Isaiah 40:3-9

Preparation for Progress

Isa 40:3-9

That voice is always crying. The note of all times that are progressive is a note of urgency, preparation, advance. The king is always coming; as to the form and method of his coming, who can tell? We had better refrain from speculation that must be useless, and cultivate the spirit of expectancy, hope, sacred joyous confidence. It was a very little wilderness that was primarily meant by this reference, the wilderness between the Euphrates and Judah; but the moral reference is to a wilderness infinite. But even that boundless desert can be traversed by light, quickest of all travellers, coming suddenly, flashing abroad in time that cannot be measured, so brief is it; before we are well aware that it has come, it will have banished all the darkness, and the blue heaven will be shining above us cloudlessly, like a blessing. It is in this spirit we must do our work. Without this spirit we cannot work. The history of the world is full of dreariness, backwardness, enormous difficulty; yet even that history has been making advances, almost imperceptible in their individuality; but surely growing, extending, consolidating, until it would be impossible to roll back the history of the world. Sometimes there is nothing to instruct us but a "voice." We hear it, but cannot trace it. It is called the spirit of the times, the voice of the day, the genius of the hour. Sometimes it is personated in one man, one policy; at other times, it is a diffused voice, coming, apparently to the ear, from all the points of the compass at once, but with singular unanimity, emphasis, truthfulness. It is never a voice of despair, or a tone that would cast the soul into dejection, but always like a clarion, or a chiming bell, or a father's call, or a soldier's resounding peal. Blessed are they who have ears to hear, and who respond to the call of the times with promptitude and diligence and loyalest love: only such shall be blessed with all heavenly treasure and rest.

There are many anonymous speakers in the Book of God. In fact, we cannot get rid of the anonymous element in the Bible: "A voice said unto me;" "A voice shall be behind thee, saying;" "An angel wrestled with me;" "My Spirit shall go before thee;" "A man clothed in white raiment" a figure rather than a man in the ordinary sense of the term, an outline, an all but impalpable glowing vision, yet gleaming, approaching, receding, and wondrously acting upon the imagination, and all the while sounding a note of advance Prepare; make ready; at such an hour as ye think not. Blessed is that servant who shall be found waiting, watching. We may judge of the reality (and need we shrink from saying, the divinity?) of voices by the message which they deliver. When the voice says "Go back" we may be sure it does not come from heaven. Heaven is a growing kingdom. When God's kingdom rests it is that it may come up again in larger, greener springs, in fuller and more glowing summers and autumns. When the preacher says, "You have done enough: there is nothing more to be learned," he has lost his ordination; the unction from the Holy One, if it ever touched him, has evaporated or passed to some larger man. Hear a voice that says, "You know nothing yet in comparison with what has to be revealed; what little light you have seen struggling on the horizon is as nothing compared to the great glory that shall flood the infinite heaven," when a voice so sounding, so charged, is heard, we may be sure that God has somewhat to do with its inspiration. Our law must be growth, development, progress, advance, every day, every year, so that we shall be always casting off our old selves, and passing forward into new identities richer, more useful, manful.

What is to happen? This is to occur

"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." ( Isa 40:4 )

"And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together" ( Isa 40:5 ).

Here we want trumpets and organs, thundering voices, and all the great solemn winds that ever careered round the earth, yea, an ocean's mighty plash and roar, to express the glorious thought. Even here we shall have the co-operation of nature in the expression of thankfulness. What is it that makes all things musical but the miracle-working sun? For a time he is baffled in his best ministry by the cruel east wind; but he will presently melt it, or make it ashamed of its abortive attempts, and send it into some other quarter; and it shall come to us with penitential voice, and humiliation, and amendment, and restitution, from the south-west, and will pray to be taken into co-operation with the music-making sun. All things sing when the sun shines; even croaking suspends its fretfulness, old age looks round for its staff that it may toddle a yard or two under the genial rays; childhood begins to sing and dance because the light fills its young heart, and all nature is joyous with a spirit of jubilee because the sun is in his happiest mood. These are symbolical, dim emblems, faint dawning hints of a grander reality. When men feel the "glory of the Lord" they cannot be silenced. True religious feelings must have musical expression. Sometimes the expression may be loud, incoherent, almost violent, so that men passing by shall say, "What are these mad men uttering?" There is a sane madness, a madness with method, a tempest of the soul in which dwells the spirit of sovereignty and peace. Again and again we have claimed that enthusiasm must return to the church, not by mechanical stipulation, but by an inspiration not of man, a mighty action of the Triune God. "All flesh shall see it together." The Old Testament is not a universal book in many lines; it is the Jews' book; it leads a certain people, cares for them, makes them rich with a thousand promises, and strong with inviolable and redundant securities; but now and again it flashes out into the greater humanity, the larger love; the redeeming yearning spirit, that would not that any should be in darkness whilst it has light to offer. We should, however, do the Bible injustice if we thought of its caring for any one people, for that one people exclusively; it is making for itself a point of origin, a point from which its action can proceed, with the larger completeness and with the higher force. Wherever God has cared for any one he has by implication cared for all men. Even God must begin somewhere. The Lord Christ began where he could. He accommodated himself to the moods and needs of the people; he himself might have begun at many a point not within the range of human imagination, but he was content to sit down with men, and to say to them, in effect, "Where can we begin? What wilt thou?" and when the thing was uttered, he said, "Believest thou that I am able to do this?" and when the answer was, "Yea, Lord," the word was hardly spoken before the miracle was completed. Here we have an escape from locality and limitation of every kind, and the prophecy culminates in a benefaction to "all flesh."

This is the Gospel in Isaiah; this is the evangelical dawn; this is the commission of evangelisation in its earliest utterances. We shall find other words which occur for the first time. It is infinitely interesting to be present at the birth of words, or at their new uses, or inauguration for larger purposes. "All flesh:" the Jew is there and the Gentile, the bond and the free, the mighty man and his slave, old men and little children, young men and maidens, "all flesh shall see it together;" it shall be a coming blessing, a universal donation, an impartial revelation of the divine glory. What is the divine glory but the divine holiness? We must not detach the attributes of God from his moral majesty. Who cares for omnipotence, except as a momentary wonder, something to be looked at, estimated, gazed upon with more or less of open-mouthed wonder? There is nothing in it, taken by itself, but fear, danger, a sense of overwhelming stress, and that is painful; and when we speak of the divine glory, what is it? If it be only so much light it would overpower human capacity, our receptivity would be distressed; we should say, "Lord, withhold the light, for our eyes are tormented with glory." God's power must be another term for God's goodness, God's glory another word for God's holiness. All the terms must admit of moral transfer or translation; and this correlation of forces must be a passage from the abstract, the intolerable, the infinite in mere power and splendour, into moral temper, spirit, purpose; and then when we read of wisdom, holiness, mercy, compassion, and when at last a man arises to say it all in words of one syllable "God is love" it is noonday with civilisation, high noon with manhood, consummation below the heavens.

When the herald was charged to deliver another message it was in reality not another.

"The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever" ( Isa 40:6-8 ).

Now we come to the second word which is used for the first time.

"O Zion, that bringest good tidings" ( Isa 40:9 ).

That is the first use of the term in this relation. This is Gospel good-spell, God's spell, good news. The primary meaning of the Hebrew word is to make smooth ; hence the balance of the sentences between the ninth verse and the fourth verse. All things shall be smoothed, and from smooth the word passes easily to brighten, and from brighten to gladden, and today in the German it is glatten . So do we here and now, in Isaiah 40:9 , make our acquaintance with the sweet music-word Gospel, evangelisation. Is the evangelist born here? Is history dating itself with a new term from this juncture? O Zion, that bringest gospels. good news, get thee up into the high mountain no mountain high enough and let the world hear that the day of the Lord has come! "O Zion... O Jerusalem:" the appeal is the same; Zion, for the purposes of this appeal, is Jerusalem, Jerusalem is Zion. O Zion, O Jerusalem, to the mountain, and publish the jubilee of the world!

So would Christ have us do every day. The gospel was never given to be kept as a secret. Nowhere do we hear it said, If you have any bread, keep it to yourselves, no matter who is hungry. Nowhere is it said to the Christian Church, "You are in a time of reserve and self-consideration, and you must make your own souls guests at the Lord's table, without regarding the innumerable vacancies at the banqueting board; eat and drink, O beloved, and do so abundantly, and care nothing for those for whom nothing is prepared." That is not the voice of Christianity; that is not the purpose of the Gospel; that is not the mission of the Church. Is it possible that men can have good news and keep it to themselves? Here is a man face to face with a sufferer; he observes the sufferer's emaciated condition, he notes his languid eye, his sunken cheeks, his bloodless lips, his gait of helplessness, his deepening infirmity, and all the time he knows precisely what would meet the case, and never speaks the secret. What is that man if the sufferer should die? He is a murderer! Can he in charity be called by any other name? He knew what would cure the man and never told him, and the man died. What does the Lord say? He says, His blood will I require at the traitor's hand. "If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain: if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?" These are the questions: what are the replies?