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For all true and worthy service of God — which simply means all true and worthy living of the lives God hath here given us — this word reminds us that there is a necessity — a falling and a rising before God. For this man whom God bids to rise and stand upon his feet had been down, down low and in the dust. Ah! there is too little of this prostration before God — too little vision of the glory and majesty of Him with whom we have to do. Yet this must precede and be the source of all powerful rising and service. We must get down before we can get up. And the humiliation that is blessed is the humiliation that comes from realising God. Our Lord Himself spent memorable hours of His life bowed in communion before God. He found there the secret of power and strength to fulfil His Father's will. Much more must we. There is, then, first of all the lowly abasement. But there follows also, as surely, the rising again. And this is the second condition under which God will speak to us and use us — "Stand upon thy feet."

I. GOD CALLS US TO A TRUE DIGNITY WHEN HE CALLS US TO HIS SERVICE. It is a very false view of religion which holds that it tends to make a man poor. spirited and lachrymose. The true self-respect, the self-respect that springs from humility before God, and not from pride before man, has its roots in religion. And there is no man who will carry himself with truer dignity through the world than the man who believes in God, who has the fear of God before his eyes, and has heard the voice of God in his own soul. And, if we think of it, there are many men who are laid low whom God would rather have to stand up; and many, on the contrary, who stand up whom God would rather see abased. The despairing and the doubting, for example, are often on their faces on the earth. They wander in the grounds of Giant Despair, and he punishes them sorely and without pity. Now, God would rather that they arose, that they made effort to stand upon their feet, and to set them on the rock that is higher than they. On the other hand, there are some who stand whom God would rather see abased. We have many types of them in the Scriptures. The self-reliant is one. Peter points many a moral, but none more surely than this — "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." Again, the Pharisee of Christ's parable is another type. The rich fool of the parable, too, was a man who stood up very proudly, planting his foot confidently on his sure income, his fine houses, and stores. "Thou fool!" What an awful irony is here. "Thou fool, this night" thy soul, thy soul shall be required of thee. Very far, then, is the dignity and self-respect of a deeply religious man from such foolish pride and vain self-confidence as this. He stands as Christ stood (and never was there dignity more regal than His), rooted in humility, yet conscious of the Divinest relations, that, like golden chains, bind him to his God.

II. When God says, "Son of man, stand upon thy feet," it also means that HE REQUIRES COURAGE IN THE SOULS THAT WOULD SERVE HIM. Ezekiel needed it. "Be not afraid of them," etc. And it is needed as much by us as by others who have borne witness before us. The temptations that try our courage, though neither briers nor scorpions, are very real and powerful, and many a quaking there is before them. We need courage to do the right thing in spite of looks of enmity and glances of scorn, in spite of the alienation and misunderstanding of men. God knows we may find that our enemies are they of our own house, and much courage and standing on the feet is needed then. I read lately the story of the lives of two brothers. The one was a soldier who had won great distinction abroad. In a moment of crisis, in the heat of battle, at the peril of his own life, he dashed forward and saved a fallen comrade from the death that surrounded him. It was bravely and well done. He was decorated and gazetted, feted and lionised. But at home was a father, a drunkard, an old man whose life was a disgrace to himself and a burden to his friends. It did not suit the gallant soldier to know this father much, or to live in his neighbourhood. He preferred to enjoy his honours at a distance, away where the breath of this loathsome scandal would not reach him or mar his pleasures. But by this father stood the other son. He was a highly educated, sensitive man, whose life was dedicated to noble work, and who was already gaining for himself the first sweet distinctions of his profession. His father's life was a keen and bitter shame to him. He could easier have borne the knife plunged into his flesh. Yet, at the call of duty — the highest and most sacred duty, in his eyes — he bowed his neck to this shame and sorrow, gave up his bright prospects, lived alone, apart, with this wretched maniac of drink, did the work of a menial, and bore more than a meniars share of cruel blows and insulting words. The one gained the laurels of men, because, under the impulse of the moment, in the heat and excitement of battle, he did a courageous thing; yet in the moral trial, brave soldier as he was, he proved cowardly and ignoble, and left to the shoulders of one, whom he counted a fool for his pains, the cross that should at least have been shared by both. The other got no laurels — was nowhere noticed or spoken of with any distinction; but who can read the story of his self-sacrifice, of his humility, of his patience, without feeling that here, in the sight of God, was the true hero — here the true courage that faced worse than the bullet or the steel, and that endured longer than the swift, exciting hour?

III. The call to stand upon the feet indicates also THE UPRIGHTNESS THAT GOD WOULD HAVE IN ALL HIS SERVANTS. It is vain to think we can serve God, or be witnesses to Him in the world, if we are still harbouring the sins that tend to keep us low. Never was there greater need than today for the people of God to stand in uprightness and integrity. Christ has suffered too much and too long in the open unworthiness of many lives. There are things — habits of life, practices of trade, indulgences of temper and passion and lust, both open and secret — that, if we are to serve Him truly, must be over and ended, past and gone forever. Let us examine ourselves, and let each see what are the things he must cast from him, and must struggle to leave behind — those dead, crucified selves, on which alone we can rise to higher things.

IV. When God calls us to stand, He means HE WOULD HAVE IN US A READINESS TO ACT. Ah! God would oftener speak to us, brethren, but He sees we are not very ready to do anything. Why should He speak? We are indolent. We are too comfortable in our chairs of ease, or too much engrossed with other things. Oh, the hesitancy and reluctance of our obedience! How we need to be persuaded and pled with! Oh, shake yourself from this fatal spirit of indifference and indolence, for many are suffering from it, and losing their lives in it. Stand upon your feet. Offer yourself to God, as if you meant it. And "I will speak to you," saith the Lord. "I will direct your path, and open for you the way of a blessed life."

(R. D. Shaw, B. D.)

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KJV: And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.

WEB: He said to me, Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you.