Isaiah 24

Isaiah 24:15

The suffering child of God will "glorify Him in the fires."

I. By acknowledging His power.

II. By recognising His wisdom.

III. By a frank acknowledgment of His goodness.

J. N. Norton, Golden Truths,p. 17.

Religion very much consists in taking things out of their common places, and in removing them from a lower to a higher level. To a Christian, everything becomes great; everything has an eternity; everything owns God as its Author, and God as its final end and object. And to feel this, to recognise in everything its own inherent grandeur, to see in it the infinite and realise its vast capability, to trace it from its first real source, to hold it inGod, to use it forGod, to dedicate it toGod, this is consecration.

Consider how we may consecrate suffering.

I. To consecrate, the first thing must be, by one express, deliberate act, to dedicate the suffering. From the time this is done, you may call your pain, or your sorrow, not so much a suffering, as an offering; as much as if you laid it upon an actually material altar, it is an offering.

II. You will do well always to remember that the consecration of the little things in a trial is quite as important as the consecration of what at first sight appeared to be the greater things. A great cross, as men see it, is not generally the real cross; but the lesser cross which the great cross brings with it consecrates this.

III. Consecrate the uses of suffering, whatever those uses may be. All our sorrows and sufferings are available for others, and are intended as means for usefulness.

IV. Of all this consecration of suffering, the great exemplar is the Lord Jesus Christ. If you wish to know the way to consecrate, study Him. His aim is single to the Father's glory. Self is nowhere; love and service everywhere. "For the joy set before Him" the joy of a glorified Church "He endured the cross, despising the shame."

J. Vaughan, Sermons,13th series, p. 85.

References: Isaiah 24:15. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. xi., p. 275; Preacher's Monthly,vol. v., p. 319. Isaiah 24:23. R. W. Evans, Parochial Sermons,vol. iii., p. 83, vol. ii., p. 200. Isaiah 25:3; Isaiah 25:4. J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages from the Prophets,vol. i., p. 54.