufficient wisdom. “Your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, This is the way; walk you in it when you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left.” (Is. 30: 21.) Better still, their trials shall bring cleansing and righteousness. They shall throw away their idols and dishonor their images of silver and gold and their sorrows shall be a purifying fire as God intended. Then when all this shall have been accomplished, will come their deliverance.

The picture that follows is one of a beleaguered city set free and a land oppressed with invading armies once more bearing its harvests and covered with its waving orchards and feeding flocks in large pastures and undisturbed tranquility. Instead of scant supplies of water, rivers and streams of waters shall flow from hill and valley. Instead of darkness and gloom, “the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be as the light of seven days in the day when the Lord binds up the breach of His people and heals the stroke of their wound.” (Is. 30: 26.)

Then follows the sublime description of the tempest of wrath and judgment with which God shall come down against their enemies like the lightning flash and the devouring fire; like the overflowing flood; like the lion defending its young from the foe; like the mother bird fluttering over her nest and guarding her young, and out of the terror of the scene rises at length the joyful sound of praise from a happy and redeemed people, “You shall have a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept and gladness of heart as when one goes with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel; and the Lord shall cause His glorious voice to be heard and shall show the lightning down of His arm; for through the voice of the Lord shall the Assyrian be beaten down which smote with a rod.” (Is. 30: 29-31.)

Isaiah has told us in a later chapter how all this came to pass, and how in the very height of his pride, as the Assyrian with scorn and blasphemy demanded the surrender of the city, the angel of the Lord came forth and in a single night, by one touch of his awful wing, smote down to death a whole army of 185,000 men. And in the book of Psalms we have the record of the songs they sang. The forty-sixth Psalm no doubt celebrates this great deliverance. “Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations He has made in the earth. He makes wars to cease unto the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in sunder; He burns the chariot in the fire. Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” (Ps. 46: 8-11.)

All this has a personal meaning for our individual lives. The story of ancient Israel is reenacted in Christian experience still and the lessons of this precious chapter are among the richest and most practical that many of us have ever learned.

I. Our trials.

We too are placed in circumstances of difficulty and danger, even as they, but these are not accidents, but divine ordeals intended to test our spiritual character and bring God into our lives. There are no accidents for the children of God, but all things come through a divine plan and a divine permission, and if rightly met “all things work together for good to them that love God.”

How are we using our trials? Do we become vessels for Him to fill with His larger blessing, or do we let them come in vain and shed the bitter tears of sorrow and find no fruit in compensation?

II. The danger of trusting in the arm of flesh.

For us, as well as for them, there is still the danger of going down to Egypt and looking to men instead of God for help. Egypt for us represents the world with its resources, its compromises, its empty promises of aid. God is very jealous of His people’s confidence. He may use second causes as His means and instruments but He always wants us to look to Him as the great first Cause and commit our way to His hands and then leave Him to deliver with or without the help of man.

III. Quietness and confidence.

This is the attitude in which we should meet every trouble. “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” This is true even in the plane of human reason. It is the man that keeps a cool head and holds himself in tranquil self-command that carries his vessel through the stream and his army through the forlorn hope. It is true in spiritual emergencies. “He that believes shall not make haste.” The first thing to do when trouble comes is to be calm and look to God before we think a thought or take a step in our own wisdom. Confidence will bring quietness. It is unbelief that makes us restless and leads us to rush to the first expedient that comes to our mind instead of waiting upon the Lord to show us the way and interpose with His help.

IV. The restlessness and recklessness of unbelief.

“And you would not but you said we will fly upon horses.” And so God sometimes lets us have our way. We refuse to leave ourselves in His hand. We rush hither and thither in our great excitement and like them we find that they that pursue are swift. Our expedients fail. Our resources prove unsatisfactory. Our friends are powerless and at last our condition is worse than at the first.

V. God waiting.

Meanwhile God withdraws and waits until we get through our restlessness and are ready for His help. He does not leave us in our emergency but He lets us alone to learn our lesson and come to the place where He can really help us and we will let Him. There is nothing more touching than God’s waiting love. When Israel refused to follow Him into the land of promise and went back for forty years to their wretched wandering, God did not leave them to wander alone, but “in all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them and He bore and carried them all the days of old.” The way was hard, but it was not the way He chose for them. They had gone, in spite of Him, back to the wilderness, but lovingly He went with them and cheered them and sustained them through all the trials of the way until another generation had been born that could understand Him better and follow Him in the path of safety and obedience. So still He comes with us through the weary, wasted years that we have brought upon ourselves. It might have been all so different. He had a better way for us, but we chose our own and He went with us through it, and even in our folly and our wandering His promise is still true, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Beloved, is He waiting thus for you? Have you refused to take the better things He meant for you, and have you kept Him waiting until you have learned by experience your folly and your sin and are ready at last to let Him give you what He meant for you at first?

And while He waits, He comforts, teaches, guides and sanctifies. He uses our very blunders to show us our folly and bring us to wisdom and righteousness. He turns the curse into a blessing. He teaches us through our troubles and at last He becomes so real to us that we too shall “hear a word behind us saying: This is the way, walk you in it when you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left.”

“Your eyes shall see your teachers.” By our teachers God means the trials, the experiences, the providences that have come to us through our failure and disobedience. We are so apt to think when things cross our inclination that what we need is that somebody else or something else be made right when the truth is that it is ourselves who need to be made right, and until we are right God cannot readjust the things of which we complain. Indeed, they are His file designed to polish and smooth our roughness.

A lady went to Mr. Andrew Murray requesting him to speak to her husband about some matters that were greatly grieving her in his conduct toward her and his family. After listening to her complaint, Mr. Murray declined to speak to her husband, but said he would like to talk to her about her own life. She was much surprised when he insisted that the trouble was with her rather than with her husband, and that her first duty was to get her lesson, her blessing, her quietness and peace of mind with the victory over all these things, and when that was accomplished all the rest would easily come about. At first she was offended, but after reflection and prayer she found he was right and she went to God in humiliation and prayer for her own soul and obtained the quietness and confidence which she needed, and a few weeks later she came back to tell her counselor how God had changed all these things in her life and made them so different that everything was harmonious and happy.

Beloved, the question is not what is the matter with somebody else, but what is the matter with me? The promise to the tried one is, “I will be with him in trouble,” and then comes the next promise, “I will deliver him,” but we must first have Him with us in victory and then we shall have His deliverance. “God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved,” is the first stage. “God shall help her and that right early,” is the consummation. Let us learn the first lesson, and when we are able to stand unmoved, then we shall soon find God’s providence working for our deliverance and relief.

It is possible to go through the most trying conditions unmoved. It is possible to find amid the storms of sorrow a quietness and stillness which we never knew, when all was calm without, and it is this which glorifies God as no mere outward condition of circumstances could ever do.

“There is a peace that comes after sorrow,
Of hope surrendered, not of hope fulfilled,
That looks not out upon a bright tomorrow,
But on a tempest which His hand has stilled.”

“Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walks righteously, and speaks uprightly; he that despises the gain of oppressions, that shakes his hands from holding of bribes, that stops his ears from hearing of blood and shuts his eyes from seeing evil; he shall dwell on high: his place of defense shall be the munitions of rock; bread shall be given him; his waters shall be sure. Your eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off.” (Is. 33: 14-17.)

The outlook of this prophecy is from the standpoint of Sennacherib’s invasion. The prophet represents the land as desolate, the city beleaguered, the ambassadors returning with bitter tears, and the hope of the nation crushed as the Assyrian breaks his covenant and turns back to renew the siege of Jerusalem. But suddenly a voice from heaven breaks upon the scene. “Now will I rise, says the Lord.” God appears upon the stage and in a single night the Assyrian army is destroyed. So tremendous is the impression of this mighty miracle of saving power that the people are appalled. The “sinners in Zion are afraid,” and they begin to ask, “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” God has appeared as a consuming fire and although it is their enemies that have perished, yet they tremble at the thought of such a God in their midst and feel as did Peter afterwards when he shrank from the Master’s presence after the miracle of His power, crying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Oh Lord!”

Dr. Adam Smith, in his notes on this passage, introduces a fine figure representing a man looking at a great city fire through a colored glass which neutralizes the flame so that nothing appears but the crumbling pillars and tumbling walls and buildings, and the power that is working the destruction is invisible. But let him drop the glass and look with open face at the scene and instantly he perceives the tremendous element that is working the havoc.

So the people had been looking at the events around them as through a glass that colored their vision and all they could see was the Assyrian coming and going, the mere facts of God’s working. But suddenly God had come so near that the scales had fallen from their eyes, the distorting medium through which they looked at things had dropped, and lo, they beheld the presence of Jehovah like the fire and flame, and they shrank from its terrible power, conscious of their utter sinfulness and unfitness for such holy fellowship.

The prophet answers the question. Yes, he says, it is possible to dwell with One who is a consuming fire and not be afraid of the search-light of His presence. No, it is possible to get so close to Him that our eyes shall “see the King in His beauty and behold the land that is very far off.” But there are moral and spiritual conditions which must precede the vision. It is the man that “walks righteously,” that “speaks uprightly,” that “despises the gain of oppression,” “that shakes his hands from holding of bribes,” “that stops his ears from hearing of blood,” “that shuts his eyes from seeing evil.” “He shall dwell on high,” and he shall enter into the beatific vision of the glory of Jehovah.

I. The righteous man.

Five things are predicated of this man. They refer to his feet, his tongue, his hands, his ears and his eyes. It is a very realistic picture of practical righteousness.

I. “He walks righteously.” His feet are in the right path. The figure of our walk is a common one in the Bible. It describes our whole outward conduct and deportment. It would not be difficult to fill a volume with the divine picture of the path of the saint. Like Enoch he walks with God, keeping step with his heavenly Father and enjoying His intimate companionship and communion. “He that abides in Him ought himself to walk even as He walked.” We are to “walk by faith.” We are to “walk in love.” We are to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called.” We are to “walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise.” How are we walking? What paths are we treading? What footprints are we leaving? Do we go anywhere where He does not go before us, and would not accompany us? Are we walking in the narrow path or in the broad road that leads to destruction?

2. “He speaks righteousness.” His tongue is the next object of the prophet’s attention. The condition of our tongue is one of the medical tests of health. This man’s tongue is right. “He speaks uprightly,” that is, as in the sight of God and the hearing of heaven. It is a very solemn thought that just as the phonograph records and keeps the sounds of the human voice and can reproduce our very words in after years, so perhaps yonder God has an automatic mechanism which will reproduce every utterance of our lips and furnish the records of the judgment by and by when “for every idle word that men have spoken they shall give account to God in the time of judgment.” The Word of God has much to say about the tongue. It is not merely what we think and feel, but what we say that defiles and sets on fire our whole being. The spoken word reacts upon us with fatal and corroding poison.

Let us bring our words to the divine standard. Is our tongue pure, reverent, truthful, kind, wise and touched with the fire of Pentecost? Does it belong to God? Does it speak for God? Is it anointed of God and consecrated to His service and His praise? Can we meet the test? “He that speaks uprightly.” Christians little realize how much they lose by idle, vain and foolish talking. If we had conserved the strength that is wasted on empty talk, it would add years to our lives. “Let your speech always be with grace seasoned with salt that you may minister grace unto the hearers.”

3. Clean hands. “He shakes his hands from the holding of bribes.” The political, social and business world are reeking with corruption of every kind. The true Christian scorns all such things, refuses dishonest gain and avoids the popular methods of reckless speculation and unfair if not unlawful business and finance. It is easy to be caught in the whirl of promising ventures and brilliant commercial speculations, the alluring promise of a speedy fortune and enormous profits on trifling investments. These are temptations that beset us on every side. The true servant of Christ will always weigh every transaction not only in the light of conscience and even of human law, but in the light and the spirit of God’s Word. Will our business bear the searchlight of the Scriptures and permit us to dwell with the devouring fire and the everlasting burnings, and will our books stand the inquisition of that day when the fire shall burn the wood, the stubble and the hay?

4. Sanctified ears. “He stops his ears from the hearing of blood.” We have no more business to listen to evil than to speak it. A righteous man or woman will refuse to hear scandal, gossip and evil speaking. It is perfectly proper when some malodorous story is brought to you by a gossiping friend to refuse to listen unless the accuser is willing to have his victim in your presence. You will always find this a sure preventive and you will never be troubled a second time. The injury that is done to character and reputation in this sinful way is not half so great as the injury done to the people that listen to it and that perpetuate it with their scorpion tongues. It is a blessed exemption to have one’s mind and memory free from these defiling streams of uncharitableness and sin.

5. Sanctified eyes. “That shuts his eyes from seeing evil.” There are many things to which the servant of the Lord should be blind.One of them is his own virtue. Another is the evil of his brethren, and a third is the vanity and the folly of the world. There are evil things that hypnotize. It was by a look that David was led into his great crime. “Turn away my sight and eyes from viewing vanity,” was the wise petition of the Psalmist. “Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you; ponder the path of your feet and let all your ways be established,” was the equally wise direction of the sage of Jerusalem.

Beloved reader, how does your life stand this five-fold test? How can you abide the devouring fire and everlasting burnings when all your ways shall pass under the searchlight of heaven?

II. His blessing.

This righteous man has great and mighty promises.

1. Exaltation. “He shall dwell on high.” We need the New Testament to interpret this promise. It is more than moral sublimity, more than lofty aspiration, more than a high aim and a noble purpose. It is what the apostle describes in Ephesians 2: 6, “He has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

It is a great spiritual transformation that links our life with Christ upon the throne and makes us citizens of heaven. There is our homeland. There we belong more truly than to any place on earth. There are our affections. There our friends are going fast. There is our future and everlasting home.

Are we claiming this high place? Are we walking with our feet on earth but our heads and hearts above? Are we keeping in close touch with the loved ones that have gone, not through the sinful attempts of spiritualism, but by loving fellowship with Jesus Christ with whom we can ever have communion and know that those we love are with Him there? Are we looking at our trials as we shall one day look upon them from on high and truly dwelling above?

2. Security. “His place of defense shall be the munitions of rocks.” The righteous man who dwells on high in union and fellowship with Jesus Christ is impregnable. “If God be for us who can be against us?” “Who is he that will harm you if you be followers of that which is good ?”

There is nothing that we need fear while we abide in Him. We do not have to fight our battles, but take refuge in our Savior and see Him conquer. Oh how safe they are who have found their dwelling “in the secret place of the Most High,” and “abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” Of such it is true, “The Lord will preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth and even forevermore.”

3. Sufficiency. “Bread shall be given him; his water shall be sure.” God’s blessing includes all temporal things. He does not promise us the bread of idleness nor the bread of luxury, but sufficiency, and the records of faith have no richer story than the providence of God in common things in answer to His people’s believing prayers.

4. A larger vision. “Your eyes shall see the King in His beauty; they shall behold the land of far distances.” The spiritual vision is characterized by a life of holiness and obedience. “I know more than all my teachers,” David could say, “because I keep Your statutes.” There is such a vision of Jesus possible to the soul as will make Him more real than all persons and things and give to the heart such utter satisfaction and rest that we never again can want anything else. The historical Christ apprehended by the intellect is one thing, the living Christ known, realized and loved by the heart is another. The vision does not add to His beauty, but it makes Him real to us and from that hour all other attractions fade and all other delights pale before the vision of His love.

“I have seen Jesus and I’m weaned from all beside,
I have seen Jesus and my wants are all supplied,
I have seen Jesus and my heart is satisfied,
Satisfied with Jesus.”

But the vision takes in the whole horizon. “They shall behold the land of far distances.” He will reveal to us not only His beauty, but all that inheritance of blessing which He has for us. “The riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints and the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe.” There is a land of promise for every saint just as real as the hills and valleys of ancient Canaan and just as large as our faith is able to take Him.

Most people have such a limited range of vision, but God promises to give us wider horizons when we see all the fulness of His purpose for us, and all the glory of our destiny as the redeemed children of God, and the years of His kingdom and glory that lift us above the lesser attractions of the world and sin, and we press on to apprehend all for which we have been apprehended of Christ Jesus. Shall we ask Him to open our eyes and show us the vision of the “land that is very far off”?

And then the prophet adds, “Your eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down.” God will give us the vision of His work and its blessing and prosperity, and then send us forth to make it real.

5. The glorious liberty of God’s fulness.

“There the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams wherein shall go no galleys with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby.”

This is a very fine figure of the fulness and the freedom into which the Holy Spirit brings the surrendered heart and life. God becomes to us a glorious Lord, and life becomes not a hard struggle like the fight of the toiling rower making his way with strenuous effort through the opposing waves, but like a vessel borne on by the mighty current, making our life spontaneous, victorious and sublime.

Beloved, do we know Him as the glorious Lord? Have we found our place in the mid current of this mighty river of His love and power, and is our life not a desperate endeavor. but a glorious liberty of love and power? Let us grasp the vision and let us rise to meet it.

“Until the Spirit be poured out from on high and the wilderness become a fruitful field and the fruitful field be counted for a forest.” (Is. 32: 15.)

The prophet Isaiah is not only a witness to the Messiah but also to the Holy Ghost. It was the touch of the heavenly fire upon his lips that called and consecrated him to his high vocation as we read in chapter 6. And it was by His anointing that the Messiah Himself was to be prepared for His greater ministry as we read in chapter 11. Here we have the picture of a great outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon Israel and the world, and the glorious result of this transforming the wilderness into a fruitful field and making the fruitful field seem to be a forest in contrast with the new scene of fertility and beauty which this great revival would bring.

The air is full of the tokens of revival. The hearts of God’s people are going out in earnest prayer for a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We turn with intense interest to this picture of the necessity and the effects of such an awakening.

I. The need.

“Upon the land of My people shall come up thorns and briars until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high.” These thorns and briars may well describe the character of every product of the soil of nature. All man’s philosophies and religions are but weeds and only the Holy Spirit can transform the wilderness into a garden of the Lord. Man’s culture and husbandry have failed. Social reform and ethical teaching will not regenerate society. Let us not waste our strength in second-class things, but work with God on His higher plane through the gospel of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

But the thorns and briars are not all found in the wilderness of the world, but often in the hearts of Christians and in the enclosures of the church itself. Without the Holy Ghost our life and our work are filled with weeds and our best things run to waste. Our Lord has taught us in the parable of the sower what these thorns are. “Some fall among thorns and the thorns spring up and choke them.” “He that receives seed among thorns is he that receives the Word and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word, and you become unfruitful.” Or as expressed in Luke 8: 14: “And that which fell among thorns are they which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life and bring no fruit to perfection.”

The version in Mark is also instructive. “The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lusts of other things entering in choke the Word and it becomes unfruitful.” (Mark 4: 19.) What a picture of many of our heart and lives! The strength of our nature absorbed in seeking pleasure, pursuing ambition or amassing wealth, little time for God, the business of the week day encroaching even on God’s Sabbath, the family altar pushed aside and both mind and body so worn with care and pleasure that there is little energy or leisure for private prayer, for the study of God’s Word or for the work of winning souls. The writer met a young fellow one Sabbath morning lately who used to be an earnest Christian worker. He was on his way to business. “How are you getting on?” was asked. “Oh, very well.” “Are you busy?” “Yes, very busy.” And looking into his face earnestly the question was added, “Are you too busy?” A look of earnestness lighted up his countenance and with an expression of pain he answered, “Yes, too busy, for I am now on my way to business, and it seems as if I cannot help it without giving up my position altogether.”

Ah, Christian brother, take care lest you get too busy. The lives of most Christians today, it is to be feared, are like the old garden grown up with weeds and thorns. Some day you will have to take time to meet the Master. Alas for you if you shall have nothing to bring but thorns!

II. The Pentecostal blessing.

“Until the Spirit be poured out upon us from on high.” This is more than the coming of the Holy Spirit to our individual lives. This is a public outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon the church and a special visitation to the individual heart. This is one of the promises of the New Testament, “There shall be days of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.” “There shall be showers of blessing.” Such an outpouring came on the day of Pentecost and such seasons of revival were occasional features of the Apostolic church and have been among the richest blessings of the church of Christ in all ages. God is pouring out His Spirit at this time in a very wonderful way in the valleys of Wales and upon the great cities of England. Some of these seasons of blessing are quite phenomenal, having little human leadership or machinery about them and showing the mighty hand of God alone.

Such an outpouring of the Holy Ghost is the best remedy for all the evils of our individual and church life. It will lead sinners to repentance. It will bring men to realize the presence and power of God. It will awaken Christians from their sleep of death. It will honor the Word of God and revive the work of the gospel in all the world and it will bring about a mighty uplift in the work of the world’s evangelization. God is waiting to send us such a blessing. Let us earnestly desire it. Let us prayerfully seek it and let us put ourselves in line with it before it comes.

III. The great transformation.

“And the wilderness shall become a fruitful field.” It is very beautiful to travel through the Western prairies and after hours of sweeping over the arid desert with nothing but the drifting sand and the scrubby sage brush, to suddenly come upon a little town lying like an island of beauty in a sea of desolation, the fields and gardens exquisitely green, streams flowing through every garden and along every highway, and the whole place literally blossoming like a rose. Ask some one for an explanation and he will tell you it is the very same desolate soil that you have been passing through all day, but in this case the only explanation is the single word, “irrigation.” The waters have been brought down from the mountains and the wilderness has become a fruitful field.

Such a transformation takes place in the most wretched and sinful lives when God comes into them with His grace. How we have seen them in these years come from the street, from the saloon, from the depths of sin, haggard, unkempt, with hollow eyes and hopeless hearts, and at the feet of Jesus receive His cleansing touch, bathe in the living water and begin to drink of the fountain of life! How marvelously they have changed! In a few days you behold them clothed and in their right mind; happy-faced girls, manly men, transformed lives literally resurrected from the grave, and entering upon a career of happiness, usefulness and blessing to the world. Hundreds of such men and women today are leading our rescue missions at home and working on our mission fields abroad and passing on the blessing that has come to them to thousands more. When we think that the coming of the Holy Ghost will bring just such transformations to thousands of the wretched hearts and homes around us, oh, surely we should give ourselves no rest until we seek and gain these promised showers of blessings.

IV. Righteousness and peace.

“Then shall judgment dwell in the wilderness and righteousness remain in the fruitful valley; and the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever. And My people shall dwell in peaceful habitations and in sure dwellings and in quiet resting places.” (Is. 32: 16-18.)

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit will bring righteousness to the wilderness. Even in the social and secular world, conditions will be revolutionized, wickedness will be checked, intemperance, vice and misery will be restrained and the face of society will be transformed. So much is this the case in the recent revival in Wales that the very saloons have lost their business and the courts of justice are without occupation. We are not going to see this come to pass everywhere in the present age. These, however, are samples of what the Holy Ghost can do and what the coming of our Lord in a little while will do throughout the entire world. Oh let us realize it and seek it to the utmost possible extent even in this present mingled condition of human society. “Righteousness shall remain in the fruitful valley.” This refers to the sanctification of believers and the higher standard of holiness in the church which the outpouring of the Holy Ghost will bring.

The final result of this blessing will be the reign of peace and joy in every heart and home. “The work of righteousness shall be peace.” It is not designed that our life shall be occupied in the constant excitement of religious meetings, but in our hearts and homes and the normal current of duty, this beautiful picture will be realized and “the peace of God that passes all understanding shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Through such awakenings thousands of God’s happy children today at one time entered into the rest of faith and the deeper life which has not only satisfied their spiritual needs but multiplied a hundredfold their power to bless others. Such blessings are waiting the present generation through the coming of the Holy Ghost. Oh that we may seek and find that blessing in all its fulness!

V. The uplifting of our Christian life to higher ideals.

“The fruitful field shall be counted for a forest.” This is a very remarkable expression and the obvious meaning is that so great shall be the transformation of the church, hearts, and of the Christian life of the individual, that the vision we have hitherto known shall seem as nothing in comparison with the blessing that is to come. Even the fruitful valley will be so improved that it will seem as if it had only been a forest before.

One of the worst features of the private and public life even of the people of God is the tendency to sink into ruts and to grow rigid and frigid in the formal, conventional routine of life. The old proverb, “Good enough is never good,” is in place here. No doubt the reason so little progress is made by very many persons is because they are measuring themselves by old standards and really never getting any further on. When the Holy Spirit comes, He lifts our minds to new ideals and gives us conceptions of things so much in advance of our present experiences that we long for higher ground; the saved become sanctified and the sanctified rise to a life of sacrifice and unselfish service. We see our own shortcomings, our sins of omission of duty, self life, our worries, anxieties and cares, our narrow sympathies, our low conceptions of God, our little faith and our unworthy standards and aims so that we cry out for all the fulness of God, and “forgetting the things that are behind, reach forward unto those things that are before.” The promises of God rise before us with new vividness, the possibilities of a victorious Christian life allure us, and the voice of God is heard crying, “Whom shall we send, and who will go for us?” Sometimes God permits us to see in some other life the glorious possibilities that we are missing and we rise up to new planes, new ambitions, new visions and new commissions of service for God and man. It was the apostle’s prayer for the Ephesians that they might know “the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe,” and this was to come about through “the eyes of their understanding being enlightened.” Again he declares in the second chapter of 1Corinthians, “Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him, but God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” When this vision comes there rises before us the alluring prospect of that better country which Christ is waiting to bring us into:

“Rejoicing now in earnest hope,
We stand, and from the mountain top
See all the land below.
Rivers of milk and honey rise
And all the fruits of paradise
In endless plenty grow.”

To the dull eyes which can appreciate only earthly things, the things of God are clothed with enchanting beauty. The sinner grows sick of his sin, the worldling turns from his elusive dreams, the discouraged and defeated saint takes heart again and our dull, cold Christian life becomes a romance of beauty and blessing.

There is a thrilling story told of a man of great wealth and brilliant genius who had become a leader in the industrial life of the land, and the master of an enormous fortune, but who had no taste for art or music or high things. One day he was called upon by an old schoolmate from the distant land where both were born and who in turn had become illustrious in his profession as a musician. He invited the merchant prince to come to one of his concerts and hear him play on his famous violin, but the millionaire laughed at him and said he had no time for such trifles; he was engaged in more practical things. At last the musician caught his friend by strategy. He took his violin one day to the factory of the rich man, and asked him to make some trifling repairs upon it, as he was a machinist while the other was only a musician. After the trifling work had been done, the musician began to play to see if it was all right, but before half a dozen bars of music had been rolled off, the millionaire was standing with the tears streaming down his face with undisguised admiration and delight. The music had broken his heart and the musician had conquered him by his wiles. Not only so, the whole factory became demoralized, and as he played on, the entrancing strains gathered clerks, foremen, porters, everybody, in crowds around the door, and at last the musician apologized for disturbing their business; but the great man, wiping the tears from his eyes, said, “Don’t stop for the world. Play on; I never knew until this moment how much I had missed out of my life.” Poor man, he found that day a new world of sweetness to which he had been a stranger, and his heart longed for more.

In a far higher sense that is what happens when the light of heaven falls upon the heart and we see the King in His beauty and a land that is very far off. Then earthly things pale before the vision of that better country and our hearts long for God and heaven. Oh, if we should go on in our blindness until it is too late! Oh, if some day we should wake to hear “the voice of harpers harping with their harps,” and the new song they sing above, and discover at last that we have no part in it, but have thrown our lives away upon the barren, empty wilderness of life, ours would be the eternal sorrow and an irretrievable loss!

Let us ask God to open our vision, to awaken our hearts, to show us the things that are true and good and beautiful and everlasting, “the things which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor entered into the heart of man, but which God has prepared for them that love Him,” and “which God has revealed unto us by His Spirit.”

Oh, that the great Revealer might come to us and show us the vision! Oh, that the great Inspirer might come to us and lift our hearts to meet it! Oh, that the great Enabler might come and transform our lives and make the vision real even here as well as in the life everlasting!”

“I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground.” (Is. 44:3.)

The Holy Spirit is falling upon His people. An organized religious movement of great power is sweeping over Great Britain and centering at the present time in its metropolis. A still more remarkable spontaneous revival is rolling over the valleys of Wales, and already has brought tens of thousands to God and changed the face of society in scores of communities. In our own land, the Holy Spirit is working with great power in many places. Such tokens give blessed emphasis to the promise of our text and encourage us to expect yet greater things through the outpouring of the Spirit from on high. This text gives us a three-fold picture.

I. The field.

The prophet repeats himself in the familiar form of a Hebrew parallelism, and yet the verses are not exactly parallel when he speaks of “him that is thirsty” and the “dry ground.”

1. “The dry ground.” This means that the Holy Spirit is waiting to come, in answer to the prayers of God’s people, upon the hardest, the deadest and the most discouraging fields. It reminds one of the soil of some tropical country after months of drought when the ground is baked like stone and great fissures sink deep into the soil and clouds of dust sweep over the land with every passing breeze, while the very air seems like liquid fire and no green or living thing remains in forest or field until the monsoons pour down and “the desert blossoms as the rose.”

Such is the transformation that the Holy Spirit brings to a wretched heathen community; to the besotted drunkard’s home; to the heart that has been steeped in sin and hardened with years of daring wickedness, and to the church which has become like a cemetery in its cold formalism while God has been saying to it, “You have a name that you live and are dead.” It is upon just such people and communities that the power of a great revival tells, and God is waiting to work these wonders of His grace and power in answer to our believing prayers.

2. “Him that is thirsty.” This is the promise for the individual Christian. It describes that on which the coming of the Holy Spirit to the individual heart depends. In the natural world a vacuum always brings a current of air to fill, and in the spiritual realm it is just as true that a condition of conscious need never fails to bring supply of God’s presence and Holy Spirit. The writer never can forget his visit to the Telegu mission in India and the extraordinary way in which this promise was fulfilled in the experience of one of the native teachers at Rampatam.

Our little party had just come late on Saturday night and on Sabbath morning we went to the native church with the good pastor. After his sermon, he announced that in the evening two strangers would give an address on the Holy Spirit. It seems that at the time a great spiritual awakening was coming over this wonderful mission. A few years before tens of thousands had been converted, but now they were seeking the deeper blessing, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the announcement of a meeting for that purpose evidently awakened the deepest interest, and a look of expectancy brightened their countenances.

On returning from the service to the pastor’s house, one of the native teachers, a physician, was waiting, and approaching the pastor he said with great earnestness, that he had come to hear about this blessing, for he greatly needed it and could not be satisfied to wait until evening. As we looked at that earnest face, we felt that the Spirit had already fallen upon him and he was indeed thirsty. We all knelt down and began to repeat special promises and this was the first that came to our mind, “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground.” It seemed to take hold of him and after a few other promises had been successively repeated, he began to pray in his native Telegu. It was one of the most touching prayers we have ever heard. We could not follow the words and yet we could follow the spirit of it every moment. With cries of heart agony, he called upon God, told Him how he longed for this blessing. After a while his tone changed and a look of trust began to overspread his countenance. As he still prayed on, the tone of hope and joy increased and in a little while his face was shining with holy gladness and he was pouring out his thanksgivings for the blessing that had come to him. When at length he was able to stop this torrent of prayer, he turned to us and began to embrace us one by one, and such a look of unutterable joy I have seldom seen upon a human countenance.

The Holy Spirit is just as ready to meet our cry and satisfy our thirst. It would seem as if a condition of intense desire were necessary as a preparation for the blessing. Just as hunger prepares us to assimilate food, so the deep desires of the heart for the divine blessing prepares it to receive that blessing according to a great spiritual law of the fitness of things. Are we thirsting for this priceless blessing? Have we found the fountains of earthly pleasure disappointing? Have the waters of time turned to bitterness? Do we long to rise to the highest things and be used of God in blessing to others? Let us send up our cry:

“While on others Thou art calling.
Let some blessing fall on me.”

II. The flood.

The Holy Spirit is compared to water frequently in the Scriptures. The stream that flowed from the smitten rock in Horeb was God’s peculiar type of the coming of the Spirit through the atoning death of Jesus Christ. The subsequent history of that stream, that flowed through the desert and could be tapped and opened at any time and made to give forth from its subterranean depths the fulness of supply for themselves, their children and their cattle, is a still more complete type of the deeper fulness of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and lives of the children of God. Like water, the Holy Spirit satisfies, cleanses and fertilizes. Nothing else can fill the void of the human heart. Nothing else can take away the power of sin. Nothing else can make the desert to bloom as the rose. Two forms of the Spirit’s operations are here set forth, the ordinary and the extraordinary. Even the ordinary work of the Spirit is expressed by the stronger figure, “I will pour water,” but His extraordinary ministry is described by a more emphatic figure, “I will pour floods upon the dry ground.” These floods represent the occasional outpouring of the Spirit of God in seasons of great revival which the church is witnessing now in many places and which earnest Christian hearts are longing to see everywhere.

Such seasons of mighty blessing are powerful witnesses for God, awakening the attention of a careless world and compelling even the most skeptical and indifferent to recognize the reality and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Such seasons, for a time at least, lift up a standard against the enemy and check the prevalence and power of evil as no mere human words or authorities ever can. God becomes His own witness and the scoffer and the sinner are awed and humbled before the majesty of the Lord. Let us pray for such a mighty outpouring of the Holy Ghost in our day. We are warranted to expect such manifestations of divine power especially as the coming of our Lord draws near. These are to be the very signs that will herald His return, “I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh,” He says, “and I will show signs and wonders before the coming of that great and notable day of the Lord.”

III. The fruit.

“They shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses.” One thing about the grass is the multitudinousness of it. Even the little lawn that fronts your cottage has myriads of blades of grass in it, and each one is different from its fellow. When the Holy Ghost comes in power, He will touch myriads of hearts and multitudes will respond to His call and thousands and tens of thousands of souls will flock to the Savior.

Another thing about the grass is its commonness. It represents those things of the Holy Spirit that touch our ordinary life and make its most secular and simple duties to shine with the grace and glory of the Lord.

Then there is nothing more beautiful than the grass; so fresh, so green and so unfading in its verdure. The flowers may come and go, but the grass is perennial. And so the Holy Spirit brings the blessing that is abiding and covers the life of a Christian, the home, the church, with a beauty and a glory that never can fade.

Another fine illustration of the fruit of the Spirit is the willow by the water courses. The most remarkable thing about the willow is that it cannot live apart from the water courses, and so the Christian cannot live without the Holy Ghost. Indeed, it is absolutely true that the more fully we are surrendered to God, the more utterly are we dependent upon Him, so that we cannot take one step or breathe a single breath apart from Him. The willow follows the water, and when the fountains are abundant, its leaves are green and its beauty unfading. I have heard of a gardener who tried for a year to change the shape of a willow which insisted upon growing all to one side. In vain he pruned and slashed at the lopsided branches: they still persisted in growing that way. One day he took a spade and dug down below the roots of the tree and then he found that a subterranean stream was running on the side to which the willow leaned. It simply followed the fountain that fed its life. He put away his pruning knife and he dug a little channel for the river around the other side of the tree, and lo, next year it grew toward the river and became symmetrical and beautiful without a touch of violence.

Beloved, that is what we need to change the deformities of our lives; not more trying, not more suffering, not more scolding, not more condemning of ourselves, but more life, more help, more love, more of the precious grace of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost. Then our lives will grow to Him by whom they are sustained, and it will be true of us, “Of Him and for Him are all things, to whom be glory forever and ever.” Amen.

The prophet next describes the individual blessing that will follow these gracious outpourings.

1.Individual conversion. “One will say, I am the Lord’s.” (Is. 44: 5.) The Holy Spirit will lead souls, one by one, to Christ. How beautiful it is to read in the account of the Welsh revival of people springing up all over the meeting spontaneously and confessing the Savior they had just found. It was not through preaching, but through personal dealing with the Holy Spirit who was present pleading with souls all over the place, and they yielded and confessed Him one by one just as they settled the great transaction. Any one can be saved the moment he is ready to confess Christ as his Savior: “If you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” This is a personal confession directly to God and He accepts it and records the name of the confessor in the Lamb’s book of life.

2. Uniting with the people of God. “Another will call himself by the name of Jacob.” (Is. 44:5.) This undoubtedly represents the identifying of the individual with the Lord’s people. When the Holy Spirit truly leads souls to Christ, they always want to belong to His people. How quickly all censorious criticism about churches and church members disappears and the true and humble spirit turns to the children of God for fellowship, sympathy and help. It is the duty of the young convert to attach himself to the fold of Christ, and although there may be many imperfections in the visible church, yet it is far safer to be inside than outside and all who truly love the Master will want to be identified with some branch of His cause.

3. The covenanted life. “Another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord.” (Is. 44: 5.) This represents that closer covenant into which it is the privilege of the individual soul to enter with the Lord Jesus. Dr. Phillip Dodridge recommends to young Christians to write down their covenant and formally sign it and ratify it, and then preserve it, and he suggests a very solemn form in which the soul may give itself to the Lord and claim His covenant blessing.

There is no doubt that such personal covenants have brought great blessing to those that have faithfully kept them and as we look back upon the records of our own lives we shall find that even where we have failed “He abides faithful.”

4. Higher spiritual blessing. The next clause, “and surname himself by the name of Israel” (Is. 44: 5), seems to express the highest spiritual experiences. Israel stands for much more than Jacob. It marks the second stage of the patriarch’s spiritual life when the Supplanter became the Prince of God. When the Holy Spirit comes, He leads the willing heart in the deeper and highest things of God. He shows the young convert that it is his privilege to be baptized with the Holy Ghost, to receive the Lord Jesus as an indwelling presence, to be delivered from the power of self and sin and to enter into a life of abiding victory, rest and power.

Indeed, these are among the richest fruits of every true revival, and no wise Christian worker will be satisfied until the souls committed to his care have been led into all the fulness of Christ. This is presented here as a voluntary act and as the privilege of all who are willing to rise to it. God does not force His best things upon us, but offers them to our holy ambition.

Shall we, as we realize this mighty promise, rise to it for ourselves and claim, even as we read these lines, these showers of blessing, these floods of power and these glorious fruits for our own individual Christian life and the cause and kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.” (Isa. 61: 1, 2.)

The New Testament quotation of this verse leaves no doubt of its Messianic meaning. To say that it was only the prophet’s vision of his own inspiration is beneath its obvious meaning and the grandeur of its true application. In this verse the Lord Jesus is personified in anticipation of His future ministry and applies to Himself the language which He afterwards uttered with His own lips in the synagogue at Nazareth. There came a day when the Master went forth from Nazareth after thirty years of quiet, patient toil, to the banks of the Jordan and, offering up His life to the Father and the world in the beautiful, symbolical rite of baptism, received from the open heavens the visible baptism of the Holy Ghost and the distinct testimony of His Father’s voice to His divine Sonship and Messiahship.

Then came forty days of testing and conflict in the wilderness and this led up to a deeper baptism of the Spirit and the commencement of His public ministry. Speaking of it in the context before us, Luke says, “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee and there went out a fame of Him through the regions round about, and He taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.”

It was eminently proper that the first public announcement of the objects of His ministry should be made at Nazareth, His former home. Therefore, with deliberate purpose, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and being recognized already as a Rabbi and public teacher, the leader of the services courteously offered to Him the scroll of the sacred Scriptures and invited Him to give some message in connection with the services of the day. Turning at once to this passage in Isaiah, He read the text, and then, stopping abruptly before reading the last clause about the “day of vengeance of our God,” He closed the book or scroll, and sitting down began to offer, as was customary, a few words of exposition and application. His very first sentence awakened the astonished interest of all His audience as, applying the prophecy directly to Himself, He declared, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.” There can therefore be no doubt about the meaning of the prophecy and its application to our Lord Himself.

The first lesson suggested by the text and its historical fulfilment is:

I. The Relation of the Holy Spirit to Christ.

This is a subject that is well worthy of the closest study, for it teaches us much practical truth not only in connection with the Master, but also with our own spiritual life. For if He was our Forerunner, and if it be true that “as He is, so are we also in this world,” then the definite steps of our Lord’s experience should be repeated and fulfilled in the lives of His followers. There is no doubt that in some sense the Lord Jesus had the Presence of the Holy Spirit in connection with His birth and His early life. The announcement of His birth stated explicitly, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon you and the power of the highest shall overshadow you; therefore that Holy Thing that shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God.” Christ therefore was born in His Divine and human Person through the Holy Ghost. Nor can we question whether the wonderful grace and wisdom which marked His childhood and youth were the result of the Holy Spirit’s influence. And yet there came a day when in some entirely new and higher sense the Holy Spirit, like a dove, descended and abode upon Him. From that time there were two personalities connected with the life and work of our Lord Jesus; the Son of God was in direct union with the Spirit of God, and all His words and all His works were inspired by the Holy Ghost. He could truly say, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me for He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.” Indeed, from this time He attributed all His works to the power of the Holy Ghost who dwelt in Him, and one of the very reasons why the sin of rejecting Him was so aggravated was just because it was a sin not only against Him, but against the Holy Spirit who dwelt in Him and spoke and worked through Him.

Now, if this be true of the Master, it should also be true of His followers. If our Lord did not venture to begin His public ministry until He had been baptized with power from on high, and if he attributed all His work to the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost, what folly and presumption it must be for us to try to serve Him by our own resources, gifts and wisdom. Is it applying the parallel too rigidly to say that just as He was born of the Spirit and yet afterwards baptized of the Spirit in the sense of a direct personal union and indwelling of the Holy Ghost, so likewise His people should not only experience a new birth through the grace and power of the Holy Ghost, but should yield themselves, as He did in His baptism, for the indwelling and abiding of the Comforter in the very same sense in which the Spirit came to Him? There is no stronger argument for the scripturalness of this deeper experience which God is giving to so many of His children in these days than the example of the Master Himself.

Beloved reader, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed, and have you been endowed with power from on high for your life and work even as He?

But this truth has another side, not only affecting our individual privileges as believers, but the whole gospel dispensation. In one very remarkable passage, the Lord Jesus explained to His disciples the reason why He wrought His miracles by the power of the Holy Ghost. “If I by the Spirit of God cast out demons,” He said, “then no doubt the kingdom of God is come near unto you.” It was as if He had said, “If I perform My miracles and accomplish My work by virtue of My own inherent power and deity, and then withdraw from the world after My resurrection and ascension, it might be said that I had taken the power with Me; but if, on the other hand, these ministries and miracles are accomplished not by My own inherent power, but by the Spirit that dwells in Me, and is afterwards to dwell in you and perpetuate My ministry, then indeed the kingdom of God is come near to you. The gifts and powers of the kingdom are not withdrawn by My return to heaven, but they continue permanently through all the future generations of the Christian age, and the Holy Ghost still carries on My work just as truly as I have begun to carry it on during My earthly ministry.” This gives perpetuity to all the supernatural features of Christ’s life and work and the apostolic age and, as some one has said with great beauty and power, it makes the Lord Jesus our contemporary to the end of time. Then we should cease to talk about the apostolic age as though it were a privileged period, for there is but one age, the age of the Holy Ghost, and we are living in it just as truly as the apostles and immediate followers of the Lord Jesus were.

What a blessed reality all this gives to our Christian faith and hope! The kingdom of God has indeed come near to us. It is in our midst, and the promise of the departing Master is just as true as we will allow Him to make it. “Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the age.” “He that believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto My Father.” When this fully dawns upon the conception of the church of God, she will arise to her heavenly birthright, and the promise of Joel will be fulfilled in a more glorious way than has been witnessed even in the past. “I will show signs and wonders in heaven above and on the earth beneath before the coming of the great and notable day of the Lord.”

II. The Holy Ghost and the gospel.

Not only does this glorious text give us the revelation of the Spirit in His relation to Christ, but an equally blessed revelation of the Spirit in His relation to the gospel, for the Holy Spirit came upon Christ to anoint Him for the publication of the gospel, and the same Holy Ghost still comes upon the church and ministry for the same purpose and with the same gospel.

What a glorious gospel it is, and what a glorious thing to think about it, not merely as the gospel of Jesus Christ, but as the gospel of the Holy Ghost; for it is not only a proclamation once made by lips that are dead, but it is a proclamation repeated afresh to every soul that will receive it by the very One who first breathed it from the lips of Christ, the Holy Comforter. Some one has well called it the gospel of the Jubilee, for the whole setting of this proclamation is just a figure and the frame of Israel’s ancient year of Jubilee.

There was nothing more splendid in all the glorious ceremonial ritual of ancient Israel than the event of the fiftieth year, or the year of Jubilee. It was a great national festival a whole year long, and its one keynote was rejoicing and gladness. With the early dawn of the tenth day of the seventh month, the glad trumpets of the Jubilee were heard resounding from every mountain top throughout the land, and immediately the whole nation set itself to keep the glad holiday for an entire year. Even the fields rested from their accustomed harvest, the workman laid aside the implements of his toil and the very cattle entered into the national rest and rejoicing. Then you could have seen the little family circles all over the land wending their way back to the little cottage, which years before they had been obliged to leave as it was mortgaged and sold over their heads; but on the year of Jubilee all debts were canceled, all mortgages were worthless, all lost estates were restored, and again with tears and songs of gladness they embraced each other on the threshold of their home and felt that they were back to their own again. And as they sat rejoicing under their vine and fig tree, here and there you might behold a son or a daughter welcomed home. They had been slaves in some distant town, or some wealthy family, and had to serve for weary years in payment of some debt or obligation, but now they were free. The year of Jubilee emancipated every slave, and fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, welcomed back the lost one to the family circle. There too, you could have seen the prisoner stepping out from his dungeon and hastening to his home and beginning life again with the assurance that all his liabilities, disabilities and reproaches were blotted out by this glad year of emancipation. It was just a little bit of heaven let down on earth and might well afford a splendid figure of that glorious age of happiness, hope and holy liberty which the Lord Jesus and the glorious gospel have brought to men and which His second coming in a little while will bring to grander consummation.

It is to this our text refers when it says, “To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” But indeed, every clause and every phrase has a note of the Jubilee in it; good tidings to the poor, liberty to the captive, joy to the broken hearted: all these are just fulfilments of the ancient type. Four points will sufficiently sum up this gospel of the Jubilee.

1. The payment of all debts. The Jubilee canceled every debt, and so the coming of the Lord has provided for our debt of sin and blotted out our condemnation, and given to us God’s decree of righteousness and making us “accepted in the beloved” “even as He.”

2. Liberty to the captives. Christ has brought us deliverance from the slavery of sin and Satan, and power to overcome our old hearts, our evil habits, and all our temptations and spiritual foes. Not only is this the Gospel of Christ, but it is the Gospel of the Holy Ghost. Not only was it proclaimed once, but it is made real ten thousand times as men receive Him and let Him work it out in their surrendered lives.

3. The restoration of our lost heritages. The Jubilee gave back the home that had been forfeited, and the inheritance that had been lost; and so Christ comes to us proclaiming:

“You that have sold for naught
Your heritage above,
Receive it back unbought,
The price of Jesus’ love;
The year of Jubilee has come,
Return, you ransomed sinners, home.”

Not only has Christ proclaimed it, but the Holy Ghost is constantly making it true. He comes to the discouraged life dragged down by its hopeless past and He says, “I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten.” Oh this blessed Friend, that gives back the things that we have lost. No life is too blighted, no past is too discouraging, no case is too hard for His grace and power.

“Nothing is too hard for Jesus;
No man can work like Him.”

But all this is as nothing compared with what awaits us in the days of restitution which His coming again is to bring back; our moldering body, our departed friends, our lost paradise, and it shall be true

“Our more than Egypt’s shame
Exchanged for Canaan’s glory,
And our lost heaven won.”

4. Above all else the year of Jubilee was a year of joy and the gospel of the Holy Ghost is a gospel of gladness. The Holy Spirit is the messenger and the source of peace and lasting joy. We do not need to go to heaven to know its joys. “The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.”

Now all this is not an old gospel merely, but a gospel ever new. The blessed Spirit is with us not only to whisper it to the troubled heart, but to make it real in our deepest life. Let us not attempt to preach that gospel without “the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.” Salvation is not a creed; it is a life, and the world is yet to realize all that is meant by the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. Oh, that we might have in our hearts the joy that He brings to commend this gospel, and that we might so believe in Him that He will also work in the hearts of all who hear and make our gospel to be not in word only, but in power.

But there is one impressive fact in connection with this text that we must not pass by without a further reference. It was not without deep significance that the Lord Jesus paused and “closed the book” at the passage in the prophecy which He did. The book which He closed was the record of judgment, “the day of vengeance of our Lord.” The time for that had not yet come. This is the day of grace, the day of mercy, the day of probation, but we read in the sacred volume of a day when the “books shall be opened.” The Lord will take up the scroll again and turn to the place where He left off, and the heavens will echo with that last clause, “the day of vengeance of our God.” The parenthesis of grace is almost over, the climax will come with His appearing. Dear reader, make haste to know Him as your Friend and Savior before you meet Him as your Judge. Make haste to take refuge in the gospel of the Jubilee before you shall be awakened by the trumpet of the judgment.

There is a story told of a lady who had a case at law that caused her much concern. She went to an attorney and asked him to take it up, and he was disposed to do so, although the case was a bad one, but he said, “If you will commit it to my hands, I can carry you through.” Day after day she dallied and delayed, until at last the summons came to her that the case was coming on for hearing and she must at once decide upon her course of defense. She hastened to the attorney and said, “I am ready now to give you the case.” His answer filled her with confusion and despair. “Madam,” he said, “it is too late. I would have taken your case if you had come to me sooner, and I could have carried you through. I was willing to act as your attorney, but within the last few days I have been appointed to be your judge, and when the case comes up for hearing, I must sit upon it not as your friend, but as an impartial arbiter of your fate. You should have come to me before.”

The illustration needs no application. This is the day of grace. Tomorrow will be the day of judgment. Oh, take the Savior as your Advocate before you have to meet Him as your Judge.

“The voice of him that cries in the wilderness; prepare you the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (Is. 40: 3.)

This chapter opens the third section of the prophecies of the book of Isaiah relating to the return, consisting chiefly of longer captives from the exile and the coming of the Messiah.

Many modern critics hold that it was written by a second Isaiah in the time of the captivity, and one hundred and fifty years after the earlier portion of the book. Conservative expositors still hold to the old view that the prophet anticipated the future and wrote in inspired vision of things to come as if they were taking place at the time.

The text is written from the standpoint of the exile. The captives are waiting in sorrow and bondage for the coming of the Lord to set them free. The one bright hope of their bondage is, “Behold, the Lord shall come with strong hand, and His arm shall rule before Him. He shall lead His flock like a shepherd.” But this coming of the Lord for Israel’s deliverance was but a type of all those other comings which were to follow at the great epochs of the ages. A few centuries later He was to come again in the flesh as the incarnate Son of God. The promise also may well include the coming of the Holy Spirit in times of special blessing to the church of God; a coming such as God’s people are waiting and praying for today in every land. The climax of all these comings will be the glorious return of our Lord and King “when He shall come to be glorified in His saints and admired in all them that believe.”

The prophet calls upon the people to prepare for the coming of their king, and this is also a summons to us bidding us to meet the conditions which will bring His presence in our midst and in our day.

There are five voices in this dramatic passage that speak in the wilderness, each with a distinct message.

The first is the voice of divine love and pardon, assuring the people of God’s forgiveness and grace.

The second is the voice of preparation that bids them get ready for His presence, for He is to come Himself to dwell among them.

The third is the voice of the Spirit as He breathes upon all fleshly and forbidden things, and leads them down into that deeper death which is to bring the spiritual realization of the promise.

The fourth is the voice of faith as it proclaims from the mountain tops the glad tidings to Jerusalem and Zion, “Behold, your King comes.” And the last is the voice of God Himself responding to their faith and declaring, “Behold, your God shall come with strong hand, and His arm shall rule before Him. Behold, His reward is with Him and His work before Him. He shall feed His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with His arms, carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.” (Is. 40: 10, 11.)

I. The voice of pardon.

The Hebrew construction here is dramatic and beautiful. Softly breathing upon the air like the faint notes of rising music comes the whisper, “Comfort you My people, says the Lord; speak to the heart of Jerusalem.” (Is. 40: 1.) It is like a love note wooing a maiden’s heart. Then the notes rise to bolder tones and ring out like a trumpet call, “Cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished,” or, as the margin reads, “that her appointed time has come; that her iniquity is pardoned, for she has received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” (Is. 40: 2.)

The very first thing that is necessary in our preparing to meet the Lord is that we should accept His grace, dismiss our doubts and fears and be reconciled at our Father’s feet. We can have no fellowship with God while guilt and fear interpose their heavy clouds between us and His love. God meets us with the frank and full proclamation of His grace and love and bids us accept His pardon without conditions and without reserve. The very first thing for the sinner to do is to receive God’s mercy. You may not be able to understand how He can offer you such grace, but that is His business, not yours; it is yours to take it in thankful confidence and enter into the relations of a forgiven and accepted child. Then He can lead you on into all the fulness of his manifested presence and deeper blessing.

“She has received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” (Is. 40: 2.) This is a strange and striking announcement. Does it mean that God’s mercy is given on the principle that where sin abounded, grace should much more abound? Does He, in His marvelous generosity, treat us so much better than we deserve, that the most unworthy receive most richly of His grace?

Or does this double portion mean that the sufferings of Israel were a type of the sufferings of their great Messiah; that Israel, the servant of the Lord, was fulfilling in some measure now the vicarious work of the greater Servant of the Lord that was soon to come, and that their calamities as a nation had been a foreshadowing of that great atonement which was to be made for them by the Son of Man, and which was, as it were, discounted and anticipated now in the mercy of God and deemed a double satisfaction for all their sins? This, at least, we know: His great sacrifice is the ground of our forgiveness and salvation, and that it is for every believing soul,

“Of sin the double cure,
Cleansing from its guilt and power.”

If we would prepare for the deeper blessing which the Lord is waiting to give, let us begin at the foot of the cross; let us take the riches of His grace in Jesus Christ and God’s double for all our sins.

II. The voice of preparation.

“The voice of him that cries in the wilderness, Prepare you the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” (Is. 40: 3-5).

After God meets us in His pardon and love, there is a deeper experience into which He would bring us. He wants to come Himself and dwell within us. This is the climax of the believer’s experience, the highest possibility of blessing here. But for this we must prepare the way. The promise also includes His coming in blessing to His church and people. There are special seasons of spiritual blessing promised to the church and the people of God. The Holy Ghost does come in a very glorious way and give power to His word and salvation to His people; but for this also there must be special preparation. The crooked must be made straight and the rough places plain. The stumbling-blocks must be removed and the way of the Lord prepared. To each conscience and heart the light will come directly and individually. If we want to know, God will show us what hinders the fulness of blessing, and He will make us both willing and able to put it aside and then He will come into our own hearts and through us into the hearts of others in the fulness of His power and blessing. Is He speaking this word to the conscience of any reader of these lines? Are there low places in our life that should be raised to a higher level of fellowship and obedience? Are there crooked places that need to be made straight? Are there rough places that need to be made smooth? Is there sin unconfessed and uncleansed? Is there strife or strain with any fellow Christian? Is there any forbidden thing in our relations with man or woman? Is there a neglect of the family altar, the Word of God, the house of God and the habit of secret prayer? Is there something which stands out before the searchlight of the Holy Ghost as we read these lines, and which we know is a stumbling-block and a hindrance in our life? God help us to meet it without reserve, and so to open the way that the glory of the Lord shall be revealed in our hearts and lives and divine things shall shine with a beauty and reality so heavenly that it will almost seem as if we had never known the Lord before. God is waiting to show His glory and to lift us to a plane where all that we have known of His grace and blessing shall seem but as the light of the moon to the sunshine of His face. Shall we prepare the way of the Lord?

III. The voice of the Spirit.

“The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodness thereof is as the flower of the field; the grass withers, the flower fades because the Spirit of the Lord blows upon it. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God shall stand forever.” (Is. 40: 6-8.)

There is a still more searching, penetrating voice. It is the very breath of the Spirit, withering our fleshly life and bringing to death all that is of the old natural life, that we may rise to the supernatural and resurrection life with our risen Lord, and His Word may have free course through all our being. Life must always begin with death, both in the individual soul and the church work of the Master. God cannot purify or improve the flesh. It must be condemned and crucified, and God cannot use the worldly and unscriptural methods by which the church too often is seeking, through fleshly means, to bring people to its fold. All this must die, and through the simplicity and power of His Word and Spirit alone the work must be accomplished. Oh, how much rubbish in the form of religious machinery and manmade revivals must be got out of the way before the Holy Ghost can come in the fulness of His power, and how much of mere sentimentalism and worthless formalism must be burned out of our individual experience before we can go down to death with our Lord and come forth in the fulness of His resurrection life!

IV. The voice of faith.

The next voice rings out in trumpet notes of confidence from the mountain height. It is the voice of faith proclaiming that the blessing has begun and the Lord Himself is coming to His people. The Greek translation is, “Oh, you that bring good tidings unto Zion, get up into the high mountain; Oh, you that bring good tidings unto Jerusalem, lift up your voice with strength, say unto the cities of Judah: Behold, your God.” (Is. 40: 9.) The herald of faith must precede the coming of the Lord. We must believe before we can receive, whether for ourselves or for the work of the Master, and we must believe so utterly and unreservedly that we shall not fear to commit ourselves to our confidence and go forth to confess our blessing.

V. Finally, the voice of God Himself responds, “Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him.” (Is. 10: 10.)

He will come in power. He will come to bring things to pass. He will come to answer prayer. He will come to silence the adversary and deliver His people. He will come to convict the indifferent and unbelieving world of sin. He will come to break down hardened hearts. He will come to lead ungodly men to the feet of Jesus and save the worst of sinners, and separate His people from the world and sin and reenact once more the victories of Pentecost. He will come to do the things we cannot do. He will come to consecrate the wealth of His selfish people and enable them to go forth with the message of salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth. He will come to silence the voice of unbelief and answer the unbeliever and the agnostic, not with words, but with mighty demonstrations of His power and presence.

And He will come in providence as well as grace to judge among the nations and prepare the way for His more glorious coming as earth’s millennial King. Already we see some signs of His mighty working as the Ancient of Days and the Judge of sinful nations, but we are to behold more wondrous things as the latter days hasten to their consummation.

But these things must come to pass first through the revelation of His power in the hearts of His people. It is true His body, the church, with the Head, is to work in the victories of His providence in the world; and so it is from a great awakening that there must come the prayer, the faith and the cooperation that are to bring the mightier victories of His hand in the world at large. “He is able to do exceedingly above all that we ask or think,” but it is “according to the power that works in us” that His mighty working in the world is to be revealed. He works through His people, and according to their faith and spiritual preparation.

If, therefore, we would see the coming of our King in glory and the preparation of the world to meet Him, let us first receive Him in our own hearts, and work and pray for the opening of the hearts of His people everywhere for His incoming and indwelling, until the standard of Christian life shall rise to such a level that God can accomplish through His people all the highest possibilities of His promise and His grace.

The expression “His reward is with Him” literally means His recompense. This has reference, no doubt, to His judicial working in connection with the wicked and sinful nations of men. Already we see Him dealing with them in judgment and giving to us some pledges of that far-reaching and impartial retribution which He is yet to mete out to those that have oppressed His people and abused their sacred trust as the selfish and sinful rulers of this godless age. We are to expect more and more the manifestations of His judgments as His people rise to that plane of holy fellowship which will enable them to stand with Him in the conflicts and victories of these last days.

But it is not all judgment. It is not all power. He is coming also in the gentleness of His grace. “He shall feed His flock like a shepherd.” (Is. 40: 11.) His coming will bring His people into all that is meant by the “green pastures” and the “still waters” of His grace. And His coming is to include the children, too. “He shall gather together the lambs in His arm and carry them in His bosom.” But what is meant by this last clause, “He shall gently lead those that are with young?” Perhaps it is the picture of the tenderness with which the shepherd will guard them in the helplessness of motherhood; not hurrying or driving them as the cruel conqueror when he carried them across the land in that fearful captivity which we find depicted on the Babylonian monuments showing the brutal soldiers driving helpless women and children before them, and tossing aside the weak and fainting ones to perish by the wayside. Not so will this gentle Shepherd lead His flock, but with tender care will He conduct them in the noontide heat and rest them by the still waters, and carry the feeble ones in His loving arms.

But the phrase has perhaps a different meaning. “Those that are with young” would seem to suggest the mother and the young as they travel together. And when the mother is unwilling to follow the shepherd he sometimes carries the lamb across the river, and then she follows because her lamb has gone before. So sometimes He has led us by taking our loved ones from us and calling them on before, that we might follow them when we would not follow Him.

So He is waiting to come; to come to our hearts in personal blessing; to come to our work in the power of the Holy Ghost; and to come again in the fulness of His glory and make all things new. Do we long for His coming? Then let us arise and “prepare the way of the Lord.”

I have long time held my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: now will I cry like a travailing woman; I will destroy and devour at once (margin: I will gasp and pant together. R.V.). (Is. 42: 14.)

This impassioned text has been appropriately and not irreverently described as the passion of God. But it is not the only passage in this intense prophetic volume which expresses the majestic appearing of Jehovah as He arises for the vindication of His glory and the deliverance of His people. Again and again we find the prophet’s soul enkindled to the most sublime enthusiasm as he describes the march of God’s glorious purpose towards its end. The picture becomes a sort of heavenly drama in which the heart of God upon the throne and the Holy Spirit in the church below move in sympathy in the mighty conflict.

Our text is really associated with a number of similar texts which together afford a striking picture of the intense conflict in the heavenly places which is ever going forward with intenser force as the crisis of the age draws nigh.

I. The cry.

The first passage in this sublime drama is Isaiah 64: 1-4, “Oh, that You would rend the heavens, that You would come down, that the mountains might flow down at Your presence, as when the melting fire burns, the fire causes the waters to boil, to make Your name known to Your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Your presence. When You did terrible things which we looked not for, You came down, the mountains flowed down at Your presence. For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither has the eye seen, O God, beside You, what He has prepared for him that wait for Him.”

This is the cry of the waiting soul for God to reveal Himself in the majesty of His glory and His power. There are times when the hearts of men seem to have become so stupidly indifferent, when the church herself is so fast asleep, and when even earnest hearts seem to have settled down to such a dead level of self-content, that the praying souls who look out upon the religious conditions of our time are compelled to send up this passionate cry as they feel that nothing less than the very dynamite of God can clear the air and wake the dead.

It is like one of those days which sometimes come in summer when the atmosphere is so sultry and the air so dead that we breathe by gasps, and after a while we instinctively look out upon the horizon and long for the electric storm, the cleaving lightning and the crashing thunder to break the awful spell, to clear the air and restore our vital breath.

Such a condition is upon us today in the religious history of our time. The public conscience is so corrupted that vice has ceased to stir us. The horrors of war grow insipid through the hardening influence of habit. The moral and social standards of mankind and the tone of public opinion grow looser and lower. The chief interest of the study even of God’s Holy Word is centered upon the excitement of higher criticism. Intellectual doubt has pushed aside the simple faith of other days. The world has swept away the barriers of separation and the church is sleeping on the enchanted ground of self-complacency. Even those who know and love the Master best feel paralyzed by the presence of depressing conditions in the air, and Zion’s watchmen are crying out in desperate earnestness, “Oh that You would rend the heavens and come down.” (Is. 64: 1.)

This is not a figure of speech referring to God’s historical manifestation at Mt. Sinai and in the wilderness or as He came in Isaiah’s time to destroy the armies of Sennacherib and deliver Jerusalem, for as we read the passage through we find that verse four forms part of one of the most important quotations in one of Paul’s epistles to the Corinthians. (1 Cor. 2: 9, 10.) There he applies all this directly to the Holy Spirit, “Eye has not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him, but God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit.”

This mighty revelation of God for which the prophet cries is not a mere miraculous display of His glory and His power before the nations, but a spiritual coming of the Holy Ghost to the hearts of His people as they seek Him in earnestness and faith, for he adds (Is. 64: 5), “You meet him that rejoices and works righteousness.” God is waiting therefore to reveal to earnest souls the glory of His grace and power in a measure such as “eye has not seen nor ear heard,” nor our highest spiritual conceptions have ever dreamed. Shall we meet His challenge? Shall we send up the cry until the heavens open and God comes down in the revelation of His presence and His power, and the mountains of opposition and iniquity melt away at His presence, and the melting fire of apostolic love kindles the heart of the church of God, and the waters boil in the engines of our spiritual machinery, and the power of God goes forth into every agency of Christian work and world-wide evangelization?

That is what the prayer may mean according as our faith will dare to claim it. God give us the prayer and the answer until the church of God shall wake from her debasing slumber and once more stand forth “fair as the moon, clear as the sun and terrible as an army with banners.”

II. The answer.

Our text proper is the answer to this cry. “I have long time held My peace; I have been still and refrained myself : now will I cry like a travailing woman. (Is. 42: 14.) The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man, He shall stir up jealousy like a man of war: He shall cry, yes, roar; He shall prevail against His enemies.” (Is. 42: 13).

Yes, God waits and suffers long. The cry of the needy seems unheeded, the triumph of the proud appears unchallenged, the prayer of the saint finds no answer, but God is not asleep or dead. Prayer is accumulating before the throne. God is waiting until the cup of sin is full and the moment strikes when all the forces of His omnipotence are let loose in a cyclone of glorious power and victorious majesty.

What a blending of splendid figures we have here! There is the shout of the warrior. There is the cry of the travailing woman. There is the convulsion of a great cyclone. There is the gasp and the panting of a mighty wrestle, and there is the final overthrow of every obstacle and opposition. What does all this mean?

1. It is a picture of the heart of God. Our heavenly Father is not a selfish embodiment of isolation and power like the Buddhist’s dream of Nirvana, but a great, loving, living heart in constant touch with the needs of His people and the conditions of the world over which He reigns. He that made the heart of the soldier has in Him all the heroic qualities which have illuminated the battlefields of earth. He who made the tempest and the lightning has in Him all the force of which they are but heart throbs. He who gave the mother her passionate love has in Him all the depths of maternal tenderness for His suffering children. He who created the father’s heart is the great Father Himself. Look at Him as He seeks for His lost Adam amid the shades of Eden crying, “Adam, where are you?” Listen to Him as He cries out over a sin-cursed world, “It repents Me that I have made man and I will destroy him from the face of the earth.” (Gen. 6: 6, 7.) Listen again as He cries over the sufferings of Israel in the brick-fields of Egypt, “I have seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt and have heard their cry, for I know their sorrows.” (Ex. 3: 7.) Hear Him as He wails over Ephraim, His prodigal child, “How shall I give you up, Ephraim; how shall I deliver you, Israel? My heart is turned within Me; My repentings are kindled together.” (Hosea 11: 8.) Listen as He pleads through Jeremiah with His wandering bride, Israel. “I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the love of your espousals.” (Jer. 2: 2.) Listen again as there falls from heaven the sweet cadence of His love. “Like as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him, for He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust.” (Ps. 103: 13, 14.) And yet once more a softer cadence falls and the words breathe out the tenderest depths of maternal love. “As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you, and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” (Is. 66: 13.)

Yes, that is the great Heart whose pulse beats move the mighty universe and throb responsive to His children’s need and His people’s cry. He will not always be silent. He will respond.

“Oh, watchers on the mountain height,
Stand firm and steadfast there;
Oh, wrestlers in the vale beneath,
Cease not your sevenfold prayer;
God will not always wait; He will
Accept your sacrifice;
Oh, loving hearts and praying hands,
God will in love arise.”

2. It means not only the heart of God, but the passion of Christ, His beloved Son. Isaiah has given us a picture of this passion. (Is. 58: 1-5). He beholds a mighty Conqueror marching from Edom, glorious in His apparel and yet with garments stained with blood; and as he listens the Conqueror proclaims His mighty name, “I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” But the prophet asks, “Why are You red in Your apparel, and Your garments like him that treads in the wine fat?” Once more comes the answer, “I have trodden the winepress alone. I looked and there was none to help; I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore My own arm brought salvation unto Me, and My fury, it upheld Me.”

This is a picture of the Son of God in the mighty conflict of redemption. The passion of His Father’s heart was passed on to Him, and with obedience and willing love He has hastened down to meet the awful emergency and lead the mightiest battle of the ages. The hate of Satan, the opposition of men, the power of earth and hell were all arrayed against Him and as He pressed through to the cross, He cried in the intensity of His agony, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished.” (Luke 12: 50.) The curtain rises for a moment on that agony in Gethsemane and His sweat is as great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Once more He seems to sink in dying anguish on the cross, but again we hear the shout of victory, “It is finished,” and we see the rending gates of death as He comes forth a conqueror in His resurrection. He passes through the heavenly gates in His ascension glory, but even there the conflict does not end. Still He is regarded as the great High Priest and mediatorial King. Still He is leading the hosts of God as the Captain of our salvation, and still we hear the shout of the Conqueror, and we feel the falling tear of the Sufferer as “He is able to be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” Bending from the throne, He whispers to persecuting Saul, “Why do you persecute Me?” Pleading at the closed heart of the sinner, He cries, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” (Rev. 3: 20.)

Yes, it is the passion of God still in the heart of Jesus, and the conflict must still go on until the last enemy is subdued and the last saint is gathered home.

3. The passion of the Holy Ghost. The Father passes on the burden to His beloved Son, and the Son in turn has transferred it to the Holy Ghost. It is His high vocation to finish the work which Jesus began upon earth. Unlike the Lord Jesus, the Holy Ghost has no body of His own, and therefore His conflict is carried on in the body of Christ, which is the church. It is our hearts that must feel His agony. It is our lips that must breathe His prayer. It is our hands that must be responsive to His touch. And in all this we are but representing our Living Head, the Lord Jesus in heaven as well as our Living Heart, the Holy Ghost on earth.

Now, the Spirit is constantly represented in the New Testament as a suffering, sympathizing Being. We can “grieve” Him, thus implying that His heart is sensitive to slight and to sorrow. The Apostle James tells us that “The Holy Spirit that dwells in us loves us to jealousy.” Therefore we can wound His jealous love by failing to meet His expectations and give to God our whole devotion. In a very remarkable passage in the eighth chapter of Romans, He is said to make “intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.” These groanings represent the agony of prayer by which He works out in the hearts of His people the victories of grace.

In yet another passage (Eph. 6: 10-18) we find Him leading the great conflict in the heavenly places where the weapon is “the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God,” and the agency of victory is “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.” So we find the Holy Ghost sharing the passion of God and all through the Christian age representing the suffering of heaven in the long agony of the redemption’s conflict.

4. The cooperation of the people of God. But it is through the hearts of His people that the Holy Ghost must work, and if we are not responsive to His touch, how can He work? If you had a paralyzed tongue and arms and limbs enfeebled by disease, your brain might think never so wisely, your will might purpose never so forcibly, but all would be futile if your tongue refused to speak a word, your feet to move to the message and your hands to fulfil the plan.

So the Holy Ghost is hindered by the unresponsiveness of His people and the agony is often caused chiefly by His struggle to awaken our slumbering souls to understand His thought and to enter into His prayer. As we look back through the history of earnest lives, we find that the servants of God were sufferers. Jeremiah was like a sensitive harp echoing every sorrow of his suffering people. “Oh that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears,” was his cry, “that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.” Again he cries, “I said, I will not make mention of Him nor speak any more in His name; but His Word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing and I could not stay.”

We find the great Isaiah crying out as he watches the burden of Dumah, “My loins are filled with pain; pains have taken hold of me as the pains of a woman that travails; my heart panted; fearfulness frightened me. Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning comes and also the night.”

Habakkuk, the poet prophet, pleaded with God, “Oh Lord, revive Your work in the midst of the years, in wrath remember mercy,” and God answers his prayer by a hurricane of power. “His glory covered the heavens and the earth was full of His praise; the mountains saw You and they trembled, the overflowing of the water passed by; the deep uttered his voice and lifted up his hands on high; You went forth for the salvation of Your people.”

We find Deborah raised up in Israel as the counselor of Barak; and while he leads the battle in the front, she waits in her tent in a greater conflict of prayer. As she prays, the whole panorama passes before her until the enemy is scattered and the shout of triumph rises over the land and Deborah is in it all, and as the cyclone in her soul subsides in peace, she breathes out her glad relief in the cry, “O my soul, you have trodden down strength.”

It was thus that Elijah prayed on Carmel when his body was bowed together in soul travail until an answer came.

It was thus that Paul described his spiritual sufferings for his flock. “I want you to know what great conflict I have for you,” and then he explains it all in that profound passage (Col. 1: 24), “I rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, the church.” And a little later (Col. 1: 29), “I also labor, striving according to His working, which works in me mightily.”

Writing to the Galatians he says, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth, until Christ be formed in you,” and to the Philippians he says, “God is my record how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ,” and it is with reference to them he writes, “Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake, having the same conflict which you saw in me and now hear to be in me.”

This is the very mystery of fellowship with Jesus. This is the deepest secret of power. This is the highest service that we can render to Christ and His church. Sometimes the prayer becomes a groan until we think our prayer is lost, but that is the very moment when it has overcome.

Sometimes God lays upon a praying one the burden of a worker, and while the one is active, the other is silent, and yet the silent force is the real power. Anna Shipton tells of having had upon her heart for some weeks a minister of Christ in a ceaseless agony of prayer. During that time, ignorant altogether of her prayer for him, he was led into the fulness of Christ and became the instrument in the salvation of scores of souls, and never knew until afterwards that the secret of it all was a silent, suffering life which was not even in outward contact with him.

This was the secret of that wonderful revival that has lately swept through the valleys of Wales. This was the secret of the power of David Brainard, Jonathan Edwards and William Burns. It is this that is to set the church on fire with consecration and holiness. It is this that is to awaken a zeal which will give to her languid work something of the energy of the great enterprise of modern commerce. It is this that is to bring the great evangelistic and missionary campaign which will give the gospel as a witness to the world and prepare the way of our coming Lord. And it is this which is to set in motion the mighty forces of providence among the nations which will “overturn and overturn and overturn until He shall come whose right it is.”

There was a man in ancient Babylon to whom God gave the name, “Oh, man of desires.” The secret of Daniel’s character was a great capacity for holy desire. He had insatiable longings for the kingdom of God, and he prayed them out for weeks together in an agony of love. What followed?

The mightiest conqueror on earth was sitting upon the throne of the empire. Cyrus, sated with conquests, had nothing more to ask of earthly success. Suddenly there came to him a strange purpose and he issued a decree telling the world that the Lord God of heaven had commanded him to build Him a house in Jerusalem and to send back the captive Jews. But behind that decree and that band of returning captives and that restored city and temple, see that “man of desires” silently praying in Babylon.

Or shall we look at a still grander vision? There is silence in heaven. The voice of God has hushed every angelic song, for the prayers of the saints are being brought in. They have been long accumulating, they have been treasured up in golden vials. God sends for them to be presented at His throne, and as He breathes in their sweetness, mingled with the incense of the great High Priest Himself, no sound is permitted to disturb the sacred hour. But this is not all. The command is next given to take these prayers and pour them out upon the earth again, and as they are emptied back upon the world from which they came, lo, there are voices and thunderings and a great earthquake, and the mighty angels of the coming advent begin to sound the trumpets that proclaim that the consummation of the age has come.

And come through prayer; come through the passion of holy desire in loving, longing Christian hearts. Oh, that we might understand our high calling! Oh, that we might enter into the Holiest by His precious blood! Oh, that we might know the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings! Oh, that we might be saved from the curse of lukewarmness and “enkindled with the passion fire of love divine”!

“Behold My servant whom I uphold, My elect in whom My soul delights. I have put my Spirit upon Him. He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles; he shall not cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break and the smoking flax shall he not quench; he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged until he has set judgment in the earth and the isles shall wait for his law.” (Is. 42: 1-4.)

This expression, “the servant of the Lord,” is a sort of keynote to a large portion of the prophecies of Isaiah. The phrase is used in three senses. First, it is applied to Israel, the servant of the Lord. We find it so used in Isaiah 41: 8, and other passages, “You, Israel, are My servant; Jacob, whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, My friend.”

But Israel failed to fulfil his great trust as the servant of the Lord and was put aside and the Lord Jesus Christ now becomes the Servant of the Lord. So the expression is used in the present text. So again in Isaiah 49: 3, 52: 13, 53: 11, etc. Then the plural form is used and in several passages toward the end of the prophecy we find, “The servants of the Lord” spoken of. The reference here is to the people of God individually who, as members of Christ and fellow servants of the great Minister of the covenant follow in His steps of service. So we find it in Isaiah 54: 17, 65: 13, etc. It is to the second application of this term that our attention is now called.

I. The Great Servant.

God wanted some one to represent Him in the world. He had given to mankind a revelation of His will and it was necessary that some one should fulfil it. God’s law could not be left a broken and dishonored memorial of man’s disobedience like some splendid architectural plan which no one could be found to transform into an actual edifice. His honor and glory demanded that some one should fulfil it and render unto heaven a devotion and service which man had failed to give.

It was for this purpose that Israel had his high calling, and yet Israel utterly failed to keep his own law. At last one Man was found who could render unto heaven the obedience due to the authority of God. “Lo, I come,” was His cry, “I delight to do Your will, oh God, yes Your law is in My Heart.” (Ps. 40: 8.) At every step of His earthly life the supreme business of Jesus was to do His Father’s will, and He was able to say, “I do always those things that please Him.” ( John 8: 29.) The one supreme purpose of His life was to glorify the Father and finish the work He had given Him to do, and at last He could say, as He handed over His accomplished task, “I have glorified You on the earth; I have finished the work You gave Me to do.” (John 17: 4.)

Among the types of Moses, there was a beautiful ceremony by which a Hebrew slave, when his term of service had expired and he had the option to go free, was permitted, if he preferred, to resume the yoke of bondage and continue a slave by his own choice. Perhaps his wife and children were slaves and he did not want to leave them in bondage. Perhaps he loved his master better than his liberty, and did not want to go free, and so he was permitted to say, “I love my master, I love my wife and children, I will not go out free.” And then this ceremony was performed. His ear was pierced and he was nailed to the doorpost of his master’s house by his ear in token of voluntary subjection and servitude.

This beautiful type has been applied to Christ in one of the prophetic Psalms where the Messiah is represented as saying, “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; my ears have You bored; then said I: Lo, I come, I delight to do Your will, oh My God, yes, Your law is within my heart.” (Ps. 40: 6-8.)

This is a picture of Christ as the great Servant. He might have retained His liberty and remained in heaven, but He loved His Father, He loved His Bride, the Church, He loved His lost children here, and He gave up His liberty and as the apostle expresses it in Galatians, “For when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them that were under the law.” (Gal. 4: 4.) He fulfilled our tasks, He paid our debts. He offered to God the righteousness which we had failed to give and of His finished work the Father could say, “The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness’ sakes; He will magnify the law and make it honorable.” (Is. 42: 21.)

But there was another purpose which Israel failed to serve as the Lord’s servant, and that was to be God’s messenger to the world, the light of the Gentiles and the revealer of God’s holiness and grace to the children of men. Instead of this Israel sank, through their sins, to a condition that the prophets describe as even worse than the heathen. God had to humble them before their enemies and send them into shameful captivity under the Gentile nations. This glorious ministry has been committed unto the divine Servant and so we read in this passage, “I, the Lord, have called You in righteousness and will hold Your hand and will keep You, and give You for a covenant of the people, for the light of the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. I am the Lord, that is My name, and My glory I will not give to another, neither My praise to graven images.” (Is. 42: 6-8.)

In these respects, we are called likewise to be servants of the Lord; to represent Him by our lives and by our testimony as the messengers of His Word to all mankind. The apostles loved to call themselves the servants of the Lord. Christ taught His disciples that the highest honor was in the lowliest service. “He that will be great among you, let him be your minister, and he that will be chief, let him be your slave.”

Oh, that we might be able to say, as our High Priest, “Whose I am and Whom I serve.”

II. The Servant’s acceptance.

“Behold My servant in whom My soul delights.” (Is. 42: 1.) God’s heart had been disappointed in the race. There had come up to Him from this sinful world the stench of human vileness, and age after age He had sought for someone that could bring the sacrifices of a sweet smelling savor. At last on Jordan’s banks there stood a man to whom He could say, “Behold My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Matt. 3: 17.) God’s face shone with a light so bright that it broke through the opening heavens, and for a moment shed its glory upon the earth beneath.

It is because of that acceptance that we are justified and accepted now. “He has made us accepted in the beloved,” is the measure of our standing as justified believers in the sight of God. Literally, the verse means “accepted in the Son of His love,” and it conveys the force that we are accepted just as He and loved the same as He. Not only so, our sanctification comes through Him. In His sublime prayer in John 17, He thus prays concerning the Father’s love “that the love wherewith You have loved Me may be in them and I in them.” He asks His Father to love us just as He loves the Son. The reason: He is so in us Himself that our personality disappears from view and it is only the Christ in us that the Father sees and loves. So we can pass out of our own self-consciousness and into this blessed Christ consciousness, and although feeling utterly unworthy in our own name we can ever by the righteousness of Jesus Christ our perfect sacrifice, know that this is true:

“So dear, so very dear to God,
More dear I cannot be;
The love wherewith He loves His Son.
That love He has for me.”

III. The Servant’s anointing.

“I have put My Spirit upon him.” (Is. 42: 1.) The Father endued Him for His work by the anointing of the Holy Ghost. That Spirit He shares with us and in Him we claim the same anointing for the same service. We are not asked to render unto Him our services at our own charges, but it is said of our ministry that we are “created in Christ Jesus unto good works which were before prepared that we should walk in them.” The gifts of power, wisdom, faith and supernatural efficiency prescribed for the church in the twelfth chapter of 1 Corinthians are all called “charismata,” that is, abilities bestowed upon us, not talents original with us.

Even love itself, the greatest of all the graces, is a gift and not a virtue. It is Christ’s love shed abroad in our hearts and flowing out to others from Him.

Beloved, are we anointed for service? Are we faithful servants and are we walking in the light of the blessed “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord.”

IV. The Servant’s meekness.

“He shall not cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets.” (Is. 42: 2.)

The first element in the training of a good servant is discipline, subjection, self-suppression and self-restraint. How beautifully we behold this in the meek and lowly Christ! “I am among men as He that serves. “In this age of loud and noisy people, when even Christian work is blazoned, advertised and flaunted before the eyes of the multitude, how restful to turn to this picture of Him who is our great Example of service. The Hebrew word here literally means loud and screamy. He was not loud and screamy, but His Spirit was very chastened and self-suppressed. We get a little conception of how the Deity within Him was pressing out for expression in that scene in the temple when He was twelve years old and when His heart gave utterance to that deep cry, “Do you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Luke 2: 49.) And yet He went back for eighteen years to the quiet drudgery of the work-bench at Nazareth and held within that bursting heart, that longing to glorify His Father and save and help His fellow men. At length the devil came to Him, to His highest longings, and whispered, “Now is your chance to reveal yourself and glorify your Father by a stupendous miracle. Cast yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple, throw yourself upon the protecting arms of omnipotence, let the people see who you are.” But He only said, “Get behind Me, Satan; you shall not tempt the Lord, your God.” Yet again the adversary tried to tempt Him to accept a throne among the kingdoms of the world, and all the glory, urging no doubt, not his selfish ambition and personal glory so much as the opportunity it would give Him to be a blessing to the world and alleviate the miseries of mankind. But again He refused the tempting offer and went forth on His path of lowly suffering.

During His earthly ministry how often we find Him giving up His rights. Just before Matthew quotes this passage from our text, he tells, (Matt. 12: 14), “They held a council against Him, how they might destroy Him. But when Jesus knew it, He withdrew Himself from there and great multitudes followed Him and He healed them all and charged them that they should not make Him known: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias, the prophet, saying, “Behold My servant, whom I have chosen; My beloved, in whom My soul is well pleased: I will put My Spirit upon Him and He shall show judgment to the Gentiles; He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets.” (Is. 42: 1, 2.)

A little later, they tried to take Him by force and make Him a king, but He gently took Himself out of their hands. The Samaritans refused to receive Him and the ardent disciples insisted that He should call down fire from heaven and consume them, but He quietly answered, “You know not what manner of Spirit you are of,” and He went to another village. To the very close of His earthly ministry, we see the spirit of self-restraint. In the judgment hall, He answered not a word. Even after His resurrection, His appearances to the disciples were of the most simple and quiet character, and all the glory which He had won by His great redemption He kept in reserve, giving to His followers rather than assuming to Himself the victories of Pentecost and waiting for the reward of His sufferings until the end of the age while He still ministers in sympathy and tenderness to His suffering church, and is content to be the rejected Nazarene and let the present age have its day while He is slowly gathering in from the lowly children of sin the members of His body and His Bride.

Oh, that our service were more like His, more hidden “in the shadow of His hand” with less of self and more of Christ, and with that “hiding of His power” which is the very triumph of power divine.

The power which today controls the tremendous machinery of our age was hidden deep in the bowels of the earth thousands of years ago by the fire that consumed primeval forests and stored the coal mines of our mountains with the real material of all physical force. The mighty battleship, the swift Atlantic flyer, the trains that sweep across the myriad tracks of transportation are all moved by the coal mines of the mountains.

So the force which God uses in the great processes of the spiritual world comes forth from the hidden depths of lives where perhaps long ago the natural and the earthly were burned away by the fire of the Holy Ghost and God was starting up the power which today is leading some great revival or evangelizing some heathen land.

So Jesus waited at Nazareth and gathered the forces which made the last three and one-half years of His life accomplish more for the world than all the centuries before or since.

God help us to learn the silent sources of spiritual power and the ministry of waiting as well as working.

V. The Servant’s gentleness.

“The bruised reed shall he not break and the smoking flax shall he not quench.” (Is. 42: 3.) We need not seek far in the story of His life to find the illustrations of this blessed portrait.

Look at that crushed life which kneels weeping at His feet condemned by the Pharisee, condemned by her own sense of right, a bruised reed. What is there left for a woman who has thus lost all? But listen to Him: “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” (John 8: 11.) Look again at the disciple that has denied and blasphemed Him. Alas, Peter, it does seem to be all over with you this time. The Master is going now to come back no more. Many a time have you blundered and He has been there to take you up, forgive you and start you out again, but that is all over. Look, they are taking Him away, bound and fettered and in a little while He will be crucified and dead. It is too late, Peter. But lo, just at the last moment that loving, yearning face of Christ turns back and looks on Peter and that look was a volume. It said, “No, Peter, it is not all over. I forgive you and I trust you still.” “And Peter wondered and wept bitterly.” But for that look it would have been the story of Judas duplicated, but He would not break the bruised reed, and from that hour Peter was bound to his Master with a love that could never die, and his restored life was given to comfort tempted ones.

There is no life so crushed, there is no heart so discouraged but He has still some look of love, some word of cheer, some touch of victorious help.

The smoking flax refers rather to the feeble beginnings which others might think scarcely worth the trouble of treasuring, but He will take the feeblest beginning and fan the flame to a glorious fire. Look at that cowardly inquirer who comes sneaking in at the back door of the Master’s lodging tonight. He is a member of the Jewish council. His name is Nicodemus and were it known that he was here it would be as much as his reputation is worth. Why does not the Lord disdain to meet him in this clandestine way? Why does He not say, “Nicodemus, I will have no followers that do not come out in the open and confess Me without reserve.” Ah, no! Jesus is glad to see him. It is only a little smoke, but some day this man will stand up in that great council and defend the Master before His enemies. And so the Lord meets him and tells him the story of the new birth and the wondrous love of the Father in giving His only Son, and that man goes out tonight with a new life that can never die.

And Thomas, the doubting disciple, with scarcely faith enough to come to the meeting with his brethren; Thomas, the agnostic, demanding ocular demonstration and making his own terms of faith. All right, Thomas, you can come too. If you want to put your hand in the wound of the spear, you are welcome. It is the nearest way to My heart. The Lord meets him on his own terms, but Thomas falls at His feet astonished, overwhelmed, ashamed, a thousand times convinced, crying, “My Lord and my God.”

Are there any reading these lines who feel that they have but a weak will, a timid faith and a worthless life to bring to Christ? Bring what you have. Better come blundering to His feet than not at all. He will not quench the smoking flax; He will not break the bruised reed.

VI. The Servant’s strength.

But His gentleness is not weakness. Oh no! “He shall not fail nor be discouraged until he send forth judgment unto victory.” (Is. 42: 4.) The words translated “fail” and “discouraged” are the same as translated just before “break” and “quench.” While He will not despise the weak, He is not weak. What a mighty evidence the prophet gives us of His glorious and victorious strength. There is nothing in ancient prophecy more sublime than this prophetic vision of what some has called the passion of God as it rises to its climax and as He comes forth to the world in His last manifestation to beat down His adversaries and bring in His kingdom. “The Lord shall go forth as a mighty Man; He shall stir up jealousy like a man of war; He shall cry, yes, roar; He shall prevail against His enemies.” And then, like a great spasm of inward conflict, He continues, “I have long time held My peace, I have been still and refrained Myself; now will I cry like a travailing woman, I will destroy and devour at once; I will make waste mountains and islands and dry up all their herbs, and I will make the rivers islands, and I will dry up the pools, and I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths they have not known; I will make darkness light before them and crooked things straight; these things will I do unto them and not forsake them.” Space will not permit us to dwell on this sublime picture of the conflict of Christ and the passionate intensity with which we should be ready to enter into that conflict in the victories of faith and prayer. We are reading today of men of God who stand in front of a great religious movement whose very souls seem rent asunder in agonies of prayer as they plead for perishing souls, and we have also been told how the Holy Ghost has come in tidal waves of victory and blessing just through such spiritual conflicts and agonizing prayers. It is Gethsemane repeated in the body of Christ as once it was experienced by the Head. It is through His people the Master is to fight these final battles and win these millennial triumphs.

Oh, that we might enter into His throbbing heart, oh, that we might share the anguish of His love and the joy of His triumph, oh that each of us might say

“Lord, kindle in this heart of mine
The passion fire of love divine.”