Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1756
“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” Isaiah 40:31.
HUMAN strength is of many kinds, but in any form it will spend itself in due time. God can lend to men immense physical force, but though a man had the strength of a lion and an ox combined, he would one day fail. The force of flesh must fade like the grass to which it is likened. Samson sometimes becomes exhausted and he is likely to die of thirst, though he has slain a thousand men! Yes, more, he must ultimately die and his mighty and tremendous muscles must yield to the worm and return to the dust of death. Since even granite and iron yield to constant wear and tear, assuredly man’s frail body cannot long be a thing of strength—
“Our days a transient period run, And change with every circling sun. And while to lengthened years we trust, Before the moth we sink to dust.”
Mental strength is a noble possession, but it also fails its owner, for at best it is a finite power. The wisest of men, by-and-by, feel the infirmities of age creeping upon them and frequently present the sad spectacle of second childhood. Death pays no regard to science or eloquence. The fool dies and as surely dies the senator, the philosopher, the Divine. When you take up the skull of a sage, you find no weight of wisdom there, nor trace of all the curious movements of a potent brain. Knowledge, genius, imagination, prophetic fire all depart—even before death they often fail. Baffled by mysteries; balked by prejudice; blinded by pride, the man of great understanding may yet be driven to his wit’s end.
So far as even spiritual strength is of the man, himself—so far as you can conceive of it apart from the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit—it, also, cannot be depended on. The most devout may grow lukewarm, the strongest Believer may doubt, the most sanctified may backslide! It is a heavenly strength, but so far as it is transfused into our humanity and becomes a part of ourselves, it, also, may wax weak, though, blessed be God, it can never utterly die! Every form of human strength must of necessity spend itself, for the world of which it forms a part decays and, by-and-by, like a worn-out vesture, the heavens and the earth shall be rolled up and put away.
Some signs of age, the creatures show already, but the time will come when their strength shall utterly fail. The reason is that all strength apart from God is derived strength and is, consequently, measurable. Yes, apart from God it is not strength at all and, consequently, must come to an end. The river runs on and the brook fails not because they come from fountains that are not affected by drought—but cisterns are dried and reservoirs fail because they have no springing well at the bottom of them—and if the pipes which supply them cease to flow, they are soon left dry as a threshing-floor. Pools which are not self-supplied are always liable to be exhausted as the water is drained from them. Let every man know, therefore, that whatever his strength may be, of body, mind, or spirit—if it is his own, it will one day fail him.
Let him see to it, therefore, that he does not trust it—especially that he does not trust it with eternal hazards or rest upon it for his soul’s safety—for which it never can be equal. It will be a horrible thing to be leaning and to find your staff fail you when you are on the edge of a measureless precipice! It will be terrible to be building and to find your foundation washed from under you and all your handiwork carried away by the flood! Yet so it must be if we are depending upon anything that comes of ourselves. Our own righteousness, our own thoughts, our own religiousness, our own prayers, resolves, attainments, achievements—everything that is of ourselves must sooner or later prove themselves to be but human—and over all things human it is best to write, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!”
Mingled with all things human there are portions of that all-dissolving acid which fell upon man’s nature when Infinite Justice said, “Dust you are, and unto dust shall you return.” On the other hand, what a contrast there is as to Divine strength! That never fails! It seems almost a superfluity to say as much as that—it abides in joyous fullness, never in the least diminished. With God there are no years to make Him decline with age, no labors to tax His powers. With God our lives are but as the swing of the pendulum. A thousand years in His sight are passed away as a watch in the night! Millions of ages are nothing to Him. He was God when as yet this sun, moon and all these stars slept in His thoughts like unborn forests in an acorn! And He will be God when all this brief creation shall melt back to nothing as a moment’s foam dissolves into the wave that bore it and is lost forever.
God changes not in any degree whatever—the fountain of His almightiness still overflows. He made this world—no doubt He has made thousands more and has still an undiminished power to create! All the worlds that we can see revolving in yonder sky are, perhaps, as a single chamber in the mansion of creation—they occupy an insignificant corner behind the door—compared to other and vaster worlds that He has made. But the glorious Lord is just as ready to make more! He is still the same forever and forever. In your dire necessity you may draw largely upon Him, but you cannot exhaust Him. You may bring your boundless needs and have them all supplied, but you shall no more diminish His all-sufficiency than when an infant dips his cup into the sea and leaves the sea brimming over upon 10,000 leagues of shore!