Causes and Cure of Fainting
(No. 2812)
A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, JANUARY 4, 1903.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE 7,
1877.
"Hegives power to the faint." Isaiah 40:29.
THE connection in which these words stand is very suggestive. The
previous verse says, "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The
everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints
not, neither is weary. There is no searching of His understanding." He
has the perfection of power and also of wisdom. Unbelief is based upon
absurdity, but faith rests upon reason and fact. This may not, at first
sight, seem to be true, but it really is. To believe in the almighty
and all-wise God is the most rational thing in the world–to disbelieve
Him is both the most wicked and the most irrational thing. When a child
of God begins to distrust his Father, it must be because he doubts
either God's memory or His power. It seems utterly absurd, as well as
grievously wrong, to suspect the Lord of fainting or being weary. The
moment we give utterance to such a sentiment, we feel as if we must at
once withdraw the words. It is so altogether ridiculous and absurd to
speak thus of Him who made the heavens and the earth and who supports
all things by the word of His power! How can He fail or faint? The
Self-Existent One, from whom all the power that ever was, or is, or
shall be, and must primarily come–how can He fail or faint? Then would
the sun grow dim at noon! Then would earth dissolve and Heaven pass
away if once faintness could seize the Deity who supports all things!
We know better and we ought, therefore, to act better. And as we feel
that He cannot faint or be weary, we ought not to harbor a single doubt
concerning His fainting. How can He faint? It is He that gives power to
the faint! When faintness comes anywhere, it does not come to Him–it
comes to you who doubt. You are like a reeling man who thinks that it
is the earth that reels, or like a person travelling in a train who,
for the moment, forgets that he is moving and thinks that the trees and
hedges are all swiftly rushing by him! It is not God who changes–it is
you who have changed. It is not He that is weary–it is you who are
weary. It is not He that is faint–it is you that are fainting. And
here comes, in this blessed Truth of God, for your encouragement–that
you may be revived from this faintness–instead of Him fainting, God,
"gives power to the faint."
I. First, I will endeavor to answer the question, WHAT MAKES US FAINT?
We will first consider the case of the awakened sinner, the man who
does not know that he is saved and who, perhaps, is not yet converted.
But he is, to some extent, under the gracious influence of the Spirit
of God, for he has been awakened from his sleep of sin and has begun to
pray. It very commonly happens that when persons are in this condition,
they are seized with faintness. What is it that makes them feel faint?
Well, first, they may very well faint, for they have made a most
alarming discovery. They were not aware of their true position, but
they suddenly find themselves lost. Their own righteousness, which
appeared to them to be like fair, white linen, has proven to be only
filthy rags. Their own merits, which seemed to them to be a great heap
of gold, are shown to be just so much dross. They fancied that they
were rich, increased with goods and had need of nothing, but they find
themselves wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. They see
themselves condemned of God on account of sin and they also see before
them, with an awful astonishment, the burning lake of Hell–and they
cannot tell whether their next step will not plunge them into the dread
abyss from which there will be no escape! Is it amazing that when a man
first realizes all this, he is filled with terror, the cold sweat
stands on his brow and he is ready to faint? Indeed, if it were not
for the goodness of God in only revealing the sinner's danger to him,
in a measure, I would not wonder if when men saw themselves in their
true state, they were to lose their reason!
It has not seemed at all strange to me that men have gone mad when they
have suddenly found out where they were and where they were likely to
be in a very short time! I have had to bless God that so few cases of
that kind have occurred and I have never wondered when I have seen the
horror and distress of mind of persons who have discovered their lost
condition. Some of you who are now sitting very comfortably in your
seats–if you only knew what it is to be already condemned because you
have not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God–if you
could but catch the meaning of these words, "He that believes not the
Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him." If you
discovered that this was no myth, or fiction, but an awful reality,
like a cloud charged with deadly electricity you, also, would be ready
to faint!
Sometimes, too, awakened sinners faint for another reason, namely, that
they have tried to escape from their dangerous position, but they have
not succeeded. What long and laborious attempts at self-salvation,
awakened souls will make! They will deny themselves many pleasures,
they will subject themselves to a great deal of toil, they will
resolve, pray, cry and fret–yet it all ends in failure. A man trying
to save himself is like a prisoner on the treadmill, perpetually
stepping, but never mounting an inch higher. He is like a blind horse
in a mill–he goes round, and round, and round, but makes no real
advance. What can he do? He is trying to weave a substantial garment
out of spiders' webs! He is attempting, with worthless works, to make a
perfect righteousness! It was no small blessing for Israel when it
could be said of them, "He brought down their heart with labor; they
fell down and there was none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord in
their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses." The sooner
an end comes to all self-righteous attempts to obtain salvation, the
better! Then does the man's soul faint within him. Then is he like one
who is at sea in a storm, who has tugged at the oar, or has tried to
use the sail, but can make no headway, or escape the fury of the
tempest. "They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are
at their wit's end." Thus are they faint.
We have known some grow so faint through a sense of sin and dread of
its punishment–and a consciousness of their own inability to save
themselves–that they have even wished to die. Yet, when they have
looked at their condition aright, they have asked themselves what use
death would be to them? It would be as when a man escaped from a lion
and a bear slew him. Or as if a weary man leaned upon a wall and a
serpent that was hidden in a cranny, bit his hand. For a man, loaded
with sin, to die, is for him to be damned! Well might he choose to die
if death meant annihilation–but there is that dread of something after
death, that appearing before the Judgment Seat of Christ, that terrible
sentence from Him that sits upon the Throne of God, "Depart, you
cursed!" This is what makes a man faint and causes him to dread both to
live and to die. Then does he say, with Job, "My soul chooses
strangling and death rather than my life." Yet he dare not actually
choose it, for he dreads what would come after it. So he is faint, and
well may he be!
Perhaps also, at such a time, a sore trouble may happen to the man,
for, in the parable of the prodigal son, it appears that he was quite
as much influenced by the peculiar circumstances without as by his
sense of sin within. We have often known the soul that has been under
distress because of sin, to also fall into distress through temporal
trouble. It has seemed as if the hand of God had gone out against him
and he cries out in his agony, "You hunt me as with fierce dogs that
would gladly tear me to pieces! You make me the target of all Your
arrows. You do not give me space in which to swallow my spittle between
one trial and another!" Then the troubled soul faints beneath the hand
of God who seems to say to him, "You have sinned against Me; and if you
faint, now that I have begun to deal with you, what will you do
by-and-by? If, in the land of peace, wherein you trust, My hand is too
heavy for you, what will you do in the swellings of Jordan? If you
faint when I do but come against you with footmen, what will you do
when you have to contend with horses–when I put forth My might to
punish My rebellious creatures?" When this happens, the soul is utterly
brought into the dust of death, ground down, faint and ready to die."
Now I pass on to another character, namely, the child of God in his
fainting fits, but fainting fits of a peculiar class which are
especially sinful–for there is a degree of sinfulness about some of
these faintings which is not to be found in others. For instance,
sometimes the children of God faint through lack of faith David said,
"I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in
the land of the living." So, the cure for fainting is faith–and,
therefore, the best way to prevent fainting is to believe. He who
believes shall not fall into this state of pain, prostration, inaction
and similitude of death. Child of God, are you fainting because you do
not believe your Father's promises? I must not begin
to comfort you until, first of all, I have rebuked you! Why do you
doubt your God? On what ground do you distrust His faithfulness? Have
you ever had cause to think that He will fail you? Put your finger on
anything that He has ever done to you that will give you even a shadow
of justification for mistrust of Him! O Man, if unbelief is at the
bottom of your faintness, repent of it and pray to be forgiven! Surely
the Lord deserves to be trusted by His own children, if not by anybody
else! If anyone will persist in distrusting Him, led it be the sinner.
But as for you, the chosen people of His love, the favored ones of His
heart–will you doubt Him? A man might bear almost anybody's distrust
sooner than that of his beloved wife or darling child–and shall the
Lord have distrust from you whom He has so highly favored by His own
eternal love? Pray Him both to forgive and to banish your unbelief!
Again, some are brought into a state of faintness through a selfish
need of resignation. A specimen of that kind of character was that
strange-tempered old Prophet, Jonah. You remember that "the Lord God
prepared a gourd and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a
shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was
exceedingly glad of the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning
rose the next day and it struck the gourd that it wi-thered…And the
sun beat upon the head of Jonah, so that he fainted and wished in
himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. And
God said to Jonah, Do you well to be angry for the gourd? And he said,
I do well to be angry even unto death." It was not only the heat of the
sun that caused him to faint–it was also the heat of his temper! Evil
tempers inside of us do more to cause us to faint than all the sultry
weather outside of us. If we will not let God have His way with us. If
we are like children in a tantrum and begin quarrelling with our
Father, or with one another. If we try to be masters in God's house and
lords over God's heritage, seeking to rule His household according to
our own will and way–do you wonder that when we get into the sulks,
by-and-by, we begin to faint? Some of those who have lost dear children
seem as if they will not forgive God for taking them. They keep on
fretting and pining for years after the bereavement. They go to the
drawer and take out the little socks and the toys–and weep over them
in a fashion which shows that they are not resigned to the will of God.
It is not for us to harshly censure them, but I think it is for them to
cease from such a rebellious course of action and to ask God that they
may not faint through a lack of obedience and resignation to His will.
There are children of God, also, who fall into faintness through
trusting in themselves. In the chapter from which our text is taken, it
is said, "Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men
shall utterly fall." Why is that? It is because the youths felt
themselves able to do anything! Up or down, mile after mile, they could
leap, run and jump, for they were so strong. And then, at last, they
fainted, for they had nothing to sustain them but their own strength.
And as for the young men–they said that the boys were always so
impetuous and spent their strength too soon, but they, themselves, had
staying power–so they felt that they could keep up the pace. But the
Prophet says, they "shall utterly fall." So will it be with any of us
who begin to trust in our own strength! Before long we shall come to
the end of our force. The strongest sinew in an arm of flesh will
crack, sooner or later. The brightest thought of the most brilliant
intellect will one day die out in darkness. Being made of clay and
being born of woman, we cannot expect that we should last forever. The
worst of it is that this faintness will sometimes come to the strong
just when they most need all their strength–when they feel, "If ever
we needed all our wits about us and all the vigor of our physical
frame, it is now." It is just then that the collapse will probably
come, for faintness is sure to follow if we once begin to trust in
ourselves!
Then faintness may also arise from another cause which is sinful,
namely, neglect of prayer. Did not our Savior say that "men ought
always to pray, and not to faint"? And did He not imply by that form of
expression that if they did not pray, they would be sure to faint? We
have a choice of these two courses–either to wait upon the Lord and so
to renew our strength, or else to be overpowered by faintness. Is the
path to your secret place of prayer overgrown? Do you seldom retire for
private fellowship with your God? Has your heart forgotten your
privilege of momentary, continuous communion with the Most High? Do you
live as though you had quarreled with God and would have no more
dealings with Him? If so, you will surely faint before long–and it is
a blessed thing for you that it should be so, for it would be truly
terrible for us to appear to be strong without prayer. It is a sign of
something radically rotten within when a man can apparently be just as
holy and as earnest without prayer as he is with it. You cannot really
know the power of the life of God if you are able to live without
prayer, for, just as a man who is unable to breathe, soon faints, so
must a person spiritually faint if he does not pray.
Now I am going to mention some other reasons why children of God fall
into faintness. And one is the length of the way. Some pilgrims faint
because the way is so very long. We can do a great deal at a spurt, but
we are not able to keep it up. We have a great many people who come
among us and who even enter the Church who are splendid fellows for a
short time. If they could get to Heaven in a one mile race, they would
surely win the prize, but they have no staying power in them. They are
like those Galatians to whom the Apostle Paul wrote, "You did run well;
who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth?" What is needed
is perseverance in well-doing, perseverance under slights,
misrepresentations and slanders, perseverance when it means tugging and
toiling at the oars, perseverance when there is no smile of
recognition, but when there is many a frown from those who misjudge
your work. And it is under such difficulties that men are apt to faint.
It is not even 10 or 20 years of an unsullied profession that will
suffice–our Lord said, "He that endures to the end shall be saved."
You would not care to live in your house if it were only half
built–you must go on to the crowning of the edifice if it is to be fit
for a habitation. Who that has realized how great are the difficulties
of persevering in Divine Grace does not feel that, for this task, we
must have Divine power? Otherwise, however far we may have gone, we
shall tire, faint and walk the ways of God no more. I know of no
doctrine that seems to me to show such a splendor of Divine Grace as
the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints, for if the Lord does,
indeed, keep His people faithful to the end, as He assuredly will, then
is it a veritable marvel of Grace, for, oftentimes, they are ready to
faint by the way.
Others are ready to faint because of the heaviness of their burden. We
are not all burdened alike, but, I daresay, if we could form a right
estimate, we should find that we are more equally weighted than we
imagine. Sometimes the poor judge that they have a monopoly of trouble,
but if they could see how much unhappiness there is in the homes of
some of those who are rich, or the lack of health that is the lot of
many who live in the midst of abundance, they might be more content to
carry their own cross. Yet are there some to whom the burden is
peculiarly heavy. Some of God's children seem pressed down under double
loads and they are often ready to faint. The remedy for their condition
is to get double Grace and double strength from the Lord their God,
but, until they do, their soul will feel faint and weary.
Another frequent cause of your faintness is a sense of your own
weakness. It is not that your burden is really heavier than it was, but
you do not feel as if you can carry it any longer. The flesh is weak
and the spirit sympathizes with the flesh, and grows weak, too. You
cannot do what you did when you were younger. The difficulties which
you once smiled at, now oppress you. By reason of the length of your
years, the grasshopper has become a burden! Well, then, you must look
to the Strong for strength and then no faintness will overpower
you–but if you do not, your weakness will soon bring you into a sad
state.
Yet another frequent cause of faintness is the spirit, itself, sinking.
There is a certain condition in which the heart seems to go down, down,
down, down, down. I know not how to describe it, but everybody who has
ever had that painful experience knows what it is. You can hardly tell
why you are so depressed–if you could give a reason for your
despondency, you might more easily get over it, but, like David, you
cry to your own heart, "Why are you cast down, O my Soul? And why are
you disquieted within me?" You try to argue with yourself to find out
the reason why you are so despondent and why you look at the black side
of everything and imagine that things will go amiss which will turn out
right, after all. Your friends tell you that you are nervous, and there
is no doubt that you are, but that does not alter the case. I will not
blame you. I will, however, say to myself, and urge you to say to
yourself, "Hope you in God: for you shall yet praise Him, who is the
health of your countenance and your God." Better still, I pray our
sympathizing Savior will say to you, "Let not your heart be troubled;
you believe in God, believe also in Me"–and on His loving bosom you
will leave all your sorrows and your cares.
There are some children of God who get faint through lack of spiritual
food. There are some Christians who are so situated that they cannot
get proper nourishment for their souls. It is not in every country
village or town that Jesus Christ is so preached that the souls of
God's people are fed. And among all the troubles a godly man can have,
a dreary Sabbath is about the worst–when the sheep look up, but they
are not fed–when it is not the Gospel that is preached, but another
gospel, which is no Gospel at all–when there are fine words and grand
elocution, but nothing for the heart to stay itself upon. In such
circumstances it is small wonder if the best of God's children begin to
faint! Be thankful, Brothers and Sisters, if you are privileged to
enjoy a soul-feeding ministry! And if you are not so favored, try to
make up for it by being doubly diligent in searching the Scriptures and
feeding upon the Word in private.
Still, at the same time, it is a great deprivation to a child of God if
he is not supplied with spiritual food. I thought it was a good prayer
of the deacon who thanked God that the minister had put the food down
in a low rack where the sheep could get at it. There are some who put
the provender in such a high rack that it could only be reached by
giraffes! God's children need to have the Bread of Life broken up in
small pieces for them, and to have the Truth of God made very simple
and plain so that they can understand it. May all of us who teach or
preach always try to do that and, remembering the folly of others, let
us avoid it ourselves!
Sometimes, God's children also faint when they are in adversity.
Solomon said, "If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is
small." That is true and our strength is often thus proved to be small.
Many a man who thinks that he is rejoicing in the Lord, is really
rejoicing in his prosperity–but adversity tries him–it is to him what
the fining pot is to silver. Under adversity, we begin to faint and
especially if, coupled with that adversity, there is the rebuke of God.
Oh, how we faint when we are rebuked of Him! I know of nothing that
more readily makes a man faint than that God should look at him with
angry eyes. He has trouble in the home and no consolation. He has loss
of property, but, above all, loss of fellowship with his God! The
promises are no longer sweet to him. Prayer is like a dead letter.
Waiting upon God seems to be in vain. The Lord says to those who are in
this condition, "I have withdrawn Myself from you. As you have walked
contrary to Me, I also will walk contrary to you." Under such
circumstances, it is necessary for the child of God to ask for more
Grace and strength so that he may wrestle and pray until he gets a
blessing. But the tendency of the poor deserted spirit is to begin to
faint because the Lord seems to be favorable no more.
There are some who become faint through increasing infirmitywhich makes
them unfit for such service as they formerly rendered. When David, in
his later years, went out to battle against the Philistines, we are
told that he waxed faint and would have been slain by a giant if
Abishai had not succored him. Yet, in former days, he had killed a lion
and a bear, and the great Goliath of Gath! It was a dreadful thing for
David to wax faint at such a time as that, just in the middle of the
fray, but a like experience has happened to many of the Lord's
champions in order to teach His people that the best of men are but men
at the best–and that the strongest of them are only strong in God's
strength–and that they will be as weak as water if the Lord should
leave them to themselves!
II. Now I want to show you how the Lord deals with His fainting
people–"He gives power to the faint. I must just briefly mention many
points, that you may meditate upon them at your leisure.
See how tenderly the Lord deals with His fainting people. He does not
desert them when they are faint, saying, "They are no longer any use to
Me. They can do nothing for Me, I will leave them where they are." No,
but, "He gives power to the faint." Observe that He does not merely
comfort the faint, or rebuke or reprove them. That would not help them
much when they were fainting. But He does what we cannot do for
fainting people–He gives them power. That is the best way to deliver
them from their faintness! Even if no cheering word is whispered in
your ear, if power is given to you, if your pulse is quickened and your
spirit is filled with new energy, your faintness will soon be over.
This is what the Lord does for you when "He gives power to the faint."
What sort of power does He give to the faint? Well, you may be sure
that He does not give them any of their own. That has all gone from
them. The very image of death is stamped upon them. See how pale they
look! Note how the blood seems to have fled from their faces–their own
power has all gone from them. So, my Brothers and Sisters, when the
Lord gives power to the faint, it is His own power that He gives to
them! What a blessing it is to feel that it is His power that is
working in you! To attain such an end as that, a man may well be
content to have all his own power bled out of him. Let it run out at
every vein till the last drop of it is gone, that I may then be filled
with the power of God! He gives His power to the faint because, in
their faintness, there is room for the display of His power. Their
power has all departed, so now His power comes in.
When God gives power to the faint, you may rest assured that it will be
sufficient for the emergency, for He has all-sufficient power and He
never gives to His people merely half the power or a tenth of the power
that they need–He gives them all the power that they require! His
promise is, "As your days, so shall your strength be."
The mercy is that the power that God gives is a power that the devil
can neither defeat nor take away. If He has given you that power, it
shall be yours as long as you need it. That power neither man nor devil
can take away from you, but, through it, you shall be enabled to tread
down all your adversaries and conquer all your difficulties. There is
wondrous power in the weakness which leads us to faint away on the
bosom of God and so to be made strong in the Lord and, in the
power of His might, to swoon into unconsciousness and then to find our
all-sufficiency in our God! To get out of life of a carnal kind by
swooning into the image of death and then being raised into newness of
life by the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ! That is the
kind of power which God gives to the faint.
Why is it that He gives this power to the faint? Well, I think it is
because in His great goodness He looks out for those who need it most.
As we, if we are wise, give our alms to the most destitute, God gives
His power to those who require it most–those who are fainting for lack
of it.
Then, next, He gives it to them because they will praise Him most for
it. When the fainting ones receive the power that God gives to them,
they will say that it is of the Lord and not of themselves.
They will be the people to receive this power because they will be sure
to use it. I think that when a person who has been faint, receives
power from God, he will likely be sympathetic, tender and gentle
towards others. At least that is how he should be. If a man is always
strong, how can he sympathize with God's weak and afflicted people? I
have known a dear Brother who has never had an hour' s illness in his
life, seek to sympathize with me when I have been in great pain. But it
was like an elephant trying to pick up a pin–he cannot do it, it is
not in his line. But he who has been faint and thenhas received power
from God is the man who knows what faintness means–and so is gentle
towards other fainting ones as a nurse is with the little child
committed to her charge. Hence the Lord entrusts power to His fainting
children because He knows that they will be sympathetic and use it
wisely and well.
What, Beloved Friends, is the conclusion that we may draw from our
text? Is it not this? If God gives power to the faint, let us be
thankful if we have fainted and have been revived by Him. I do not
refer to any sinful kind of fainting when I speak thus, but I mean what
the Apostle Paul means when he says, "Most gladly, therefore, will I
rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon
me." But let us have done with fainting for the future because, if God
gives power to the faint, if He has given us His power, we ought to
have no more fainting, now that we have received God's power! So let us
henceforth seek to live in the energy of that Divine might above the
faintness to which the flesh is prone.
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: ISAIAH40.
Verse 1. Comfort you, comfort you My people, says your God.' 'They need
it, and they shall have it. Mind, O my servants, that you give it to
them. Comfort you, comfort you My people, says your God."
2. Speakyou comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her
warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she has
received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins. The first meaning
of these words was that, as Jerusalem had passed through a time of
great tribulation, she should have a season of rest. But the grand
Gospel meaning to you and to me is that our Lord Jesus has fought our
battle and won the victory for us–that He has paid our debt and given
to Divine Justice the double for all our sins and, therefore, our
iniquity is pardoned! One would think this is enough to make anyone
happy. It is the best thing that even Isaiah could say, or that God,
Himself, could say by the mouth of Isaiah, when his object was to
comfort the Lord's tried people.
3, 4. The voice of him that cries in the wilderness, Prepare you the
way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
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. When God means to come to men, nothing can stop Him or block up
His road. He will level mountains and fill up valleys, but He will come
to His people somehow or other. And when He comes to them, if He finds
many crooked things about them, He will make the crooked straight and
the rough places He will make plain.
5. And the Glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see
it together: for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it. And since He has
spoken it, it must come to pass. "Has He said, and shall He not do it?"
With Him, to say anything is to will its accomplishment!
6-8. 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 withers, the flower fades: because the spirit of the LORD
blows upon it: surely thepeople are grass. The grass withers, the
flower fades: but the word of our God shall stand forever Yes, the
dearest ones that we have
are but flesh, so they wither and pass away like the green herb. Have
you been bereaved, my believing Friend? Well, you may still say to your
Lord, in the words of our hymn–
"How can I bereaved be,
Since I cannot part from Thee?'
The mower with the sharp scythe outs down the grass, but he cannot
touch the secret source of our hope, joy and confidence in God and,
above all, he cannot touch the God in whom we confide!
9. O Zion, that brings good tidings, get you up into the high mountain;
O Jerusalem, that brings good tidings, lift up your voice with
strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah,
Behold your God!If the chief, the best, the holiest city has found her
God. If Jerusalem has been thus favored, let her sing the gladsome
tidings over the hilltops to the most distant cities of the land and
say to them, "Behold your God!" If you have seen your Lord, Beloved,
proclaim the good news to those who have well nigh forgotten that there
is a God. Say to them, "Behold your God! He is still to be seen, by the
eye of faith, working graciously in the midst of the earth."
10-11. Behold, the lord GOD will come with a strong hand, and His arm
shall rule for Him: behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before
Him. He shall feed His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs
with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those
that are with young. He knows their weakness, their weariness, their
pain and how incapable they are of speedy and long travelling. He is
very tender and full of pity and He will gently lead them.
12-14. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted
out Heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a
measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a
balance? Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being His
counselor has taught Him? With whom took He counsel, and who instructed
Him, and taught Him in the path of judgment, and taught Him knowledge,
and showed to Him the way of understanding? And yet, Beloved, we
sometimes act as if we were God's teachers, as if we had to instruct
Him in what He should do! And because we cannot see our way, we almost
dream that He cannot. And because we are puzzled, we conceive that
Infinite Wisdom must be at a nonplus, but it is not so. He was full of
wisdom when there was no one with whom He could take counsel–and He is
still wise in the highest degree!
15. Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket. Not a bucketful, but
just a drop that remains in the bucket after you thought it had been
completely emptied.
15. And are counted as the small dust of the balance. Remember that
this is said of "the nations." China, India, Europe, Africa–with all
their teeming multitudes are only like the small dust of the balance
that is blown away by the slightest puff of wind!
15, 16. Behold, He takes up the isles as a very little thing. And
Lebanon. With all its forests of cedar. "Lebanon" —
16. Is not sufficient to burn. Think of all the cedars of Lebanon as
being on fire, like some great forest fire, yet not being sufficient to
supply the wood for God's altars!
16. Nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. Whether it
is the wild or the tame beasts that are on that mountain range, they
are not sufficient for a burnt offering unto the Most High.
17. All nations before Him are as nothing; and they are counted to Him
less than nothing, and vanity. As if they were the mere shadow of
something and had no more influence over Him than as if they did not
exist!
18. To whom, then, will you liken God?This is a strong argument against
idolatry, against the worship of God under any visible form
whatever–"To whom, then, will you liken God?"
18. Or what likeness will you compare unto Him?The heathen did make
these supposed likenesses of God. Here is a description of the process
by which they manufactured their idol gods.
19. The workman melts a graven image, and the goldsmith spreads it over
with gold. The rough metal is cast in a certain fashion and then the
goldsmith puts on it his thin plates of gold,
19. And casts silver chains. To adorn it.
20. He that is so impoverished that he has no offering. The poor man
who cannot manage to make a god of gold– 20. Chooses a tree that will
not rot. A good piece of heart of oak or enduring elm.
20. He seeks unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image, that
shall not be moved. Fix it firmly, drive the post down far into the
earth so that it may be an immovable god!
21-26. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you
from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the
earth?It is He that sits upon the circle of the earth, and the
inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers, that stretches out the heavens
as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in: that brings
the princess to nothing, He makes the judges of the earth as vanity.
Yes, they shall not be planted, yes, they shall not be sown: yes, their
stock shall not take root in the earth: and He shall also blow upon
them, and they shall wither and the whirlwind shall take them awayas
stubble. To whom, then, willyou liken Me, or shallIbe equal?says the
Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high. Suppose it to be night time–"Lift
up your eyes on high"–
26. And behold who has created these things. These wondrous worlds,
these stars that sparkle in the firmament!
26. That brings out their host by number. For God knows the number of
them all and the name of every separate world that moves in the vast
expanse of space!
26. He calls them all by names by the greatness of His might and the
strength of His power, not one fails. They are not propped up with
pillars, nor hung upon some mighty ropes, yet they continue to occupy
the spheres appointed to them by God. He hangs the world upon nothing
and keeps it in its place by the perpetual out-going of His power!
27. Why say you, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, My way is hid from the
LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God? What? When He has not
forgotten one of all those mighty hosts of stars and when not a sparrow
falls to the ground without His notice–how can you dream that He has
forgotten you, or that your way is hidden from Him?
28-31. Have you not known?Have you not heard that the everlasting God,
the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is
weary? There is no searching of His understanding. He gives power to
the faint; and to them that have no might He increases strength Even
the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly
fall: but they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they
shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary;
and they shall walk and not faint.