Christ's Yoke and Burden
(No. 2832)
A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, MAY 24, 1903.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
SEPTEMBER 2, 1886.
"My yoke is easy and My burden is light." Matthew 11:30.
OBSERVE dear Friends, that our Lord Jesus Christ does lay a yoke and a
burden upon His followers. He uses those words that none may presume to
enter His service without due consideration. Religion is not a matter
for trifling. The service of the meek and lowly Christ is no child's
play. There is a yoke that is to be borne by all His disciples and the
neck of self-will must be bent low to receive it. There is a burden to
be carried for Christ–and all the strength that God gives us must be
used for His honor and Glory.
But, lest those words, "yoke," and, "burden," should sound harsh to our
ears and any of us should start back because we have had our shoulders
galled by another yoke and our backs bent beneath a very different
burden, the Master very graciously and sweetly says, "My yoke is easy
and My burden is light." It appears to me that He spoke thus so that
none may despair–that despair may not even come near us and that we
may not despond as to the possibility of our salvation. Christ has a
yoke for us to wear, so let us seriously wear it. But it is an easy
yoke, so let us wear it hopefully. He has a burden for us to carry for
Him, so let us be in earnest in bearing it–but it is a light burden,
so let us be full ofjoy at the very prospect of carrying it. Our
Savior's adjectives are always emphatic and they are especially so
here. His "yoke is easy"–easy in the fullest sense, and His "burden is
light"–light in the most joyous meaning of the term! You may always be
sure that in Christ's words there is never less than He seems to say
and, more than that, you can scarcely ever be wrong in believing that
every statement made by Him contains far more than appears on the
surface of it.
I want you to feel, at this time, that whatever yoke and burden there
may be connected with Christ, that yoke is easy and that burden is
light. I hope you will not pervert this text as some people do. They
misquote it by saying that "the yoke of Christianityis easy and the
burden of Christianityis light." I am not greatly concerned about the
yoke or burden of Christianity–to me, the charm of our text is that,
here, we have Christ Himself saying to us, "My yoke is easy and My
burden is light." I want you to have before you not some impalpable,
visionary, imaginary thing, but the very Lord that bought us with His
precious blood speaking with those lips which are as lilies dropping
sweet-smelling myrrh and, pointing with His pierced hand to the yoke
and to the burden which He calls especially His own and saying, as He
said when He was here upon the earth, "My yoke is easy and My burden is
light."
Coming, then, to our text, I ask you to notice, first, that the context
explains it Secondly, a little word of distinction in the text clears
it And, thirdly, the experience of all who know the Lord proves it to
be true.
I. First, then, THE CONNECTION OF OUR TEXT EXPLAINS IT.
Our Savior did not speak these two sentences by themselves and,
therefore, we may not take this verse by itself. It is true, but you
may make it untrue to yourself unless you take it in its proper
connection. How often shall we have to tell people that the Bible is
not a mere collection of separate sentences which they may tear from
their context just as they please? We are not to treat the verses of
the Bible as pigeons might treat a bushel of peas–picking out one here
and another there, without any thought of the surroundings of that
particular passage! No, this blessed Book was written for men to read
right through–and if they are to understand the meaning of it, they
must read each sentence in the connection in which it is found.
So, keeping this Truth in view, I begin by saying that some of you
would not find Christ's yoke easy or His burden light. That is the very
last thing you would find them to be to you in your present
condition–you would find His yoke heavy, and His burden impossible for
you to bear! Some of you are mere worldlings–"lovers of pleasures more
than lovers of God." It may be that some of you are self-righteous and
proud of that which should be your shame. Anyhow, if you are
unregenerate, our text would not be true to you in your unconverted
state. There is something else which must come before this. If any
unsaved man thinks that he can, just as he is, shoulder Christ's Cross
and yield himself up to be Christ's servant, he has made a great
mistake. Before him, these burning sentences must flash like Sinai's
lightning–"You must be born-again." "Because the carnal mind is enmity
against God: for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed
can be." God will not be served by men whose sins have not been washed
away by the precious blood of His dear Son! He will have none to bear
His burdens but those who have, first of all, received of His Grace
through faith in the great "Mediator between God and men, the Man,
Christ Jesus." So you see where you have to begin. "Come unto Me," said
Christ, "all you that labor and are heavy laden." By that He means, "Do
not suppose that because you are already laborers in another master's
service, you can wear My yoke. Do not imagine that because you are
already heavily laden, you can bear My burden. You must first get rid
of that which now makes you labor. You must first be rid of that which
is a burden to you, for 'no man can serve two masters.' Your old,
toilsome labor must be done with, for no man can carry the double
burden of his own guilt and of the service of God. That cannot be."
So, dearly-beloved, if you wish to be servants of God. If in your heart
there burns a holy desire to serve the Most High, begin at the right
place! Christ directs you to the door of entrance into His service and
into everything else that is worth having when He says, "'Come unto Me,
all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' I
will give it to you–you are not to buy it, you are not to earn it, or
deserve it–I will give it to you freely, for nothing is freer than a
gift! I will give it to you–nobody else can do so, but I, in My own
Personality, will give to you who are the most weary with your
laboring, and the most heavy laden with your sin–I will give to you
rest and I will give it to you immediately, on the spot! Come to Me
now, by believing on Me, by trusting wholly to Me, by getting away from
yourself and forgetting, for a while, any hope you ever had in
yourself–just coming to Me to find your all in Me–and so coming, I
will give you rest."
You cannot take Christ' s yoke upon you, or bear His burdens–and
therefore you cannot prove them to be easy and light–till first of all
you have entered into this rest which He so freely gives! If you are
first perfectly rested, then you can work. I have told you before how
the change which our Lord has made in the Sabbath is indicative of the
change which He has made in our life. The Law of God says, "Work six
days, and then observe the seventh as the Sabbath," but, under the
Gospel, the arrangement is, "Rest on the first day before you have done
a stroke of work. Just as the week begins, take your rest and, after
that, in the strength derived from it, and from the grateful motives
which arise out of that one blessed day of rest, give to the Lord the
six days of the week." There is a change from Law to Gospel indicated
in that very change–so let it be with you. "Come unto Me," said
Christ, "all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest." When you have done that, the text will be true to you, "My yoke
is easy and My burden is light."
There is something more than that, however. We began with the Master's
gracious invitation, "Come unto Me." Then follows the command, "Take My
yoke upon you." You will prove that His yoke is easy when you take it
upon you. But, instead of doing so, I know what a man often does. He
draws his chair up, sits down and says, "I will consider what Christ
requires of me. I will think of what it is to lead a Christian
life–all the self-denials, the struggles and the conflicts that will
be involved in wearing His yoke which seems to me a very hard one." Get
up, Sir, from that chair and, instead of being a critic of Christ's
yoke, put it on! "'Take My yoke upon you,' says the Lord Jesus. Take it
upon your shoulder by a humble yet confident faith. First be rid of
your old burden and so get rest–and then take upon you this yoke of
Mine."
Let me put it practically to you and then see whether Christ's yoke is
not easy, and His burden is not light. Suppose a number of persons say
to me, "That mass of white substance yonder is salt." I say, "No, it is
not salt. It is sugar." "But from this distance it looks like salt." I
tell them that it is sweet, the very essence of sweetness, but they do
not believe me. We may have a long talk over the matter, but we shall
never get to the end of the controversy till they come to the sugar and
taste it. Then the controversy will be ended at once. So is it with men
who have not proved the sweetness of Christ. They say, "There is
nothing in religion except that which is burdensome and sad." It may
seem to be to you who do not
know anything about it, but we who trust and love the Lord say to you,
"Taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusts in
Him." That is the test–come and prove it for yourselves, for there has
never yet been a case in which a man has really taken Christ's yoke
upon him, in which he has not, by that very fact, proved that Christ's
yoke is easy and His burden is light!
There is still more to follow, for the Savior says, "Take My yoke upon
you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you shall
find rest unto your souls. "There are two rests for a Christian to
enjoy. The first is the rest that Christ gives him when he believes.
The next is the rest that he finds when he takes Christ's yoke upon
him. These two rests will be distinctly enjoyed by anyone who truly
comes to Christ and learns of Him–and no one will find Christ's yoke
easy in any other way. To put it in humble phraseology, when we are
bound to Christ, as apprentices are bound to their master, to learn of
Him, we shall find a new and yet deeper and fuller rest to our soul
than we have ever known before. And this will prove to us that His yoke
is easy and His burden is light. There is a use and habit in the
service of Christ that brings much sweetness with it. To the beginner,
the yoke may seem strange and, perhaps, galling, but, after a while,
when we have learned of Christ–even as He, Himself, learned obedience
when He made Himself a Servant for our sakes–then we shall discover
that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
There are some, even among real Christians, who do not yet know the joy
of service for the Savior because they have not been long enough bound
apprentice to the Master. See, that work is very hard to that young
lad. He has been only two or three months in that workshop and, though
he is trying his best, he does not succeed at it yet. But if he remains
long enough by his master's side and learns of him, you will then see
how deftly he will do it. Just as the master now does it and makes
little of it because he is accustomed to it, so will this lad,
by-and-by, find it quite easy–and he will then wonder that he ever
thought it to be difficult! And he will agree with his master that,
after all, the yoke is easy and the burden is light because he has
learned the knack of carrying it.
When I am at Mentone, I frequently see women with bare feet, tripping
down from the hills, carrying a basket, perhaps full of lemons and,
very likely, with a child on the top of it. They never put up a hand to
steady it, but they swing along, knitting their stockings as they come
down the hill, using all their fingers for their work and cheerily
saying, "Good morning," as they come by us! It is amazing how they
carry such a load! I could not even lift the basket which they carry on
their heads. How is it that they can do it? I do not suppose they could
tell you, but they have done it since they were girls, and they have
kept doing it! And feeble as you would suppose them to be, their
strength has seemed to grow with the burden and they are able to carry
their load easily and cheerfully. So, when you come to Christ and get
rid of your old burden, He puts upon you His burden–and you stay with
Him and learn of Him till, at last, you, also, prove that His yoke is
easy and His burden is light!
I must ask you to go one step further with me. He who would enter to
the fullest into the sweetness of this text must know Christ Himself,
for, observe, the Master puts Himself into it–"I am meek and lowly in
heart; and you shall find rest unto your souls." I do most firmly
believe that there is nothing that makes such men of us as knowing the
Son of Man! After all, the most sublime science in the world is to know
Christ and, especially, to know the meaning of the wounds of Christ.
The man who has most studied the agony in the Garden and on the Cross,
and who has most studied his Master in all conditions, will be the best
fitted to be a burden-bearer–either to serve or to suffer, according
as God would have it. The very sight of Christ makes cowards brave! One
glance at that blessed Countenance of His, all smeared with bloody
sweat, makes us ashamed that we ever murmured–disgusted with ourselves
that we counted anything a self-denial for His dear sake!
When we see Him so gentle under all reproaches, bearing even to be spit
upon without an angry look or word. When we really begin to know His
very heart–that heart which was entirely subject to the will of God
for our sakes–yes, even for the sake of those who were His enemies and
who crucified Him–knowing Him thus, His yoke becomes indeed easy, and
His burden becomes light! When the Cross of Christ was fresh in the
memory of His Church, she bore martyrdom for Him with joy. His yoke
then became so desirable that men even pressed into the court of
justice to avow themselves Christians with the hope that they would be
martyred! Men, did I say? Yes, and women and children, also, flocked in
and seemed as though they courted torture for Christ's yoke had grown
so light and so easy, on account of their having known Him, and His
death being so fresh a thing! Oh it was marvelous! They have handed
down to us, by their tradi-
tions, enough to make us blush if ever we dream of shrinking from any
service or suffering for the sake of the Master who loved us so much
that He even died for us!
II. But now, secondly, and may God the Holy Spirit help me to speak
with power upon this important point!– THERE IS A LITTLE WORD OF
DISTINCTION IN THE TEXT WHICH VERY MUCH HELPS TO CLEAR IT.
Perhaps somebody says, "I do not find the yoke of life easy, or the
burden of life light." Christ does not say that they are. What He does
say is, Myyoke is easy and My burden is light." What was Christ's light
burden and what was Christ's easy yoke? I believe that I might
illustrate the text by saying that He thought thus of that yoke and
that burden which He bore–the yoke which rested upon the shoulders of
"the Prince of the kings of the earth"–the burden which lay on that
blessed back which once wore the robe of universal empire. Never before
was there such a yoke, or such a burden, but, for love of us and for
delight in what He would accomplish thereby, His yoke to Him was easy,
and His burden was light. For the joy that was set before Him, He
endured the Cross, despising the shame. So, whenever you have to bear a
yoke or a burden, count it easy for the same reason as Christ did–but
it must be Christ's yoke that we carry, for that alone will be easy to
us.
For, first, the yoke of Christ is easy and light as compared with the
yoke of others. The yoke of Moses was heavy. The yoke of the Law of God
was burdensome to the Jews, so that neither they nor their fathers were
able to bear it. But the yoke of Christ's law is easy and the burden of
Christ's command to His Church is light. The yoke of the world is
heavy. If any man will wear it, he will find that he may serve this
cruel taskmaster till he is gray and then he will be discarded.
Cardinal Wolsey lamented, all too late, that had he but served his God
with half the zeal he served his king, he would not, in his age, have
been left naked to his enemies. The yoke of sin–the yoke of
selfishness, the yoke of greediness, the yoke of drunkenness, the yoke
of unbelief–is the heaviest yoke of all! The crux of infidelity is
heavier than the Cross of Christ. You may depend upon it, that Christ's
yoke, compared with any other, or with all others, is truly easy and
light!
But then, it is not easy if we are rebellious against it' 'I find it
hard," says one, "to do the Master's will." Do you? I expect the
difficulty is the result of not doing the Master's will. If you really
did it willingly, it would be easy. "Oh, but I find such-and-such a
thing, which Christ requires of me, to be hard." No, you do not find
that to be hard–it is your own heart that is hard. The hardness is in
the sin that rebels against Christ. There would be no hardness in the
tenderness that would yield to Him, or that would come to you as the
result of yielding. I struggle, and then the cords that bind me cut my
flesh. I quietly yield, and then I do not injure myself. A man will
float if he will lie still upon the top of the water, but he will drown
if he begins to struggle. It is the complete yielding to Christ that
makes the yoke to be easy–but the difficulty comes when it is not His
yoke that we take, but one made by our self-will. We must have
everything according to our own will. We must do everything in our own
way and so, Lord Will-Be-Will comes prancing down the street on his
high horse and then everything goes amiss! But Christ's yoke is easy
and His burden is light.
"Still, the burden of life is very heavy," says one. Yes, but how far
is it Christ's yoke and His burden? It is not His yoke if we are
burdened with forbidden cares, for His yoke is that we should be free
from care because we have cast all our care upon Him who cares for us.
Has He not pointed us to ravens and to lilies and bid us learn from
them the lesson of living without care? Your cares, poor anxious one,
are not Christ' s yoke! They are a heavy yoke that is all of your own
making. But if you took another kind of care–the care of not
caring–then you would find Christ's yoke to be easy, His burden to be
light and your life would be joyous and happy!
Nor is it Christ's yoke when we add other burdens to the one He lays
upon us.' 'Oh, but I want"–yes, I know. You want to get on, to be
rich, to be famous and all of that! But is that Christ's yoke? He says,
"I am meek and lowly in heart." Ambition is your own yoke, not His! And
the lust of wealth, the desire for power, the craving for human love–
all that is a yoke of your own making–and if you will wear it, it will
gall you. There is more joy in being unknown than in being known and
there is less care in having no wealth than in having much of it. We
often go the wrong way to work in seeking true restfulness and
happiness. We set our minds on getting this and that, and then blame
our Master because we have a heavy burden on our backs. He meant that
we shouldhave a heavy burden if we would make one of our own! But if
our only care was to seek His Glory, to imitate Him, to put our feet
down into His footprints–if, like He, we were submissive even in our
greatest agony and closed our most intense petitions with His own
words, Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will," then we should
find that His yoke is easy and His burden is light! God grant us Grace
to prove the
difference between His yoke and that which we make for
ourselves–between His burden and that which we pile up by our own
willfulness!
The yoke of Christ is His word, His precepts, His commands, the
following of His example, the bearing of suffering which He appoints,
the persecution which comes to us for His sake. This is His yoke, and
His burden, quite as much as we need desire to carry. So, let us be
content that we are not our own masters, but that we are our Lord's
servants and that we have not even a pennyworth of our own to carry,
but only mean to be carriers for Him. We have hired ourselves out to
carry the vessels of the sanctuary–and we will carry no other burden
than that. You remember that Nehemiah gave orders to his servants, that
there should be no burden brought in on the Sabbath day," and the Lord
has graciously brought us to a Divine Sabbatismos" already. If we bear
no burdens but His burdens, and do no service but His service, then we
shall find that His yoke is easy and His burden is light! May God the
Holy Spirit lead us into this kind of life and then, indeed, shall we
be truly happy!
III. Our third point is to be that OUR EXPERIENCE PROVES THE TEXT TO BE
TRUE. Many of us have proved that Christ' s yoke is easy and that His
burden is light. In speaking upon this point, I must go over part of
the ground I traversed just now.
Experience–that is to say, use and habit again–proves Christ's burden
to be light Those of you who have known the Lord these 25 or 30 or 40
years, what do you say about this matter? Do you not find things
somewhat different from what they were when you first came to Christ?
Then, He gave you rest, did He not?–and you have never lost it, but,
since then, you have gone on bearing His Cross and learning of Him–and
you have found a more complete rest, have you not? I think that I shall
describe your experience, as well as my own, when I say that we now
have a calmness and serenity of spirit which we did not know at first.
We have learned to do, almost spontaneously, some things which used to
cost us a great effort. We now, almost instantaneously, think and say
what before would have caused us deliberation to think and say–and
many a burden that almost broke our backs, then, is no burden at all to
us now!
See how it is with those who have been long sick. At first they dread
the thought of being a week without coming downstairs–but after being
bed-ridden for 20 years, they get accustomed to it and even smile when
we pity them. Well, that is a strong illustration of what I mean. To
those who are not sufferers, I might give other illustrations, but it
is true that there is a sacred use and habit that comes to us through
the Grace of God. We say that use is second nature" and, being
accustomed to bear this burden, we are like the bullock which at first
is restive and will not plow, but when, year after year, he has plowed
with his true yokefellow, he gets almost to love the yoke. And when he
is brought out in the morning, he looks round for his yokefellow and
adjusts his neck so that he may bear his part of the yoke without
distressing his companion that is to be yoked with him. And almost
before the farmer bids them move, the two bullocks begin steadily to go
their usual round. There is less need of the ox-goad, now, because they
have become accustomed to the yoke. They seem to know when to turn at
the end of the furrow and how to do it all–and blessed is that
Christian who, by experience, has acquired the blessed habit of serving
or suffering as his Master wills. He finds that Christ's yoke is easy
and His burden is light.
But, dear Friends, we also, by experience, prove Christ's yoke to be
easy and His burden to be light because of the motive that leads us to
bear them. What is the motive that leads a Christian to bear Christ's
yoke and burden? Why, the master motive is love! And what will we not
do for love? Things which no money could induce us to do are freely
done out of love. Well does our poet sing–
"'Tis love that makes our willing feet
In swiff obedience move."
In our ordinary domestic life, nothing is too heavy. Nothing is too
demeaning if it is done for love. And so is it with the yoke of Christ.
When we really come to love Him, we are willing to do or to suffer
anything for His dear sake! His love makes the burden light and the
yoke easy.
Further, experience shows us that these things are light because there
is a new nature given us with which we bear the burden and the yoke.
Our old carnal nature cannot endure it–you might as soon try to yoke
the sea or to harness the wind as seek to put the yoke of Christ upon a
carnal man's shoulder, or make him open his mouth to receive the bit of
the Divine Law. But God creates in us a new heart and a right
spirit–and that new nature as naturally takes to obedience as
the old nature took to rebellion! And so the yoke becomes easy and the
burden light. Is not that the true answer to the riddle? Is not that
the great reason why that which otherwise would crush us becomes so
light?
Then, Christ's yoke is easy and His burden is light because the Divine
Trinity comes to our help. When the Trinity comes in, all thought of
difficulty vanishes. If our Heavenly Father is with us, we can do or
bear anything. The feeblest among us could stand, like Atlas with a
world upon his shoulders and never feel the strain if God the Father
were with him! Then, how uplifting is the sympathy of Christ! We can
bear anythingwhen He says to us–
"'I feel in My heart all your sighs andyour groans,
For you are most near Me, My flesh and My bones!
In all your distresses your Head feels the pain,
Yet all are most necessary, not one is in vain."
Dr. Watts wrote truly–
"Jesus can make a dying bed Feel soft as downy pillows."
Then there is the blessed co-operation of the Holy Spirit. When He
comes to us as Comforter, Quickener, Guide, Streng-thener and
Friend–then the yoke is easy and the burden is light–especially when
He comes with manifestations of God to the soul and when faith, and
hope, and joy, are all shedding their benign influence over the heart.
Well might the Apostle say that he could do all things through Christ
who strengthened him! And when the Holy Spirit comes and reveals Christ
in us, then nothing is difficult, but everything is light and easy.
Experience cracks this nut which otherwise might break our teeth. Have
you ever tried it, Brothers and Sisters? If so, I know that you have
proved Christ's word true to you, "My yoke is easy and My burden is
light."
Another thing that helps to make Christ's yoke easy to some of us is
the consciousness of the benefits which we have derived from it I can
bear my personal testimony that the best piece of furniture that I ever
had in the house was a cross. I do not mean a material cross–I mean
the cross of affliction and trouble. I am sure that I have run more
swiftly with a lame leg than I ever did with a sound one. I am certain
that I have seen more in the dark than ever I saw in the light– more
stars, most certainly–more things in Heaven if fewer things on earth!
The anvil, the fire and the hammer are the making of us–we do not get
fashioned much by anything else. That heavy hammer falling on us helps
to shape us! Therefore let affliction and trouble and trial come.
Rutherford said that he thought Christ might almost be jealous of His
Cross, for he loved affliction so much! It had brought him so much
benefit that he began even to love the cross–it had drawn him so close
to his Lord that they ran each other pretty evenly.
Well, I do not think that there is much fear of that, but, really,
Christ and His Cross do so sweetly go together that I have sometimes
felt like the man who had such blessed times in his sickness and who
became so dull when he recovered, that he said, Take me back to bed,
again, and let me have all my pains, again, for then I proved the
preciousness of Christ." Many an old Covenanter, when he met in the
kirk in Edinburgh and sat there in peace and quietness, had not half
the fellowship with Christ which he had experienced when the cruel
Claverhouse was after him! And he said, Let me go back to the moors and
worship God as I did when the text was read by the light of the
lightning flash, for God was very near His people beside the moss and
among the hills." It is certainly so, still, Brothers and Sisters. Not
only is Christ's yoke easy and His burden light, but I have often felt
as if His yoke were wings and His burden feathers–as if, by their
help, I could mount and soar above all ordinary experiences! You know
what weights are and how they hold you down–but any engineer will tell
you that there is a way of managing weights so as to make them lift you
up–and our great Engineer lifts us by that which seems as if it would
drag us down! Blessed be His name for this!
And, lastly, His yoke becomes easy and His burden light as we think of
what will come of them at last The deeper our sorrows, the louder we
shall sing. Heaven will be all the brighter because of the darkness
through which we have passed on the way to it. Oh, what a Heaven it
will be to the sick, the poor, the despised and the afflicted, to burst
their bonds and soar away to everlasting bliss! It will not be long
before you and I will be where Jesus is–therefore, till then, let us
patiently bear all that He lays upon us.
But this is not true of you all. Some of you have heavy burdens to
carry, but you have nobody to help you. How do you manage to live
without a God? O poor creatures! Perhaps you, Sir, came here in a
carriage and pair, but you are, indeed, a poor creature if you have not
a God. You draw large dividends from the bank, but you are poor,
indeed, if you have not Christ as your Savior. As for me, I will take
Christ and His Cross, and count them greater riches than all the
treasures of Egypt! The Lord bring you all to think and say the
same–and if you ever do, then you can begin with, Come unto Me, all
you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," and you
can go on to the text and claim Christ's words as applying to you–"My
yoke is easy and My burden is light." The way of holiness is an easy
way! May God the Holy Spirit graciously guide you to walk in it, for
Jesus Christ's sake! Amen.
HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"–775, 493, 495.
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: ISAIAH49:24-26; 50.
Isaiah 49:24. Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful
captive delivered? Yes, this shall happen when God makes bare His arm
and stretches it forth to rescue His captive people.
25, 26. But thus said the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall
be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I
will contend with him that contends with you, and I will save your
children. And I will feed them that oppress you with their own flesh;
and they shall be drunk with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and
all flesh shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior and your
Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. This is the promise of Christ to His
Church, both the Jewish and the gentile Church. He will deliver her
from all her afflictions and distresses. And her enemies shall feed
upon their own flesh, or they shall be overthrown by mutual enemies. As
it was of old when those that were confederate against Israel suddenly
fell to quarreling and slew each other, so is it, sooner or later, in
the battle between the Truth of God and error. By-and-by there is a
split in the adversaries' camp and they devour one another! Let any
wrong thing alone and it will break in pieces of itself. All real and
abiding cohesion is gone when men seek to be united against the Lord
and against His Anointed. They shall confute one another, or they shall
eat their own words and so they shall, as it were, feed upon their own
flesh.
Isaiah 50:1. Thus says the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother's
divorce, whom I have put away? Sometimes, the headings to the chapters
in our Bible give us the meaning of the passage. They are, of course,
not Inspired, and are merely put there by the translators, but,
sometimes, they are little comments upon the text. It is so in the
heading of this chapter–"Christ shows that the dereliction of the Jews
is not to be imputed to Him, by His ability to save, by His obedience
in that work, and by His confidence in that assistance," so that the
Lord Jesus, here, speaks to the Jewish Church. The great Redeemer, "the
Mighty One of Jacob," thus speaks to His chosen people Israel, "Where
is the bill of your mother's divorce, whom I have put away?"
1. Or which of My creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for
your iniquities have you sold yourselves, and for your transgressions
is your mother put away. I t was sin that caused the alienation between
Israel and her God, and it is sin that is the cause of all the
estrangement from God in the world. A sinful man, so long as he
continues to live in sin, cannot love a holy God!
2, 3. Why, when I came, was there no man? When I called, was there no
one to answer? Is My hand shortened at all, that it can't redeem? Or
have Inopower to deliver? Behold, at My rebuke Idry up the sea, Imake
the rivers a wilderness: their fish stink because there is no water,
and die for thirst I clothe the heavens with blackness and Imake
sackcloth their covering. What a glorious God this is who says that He
has not divorced His people! How mighty He is–yes, Almighty! All power
is in His hands. Notice who He is, for He goes on to describe Himself–
4. The Lord GOD has given Me the tongue of the learned, that Ishould
know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary: He wakens Me
morning by morning, He wakens My ears to hear as the learned. Just as
scholars learn from their teacher. It was a wondrous stoop for the
Omnipotent to become a Learner, but He descended lower than that.
5. The Lord GOD has opened My ears and I was not rebellious, neither
turned back This was another step in the ladder of Christ's
humiliation, but He went lower still! Read the 3rd verse, again, and
then read the 6th . "I clothe the heavens with blackness and I make
sackcloth their covering."
6. 7. I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked
off the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting. For the Lord
GOD will help Me, therefore shall I not be confounded, therefore have I
set My face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. Even
though He had to stoop so low as to endure shame and spitting, He
knew that the ultimate result would be Glory to God and to Himself. He
had no thought of despairing. It had been already written of Him, "He
shall not fail nor be discouraged." He shall surely accomplish the work
which His Father gave Him to do. The next verse is probably the one
from which Paul took that grand challenge of his, "Who is he that
condemns? It is Christ that died," and so on. He takes out of the mouth
of Christ his words of confidence and puts them into the mouth of all
Christ's people.
8. He is near that justifies Me; who will contend with Me?Our Lord
Jesus Christ was justified in His Resurrection. He took His people's
sin upon Him and, therefore, He had to die in their place–but His work
was so complete that He was Himselfjustified as well as all His
people–and He challenges anyone to lay anything to His charge!
8-10. Let us stand together: who is My adversary? Let him come near to
Me. Behold, the Lord God will help Me, who is he that shall condemn Me?
Lo, they all shall wax old as a garment, the moth shall eat them up.
Who is among you that fears the LORD, that obeys the voice of His
servant, that walks in darkness, and has no light? It is the Savior
still speaking, for He knew what it was to walk in darkness and to have
no light. And what terrible darkness it was, my Brothers and Sisters!
What an awful thing it was to Him to have so suffer the withdrawal of
the light of His Father's Countenance from Him! He knows, therefore,
what this trial means, and being full of compassion, He offers to us
the kindest counsel if we are in a similar condition. What does He tell
us to do? Listen, you who love the Lord, yet who are in the dark.
10. Let him trust in the name of the LORD, and rely upon his God. In
darkness or in the light, take heed that you do this! When everything
about you seems contrary to the Divine promises and your spirits are
ready to sink, take heed to this good counsel of your Savior–"Let him
trust in the name of the LORD, and rely upon his God."
11. Behold, all you that kindle a fire. You who would gladly save
yourselves. 11. That compass yourselves about with sparks. Or
firebrands.
11. Walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks. Or flambeaux.
11. That you have kindled. That will be the end of it. This grand
illumination of yours–all your good works, all your glorious intellect
and I know not what–what will come of it?
11. This shall you have of My hand; you shall lie down in sorrow. God
save us all from such a lying down as that at the last, for Christ' s
sake! Amen.