Isaiah 35:6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out… I. NOTE THE PERSONS WHOM GOD HAS CHOSEN TO SING HIS SONGS FOR EVER. "The tongue of the dumb shall sing." Their singing does not come naturally from themselves; they were not born songsters. No, they were dumb. How this ought to give you encouragement in seeking to do good to others! If you have neighbours who are profaners of the Sabbath, haters of God, unwilling to come to the house of God, despising Christ; if you find them as far gone as you can find them, recollect He maketh the dumb sing, and therefore He can make them live. II. Now I am to enter into some rather more lucid DESCRIPTION OF THESE DUMB PEOPLE. Who are they? Sometimes I get a good thought out of Cruden's Concordance. As I opened it at this passage, I found Master Cruden describing different kinds of dumb people. He says there are four or five different sorts, but I shall name only four of them. 1. Those who cannot speak — that is the usual acceptation of the word dumb — the others are, of course, only figurative applications of the term. Now, spiritually, the man who is still in his trespasses and sins is dumb. He is dead, and there is none so dumb as a dead man. "Shall the dead arise and praise Thee? Shall Thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave, or Thy faithfulness in destruction?" As "no man can call Jesus Lord, except by the Holy Ghost," these people cannot do so truly. But, all hail sovereign grace! They are dumb by nature, but He will not leave them so; they cannot now sing His praises, but they shall do it; they will not now confess their sins, but He will bring them on their knees yet, and make them pour out their hearts before Him. 2. But there is a sort of dumb people that will not speak. They are mentioned by Isaiah. He said of preachers in his day, they were "dumb dogs that would not bark." 3. I will now introduce you to a third sort of dumb people. They are dumb because they dare not speak; and they are good people. Here is one of them: "I was dumb with silence; I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it." And it is so blessed to be dumb in that fashion. The Lord's servant will often have to be dumb under trials and troubles. You are, it may be, in the deepest trouble now, and obliged to be silent; well, you shall sing yet for all that. If you cannot cheer the darkness with "songs in the night," yet He shall "compass you about with songs of deliverance." We are not always to be silent with affliction. The saints have known joy, unspeakably great, in the midst of trial intolerably hot. Their murmuring has been silenced, and their thanks-giving has become vocal. An old Puritan said, "God's people are like birds; they sing best in cages." 4. We have one more kind of dumb people — those who have nothing to say. I will give you an instance; Solomon says in the Proverbs — "Open thy mouth for the dumb"; and he means those who in the court of judgment have nothing to plead for themselves, and have to stand dumb before the bar. Like that man of old, who, when the king came in to see the guests, had not on a wedding garment; and when the king said, "Friend, how earnest thou in hither?" he stood speechless; speechless, not because he could not speak, but because he had nothing to say. Have not you and I been dumb, and are we not now, when we attempt to stand on law terms with God, when we forget that Jesus Christ and His blood and righteousness are our full acquittal? We can now sing this anthem: "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Not God, for "He hath justified." "Who is he that condemneth?" Not Christ, "He hath died, yea rather, hath risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, and maketh intercession for us." III. THE OCCASIONS WHEN THE TONGUE OF THESE DUMB PEOPLE SINGS THE BEST. I think it sings always, little or much. If it is once set at liberty, it will never leave off staging. ( C. H. Spurgeon.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. |
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