Isaiah 40:29

The Divine Helper

Isa 40:29

IT were, perhaps, impossible to indicate any number of words into which more significance and sublimity are condensed. The entire sentence is vital with meaning. We know not whether more to admire the power which they reveal, or praise the sympathy which they express. Let us analyse the language: "He giveth;" how suggestive of opulence how indicative of benevolence! The terms are applicable to God in all relations to every grade of intelligent being: there is no moment in the history of life, in all regions, in which God ceases from giving; he is the one Giver: "Every good gift, and every perfect gift, cometh down from the Father of lights." In proportion, therefore, as man gives, does he become God-like; it is impossible for the finite more closely to approach the infinite than in the act of imparting blessing. "He giveth power;" how suggestive of might! Giving does not diminish his strength; he is as powerful now as when he projected the worlds into the fields of space; he is as able now to take up the isles as a very little thing as when Isaiah sung the wonders of his arm. "He giveth power" this is the language of the sunbeam, as it pierces the intercepting cloud and gladdens the earth with its smile this is the language of the flower, as it opens its mild eye in the morning of spring, this is the language of the moral Lazaruses, as they rise from their tombs and lay aside their cerements, and this is the language of the angelic hosts, as they spread their pinions to pursue their appointed mission! In short, this is the language of the universe; we can touch no atom which is destitute of the inscription, "He giveth power." "He giveth power to the faint;" who cares for the faint? If a man cannot succeed in business, he is often left to perish without a tear of sympathy or an offer of aid. So long as men can support themselves they may find supporters, but when they faint by the way, few are sympathetic enough to bend in brotherly kindness and help in their restoration! God, however, whose thoughts and ways infinitely transcend the thoughts and ways of man, stoops in paternal benevolence to revive the weary and invigorate the faint. Thus is every word pregnant with meaning, and the bare enunciation of the language should awake the thankfulness of every spirit!

Our spiritual condition is intimately known to the divine Father. He knows the strong and the faint alike. As a wise Shepherd he is acquainted with the state of his entire flock. Some he leads with gentleness, and others are carried in his bosom. It is, indeed, in no wise strange that man should be morally faint, if we consider his nature, and the agencies by which it is influenced.

(1) There is our inherent antagonism to evangelical truth. Man is prone to self-leaning. Every hour witnesses to the difficulty of renouncing self, and casting the soul with strong confidence on the finished work of the only Saviour. Man will ever and anon deport himself as though by his own might he could remove mountains and encounter embattled hosts, and God permits him to try his skill, and returns not until the cry is heard, "Lord, save me, or I perish." We are strong in proportion to our trust. As we are enabled to look beyond ourselves we can reiterate the apostolic paradox, "when I am weak then am I strong." When we leave the Cross we faint while we glory in its Sufferer we are armed with irresistible might!

(2) There is the seductive influence of worldly association. Could we evermore remain on the mount of transfiguration, we might be strong, rejoicing in the Lord; but as we descend from its holy and resplendent heights, and re-unite ourselves with the world, our fervour becomes chilled and our strength paralysed. Individual experience confirms these assertions. There have been blissful periods in which our souls have been thrilled with delight, in which our exultation has been second only to the raptures of heaven. Descent is less difficult than ascent; while it requires the might of God to secure our elevation, the breath of man may be effectual to our downfall! We have often entered the world with a determination to resist its charms and avoid its snares, but in an evil hour have relaxed our moral grasp on the Great Helper, and have thus been wearied and prostrated by the stormy and enervating influence of the world.

(3) There is the fierce battle for daily bread. In these times of fierce competition it is sometimes difficult for virtue to cope with the ingenuity of vice. Vice respects no boundaries, and laughs scornfully at the true standard and the just weight. No device is too mean for unprincipled men. Intellect is bribed to invest rottenness with charms, and conscience is lulled to sleep that she may cease from hurling the thunderbolt or taking up a lamentation for the mournful fate of rectitude. I sympathise most tenderly with the Christian merchant who is exposed to the subtle and powerful temptation to meet men on their own ground, and smite them with their own weapons. Let me entreat you, however, to abide by truth and purity, remembering the gracious assurance, "No good thing will God withhold from them that walk uprightly."

(4) There is our ever-recurring unbelief. The spirit of ancient Israel unhappily still prevails. Though we have beheld a succession of wonders displayed on our behalf though morning and night have alike been eloquent with the praise of God, yet we have no sooner been delivered out of one difficulty than we have dreaded another! Instead of reasoning from the lion and the bear to the uncircumcised Philistine, we have forgotten our deliverances, and mourned as though Omnipotence had never bared its arm in our defence! We have forgotten the seven loaves and the twelve baskets of fragments, and have hung our heads as though we Bad never used a sickle or enjoyed a feast! "How is it that ye have no faith?" is the oft-repeated inquiry which God institutes in his own family. As faith fails, man faints and on the ground which he should have occupied as a conqueror, he lies panting as a victim.

Seeing that such is our nature, and such are the influences which affect it; we are called upon to rejoice that God treats us as men. "He knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust." Did his expectations exceed our capabilities, the love of the Father would be lost in the rigour of the tyrant. He knoweth every blast which we encounter, and not a foe can find an ambush whose secrecy evades the vigilance of his love. God will not suffer his people to be tried above that they are able to bear he will not allow faintness to be followed by death, for "he giveth power to the faint."

Moral faintness does not invalidate Christian character. Were all the "faint" to be excluded, how many of you would remain as children of God? Does the parent cast off the crippled child? Does the parent make physical weakness the reason for disinheritance? In one loud No you answer. Neither does God neglect or despise the weakest believer who confides in his Son. Let us guard this assurance with two explanations:

(1) It contains no encouragement to moral indolence. You are not to exonerate yourselves from the stern duties of life, on the plea that you are "faint." Imagine not that as moral invalids you are entitled to a life of ease; your business is to "renew your strength," by waiting upon God. Indolence will increase your weakness. The toiler grows strong. Exercise develops muscle. In proportion as you labour will the power of labouring augment. You are to resemble Gideon and his three hundred true-hearted allies, who, in searching for the kings of Midian, are described as "faint, yet pursuing;" and though the princes of Succoth refused them bread, they ceased not until Zebah and Zalmunna fell beneath their sword. Do you affirm, then, that you are "faint"? I reply, you may still be "pursuing," and though not with the rapidity of the robust, yet with all the strength which a willing mind can command.

(2) It affords no palliation for inconsistency. We are never allowed to plead weakness as a reason for sin. Because Gideon's soldiers were "faint" they did not turn their swords upon each other, or prove treacherous to the mission which they had under taken. They might have pleaded their faintness as a reason for returning home, but with soldier-like courage they pursued the difficult way, until their weary heads were honoured with the crown of victory. Let not their example be lost upon us: though weak, let our faces be Zion-ward, and though many may outstrip us in the race, let us be found laying aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, "looking unto Jesus" for the smile which can cheer the most rugged path, and the strength which can vanquish the most potent foe!

In God's great family there are diversities of moral development. There are alike the babe of days and the sire crowned with grey hairs the tremulous spirit easily deterred, and the valorous heart that exults in the prospect of difficulty! There is, however, but one Father, and his tender mercies are over all. "One star differeth from another star in glory," but all stars bear the impress of a common origin. So in the moral world the triumphant apostle who asks death to show his sting, and the trembling publican that dare ask for nothing but mercy, are alike the offspring and choice of Infinite Power and Unsearchable Wisdom. The question, therefore, relates not to the degree of power with which you may be blessed, but to your moral position: Are you in the family? I ask not whether a hemisphere may be radiant with your splendour, or whether yours is a struggling and fitful ray, but I ask, Are you in the firmament? There is no honour so lofty, no privilege so sweet, as that of being a moral child, even though so weak as to be carried in the Saviour's arms.

Infinite power is accessible to the morally feeble. "He giveth power to the faint."

(1) God never communicates surplus power. "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass, and as thy day so shall thy strength be." God promises no strength beyond the day in which it is required.

(2) God's method of communicating power teaches the dependence of humanity. God gives power as daily bread is given. Not a single energy is ever displayed by your body or mind, that is not bestowed or sustained by the Supreme. Our duty, then, is to remember that in ourselves we are helplessly weak, but that in Christ we are armed with power irresistible. Hence, saith the apostle, I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me;' even Paul's was a derived power. God's alone is original; but it is enough for man if he can shine with radiance borrowed from the Fount of uncreated light.

(3) God's willingness to communicate power greatly increases the responsibility of the Church. What power we might have! "Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." It is not enough to satisfy the severity of reason that men should merely walk according to the light they have, they are bound to walk according to the light which they might have. The same remark applies to moral power; Infinite might is placed at our disposal God says, "Ask, and it shall be given," so that if we faint, we faint in despite of the divine offer if we perish with hunger, it is in the presence of a table spread with the viands of heaven.

Let me call you to the Rock as your standing place. "The conies are a feeble folk, but they make their houses in the rock." God's invitation to you is to make your dwelling in. the Rock of Ages in order to assist you he has caused that Rock to be cleft on your behalf, and all who find a refuge there are preserved alike from the heat of the sun, the fury of the wind, and the rage of the swelling billow.

Though we might pause here, and thank God for the goodness which he has manifested to the Church, the festival is by no means exhausted: there are truths yet to be elicited from this text which will be as meat and drink to those who are hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Let us consider the declaration in the following aspect:

(1) As the sublimest encouragement to the Church. "He giveth power to the faint." Who is this Being represented in the pronoun? Who will supply the substantive? Isaiah himself shall answer: "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in." This All-glorious Being deigns to comfort the Church with assurances of aid: "Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding." Did ever pronoun represent a substantive equal to the majesty and excellence here implied?

(2) As the tenderest assurance to the penitent. "The bruised reed he will not break, the smoking flax he will not quench." Can you crawl, as it were, to the throne of the heavenly grace? He will give you power! The Infinite will receive the weak and the powerless with compassion, and those who struggle feebly to his feet will be so strengthened as to walk and leap and praise the Lord! "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young." Are any fearing that God will spurn their approach? They need fear no longer! "He giveth power to the faint." Your meekness will excite his pity, and will be turned into might by the impartation of his energy. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

(3) As the highest tribute to the work of Christ. Had there been no Saviour, there could have been no "faint" ones. Even faintness implies life; but whence came this life? Men, by nature, are dead in trespasses and sin earth is a vast cemetery. Who has blown the trumpet of resurrection? Christ has visited the cemetery, and wept amid its terrible desolation; and, as he gazed on the ruins of a noble race, he said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." Then is Christ man's life-giver! The weakest child in the great family is a tribute to the mighty energy and unparalleled tenderness of Christ. He disarms the tyrant, and leads all who believe in him to the region of happiest freedom!

(4) As a glorious pledge of God's interest in humanity. He did not turn from the sinner as from a mass of loathsome corruption, and betake himself to recesses where the voice of the moral leper could not be heard. But when iniquity abounded, love much more abounded true, the race was smitten with foulest leprosy, blasphemy was thunder-tongued, and vice was rampant, yet the divine Spirit was moved with pity, and divine compassion was embodied in sacrifice. There is peculiar solemnity in the reflection that God is interested in man this thought invests every individual with singular dignity, and charges human life with most oppressive responsibilities. To the believer, in particular, is the thought affecting and blissful: he is compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses his steps are ordered by the Lord his very hairs are numbered and his song is, "though I fall I shall not be utterly cast down, for God giveth power to the faint." We cannot realise God's marvellous condescension, in helping the helpless, without being deeply affected by the conviction that he is intensely interested in all that appertains 1:0 the purity, freedom, and happiness of the human race.

(5) As a presumptive proof of man's immortality. But how so? What of immortality breathes here? Can they who faint be immortal? Observe that I claim to find merely a presumptive proof of our endless duration, and am persuaded that you will justify my reasoning when acquainted with the basis on which it rests. Why all this feeding like a shepherd? Why this gentle tending this inspiration of life this sustaining of vigour this communication of power? Is the mysterious process undertaken when God has determined that all shall end in dust? Does the divine Being sustain merely that earthly life shall be prolonged? Reason revolts at the supposition. With reverence we declare our conviction that such a process, terminating in such an issue, is utterly unworthy the power, the wisdom, the tenderness of the everlasting God. Why should Jehovah stoop to impart power to the faint, when he knows that in a few brief years the faint one will have crumbled to dust? Assuming man's mere mortality, you argue that the education, the discipline, the capacities with which God has endowed the race, are all to be conquered and destroyed by death! Be it ours, to feel in every reviving breeze breathed over our fainting spirits a pledge of life that shall survive death a life coeval with the duration of Godhead. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." "What advantageth it us, it the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die." While, therefore, impressed with the solemn conviction of our immortality, I charge you to institute an immediate and exhaustive examination into the grounds on which you rest your hopes of happiness in the march of endless ages!

In addition to the great principles which we have thus enunciated, we might supply almost interminable illustration of the text from the records of individual life. See Elijah, for example, hidden in the cave and desiring to die; he is faint well nigh unto death, yet the "still small voice" revives his drooping energies, and as he passes from the hiding-place of his weariness and sorrow, he practically repeats the text " He giveth power to the faint." Behold Jonah also; as the sun is beating on his head he faints and wishes in himself to die, saying it is better for me to die than to live, but he is re-inspired by the Power which will not break the bruised reed. Turn to the history of David, and illustration without end will be furnished; in all the storms of his eventful life he tested the life-sustaining grace of God: so truly is this evident, that in his most mournful strains there are notes of hope which he could learn nowhere but at the gate of heaven. Hear the joyous melody which gushed from his grateful and mighty spirit: "Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident... in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me upon a rock... I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord:" as though he had overheard Isaiah assuring despondent Israel that "they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." But why should we cull illustrations from the ancient record? It is not necessary that we should escape from modern days and appeal to the library of Judaism for historic proofs that God giveth power to the faint. We are living witnesses of the glorious fact. We can say with all the gratitude of the apostle, "though the outward man perisheth, the inward man is renewed day by day." Faint and weary we have been met by the sympathetic Saviour, and have received of his fulness grace upon grace! We rejoice, indeed, that the song which celebrates renewing power was awakened in the morning of the world, and we would prolong its swelling strains until the mantle of night shall assert the termination of earthly scenes. One generation has cried after another, "Thy tender mercies have been ever of old;" and the testimony shall increase in force until all nations shall call the Restorer blessed! Our hearts burn within us as we muse on the loving-kindness which stoops to revive the faint. Are any travel-worn and cast down by reason of the difficulties of the way? whose mournful language is, "Oh, that it were with us as in times gone, when we ran with footmen and horsemen, and so outstripped them that we even longed for a contest with the swellings of Jordan; but now is our strength failed and our bones are melted "? Then, O dejected ones, in the language of the prophet, "Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?" You are waiting at the broken cistern of your own righteousness for a supply of power, instead of turning to the Omnipotent and pleading his promises of aid. Rise, and return to the God of Jacob, for if he has smitten he will heal, and if he has torn he will bind up!