Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2812
“Hegives power to the faint.” Isaiah 40:29.
THE connection in which these words stand is very suggestive. The previous verse says, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary. There is no searching of His understanding.” He has the perfection of power and also of wisdom. Unbelief is based upon absurdity, but faith rests upon reason and fact. This may not, at first sight, seem to be true, but it really is. To believe in the almighty and all-wise God is the most rational thing in the world—to disbelieve Him is both the most wicked and the most irrational thing. When a child of God begins to distrust his Father, it must be because he doubts either God’s memory or His power. It seems utterly absurd, as well as grievously wrong, to suspect the Lord of fainting or being weary. The moment we give utterance to such a sentiment, we feel as if we must at once withdraw the words. It is so altogether ridiculous and absurd to speak thus of Him who made the heavens and the earth and who supports all things by the word of His power! How can He fail or faint? The Self-Existent One, from whom all the power that ever was, or is, or shall be, and must primarily come—how can He fail or faint? Then would the sun grow dim at noon! Then would earth dissolve and Heaven pass away if once faintness could seize the Deity who supports all things!
We know better and we ought, therefore, to act better. And as we feel that He cannot faint or be weary, we ought not to harbor a single doubt concerning His fainting. How can He faint? It is He that gives power to the faint! When faintness comes anywhere, it does not come to Him—it comes to you who doubt. You are like a reeling man who thinks that it is the earth that reels, or like a person travelling in a train who, for the moment, forgets that he is moving and thinks that the trees and hedges are all swiftly rushing by him! It is not God who changes—it is you who have changed. It is not He that is weary—it is you who are weary. It is not He that is faint—it is you that are fainting. And here comes, in this blessed Truth of God, for your encouragement—that you may be revived from this faintness—instead of Him fainting, God, “gives power to the faint.”
I. First, I will endeavor to answer the question, WHAT MAKES US FAINT?
We will first consider the case of the awakened sinner, the man who does not know that he is saved and who, perhaps, is not yet converted. But he is, to some extent, under the gracious influence of the Spirit of God, for he has been awakened from his sleep of sin and has begun to pray. It very commonly happens that when persons are in this condition, they are seized with faintness. What is it that makes them feel faint?
Well, first, they may very well faint, for they have made a most alarming discovery. They were not aware of their true position, but they suddenly find themselves lost. Their own righteousness, which appeared to them to be like fair, white linen, has proven to be only filthy rags. Their own merits, which seemed to them to be a great heap of gold, are shown to be just so much dross. They fancied that they were rich, increased with goods and had need of nothing, but they find themselves wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. They see themselves condemned of God on account of sin and they also see before them, with an awful astonishment, the burning lake of Hell—and they cannot tell whether their next step will not plunge them into the dread abyss from which there will be no escape! Is it amazing that when a man first realizes all this, he is filled with terror, the cold sweat stands on his brow and he is ready to faint? Indeed, if it were not
for the goodness of God in only revealing the sinner’s danger to him, in a measure, I would not wonder if when men saw themselves in their true state, they were to lose their reason!
It has not seemed at all strange to me that men have gone mad when they have suddenly found out where they were and where they were likely to be in a very short time! I have had to bless God that so few cases of that kind have occurred and I have never wondered when I have seen the horror and distress of mind of persons who have discovered their lost condition. Some of you who are now sitting very comfortably in your seats—if you only knew what it is to be already condemned because you have not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God—if you could but catch the meaning of these words, “He that believes not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him.” If you discovered that this was no myth, or fiction, but an awful reality, like a cloud charged with deadly electricity you, also, would be ready to faint!
Sometimes, too, awakened sinners faint for another reason, namely, that they have tried to escape from their dangerous position, but they have not succeeded. What long and laborious attempts at self-salvation, awakened souls will make! They will deny themselves many pleasures, they will subject themselves to a great deal of toil, they will resolve, pray, cry and fret—yet it all ends in failure. A man trying to save himself is like a prisoner on the treadmill, perpetually stepping, but never mounting an inch higher. He is like a blind horse in a mill—he goes round, and round, and round, but makes no real advance. What can he do? He is trying to weave a substantial garment out of spiders’ webs! He is attempting, with worthless works, to make a perfect righteousness! It was no small blessing for Israel when it could be said of them, “He brought down their heart with labor; they fell down and there was none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses.” The sooner an end comes to all self-righteous attempts to obtain salvation, the better! Then does the man’s soul faint within him. Then is he like one who is at sea in a storm, who has tugged at the oar, or has tried to use the sail, but can make no headway, or escape the fury of the tempest. “They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.” Thus are they faint.