Words in Season for the Weary
‘Thou knowest, not alone as God, all-knowing;
As Man, our mortal weakness Thou hast proved:
On earth, with purest sympathies o’erflowing,
O Saviour, Thou hast wept, and Thou hast loved:
And love and sorrow still to Thee may come,
And find a hiding-place, a rest, a home.”
Ho Lak:
ISAIAH I. 4.)
aX VER since the world began, men have been weary.
4 “Weary” denotes a class to which a multitude
/ belong that no man can number, of every nation,
“Oy kindred, tribe, and people. Physzcal weariness — of t oy
the slave on the march; of the toiler in the sweating den; of the seamstress working far into the night by the wasting taper; of the mother worn with watching her sick child. Mental weariness — when the fancy can no longer summon at will images of beauty; and the intellect refuses to follow another argument, master another page, or cast up another column. Aear¢ weariness — waiting in vain for the word so long expected but unspoken; for the returning step of the prodigal; for the long-delayed letter. The weariness of the inner confiuct of striving day by day against the selfishness and waywardness of the soul on which prolonged resistance makes so slight an impression. The weariness of the Christzan worker, worn by the perpetual chafe of human sorrow, sin, and need.
If only we could make one brilliant assault on the powers of evil, which should for ever quell their might, so that they would perforce retreat, leaving the field with us — who would not accept it as the most blessed gift of God? But, instead of this, we are engaged in a conflict which is tedious, incessant, and terribly wearing. If we defeat our enemy to-day, he will be ready to meet us to-morrow with equal force. If we conquer him in one thing, he will straightway disguise himself in another. Thus beneath the long ordeal, heart and flesh fail; and we sigh for the place over whose portal Christ has written, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Thus, in one way or another, all souls at some part of their life get weary. There is nothing novel in this; but the novelty, the great novelty, consists in the infinite care that God takes of the weary. There is nothing like it outside the Bible, and the literature to which it has given birth. Man hears with composure that scores of weary ones have fallen out of the march of human life, and lie stretched on the scorching sand, doomed to expire of fatigue and thirst. God, on the other hand, the High and Holy One, inhabiting Eternity, stoops to the need of the weakling; expends his care on the lame, halt, maimed, and blind; adopts into his family those who had been rejected for their deformities and ugliness; gathers up the broken fragments; tills the sterile ground; ransacks the highways and byways for the waifs and strays whom no one invites to his board; and is .perpetually engaged in brooding over each weary heart with its sore, its tears, its yearnings, its despair. This God is our God for ever and ever, unrivalled in his tender pity, the God of the fatherless and the widow.
But the deep tenderness of God for every tired atom of humanity had been hidden from our knowledge, had it not been for the Great Servant who speaks in these paragraphs, and who combines the form of the Servant and equality with Jehovah. No one ever comforted the weary as He did. He could not look upon a great multitude, distressed and scattered as sheep not having a shepherd, without being moved with compassion towards them, and beginning to speak as only He could. How many weary souls did He sustain with his words (R.V.); to how many did He speak a word in season (A.V)! Ask Him, speaking after the manner of men, whence He derived this matchless power; and He will answer, “The Lord God gave it Me. In his great love for weary souls everywhere, He raised Me up to be their Shepherd. Through days and nights, He taught Me, wakening Me morning by morning to some new lesson of sympathy and mercy, comforting Me amid the assaults of my foes and the darkness of dark hours, that I might be able to comfort others with the comfort wherewith I Myself had been comforted by my Father.”
We are brought then to consider the education, resolution, vindication, and entreaty of the true Servant of Jehovah, Himself God over all.
I. THE EDUCATION OF THE DIVINE SERVANT. — We must notice the difference between the authorized version and the new. In the one, “the Lord God hath given Me the tongue of the learned, that I should know.” In the other, “of them that are taught” — or, as the margin reads, “of disciples.” The thought being that the Lord Jesus in his human life was a pupil in the schoo! of human pain, under the tutelage of his Father, of whom He said, “I do nothing of Myself, but as the Father taught Me I speak these things.” “I ama Man that hath told you the truth which I heard from God” (John viii. 28, 40). This is in keeping also with that marvellous word of the Epistle to the Hebrews, “Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered; and, having been made perfect, He became unto all them that obey Him the Author of Eternal Salvation.”
His education was by God Himself. “The Lord God hath given Me... He wakeneth morning by morning... The Lord God hath opened mine ear.”
It was various. He passed through each class in the school of weariness. Being wearied with his journey, He sat by Sychar’s well; they took Him, even as He was, in the ship; He looked up to heaven and sighed, because of the pressure of human pain, and the obstinacy of unbelief; He suffered being tempted; He once cried in the bitterness of his soul, “How long shall I be with you, and suffer you?” He was glad when the hour came that He should go home to his Father. The waves of human sorrow broke over his tender heart, and though possessed of an inexhaustible patience, there was an incessant waste of the physical tissues, beneath which at last He fainted on the way to Calvary.
It was constant. “Morning by morning” the Father woke Him. After his brief snatch of sleep, amid the thyme of the hill-side, or in the storm of the fishing-smack, or on the couch that the sisters’ love had spread for Him at Bethany, the Spirit touched and summoned Him to the new lesson of the fresh young day. Morning by morning He was wakened to learn, by the ever-changing circumstances of daily providence, some deeper phase of the world’s suffering and its medicine. Would that we were quicker to detect that same awakening touch; and to learn the lessons taught by the circumstances of our lot as to the treatment of the weary and suffering!
Lt dealt with the season for administering comfort. “That I should know how to speak a word in season.” It is not enough to speak the right word; you must speak it at the right moment, or it will be in vain. Many a word spoken out of season has fallen like a seed on the wayside to be devoured by birds; whilst the same word, uttered at the right time by a voice with less quality of tone, has been God’s balm. It is not easy to know just when to speak to the weary. There are times when the nervous system is so overstrained that it cannot bear even the softest words. It is best then to be silent. A caress, a touch, or the stillness that breathes an atmosphere of calm, will then most quickly soothe and heal. This delicacy of perception can only be acquired in the school of suffering. Our Master knows when to speak, and when to be still, because He has graduated there.
It embraced the method. “That I should know how.” The manner is as important as the season. A message of goodwill may be uttered with so little sympathy, and in tones so gruff and grating, that it will repel. The psalmist speaks of words so soft that they do not break the head! The touch of the comforter must be that of the nurse on the fractured bone — of the mother with the frightened child. God knows how delicately strung our system is, and how it demands the gentle tread across the floor; movements like the fall of rose-petals
Che Object of Christ’s Lite. III
on the grass; methods of perfect sympathy. All these He has provided, who made the snow descend in noiseless flakes, and the ocean break in silvery ripple on the sand. Thy King hath been trained to this; lo! He comes, meek and lowly, sitting on the ambling foal. He will not break the bruiséd reed, nor quench the smoking flax.
It seems to me as if the education of our High Priest has not ceased with his transference from this world of sorrow to the realm where weariness is never felt. His ministry to weary hearts through succeeding ages has made his eye more quick, his touch more delicate.
O weary soul! I have seen Him coming to thy help. The voice of the Shepherd lifts itself, calling thy name. He is searching for thee by crag, and brake, and torrent-bed. He knows just how to take thee. He will cast thee about his shoulders rejoicing, and so bring thee home.
II. His RESOLUTION. — From the first, Jesus knew that He must die. The Lord God poured the full story into his opened ear. With all other men, death is the close of their life; with Christ it was the object. We die because we were born; Christ was born that He might die. From his birth the shadow of the Cross fell athwart his soul, as the young pigeons shed their blood for Him in the temple courts. To Nicodemus He said, “The Son of Man must be lifted up.” The scenes in the halls of Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate, were as present to his prevision as the scenes of the past are to our memory! Frequently He took his disciples apart, and told them that the Son of Man would be delivered into the hands of men who would handle Him shamefully — mock, spit upon, scourge, and kill Him (Mark x. 34). But though He anticipated all, yet He was not rebellious, neither turned away back.
On one occasion towards the close of his earthly career, when the fingers on the dial-plate were pointing to the near fulfilment of the time, we are told He set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem. What heroism was here! Men sometimes speak of Christ as if He were effeminate and weak, deficient in manly courage, and remarkable only for passive virtues.
But such conceptions are refuted by the indomitable resolution which set its face like a flint, and knew that it would not be ashamed.
Note the voluntariness of Christ’s surrender. The martyr dies because he cannot help it; Christ died because He chose. He laid down his life of Himself; no one took it from Him. He might have been rebellious and turned away backward, or called for twelve legions of angels, or pinned his captors to the ground by the out-flashing of his inherent God-head; but He forbore. Listen to his words, as He treads the wine-press alone! “Thy will, not mine be done.” It is this which throws his resolution into such clear relief. It is this that stirs our hearts with admiration and devotion, as we see Him deliberately giving his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that pluck off the hair, and exposing to shame and spitting the face that angels gaze on with unceasing reverence, and from which, some day, heaven and earth will flee away.
It has been thought that the opened ear refers to something more than the pushing back of the flowing Oriental locks in order to utter the secret of coming sorrow. It is supposed to have some reference to the ancient Jewish custom of boring the ear of the slave to the doorpost of the master’s house. Under this metaphor it is held that our Lord chose with keen sympathy the service of the Father, and elected all that it might involve, because He loved Him and would not go out free.. The images may be combined. Be it only remembered that He knew and chose all that would come upon Him, and that the fetters which bound Him to the cross were those of undying love to us and of burning passion for the Father’s glory.
III. His VINDICATION. — “He is near that justifieth Me.” These are words upon which Jesus may have stayed Himself through those long hours of trial. The Father who sent Him was with Him. Not for a moment did He leave Him alone. God was near. The triumph with which Paul quotes these words of the justification in which the soul which has made Jesus its refuge, is privileged to robe itself, is but the sigh of an fZolian harp, contrasted with the peal of an organ, in compari-
son with the exultation that filled the heart of the Son of Man as He contemplated his vindication by his Father before all worlds.
Who is he that condemneth Me? we hear Him say; “it is God that justifieth!” Justification being used here in the sense of vindication, not, as with us, of the imputation of righteousness.
They said that He was the Friend of publicans and sinners. God has justified Him by showing that if He associates with such, it is to make them martyrs and saints.
They said that He was mad. God has justified Him by making his teaching the illumination of the noblest and wisest of the race.
They said He had a devil. But God has justified Him by giving Him power to cast out the devil and bind him with a mighty chain.
They said that He blasphemed when He called Himself the Son of God. But God has justified Him by raising Him to the right hand of power, so that He will come in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.
They said that He would destroy the temple and the commonwealth of Israel. God has justified Him in shedding the influence of the Hebrew people through all the nations of the world, and making their literature, their history, their conceptions dominant. Where are those who have condemned the Lord Jesus? Their books rot on the top shelves of libraries in undisturbed dust. Their names are only remembered as quoted in the apologetics of the defenders of the Christian faith. Their memory has not survived moth-eating time. Behold, they have all waxed old as doth a garment! The moth has eaten them up. They have passed away as an ill dream; whilst the exalted Saviour is enthroned daily in more hearts, with more enthusiasm, and with growing appreciation. His throne is established for ever and ever. Oh, do not be afraid of the wrath of man, thou child of the King! for “the moth shall eat them up as a garment, and the worm shall eat
them like wool.” The fate that has overtaken the adversaries ) FE of thy King shall overtake thine (li. 8). Only be still, as He was; set thy face as a flint; commit thy cause to God; count not on thy protestations, but upon his vindications — and He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday. He will help thee; fear not! thou shalt not be confounded.
IV. His APPEAL. — To obey the Lord’s Servant is equivalent to fearing the Lord. He who does the one must do the other. What is this but to proclaim his Deity? Those who are thus designated, who, because they fear God, brave the wrath of man, who dare to obey the voice of the Servant as the voice of his Father, are often called to walk through darkness, where there is no light. It may be the valley of the shadow of death, or ‘the garden of Gethsemane, or the midday-midnight of Calvary. But from the depth of his own experience the Divine Servant counsels such, that they should trust where they cannot see, and stay themselves upon God.
Do not stand still, or sit down, or go back, or despair; but keep right onward, believing that the growing light on the fringe of the darkness heralds the advent of the morning. God will help thee. Thou shalt not be ashamed. Set thy face as a flint. Let thy feet hold the appointed track.
The temptation at such an hour is to kindle a fire, and to gird oneself about with firebrands (R.v.); but these die out after a brief sparkle, leaving the darkness more intense. Then with dazzled eye, the Godless soul stumbles in the thicket, and is flung headlong into the pit of destruction. “This shall ye have of Mine hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow.” How awful such a lot must be ! — to lie down in the dying moment with sorrow for a wasted life behind, and a dark eternity before. Oh, abandon your fire with its sparks; and avail yourselves of the light of the Word of God, as a lamp to your feet, and a light to your path, until the day dawn and the Daystar arise on your hearts!