Isaiah 51:12-16 - Homiletics

A just confidence in God is a security against cowardly fears.

Men "fear continually every day" because of the emnity, or fury, or malignity, or cunning, of those who oppress them, or of those who would fain oppress them. They tremble before the wrath of men; they give little thought to the wrath of God. Half the sins that are committed spring from cowardice—a short-sighted cowardice, which consists in fearing those who can, at most, "kill the body," and not fearing him who after death can "destroy both body and soul in hell" ( Matthew 5:28 ). A just confidence in God will secure us against such cowardice, since it will make us feel—

I. RELIANCE UPON GOD 'S WILL TO SAVE US . God's mercy is "over all his works," over man especially; in a peculiar manner over such as love him and trust in him. He will not suffer them to be tried "above that they are able." He loves them, and watches over them, and sympathizes with their sufferings, and counts their wrongs, and hears their groans ( Exodus 2:23 ), and "knows their sorrows" ( Exodus 3:7 ). Oppressors are hateful to him ( Isaiah 1:23 ; Isaiah 3:15 ; Isaiah 5:7 , etc.). They provoke him to send upon them "swift destruction." The greater their fury, the more they rouse against them God's indignation, and the closer their destruction draws nigh.

II. RELIANCE UPON GOD 'S POWER TO SAVE US . Men are finite; God is infinite. Man is the creature of a day; God is "from everlasting to everlasting." Man fades as grass; God is "strong in power" ( Isaiah 40:26 ), unwearied, unfailing. The "fierceness of man turns to God's praise," for that fierceness he is able at any moment to "refrain" ( Psalms 76:10 ). He who "has stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth," and created man and placed him on the earth, and alone sustains him in life, can at any time sweep him into nothingness, destroy him, and make "all his thoughts perish."