Isaiah 40:28

GOD’S POWER THE COMFORT OF HIS PEOPLE

Isaiah 40:28. Hast thou not known? &c.

A softer tone one might think better adapted to the despondent; but this great interrogation seems as if the very thunder had taken in charge God’s defence and man’s elevation. The terms by which God is described are not what may be termed the gracious designations often employed to describe Him. It is not the Father, the Redeemer, the gentle One; it is the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth; as if Divine comfort were not a sentiment only, but arose out of the majestic, dominant, mighty, and grand in the Divine nature.
I. “Hast thou not known?” This is not a new revelation; it is an appeal to memory—a strong point in all the Divine pleading. Our memory should be as the prophet of the Lord in our life; recollection should be inspiration. Let a man be faithful to his own recollections, and it is impossible he can long be despondent, weary, and slow of heart to lay hold of the great work and discipline of life. It is the preacher’s strength that he has to speak directly into people’s hearts.

II. Is God all-mighty?

1. Then do not fear for the stability of His works. What guarantee have we that the summer is coming? God’s Word (Genesis 8:22). We work because God is. This is very humbling in one of its aspects, because we have nothing to do with all that is highest and grandest in the creation. We are to do the servant’s work; but no employment is menial if it be accepted from God’s hand, and wrought out according to the measure of His commandment and the inspiration of His call.

2. Have no fear about the realisation of His promises. It is difficult to see how certain promises are to be realised. God keeps our hands off His promises quite as surely as He keeps them off His stars; He asks that their fulfilment be left to Him. It is God’s heart that comes down with His signature; because of His moral attributes, all that He has promised shall be fulfilled.

3. Do not imagine you can escape His judgments. His lightnings find us out. You have evaded Him now fifty years, and you think you can do it fifty more; but you cannot. There are many oxen that are being prepared for the slaughter when they little think it.

4. Be assured that the throne of right shall stand upon the ruins of all wrong. You cannot kill evil with the sword; its abolition is a work of time: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness” (Psalms 2:1). There is a poor outlook for those who are going to fight God!

III. God is not only powerful, but also all-wise. “There is no searching of His understanding.” Infinite strength would terrify us, but infinite strength under the dominion of infinite mind recovers us from the shock which comes of immeasurable, unwasting strength. The forces of Nature are not lawless; behind them all is God’s mind.

1. The darkest providences have meaning. Let us keep within our little sphere, and live a day at a time, and interpretation will come when God pleases and as He pleases.
2. God’s plan of salvation is complete and final. We shall waste our strength and show how great is our folly by all attempts to improve the method of redemption and recovery of the world. Is there a blade of grass we can improve, looking at it as God made it? Then, why seek to improve His method of salvation?
3. Our individual life is all understood by Him. We are often in shadow; it is enough that God knows our life, and that His wisdom is pledged as our defence. View the mysteries of life atheistically, and they become terrors; but regard them as under the control of a beneficent Power, and an eye of glory opens in the very centre of the gloom.
4. We have a guarantee of endless variety in our future studies and services. God is ever extending our knowledge in reward of the endeavours we are making. Monotony depresses and enfeebles; He will ever have something new to communicate to the mind of His servants.

CONCLUSION.—

1. What is our relation to this Dread Being, whose power is infinite, and whose wisdom is past finding out? We are either loyal subjects of His or rebels in His realm. Everything depends upon our relation to the Cross of Jesus Christ. Nature itself is but a mocking mystery apart from the Cross, which reveals our sin and God’s plan of salvation (John 1:29).

2. Those who are rejoicing in the forgiveness of sins have the freedom of the City of God. “What time I am afraid, I will trust in God.” God waits to gather us into His infinite strength, and to make us wise with perfect understanding.—Joseph Parker, D.D.: City Temple, pp. 349–356.

THE UNWEARIED GOD

Isaiah 40:28. The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary.

A great contrast between God and all His living creatures on this earth. They all need rest, but He has no need of it, for He is never weary. We shall find this declaration full of comfort; but before we consider the senses in which it is true, we shall do well to remember that we are plainly taught in His Word that there are certain things of which God is weary.
I. THINGS OF WHICH GOD IS WEARY.
God is weary,

1. Of the obstinacy of sinners (Isaiah 43:24).

2. Of the backsliding of His professing people (Jeremiah 15:6).

3. Of heedless praises and hypocritical prayers (Isaiah 1:11).

4. Of our cruelty to each other (Exodus 3:7; Exodus 22:22; Isaiah 7:13).

II. THINGS OF WHICH GOD IS NOT WEARY.

1. He is not weary in continuing and preserving His creation. The extent of this task; the multitude and minuteness of its parts. Neither its vastness, nor its complexity, nor its duration have availed to weary Him. We rest sometimes by changing the mode of our activity, but there is no cessation possible in God’s work (H. E. I. 362–365, 3174–3176).

2. He is not weary of caring for His people, supplying their temporal wants, guiding their affairs, removing unknown hindrances out of their way, solacing them in sorrow, strengthening them against temptation, educating them for time and eternity (P. D. 2908).

3. He is not weary of hearing prayer. This is a special labour, additional to the work of preservation, and even to the care of His people. Remember the multitude of the prayers that are constantly ascending to Him. The folly of many of them! Yet still He listens to us!

4. He is never weary in punishing sin; never so weary as to desist from it. There are cases in which we leave incorrigible offenders alone—we will not trouble ourselves any more about them; but it is never so with God. Not because He loves punishment, but because He loves righteousness. To a tender heart it is always a pain to punish; yet God, whose tender mercies are over all His works, age after age requites all who do wickedly.

5. He is never weary of pardoning penitent sinners. How many He has pardoned! How often He had to pardon every one of those who are now “the spirits of the just made perfect!” How often we have tried His patience! Yet He still waits to be gracious; He does not say, “Here comes another sinner; drive him away!” nor, “Here comes that sinner again; refuse him access to my throne.” He is as ready to pardon now as He was when Christ hung on the cross. He looks upon sins, not only as crimes, but as diseases; and, like a physician, is ready to minister to every plague-stricken one. Come, then, to Him now (H. E. I. 2285–2286, 2328–2339).

This view of God should—

1. Awaken our admiration of Him. It is good to admire His works; better to admire Him (Psalms 104:34).

2. Strengthen our trust in Him. Our human friends fail us, but God will never fail us (chap. Isaiah 26:4).

3. Deepen our love for Him. He is unweariable, not in strength merely, but in affection. His love outlasts that of many mothers (chap. Isaiah 49:15).

4. Lead us to endeavour to imitate Him. “Religion consists in imitation of God” (Which-cote). We should never grow weary of any work for Him which He permits us to do. [1327]

[1327] On Saturday, September 30, 1770, Whitfield preached his last sermon on this text: “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith: prove your own selves Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” Before he went out to do so, a friend, observing how ill he looked, said to him, “Sir, you are more fit to go to bed than to preach;” to which he answered, “True, sir;” but turning aside, he clasped his hands together, and looking up spoke:—“Lord Jesus, I am weary in Thy work, but not of Thy work. If I have not yet finished my course, let me go and speak for Thee once more in the fields, seal Thy truth, and come home and die.”