When Jesus comes to the soul, He delivers us from that direst of all bondages, fetches us out from that cruellest of all slaveries, the bondage of the spirit, the slavery of the heart.
Then we are told that, if there are any who are m a worse state than that of mere captivity, namely, in darkness as well as in bondage, the Lord Jesus Christ comes to them, and says, “Show yourselves; rise, and come out of the darkness; hide away no longer, come forth into the light, and enjoy it.”
I. I have to try to FIND OUT THE CHARACTERS mentioned in the text: “Them that are in darkness.”
1. They were not always in darkness. She was a bright young spirit once, after a fashion; and he,--I know him very well, seemed to be everything that mirth could make youth to be. But, on a sudden, there came a cloud in the sky, both to her and to him. It may be that a death happened in the family, or sickness came, or if it was neither of these things, at any rate, the mind suddenly grew strangely quiet, and a stillness came down upon the spirit, and with that stillness there fell a gloom over the whole being. What were those thoughts that brought such a sobering influence into the life? I can tell you about them from my own experience. I thought, “I have not lived as I ought to have lived. God made me, yet I have never truly served Him. He is my mother’s God, but I have forgotten Him; my father’s God, yet I have never sought Him. What shall I do? God must punish me,” &c. I seemed plastic as wax towards evil, yet hard as cast-iron or steel towards anything that was good. Then I grew sad in soul. I read my Bible a great deal, and the more I read it the more the darkness thickened about me, &c. This is the gateway into a joy that will be worth your having.
2. Besides this, a sense of sin has settled upon you.
3. The soul I am describing is in the dark, and the darkness settles down in conviction of sin. You have no hope.
4. You fear future and eternal night. It is to people in such a state that the Gospel of Christ is sent.
II. I am going to REPEAT THE EXHORTATION of the text: “Show yourselves.”
1. It means that you are running away from Divine justice, and that your wisest course will be to go and deliver yourself up. Do you not know that you are not really hidden? God sees you wherever you are; there is no hiding away from Him That is the very first thing for you to do; to submit yourself to God, to lie at His feet pleading for mercy.
2. The next way of showing yourselves is somewhat different: “Say to them that are in darkness, Show yourselves”; that is, you are very lonely, and you have been avoiding your best friends. Come out of your retirement. If you cannot speak to any mortal man, yet speak to the Immortal Man; go and tell out all your sorrow to the best of friends.
3. This passage may be applied to you who are sick, who are concealing your disease. I want every man who is troubled about the state of his heart, and every woman too, to come and show themselves to Christ, just as they are, in all their sire
4. The next thing you have to do is to show yourselves As healed ones, bound to confess Him who has cured them.
5. But I am going to carry the text a little farther yet. There are some young men, perhaps some young women also, who have been saved; they are no longer in the dark, and God has given them grace, and talents, yet still they are hiding themselves away. They are chosen ones loth to take their place of service. If the Lord has saved you, and if He is pleading for you in heaven, it is time you began to plead for Him on earth.
6. Our text applies also to persecuted ones who shall be owned and honoured of God. There will come a day when God’s people, who have long been in the dark through persecution, slander, and misrepresentation, shall hear the Lord speaking to them out of heaven, and saying, “Gather My saints together unto Me; those that nave made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.” “Say to them that are in darkness, Show yourselves.” What a change will come for God’s poor despised people in that day!
7. These words also relate to dead ones called to resurrection. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
They shall feed in the ways
The returning captives
This is part of the prophet’s glowing description of the return of the captives, under the figure of a flock fed by a great shepherd. We have seen a flock of sheep driven along a road; some of them hastily trying to snatch a mouthful from the dusty grass by the wayside. Little can they get there; they have to wait until they reach some green pasture in which they can be folded. This flock shall “feed in the ways”; as they go they will find nourishment. That is not all; the top of the mountains is not the place where grass grows. There are bare, savage cliffs, from which every particle of soil has been washed by furious torrents, or the scanty vegetation has been burnt up by the fierce “sunbeams like swords.” There the wild deer and the ravens live, the sheep feed down in the valleys. But “their pasture shall be in all high places.” The literal rendering is even more emphatic: “Their pasture shall be in all bare heights” where a sudden verdure springs to feed them according to their need. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Feeding in the ways
Whilst this prophecy is originally intended simply to suggest the abundant supplies that were to be provided for the band of exiles as they came back from Babylon, there lie in it great and blessed principles which belong to the Christian pilgrimage, and the flock that follows Christ.
1. They who follow Him shall find in the dusty paths of common life, and in all the smallnesses and distractions of daily duty, nourishment for their spirits. Do you remember what Jesus said? “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.” We, too, may have the same meat to eat which the world knows not of. That is a great promise, and it is a great duty.
(1) It is a promise, the fulfilment of which is plainly guaranteed by the very nature of the case. Religion is meant to direct conduct, and the smallest affairs of life are to come under its imperial control, and the only way by which a man can get any good out of his Christianity is by living it.
(2) But this is a great duty as well as a great promise. How many of us Christian people have but little experience of getting nearer to God because of our daily occupations! Therefore we need times of special prayer and remoteness from daily work; and there will be very little realisation of the nourishing power of common duties unless there is familiar to us also the entrance into the “secret place of the Most High,” where He feeds His children on the bread of life.
2. Further, my text suggests that for those who follow the Lamb there shall be greenness and pasture on the bare heights. Strip that part of our text of its metaphor, and it just comes to the blessed old thought, that the times of sorrow are the times when a Christian may have the most of the presence and strength of God. “In the days of famine they shall be satisfied.” Our prophet puts the same thought, under a kindred though somewhat different metaphor, in another place in this book where he says: “I will open rivers in high places.” That is clean contrary to nature. The rivers do not run on the mountain-tops, but down in the low ground.
3. May I turn these latter words of our text a somewhat different way, attaching to them a meaning which does not belong to them, but by way of accommodation? If Christian people want to have the bread of God abundantly, they must climb. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
