O people in Zion who dwell in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. He will surely be gracious when you cry for help; when He hears, He will answer you. Sermons
I. JOY IN GOD. There will be "no more weeping." Tears are significant of the lot of humanity; and in the poetry of the Old Testament we hear, as Lord Bacon says, "as many hearse-like airs as carols," and the pencil of the Holy Ghost has labored more in depicting the sorrows of David than the felicities of Solomon. It is because the gospel meets the mood of tears in us that its assurances fall so sweetly on the heart. Burns the poet said, "After all that has been said on the other side of the question, man is by no means a happy creature. I do not speak of the selected few, favored by partial Heaven, whose souls are tuned to gladness, and riches, and honors, and prudence, and wisdom; I speak of the neglected many, whose nerves, whose sinews, whose days, are sold to the minion of fortune." It is this way of thinking - it is these melancholy truths, that make religion so precious to the poor miserable children of men. If it is a mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of enthusiasm, "what truth on earth so precious as the lie?" What is needed is "the expulsive power of a new affection in the sense of the nearness of God - the sense that he does hear and that he does answer out of the vastness and the void." And he will so answer, if he be sought for with "all the heart" (Jeremiah 29:12-14). II. THE BLESSING OF TEACHERS. On the one hand, here is physical want - "bread of adversity, and water of affliction." On the other hand, a perpetual supply of spiritual food and spiritual consolation. The best of the people felt that it was the saddest thing that could be suffered - to have no more "signs" from God, to be destitute of the prophet, and of the man of superior insight (Psalm 74:9). The famine of "not hearing the Word of Jehovah" (Amos 8:11) is bitterer than hunger or thirst. The effect may be traced to a definite cause - the sin of the people or of the teachers themselves (Isaiah 43:27). The one might be unworthy to listen to, the other to deliver, the truth of God (Isaiah 43:27). There is no calling more glorious, none which leads to a more lustrous immortality (Daniel 12:3), than that of the religious teacher, none which is of greater service in the promotion of the kingdom of God. If so great be the blessing of the ministry of the truth, it flows from the goodness of God that, in the happy times to come, teachers shall never be absent from the people. III. THE BLESSING OF INWARD ILLUMINATION. The "word behind them" may be the Bath-Kol, the daughter of the Voice, as the Jews say, or, according to a way of thinking more familiar to ourselves, the voice of conscience. "God is not a hidden God in the sense that his life is closed up within himself. His Word goes forth to the world, that it may come into being, and to the children of men that they may know it and find life in it (Psalm 33:6; cf. Deuteronomy 4:12; 1 Samuel 3:4; 1 Kings 19:11, sqq.). (On the Bath-Kol, see Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5; John 12:28.) The notion is that of invisible and unexpected agency. The admonitions of providence, of conscience, of the Holy Spirit, seem often to come behind us - to recall us from the path on which we were going, from the course that would be fraught with danger. When in danger of straying to this side or to that, the voice will call us back. In this respect the Divine voice is like the daemonion of Socrates, which was a restraining influence. IV. PURITY AND PROSPERITY. A symptom of a return to true religion will be the casting away of the relics and reminders of idolatry - the defiling in the Name of the holy God of that which to heathen eyes was holy. Josiah's conduct was an example of this (2 Kings 23.). The expression of abhorrence for the symbol expresses at the same time abhorrence for the thing symbolized. The repentance of the individual, the reformation of the nation, must be signalized by the "rending of the idol," not merely from its high place, but from the heart itself. When the heart is brought into the fuller knowledge of God, it loves what he loves, and hates what he hates. The thought of what is "an abomination to Jehovah" (Deuteronomy 7:25) is reflected in an intense distaste in the soul. 2. This will be consistent with external prosperity. Rain will come down upon the sown seed. As the withholding of the rain followed upon national iniquity as the greatest curse (Zechariah 14:17, 18), so the giving of the rain meant at once all physical blessing and all Divine favors (Zechariah 10:1, etc.). Bread - rich and abundant produce of the land - cattle teeming in the wide pastures; - it is the happy picture of a golden age. Bread and water - simple elements of living; yet what poetry hangs upon their supply! and what woe, what tragedy and horror, upon the want of them! - J.
He will be very gracious unto thee. Observe the kind of prayer which is here said to move the Divine pity and win the Divine favour. It is designated a cry, i.e., it is a very fervent, earnest, importunate prayer. It is a prayer that comes out of the depths of the heart. It expresses a very deep sense of need. It utters a very longing desire after God. There is very good reason why our prayers should very often tale this form. Our sins are such that they should work in us a penitence that may fitly take expression in a cry. Our spiritual needs are so urgent that we may give utterance to them in a cry. The strife is, sometimes at least, so hot, and the battle seems so going against us, that it may very reasonably be expected from us that we should cry unto God for His help. And God is such a necessity to these natures of ours, and God as a possession is so sufficing, that our desire for Him may well be intense enough to require this language to give expression to our prayer.I. There is encouragement for faith in prayer to be found in THE NATURE OF GOD HIMSELF, as we cannot help conceiving of it. Goodness enters into His very nature. We find it necessary to believe that. It is too dreadful to believe the contrary. If I apprehend Him as perfectly good He must be pitiful, He must be tender in His pity; and if so, He is surely likely to be very gracious when He hears the voice of our cry. II. There is encouragement, too, in THE RELATIONS WHICH WE MUST CONCEIVE GOD AS SUSTAINING TO US. He is our Creator, and there is no reason at all in the suspicion that He who has made us is looking with indifferent eyes upon us or listening with indifference when the voice of our cry reaches His ear. He is our Father. He has communicated to us of His own nature, and so has become our Father as He is not the Father of other creatures that live on the face of this earth. But how does He fill up your idea of Father if, when you are in want, He does not heed? if, when you express your want of Him and of His help by a cry, He is not moved? III. THE INSTINCT OF PRAYER which we have offers encouragement to us that He will be moved when we call. We are in pain; some One is near who can relieve us, and we instinctively cry for relief at His hands. Your child is in imminent peril, and there is a man near who can rescue him; you instinctively call for the help of that man. And so we feel great wants which God only can supply. We are in great peril, from which God only can deliver us. There is something which instinctively moves us to appeal to God, to cry to Him. If God has put that instinct in our nature, He mast have intended to gratify it. There is no instinct of human nature for the gratification of which God has not in some way provided. IV. We have encouragement, too, in THE ANALOGY TO ALL HUMAN RESPONSE GIVEN TO GREAT NEED. It is not to children only that we give our compassion when they appeal to us in great distress; we are moved by the lower animals when in their great trouble they make an appeal to us. But you are not more pitiful than God. There is no love or pity in man that was not first in God. V. We have the highest encouragement to this faith in God in THE REVELATION OF HIM IN THE SCRIPTURES. It is a positive command of His that we should call upon Him when we need Him, that we should cry unto Him when we are in distress. His command means His purpose to hear; His command involves a promise in it. What do we find given in the revelation? Explicit promises without number, and in every form — proofs and illustrations and examples without number of God's readiness to be very gracious unto those that cry unto Him. What do we see in the revelation of God in the Christian Scriptures? God showing what He is through a man. He went about in the form of a man. The sinning, and the needy, and the suffering came to Him, surrounded Him, tracked His steps, and cried to Him for His pithy and for His help. And was He not very gracious! When He was suffering, dying Himself, there came a cry from another who was in great distress, saying to Him, "Remember me"; and He was very gracious at the voice of that cry. But some are thinking that it is all true about the nature of God, but that they are guilty, and there are God's law, and God's government, and God's justice, in the way of His nature expressing itself in His pitifulness to them in answer to their cry. Whatever hindrance they put in the way has been taken away by Christ. (D. Thomas, B. A.) 1. This is applicable and comfortable to all afflicted people. 2. To those who are troubled on account of sin. 3. To backsliders filled with their own ways, who are alarmed and distressed at their grievous departures from their God. 4. To all believers in Christ who are at all exercised in heart. II. THE ASSURANCE HERE GIVEN IS VERY FIRMLY BASED. The words of our text are no old wives' fable, they are not such a pretty tale as mothers sometimes tell their children, a story made to please them, but not actually true. What is the ground of this assurance? 1. The plain promise of God. 2. The gracious nature of God. 3. The prevalence of prayer. "He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry." 4. Personal testimony as to the result of faith in God and supplication to III. THE ASSURANCE OF THE TEXT BEING SO WELL CONFIRMED SHOULD BE PRACTICALLY ACCEPTED AT ONCE. 1. Let us renounce all earthborn confidences. 2. Refuse despair. 3. Try the power of prayer and childlike confidence in God. ( C. H. Spurgeon.) People Assyrians, Egyptians, Isaiah, Mash, Pharaoh, Rahab, SaraphPlaces Egypt, Hanes, Jerusalem, Lebanon, Negeb, Rahab, Zion, ZoanTopics Answereth, Certainly, Cry, Dwell, Dwellest, Ear, Ended, Gracious, Heareth, Hears, Inhabitant, Jerusalem, Longer, Mercy, O, Pitieth, Pitying, Surely, Voice, Weep, Weeping, Yea, ZionOutline 1. The prophet threatens the people for their confidence in Egypt8. And contempt of God's word 18. God's mercies toward his church 27. God's wrath and the people's joy, in the destruction of Assyria Dictionary of Bible Themes Isaiah 30:19 8409 decision-making, and providence Library 'Quietness and Confidence''In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.'--ISAIAH xxx. 15. ISRAEL always felt the difficulty of sustaining itself on the height of dependence on the unseen, spiritual power of God, and was ever oscillating between alliances with the Northern and Southern powers, linking itself with Assyria against Egypt, or with Egypt against Assyria. The effect was that whichever was victorious it suffered; it was the battleground for both, it was the prize of … Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture God's Waiting and Man's The Voice Behind Thee My God Will Hear Me With a Heart Full of Anxious Request, But Though Prayer is Properly Confined to Vows and Supplications... "Take My Yoke Upon You, and Learn of Me," &C. The Girdle of the City. Nehemiah 3 Sennacherib (705-681 B. C. ) How those are to be Admonished who have had Experience of the Sins of the Flesh, and those who have Not. Concerning Worship. A Sermon on Isaiah xxvi. By John Knox. The Evening Light The Baptist's Inquiry and Jesus' Discourse Suggested Thereby. The Eternity of God How Christ is Made Use of for Justification as a Way. The Prophet Hosea. The Gospel Message, Good Tidings "They have Corrupted Themselves; their Spot is not the Spot of his Children; they are a Perverse and Crooked Generation. " The Covenant of Works A Description of Heart-Purity Links Isaiah 30:19 NIVIsaiah 30:19 NLT Isaiah 30:19 ESV Isaiah 30:19 NASB Isaiah 30:19 KJV Isaiah 30:19 Bible Apps Isaiah 30:19 Parallel Isaiah 30:19 Biblia Paralela Isaiah 30:19 Chinese Bible Isaiah 30:19 French Bible Isaiah 30:19 German Bible Isaiah 30:19 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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