Isaiah 40:27-31 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?… I. Isaiah here reaches and rests upon THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF THE FAITH, TRUST, AND HOPE OF MANKIND — the living God. Creation rests on His hand; man, the child of the higher creation, rests on His heart. What His power is to the material universe His moral nature and character are to the spiritual universe. "Have faith in God." Creation lives by faith unconsciously, and all her voices to our intelligent ear iterate and reiterate "Have faith in God." II. WHAT DO WE KNOW OF GOD THAT WE SHOULD TRUST HIM? What aspects does He present to us? We have two sources of knowledge — what He has said to, and what He has done for, man. 1. There is something unspeakably sublime in the appeal in ver. 26. It is heaven's protest against man's despair. Nor is Isaiah the only sacred writer who utters it. There is something very strikingly parallel in Job (Job 38.). In both cases God's appeal is to the grand and steadfast order of the vast universe, which He sustains and assures. God tells us that all the hosts of heaven are attendant on the fortunes of mankind. They all live that God's deep purpose concerning man may be accomplished. 2. God declares here that we are not only involved inextricably in the fulfilment of His deepest and most cherished counsels, but that we are needed to satisfy the yearnings of His Father's heart. III. WE MAY APPLY THESE PRINCIPLES to the seasons of our experience when faith in the living God is the one thing which stands between us and the most blank despair. 1. The deep waters of personal affliction. 2. The weary search of the intellect for truth, the struggle to comprehend the incomprehensible, to know the inscrutable, to see the invisible, which is part, and not the least heavy part, of the discipline of a man and of mankind. 3. Dark crises of human history, when truth, virtue, and manhood seem perishing from the world. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God? |
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