Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2696
“When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue fails for thirst, I the LORRD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.” Isaiah 41:17.
NOTICE, dear Friends, that this double promise to the poor and needy stands in connection with other great promises which guarantee the gift of wonderful strength and blessing to God’s people. These promises seem to me to be such as the mightiest servant of God might well desire to have fulfilled in himself. Look, for instance, at the one in the 15th and 16th verses—“Behold, I will make you a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: you shall thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shall make the hills as chaff. You shall fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and you shall rejoice in the Lord, and shall glory in the Holy One of Israel.” What a great promise that is! How it makes the child of God to participate in the greatness of Jehovah’s strength! The picture here drawn is a very remarkable one. Here is a man—a poor, feeble man—so strengthened by God that he not only threshes wheat, but he threshes mountains! Nor does he find that the gigantic enterprise is beyond the strength imparted to him—the rocks and the hills are turned to chaff. Nor is that all that happens to them, for this man, Divinely strengthened, takes up a colossal winnowing fan and sets Alps, Andes, Himalayas flying just like the small dust from the threshing floor! This is grand work and it needs a man of God when he has come to the fullness of his strength through the indwelling of the Spirit of God.
Whenever we quote a great promise like that, it usually depresses some little one in the Lord’s family. He (or, more likely, she) begins to say, “But what can Ido? I cannot thresh mountains! No, rather, it seems to me that Satan’s threshing me and desiring to have me that he may sift me as wheat. And, instead of me holding the winnowing fan in my hand, it is the winnowing fan that is being used upon me—and what I thought was a fine heap of wheat is being blown away— and I am afraid there will be few precious grains left to lie upon the floor. Ah, me! Ah, me!” Well, now, our God has a gracious way of caring for all His children and, from the very nature of Him, I am quite certain that if one of His children could be forgotten, it would not be the little one! You mothers know that if ever there was one member of the household left out in the cold when you closed the door at night, it would not be the baby—you would be sure, first of all, to see that the wee mite was safely housed. And if it were possible that the Divine mind could pass over and forget one of the beloved family, it certainly would not be the little one or the tried one!
There are special promises for the child of God in the time of trial—“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not flow over you: when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon you.” The Presence of God is with all His chosen ones at all times! But if there could be an exception to that rule, it certainly would not be in the case of those who are tried, troubled and depressed. No, the exception would be the other way. If the Good Shepherd left the 99 safely folded in the wilderness, He would be sure to go after the one sheep that was lost—the weak and wounded one, the feeble and footsore one—even though the cause of its sufferings might be its own guilty wanderings! Oh, the splendor of the love of God! There is nothing to be compared with it under Heaven, or even in Heaven itself. It stands alone and unapproachable. He is always considering those among His people who are downcast, weak and brokenhearted!
And I think that the promise of our text especially comes in, not for you mountain-threshers—not for you who are made so strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, but for some who cannot as yet get a grip of that grand Word of His to which I have referred. There comes in this sweet promise, “when the poor and needy,” those who are not trying to thresh mountains, but are looking for that which is necessary for the supply of their own personal needs—seeking water They are in too low a condition to be able to rise to the dignity of service, but are just like poor Hagar and Ish-mael in the wilderness, seeking water. They have fallen into such a sad and sorrowful state of heart that instead of testifying to the goodness of God, they cannot testify to anything, for “their tongue fails for thirst.” It is then, in their extremity, that the blessed promises shall come to them—“I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.”
I am going to follow the Good Shepherd’s example and leave the 99—you Brothers and Sisters who are happy and joyful in the Lord, I must leave you to take care of yourselves, or, rather, the Lord will take care of you. I want just now to go after that one sheep that is lost! And I would not be surprised at all if there are not more than one out of every hundred here in the condition which our text describes! If so, may the Spirit of God cause the message to reach the hearts of all such sorrowing ones that God may again be glorified in the abundance of His mercy toward them! Let us begin at the beginning of the text and consider it from point to point very briefly. We will start with these people where the text starts with them.