God does not undo, in His relationship to us as Re-creator, the work which He has already performed as Creator. He does not strip us of our natural faculties, and endow us with others altogether distinct from these. Our natural faculties are in themselves neither good nor bad, but in every case are capable of development, either in the direction of good or of evil. When first the grace of God finds us, the powers of evil have more or less infected our nature, and most of our faculties (if not all of them) have exhibited a downward inclination; our members have become “instruments of unrighteousness,” the weapons which Satan has used to do his own fell work. It is upon these dishonoured faculties that God lays His hand when He enters and takes possession of the new-created soul. What He demands on our part is, that these members should be surrendered to Him, as they formerly were to the powers of darkness.
2. The prophet here speaks of one important faculty which exercises an influence for good or evil second to none that affects society--the tongue. The faculty of speech is one of the noblest endowments of humanity, distinguishing us, as it does, from all the lower animals, rendering social life possible, and binding humanity into one. How much of evil originates with the tongue! And yet what a mighty engine for good language may be! Surely God has put no small honour on human speech when He permits His own Son to be described as “the Word” of God.
3. How many of us have endeavoured to use our tongues in the service of God, and yet our efforts have been singularly weak and unsuccessful. Let us not be discouraged, but listen to this word of power: “I have made thy mouth a sharp sword”--sharp no longer for sarcasm and cutting scorn. The withering scoff, the poisoned slander, the bitter reproach, are no longer to proceed, like a sharp two-edged sword, from those consecrated lips of thine; but, if thou wouldst but believe it, a new power has been communicated, in virtue of which that very member, which was of old so keen-edged a weapon in the hands of the destroyer, is now to be equally sharp and pointed in the grasp of its Divine Master. But have we yet begun to be discontented with our want of sharpness? Are we ready to be used by God as a sharp sword? Have we counted the cost? Are we prepared for the consequences? If we are, our weakness matters not. God can use us. “Fear not, thou worm Jacob; I will make thee a sharp threshing instrument, having teeth, and thou shalt break in pieces the mountains.” How many of our well-meant efforts fail for want of teeth!
4. What is required in order to render us efficient instruments in the hands of God?
(1) Definiteness of purpose. The man whose mouth is a sharp sword will speak, not for speaking’s sake, nor to ease his conscience, but to reach the heart.
(2) Incisiveness of language. Our words need not be ungentle nor severe, and yet they may be pointed.
(3) Earnestness.
(4) One other characteristic will be embodied in the word “now.” The man who speaks for God will ever remember that “the King’s business requires haste.” “The Holy Ghost saith, To-day”; and he who speaks in the Spirit will speak as the Spirit. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)
A sharp sword in God’s hand
Two young men were educated together in an American university. The one was possessed of very considerable talents, and subsequently became the popular minister of a large and fashionable congregation; the other was a man of humble abilities, but possessed by an ardent desire to win souls, and therefore ready to adapt his means to the attainment of this end. Years rolled on, and the popular preacher had occasion to pay a visit to the parish of his old acquaintance. After witnessing all that was going forward in connection with his friend’s congregation, he could no longer repress his astonishment. “I cannot understand how it is,” he said, “that everything in your district and congregation seems to flourish. Your church seems full of really converted souls. The number of your communicants is astonishing, and the amount of work that seems to be going on all round fills me with amazement. How can it be that I, preaching the same truth, yet see scarcely any definite result of my labours? I can scarcely point to any who have been turned from darkness to light as the result of my ministry.” After much conversation, his friend requested him to try an experiment. “Will you,” he said, “take one of my sermons (which in style and composition are by no means to be compared to your own), and deliver it to your own flock? Make it a matter of prayer beforehand that God will make use of it,” not only for their good, but as a lesson to you in your own ministry, if it is intended to be so. Then watch the results. He agreed to do so, and on returning to his flock, delivered with much feeling one of his friend’s fervid discourses. The effect was evident, and to him astonishing. It was clear that many in the congregation were deeply stirred by what they had been listening to. At the conclusion of the service he was sent for by a lady, whom he found remaining behind in the church, in a state of considerable agitation. “If,” she exclaimed, “my dear sir, what I have heard from you to-day is true, then I am all wrong!” “My dear madam,” he replied, with great consternation, “what is the matter? I hope I have said nothing that has hurt your feelings!” (W. Hay Aiken, M. A.)
The Word of God as a sword
1. Because it pierceth the very heart (Act_2:37; Act_7:54).
2. Because it separateth between virtue and vice, by teaching what is good and what is evil.
3. Because it cutteth off sin, by the threats which are therein contained against sinners, and by the promises which are thereby made to those who forsake sin.
4. Because it cuts off error and heresy by teaching the truth. (W. Day, M. A.)
In the shadow of His hand hath He hid Me
Seclusions
These words refer in the first place to Him who is the central figure of all prophecy, the coming Messiah. Perhaps they point to His pre-existent state, and denote the concealment of the Eternal Word before it was made flesh. Or the words may contain an allusion to certain aspects and experiences of Christ’s earthly history, and notably the first thirty years of it. What holds good with regard to the Master, holds good also with regard to the servants. As He was in this world, so are they. It is not so much the expression of a general and abiding relationship we have here, as of a special and occasional experience. Every believer lies locked in the closed hand of God, nor shall any pluck him out of it. But it is not of a hiding such as this that the text speaks. It is rather of what is temporary and repeated. What, then, are some of the ideas involved in the special figure of the text?
I. We have God’s love brought before us as an influence to PRESERVE AND PROTECT. And it preserves us in a special way, it protects us through a special process--by withdrawal. That, of course, is not always God’s plan. He has other ways of arranging in providence for the safety of His people, than by removing them from the sphere of their danger. When opposition threatens or temptation assails, He may keep men face to face with the foes that encompass, and seek to educate and to strengthen them by the process. At such times as these they are called to comport themselves as good soldiers of Christ. But at other times it is not incitement that the Christian needs, nor the strength that enables him to do and to dare. It is shelter, screening, quiet, and removal. And when such seasons are needed, they are given. And what a hand it is to retreat to! Think of all that the Scripture reveals to us of its power.
II. The text leads us to think of God’s care as a PREPARING influence. It trains, as well as protects. He quenches not the smoking flax; on the contrary, He fosters and fans it. And for this end He covers it with the shadow of His arched hand, till it brightens from a smouldering spark to a clear and steady flame. Sometimes these seasons of concealment take place at the beginning of a man’s life-work. Take Paul, the newly-converted. When the due time came, and study and seclusion, meditation and silence, had accomplished their work, the hand was unclosed, the shadow was withdrawn. God drew the shaft He had polished from its quiver, and Paul came forth from his retreat, ready to do and to speak, to suffer and to dare for the cause of Christ. And what happens at the outset of a believer’s life, happens often in its course; and many an active Christian life has been cleft in twain by the silence and the pause it imposes. There is a special illustration in the history of Luther. The man had attained the very climax of his immense activities. The nations had wakened from the sleep of ages at the thunder of his lips. Hither and thither he had been moving; here attacking, there defending, yonder restraining. And now every nerve was strung to tenseness by the strain, every faculty wrought to fever in the whirl. And what does God do with him? He suddenly bears him off out of view, takes him from pulpit and from councils, hushes and encloses him in the Wartburg, and leaves him there in imprisonment and isolation for a time. Had God no purpose in view, in thus plunging His servant into the darkness awhile--apart from the work that he loved so well? Assuredly He had. The Church of Christ was all the better of this temporary withdrawal of its one outstanding defender. It was reminded thereby that the cause was God’s and not man’s. And it was taught that the cause could go on, though the man who was its agent was removed. Luther himself was all the better of the discipline too. And when Luther emerged from the shadow, in God’s good time, to achieve and withstand, to struggle and to conquer, once more, he did so as a stronger, because a wiser and a calmer man. And a year’s or a month’s time spent in quiet waiting in the shadow of His hand, may do more to ripen the soul for its future existence with Himself than half-a-century of busy labour amidst the outward activities of life. The believer passes from the sphere of active work to the sphere of quiet waiting, that the discipline of service may be supplemented by the discipline of submission, and the God of peace be enabled through the training to sanctify him wholly. The shadow where the life disappears is only the shadow of the hand. And when the hand is unclosed on the other side death, the light it has covered will be found to be all the more steady and brilliant for the discipline, and shall shine in God’s holy place, as the stars in the firmament, for ever and for ever.
III. Pass from the protecting and preparing influences of God’s hand, to its CHASTENING. For you have the idea here not only of isolation, but of pressure; pressure and pain. It does not always lie gently round about us, this hand of God. There are times when it contracts more tightly, darkens more deeply, impinges more closely. And it does so in many ways--does so even when we are least ready to realise the source whence the pressure arises. If ever a Christian is tempted to think his trials come from another source than the wise and tender Fatherhood of God, it is when they shape themselves in the words and deeds of sinful men. Yet the shadow which they cast on the life is only the shadow of the hand, and the pain the experience gives us only its contracting pressure. And of other trials than these, it is still the same. There are complications of adversity at times so persistent and perplexing that they almost seem to argue the operation of some malignant fate. You are in dark places, But it is only the shadow of the hand. Lie quiet, and bear it as well as you can. And He who at present contracts His hand will in due time open it, and set you in a large room once more.
IV. The text speaks of the INDIVIDUALISING influence of God’s care. While I rest in the shadow of the hand, God of course has the whole of me; but there is another side to the relationship: I have the whole of God.
V. The text reminds us of the hand of God in its REMOVING influences. When lover and friend are put far away from us, and our acquaintance are hid in darkness, they are only removed by the same loving hand, and covered awhile in its shadow, but blessed and safe where they rest, awaiting the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body. And what of the body itself? (W. A. Gray.)
A polished shaft
A polished shaft
I. The prophet speaks of the servant of the Lord under the figure of A POLISHED SHAFT. There are not wanting some who, in their eagerness to deliver their souls, and to be faithful to their responsibilities, outstep the limits of Christian courtesy. They have their own blunt way of working for God, and they are disposed to flatter themselves that it is the best way, because it is most in accordance with their own natural dispositions; but the Lord seeks polished shafts for His quiver. No sword was ever so sharpened as were the words of Jesus; and yet how gentle He was, how considerate! But, you say, we have all our natural peculiarities, and we must continue to be what nature has made us. Not so, my dear brother. Thou art to be perfected by grace, not by nature. Cut a rough stick from a hedge: if it be tolerably straight, and a spike be stuck in the end of it, it may serve, on an emergency, in the place of an arrow at a short range. But every little notch, every distinguishing peculiarity, of that rough stick is an impediment to its flight. We need not fear for the skill of the Great Archer who keeps His saints in His quiver; but we must remember that when we assert our natural peculiarities of disposition, instead of surrendering ourselves to Him to be polished according to His will, the fault is ours, not His, if we miss the mark. We have no right to be content with doing the Lord’s work in a “rough and ready,” bungling, clumsy fashion, effecting perhaps a little good and a great deal of harm. “He that wins souls is wise”; he that seeks merely to relieve his own conscience can afford to do things in a blundering way. What does it matter to him, so long as it is done? But surely if the work is to produce its proper effect, we need much tact, much delicacy of feeling, much tenderness of sympathy; we need to learn when to hold our tongues, and when to speak. It is quite true that God may bless our very blunders when He sees they are committed with true sincerity of purpose, and arise rather from ignorance and bad taste than from wilful carelessness; but that does not warrant us in continuing to blunder, still less in regarding our blunders as almost meritorious, and reflecting self-complacently that it is “our way of working.” We shrink from the polishing process; but He who desires to see us so polished that we shall reflect His own glory, not exhibit our own peculiarities, will take care that the means for our polishing are forthcoming. It is by friction that the arrow is polished, and it is by friction that our idiosyncrasies are to be worn away. This friction is provided in different ways. Perhaps it will be supplied by failures and disappointments, until, like Gideon of old, we are ready to say, “If the Lord be with us, why is it thus with us?” Perhaps it will be supplied by the violent and bitter antagonism which our inconsiderate roughness and unwisdom has stirred in the hearts of those whom we seek to benefit. Sometimes it is provided in our common intercourse with others, not unfrequently in our intercourse with fellow-Christians. Possibly He may subject us to the severest discipline of trial before the work of polishing is complete; but polished in one way or another the shafts must be which He is to use for His own glory.
II. THE SHAFT IS POLISHED ONLY TO BE HIDDEN. It might seem that when once the process of polishing had been completed, the arrow would be a proper object for display, and here is a peril which even polished shafts are exposed to. There is so much of the beauty of the Lord impressed upon some of His servants, that men cannot withhold their admiration. Christians are lavish of their love, and there are hidden perils concealed under this favourable esteem. Sharpened and polished, how apt are we to display ourselves, even as the Assyrian axe of old “boasted against him who hewed there with.” “But,” says the great apostle (himself a polished and sharpened arrow), “we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord.” And so it is that the polished shaft has to be hidden. Your attention is not directed to the arrow while it is waiting to be used; it is concealed within the quiver.
The eye is not caught by it when it is in the hand; it is hidden under the shadow of the hand. Another moment, it rests on the bow; another moment, and it speeds to the mark. Neither in the quiver, nor in the hand, nor on the bow, nor in its flight, is the arrow conspicuous. The more swiftly it flies, the more invisible it is. Thus the archer wins all the applause, and the arrow is nothing; yet it is by the arrow that he has done his work. And while man is not attracted to the arrow, the great Archer Himself is. It is upon it that He bends His eye. It is to it that He gives the credit of the victory: “Thou art My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” Yes, there is a special joy in His heart when He can truly say of us, “Thou art My servant.” How near we are to His sacred Person when we are thus hidden in God’s hand, concealed in His quiver! And how much truer and deeper the joy of such service than the momentary excitement of human applause! And then the thought that it is possible for God to be glorified in us as the archer is glorified in the arrow, that the intelligences of heaven shall gaze down and admire the work that God hath wrought by instruments once so unpromising, and shall praise Him for it; that men on earth shall be constrained to admit that this is the finger of God, and to take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus; that the devils in hell shall recognise in our lives the presence of Omnipotence, and tremble as they see the mighty Archer draw us from the hiding-place within the quiver! “Hidden in God’s hand!” Hidden from the grasp of Satan. He fain would snatch us out of God’s keeping; but his hostile hand can never touch those who are concealed in God’s quiver. Hidden from the desecrating touch of the world to which we no longer belong. Hidden above all from ourselves--our morbid self-consciousness, our inflated self-esteem, our gloomy self-depression. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)
The pride that apes humility
I remember once overhearing the remark from the lips of one whom long experience and keen observation had taught more of the subtlety of the human heart than most men ever discern: “Ah, my dear brother, the truth is that we are all full of self; only some of us have the good taste not to show it, and some have not.” The words may appear almost cynical, but a little reflection will show us how true they are. (W. HayAiken, M. A.)
A polished arrow
Mark Guy Pearse says that the crest for the Lord’s worker is “an arrow” polished and feathered, content to be in the quiver until the Master uses it; lying on the string for His unerring fingers to send it forth, then going strong, swift, sure, smiting through the heart of the King’s enemies, and with this for the motto, “I fly where I am sent.”
