Preached by the late Rev. M. GILLIES, Stornoway, at Dingwall, on Friday, 5th November, 1937 (Communion).
“The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.”—(Isaiah chap. l. v. 4, 5 and 6.)
In endeavouring to consider these words let us notice three things:—
I. The person who is the concern of the Lord Jehovah, a person upon whom His eyes are, and to whom His heart goes out, and the person is him that is weary, whoever he is. He is the object of the Lord’s concern.
II. Let us notice what the Lord Jehovah was providing for this person, and what the Lord Jehovah was providing for this person was One that would speak a word in season to him—One that would just come and touch his grief, to meet his grief and to give him ease and comfort in his grief. The Lord Jehovah would have One that would speak a word in season, One with the tongue of the learned, or, as the word could be translated, One with the tongue of a disciple. One that has been taught Himself, and in that way He is able to speak this word in season to him that is weary.
III. The Person whom the Lord Jehovah found. He says: “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary; he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting.”
First, there is an individual brought before us here and the Holy Ghost declares that he is the concern, in love, and in mercy, and in kindness, and in pity, and in grace, of the Lord Jehovah. The eyes of the Lord are upon him for good. The eye of the Lord is on him in loving kindness and in tender mercies. The Lord declares in many places of the Word that there are many individuals in whom He has no delight—in the 10th chapter of Hebrews: “but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.” He has no delight in man’s legs, nor in horses’ strength. The Lord has no delight in the supposed strength of the creature. He has no delight in the supposed self-sufficiency of the creature—no delight in him that goes on frowardly in the way of his own heart. “Surely God shall wound the head of those that are his foes, the hairy scalp of him that still on in his trespass goes.” He says: “I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me and I was chastised, as a bullock uncustomed to the yoke: turn thou me and I shall be turned, for thou art the Lord my God.” The Lord says: “Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still; therefore my bowels are troubled for him, I will surely have mercy upon him.” That is the person in whom God delights. He says: “Surely I will have mercy on him,” and that is the person that we have brought before us here—he that is weary and a sinner has good right to be weary. There is no sinner on the face of the earth that has not got every reason to be weary, but they are not weary. It says further on in this prophecy—”Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way; yet saidst thou not, there is no hope.” The way of the sinner is a hard way, a great way, yes, it is an unspeakably difficult way, it is an impossible way. He will not get on with it. How great is the way of the sinner? It is as great as this—he walks in opposition to the moral government and to the gracious government of God. There is not a sinner that does not make that his way. He is going to walk in open defiance to the moral government of Jehovah, and to the gracious saving government of God. That is a great way. No wonder although the sinner is weary in it, and yet he pursues in it. He does not realise from what his weariness comes. He does not realise where the dissatisfaction really is. He is blinded by Satan and his own wicked heart. Oh my friends, how terribly great, how impossibly great in defiance is the way of the sinner! That is the path upon which every Adam’s child walks as he is by nature. He walks in this terrible way of opposition to God. God says: “Thou shalt not,” and the sinner just tramples that under his feet. Then as to God’s gracious government, this is the way of salvation. It is the way by which you can escape hell, and be delivered from your sinnership, from all the miseries that you have brought upon yourself, and the sinner just tramples it under his feet and walks contrary to God, morally and evangelically. He is wearied in it. But now I come to speak about this person—who is he? He is the person here spoken of—he is one that sees that all is vanity, and he has given up the ghost regarding the way in which he walked and he has become so wearied of the greatness of his way that he has said: “There is no hope and the life that I am leading is going straight to hell. Yes, I am going straight to the bottomless pit.” The end of these things is death. Yes, it is because the Holy Spirit has made the Word effectual. It is quite easy, in a way anyway, for one to know whether the Word is effectual in his case or not. You see, as long as a sinner can contradict the Most High and just ignore God’s precepts, he need not think that the Word is effectual. The Word is effectual in the day that the sinner stops. See how effectual the Lord Jesus’ Word was to Saul of Tarsus. He said: “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks,” and that meant that it was impossible for him. He would make nothing of it but ruin himself for eternity. The weary is one who has said that there is no hope regarding how he lived since he was born into this world—without God and Christ. That man will be a weary man who sees that he has only earned the wages of sin which is death, and that he has brought himself by sin under the dreadful displeasure of God. Ah, friends, it is a mercy from heaven when a sinner comes to see this, that if he goes on as he is going that he shall be lost as sure as Satan, whatever kind of life he is living. Every godless, graceless life is of that nature. If the sinner continues in it he must be lost. But I notice secondly about him that is weary, that a sense of his great sinfulness makes him weary. When the Spirit of God convinces one of his sin and of his misery he becomes weary. That is a terrible burden: “Because gone up above mine head my great transgressions be, and as a weighty burden they too heavy are for me.” That is a weary, weary soul. Ah, friends, there is no burden so heavy as sin. How it crushed the humanity of the Second Person of the adorable Trinity when the weight of sin was put on Him! How it crushed Him when it caused His body to be sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane! There is no burden so heavy as the burden of guilt and sin when that lies upon the conscience of man, when the understanding is opened to receive (as we were hearing already today), the light of God’s truth regarding man’s relation to God, man’s sinnership, man under the law. What a burden of guilt comes to light upon the soul and how the conscience crushed under that burden declares that he is a lost creature, a cursed creature, a creature upon whom the wrath of God must abide for ever and ever. That is a weary soul—a soul with a burden of sin on it, that will take the soul down to Tophet. That is a weary soul, and see you, not only sin as to its condemning power but sin as to its defilement. Oh how weary the soul of man comes to be under a knowledge, under a personal experience of the defilement of sin. How it has defiled all the faculties and how man is polluted in the very well-springs of his nature and in all his faculties by sinning against God, and how not only is the creature under the curse, but he is become loathsome—become altogether separate from everything of the nature of holiness and purity, and become defiled and polluted, and that by his own sin. That will weary one. But I notice this, that the weakness, the impotency of a sinner under a sense of his sin and misery causes him to be weary. You see we can do nothing to remove our guilt or to cleanse ourselves from sin. We can sin and commit plenty of it, but oh, friends, there is the guilt and there is the defilement attached to the guilt of sin, and we cannot move a hair to remove that guilt. We cannot do the least to remove the least of the least of the defilement of sin. We are utterly undone and ruined in the matter of sin as to its penalty and pollution. What we need is a Saviour. Our own condition is an utterly undone condition, and that will make one weary. Oh how weary the soul of man will find itself to be when it is confronted with the consequences of the fall in Adam and with one’s own actual transgressions, and that he cannot in the slightest degree remove the awful consequences or meet with them in any way to take them away. He cannot do the slightest to remove sin as to its penalty or pollution. That is a weary soul. Nor change his misery into joy, but the Lord can do it—the creature can never do it. His cry is: “Thou art angry with me,” and it is righteous that the Lord should be angry with one, but in the matter of the anger being turned away and comfort given in the place of misery, that is impossible to the creature—he has nothing but weariness and vexation of spirit, and utter helplessness so far as he himself is concerned. But then again, this makes one weary: “Have I got an interest in Christ? Will I have an interest in Him?” Doubts and fears wear out the soul, make it weary: “Will grace be bestowed on me?” “Turn thou me,” said Ephraim, “and I shall be turned.” The difficulties of the creature, as it is confronted even with God’s provision in grace; his condition as it is confronted with the fullness of the gospel, weary him out. Then there is the condition of a soul in whom faith hath been wrought. There is weariness of soul here: “Will I get Christ or have I got Him?” The sinner, confronted with a provision which is fitted to meet with his need and case as a sinner, but whose soul is clouded with doubts and fears, temptations, darknesses and many unpromising personal experiences, and doubts and fears even regarding his interest in Christ, is weary and faint. Then there are the many sorrows—”The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy.” This is good news indeed that such a miserable creature is the concern of the Lord Jehovah. It is good news indeed that He from His high throne looks down on the earth—He views from heaven on high to hear the prisoner groaning and to free him that is doomed to die. That is good news. He looks down but He has no delight in the giddy crowd. He has no delight in the worshippers of mammon, nor in those that spend their time giving ease and comfort to their fallen nature, but He looks down from His high throne in heaven to listen to the poor sinner that is groaning for his sins and for his misery, and for his inability, for his fear that he shall come short of the grace of God, and that he shall not be found in Christ and without his own righteousness. His bowels are moved for such a person, and He says: “Surely, I will have mercy upon him.”
There is no creature under heaven that is more afraid that God never loves him, and never looks down upon him, than this person. You find Zion saying: “The Lord hath forsaken me and my Lord hath forgotten me,” which is the very opposite to the truth. You see, we are very apt to gauge everything according to our own miserable standard, and because we feel in a certain way, we consider that that is to be the criterion—the standard is what we think when saying that the Lord had forsaken her, and her Lord had forgotten her, when the very opposite was the truth. “Can a woman forget her suckling child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.” You are weary of sin and the devil and an evil heart, and your distance from Christ, and with all your fears and doubts you are commanded by the Word of God to exercise faith on this truth that your condition is the concern of the Lord Jehovah, in His love and in His pity and in His kindness. That is what you are called upon to believe—exercise faith upon that instead of giving place to unbelief, that He has forsaken you and forgotten you, and that it looks very like it that you do not belong to the children at all. Instead of giving place to unbelief, you are called upon by the revelation given of Himself in His love to the Church, to believe that your condition is one which God makes His chief concern to relieve in the world.
We come in the second place to notice what the Lord Jehovah would provide for this weary soul, and what He has provided for him. Well, we said already that He was providing this for the weary soul—One that would have the tongue of the learned—One that would have the disciple’s tongue, so that He would know how to speak a word in season to this poor soul that is weary. He would provide such a Comforter as that—not a miserable comforter, but a reasonable Comforter, a real Friend in need, a real Brother, that would love at all times, a real Friend that would love at all times, and a real Brother that would be born for adversity. A Brother is born for adversity who is to meet the need of the poor, weary, tempted, tried soul. He is born for that. The Lord God was providing One with the tongue of the learned so that such a One would speak in season to him that is weary. Yes. You find most people think that it is the easiest thing in the world to comfort the distressed. Yes, most people think that. Some people lay themselves out to comfort the distressed. The Lord Himself provides such, but it is not everyone that can comfort the distressed.
You see, you may have the best intentions out, and you may, with your best intentions endeavour to comfort someone in distress, and perhaps your comfort is only galling to them—only pouring vinegar on an open sore. Say that there was a family there bereaved of a dearly loved one, I might go to that home and with a good will endeavour to comfort them in their sore bereavement, and I might just be pouring vitriol into their hearts through my ignorance and inexperience. It takes a real comforter to comfort him that is weary. You see, in connection with the Gospel, the great majority of people think it is an easy matter to preach the Gospel, that it is an easy matter to deal with souls. Yes, it is an easy matter to ruin souls. There has been plenty of that work done. These revivals that men get up, it is to be feared that terrible havoc has been made upon the souls of men, and that by those, who according to their own light wanted to do good, but instead of doing good, through their inexperience they are doing evil. Oh friends, it is another matter altogether to deal with souls on the way to eternity. It is no easy matter to deal with a weary soul—a soul that has wearied itself out by walking contrary to God morally and also graciously, walking contrary to God in His moral government and in His gracious government. It is another thing altogether to deal with such a soul. It is not every novice, as the Apostle said to Timothy—”Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.” The men that the Lord used were men that realised their weakness in some measure, and felt the greatness of the work—”Who is sufficient for these things.” These were the men whom God used, not the man that would go out and do wonders. The only wonders they would do is harm unless the Lord accompanied them. Say, that there was a person in Dingwall who took ill and was rushed to hospital to-night and would think of allowing a rustic from the country come and operate on him—men would say: “That man is finished if the rustic will be allowed to touch him.” It is a solemn thing to deal with souls on the way to eternity, and it is a most solemn thing to deal with a soul whom the Holy Ghost has brought alive and quickened to his sense of his need of a Saviour. Oh how solemn it is! How essential it is that one be taught himself in order to deal with such a creature. Oh friends, man is quite insufficient, and that in the affairs of the soul and eternity—man apart from the grace of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He is quite insufficient to meet the need of the weary soul. It is not so simple a matter as some think to deal with souls for eternity, and it is not so easy as some think to take the lambs and the sheep of Christ out of the ditches and out of the hedges in which they are entangled. It is not every novice that can do that. It is just the Holy Spirit using the instrumentality of a messenger to deliver God’s people out of the snares of the devil, and out of their doubts and their fears. It is not every novice that will strengthen the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees, and say to him that is of a feeble heart: “Be strong, fear not.” No. But ah, dear friends, this work is beyond the skill of man, and especially of the man who thinks he can do something, but the Lord Jehovah will not leave the weary soul without a word in season. He will see to it that the weary soul will get a word in season—a word that will just fit into his case and that will be the means of deliverance so that the weak will say: “I am strong.”
That is the will of Jehovah, that He shall provide One with the tongue of the learned, or the tongue of a disciple that will know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. It is His will to provide such a One, and He has provided One who is pre-eminent in this, and who speaks here, and it is through the grace of the One who speaks here that any of His sent messengers or people have the tongue of a disciple to speak a word in season. It is through the pre-eminence of Christ that His people will also be used for this very purpose. Why, dear friends, are the public means of grace set up? Why have we communion seasons? It is for this, that the Lord Jesus, through His sent messengers, and through His people, might with the tongue of the learned—of a disciple—speak a word in season to the weary soul, and many a weary soul got in the means of grace a word in season—came in, may be, to the public means in bonds and fetters, and went out rejoicing. Yes, the Lord set up the means for that very purpose, in order to strengthen the heart of the weary. He will satiate the weary soul.
But now I come in the last place to notice the Person whom the Lord has provided for this purpose. He has the tongue of the learned that He might know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. Oh, friends, He who speaks here is the Messiah Himself, the Son of God. Yes, the Lord Jesus, the Saviour of sinners. It is He who speaks here. He who is the brightness of the Father’s glory, and the express image of His Person; who has the same glory and power as the Father. Yes, “I and the Father are one,” He says. He is the Person who speaks here, and is set before us as the Father’s Servant in this wonderful prophecy and in these chapters. The Son of God and co-equal with the Father—He became the Father’s servant, and that for the salvation of the Church, and although He is God yet He appears before us here as the servant, and although He knows all things as God, He is here as the Father’s Servant, in obedience to the Father. He is further brought before us here as receiving a word from the Father’s mouth, and conveying it in this way to the weary soul. It is a mystery, of course. We must not allow our minds to think that God the Father spoke to God the Son as an earthly father may give knowledge to an earthly son. We must not allow our minds work like that. We have here the mystery of the Covenant of Grace. We have here the Father taking the position of giving to the Son the message that the Son will give to the weary soul, and you find Him speak like that in the days of His flesh: “I can of mine own self do nothing.” He is the Son, co-equal with the Father, but He is the servant and takes up that place: “Behold my servant.” He says here that the Lord gave Him the tongue of the learned or the tongue of a disciple. He gave Him this—that He would receive doctrine, words, and a message, and the Lord opened His ear to hear as the learned. Oh, dear friends, we have here another view of the love of the Father to the Church, and the love of the Son to the Church, when the Father is brought before us as opening the ear of His Son to give a message in love to the poor soul down in the world, opening His ear and putting words into His mouth. The authoritative message is put into His mouth. The tongue of the learned is given to Him so that He might give His Father’s message to the weary soul—yes, what He learned of the Father that He might give it to them down in the world. There is mystery here but there is grace here. What infinite grace is beneath, and above, and on every side of this—how that the Lord God opened the ear of His Son and gave to Him the tongue of the learned so that He would speak a word in season to the weary soul, and there is not one of them to whom He does not give His Father’s word.
What did the poor man get that had the palsy, and was carried to the Saviour in the days of His flesh? He got the Father’s word by the mouth of Christ: “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.” Yes, the word that the Father gave to the Son as His servant to give to the weary soul, and the weary soul got that word, and that is what you get in the day of your weariness, when you had nothing but your sinfulness and your unworthiness, and your inability—when you had no faith or repentance, or new obedience, or anything that was right—that was the word that you got from the mouth of Him who has the tongue of the learned, and knows how to speak a word in season to the weary. See how He who has the tongue of the learned dealt with the woman of Samaria—how He gave to that woman of such an evil reputation: “I that speak unto thee am He,” and you all know how wisely He spoke to her. “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” He then went on until He said: “I that speak unto thee am he.” He gave her the Father’s word—the word that He got from the Father to give to her, and that is what the Lord’s people get—that is what they get in every age and generation of time. That is what they get in the day in which their bonds are loosed—in the day in which He takes the sackcloth off them, and gives them gladness. They thus get what the Father gave to the Son for them. It is a wonderful matter—a sublime matter—you get the word out of the fullness of grace that is in God through the eternal Son in human nature as the Saviour of sinners. That is how you get it, and when He speaks to your weary soul going through time it is the same thing. You had your days of difficulties, trials and temptations, and you know this, that when He speaks a word in season it fits into your case just as well as a glove will fit the hand, even so the word of Him who has the tongue of the learned meets the case of the needy soul. The Lord’s people know that (at least some of them may be afraid that they do not know it) the Lord Jesus has the tongue of the learned, and He knows how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. Well, He was in that school, and oh, what a wonderful school this was, when God the Father was giving to God the Son the word for the Church—giving to Him the words of comfort and peace and life, the word that would lift them out of the mire and bring them into life and liberty. That was a wonderful thing. This school the Saviour uses wherever He has sent messengers—He brings them to tuition. That is a wonderful word of the Apostle John: “I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it.” There was John, and he was writing to the Church who knew the truth of the gospel, and because they knew the truth of the gospel he was writing to them the truths of the gospel. The Son of God knew all as God. The Father gave His word to the servant who delivered it to those who know the truth—those He deals with on this wise, some more and some less. He will open their ears time after time, morning by morning, and give them the word, treasuring up in their minds the knowledge of the gospel, the knowledge of the grace of God, the knowledge of the doctrines of grace and the knowledge of the ways the Lord has with His people. He will teach them in this school, and that is the place where we all need to be until the day break—disciples sitting down wishing to be taught—wishing that He would open our ears to hear as disciples, day by day, that He may use us for the comfort of His people, as it says elsewhere: “Who comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.”
The Lord brings some of His people through great temptations and trials, having this end in view, that they would be able to deal with the trials and temptations of others, so that they can deal with and handle the cases and conditions of others, and apply the Word by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. All this comes from the Master. It comes from the Master of Assemblies that there should be such to whom He gives the ear of a disciple so that they might speak a word in season to the weary. But there is another thing in this school—the Head had it, and so had the members—the discipline. We do not like the discipline. His ear was opened morning by morning. He was led in the way of obedience, which meant suffering: “I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.” “I was commanded to walk in the path of obedience—I was commanded to obey the truth and maintain it.” “Oh well, they will be wanting your back and they will be wanting your cheeks, your hands and your feet to put spikes through them.” Oh well, I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.” “I just gave my back to the smiters, let them smite. I gave my cheeks to them that plucked off my hair, and I gave my face to shame and spitting.” “It came to me in the way of adherence to truth and obedience, and so I submitted. Yes, I hid not my face from shame and spitting.” That was the Head, and so He can speak a word in season to the weary soul. “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” What a word in season!
The Saviour, who was crucified between the malefactors, can speak to a poor soul who has to suffer from the devil and from his own heart and from the world, because he wants to walk in the truth. What a word the Lord Jesus, who suffered so much Himself, can speak to such a soul. Dear friends, the Lord permits discipline in the teaching of those whom He uses as under-shepherds, to speak a word in season to him that is weary. We do not like suffering, and we are very apt to take it as a bad omen that we have to suffer. Foolish, foolish, it is not a bad omen. Persecution, the spite and malice of men, is not a bad token on the Church of God, but a good token. That is what the Lord had suffered and that because He would not deviate from the truth. If He would deviate from the truth the devil would give Him all the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them—if He would just bow His head before him for this once, and Satan being unsuccessful here, prepared enemies innumerable, scourges and a crown of thorns. The devil prepared it all, and He just gave Himself over to them, willingly and submissively gave His back to the smiters and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair, so that He would keep the commandment that the Father gave Him: “Let them do what they please, but I shall continue in the commandment which I received from my Father,” and that is the duty of the Church. All that Christ minded was this, that He would keep to the commandment that the Father gave Him. He minded nothing else but this, that He would keep to the commandment that the Father gave Him. That is the duty of the Church. The Lord will use you if He will give you the tongue of a disciple that you will know how to speak a word in season to the weary—you must be like your Master. You have got to submit to discipline, to open your ear, and while the Lord Himself will open your ear to hear as the learned, He will put before you that you must suffer, but never mind, He will use you
to speak a word in season to the weary, and that is worth anything that you will have to endure in this world for the sake of Christ.
Ah, dear friends, I am keeping you too long. You see here how the Lord promised to meet the weary, to meet the poor and needy. He will provide drink for the thirsty soul: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.” Have you a hope yourself to-night that you are the concern of the Lord Jehovah, and to whom He will send a word in season? Have you a hope that you belong to them, or are you wearying yourself out, fighting against God and destroying your soul? “Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?”