Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 928
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, May 1, 1870
“And in that day you shall say, O Lord, I will praise You: though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, and You comfort me.” Isaiah 12:1.
THIS prophesy is said by some to relate to the invasion by Sennacherib. That calamity threatened to be a very terrible display of Divine anger. It seemed inevitable that the Assyrian power would make an utter desolation of all Judea. But God promised that He would interpose for the deliverance of His people and punish the stout heart of the king of Assyria. And in that day His people should say, “We will praise You though You were angry with us, and therefore sent the Assyrian monarch to chastise us. Your anger is turned away, and You comfort us.”
If this is the meaning of it, it is an instance of sanctified affliction—and it is a lesson to us that whenever we smart under the rod, we may look forward to the time when the rod shall be withdrawn. And it is also an admonition to us that when we escape from trial we should take care to celebrate the event with grateful praise. Let us set up the pillar of memorial, let us pour the oil of gratitude upon it, and garland it with song, blessing the Lord whose anger endures but for a moment, but whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting.
It is thought by others that this text mainly relates to the latter days, and I think it would be impossible to read the eleventh chapter without feeling that such a reference is clear. There is to be a time when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the cockatrice den. Then the Lord will set His hand again, the second time, to recover the remnant of His people. Then He will repeat His wondrous works of Egypt and at the Red Sea, so that the song of Moses shall be rehearsed again, “The Lord is my strength and song, and He is become my salvation: He is my God, and I will prepare Him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt Him.”
In that day the Jewish people upon whose head the blood of Christ has come, who these many centuries have been a people scattered and peeled, and sifted as in a sieve throughout all nations—even these shall be restored to their own land—and the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. They shall participate in all the glories of the millennial reign, and with joy shall they draw water out of the wells of salvation. In those days, when all Israel shall be saved, and Judah shall dwell safely, the jubilant thanksgiving shall be heard, “O Lord, I will praise You. For though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, and You comfort me.”
The whole people shall sing with such unanimity, with such undivided heart that they shall speak as though they were but one man. They shall use the singular where their numbers might require the plural, “I will praise You,” shall be the exclamation of the once divided but then united people!
Although both these interpretations are true, and both instructive, the text is many-sided and bears another reading. We shall find out the very soul of the passage if we consider it as an illustration of what occurs to every one of God’s people when he is brought out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. When he is delivered from the spirit of bondage beneath Divine wrath and led by the Spirit of Adoption into the liberty wherewith Christ makes him free. In that day I am sure these words are fulfilled. The Believer does then say right joyously, “O Lord, I will praise You: though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, and You comfort me.”
In regarding the text from this point of view, we shall first observe the prelude of this delightful song. And then, secondly, we shall listen to the song itself.
I. First I shall ask your consideration of THE PRELUDE of this charming song. Here are certain preliminaries to the music. They are contained in the first line of the text. “In that day you shall say.” Here we have the tuning of the harps, the notes of the music follow in the succeeding sentences. Much of instruction is couched in these seven words of prelude. Note then, first, there is a time for that joyous song which is here recorded. “In that day.” The term, “that day,”
is sometimes used for a day of terror, and often for a period of blessing. The common term to both is this—they were both days of the manifestation of Divine power.
“That day,” a day of terrible confusion to God’s enemies. “That day,” a day of great comfort to God’s friends. The day being in either case the time of the making bare of God’s arm and the manifestation of His strength. Now, the day in which a man rejoices in Christ is the day in which God’s power is revealed on his behalf in his heart and conscience, and the Holy Spirit subdues him to the reign of Christ. It is not always that God works with such effectual power as this in the human heart—He has His set times. Oftentimes the word of human ministry proves ineffectual—the preacher exhorts, the hearer listens, but the exhortation is not obeyed. It sometimes happens that even desires may be excited, and yet nothing is accomplished, for these better feelings prove to be as those spring blossoms on the trees which do not knit and fall fruitless to the ground.