'O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high
mountain: O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice
with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah,
Behold your God!'--ISAIAH xl. 9.
There is something very grand in these august and mysterious voices
which call one to another in the opening verses of this chapter. First,
the purged ear of the prophet hears the divine command to him and to
his brethren--Comfort Jerusalem with the message of the God who comes
for her deliverance. Then afar off another voice is heard, the herald
and forerunner of the approaching Deity; and when thus the foundation
has been laid, yet another takes up the speech, and 'The voice said,
Cry,' and the anonymous recipient of the command asks with what message
he shall be entrusted, and the answer is the signature and pledge of
the divine fulfilment of the word thus spoken. And then there comes, as
I take it, a pause of silence, within which the great Epiphany and
manifestation takes place, and the coming God comes, enters into the
rebuilded city, and there shines in His beauty; and then breaks forth
the rapturous commandment of my text to the resuscitated city, to tell
to all her daughters of Judah the glad tidings of a present God.
I need not, I suppose, spend your time in vindicating the translation
of our Bible as against one which has been made very familiar by being
wedded to Handel's music, and has commended itself to many, according
to which Zion is rather the recipient than the herald of the tidings,
'O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with
strength,' and so on.
And I suppose I need not either spend any time in vindicating the
transference of the text to the Gentile Church, beyond the simple
remark that, whatever be the date of this second portion of Isaiah's
prophecy, its standpoint is the time of the Captivity, when Jerusalem
lay desolate, burned with fire, and all their pleasant things were laid
waste, so that the city here addressed is the new form of the ancient
Zion, which had risen from her ashes, and had a better tidings of glad
significance to impart to all the nations. And so, dear brethren,
looking at the words from that point of view, I think that they may
very fairly yield to us two or three very old-fashioned and well-worn
thoughts, which may yet be stimulating and encouraging to us. I take
them as simply as possible, just as they run here in this text, which
brings out very strikingly and beautifully, first, the function of the
Evangelist Zion; secondly, the manner of her message; and lastly, its
contents.
I. Look with me at the thoughts that cluster round the name, 'O Zion,
that bringest glad tidings.'
It is almost a definition of the Church; at any rate, it is a
description of her by her most characteristic office and function, that
which marks and separates her from all associations and societies of
men. This is her highest office; this is the reason of her being; this
is her noblest dignity. All mystical powers have been claimed for her,
men have been bidden to submit their judgment and manhood to her
authority; but her true dignity is that she bears a gospel in her hand,
and that grace is poured into her lips. Fond and sense-bound regrets
have been sighed forth that her miracle-working gifts have faded away;
but so long as her voice can quicken dead souls, and make the tongue of
the dumb to speak, her noblest energies remain unimpaired, and so we
may think of her as most exalted and dignified in that her Master
addresses her, 'O Zion, that bringest good tidings.'
Now, if I was right in my preliminary remark, to the effect that, prior
to my text, we are to suppose the manifestation and approach of the
Divine Deliverer, then I think it is quite clear that what constitutes
Zion the messenger of good tidings is the presence in her of the living
God. Translate that into New Testament language, and it just comes to
this: that what constitutes the Church the evangelist for the world is
the simple possession of Christ or of the Gospel. That thought branches
into some considerations on which we may touch.
The first of them is this: Whoever has Christ has the power to impart
Him. All believers are preachers, or meant to be so, by virtue of the
possession of that Divine Christ for your own. We Nonconformists are
ready enough to proclaim the universal priesthood of all believers when
we are opposing ecclesiastical assumption; are we as ready to take it
for the law of our own lives, and to say, 'Yes, priests by the
imposition of a mightier hand, and ministers of Christ by the
possession of Christ, and therefore bound and able to impart Him to all
around'? He has given us His love, and He thereby has made us fit to
impart Him. Zion only needed to receive its God, in order thereby to
possess the power to say unto all the cities of Judah, 'Behold your
God.' It does not take much genius, it does not take much culture, it
does not need any prolonged training, for a man who has Christ to say,
'Behold, I have Him.' The very first Christian sermon that was ever
preached was a very short one, and a very effectual one, for it
converted the whole congregation, and it was this: 'We have found the
Messiah.' That was all--the utterance of individual possession and
personal experience--and it 'brought him to Jesus.'
Take another point. The possession of Christ for ourselves imposes upon
us the obligation to impart Him. All property in this world is trust
property, and everything that a man has that can help or bless the
moral or spiritual or intellectual condition of his fellows, he is
thereby under solemn obligation to impart. There is an obligation
arising from the bands that knit us to one another, so that no man can
possess his good alone without being untrue to what we call nowadays
the solidarity of humanity. You have, you say, the bread of life: very
well, what would you think of a man in a famine who, when women were
boiling their children, and men were fighting with the swine on the
dunghill for garbage, was content to eat his morsel alone, and leave
others to perish by starvation? You possess, you say, the healing for
all the diseases of humanity: very well, what would you think of a man
who, in a pestilence, was contented with swallowing his own specific,
and leaving others to die and to rot in the street? If you have the
Christ, you have Him that you may impart Him. 'He that withholdeth
bread, the people shall curse him'; of how much deeper malediction from
despairing lips will they be thought worthy who call themselves the
followers of Him that gave His life to be the bread of the world, and
yet withhold it from famishing souls?
And it is an obligation that arises, too, from the very purposes of our
calling. What are Christian men and women saved for? For their own
blessedness? Yes, and no. No creature in God's great universe but is
great enough to be a worthy end of the divine action; the happiness of
the humblest and most insignificant moves His mighty hand. Ay, but no
creature in God's universe so great as that he is a worthy end of the
divine action, if he is going to keep all the divine gifts in himself.
We are all brought into the light that we may impart light.
'Heaven doth with us as we with torches do;
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
But to fine issues.'
II. And now turn to the second thought which I desire to draw from
these words. We have here, in a very picturesque and vivid form, the
setting forth of the manner in which the Evangelist Zion is to proclaim
her message.
The fair-featured herald is bidden to get up into the high
mountain--perhaps a mere picturesque detail, perhaps some reference to
the local position of the city set upon a hill--like the priests on
Ebal and Gerizim, or Alpine shepherds, calling to each other across the
valleys, to secure some vantage-ground, and next, to let her voice roll
out across the glen. No faltering whisper will do, but a voice that
compels audience, that can be heard above the tumult and afar off, and
confident and loud and clear, because courageous and without dread.
'Lift up thy voice with strength.' Yes, but a timid heart will make a
tremulous voice, and fear and doubt will whisper a message when courage
will ring it out. 'Be not afraid' is the foundation of the clearness
and the loudness with which the word is to be uttered.
That thought opens itself out into these two others, on each of which I
say a word or two. Our message is to be given with a courage and a
force that are worthy of it; 'Be not afraid.' That is a lesson for this
day, my brethren. There are plenty of causes of fear round about us if,
like poor Peter on the water, we look at the waves instead of at the
Master. There are the great forces of evil that are always arrayed
against Christ. There is the thoroughgoing and formidable rejection of
all that is dearest to us, which is creeping like poison through
cultivated society at home; there is the manifest disproportion between
our resources and the task that we have set ourselves to. 'They need
not depart; give ye them to eat,' said the Master. What! five thousand
people need not depart, and only this scanty provision of loaves and
fishes! Yes; the Master's hand can multiply it. There is the
consciousness of our own weakness; there is the apparent slow progress
of the Gospel in the world. All these things come surging in upon us
when our spirits are low and our faith weak; and yet the message comes
to us, 'Be not afraid.' I venture to break that injunction up into two
or three exhortations, which I cast into the shape of exhortations, not
from any assumption of superiority, but for the sake of point and force.
First of all, I would say, let us cherish a firm, soul-absorbing
confidence in the power and truth of the message we have to carry. I do
not speak now of the intellectual discipline which may be required from
each of us to meet the difficulties of this day--that is outside of my
present subject; but there is a moral discipline quite as important as
the intellectual. There cannot be any question, I suppose, to any one
who looks round about, and notices the tendencies of his own mind, but
that all we Christian people, in our various circles and organisations,
are under a very great temptation to a very perceptible lowering of our
key in the presence of widespread doubt. We are tempted to fancy that a
truth is less certain because it is denied; that because a has attacked
this thing, and b's clever book has unsettled that thing, and c's
researches seem to cast a great deal of doubt upon that other thing,
therefore we are to surrender them all, and talk about them as if they
were doubtful problems or hypotheses rather than sure verities of our
faith. And there are some of us, I venture to say, who are in danger of
another temptation, and that is of getting a little ashamed and
becoming afraid to say 'Yes, I stand by that great truth, God in Christ
reconciling the world to Himself,' for fear of being thought to
be--well, 'narrow' is the favourite word, 'old-fashioned,' or 'holders
of a creed outworn,' 'in antagonism with the spirit of the age,' and so
on, and so on. Brethren, I am not the man, I hope, to preach an
unreasonable attitude of antagonism; I am not the man to ask anybody to
exaggerate his beliefs because somebody else denies them, but I do
believe that among us all, and especially among young men, there is the
temptation just to be a little bit afraid, and not to let the voice
ring out with that clear certitude which becomes the messenger of the
Cross. Try by mental discipline to find intellectual standing-ground
that will be firm below your feet, and then remember that that is not
all, but that moral discipline is wanted also that I may open my mouth
boldly, as I ought to speak.'
And then, if I might venture to dwell for a moment or two further upon
this class of consideration, I would say, Do not let us make too much
of the enemy. There is no need why we should take them at their own
appraisement. Men are always tempted to think that no generation ever
had such a fight as their own generation. They have said that ever
since there was a Christian Church. But the true, healthy way of
looking at the adversary--and by that I mean all the various forms of
difficulty which beset us in our evangelistic work, difficulties in the
mission-field, difficulties in the state of things here round us--the
true, healthy way of looking at them all, is to look at them as the
brave Apostle Paul did, when he said, 'I am going to stop at Ephesus
till Pentecost, for there is a great and effectual door opened to me.'
And how did he know that? He tells us in the next clause, 'There are
many adversaries.' Where there are many adversaries, there is an
effectual door, if you and I are bold and big enough to go in and
occupy.
And then I would venture to say, still further, let us remember the
victories of the past. Let us make personal experience of the
overcoming powers that are stored and hidden in Christ's Gospel. And,
above all, let us remember who fights with us. Jesus Christ and one man
are always the majority. There is an old story, which you may remember,
about the Conqueror of Rome, who dashed his sword into the scales when
the ransom was being weighed; and Christ flings His sharp sword with
the two edges into the scales when we are weighing resources, and the
other kicks the beam. There are enemies, plenty of them, all round
about. Yes, and the spreading forth of their wings fills the breadth of
the land. Be it so. But notwithstanding the irruption of the barbarous
and cruel hosts, it is 'Thy land, O Emanuel!' And in His time He will
sweep them before His presence, as the north wind drives the locusts
into the hindermost sea. I do not know if any of you remember an
ancient Christian legend, and I do not know whether it is a legend or a
truth--it does not matter, it will serve for our purpose all the same
either way--how when the Emperor Julian, surnamed the Apostate, once
taunted a humble Christian man with the question, 'What is the
carpenter's son doing now?' and the answer was, 'Hewing wood for the
emperor's funeral pile,' and not very long after there came the fatal
field on which, according to ancient tradition, he died with the words
on his lips, 'Thou hast conquered, Galilean. As in Carlyle's grand
translation of Luther's Hymn of the Reformation--
'Of our own strength we nothing can,
Full soon were we downridden;
But for us fights the proper Man,
Whom God Himself hath bidden.
Ask ye, who is the same?
Christ Jesus is His name,
The Lord Sabaoth's Son.
He and none other one
Shall conquer in this battle.'
'Lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid.'
III. I come to the last thought that emerges from these words, and that
is the substance and contents of the Evangelist Zion's message: 'Say
unto the cities of Judah, behold your God!'
They were to be pointed to a great historical act, in which God had
manifested and made Himself visible to men; and the words of my text
are, not only an exclamation, but they are an entreaty, and the message
was to be given to these little daughter cities of Judah as
representing all of those for whom the deliverance had been
wrought--all which things are paralleled in the message that is
committed to our hand.
For, first of all, we all have given to us the charge of pointing men
to the great historical fact wherein God is visible to men, and so
crying, 'Behold your God!' God cannot be revealed by word, God cannot
be revealed by thought. There is no way open to Him to make Himself
known to His creatures except the way by which men make themselves
known to one another; that is, by their deeds; and so, high above all
speculation, high above all abstraction, nearer to us than all thought
stands the historical fact in which God shows Himself to the world, and
that is the person and work of Jesus Christ, 'the brightness of His
glory and the express image of His person,' in whom the abysses of the
divine nature are opened, and through whom all the certitude of divine
light that human eyes can receive pours itself in genial and yet
intensest radiance upon the world. How beautiful in that connection the
verses following my text are I need only indicate in a word as I pass,
'Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand,' and yet, 'behold, He
shall feed His flock like a shepherd.' And so in Christ is the power of
God, for I take it that He is the arm of the Lord; and in Christ is the
gentleness of God; and whilst men grope in the darkness, our business
is to point to the living, dying Son, and to say, 'There you have the
complete, the ultimate revelation of the unseen God.'
And do not let us forget that the burning centre of all that brightness
is the Cross, that ever-wondrous paradox; that the depth of humiliation
is the height of glorifying; that Christ's Cross is the throne of the
manifested divine power quite as much as it is the seat of the
manifested divine love, and that when He is hanging there in His
weakness and mortal agony, the words are yet true--strange,
paradoxical, blessedly true--'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father.' And when we say, pointing to His Cross and Him there, His brow
paled with dying, and His soul faint with loss--when we say, 'Behold
the Lamb!' we are also and therein saying, 'Behold your God!'
And therefore, with what of gentleness, with what of tenderness, with
what of patient entreaty as well as strength and confidence, the word
that speaks of a strength manifested in weakness, and a God made
visible in Christ, should be spoken, it needs not here to enlarge
upon--only take that one last thought that I suggested, that this
message comes to all those for whom God has appeared, and for whom the
deliverance has been wrought. We each have the right, and we each have
the charge, to go to every man and say, 'Behold your God!' and the
hearts of men will leap up to meet the message. For, though overlaid by
sin, perverted often into its own opposite by fear, misinterpreted and
misunderstood by the very men that bear it, there yet lies deep in
every heart the aching thirst for the living God, and we have the word
that alone can meet that thirst. All around us men are saying--'In all
the fields of science and of nature, in human history and in the spirit
of men, I find no God,' and are falling back into that dreary negation,
'Behold, we know not anything!' And some of them, orphaned in their
agony, are crying, though it be often in contemptuous tones that almost
sound as if they meant the opposite, 'Oh, that I knew where I might
find Him!' We have a word that can meet that. For cultivated Europe it
has come to this--Christ or nothing; either He has shown us the Father,
or there is no knowledge of Him possible. We do not need to dread the
alternative; we can face it, and overcome it. And in far-off lands men
are groping in twilight uncertainty, worshipping, with a nameless
horror at their hearts, gods capricious, gods cruel, gods
terrible--tamely believing in gods far-off and mysterious, cowering
before gods careless and heartless, degrading their manhood by
imitating gods foul and bestial, and yet all the while dimly feeling,
'Surely, surely there is somewhere a good and a fair Being, that has an
eye to see my sorrows, and a heart to pity them; an ear to hear my
prayer, and a hand to stretch out.' We have a word that can meet that.
Let that word ring out, brother, as far as your influence can reach.
Set the trumpet to thy mouth, and say, 'Behold your God!' and be sure
that from the uttermost parts of the earth we shall hear the choral
songs of many voices answering, 'Lo! this is our God, we have waited
for Him, and He will save us! This is our God; we will be glad and
rejoice in His salvation!'
'HAVE YE NOT? HAST THOU NOT?'
'Have ye not known, have ye not heard? hath it not been told yon from
the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the
earth?... Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard?'--ISAIAH xl. 21 and
28.
The recurrence of the same form of interrogation in these two verses is
remarkable. In the first case the plural is used, in the second the
singular, and we may reasonably conclude that as Israel is addressed in
the latter, the nations outside the sphere illumined by Revelation are
appealed to in the former. The context of the two passages confirms
this reference, for the witness of Creation and History is summoned in
the former section, and that of God's inward dealings with trustful
souls is brought out in the latter.