I will give you the treasures of darkness and the riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who calls you by name. Sermons
I. OBSTACLES IN THE WAY SHOULD BE NO HINDRANCE TO US. There is hardly anything worth doing in life that is not difficult to do. The difference between men is seen in their attitude in face of difficulties. Illustrate by the position of Israel before the Red Sea. It was a brave thing for Moses to command Israel to "go forward;" but it was a type of the right attitude for us always to take when the way seems obstructed. "I cannot" must give place to "I will, God helping me." II. THE ONE THING TO SEEK IS THE ASSURANCE THAT WE ARE DOING GOD'S WILL. This distinguishes the good man from the mere man of energy. The Cyrus here referred to was raised up by God, and entrusted with a particular work. But it is true that still God calls individuals to special service. He makes plain to them his will And our first anxiety should be to be sure that we are where he has set us, and are doing just what he would have us do. Once let these things be settled, and oppositions and hindrances count for nothing. We want more faith in Divine providence, in the inward inspirations and outward directings of God. Where he sets us we must bear, conquer, and do. III. WAYS ALWAYS OPEN BEFORE THE OBEDIENT, RESOLUTE. TRUSTFUL MAN. Firmness, moral courage, persistency, and, above all, real faith in God, compel difficulties to yield. They are always according to the size of the man himself. If he is big with faith, they grow small; if he is little with fears, they grow big. Obstacles are searching tests of character. Men of faith are like the mountain streams that make their way down amid the rocks; if they cannot get over the rocks, they go round them, but they will not be stopped. - R.T.
And I will give thee the treasures of darkness. There is a whole library of sacred philosophy in the words of the Psalmist on the relation subsisting between God and His creatures. "That Thou givest them, they gather. Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled with good." Perhaps one is hardly ever reminded more strongly of this fellowship of Providence and industry than when passing through a district seamed and bored and blackened by the mining operations in search of the metals which yield the wealth of a country, or of the hardly less precious coal, by the aid of which the iron, the copper, or the silver is smelted into useful forms. The ore, it is beyond the miner s province to fashion; God makes it to him a free present; but the digging, and the hoisting, and the smelting, and the moulding, and the chasing, and the carving, and the coining into currency, these things God no more does for man than man, in the beginning, created the heavens and the earth. Let us learn to be grateful without being indolent. Let us equally take care to be diligent without being proud. There is a high moral and spiritual mineralogy, wherein we may become rich, "not with corruptible things, such as silver and gold." There are caverns of unimaginable wealth, every grain of which comes from God's free bounty, but not one grain of which man can touch, except he do it "in the sweat of his brow." Bring to the text not only faith in God's promise, but strong hands and swift feet to do according to God's commandment. We are now ready to follow on into the figure we have borrowed, and show how frequently God blesses His people, as He provides for the workers or the owners of mineral quarries, fetching "treasures" out of "darkness," and "hidden riches" out of "secret places."I. St. Paul represents THE CHRISTIAN FAITH as a secret which is now for the first time discovered and made known, and the implication of the apostle, whenever he employs the term, is that the great blessing which prophecies and types had contained, but, containing, had concealed, was now in Christ Jesus brought out as into open daylight for all men to behold and possess. It has never been questioned that this truth was the real meaning of the rending of the veil in the Temple at the moment of our Lord's giving up of the ghost. For three hours there had been suspended over Mount Calvary a thick curtain of darkness; but at the ninth hour that veil, like the other close by, was "rent" also "in twain, from the top to the bottom." I find in that darkness the awful symbol of the misery, and the ignorance, and the confusion whereof the world itself had been the victim all through the ages preceding the Advent. But the very same fact which tore down the rich drapery in the building dispelled the dense blackness on the mountain, and declared the very same doctrine that "Christ Jesus was the Saviour of all men, and specially of them that believe." Learn to ascribe your redemption to the clouds of-misery behind which your Surety laid down His life. II. Somewhat in this way it would not, perhaps, be extravagant to represent any one of ourselves, at the crisis of his CONVERSION, as looking towards the Saviour much as one of those spectators literally did when the darkness was beginning to clear off from the crucifixion. When the veil is rent, and the power of faith scatters the clouds, and the soul peering through catches the first glimpse of a Saviour, the rapture of being forgiven has, so to speak, been quarried and hewn out of the black deep pit of conviction and remorse. III. It will be far less difficult to show that all along the journey of the Christian he digs his BEST AND BRIGHTEST MERCIES out of thick, and often terrible, gloom. I find some of you shut up in the deep pit of constant bodily pain, or infirmity. I find others of you wandering through the pitch dark avenues of a recent family funeral. There is a time for the digging of the gold. That is yours now. And there is a time for the burnishing and the chasing, and the putting on of the gold. That is not yet come. There is a place, says Solomon, for the sapphires in the stones of the earth; but the men who take the sapphires first out of the stones need all their skill and practice to tell which is which, and you would not thank the miner for the jewellery just left as he gets it. You must allow a fair time for the lapidary or the goldsmith to take up the business where the rough black denizens of the pit leave off — and "no affliction for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless, afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness to them who are exercised thereby." (H. Christopherson.) I. In one sense, THIS IS TYPICAL OF ALL GOD'S DISCLOSURES. Those things which men discover to-day are treasures which have been in darkness for countless generations, jewels which have been concealed in hidden places during millenniums. II. This is supremely true of THE ADVENT AND REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST. Look at the manner of His coming. See the poverty which surrounded His birth. Look at the nature of His life — "Without a place to lay His head"; "a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief." He was, more-over, "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." There is nothing very bright in that record. When Christ, in the hour of utter loneliness, uttered that piercing cry, "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?" and darkness covered earth and heaven, then out of that dense gloom He who in the beginning made light to shine out of darkness, made the most glorious light to shine; so that from the Cross to-day there streams the greatest revelation with which God has ever enriched our race. Again, how graciously true this is of Christ's redemptive work in view of the spiritual darkness of the world which He came to save! What a revelation of the world's night we find in the advent of our Lord. Until then men knew not how dark this world was. These words only gain their full significance in the story of Christ's redemption When He came the world was hopeless and undone. It had exhausted its energies in its numberless attempts to save and ennoble itself, and down deep in recesses of darkness and iniquity were buried the brightest talents with which humanity had been enriched — so many glorious impulses and high capacities prostituted to the vilest uses, or paralysed in the dark and made utterly useless. Oh, the countless lost pieces of silver, and the priceless jewels which He has rescued since then from hopeless degradation and sin! III. This is gloriously true in THE EXPERIENCE OF THOSE WHO ACCEPT CHRIST AS THEIR SAVIOUR. 1. Was not the first hour of our spiritual enlightenment and enrichment a fulfilment of the same Divine promise? 2. Then, again, you have had your doubts and fears. They were terrible to bear at the time; yet out of them you were at length permitted to snatch a new wealth of assurance and joy. 3. This is true also, in the life of every one who has accepted Christ, of that other experience which darkens our vision, namely, that of sorrow in its many and varied forms. It is in darkness, too, that we learn trustfulness and faith. (D. Davies.) 1. It ought not to be difficult for us to believe that there are spiritual treasures that we have never even got a glimpse of yet. Christ spoke of treasure "hid in a field." That surely must have been among the treasures of darkness. And the Apostle Paul, long after, spoke of the "unsearchable riches of Christ." What he had himself freely taken from this store made him feel himself rich indeed; so rich, that he had not the least inclination for anything that the world could give. One of the saddest and most mournful of all things for us would be to settle down contentedly with the notion that God had no treasures to bestow but what we see all about us with the utterly inexperienced eye! To think the common experience of life, to think our own experience, the limit of all things, would be to make life a very poor thing indeed. 2. God must have infinite treasures and pleasures which He does not want to keep in darkness unused. That ought to be an axiom with us. If we should never dream of speaking of ourselves as spiritually rich, it cannot be because either God has nothing better to bestow, or that He grudges to bestow it. 3. We seem to believe readily enough that the future may reveal to us glories that we cannot forecast. But why be content to postpone to a future state the higher degrees of true blessedness? Why not possess some of the treasures now? 4. The phrase suggests to us that what we deem empty, void, and even repellent as darkness, may contain things unspeakably precious. We speak of the "night of sorrow." But it only requires a very moderate faith in God to believe that He is too good and kind ever to let a single sensitive being pass through such trials as are the lot of not a few, unless it were that only so can they be prepared for, and put in possession of, choicer good. But there is a darkness far blacker than the night of affliction and sorrow. It is this awful gloom, this darkness that may be felt, which we all feel at times to involve the moral world. This is a world of tremendous mystery to the morally sensitive soul. Let a man ever come to see that a world which he cannot but feel to be evil to the core, is nevertheless the very best possible school for man in the early stage of his training for immortality; that this discipline of evil is absolutely essential for a while; that he would clearly be a poorer creature without it; that it is the conflict with evil which brings out some of the most precious qualities of the soul; that without evil, good itself could not be known; that God Himself could not be so gloriously revealed to the heart as He is through the occasion that every man's sin affords; that the greatest proof that God is Love must have been for ever wanting, had He, by restraint and force, mechanically prevented the entrance of evil into the universe. Only let one — this one — little ray of light fall upon the darkness, and you will feel how priceless are the treasures of darkness! 5. But the darkness can be made to yield up treasures only to those who will listen for the voice Divine. To the upright there will arise light in darkness. It is only the children of light who can go into the darkness, and from it fetch out the hid treasures. "God is light: in Him is no darkness at all." Christ is the Light of the World: whoso walketh with Him shall have the Light of Life. (H. H. Dobney.) Records of the Past. The prophet apparently expects that Cyrus will come to acknowledge Jehovah as the true God and the author of his success. Whether this hope was actually realised is more than ever doubtful since the discovery of cuneiform inscriptions, in which Cyrus uses the language of crude polytheism.(Records of the Past.) People Cyrus, Isaiah, JacobPlaces Cush, Egypt, JerusalemTopics Calling, Calls, Dark, Darkness, Hidden, Hoards, Mayest, Places, Riches, Secret, Stored, Stores, Summons, Treasures, WealthOutline 1. God calls Cyrus for his church's sake5. By his omnipotence he challenges obedience 20. He convinces the idols of vanity by his saving power Dictionary of Bible Themes Isaiah 45:35027 knowledge, God's of humanity Library Hidden and Revealed'Verily thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.... I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye Me in vain: I the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.'--ISAIAH xlv, 15,19. The former of these verses expresses the thoughts of the prophet in contemplating the close of a great work of God's power which issues in the heathen's coming to Israel and acknowledging God. He adores the depth of the divine … Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Sovereignty and Salvation The Solar Eclipse Ecce Homo The Eve of the Restoration Jehovah-Shammah: a Glorious Name for the New Year The Eternity and Unchangeableness of God. Of Four Things which Bring Great Peace Covenanting According to the Purposes of God. A Plain Description of the Essence and Attributes of God, Out of the Holy Scripture, So Far as Every Christian must Competently Know, and Necessarily Believe, that Will be Saves. The Unity of God Spiritual Hunger Shall be Satisfied Thy Name: My Name The Extent of Messiah's Spiritual Kingdom Its Nature The Theology of St. Hilary of Poitiers. Gifts and Talents. Putting God to Work Extent of Atonement. Messiah's Innocence vindicated Nature of Covenanting. Links Isaiah 45:3 NIVIsaiah 45:3 NLT Isaiah 45:3 ESV Isaiah 45:3 NASB Isaiah 45:3 KJV Isaiah 45:3 Bible Apps Isaiah 45:3 Parallel Isaiah 45:3 Biblia Paralela Isaiah 45:3 Chinese Bible Isaiah 45:3 French Bible Isaiah 45:3 German Bible Isaiah 45:3 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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