Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The uneven shall be made level, and the rough places a plain.
Yahweh’s glory shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken it.”
The voice of one saying, “Cry!” One said, “What shall I cry?” “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades, because Yahweh’s breath blows on it. Surely the people are like grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God stands forever.”
You who tell good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who tell good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with strength! Lift it up! Don’t be afraid! Say to the cities of Judah, “Behold, your God!”
Behold, the Lord Yahweh will come as a mighty one, and his arm will rule for him. Behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arm, and carry them in his bosom. He will gently lead those who have their young.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv4–11 Whatsoever may let or hinder this deliverance, shall be…
Whatsoever may let or hinder this deliverance, shall be removed.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv4–11 Isa 40:4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every…
Isa 40:4 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:
Ver. 4. Every valley shall be exalted.] Terms taken from the custom of princes coming into a place - viz., to have their way cleared, and passages facilitated. See on Mat 3:3.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv4–11 This is only a more particular explication of that…
This is only a more particular explication of that which was generally expressed Isa 40:3. The sense is, All obstructions shall be removed, and the way made in all respects convenient and easy for the passenger.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v9 It was promised (Isa 40:5) that the glory of…
It was promised (Isa 40:5) that the glory of the Lord shall be revealed; that is it with the hopes of which God's people must be comforted. Now here we are told,
I. How it shall be revealed, Isa 40:9. 1. It shall be revealed to Zion and Jerusalem; notice shall be given of it to the remnant that are left in Zion and Jerusalem, the poor of the land, who were vine-dressers and husbandmen; it shall be told them that their brethren shall return to them. This shall be told also to the captives who belonged to Zion and Jerusalem, and retained their affection for them. Zion is said to dwell with the daughter of Babylon (Zac 2:7); and there she receives notice of Cyrus's gracious proclamation; and so the margin reads it, O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, etc., meaning the persons who were employed in publishing that proclamation; let them do it with a good will, let them make the country ring of it, and let them tell it to the sons of Zion in their own language, saying to them, Behold your God. 2. It shall be published by Zion and Jerusalem (so the text reads it); those that remain there, or that have already returned, when they find the deliverance proceeding towards perfection, let them proclaim it in the most public places, whence they may be best heard by all the cities of Judah; let them proclaim it as loudly as they can: let them lift up their voice with strength, and not be afraid of overstraining themselves; let them not be afraid lest the enemy should hear it and quarrel with them, or lest it should not prove true, or not such good tidings as at first it appeared; let them say to the cities of Judah, and all the inhabitants of the country, Behold your God. When God is going on with the salvation of his people, let them industriously spread the news among their friends, let them tell them that it is God that has done it; whoever were the instruments, God was the author; it is their God, a God in covenant with them, and he does it as theirs, and they will reap the benefit and comfort of it. "Behold him, take notice of his hand in it, and look above second causes; behold, the God you have long looked for has come at last (Isa 25:9): This is our God, we have waited for him." This may refer to the invitation which was sent forth from Jerusalem to the cities of Judah, as soon as they had set up an altar, immediately upon their return out of captivity, to come and join with them in their sacrifices, Ezr 3:2-4. "When the worship of God is set up again, send notice of it to all your brethren, that they may share with you in the comfort of it." But this was to have its full accomplishment in the apostles' public and undaunted preaching of the gospel to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. The voice crying in the wilderness gave notice that he was coming; but now notice is given that he has come. Behold the Lamb of God; take a full view of your Redeemer. Behold your King, behold your God.
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II. What that glory is which shall be revealed. "Your God will come, will show himself,"
1. "With the power and greatness of a prince (Isa 40:10): He will come with strong hand, too strong to be obstructed, though it may be opposed. His strong hand shall subdue his people to himself, and shall restrain and conquer his and their enemies. He will come who is strong enough to break through all the difficulties that lie in his way." Our Lord Jesus was full of power, a mighty Saviour. Some read, it, He will come against the mighty one, and overpower him, overcome him. Satan is the strong man armed; but our Lord Jesus is stronger than he, and he shall make it to appear that he is so, for, (1.) He shall reign in defiance of all opposition: His arm shall rule, shall overrule for him, for the fulfilling of his counsels, to his own glory; for he is his own end. (2.) He shall recompense to all according to their works, as a righteous Judge: His reward is with him; he brings along with him, as a returning prince, punishments for the rebels and preferments for his loyal subjects. (3.) He shall proceed and accomplish his purpose: His work is before him, that is, he knows perfectly well what he has to do, which way to go about it, and how to compass it. He himself knows what he will do.
2. "With the pity and tenderness of a shepherd," Isa 40:11. God is the Shepherd of Israel (Psa 80:1); Christ is the good Shepherd, Joh 10:11. The same that rules with the strong hand of a prince leads and feeds with the kind hand of a shepherd. (1.) He takes care of all his flock, the little flock: He shall feed his flock like a shepherd. His word is food for his flock to feed on; his ordinances are fields for them to feed in; his ministers are under-shepherds that are appointed to attend them. (2.) He takes particular care of those that most need his care, the lambs that are weak, and cannot help themselves, and are unaccustomed to hardship, and those that are with young, that are therefore heavy, and, if any harm be done them, are in danger of casting their young. He particularly takes care for a succession, that it may not fail or be cut off. The good Shepherd has tender care for children that are towardly and hopeful, for young converts, that are setting out in the way to heaven, for weak believers, and those that are of a sorrowful spirit. These are the lambs of his flock, that shall be sure to want nothing that their case requires. [1.] He will gather them in the arms of his power; his strength shall be made perfect in their weakness, Co2 12:9. He will gather them in when they wander, gather them up when they fall, gather them together when they are dispersed, and gather them home to himself at last; and all this with his own arm, out of which none shall be able to pluck them, Joh 10:28. [2.] He will carry them in the bosom of his love and cherish them there. When they tire or are weary, are sick and faint, when they meet with foul ways, he will carry them on, and take care they are not left behind. [3.] He will gently lead them. By his word he requires no more service, and by his providence he inflicts no more trouble, than he will fit them for; for he considers their frame.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv4–11 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and…
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low,.... Which is not to be understood literally, but, as Kimchi says, parabolically and mystically: the meaning is, that in consequence of John's ministry, and our Lord's coming, such who were depressed and bowed down with the guilt of sin, and were low and humble in their own eyes, should be raised up and comforted; and that such who were elated with themselves, and their own righteousness, should be humbled; their pride and haughtiness should be brought down, and they treated with neglect and contempt, while great notice was taken of lowly minded ones; see Luk 14:11 and Luk 18:14,
and the crooked shall be straight and the rough places plain; what before was dark and intricate in prophecy should now become clear; and such doctrines as were not so well understood should now become plain and easy.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv6, 9, 10 Cry - God speaks unto his ministers. He -…
Cry - God speaks unto his ministers. He - The prophet. All flesh - The prophet having foretold glorious things, confirms the certainty of them, by representing the vast difference between the nature, and word, and work of men and of God. All that men are or have, yea, their highest accomplishments, are but like the grass of the field, weak and vanishing, soon nipt and brought to nothing; but God's word is like himself, immutable and irresistible: and therefore as the mouth of the Lord, and not of man, hath spoken these things, so doubt not but they shall be fulfilled.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 Verse 4. Crooked] The word עקב akob is very…
Verse 4. Crooked] The word עקב akob is very generally rendered crooked: but this sense of the word seems not to be supported by any good authority. Ludolphus, Comment. ad Hist. AEthiop. p. 206, says "that in the Ethiopia language it signifies clivus, locus editus:" and so the Syriac Version renders it in this place, ערמא arama: Hebrew, ערמה aramah, tumulus, acervus. Thus the parallelism would be more perfect: "the hilly country shall be made level, and the precipices a smooth plain."
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 9, 10 Isa 40:5. And the glory of the Lord shall…
Isa 40:5. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed — It was revealed in some sort when God brought his people out of Babylon: for that was a glorious work of God, in which he displayed his power, and love, and faithfulness in fulfilling his promises. But his glory was much more eminently revealed when Christ, the Lord of glory, was manifested in the flesh, and gave much clearer and fuller discoveries of God’s glorious wisdom, holiness, goodness, and other divine perfections, than ever before had been imparted to mankind, or to his church. And all flesh shall see it together — All nations, Jews as well as Gentiles. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it — Though it may seem incredible, yet God is able to accomplish it.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv4–11 Every valley shall be exalted - That is, every…
Every valley shall be exalted - That is, every valley, or low piece of ground, shall be filled up so as to make a level highway, as was done in order to facilitate the march of armies. This verse is evidently designed to explain what is intended in Isa 40:3, by preparing the way for Yahweh. Applied to the return of the Jews from Babylon, it means simply that the impassable valleys were to be filled up so as to make a level road for their journey. If applied to the work of John, the forerunner of the Messiah, it means that the nation was to be called on to put itself in a state of preparation for his coming, and for the success of his labors among them. Vitringa, and others, have endeavored to specify what particular moral qualities in the nation are meant by the ‘valley,’ by the ‘mountain and hill,’ and by the ‘crooked’ and ‘rough places.’ But the illustrations are such as cannot be demonstrated to be referred to by the prophet. The general sense is plain. The language, as we have seen, is taken from the march of a monarch at the head of his army. The general idea is, that all obstructions were to be removed, so that the march would be without embarrassment. As applicable to the work of John also, the language means in general, that whatever there was in the opinions, habits, conduct, in the pride, self-confidence, and irreligion of the nation that would prevent his cordial reception, was to be removed.
Every mountain and hill - They shall be dug down so as to make the journey easy. All obstructions were to be removed.
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And the crooked - The word used here, (עקב ‛âqob) is usually rendered ‘crooked;’ but perhaps not by any good authority. The verb עקב ‛âqab usually denotes to be behind; to come from behind; or, as Gesenius supposes, to be elevated like a mound, arched like a hill or tumulus, and is hence applied to the heel from the figure (see Gen 25:26; Hos 12:4). According to this, the word would denote properly a hill, mound, or acclivity, which would put back those who attempted to ascend.
Shall be made straight - Margin, ‘A straight place.’ The Hebrew word (מישׁור mı̂yshôr) denotes properly “evenness,” a level region, a plain. The hilly places would be reduced to a level.
And the rough places - Those which are hard, bound up, stony, difficult to pass. Such as abounded with rocks and precipices, and which presented obstructions to a journey. Such places abounded in the region lying between Palestine and Babylon.
Plain - Margin, ‘A plain place.’ A smooth, level plain.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 Plain. For the captives, or the conversion of the…
Plain. For the captives, or the conversion of the world, Baruch v. 6.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 Eastern monarchs send heralds before them in a journey…
Eastern monarchs send heralds before them in a journey to clear away obstacles, make causeways over valleys, and level hills. So John's duty was to bring back the people to obedience to the law and to remove all self-confidence, pride in national privileges, hypocrisy, and irreligion, so that they should be ready for His coming (Mal 4:6; Luk 1:17).
crooked--declivities.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv6, 9, 10 6-8. Cry — Isaiah again hears a voice crying.…
6-8. Cry — Isaiah again hears a voice crying. Not the same voice. That was the herald’s cry. This one belongs to another subject.
He said — ואמר, v’amar, is the true pointing of the text, according to the best authorities, though Lowth, Noyes, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and a few Hebrew manuscripts read, And I said, and this apparently helps the sense of what follows. But it is, too, apparent, on the other hand, that it is the prophet who is here hearing, and the voice seems to be that of God, or of an ideal person in behalf of God, to the prophet, because when the latter asks, What shall I cry? the answer is such as to exalt the divine Word above all that is conceivable of man. The answer is, therefore, the theme of the entire passage. He is commanded to proclaim the perishable nature of man and of all flesh, and the imperishable nature of the word of God. Why such a proclamation? Possibly for preparing the way in men’s minds to see the absolute nothingness of idols (as shown in chapters following) when compared with the infinite exaltation of the almighty God. But more probably, and more directly, to assure the confidence of men in the reliability of God’s word of promise that Zion, or the believing ones in exile, shall surely have the deliverance promised.
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The grass withereth, the flower fadeth — Grass is “all flesh,” or man in the abstract. Then these predicates of man show him in infinite contrast with God. Man is impotent, limited, perishing: the blast of God’s breath upon man is his destruction. Whatever such an infinite One says, therefore, can never fail. His promise of consolation and comfort is sure. This is clearly the sense to Isa_40:9. See Psa_10:15; Isa_1:10-11; 1Pe_1:24-25.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv4–11 4. and the crooked … plain] More literally: and…
4. and the crooked … plain] More literally: and the uneven shall become a plain, and the rugged places a valley. rough places is a word of somewhat uncertain sense, which does not occur elsewhere. straight and plain are nouns in the original.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 (4) Every valley shall be exalted.—The figure is drawn…
(4) Every valley shall be exalted.—The figure is drawn from the titanic engineering operations of the kingly road-makers of the East, but the parable is hardly veiled. The meek exalted, the proud brought low, wrong ways set right, rough natures smoothed: that is the true preparation for the coming of the Lord, and therefore the true work of every follower of the Baptist in preparing the way. (Comp. Mat_3:5-7; Luk_3:3-9.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv4–11 Every valley shall be exalted, etc.; rather, let every…
Every valley shall be exalted, etc.; rather, let every valley be exalted. The prophets are to see that the poor and lowly are raised up; the proud and self-righteous depressed; the crooked and dishonest induced to change their ways for those of simplicity and integrity; the rude, rough, and harsh rendered courteous and mild. "In general, the meaning is that Israel is to be made take care that the God who is coming to deliver it shall find it in such an inward and outward state as befits his... purpose" (Delitzsch, "Comment. on Isaiah," vol. 2. p. 142).
Vers. 4-8. God"s promises sure.
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With Isaiah it is enough that "the month of the Lord has spoken" a thing. (Isa_1:20 Isa_40:5) "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent". (Num_23:19) What he has promised, he will perform; what he has said, he will do, in the sense in which he said it. It is true, his promises are of two kinds
(1) unconditional, and
(2) conditional; and, though both kinds are sure, they are not sure in the same way.
I GOD"S UNCONDITIONAL PROMISES ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN OF ACCOMPLISHMENT. God has promised that he will never again destroy mankind by a flood. (Gen_9:11) He has pledged himself that "while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease". (Gen_8:22)
By his Son he has declared that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against his Church", (Mat_16:18) that he will send his Son to earth a second time to judge the quick and dead, (Mat_25:31-45) and that then the wicked "shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal". (Mat_25:46) These are unconditional promises, and are absolutely certain of fulfilment. Nothing can come in their way. God"s veracity is pledged to them, and, as he is true, he must and will bring them to pass.
II GOD"S CONDITIONAL PROMISES ARE CERTAIN OF ACCOMPLISHMENT, IF THE CONDITION REFULFILLED. The bulk of God"s promises to mankind are "covenant promises," and, by the nature of a "covenant promise," they depend on a condition or conditions which have to be fulfilled. The promises to the Israelites that they should possess Canaan, to David that his seed should sit upon his throne, and to captive Israel that it should be restored, were of this nature. So are all promises of temporal and spiritual blessings to individuals. Even where the condition is not expressed, it is understood. A single example will suffice to show the nature of this kind of promise. A covenant was made with David to establish his seed for ever, and set up his throne to all generations. (Psa_89:3, Psa_89:4) This covenant was to stand fast, so long as his children walked in his ways. If, however, they forsook God"s Law, and walked not in his judgments; if they broke his statutes, and kept not his commandments, then their transgressions were to be visited with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. The Anointed of the Lord was to be cut off and abhorred; the covenant with him was to be made void, and his crown to be cast to the ground. (Psa_89:30-39) In these cases God"s part of the covenant remains sure; it is man"s which is uncertain. If man fails, then God is, by his very faithfulness, bound to mark his sense of the failure by non-fulfilment of the promises which were made conditional on a certain course of human action. Unless man fails, God"s promises remain firm. No one can pretend to point out any case m which the covenant has been observed by man, and God"s part in it has been that of a defaulter.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and…
Isa_40:4-5
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low
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Christianity an essential element in true civilisation
I.
THE WORLD IS STILL FULL OF THINGS NEEDING TO BE SET STRAIGHT. So far as the economy of our earth is concerned a period of confusion has immediately preceded the establishment of Divine order. Chaos preceded Paradise. Egyptian bondage was the precursor of the exodus, which was the beginning of a national life Divinely ruled. Judaism was at its worst and Paganism in its most corrupt condition when the voice of the preacher of righteousness was heard, preparing the way of the Lord. Isaiah here compares the social and religious condition of a people awaiting a revelation of Divine glory to the condition of a country, barren as a desert, and impassable by reason of mountains and valleys; and the preparation of a highway amongst these physical obstacles represents the exaltation of what is base and the abasement of some things that are high in human life before the coming revelation of God. Around us here in England, as well as in those foreign countries to which missionary enterprise addresses itself, is a wilderness, in which what is good cannot and does not grow. The bodily and moral degradation of some of our own people, if it were revealed in all its nakedness, would startle the Church from its stately propriety. A wilderness is a fit emblem of a large section of our own population. Yet in this land we have had the Gospel for centuries. How much more, then, do the heathen want and deserve your sympathy! Another phrase in our text, which speaks of valleys, may remind us further of depths in our social life in which corruption hides. Meanwhile pride covers us, as with a garment. We talk of the progress of the age, we boast ourselves of our achievements and discoveries. There are mountains of pride to be brought down, as well as valleys of degradation to be exalted. And how many crooked things are yet to be made straight! What distortions of truth are yet to be found in England, as well as elsewhere! The orderliness of Divine progress in the natural world is a truth so contorted that some argue from it that all things seen were originally made of things that do appear, and chat there was no Divine Creator in whom they found their origin. The mercifulness of God is used as an argument against the possibility of punishment for sin.
II. THE WORLD IS NOT ESSENTIALLY THE BETTER FOR THE HUMAN INVENTIONS OF WHICH THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IS SO BOASTFUL. Much of the misery of modern life is due to the fact that moral and religious advance has not kept pace with mechanical advance, and our danger is lest developed mechanism should be to our age what a complicated and resistless machine would be in the hands of a child who knows not the ends for which it is designed. Trains and steamers carry us over land and sea with a swiftness which, to our grandfathers, would have seemed incredible. Our daily bread is often the product of labour done in the far-off fertile fields of California. There has been a literal fulfilment of these words, which speak of conquering mountains and valleys, and overleaping all obstacles, such as Isaiah never dreamed of. But the question is fairly asked, Are we the better for all this? Are we wiser, are we happier, are we nobler, are we more Christ-like, than our fathers were? We have greater appliances than our fathers, but it may be fairly doubted whether we surpass them either in capacity or in enjoyment. When you go for a holiday you can rush up the Rhine, through Switzerland, and back across France in a fortnight, but probably, in a dozen journeys of that sort you see far less than poor Oliver Goldsmith did when, with a fife as his companion, he trudged along the highways of Europe. Scientific instruments are marvellous in power and in accuracy, but scientific men have not advanced in genius beyond Newton or Herschel. Music is heard on every hand; but it is not better than the music of Handel, or of Bach, or of Haydn. In short, we have not a higher life because we have higher material appliances, and you and I are not one whit the nobler men because we can read all the news of the world in a penny paper, and transact our business with the other ends of the earth in a few hours. What do we all gain if, in covering our land with factories and steam engines, we are covering it also with want and wretchedness? In spite of all scientific discoveries and mechanical appliances, it is evident that the world wants something more than these can give. It wants freedom from its sins, and a Redeemer who can set it free. It wants love amidst its cruelties, and rest amid its weariness.
III. THE WORLD REQUIRES MOST OF ALL A REVELATION OF THE GLORY OF GOD. Many say, Let our trade and our railways and all our conveniences first find entrance to a heathen land, and then the people there will be prepared for the Gospel. A grosser delusion could hardly be promulgated. Our own social condition might show its fallacy, and experiment in heathen lands has confirmed it. When this so-called civilisation has preceded Christianity, idolaters have become atheists, and their last state worse than their first. The great object we Christians are to keep in view, in all our achievements, is that the glory of God may be revealed--not the glory of man, nor of a society, nor of a sect, but the glory of God. As a king, a man finds his glory in the contentment of his people; as a father, a man finds his glory in the well-being of his children; and so the great King and Father of us all finds His glory in our contentment and well-being. And how can that be brought about? It is by the work and words of those who speak comfortably to the sinners, who proclaim a reconciled God revealed in Jesus Christ.
IV. GOD IS LOOKING TO THE CHURCH TO BRING ABOUT THIS CHANGE. He is addressing His people here, and, instead of saying I will comfort, He says Comfort ye. No angel messengers now wing their flight from heaven to announce the glad tidings of great joy. The message has been entrusted to us. Let us have patience, though the results of our work at home and abroad seem sparse and small. The upraising of valleys and the levelling of mountains is no childs play, even in the physical world, and it is harder still in the spiritual realm. When we remember the cost at which some modern discoveries were won, and see the patience and skill and risk which accompany the driving of tunnels through mountains, or under the sea, we are ashamed of the ease with which Christians give way to disheartenment. In preparing the highway here spoken of we must work on the plan the Norwegians adopt for keeping up their roads. Each occupier of land, in proportion to his acreage, has his own allotted portion of road to maintain, and for that he is responsible. So, in proportion to your capacities and opportunities, you have your work to do--in your home, in your class, in your sphere of thought or activity, and from that responsibility none can release you. (A. Rowland, B. A.)
The prospects of the Church
I. SOME OF THE MOST FORMIDABLE OBSTRUCTIONS TO THE DIFFUSION AND PROGRESS OF TRUE RELIGION AND THE CERTAINTY OF THEIR REMOVAL.
1. The defective character of personal religion. There are many features of the Christian character scarcely ever brought out to public view; and others whose nature is so misapprehended as to lead to a misshapen exhibition of the spirit and precepts of the Gospel of Christ. Have you never been pained when at the close of the day you have endeavoured to ascertain the character of your thoughts, feelings, and actions? Have you never been surprised at the moral personage who has presented himself to your view at such seasons? There is much of secularity mingled with the religion that prevails. What has religion done for us if it has not so elevated the tone and order of our feelings as to render us indifferent to the pleasures of sin? As a natural consequence of this defective piety much is withheld from the service of God. There is so much of self mingled[with our religious engagements. The purposes of God embrace the agency and co-operation of man. If, then, the piety of the Church be defective, if the body that acts for God be enfeebled by disease, or misguided in its operations, how fatally must its efficiency be counteracted! But assuredly an end will be put to this state of things, for every valley shall be exalted, etc.
2. The division and animosities amongst Christians. A sectarian character has thus been given to the Church, a fictitious and morbid zeal has been engendered, and those resources which ought to have been expended in the evangelisation of the world have, on many occasions, been laid out for party and sinister purposes.
3. The connection that subsists between religion and State politics. The Christianity that has been patronised by the State--that has been adopted as the stepping-stone to emolument and power, this has been mistaken for the religion of the Bible.
II. THE RESULTS WHICH THE PROPHET REPRESENTS AS CONSEQUENT UPON THE REMOVAL OF THESE OBSTRUCTIONS. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Nothing can be more inspiring than this prospect. If it is gratifying to see the boundaries of science enlarged, or the elements of human happiness increased; if the political resurrection of a nation inspires us with joy; if it invigorates our hearts to see the spirit of an age awakening from its slumber and preparing itself for wise and virtuous action, what should be the emotion of our hearts in contemplating such a consummation as is represented in my text? It is not the mere promise of an approaching good by which the prophet here seeks to inspire our mind. It contains the elements of all conceivable happiness. It will embody and secure to the inhabitants of our world the highest enjoyment of which their nature is susceptible. The glory of God has hitherto been but partially unveiled. The sun is still behind the cloud, and a shadow is in consequence thrown on our path. But when the piety of the Church shall be freed from its present stains, when her divisions are healed, then shall she arise and shine, for her light will have come, and the glory of the Lord will be risen upon her. But we are informed that all flesh shall see it together. The Evangelist slightly,, varies the latter part of the prophecy--All flesh shall see the salvation of God. As yet the salvation of God is known to but a limited portion of the world. But the salvation of God all are yet destined to see. (T. Price.)
The levelling force of Christianity
There are and ever have been in the soul of society opinions, prejudices, feelings, conventional notions which, like mountains and valleys, have separated men into classes, and prevented the free-flowing interchange of soul. Those mountains rear their frowning heads and throw their chilling shadows in every district of society. Those valleys yawn everywhere, and form an impassable gulf between the brothers on either side. Christianity has a power to remove those mountains, fill up the valleys, etc. How does Christianity do this? In two ways--
I. BY THE LEVELLING TRUTHS WHICH IT REVEALS.
1. A common God.
2. A common nature.
3. A common obligation.
4. A common depravity.
5. A common salvation.
II. BY THE LEVELLING SPIRIT WHICH IT GENERATES. The spirit which Christianity generates in the human soul is such that raises a man above all those prejudices of the heart and conventionalities of life that divide men. What is the spirit? It is a spirit that has supreme regard to three things--
1. The spiritual in man.
2. The right in conduct.
3. The eternal in destiny. The socially levelling force of Christianity, however, does not involve spoliation. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The crooked shall be made straight
The prophet and the picturesque
There is much in us which would instinctively resent and repudiate this ideal that he has put before us. Take, for instance, that sensitive faculty in our century receiving so peculiar and overwhelming a development, the sense of the picturesque. The words of my text break in with a very surprising emphasis. This vehemence of the prophet clashes with all the primary instincts of this sentiment of ours. Mountains flattened out, valleys filled in, highways levelled from end to end, every broken piece of rough ground repaired, every turn and twist in the path straightened--what a picture to portray with such rapturous enthusiasm! Could any result be more deplorable? It is the very murder of the picturesque! The picturesque asks only that the mountains should rise yet higher, be more pathless, more craggy, more perilous; that they should be torn by glaciers and scoured by avalanches and wasted by storms and bemoaned by winds, and be aghast with lonely desolation--that is what it prefers, that is what excites it,--and the valleys shall plunge yet deeper, more gloomy vaults, sunless, with hoarse torrents buried in awful black gulfs and roaming along in anger out of sight. There should be no roads if possible; at least, never level or straight for two yards together; and there should be cliffs that are frowning and overhanging and ruinous and threatening, and high and fierce and solitary rocks. Everything should be rough, everything should be crooked, for the sake of the picturesque! (Canon H. Scott-Holland, M. A.)
Picturesque abuses
In this contrast between the prophet and the picturesque is there nothing but of a light or superficial nature, nothing serious? I doubt it. The prophets thunderous intensity brings our sentiment to a check just at the point where it is apt to pervert the moral judgment. Where is that? At the point where it helps to blind us to the actual life, the actual needs and necessities of a living present. The feeling for the picturesque belongs always to those who are outside the object of their admiration. They are looking on as unconcerned spectators. That which they observe lies wholly outside their own living, personal experience, and that is why it touches them and startles them, and pleases because it startles. It is so odd, so unexpected, so dreamy, so old. That is the sentiment bred in tourists, in passengers tarrying the day, gazing from without at a scene, unaffected by its sorrows, aloof from its inner reality. We like these strange, huddled, dirty streets, and these swarming beggars, and these crumbling walls, and these crooked alleys, and all the oddities of decay, and all the quaintness of the obsolete. Abuses, so long as they do not hurt us, are much more picturesque than their remedies. In this mood what serious blunders we have made abroad--offences against our best English self, for the native English have a love for liberty, for a free people. How much has our love for the picturesque killed our sympathy for freedom in Rome or in Venice, shall we say? This error which we make again and again abroad is very apt to repeat itself here at home; for those who have leisure to enjoy the picturesque are bound, of course, to have already reached some comfort themselves, some security of position. That thatched cottage in the dell, in the hollow of the wood, could anything be more engaging? We have sketched it again and again. It is very damp, and those colours on it that we like so, the greens and the yellows, reveal the dampness. It is buried under the trees, it stands on soppy ground, and there is no drainage; there is a cesspool behind. But how raw the new brick four-roomed house would look without an offence in our rustic nook! There is a great deal more of this among us comfortable and educated people than we are at all aware of. It acts as a dead weight on us, it counteracts the force of our reforming zeal. We should never for one moment dream of letting the picturesqueness stand in our way if we had to sink into consumption through the damp or die of typhoid in some undrained, old-fashioned street; but somehow it puts in its plea with us with far greater power when others are concerned, and we are but spectators. It is against all this that the prophets zeal thunders. The picturesque may rightly widen our sympathies for the past; it may plead for gentle handling of what is so fair in the deposits of the past, it may rightly prompt us to do oar very utmost to save what is beautiful and natural from cruel, hideous misuse by commercial greed, but there is one supreme law which it never must gainsay, the law which is uttered in the cry of the recovered king, Hezekiah, when he recovered from his sickness: Death cannot celebrate Thee. The living shall praise Thee, as I do this day. (Canon H. Scott-Holland, M. A.)
Redemptive growth
Since the cloud and curse of sin, all this growth of ours, which is our life, is remedial, corrective, redemptive. It is won through strife over wrong, through struggling out of evil, and always, therefore, it must witness to its vitality by straightening the crooked, by making the rough places plain. It must always testify to its life. Always it must be bettering bad highways. It must be abasing mountains that obstruct and daunt. It must be filling up valleys that cramp and choke and darken. That is the necessity, the necessity of clearing the way for free motion towards a better day. But, again, even from inside this growing life, even after we have torn ourselves out of the ranks of unconcerned spectators and irresponsible tourists, and have thrown ourselves with heart and hope into this remedial work, and are keenly striving to bring the crooked straight and to loosen the terrible burden of wrong; even then this old perplexity and trouble will recur, and recur in a subtler and much deeper form. Perhaps in the very midst of our reforming zeal there will suddenly come a thought, a sight crossing our mind of all our hopes achieved. The crooked, now so cruelly wrong or disastrously distorted, has at last been made perfectly straight. What then? Are we better off? What a poor, stale, stupid place this world will have become. All wrongs redressed, all blunders rectified, all inequalities levelled; everybody on the same platform, decent, snug, comfortable--a dull, unbroken mass of average respect-abilities. Comfort for the comfortless--it was for that that we had hungered and toiled. But the comfortable! Look at those who have already attained it. Are they so encouraging a prospect? What if all were as they? After all, moral character is our sole aim; and will character have lost or gained when our efforts have succeeded? Where is character found now? we say. Is it found amid the comfortable? Hardly. Is it not always won through suffering, strife, anguish? Those rare simplicities of the poor, those generosities, those devotions--are they not worth all the smugger virtues? Would they not have vanished in a world where there was nothing crooked, no high lights and no dark shadows, no ups and downs? Perhaps we take up some industrial Utopia, some book like Looking Backward, and as we read we are chilled to the marrow. There is a dull recoil. How utterly repugnant; how fiat and stale and unprofitable! All that makes humanity dear and pathetic and glorious gone, died out! No room in such a world, we say, for high adventures, shining heroisms; no trumpet calls, no splendid risks, no holy indignation, no exaltation of sacrifice, no prophetic passion. Democratic equality has levelled all the roads straight as dies. They run between their kerbstones. All is smooth, orderly, equitable, and there is no material there for art, none for music. Where shall we seek for Schuberts songs that float like dreams? They were won, we say, by his tears. And where will be our Hamlets and our Lears in the romance? How will man ever display his higher capacities except through pain and struggle and sorrow? Yet those are the very conditions that we are labouring to deny him. Alas! our hearts sink, our imagination protests, our hopes flag, and the glowing passion of the prophet, as it catches sight of the very fulfilment of its dream, dies away in the wail of the preacher, Vanity, vanity, even this is vanity. (Canon H. Scott-Holland, M. A.)
No fear of Utopia
We have invented a terror for ourselves. We need not be the least afraid. These visions of the future deceive us by suggesting a finality at which man will have arrived. These Utopias are just what will not be true. That is just what we are quite certain will never occur while this present age endures. The one thing that we know of the future is that it will not be like that, for we know that at each moment of his earthly career, until his Lord Jesus comes again to make earth and heaven anew, man will be found warring as a soldier--a pilgrim pressing on towards eternity with mountains still towering ahead, dark with unknown destiny, with valleys into which he must plunge, and moaning with perils through which he must dare his way; with tough tasks still set him to achieve; with nerves, therefore, still strung and prophet voices calling and eyes strained forward into the night, and loins girt, and heart on fire, and foes to fight, and deaths to die, and victories to win. But you will say, Is that a very encouraging message? Why waste our efforts, then, in struggling to set things right if the crooked will never be straight, if the high road will never be levelled? Why grind at smoothing down our present hills if always there will be fresh mountains beyond? Just because man is, in essence, a pilgrim, a soldier, a servant of Jesus crucified, and it is his very life to bring this to the front. He discovers himself in and through this struggle and pilgrimage, through the strain of the war. That is his mission in which he proves his courage and his nerve. Unless he is always correcting evil, unless he is always battling down wrongs, he is not himself, and he knows not of what spirit he is made. What the particular wrong may be which he is called upon to redress at this moment, or at that, is determined for him by the conditions of history, by God Himself, for God is in history-He directs, He allots, He distributes the task to man--there is a design clearly disclosed. One by one, God brings up to men the difficulties, the obstructions that He would have them encounter. Our forefathers had their own fight to fight, and they fought it. They were tested and proved in other ways. One fight at a time! They fought for liberty, they fought for free speech; they could not attend to underlying poverty. Now their part is played, their mountains are brought low, and their crooked things are made straight, and therefore there is time and opportunity for something else. There is another task for us, another test applied. We are not to enjoy what our fathers put straight without doing our own part to bend the crooked into line, to make rough places plain. (Canon H. Scott-Holland, M. A.)
The battle for to-day
Since God is in history, there is continuity in our pilgrimage, and there is purpose. The old wars, by healing some wrongs, prepared opportunities for new efforts. There is advance, after all, along this- highway, -however much there is still always a rough place just ahead, a cruel corner to put straight. We are farther along. There are wrongs righted and thrown behind us, and therefore the nearer we draw to the end. Enough for us that we know the spot on the road at which we stand, that we know what are the crooked things which it is our own special task to set straight. Let us look at them and leave the rest to God. Who can doubt at what spot on the road we stand to-day? Those crooked things on which the light of God has been turned in our day-there they are; we know them and we see them--the commercial pressure that falls on the weak, and that breaks and spoils the humanity under it, manhood, womanhood, home, joy; the heartless mechanism of an impersonal economic system which crunches the aged, the women, the children; the sorrows of those who labour on without any hope of reaching an end of their labour; men and women, jaded, bruised, disfigured, always under-fed, invalided by penury, unqualified for work, unfit for what they do; men and women tossed to and fro by blind tides of fluctuating markets over which they have no control; men and women accumulated in hordes, unsheperded and unregarded in squalid tenements, in sordid and mean dishonour, living environed by disease, born into a world too masterful for their infirmities, sustained at the edge of starvation by a competition that never improves them and yet never eliminates them, drawn under by demands which they are helpless to fulfil, bruised and damaged in trying to meet them. No one anticipated that our industries would create them or sustain in existence classes of this type. They are the signals of some defect in our system, of some perversion, of some disease,, of some disaster--that something that meant well enough has gone crooked, that the machinery of our civilisation is out of gear. We have got out of the track. That much is plain. Therefore a responsibility is laid upon us; a thing has got to be done. (Canon H. Scott-Holland, M. A.)
And the rough places plain--
The rough places made plain
I. We may take this to be, in outline, THE DESCRIPTION OF GODS WORK WITH OUR WORLD AND WITH MANKIND, REGARDED AS A PREPARATION FOR THE FUTURE. It is the voice of history, of nature, of science, of revelation. The present is a preparation for the future, as the past was a preparation for the present, and as the future will be a preparation for a still coming and greater future. We know the history of religion; how slow its progress--how for centuries it was only successful in casting down obstacles, and preparing the hearts of men for the entrance of a faith which was worthy of its Author. It required not the labours of one prophet like John only, but the labours of many generations of prophets, to prepare for the advent of Jesus Christ. Religion passed through numerous forms before it arrived at that form which Christ gave it. And as this was the work of God in the religious thought and life of man, so was it the work of God in the world. The kingdom of heaven did not come until the world was in a measure ready for it.
II. So we may say that this is AN INDEX TO THE COURSE OF HIS PROVIDENCE IN EVERY AGE AND COUNTRY. This lesson may be learned--that in all cases the spiritual is above the material; and that all progress and improvement in the material world are but means to an end, and are intended to serve far higher interests. All these benefits of rapid intelligence, of conveniences, of comforts, are but the removal of hindrances out of the way of the progress of what is spiritual and Divine. If they leave men devoid of better aims--if they leave us selfish, earthly, false--they are no blessings after all! If we use the gifts of nature and invention and discovery merely to attain our own ends, and if there is no growth of the spirit of truth and charity, we have gained nothing: we have merely added to our former powers the power to increase our selfishness. But such is not the use for which these new acquisitions are designed. If there are more facilities for reaching the human mind by thought and speech or writing, all the more carefully ought everyone who has influence over his fellows to see that that influence is wholesome, and not hurtful. The material is the servant of the spiritual. What John the Baptist was to Christ, such is all the world to the Christ. All nature was a preparation for Him, all knowledge, all discovery. The world did not see this at the time; but the fact is true for all that. People say that the growth of human wisdom and the increase of human blessings are adverse to the Gospel; but on looking back on history we see that all these things were in the hands of God, and were all made to prepare the way for the kingdom of God. So it is, and so ought it ever to be.
III. THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN MAKING THE PATH TO GOODNESS EASIER.
IV. THIS IS OUR WORK AS CHRISTIANS IN THE WORLD AND FOR THE WORLD. This is part of our task for those who are finding the road to goodness and right living hard and rough. Each of us has something in his power to prepare the way for the kingdom of God in the lives and hearts of others. To many, the difficulties of a right life are very great, and it is no easy task for them to carry it out. Everything is against them: training, circumstances, companions, habits. From their youngest years they have been familiar with evil. It comes to them naturally to deceive, to lie, to do all manner of misdeeds. How can such a youth ever open into a manhood of worth or goodness? He must be helped by education, by guidance, by living examples of affection and well-doing. Christian society, the Church, must come to his aid. And what is all this but doing the work of Christ, the work of prophets and evangelists, the work of the Gospel, preparing a highway, helping those who cannot walk, making the rough places plain, making it easier for a man to stand in goodness and truth? After all is done, however, both for nations and individuals, there will be difficulties to overcome. You can never for yourselves, or for those whom you most love, so arrange things that all personal need for care and effort shall cease. There will be for every man the cross to carry, and for many men the thorn to trouble them. (A. Watson, D. D.)
Rough places
I. ROUGH PLACES.
1. In general human history.
2. In individual human life.
II. ROUGH PLACES MADE PLAIN.
1. The supreme power of Jesus Christ.
2. The supreme power of Jesus Christ used for the advantage of mankind.
3. The advantage of mankind identified with the coming kingdom of Jesus Christ.
III. THE TRANQUIL AND BLESSED FUTURE OF THE WORLD. Christianity is good news. Inequalities are to be rectified. Relations are to be adjusted. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv6, 9, 11 (Autumn Sermons.)
THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT
(Autumn Sermons.)
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Isa_40:6-8. All flesh is grass, &c. [1315]
[1315] The very affecting images of Scripture which compare the short-lived existence of man to the decay of the vegetable creation are scarcely understood in this country. The verlure is perpetual in England. It is difficult to discover a time when it can be said, “The grass withereth.” But let a traveller visit the beautiful plain of Smyrna, or any other part of the East, in the month of May, and revisit it toward the end of June, and he will perceive the force and beauty of these allusions. In May, an appearance of fresh verdure and of rich luxuriance everywhere meets the eye; the face of Nature is adorned with a carpet of flowers and herbage of the most elegant kind. But a month or six weeks subsequently, how changed is the entire scene! The beauty is gone, the grass is withered, the flower is faded; a brown and dusty desert has taken the place of a delicious garden. It is, doubtless, to this rapid transformation of Nature that the Scriptures compare the fate of man.—Hartley: Researches in Greece, p. 237.
We are witnessing one of the last phases of that wonderful life which Nature unfolds before us each year with ever-new beauty. To most men it is a sad phase. Why? Not because we are entering upon the rugged season of the year. They know that the discomforts of winter are transient; and winter brings its own pleasures. The feeling finds its source in that intuitive faculty in man which enables him to interpret the spiritual significance in Nature, and which tells him that in the withering and falling leaf, decomposing and resolving itself into its first elements,—in the dry and flowerless stalk and the harsh brown grass, he sees the type of his own mortality (P. D. 248, 2222).
The decay of autumn suggesting the thought of decay in human life, suggests also very forcibly the thought of immortality. Never does the longing to live for ever so take possession of my soul as when all about me is telling me that life is transitory. When life is fullest and most satisfying, death is most unwelcome; and when decay and death draw nigh, we long with quickened desire for life.
There are two elements in all things earthly—the transitory and the permanent. Nature has a real life which survives when she sheds what have been the visible tokens of her life. The things which seem most alive in Nature are the leaves, the flowers, and the fruits; but these are the things that perish soonest. The real life lies deeper—hidden from human eyes; and that endures. It is so with man. There is somewhat that is real and abiding; there is somewhat that is only temporary—the foliage in which the real expresses itself to-day, and which it will cast aside to-morrow. And so we find the sacred poet thinking upon the transitoriness of life, reassuring himself with the thought that there is nevertheless somewhat that is real and abiding. “All flesh is grass,” &c.
There are lives which all of us can live which will have more than a transitory significance; deeds within the power of us all which will be immortal; things which may be acquired by us which neither time nor accident can wrest from us.
I. Our good deeds will live for ever. Our acts of kindness, generosity, helpfulness are immortal because they are Divine. There is a threefold immortality—
1. Acts that lessen life’s burdensomeness and diminish the temptations to sin have far-reaching consequences to others. By these personal ministries, often humble and obscure, we are shaping immortal lives. Our good deeds will live in other souls (P. D. 1006, 2302, 2443, 3205).
2. You cannot do another good without doing yourself good in the deed; you are building your own character, and that will show your work upon it unto eternity (H. E. I. 720; P. D. 3609).
3. Our good deeds become immortal by their life in the thought of God (Heb_6:10; Act_10:31; H. E. I. 451, 1726; P. D. 2012).
II. Our pure affections will live for ever (P. D. 749–2351).
The leaves fall and mingle with the sod, the flower droops and withers, and earth ere long will lie sepulchred beneath the snow; but in the providence of God the spring will come, and earth will wake to a fresh and radiant life. And so, also, when our earthly plans are broken, our accumulations scattered, and our bodies crumble into dust, the soul with all its fulness of love and all its trophies of service shall live on in the immortality of God.—George P. Gilman.
God’s comparisons are striking, His contrasts sharp. Could the perishability of creation and the imperishability of its uncreated Author be put more vividly before our eyes than by likening the one to a worn-out garment, ready to drop apart, while the other stands out untouched by time, and with years that have no end? (Psa_102:26-27). In this passage from ancient prophecy, how the fleeting is made a background on which to set the fixed! Over against Nature’s decaying growth are put Revelation’s verities that eternally abide. “The grass withereth,” &c.
I. We have symbolised a changing world. While the decay of vegetation which the season brings needs not be, and ought not to be, a ghastly or gloomy thing [1318] it is a symbol of change, a reminder of the evanescence of all material objects and concerns. Look around, and you will observe that all things are changing, most of them rapidly (H. E. I. 4975–4989; P. D. 408, 2536, 3336). Turn where you will, you note the restlessness of men. New partners, new parties, new experiments, new diversions. Why are all things around us thus full of change?
1. Partly because that capricious thing the human will underlies all finite activities, and will not let us remain quiet. Its fickleness it is that keeps public and private life disturbed [1321] A changing world! Can it be otherwise with such a vacillating element under it? Can you build a vessel that will not pitch or lurch, when beneath it there is that which pitches and lurches all the while? A changing world indeed. Changing in its loves and hates, in its wishes and its wills, in its hopes and fears, in its purposes and plans. Changing like withering grass and fading flower.
2. But this evanescence is not entirely an outgrowth of human weakness; part of it is the outworking of a Divine design. The fluctuations of earth are its heavenly discipline. God uses it to rid the world of evils, as He uses thunders and lightnings to shake out of the air deadly diseases hanging there. Even for the individual a quiet, undisturbed life is rarely God’s plan. The soul is apt to grow hard, and selfish, and narrow, unless over-turnings and ups and downs shake it loose from earthly good and gain (Psa_55:19; Jer_48:11; H. E. I. 3997–4014). To prevent this, changes keep us shaken up. God’s merciful hand is in the commotion (H. E. I. 110, 111).
[1318] There is a kind of autumn sermonising or moralising that is more vapoury than truthful, and more sentimental than pious. Much of the doleful talk about the blighting and blasting of the fair and the beautiful, in the field and forest and on the lawn, is foolishness. The blanched leaf fluttering from the tree is spoken of pityingly as though overtaken by some untimely fate, as though some destroying influence had cut short its life. But as a matter of fact, we know that the falling of the leaf was as natural as the unfolding of the leaf. Winter or no winter, frost or no frost, it would have faded or fallen, because that was the Creator’s plan concerning it. He meant from the beginning that it should last only so long. Study its structure, and you will see that its work was done. When, therefore, the landscape spreads around the emblems of a frail and dying world, instead of taking on a plaintive tone, it would be wiser cheerfully to say, “The summer has finished its appointed task, and when the set time comes, may my own be finished just as well!—Vassar.
[1321] I was running over again recently the career of that hapless Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. Who that has once read it can forget the tragic history? For a brief space she was the idol of her realm. Then her enthusiastic subjects offered to take the horses from the royal carriage and draw it with their own hands down the streets of her gay capital. How terrible the transition when, a little later, along those same avenues they dragged the widowed sovereign to execution, rending the air with curses that ceased only when the bloody head was held up in sight.—Vassar.
II. Note now the stability with which this inconstancy is contrasted. Turn from the changing world and consider the unchanging Word. “The Word of our God standeth for ever” (Mat_24:35; 1Pe_1:24-25).
1. There is this immutability about the facts which Scripture states. Every little while infidelity with blare of trumpets announces some fresh discovery of science hostile to revelation, and at each disclosure some timid believers are almost ready to concede that the Bible has gotten its deathblow. Children that we are to be scared by shadows! Why, Sir Charles Lyell tells us that in 1806 the French Institute numbered more than eighty geological theories that struck against the inspired record, and not one of those theories survives to-day (H. E. I. 539, 636, 642–645).
2. There is the same permanence about the predictions of this Word [1324]
3. There is the same perpetuity about the principles or doctrines of this Word. At times the enemy comes in so like a flood that it seems as if all the old landmarks were swept away. But the old verities remain unchanged. Divine holiness, justice, and supreme dominion; human accountability to a righteous law; human sinfulness, and pardon through a crucified Saviour; the necessity of repentance and regeneration through the renewing and sanctifying Spirit; a reckoning day when right shall be crowned and wrong crushed, and the drama of history close amid praises—not one of these Bible truths has been abrogated or annulled by all men’s sneers or jeers. Providence is not a myth. Christ is not an amiable enthusiast. Heaven is not a dream, nor is hell a fiction.
4. This Word is permanent in its fruits. “The Word of our God” is first of all sometimes heard with the ear, then sometimes accepted by the understanding, then sometimes received into the soul, and then sometimes manifested in the life of the believer. Where so grasped and held, it is a principle of undecaying power. The work that begins with the saving entrance of the Word goes on for ever. Not only does the truth so embraced by the heart perpetually produce fruit in the individual, but in the community it keeps yielding fruit year after year.—Thomas E. Vassar.
[1324] Prophecy is only pre-written history Much of it has not yet come to pass, yet Christian trust no more doubts that what is pledged is coming than the man of the world doubts that winter is on its way. Why should we doubt it? Look back and see how predictions once made have turned into realisations on the right hand and the left. Hear the cry of the bittern as it sails amidst the flooded palaces of Babylon; listen to the song of the fisherman spreading his net where Tyre once sat a proud ocean-queen; catch the wail of the Jew downtrodden in the city of his fathers, and without a country anywhere that he can call his own, and then ask whether other promises or other threatenings of the Divine Word are not as likely to be fulfilled.—Vassar.
THE STORY AND MORAL OF A BLADE OF GRASS
Isa_40:6-8. All flesh is grass, &c.
I. THE STORY OF THE BLADE OF GRASS.
The tender beauty of these words is not confined to the fact that their leading thought—the transitoriness of human life—is full of pathos. There is a plaintive music in them; the refrain—“grass withers, flowers fade”—goes singing through the brain, quickening the tender grace of days that are dead. Imagination stirs and works; we see the broad pleasant field bathed in sunlight, and then the fierce hot blast sweep across it. Who does not feel at times that that is a true picture of human life? But these words take new force as we connect them with the circumstances in and for which they were spoken. The prophet’s main duty hitherto had been to denounce the judgments of God on the sins of Israel. He is now carried on to the distant time when the Jews will start on their return to their native land. He is to “speak comfortably” to them. As he broods over the vision—“Hark, a crier!” Another message of comfort (Isa_40:3-5). There is once more silence in the prophet’s heart. But, “Hark, a voice.” It is the Divine Voice saying “Cry!”—i.e., “Proclaim.” The herald turns and asks, “What shall I cry?” The Voice replies, “All flesh is grass,” &c. The great heathen world was transient.
“Comfortable words” for the Jews. But they must not forget that their life on earth is brief; that they can only endure as they fashion themselves on the Word of God: “This people” is grass.
II. THE MORAL OF THE STORY.
The blade of grass reminds us that human life soon withers, that human fortune often withers even before the man dies. James particularises the general lesson (Jas_1:10-11). He also reminds us that some men wither even while they retain the full vigour of life and their good fortune abides. “The rich man withers in his ways;” and therefore, argues the Apostle, he should rejoice when his riches use their wings and fly away. Why? Because trial is good for every man (James
1. Isa_40:2; Isa_40:4-12). Great reverses of fortune are among the severest tests of character. This truth is based on a true, on a Christian view of human life.
We may not fear riches for ourselves, but do we not fear them for our neighbour? Do we not fear poverty for ourselves and for our friends? A Christian teacher cannot bid us grieve over any reverse by which our character is tested, matured, perfected. In the Christian view of life, character is of supreme importance; circumstances are of value only as they serve to form and strengthen and purify it. The wealth and the poverty will soon pass, but the character will remain, and will decide our destiny. If you say, “Surely it is very hard to rejoice, to be honestly and sincerely glad when loss and pain come upon us!” what can any man reply but, “Yes, surely it is very hard, so hard that we shall never do it, except as we possess ourselves of Christ’s spirit. Heaven is very high; how are we to reach it save by climbing?” The rich man is often like a blade of grass, withering beneath the scorching sun, so that the flower falls off, and its graceful beauty perishes. The sun of prosperity shines upon him with a too-fervent heat; all the beauty and nobility of his character fades under it. He withers away in his “ways,” in the multitude of his schemes and pursuits. His fortune grows, but the man dies—dies before his time—dies before he ceases to breathe and traffic.
Is not that a true picture, and a sad one? We must all needs die; and, in some of its aspects, even that fact is sad enough. But it is sadder still that many should be as grass which wilfully exposes itself to a heat it might escape, and withers and dies while the field is still green and fragrant.
CONCLUSION.—The warning comes home to us in this age; for our whole life is so intense, that it is almost impossible to make leisure for thought, or for those religious exercises on which our spiritual health depends. We are literally “withering away in our ways.” We all need to take the warning which speaks to us as unto men—i.e., as to spiritual and immortal creatures, sons of God, and heirs of eternity. If we would not have the world crush us, we must resolutely set ourselves to be in the world as Christ was in the world.—Samuel Cox, D.D.: Biblical Exposition, pp. 432–441.
THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE
Isa_40:6. The voice said, Cry, &c.
One wonders that there should be so sublime and startling a machinery for the delivery to us of so common-place a truth. Here is a voice from the firmament. An invisible agency is brought to bear, as though for the announcement of something altogether new and unexpected (cf. Job_4:15-17). But truths which we never think of disputing may be practically those which we are most in the habit of forgetting. The voice, the apparition, is not needed to impart new truth, but it is needed to impress old truth; what we want is not an increase of knowledge, but the gaining influence for knowledge already possessed.
I. It is of the first moment that this commonplace announcement should be pressed by all possible means on our attention, because no other announcement could be better adapted for the promotion and growth of the graces of the Gospel. It is undoubtedly the presumed or the imagined distance of judgment which encourages men to persist in their sins (Ecc_8:11). There is a sort of unacknowledged idea that what is protracted and indefinite will never take effect; or it is imagined that life will yet afford numerous opportunities. To overthrow this sinner’s theory, and substitute for it the persuasion that “in the midst of life he is in death”—practically to overthrow it—would be to compel him to make provision for the coming eternity, on the threshold of which he may at any moment be standing, and concerning which he is apprised by daily spectacles of mortality. And the effect thus wrought on the unconverted would not be without its parallel in the righteous, on whom we cannot charge the habitual disregard of the dread things of the future. The feeling that the day of death is not near is at work in both. He would say, when inclined to loiter and be slothful in his great work as a candidate for eternity, “Dare I lose a day, when perhaps but few hours are left; when life is the alone season in which to gain a lofty place in the future kingdom of Christ, and life may be already contracted to a span, so that what I grasp not now may be for ever out of reach?” “What shall I say?” saith a voice from the firmament; the answer of the righteous man should be, “Oh! cry so as to make me feel that ‘all flesh is grass; and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field.’ ”
II. A supernatural authority is needed to gain any practical hold for a truth which is so readily and universally acknowledged. We do not require a voice from heaven to make us know that such and such substances are poisonous, when all experience testifies that they are. And are not our churchyards filled with the old and the young?
The Heavenly Voice bade a solemn proclamation to be made of the frailty of life; as though it were ascertained that observation and meditation would never bring it home to man; as though truth must be delivered with all the force and convincingness of a new revelation, ere there were likelihood of its gaining any practical hold.
And if it be a thing for revelation, and therefore for prayer, all meditations amongst the tombs will be practically of no worth, except as they bring men to their knees.
It is most important to remember that there is no inherent power in truth to work effectually on the soul. The power is in truth only as applied by the Spirit of God. We must not substitute the Gospel for the Saviour. A voice saith, “Cry!” Your anxiety must be that the thing cried—cried so as to come as a revelation from God—may be our own constant exposure to death (H. E. I. 1557–1566).
CONCLUSION.—Let this be part of your daily prayer to Almighty God (Psa_39:4). What we need is the being brought to feel old truth, rather than the being brought to recognise new. Oh! cry, cry earnestly, that God will proclaim so as to make you practically and permanently feel this simple, well-known truth—“All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.”—Henry Melvill, B.D.: Golden Lectures, 1851, pp. 733–740.
I. ISAIAH’S MESSAGE. “All flesh is grass.” I also have the same message to publish to my hearers to-day. These words suggest—
1. Our earthly origin. The earth is the mother of us all. Every kind of grass has its roots in her, and the most beautiful flower is not ashamed to own its mother. But many conceited people, especially if they have risen in society, are ready to forget the lowliness of their origin. Their parents and the friends of their childhood they would gladly disown. What mean and ignoble vanity!
2. Our constant dependence upon the earth for our sustenance.
3. Our equality. Some flowers are fairer than others, yet they are made of the same matter. One may be in better soil than another, more sheltered by nature or man’s device from the blasting north wind, and more open to the sunlight, but it is the same in substance. When we look round on society, we see men widely different in appearance from each other. How varied have been the circumstances of their birth, education, employment, opportunities, &c.! Yet they are all brethren. A common lot awaits them all (H. E. I. 1536, 1537; P. D. 677).
4. Our frailty and the uncertainly of our life. “As the flower of the field.” Not the garden flower, defended from storms and intruders by the gardener’s devices, but “as the flower of the field!” It opens with beauty in the morning and drinks in the warm rays of the sun; but there is no certainty that a burning tempest will not beat upon it or a beast trample it down before noon. Thus it is with us all. Confidently as the young reckon on seeing many years of happiness, “there is but a step between us and death” (H. E. I. 1539–1546; P. D. 705, 2225).
II. THE MANNER IN WHICH THE PROPHET WAS TO DELIVER HIS MESSAGE. “Cry!” Be stirring, earnest, urgent. Not that he who can cry the loudest is the best preacher. But the command suggests—
1. That there is danger. A vehement call is an indication of peril. There is danger to the sinner—not to his property, nor even to his body, but to his soul!
2. That the people do not see their danger. How true this is! How many are like a man sleeping soundly on the beach while the tide is rapidly surrounding him! Such are some of you. Wonder not, then, that we “cry” to you.
3. That the people and their danger are coming nearer to each other each moment. Many, like men working in a hayfield when a thunderstorm is gathering, postpone their escape to the last moment, and often find that the danger was nearer to them than they thought.
4. That the danger to which the people are exposed is very great.
5. That the people are unwilling to hear.
Life and Works of the late Rev. David Rees, of Lanelly, pp. 87–94.
THE IMPERISHABLENESS OF THE GOSPEL
Isa_40:8. But the Word of our God shall stand for ever.
A word is a spoken thought. God has spoken His thoughts to man. The record of what He has said is contained in the volume of inspired Scripture. The text affirms that it shall stand for ever. It is appropriated and applied to the Gospel by Peter (1Pe_1:24-25), who quotes this entire passage. The prophet’s general affirmation respecting God’s Word is applied to the Gospel in particular. It is imperishable. The grass withers. It is fresh and green when growing on the ground. In due time the mower cuts it down, and, lacking the supply of new life, it withers in the sun. The flower is beautiful in the garden. You cannot carry it away exactly as you plucked it. You have cut it off from the sources of its life; and, however carefully you keep it, in a few days it will begin to fade away. Man grows into health and vigour. He is cut down by an invisible hand in the midst of his life-work; or he accomplishes his life-work, and then sinks into decay and forgetfulness. “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.” But while the grass withers, and the flower fades, and man dies, the Word of our God stands for ever. Our theme, therefore, is the imperishableness of the Gospel.
I. IT IS IMPREGNABLE IN ITS EVIDENCE.
The assaults of infidelity have been unable to overthrow it. Its historical records receive confirmation from advancing knowledge. Its prophecies have been historically fulfilled in the most remarkable way. Its miracles are abiding evidence of Divine power brought to bear on the confirmation of its truth. Its moral teaching is exactly adapted to man’s moral nature, and presents the loftiest ideal of possible humanity. Its conception of the great central figure, the Lord Jesus Christ, can only be accounted for by its truth. Its distinguishing doctrines are characterised by their clear perception of man’s ruined condition, and their provision of what is necessary to his spiritual interest. Its continuance and gradual advancement in the world is a fulfilment of its own prediction, and a perpetual proof that God is with it. The grass has withered season by season; the flowers have faded one by one; the generations of men have followed each other to the land of forgetfulness; but it remains. The attacks upon it, made with fresh vigour and from new points of view, have left it—a fortress often attempted, but never captured. As the sea flows up and threatens to overwhelm the land day after day, but retires again to its place, so the periodical assaults of infidelity retire like their predecessors, and leave the Gospel as it was (H. E. I. 2418–2427, 2451, 1165–1168).
II. IT IS UNCHANGEABLE IN ITS NATURE.
Notwithstanding the dangers around it, the Gospel continues the same. Human history flows on, like a stream with many variations and windings. Empires rise and fall. Cities grow to magnificence, and decline. Customs and habits change. Opinions become popular or drop into disuse. Physical science as taught in one age is entirely different from physical science as taught in another. Manufacturing processes give way to invention and improvement. New facts are discovered; new truths deduced from them. Human thought is in continual flux. Yet the facts remain. The crust of the earth and the substances it contains are the same. Change is not in the objects studied, but in the knowledge of the student. The same sun shines, the same atmosphere floats around the earth from the beginning; only both are better known. And God is the same, and the Gospel is the same. Different views may be held of some critical questions; more may be known now than formerly of the localities, the history, the customs referred to in Scripture. But Scripture remains. No criticism has expunged any important doctrine. Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.” The same way of salvation, the same invitation to the sinful and weary. The Gospel of Paul and Peter and John is the Gospel still. The “faithful saying” is still true and “worthy of all acceptation.” The justification by faith which Luther sounded over Europe is the way in which sinners are justified to-day. The need of regeneration with which Whitefield and Wesley awoke the slumbers of England still exists. Men may throw off or modify their opinions of many things, but the essential nature of the Gospel cannot be changed. It is God’s final word respecting men’s salvation. It must stand for ever.
III. IT IS IMMORTAL IN ITS INFLUENCE.
It stands for ever, not only in the written book, but in the living soul. When believed, it enters the soul as a living force. It completely changes the currents of life. Its influence pervades everything. It touches and turns into gold everything in the man’s nature. It removes fear, brings consolation, sanctifies the heart and life. “Being born again.”
And when they pass to the better land, it does not cease to live in them. They carry it with them into heaven. It was Christ in them “the hope of glory.” They are now glorified together with Him. Christ will never be effaced from their memories. The love of Christ which was felt below is perfected above. The praise of Christ, which was expressed in many a thankful strain, is the celestial song which embodies their living recollections of the Gospel (Rev_5:9). The Word of God will stand for ever in the thoughts and affections of ransomed souls.
Nor can it, as a vital power in human breasts, pass from the earth. “One generation passeth away and another cometh.” The spiritual succession will be maintained to the end of time. Flowers drop their seed before they die, so that from them other flowers may spring. Every Christian desires to leave representatives behind him. Every Christian is an agent; parents, friends, Sabbath-school teachers, ministers. Thus the Gospel lives.
Christians! how great the privilege of an interest in the everlasting Gospel! It nourishes your faith. It rests your soul. It brings daily comfort and strength. It sustains your dearest hopes when all earthly things fade.
See that you discharge your duties to the Gospel.
1. Obey it as the practical expression of your faith.
2. Disseminate it.
3. Believe in its perpetuity and triumph. Away with the drivel about the decay of its influence.
O sinner, consider the bearing of this on you. You are perishable. So is all around. The imperishable you neglect. Once more it invites. It will survive when you, as to this world, have perished. It is the winning side. At present you are on the losing side. It is preached that it may win you.—J. Rawlinson.
THE CHURCH’S MISSION
Isa_40:9. O Zion, that bringest good tidings! &c.
It is freely asserted that the influence of the Church of Christ is now extremely small. We have been made familiar with statements like these: “The pulpit has lost its power; the Church has lost its hold upon the people; multitudes are hopelessly alienated from the public services of religion.” Consider—
I. The Church’s place and function in the world. What have men a right to expect from her? The text represents the Church as a bearer of good tidings to men.
1. She is exhorted to get up on a high mountain where she will be conspicuous to all, and from which her voice shall reach over Judah’s hills, along her vales, and to all her villages and towns.
2. To be courageous and energetic, full of faith, and action, and earnestness in fulfilling her work.
3. She is told what her message ought to be: “Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!”
II. So long as the Church is faithful to her mission as the bearer of glad tidings about God, she will be prosperous and powerful. She is in the world not only to hold fast the truth, but also to hold it forth. She is to echo God’s message in human language and with human tenderness. Do not many churches fail in this respect? Some churches are turned into concert-halls, some into homes of priestcraft, some into theological arenas or intellectual gymnasia, and others into places where feeble platitudes about sin and grace, and faith and future happiness abound (H. E. I. 1184–1186).
III. How much the world needs to hear the good tidings which have been intrusted to the Church of Christ.
1. One great and growing evil, threatening us with infinite peril, is the cleaving of society into two great classes—the rich and the poor. While forces like these drive different classes apart, what is there to draw them together? Higher secular education does not do it. Politics will not do it. Communism or Socialism has tried to do it, but has failed, and must ever fail. It fights against inevitable inequalities. Men, divided from one another in various ways, must be brought under one roof before God (Pro_22:2).
2. What a terrible fact sin is in human life! Where it does not transgress the decencies of society, what a disturbing, depressing, enfeebling fact it is in our existence! The Church has here a noble field of influence. She ought to have glad tidings for hearts burdened with transgression, or gnawed by remorse, or wearied in the conflict with impurity, or depressed by the sense of helplessness.
3. What terrible facts suffering and sorrow are in human life! The Church’s message to the suffering and sorrowful is an infinitely tender and precious one. These should go forth from her courts relieved and comforted. Her Lord and Master was a great sufferer—was made perfect through suffering. “Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!”
4. What a terrible fact death is in human life! Where, how, when, shall we die? From whom can we learn anything of death? Science can explain the chemistry of our decay, can talk wisely about the conservation of energy; but we want something more. Philosophy has loved to speak of death; the Epicurean saying, “Let us eat,” &c.; the Stoic, “Death is universal and inevitable; let us meet it bravely and with dignity.” But we are only shocked and chilled. Poetry has sought to throw a charm around death; but even poetry cannot satisfy our yearning. It is reserved for the Church to justify her title as “the bringer of good tidings” by unfolding to men her God-given revelations concerning death. To her it has been given to take the sting from death, the triumph from the grave. She provides a Guide who never fails in the valley of the shadow of death. Pointing to One who hung upon the cross, lay in the grave, and rose through the clouds to heaven, she can say to all, “Behold your God!” (Isa_43:2-3).—William Young, B.A.: Christian World Pulpit, xx. pp. 330–332.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv6, 9, 11 All flesh is grass
All flesh is grass
The word "flesh" refers to people. The speaker speaks of humans as if they are grass, because they both die quickly. AT: "All people are like grass" (See: Metaphor)
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all their covenant faithfulness is like the flower of the field
The speaker compares the covenant faithfulness of people to flowers that bloom and then die quickly. The abstract noun "faithfulness" can be stated as "faithful." See how you translated "covenant faithfulness" in Isaiah 16:5. AT: "they quickly stop being faithful to the covenant, just like a flower of the field dies quickly" (See: Simile and Abstract Nouns)
covenant faithfulness
Possible meanings are 1) covenant faithfulness or 2) beauty.
when the breath of Yahweh blows on it
Possible meanings are 1) "when Yahweh blows his breath on it" or 2) "when Yahweh sends a wind to blow on it."
humanity is grass
The speaker speaks of humans as if they are grass, because they both die quickly. AT: "people die as quickly as grass" (See: Metaphor)
the word of our God will stand forever
The speaker speaks of what God says lasting forever as if his word stands forever. AT: "the things that our God says will last forever" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
voice
flesh
covenant faithfulness
Yahweh
word of God
eternity
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv5–11 40:5 The future revelation of God’s glory would include…
40:5 The future revelation of God’s glory would include the return of Judah from exile but would also go beyond it. The New Testament confirmed that the revelation of God’s glory came in Jesus Christ (John 1:14; Heb 1:3). • The Lord has spoken: The coming salvation and judgment would certainly occur because the Lord, who keeps his word, had declared it (see Isa 1:20; 58:14).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.