God Our Burden-Bearer
“Faint not! There is who rules the storm — Whose hand
Feeds the young ravens, nor permits blind chance
To close one sparrow’s flagging wing in death.
Trust in the Rock of Ages. Now, even now
He speaks and all is calm.”
GISBORNE.
ISAIAH xlvi. 4.)
#‘HIS is an incident in the Fall of Babylon. Cyrus has broken in, and the mighty city lies open to the Persian army, exasperated by long waiting at her gates. The blood of her nobles has flowed freely over the marble floors of her palaces; most of her defenders are slain. Women and children are cowering in the inmost recesses of their homes, or filling the streets with screams of terror and appeals for help, as they fly from the brutal soldiery. The final and most sanguinary conflicts have taken place within the precincts of the idol temples; but all is still now. The priests have fallen around the altars which they served; their blood mingling with that of their victims, and their splendid vestments are become their winding sheets. And now, down the marble staircases, trodden in happier days by the feet of myriads of votaries, lo, the soldiers are carrying the helpless idols. The stern monotheism of Persia would have no pity for the many gods of Babylon; there are no idol-shrines in the land of the sun-worshippers where they could find a niche: but they are borne away as trophies of the completeness of the victory.
There is Bel, whose name suggested that of the capital itself! How ignominiously it is handed down from its pedestal! And Nebo follows. The hideous images lavishly inset with jewels, and richly caparisoned, are borne down the stately steps, their bearers laughing and jeering as they come. The gods get little respect from their rude hands, which are only eager to despoil them of a jewel. And now at the foot of the stairs they are loaded up on the backs of elephants, or pitched into the oxwaggons. In more prosperous days they were carried with excessive pomp through the streets of Babylon, wherever there was plague or sickness. Then the air had been full of the clang of cymbals and trumpets, and the streets thronged with worshipping crowds; but all that is altered. “The things that ye carried about are made a load, a burden to the weary beast. They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity” (xlvi. I, 2, R.V.). So much for the gods of Babylon being borne off into captivity.
Close on this graphic picture of the discomfiture of the gods of Babylon, we are invited to consider a description of Jehovah, in which the opposite to each of these items stands out in clear relief. He speaks to the house of Jacob, and to all the remnant of the house of Israel, as children whom He had borne from the birth, and carried from earliest childhood. Their God needed not to be borne, He bore; needed no carriage, since his everlasting arms made cradle and carriage both. Such as He had been, He would be. He would not change. He would carry them, even to hoar hairs. He had made and He would bear; yea, He would carry, and deliver.
This contrast is a perpetual one. Some people carry their religion; other people are carried by it. Some are burdened by the prescribed creeds, ritual, observances, exactions, to which they believe themselves to be committed. Others have neither thought nor care for these things. They have yielded themselves to God, and are persuaded that He will bear them and carry them, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that they go, until they come to the place of which God has spoken to them (Deut. i. 31; Isa. lxiii. 9).
Il. THE BURDENS FOR WHICH GOD MAKES HIMSELF RESPONSIBLE: — The lives of most of us are heavily weighted.
We began our race unencumbered, but the years as they have passed have added burdens and responsibilities. We run heavily; we walk with difficulty; we carry weights as well as sins.
Foremost there is the burden of existence. We must live. We were not asked if we would live; we are. We had no option than to live, and we have none to-day. The physical phenomenon, which men call death, may insert a comma, or draw a line; but life continues yonder if not here, somehow if not thus, and for ever. Just because the spark on our heart-altars has been kindled at the eternal fires of the Divine nature, it will exist when the moon is withered with age, and the stars have burnt out in night.
There is the burden of sin. The word used of bearing is the same as Isaiah uses of the Sin-bearer, who bore our sins in his own body on the tree (lili. 4). Though the atmosphere presses upon us at the rate of several pounds for every. square inch of bodily surface, we are yet unconscious of its weight. So, till Jesus came, man hardly realized the burden of sin, and groaned not beneath its intolerable weight. But as his pure image has passed from land to land, from age to age, it has convinced men of the awful burden of sin. This is shown to be the reason why they are weary and heavy-laden; why their spirits lack joy and elasticity; why the step tires so soon; and the day of life drags so wearily to a close. And as the reason is given, we know it is so, and assent to Peter’s cry, “Tam a sinful man, O Lord.”
There is the burden of responsibility for others. Our life is so closely entwined with that of others, that we cannot live long without becoming weighted with care for them. The son must care for mother and sisters. The young man is linked in imperishable bonds to the twin-soul, which is dearer than himself, and whose sorrows and anxieties mean more than his own. Then the sweet children who come into our lives, with their guileless trust; the charge of others bequeathed with dying breath; the care of employés, lonely ones, tempted and persecuted ones. Ah, it is impossible for thee or me to move so quickly as we did years ago! - There is also the burden of our life-work. That we have been sent to do what no one else can do; that we have talents intrusted of which we must give an account; that we are called to cultivate one patch in the vineyard; to build one bit in the wall; to utilize one talent of the Master’s capital — this makes us sensible of the importance and urgency of life. It is not possible to realize what our life may mean of blessing or sorrow to others, and not feel the solemn weight of responsibility impinging on us.
In all these things we are doomed to be solitary. It cannot be otherwise. Each man and woman in our circle is similarly weighted. All have as much hill-climbing, burden-bearing, and fighting, as they can manage. None can share aught of his oil, or strength, or courage. We can give sympathy, but that is all. Each human soul must bear his own burden of existence, sin, responsibility, and work. But it is just here that Jehovah steps in. He does not distinguish between our burdens and ourselves; but takes us and them up in his almighty arms, and bears us with no sense of fatigue, no fear of failure. We are a dead-weight; but it matters nought to Him. He has borne us all the days of old: He daily beareth our burdens. He will bear us and carry us till He sets us down in the land where no burdens can enter; the city through whose gates they are never borne; the world, where the heavy-laden leap as an hart, and the weary are at rest.
II. THE REASON WHY GOD ASSUMES THIS RESPONSI-BILITY. — ‘I have made, and I will bear.” When a parent sees his own evil nature re-appearing in his child — the same temper, the same passions, the same peculiarities — so far from casting that child aside, and quoting its faults as reasons for disowning it, he draws nearer to it, filled with a great pity, and murmurs, “I have made, and I will bear.”
When a man has elicited in another a love which will never be at rest till it has nestled to his heart, even though considerations arise which make it questionable whether he has been wise, yet, as he considers the greatness of the love which he has
evoked, he says to himself, “I have made, and I will bear.” F
When a Christian minister has gathered around him a large congregation, and many have been converted from the world, as he looks around on those who count him captain or father, he says to himself, when voices summon him elsewhere, unless some overmastering consideration is pressed upon him, “I have made, and I will bear.”
Now let us ascend, by the help of these reflections, to the Divine nature, which is not above similar considerations. He has made and fashioned us; He has implanted within us appetites that only He can satisfy; He has placed us amid circumstances of unusual difficulty, and intrusted to us work of unwonted importance; He has committed to us the post of duty which taxes us to the uttermost: and because He has done all this, He is responsible for all that is needed for the accomplishment of his purposes. Since all things are of Him, we may rest assured that they will be through Him and to Him for ever. He has made, and He will bear. He has incurred the responsibility of making us what we are, and placing us where we are; then He must perfect that which concerneth us, since his mercy endureth for ever — and He cannot forsake the work of his own hands.
There are several corroborations of this thought in the Bible. There is that word of our Lord, in which He tells us that our heavenly Father is bound to give meat for the hunger, and clothes for the body which He has given. There is the statement that what God has wrought us for, and given the earnest of, He must complete. There is the golden chain of Rom. viii., each link in which postulates the next, and that the next; predestination involves calling, and this justification, and this again glory. When God thinks of building a character He first considers whether He can complete it; and if He begin, it is a positive assurance that He will carry out his plan. What He makes, He will bear.
It was so with Israel. He made the chosen people by his election and grace. From an obscure tribe of Bedawin, He made them his peculiar people, his own inheritance, his messengers to the world. Notwithstanding their many wanderings and provocations, He has never put away the people whom He foreknew; through all these weary centuries He has been deeply solicitous for them, and He will yet bring them on eagles’ wings to their own city and land.
Zt is so with our world. He made it. It was the nurseling of his love and power, and bore the early imprint of his benediction. Through the depths of space He has never ceased to bear it, although it has been dark with sin and red with crime. He bore its contumely and shame when they cast Him forth with contempt to the cross. He bore its sin in the agony of Calvary. And the end is sure. He bears it on his heart, and will never put it away until its evil is overcome with his good, and it shines again in its early beauty and sings in unison with its sister spheres.
III. THE CONSOLATION WHICH ARISES FROM THESE
CONSIDERATIONS.
In hours of anguish for recent sin. The sin is our own. In no sense can the sinner lay it on God. “I have sinned,” he cries, “and perverted that which was right, and it did not profit me. The sin is mine.” And yet from the depth of sinconsciousness there is an appeal to God. He created, permitted us to be born as members of a sinful race. He knew all we should be, before He set his heart upon us and made us his own. May we not ask Him to bear with us whom He made, redeemed, and took to be his children by adoption and grace? And will He not answer, “I have made, and I will bear”?
In moments of great anxiety. When burdened with care for ourselves or others, we fall at the foot of the altar-steps that slope through darkness up to God; when our circumstances are beyond measure perplexing, and the knots refuse to be untied; when we have no idea what to do, or how to act for the best — is there not every reason to look into the face of God, and say, “Thou hast permitted me to come hither, Thou alone knowest what I should do, Thou hast made me: wilt Thou not bear me through this swelling tide and bring me on to firm standing-ground?” And will He not again answer, “I have made, and I will bear”?
In days of anxious foreboding. Sometimes, as we have climbed to an Alpine summit, the gaunt black rocks have risen around us from an ocean-surface of fleecy clouds, which have, so to speak, washed up against them, filling the whole intermediate valley. The hamlet where we were to spend the night, and the road to it, were alike hidden. So the future is hidden from our view, and with the fear born of ignorance we dread what may be awaiting us. The veil is slight, but impenetrable. What may it not conceal? Then again, we turn to the ineffable God. He knows all that we can bear, for He made us. It is not likely that He will imperil that on which He has spent time and thought. He cannot fail or forsake. We may freely cast on Him the responsibility.
O our Maker! bear us, as a mother her infant; as a father his tired boy; as a guide the fainting woman turned dizzy at the vision of sheer depth beneath: Thou hast made, wilt Thou not bear? Again the answer returns, “Even to old age I am He, and to hoary hairs will I carry you; I have made, and I will bear, I will carry and will deliver.”