Ye Are My Witnesses
‘Out of that weak, unquiet drift,
That comes but to depart,
To that pure Heaven my spirit lift
Where Thou unchanging art!
Thy purpose of eternal good
Let me but surely know:
On this I’ll lean, let changing mood
And feeling come or go!”
J. CAMPBELL SHAIRP.
ISAIAH xliii. Io.)
=, inte magnificent conception with which chapter xli.
<’: opens underlies this. We have still the vast convocation of the world, summoned to decide whether Jehovah, or some idol god, should henceforth be PULLS regarded as the supreme Deity. In the arena are the rows of helpless images, rich in paint and tinsel, but mute, only waiting to be carried home by their attendant priests. Before the assembly disperses, Jehovah must vindicate his claims; and therefore calls into the witness-box his chosen people, that they may tell men what they know, and testify what they have seen.
It is a remarkable appeal. In chapter xlii. 19 they are blamed for being blind and deaf; but for all that they are addressed as capable of giving evidence. Though they had misused their opportunities, and had made less progress than they might have done in the knowledge of God, yet they knew more of Him than any nation beside upon the face of the earth, and could tell secrets which the profoundest thinkers had missed. “Ye are My witnesses, and My servant whom I have chosen.”
See, they come into court and take their stand face to face with monarchies that had ruthlessly despoiled and ravaged them, to speak for Him whose character had been so often
“maligned and misrepresented by their sins. At the period in which they were summoned to give evidence, they were actually in captivity, diminished in numbers, brought low through affliction and oppression; and yet, such is the power of witness to truth, their testimony was to silence all other voices; to bear down all rival claims; and to establish Jehovah as the one and only God. They might be vanquished and broken in the realm of physical force; but they were supreme and imperial in the realm of truth. Thus, in after days, the Lord Jesus stood bound before the representative of mighty Rome, bearing witness to a Kingdom which did not emanate from this world, but before which that of Rome was to pass into the land of shadows.
See, then, the Jews enter the arena, carrying with them their venerable sacred books. The test, as we have~seen, being whether Jehovah had uttered predictions which had been
fulfilled.
’ Has your God foretold the future?”
“Certainly!” they reply.
“Give some instances.”
“In our oldest record, centuries before it took place, He told our ancestor and progenitor Abraham, that his descendants would spend a protracted period in Egyptian bondage; and that afterwards they should come forth amid great judgments, to inhabit the land in which he was a stranger. This was precisely fulfilled.
“Again, Jehovah foretold that Hagar’s son, Ishmael, should be as a wild ass, at feud with all his neighbours. This, too, has been realised in the history of Edom.
“Again, through His prophet Isaiah, on the fatal day when our great king Hezekiah showed the ambassadors of the king of Babylon his treasures, Jehovah foretold that we should be captives in this land, and our princes chamberlains in the palace of our conqueror — as it is this day.”
The Jews have maintained this witness through the ages. Think of Babylon to-day, wrapt in the sand-drifts in the desert. No Arab pitches his tent there, neither do shepherds fold their flocks. It is the haunt of wild beasts, a possession for the bittern, and a dwelling-place for dragons. Think of Tyre, on whose site a few fisher-folk get a scanty livelihood, drying their nets on its ruins; whilst the noble harbour in which, when Nahum wrote, the wealth of the world proudly floated, is choked up with sand. Think of Edom, from whose rock-hewn houses, situated in vast solitudes and seldom visited by man, arise vast flocks of birds, which almost darken the air at the approach of a stranger. No unprejudiced mind could compare the condition of these sites with the predictions of the Old Testament, without being impressed with their strong evidence to the truth of Scripture.
The very existence of the Jewish people scattered throughout the world, and yet preserved from absorption amid the populations that surround them — that they have no rest for the sole of their foot; that they have a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and pining of soul; that they fear night and day, and have none assurance of life; that they are evidently being kept for their land, as their land is being kept for them — all this is in exact conformity to the words of Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy.
The special function of witness-bearing for God is not, however, confined to the Jewish people; but by the express words of the Lord it is shared by the Church. The Church and the Holy Spirit together bear joint witness to the death, resurrection, and eternal life of the Divine Man. “Ye shall be My witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in all Judzea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” As the King bore witness to truth, his subjects bear witness to the truth as it is in Jesus. When his matchless life set from the eyes of men behind Calvary, the Church, illumined by fellowship with Him across the spaces which no mortal eye can fathom, testified that He lived for evermore. It may be said of her, as the psalmist did of the heavenly bodies, Day unto day she uttereth speech, night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech or utterance, her voice cannot be heard; but her line is gone out through all the earth, and her words to the end of the world.
This is also the function of the individual believer: not. to argue and dispute, not to demonstrate and prove, not to perform the part of the advocate; but to live in direct contact with things which the Holy Ghost reveals to the pure and childlike nature. And then to come forth attesting that these things are so. Just as mathematical axioms have no need to be argued, but simply to be stated, and the statement is sufficient to establish them, because of the affinity between them and the construction of the human mind; so it is sufficient to bear witness to truth, amid systems of falsehood and errox. And directly it is uttered, there is an assent in the conscience illumined by the Holy Spirit, which rises up and declares it to be the very truth of God.
There are three points on which the Christian soul is called to give witness. They are suggested by the glowing words of which this call for witnesses is the climax; and we need have no hesitation in appropriating such words — addressed primarily to the Jews — to ourselves, because we are so distinctly told that we are no longer strangers from the covenant of promise, but are part of the household of God (Eph. ii. 12 — 19). It is also affirmed by the apostle that those which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham, and that the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus comes upon the Gentiles (Gal. 11.
9 — 14).
I. LET US WITNESS TO A LOVE THAT NEVER TIRES. — At the close of the previous chapter we have a terrible picture of Israel as a people robbed and spoiled, snared in holes, and hid in prison-houses; upon whom God was pouring the fury of his anger, and the strength of battle. Then most unexpectedly God turns to them, and says, “Fear not! thou art mine; thou hast been precious in my sight, and honourable and beloved.”
Thou art Mine. The words are very simple. They would come to a little lost child from a mother’s lips as she again embraced it. Our deepest emotions express themselves in the simplest words. Depth and intensity of feeling select the monosyllables of the mother-tongue. It is much for thee, O exiled soul, robbed and spoiled, that God still calls thee his; and He will not stay his hand until He elicits the response, “Great and good God, Thou art mine!” Neither sin nor sorrow can cut with their accursed shears the knot of union which the Divine fingers have tied between thy weak soul and the everlasting Lover of men.
Precious. Israel hardly dared to think it; and certainly no observer unacquainted with the ways of God could dare suppose that Jehovah counted his people as his priceless treasure. But, nevertheless, the words stand out clearly upon the page, “Thou hast been Jrectous in My sight.” Yes, soul of man, thou art the pearl of great price to obtain which the merchantman in search of priceless jewels sold all that He had, and bought the world in which thou didst lie like a common pebble. Preciousness is due to hardships undergone, purchase money and time expended, or pains of workmanship; and each of these three conditions has been marvellously exemplified in the dealings of thy God.
Honourable. Our origin was in the dust. Our father was an Amorite, our mother a Hittite. In the day of our birth none pitied; but we were cast out in the open field and abhorred. It is marvellous to know that God is prepared to raise such out of the dust, and lift them from the dunghill; to make them sit with princes, and inherit the throne of glory. Ah! how little do the titles of the world appear to those whom God dubs “right honourable”! On them the loftiest angels are proud to wait. Their nursing-fathers are kings. Demean thyself as one whom God delights to honour. It ill-becomes princes of the blood-royal to lie in the gutter.
Beloved. “1 have loved thee.” These are words which no explanation is needed to elucidate. We must sit down to muse on them, and let their quiet influence steal over us, like that of a superb painting, a strain of music, a landscape. But oh, believe them; and in the darkest hours of life, when thy feet have almost gone from under thee, and no sun, or moon, or stars appear, never doubt that God’s love is not less tenacious than that which suggested the epitaph on Kingsley’s tomb, “We love; we have loved; we will love.”
To know all this, and to bear witness to it; to attest it. in the teeth of adverse circumstances, of bitter taunts, and ot utter desolation; to persist in the affirmation amid the crossquestioning of a cynical age; never to falter, never to listen to the suggestion of doubt rising like a cold mist to enwrap the soul; never to allow the expression of the face to suggest that God is hard in his dealings — this is the mission of the believer.
I]. LET US WITNESS TO A PURPOSE THAT NEVER FAL-TERS. — God does not say, “Think of what was done yesterday”; He goes back on the purposes of eternity; the deeds of Bethlehem and Calvary; the everlasting covenant; the whole trend of his dealings with us. He says, “Read the whole book; step back and consider the perspective; get a glimpse of the mighty roots that moor the slight tree of thy life.” “Fear not! for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name; I have created thee for my glory; I have formed thee, yea, I have made thee” (verses I, 7).
Is it likely that a purpose reaching back into the blue azure of the past will be lightly dropped? The love of yesterday may pass, as the dew from the earth; the hastily-formed purpose may be as hastily abandoned; the gourd of the night perishes in the night: but thine election is the outworking of an ideal which filled the mind of God before ever the sun began to glimmer, or seraph’s voice to strike across the depths of the infinite.
This, too, demands our witness. Men misjudge God, because they look at his work in fragments, and criticize half-finished designs. Short-sighted, premature, hasty, the adverse criticism of man must be corrected by the mature, calm judgment which shall view the finished scheme of creation and of the moral government of the universe. It is our duty to appeal for this, and bear our witness to the far-reach of a purpose that moves in a slowly-ascending spiral to its end.
III. LET US WITNESS TO A DELIVERANCE THAT NEVER DISAPPOINTS. — God does not keep his children from the waters and the fire. We might have expected the verse would run, “Thou shalt never pass through the waters, or through the river; thou shalt never have to walk through the fire!” But so far from this, it seems taken as a matter of course that there will be the waters and the fire; the overflowing floods of sorrow; the biting flame of sarcasm and hate. God’s people are not saved from trial, but in it. Fire and water are cleansing agents that cannot be dispensed with. The gold and silver, the brass, iron, and tin, everything that can abide the fire, must go through the fire, that it may be clean; and that which cannot abide the fire must go through the water (Num. xxxi. 23).
Sometimes the world wonders at seeing God’s people in trouble as other men — not knowing that the King Himself has passed through flood and flame; not knowing also that there are fords for the floods and paths through the fire. God does not ‘take us to the city that hath foundations by a way which will mock our faltering footsteps. We must bear our testimony to this also, that we may clear the character of God from the aspersions of the ungodly. He will not break the silence to speak for Himself; but we must bear witness for Him.
The witness-box is the home, the place of business, the society salon, anywhere and everywhere where the right is being travestied and misunderstood. There, in the power of the witnessing Spirit, we are called to be witnesses for the Lord our God.