"As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his
mouth."--ISAIAH 53:7.
OUR Lord Jesus so took our place that we are in this chapter compared to
sheep: "All we like sheep have gone astray," and he is compared to a
sheep also--"As a sheep before her shearers is dumb." It is wonderful
how complete was the interchange of positions between Christ and his
people, so that he became what they were in order that they might become
what he is. We can well understand how we should be the sheep and he the
shepherd; but to liken the Son of the Highest to a sheep would have been
unpardonable presumption had not his own Spirit employed the
condescending figure.
Though the emblem is very gracious, its use in this place is by no means
singular, for our Lord had been before Isaiah's day typified by the lamb
of the Passover. Since then he has been proclaimed as "the Lamb of God
which taketh away the sin of the world;" and indeed even in his glory he
is the Lamb in the midst of the throne.
I. In opening up this divine emblem I would invite you to consider,
first, OUR SAVIOUR'S PATIENCE, set forth under the figure of a sheep
dumb before her shearers.
Our Lord was brought to the shearers that he might be shorn of his
comfort, and of his honor, shorn even of his good name, and shorn at
last of his life itself; but when under the shearers he was as silent as
a sheep. How patient he was before Pilate, and Herod, and Caiaphas, and
on the cross! You have no record of his uttering any exclamation of
impatience at the pain and shame which he received at the hands of these
wicked men. You hear not one bitter word. Pilate cries, "Answerest thou
nothing? Behold how many things they witness against thee"; and Herod is
wofully disappointed, for he expected to see some miracle wrought by
him. All that our Lord does say is in submissive tones, like the
bleating of a sheep, though infinitely more full of meaning. He utters
sentences like these--"For this purpose was I born, and came into the
world, that I might bear witness to the truth," and, "Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do." Otherwise he is all patience and
silence.
Remember, first, that our Lord was dumb and opened not his mouth
_against his adversaries_, and did not accuse one of them of cruelty or
injustice. They slandered him, but he replied not; false witnesses
arose, but he answered them not. One would have thought he must have
spoken when they spat in his face. Might he not have said, "Friend, why
doest thou this? For which of all my works dost thou insult me?" But the
time for such expostulations was over. When they smote him on the face
with the palms of their hands, it would not have been wonderful if he
had said, "Wherefore do you smite me so?" But no; he is as though he
heard not their revilings. He brings no accusation to his Father. He
needed only to have lifted his eye to heaven, and legions of angels
would have chased away the ribald soldiery; one flash of a seraph's wing
and Herod had been eaten by worms, and Pilate had died the death he well
deserved as an unjust judge. The hill of the cross might have become a
volcano's mouth to swallow up the whole multitude who stood there
jesting and jeering at him: but no, there was no display of power, or
rather there was so great a display of power over himself that he
restrained Omnipotence itself with a strength which never can be
measured.
Again, as he did not utter a word against his adversaries, so he did not
say a word _against any one of us_. You remember how Zipporah said to
Moses, "Surely a bloody husband art thou to me," as she saw her child
bleeding; and surely Jesus might have said to his church, "Thou art a
costly spouse to me, to bring me all this shame and bloodshedding." But
he giveth liberally, he openeth the very fountain of his heart, and he
upbraideth not. He had reckoned on the uttermost expenditure, and
therefore he endured the cross, despising the shame.
"This was compassion like a God,
That when the Saviour knew,
The price of pardon was his blood,
His pity ne'er withdrew."
No doubt he looked across the ages; for that eye of his was not dim,
even when bloodshot on the tree: he must have foreseen your indifference
and mine, our coldness of heart, and base unfaithfulness, and he might
have left on record some such words as these: "I am suffering for those
who are utterly unworthy of my regard; their love will be a miserable
return for mine. Though I give my whole heart for them, how lukewarm is
their love to me! I am sick of them, I am weary of them, and it is woe
to me that I should be laying down my heart's blood for such a worthless
race as these my people are." But there is not a hint of such a feeling.
No. "Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto
the end," and he did not utter a syllable that looked like murmuring at
his suffering on their behalf, or regretting that he had commenced the
work.
And again, as there was not a word against his adversaries, nor a word
against you nor me, so their was not a word _against his Father_, nor a
syllable of repining at the severity of the chastisement laid upon him
for our sakes. You and I have murmured when under a comparatively light
grief, thinking ourselves hardly done by. We have dared to cry out
against God, "My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the
shadow of death; not for any injustice in mine hands: also my prayer is
pure." But not so the Saviour; in his mouth were no complaints. It is
quite impossible for us to conceive how the Father pressed and bruised
him, yet was there no repining. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?" is an exclamation of astonished grief, but it is not the voice of
complaint. It shows manhood in weakness, but not manhood in revolt. Many
are the Lamentations of Jeremiah, but few are the lamentations of Jesus.
Jesus wept, and Jesus sweat great drops of blood, but he never murmured
nor felt rebellion in his heart.
Behold your Lord and Saviour lying in passive resignation beneath the
shearers, as they take away everything that is dear to him, and yet he
openeth not his mouth. I see in this our Lord's _complete submission_.
He gives himself up; there is no reserve about it. The sacrifice did not
need binding with cords to the horns of the altar. How different from
your case and mine! He stood there willing to suffer, to be spit upon,
to be shamefully entreated, and to die, for in him there was a complete
surrender. He was wholly given to do the Father's will, and to work out
our redemption. There was _complete self-conquest_ too. In him no
faculty arose to plead for liberty, and ask to be exempted from the
general strain; no limb of the body, no portion of the mind, no faculty
of the spirit started, but all submitted to the divine will: the whole
Christ gave up his whole being unto God, that he might perfectly offer
himself without spot for our redemption.
There was not only self-conquest, but _complete absorption in his work_.
The sheep, lying there, thinks no more of the pastures, it yields itself
up to the shearer. The zeal of God's house did eat up our Lord in
Pilate's hall as well as everywhere else, for there he witnessed a good
confession. No thought had he but for the clearing of the divine honor,
and the salvation of God's elect. Brethren, I wish we could arrive at
this, to submit our whole spirit to God, to learn self-conquest, and the
delivering up of conquered self entirely to God.
The wonderful serenity and submissiveness of our Lord are still better
set forth by our text, if it be indeed true that sheep in the East are
even more docile than with us. Those who have seen the noise and
roughness of many of our washings and shearings will hardly believe the
testimony of that ancient writer Philo-Judæus when he affirms that the
sheep came voluntarily to be shorn. He says: "Woolly rams laden with
thick fleeces put themselves into the shepherd's hands to have their
wool shorn, being thus accustomed to pay their yearly tribute to man,
their king by nature. The sheep stands in a silent inclining posture,
unconstrained under the hand of the shearer. These things may appear
strange to those who do not know the docility of the sheep, but they are
true." Marvellous indeed was this submissiveness in our Lord's case; let
us admire and imitate.
II. Thus I have feebly set forth the patience of our beloved Master. Now
I want you to follow me, in the second place, to VIEW OUR OWN CASE UNDER
THE SAME METAPHOR AS THAT WHICH IS USED IN REFERENCE TO OUR LORD.
Did I not begin by saying that because we were sheep he deigns to
compare himself to a sheep? Let us look from another point of view; our
Lord was a sheep under the shearers, and as he is so are we also in this
world. Though we shall never be offered up like lambs in the temple by
way of expiation, yet the saints for ages were the flock of slaughter,
as it is written, "For thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are
accounted as sheep for the slaughter!" Jesus sends us forth as sheep in
the midst of wolves, and we are to regard ourselves as living
sacrifices, ready to be offered up. I dwell, however, more particularly
upon the second symbol: we are brought as sheep under the shearers'
hands.
Just as a sheep is taken by the shearer, and its wool is all cut off, so
doth the Lord take his people and shear them, taking away all their
earthly comforts, and leaving them bare. I wish when it came to our turn
to undergo this shearing operation it could be said of us as of our
Lord, "As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his
mouth." I fear that we open our mouths a great deal, and make no end of
complaining without any apparent cause, or with the very slenderest
reason. But now to the figure.
First, remember that _a sheep rewards its owner for all his care and
trouble by being shorn_. There is nothing else that I know of that a
sheep can do. It yields food when it is killed, but while it is alive
the one payment that the sheep can make to the shepherd is to yield its
fleece in due season. Some of God's people can give to Christ a tribute
of gratitude by active service, and they should do so gladly every day
of their lives; but many others cannot do much in active service, and
about the only reward they can give to their Lord is to render up their
fleece by suffering when he calls upon them to suffer, submissively
yielding to be shorn of their personal comfort when the time comes for
patient endurance.
Here comes the shearer; he takes the sheep and begins to cut, cut, cut,
cut, taking away the wool wholesale. Affliction is often used as the big
shears. The husband, or perhaps the wife, is removed, little children
are taken away, property is shorn off, and health is gone. Sometimes the
shears cut off the man's good name; slander follows; comforts vanish.
Well, this is your shearing time, and it may be that you are not able to
glorify God to any very large extent except by undergoing this process.
If this be the fact, do you not think that we, like good sheep of
Christ, should surrender ourselves cheerfully, feeling, "I lay myself
down with this intent, that thou shouldst take from me anything and
everything, and do what thou wilt with me; for I am not mine own, I am
bought with a price"?
Notice that the sheep is itself _benefited by the operation of
shearing_. Before they begin to shear the sheep the wool is long and
old, and every bush and brier tears off a bit of the wool, until the
sheep looks ragged and forlorn.
If the wool were left, when the heat of summer came the sheep would not
be able to bear itself, it would be so overloaded with clothing that it
would be as uncomfortable as we are when we have kept on our borrowed
wool, our flannels and broadcloths, too late. So, brethren, when the
Lord shears us, we do not like the operation any more than the sheep do;
but first, it is for _his glory_; and secondly, it is for _our benefit_,
and therefore we are bound most willingly to submit. There are many
things which we should have liked to have kept which, if we had kept
them, would not have proved blessings but curses. A stale blessing is a
curse. The manna, though it came from heaven, was only good so long as
God's command made it a blessing, but when they kept it over its due
time it bred worms and stank, and then it was no blessing. Many persons
would keep their mercies till they turn to corruption; but God will not
have it so. Up to a certain point for you to be wealthy was a blessing;
it would not have been a blessing any longer, and so the Lord took your
riches away. Up to that point your child was a boon, but it would have
been no longer so, and therefore it fell sick and died. You may not be
able to see it, but it is so, that God, when he withdraws a blessing
from his people, takes it away because it would not be a blessing any
longer.
Before sheep are shorn _they are always washed_. Were you ever present
at the scene when they drive them down to the brook? Men are placed in
rows, leading to the shepherd who stands in the water. The sheep are
driven down, and the men seize them, throw them into the pool, keeping
their faces above water, and swirl them round and round and round to
wash the wool before they clip it off. You see them come out on the
other side frightened to death, poor things, wondering whatever is
coming. I want to suggest to you, brethren, that whenever a trial
threatens to overtake you, you should entreat the Lord to sanctify it to
you. If the good Shepherd is going to clip your wool, ask him to wash it
before he takes it off; ask to be cleansed in spirit, soul, and body.
That is a very good custom Christian people have of asking a blessing on
their meals before they eat bread. Do you not think it is even more
necessary to ask a blessing on our troubles before we get into them?
Here is your dear child likely to die; will you not, dear parents, meet
together and ask God to bless the death of that child, if it is to
happen? The harvest fails; would it not be well to say--"Lord, sanctify
this poverty, this loss, this year's bad harvest: cause it to be a means
of grace to us." Why not ask a blessing on the cup of bitterness as well
as upon the cup of thanksgiving? Ask to be washed before you are shorn,
and if the shearing must come, let it be your chief concern to yield
clean wool.
After the washing, when the sheep has been dried, it actually _loses
what was its comfort_. The sheep is thrown down, and the shearers get to
work; the poor creature is losing its comfortable fleece. You also will
have to part with your comforts. Will you recollect this? The next time
you receive a fresh blessing call it a loan. Poor sheep, there is no
wool on your back but what will have to come off; child of God, there is
no earthly comfort in your possession but what will either leave you,
or you will leave it. Nothing is our own except our God. "Why," says
one, "not our sin?" Sin was our own, but Jesus has taken it upon
himself, and it is gone. There is nothing our own but our God, for all
his gifts are held on lease, terminable at his sovereign will. We
foolishly consider that our mercies belong to us, and when the Lord
takes them away we half grumble. A loan, they say, should go laughing
home, and so should we rejoice when the Lord takes back that which he
had lent us. All our possessions are but brief favors borrowed for the
hour. As the sheep yields up its wool and so loses its comfort, so must
we yield up all our earthly properties; or if they remain with us till
we die, we shall part with them then, we shall not take so much as one
of them across the stream of death.
The shearers _take care not to hurt the sheep_; they clip as close as
they can, but they do not cut the skin. If possible, they will not draw
blood, even in the smallest degree. When they do make a gash, it is
because the sheep does not lie still; but a careful shearer has
bloodless shears. Of this Thomson sings in his "Seasons," and the
passage is so good an illustration of the whole subject that I will
adorn my discourse with it:
"How meek, how patient, the mild creature lies!
What softness in its melancholy face,
What dumb complaining innocence appears!
Fear not, ye gentle tribes! 'tis not the knife
Of horrid slaughter that is o'er you waved;
No, 'tis the tender swain's well guided shears,
Who having now, to pay his annual care,
Borrow'd your fleece, to you a cumbrous load,
Will send you bounding to your hills again."
It is the kicking and the struggling that make the shearing work at all
hard, but if we are dumb before the shearers no harm can come. The Lord
may clip wonderfully close; I have known him clip some so close that
they did not seem to have a bit of wool left, for they were stripped
entirely, even as Job when he cried, "Naked came I out of my mother's
womb, and naked shall I return thither." Still, like Job, they have
added, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name
of the Lord."
Notice that the shearers always _shear at a suitable time_. It would be
a very wicked, cruel, and unwise thing to begin sheep-shearing in winter
time. There is a proverb which talks about God "tempering the wind to
the shorn lamb." It may be so, but it is a very cruel practice to shear
lambs while winds need tempering. Sheep are shorn when it is warm,
genial weather, when they can afford to lose their fleeces, and are all
the better for being relieved of them. As the summer comes on
sheep-shearing time comes. Have you ever noticed that whenever the Lord
afflicts us he selects the best possible time? There is a prayer that he
puts into his disciples' mouths, "Pray that your flight be not in the
winter;" the spirit of that prayer may be seen in the seasonableness of
our sorrows. He will not send us our worst troubles at our worst times.
If your soul is depressed the Lord does not send you a very heavy
burden; he reserves such a load for times when you have joy in the Lord
to be your strength. It has come to be a kind of feeling with us that
when we have much delight a trial is near, but when sorrow thickens
deliverance is approaching. The Lord does not send us two burdens at a
time; or, if he does, he sends double strength. His shearing time is
chosen with tender discretion.
There is another thing to remember. It is with us as with the sheep,
_there is new wool coming_. Whenever the Lord takes away our earthly
comforts with one hand, one, two, three, he restores with the other hand
six, a score, a hundred; we are crying and whining about the little
loss, and yet it is necessary in order that we may be able to receive
the great gain. Yes, it will be so, we shall have cause for rejoicing,
"joy cometh in the morning." If we have lost one position, there is
another for us; if we have been driven out of one place, a better refuge
is prepared. Providence opens a second door when it shuts the first. If
the Lord takes away the manna, as he did from his people Israel, it is
because they have the old corn of the land of Canaan to live upon. If
the water of the rock did not follow the tribes any longer, it was
because they drank of the Jordan, and of the brooks. O sheep of the
Lord's fold, there is new wool coming: therefore do not fret at the
shearing. I have given these thoughts in brief, that we may come to the
last word.
III. Let us, in the third place, endeavor to IMITATE THE EXAMPLE OF OUR
BLESSED LORD WHEN OUR TURN COMES TO BE SHORN. Let us be dumb before the
shearers, submissive, quiescent, even as he was.
I have been giving, in everything I have said, a reason for so doing. I
have shown that our shearing by affliction glorifies God, rewards the
Shepherd, and benefits ourselves. I have shown that the Lord measures
and tempers our affliction, and sends the trial at the right time. I
have shown you in many ways that it will be wise to submit ourselves as
the sheep does to the shearer, and that the more completely we do so the
better.
We struggle far too much, and we are apt to make excuses for so doing.
Sometimes we say, "Oh, this is so painful, I cannot be patient! I could
have borne anything else but this." When a father is going to correct
his child, does he select something pleasant? No. The painfulness of the
punishment is the essence of it, and even so the bitterness of our
sorrow is the soul of our chastening. By the blueness of the wound the
heart will be made better. Do not repine because your trial seems
strange and sharp. That would in fact be saying, "If I have it all my
own way I will, but if everything does not please me I will rebel;" and
that is not a fit spirit for a child of God.
Sometimes we complain because of our great weakness. "Lord, were I
stronger I would not mind this heavy loss; but I am frail as a sere leaf
driven of the tempest." But who is to be the judge of the suitability of
your trial? You or God? Since the Lord judges this trial to be suitable
to your weakness, you may be sure that it is so. Lie still! Lie still!
"Alas," you say, "my grief comes from the most cruel quarter; this
trouble did not arise directly from God, it came through my cousin or my
brother who ought to have treated me with gratitude. It was not an
enemy; then I could have borne it." My brother, let me assure you that
in reality trial comes not from an enemy after all. God is at the bottom
of all your tribulation; look through the second causes to the great
First Cause. It is a great mistake when we fret over the human
instrument which smites us, and forget the hand which uses the rod. If I
strike a dog, he bites my stick; poor creature, he knows no better; but
if he could think a little he would bite _me_, or else take the blow
submissively. Now, you must not begin biting the stick. After all, it
is your heavenly Father that uses the staff; though it be of ebony or of
blackthorn, it is in his hand. It is well to have done with picking and
choosing our trials, and to leave the whole matter in the hand of
infinite wisdom. A sweet singer has put this matter very prettily; let
me quote the lines:
"But when my Lord did ask me on what side
I were content,
The grief whereby I must be purified,
To me was sent,
"As each imagined anguish did appear,
Each withering bliss
Before my soul, I cried, 'Oh! spare me here,
Oh, no, not this!'
"Like one that having need of, deep within,
The surgeon's knife,
Would hardly bear that it should graze the skin,
Though for his life.
"Nay, then, but he, who best doth understand
Both what we need,
And what can bear, did take my case in hand,
Nor crying heed."
This is the pith of my sermon: oh, believer, yield thyself! Lie passive
in the hands of God! Yield thee, and struggle not! There is no use in
struggling, for our great Shearer, if he means to shear, will do it. Did
I not say just now that the sheep, by struggling, might be cut by the
shears? So you and I, if we struggle against God, will get two strokes
instead of one; and after all there is not half so much trouble in a
trouble as there is in kicking against the trouble. The Eastern
ploughman has a goad, and pricks the ox to make it move more actively;
he does not hurt it much by his gentle prodding, but suppose the ox
flings out its leg the moment it touches him, he drives the goad into
himself, and bleeds. So it is with us, we shall find it hard to kick
against the pricks; we shall endure much more pain by rebelling than
would have come if we had yielded to the divine will. What good comes of
fretting? We cannot make one hair white or black. You that are troubled,
rest with us, for you cannot make shower or shine, foul or fair, with
all your groaning. Did you ever bring a penny into the till by fretting,
or put a loaf on the table by complaint? Murmuring is wasted breath, and
fretting is wasted time. To lie passive in the hand of God brings a
blessing to the soul. I would myself be more quiet, calm, and
self-possessed. I long to cry habitually, "Lord, do what thou wilt, when
thou wilt, as thou wilt, with me, thy servant; appoint me honor or
dishonor, wealth or poverty, sickness or health, exhilaration or
depression, and I will take all right gladly from thy hand." A man is
not far from the gates of heaven when he is fully submissive to the
Lord's will.
You that have been shorn have, I hope, received comfort through the ever
blessed Spirit of God. May God bless you. Oh that the sinner, too, would
humble himself under the mighty hand of God! Submit yourselves unto God,
let every thought be brought into captivity to him, and the Lord send
his blessing, for Christ's sake. Amen.