Isaiah 61:4

And they shall build the old wastes

Building the old wastes

There are many wastes in the world, and there are all sorts of them.

But of all sad and melancholy waste places, there is none so melancholy, so terrible, so desperate as a waste soul--a soul in which there is no sense of right and wrong in the tribunal of conscience; a soul where there is no distinct, manly, nobly inspiring purpose for spending and occupying life; a soul in which the mind is not instructed or Fed with useful knowledge, but which lies fallow; a soul where the heart is a cage of unclean birds.

I. As to THE METHODS of building up these waste places. Let us honestly confess that there are many of them, and none of them to be despised; and each is to be put in its proper order, and none can be dispensed with--one comes first, another second, and another third. There are in this earth of ours whole nations which may be called waste places.

1. The first thing to be done with the waste place of a great nation is to bring civilization into it; then the soil of the heart is prepared for better things to come.

2. Then many of our missionaries have to form a language: there are many words missing in the people’s dialect, without which they could not understand the truths of the Gospel. Then when a man is educated, he finds his imagination filled with new ideas; he feels he has taken his place in the great society of mankind, and is ready to listen to the truths which a little while before he trampled under his feet.

3. Another great means of building waste places is commerce and trade.

4. Good government is necessary. No man can receive the greatest and loftiest truths when they are living in a constant state of danger.

5. Preach the Gospel of Christ.

II. THE INSTRUMENTS. Whom does God use to build up the waste places?

1. His Sou is the great Builder (Luke 4:18, etc.).

2. Then as His representative, and, so to speak, in His place, His minister, His ambassador, His mouthpiece, HIS witness, the Church of God. Her great mission is to preach the Word of God, and administer the sacraments of Christ. Then there are other ways. The Church must try to enter into all the needs, and difficulties, and wants of those to whom she ministers. (A. W.Thorold, D. D.)

Social needs: religious duties

Our work is a work of restoration. This message is infinitely varied in its tone. If we are indeed to build the “old wastes,” we must see what has made them wastes; and we shall find that there have been three great enemies that have done this--disease and ignorance and sin.

I. We must bring a message of good news to THE BODY. We must recognize its needs--its need of pure air, and wholesome food, and healthy homes; and, also, its craving, especially in the days of youth, for leisure and amusement, and even excitement. We must meet these cravings, not with the forbidding frown of the Puritan, as though they were in themselves sinful, nor yet with the easy-going smile of the good-natured Epicurean, as though they were the all in all of human happiness, but with sympathy and good sense and forethought, in the belief that they represent one part of the Father’s will for His human children.

II. We must to the full recognize the rights of THE MIND. A Gospel that has no message of good news to the intellect of man is but a mutilated Gospel. Literature, art, science, music, have not, indeed, the last word to say on man’s relation to God, but they have a mighty and a lovely word to say; and it ought to be the joy of all Christ’s truest ministers, lay and clerical, to help in conveying such words to the ear and to the heart even of the poorest and dullest. Public libraries and museums, cheap concerts and cheap magazines, arc among the truest weapons of those who would in our day destroy the works of the devil.

III. Chiefly must we come face to face with sin, not only with a message against sin; we must have a message of good tidings also to HUMAN SOULS. And when I say “good tidings,” I do not necessarily mean agreeable and attractive tidings. When Jesus said, “Repent ye and believe the Gospel,” the call to repent, though hardly attractive, was in itself a Gospel. We cannot build the waste places in England, in morals and social customs, in ways of thinking and talking and feeling, unless we very plainly denounce what is unchristian in contemporary life. The message of the Gospel is not only a soothing message of forgiveness to the sinner who is troubled in mind, nor a tender message of companionship to the lonely and the bereaved, nor a consoling message of eventual justice to the wronged and the overborne. But there is also the voice which convinces the world of sin, the voice which says to society, irrespective of class, to rich as well as to poor, to poor as well as to rich: “In this and that you are wholly wrong; you are wrong in your expenditure of time, wrong in your expenditure of money, wrong in your estimate of the true prizes of life, wrong in your worship of comfort, wrong in your class isolation; wrong, many of you, in your very conception of religion.” We have, if we are indeed witnesses of our Master, a message of good tidings to all alike, to all classes, to the rich and to the poor, to the highly cultivated and-to the ignorant. (H. M. Butler, D. D.)

Antiquities revived

I. THE ANTIQUITIES THAT ARE LAID WASTE.

1. Vital godliness.

2. Apostolic doctrine. The sovereignty of God, substitution, sanctity, etc.

3. Loyalty to Jesus.

4. The unity of the Spirit.

II. THE PROMISE OF THE SPECIAL REVIVALS THAT TO TAKE PLACE. “They shall build,” etc. (J. Irons.)