Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to Isaiah chapter 40, the chapter
we read, and reading from our text, verse 29. Verse 29, he giveth power to
the faint, and to them that have no might, he increaseth strength. Isaiah 40, verse 29. It is important for us to realise
that this prophecy, some 700 years before Christ, is pointing
to that day, the day of the Lord and to the day of the Church
of God. The chapter begins, Comfort ye,
comfort ye my people, saith your God. And the gospel is comfort
for sinners. We must always remember that.
Very different voice than what the law. Law and terrors do but
harden, says the hymn writer. All the while they work alone,
but a sense of blood-bought pardon soon dissolves a heart of stone. And the word of God declares
that the law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ. And so the words of the gospel
are, speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem. The gospel does not
come with a big stick. It does not come in the language
of Moses when he smoked the rock twice instead of speaking to
it. And in an angry way, say, must
we bring you water out of the rock, you rebels? The Gospel
is not to be proclaimed in that way. Must we set before you mercy
and peace and the redemption through Christ, ye rebels? It is not that way. It is a balm
for those that are wounded and those that have no strength or
might. It is strength. for those that
are at the ends of the earth. It finds them out, it brings
them again to God. and does gather the sheep of
God together unto that voice, not by fear, but by love, constraining
love. And so we have the preparation
of John the Baptist coming in verse 3. The voice of him that
crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make
straight in the desert a highway for our God. And if we go then
to Matthew chapter 3 and verse 3, good way of remembering it,
isn't it? The prophecy here in Isaiah 40
verse 3, you think Matthew chapter 3 verse 3, for this is he that
was spoken of by the prophet Esaias saying, the voice of one
crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, his path
straight. And clearly speaking of John,
in those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of
Judea, saying, repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And indeed in this 40th chapter
we go from the voice of him that is a preparation to the message
of the Gospel in verse 9, O Zion, bring us good tidings, get thee
up into the high mountain, the Church of God, the mountains
of Zion, and we have Jerusalem set before us where Christ was
to suffer and where redemption would be accomplished. And so,
very clearly, the end of verse 9 is, well, behold your God. Pilate, he says, behold the man
as he brings forth the Lord Jesus Christ. But our Lord says, if
you have seen me, you've seen my father also. And the prophecy
here, it says, behold your God. Behold, the Lord God will come
with strong hand and his arm shall rule for him. Behold, his
reward is with him and his work before him. He shall feed his
flock like a shepherd. And we think of that beautiful
chapter in John 10 of the Lord speaking of himself as the good
shepherd. So we have no doubt that a prophecy
like this is pointing to the Gospel days. Again, it is contrast
to the idols that Israel so often fell to, gods that were no gods
at all. And from verse 18, how hopeless
and how ridiculous it is that a workman should make a graven
image and then bow down to it. that these do not have power,
they do not have mind, they cannot know, they cannot give any help
to those that worship them. But what is set before us is
the one who sitteth above the earth or upon the circle of the
earth and who is so great and so mighty and that he is the
one that brings salvation. So the question, there are many
questions in this chapter, many of them. To whom, in verse 25,
to whom then will ye liken me or to whom or shall I be equal,
saith the Holy One. And so the Lord is set forth
to say, mighty, powerful God, so different than these helpless
idols and then he is brought before us as the God of salvation
and he's brought before us in the verses where our text is
right down to the people of God, those who have souls, those who
are brought by experience to know the power of the Gospel,
to know the saving power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to know the
path of the godly. We may ask ourselves, do we know
that path? Do we know the work of God in
our hearts, the life of God's people? Do we know their faith? Do we know their down-sitting,
their up-rising? Do we understand their experience
or are we strangers to it? Can we only just bring forth
scriptures but not really know anything in our own souls of
those scriptures and walking it out? So we have in the word
of our text he giveth power to the faint, and to them that have
no might he increaseth strength. I want to, with the Lord's help
this evening, look first at the he, the one that giveth power,
the everlasting God that giveth, that is set before us in verse
28. The verse before our text is
the he that is in the beginning of our text. But then we have
the other party, as it were, in our text, which is the faint
and those that do not have any might. And so in the second place,
to consider them And then lastly, the gift of power and increased
strength that is given from the everlasting God to those that
are faint and have no mind. But firstly, we have the giver
that is set before us here. So described in verse 28, the
everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth,
He is the giver. And what is specifically said
of Him here is that He fainteth not, neither is weary, there
is no searching of His understanding. That is, his understanding is
of such greatness and depth. He understands all things. He
is greater than Solomon, more wise than Solomon, and there's
nothing that he does not understand. What a contrast with us. And
there's so many things that we do not understand and we cannot
fathom. And yet we have God said before
us here that his searching, there is no understanding of that,
there is no searching of his understanding. We are creatures
of a day, soon passing away. We come upon the scene of this
world and but a few years, even if it were measured to a hundred
years, what are they? To everlasting, from everlasting
to everlasting. And God is set before us as being
just that, having no beginning nor end. We are not able to create
anything. make things out of that which
is created. We design machines, we use those
things that are created, but we cannot bring something out
of nothing. We cannot give life to something
that does not have life. And so we have set before us
here the creator of the ends of the earth, and we have one
that in all that he does, all his power in sustaining the world
and the heavens and making the heavens and the world and ordering
the kings and nations of it and the providences of it, that he
never faints. He's never weary. He doesn't
faint because he looks upon his work and thinks, well, man is
undoing it all. It's all going to come to nothing.
All my plan of salvation and all my appointments and all my
purposes, they'll come to nothing. And to faint because of that
which he looks upon, no, he does not faint in that way because
he knows that he is in control. He knows the end from the beginning. He understands those things that
are going on and so that he is not discouraged. We are told
in another place that he shall not be discouraged. He shall
accomplish salvation. not only at Calvary, but in the
hearts and lives of His people. He shall bring them to heaven. He shall accomplish the work
and finish the work the Father gave Him to do, not only on earth,
but in the quickening of His people as well. And so we have
God set forth in all His majesty and might and power but especially
in that being so suitable as to be able to give to those that
do not have might and do not have power. How necessary it
is that there be that ability to impart in a just, righteous
and holy way that which those that are ungodly and undeserving
need. vitally need. And so with the
work of our Lord Jesus Christ and Calvary and upon this world,
he demonstrated who he was, that he was the creating everlasting
God. Before Abraham was, I am. That he truly was who he said
he was. by the miracles that he performed,
and at last by rising from the dead. But he took on him the
seed of Abraham, he took on him the seed of those of whom he
was to redeem and to save, and it was absolutely vital that
he should be made like unto his brethren, but sin accepted, that
he should take away their sin, that he should deal with the
matter of their condemnation, because all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. There's none righteous, no not
one, but the Lord Jesus Christ is the one righteous and the
one holy God-man, the one who fulfilled his father's will and
on behalf of his people accomplished a righteousness to give to them
and a payment of the debt that they could not pay. The work
our Lord did upon this earth makes him fitted and able to
supply the needs of his people. And what is said before us here
of him, that he does not faint, nor is he weary. What would we
think if we were looking to a relative, a friend to help us in some work
that we were doing? And then we heard a report that
they'd helped someone else and they had to go home halfway through
the day because they were feeling so faint and so weary. And we
thought, oh dear, well how will it be when they come and help
us? How will they last out a day? How will they be able to help
us if they failed in that way? But with our Lord we see that
which he accomplished on earth, he endured the contradiction
of sinners against himself, and that is set before us in Hebrews,
lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. We are pointed
to what the Lord did upon the earth, the same as we are in
this verse before our text. He, the he of our text, the one
who is to provide the power and the might, and we are bidden
to look upon him. I wonder how often we really
do consider that there is nothing too hard for the Lord. He is
able to do, exceeding far above all that we can ask or think. He not only has power, Even without
the Lord Jesus coming to this world, God would have power to
do these things, but he couldn't do them justly, because it would
be said, well, how unjust it is to give help to those that
don't deserve it, to give help to rebels, to give those help
and assistance that have so rebelled against God, that do not deserve
anything at God's hand. That which God does must be just,
must be righteous and holy. And so he must satisfy the demands
of the broken law on behalf of his people before he can help
them. And then he must have the ability
to help them in what help they need. Things that are appointed
them in their sojourn here below, in their experience, in their
lifetime, in what God himself has appointed is the way for
his people. He is fitted and prepared to
give them the help that they need. The scriptures testify,
I've laid help upon one that is mighty, one chosen out from
among the people. So we have set before us our
Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the eternal God, that is our
refuge, that underneath are the everlasting arms, the Creator. What a solemn thing. There are
those who would look for salvation, look for help, look for blessing,
but they deny the creation. They deny what God has done in
a natural way and yet would somehow profess that they have a faith
to believe he is able to help them spiritually and save their
souls. If we do not believe in the natural
creation, There is no way that we have faith to believe in the
spiritual creation and a saving God, or a God that can make a
new heavens and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness. Jeremiah
brings before us the word of the Lord, that the gods that
have not made the earth perish from under the heavens. And the
very evidence of faith in Hebrews 11 is that by faith we understand
that the worlds were framed to things which do not appear. Those that testify they do not
believe in the creation testify they do not have faith. They
do not have saving faith, God-given faith, yet in darkness and unbelief. We have then the everlasting
God that giveth. He giveth power to the faint
and to them that have no might increases strength. So I want to look then secondly
at the faint and those that have no might. These are the recipients
of the help from the everlasting God. He giveth power to the faint
and to them that have no might increases strength. So the two
characters here really bound up in one. To the faint, the
faint and those that have no minds. Looking at the underlying
word there with faint, of course when we think of faint, well,
We could have someone losing consciousness and fainting like
the soldiers on parade on a hot day, just falling flat down. Or we could have those that just
feel very, very faint and very weak. Or we could have those
that are feeling fatigued, exhausted, weary, and that is the underlying
words there, that the word faint here is to convey being fatigued
and exhausted and weary. We think of those that would
be running a race. I think of when we used to do
cross-country running when I was at school and heavy ground in
Australia. and three mile run we did many
times during those runs, feeling hardly you could move another
step and feeling so weary and so faint. And this is the idea
that is set before us here because in the Word of God we have many
exhortations that give a picture of the way of God's people. We have the Apostle Paul saying,
let us run the race that is set before us looking unto Jesus. The running the race, weariness. Resist the devil and he shall
flee from you. Very hard to resist when you've
got temptation after temptation. Attack after attack. The Apostle
Paul says, I keep under my body lest when I preach to others
I myself am a cast away. What a battle when we got a constant,
sinful, wretched, evil heart rising up against the new man
of grace, against the things of God. The Apostle Paul says,
the good I would, I do not. That which I would not, that
I do. A wretched man that I am. There is a conflict there. The good fight of faith is the
exhortation, lay hold upon eternal life. And all of these exhortations,
they set before us that the way of God's people is instead of
a way of just like the dead fish just going with the stream, but
fighting against it, struggling against it. In nature, by nature, those that
are dead in sin and fallen, they go on in the way of sin with
no resistance at all against it. But when God shows his just
and holy law, when he shows the worth of the soul, the preciousness
of Christ, the wonderfulness of the provision in him, and
that new heavens and a new earth, a crown that fadeth not away,
are we not exhorted to strive to enter in at the straight gate? labour therefore to enter into
his rest. And all of these give the idea
of that that makes one so faint. We referred here to John Baptist
and in Matthew 3. But if we were to go to Matthew
11 at the end, Then we have come unto me, all
ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn
of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest
unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden
is light, and that is our Lord that is speaking. May the description
here dispel any thought in Eddie's heart that the path of a Christian
is an easy, smooth path that does not have anything that makes
them weary and faint in the way. The very opposite is true, and
the implication is with our text as well. is that in these conflicts
and in this fighting, in this resisting of the devil, in this
striving for the things of God, the soul, it faints. Cannot resist another hour, feel
we cannot go another day. Other reasons for fainting as
well, when we feel how weak our resistance is, when we look at
the state of our souls, when we look at the condition of the
churches, when we have blows from sinner and from saint, when
we have many discouragements in the way, there's many things
that cause the people of God to faint, the servants of the
Lord. When they see the state of the
churches, their congregations, when they feel their own hardness
and leanness and insufficiency, those things, they bring us to
faint, to feel indeed so fatigued and exhausted and weary and our text, it really sets
forth the people of God like this, but doesn't give them no
hope, that doesn't write them off, doesn't say that this is
not the path of the people of God, doesn't berate them, doesn't even exhort them to fresh
exertions It speaks to the faint and those
that have no might. And though it says no might,
if it was completely nothing, it couldn't be increased, could
it? You can't increase nothing if
you have a zero and multiply it by whatever number you like.
It still remains zero. Our Lord says, O ye of little
faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? The dear disciples came to Him,
Lord increase our faith. And we are to grow in grace and
in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Really not only in the idea here
of mind, But one thing that takes away
the strength of a man is his sin. You know, you could have
a man naturally and he be tremendously wealthy, a tremendously strong
man, but he falls foul of the law, does something worthy of
imprisonment or fine, and he's brought before the courts of
the land. What good is his status? What good is his wealth? At this
point, because he has sinned, because he has broken the law
of the land, we've had it many times in our nation or reported
from other nations, We're mighty men who have been very wealthy,
being brought in guilty of crimes and for those crimes, they're
in prison now. And what made them weak? What
was it? Took away their might, their
power, their wealth, their position, their sin. And sin takes away. We cannot stand. Adam could not
stand before God. He had to flee from his presence.
And we're told that the wicked, they shall not stand in the day
of judgment. When Joseph's brothers came before
him, when the cup had been found in Benjamin's sack, then they
could not answer. They said, our sins have found
us out. What shall we say? We are guilty.
We be all your servants. And this is where sin brings
us. Jehoshaphat, in fighting against
the adversaries that came against Judah, his prayer to God was,
we have no might nor power against this adversary, neither know
what we to do, but our eyes upon thee. And our weakness through sin takes
away our power, our strength. But what a blessing if we are
quickened to be alive, to know that we are sinners, to know
that we are under the sentence of death, to know that we cannot
stand in the day of judgment, to know that we do need to have
our might increased, and really the might that the Lord gives
his people is to know their condition and to know their need of a saviour,
or shall I say, to even bring into the character of the text,
to make them to be faint. and to have no mind. Before the
Lord helped Gideon, when Midian had come with so many thousands
against Israel, and God chose Gideon to be the leader, he reduced
his army down to 300 men. And the reason why God did that
was so that Gideon and Israel did not take the glory to themselves. The glory had to be the Lord's.
And so we have it here. A people that are brought faint
and with no might, they'll never rise up in pride and describe
the salvation to their own works. Paul is very clear of this in
Ephesians 2. He says, that by grace ye are saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, faith
is, not of works, lest any man should boast. And even when the
apostle Paul had been given great blessings that could have so
lifted him up in pride, then God gave him a thorn in the flesh,
the messenger of Satan, to buffet him, lest he be exalted above
measure. And so he was then dependent
upon God to strengthen him and help him. And so he is very clear
in that, that when I am weak, then am I strong, because the
Lord had given him the promise of grace. But the point is here,
the description of those that are to be helped Their faintness
is real. Their weariness is real. Their
lack of might is real. How many of us here, or gathering
with us online tonight, and you can say, well, regard the things
in my soul, in the churches, amongst the brethren, I have
no might. And they make me faint. They
make me faint. You know, Nehemiah, when he heard
the reports of all the desolation of Jerusalem, how sad he was,
how cast down he was. And when we see and know what
we are, and the Church of God, and we see the abominations done
in the land, don't we faint? Don't we feel to have no mind?
Our besetting sins, the evils of our hearts, the
weakness of our resistance, our poor prayers, our poor following
after the Lord, Well, this is the character that
is said here, that the creator of the ends of the earth, the
everlasting God, he giveth to. And so I want to look then in
the third place of the gift of power and increased strength. He giveth power to the faint,
and to them that have no might he increases strength. And we
can read the following two verses as well. Even the youth shall
faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. It's
not natural strength. Then we have the contrast here. But they that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings
as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk
and not faint. Now years ago, I'd been preaching
on a Lord's Day up at Nottingham. And I was, I preached morning
and afternoon, I was driving home. And that's a long way down
here to Cranbrook. And so I'd driven some, couple
of hours and got down as far as Luton and it was 6.30. And I was so weary and so faint
and I thought, well, another two hours drive, another 110
miles, I need to stop. And I thought, well, I'll turn
in, I'll turn in, I'll hear the gospel preached by Mr. Ransbottom
at Bethel. Well, I'd forgotten their service
started at six o'clock. Might have gone on if I'd have
realized that, but I thought it was 6.30. So anyway, I parked
and I walked into that chapel just as he was giving out his
text. And he spoke of, from the, Psalm
80, 84. And his text was in verse 7, they
go from strength to strength. Every one of them in Zion appeareth
before God. And then his opening remarks
were, he says, some people will say, well, this is getting stronger
and stronger. But he said, the Lord's people
prove this, that they're given strength and they use all of
that strength up and they've no more strength left. And then
the Lord gives them more strength and then they can go on. And
that was just the reason I came into that chapel in a literal
sense. I hadn't got strength to drive
further and I'd come in there with the desire that I might
get some more strength to continue the journey. And it was such
a lesson, just in a natural way, an illustration to me, but also
in a spiritual way. We can think like that too, if
we're a Christian, if we're a believer, then we'll get stronger and stronger.
Our faith will, our Christian following will, but instead we
end up walking the path of Psalm 107, where again and again we
fall down. There's none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord
in their trouble and he saved them out of their distresses.
We go from one strength, one blessing, to another blessing,
but in between those blessings there's been some deep valleys.
The psalmist says, thou knowest my down-sitting and my up-rising. You've only got to look at David's
life, a man after God's own heart. How many down-sittings and up-risings
he had. How many times when he felt he
would be swallowed up by King Saul. How many times he was able
to triumph in his God and be encouraged and lifted up. brought
down when Ziglag was burned with fire and they talked of stoning
him and then he encouraged himself in the Lord his God. And you
find this. Don't be surprised if you come
into these places where we faint and where we have no mind. But
may we be encouraged by the verse of our text He giveth. You might look for strength and
help in self in vain. You will in vain if God has a
purpose of bestowing it from himself. And he giveth. It's not earned. It's given. It's imparted. Very often it is through the
Word of God. May the Lord do it this evening.
Part to some poor sinner. Something that is a remedy to
their fainting. and gives them that might and
strength to stand and to continue and to press on. You might look
back above many times when you've been brought very low and yet
the Lord has picked you up and you're still in the way. Now
dear Peter, in Satan's sieve, ought to deny his Lord and Master
three times but brought out the other side of it, strengthened.
Lord, Thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I love Thee.
And this is the God, the Giver, who understands and knows all
things and is able and does know your case, my case, my weakness,
your weakness, your fainting, your lack of might. And this
beautiful word, He, he giveth power to the faint. And to them
that have no might, he increases strength. You mentioned Gideon. The Lord said to him, if he feared
to go down to the battle, go down and listen to what they
say. And he went down to the host
with his servant and heard one telling a dream of a cake of
parley bread that tumbled into the camp and that knocked a tent
over. And the other one said, this
is none other than the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash. It's by him shall God deliver
the host of the Midianites into Israel's hand. And Gideon was
so strengthened, he went back to the camp and said, oh, up,
for the Lord hath delivered them into our hand. He knows how to. strengthen his people, encourage
them through one word, one circumstance, one providence. And we've known
these times, we've known what it is. Be strengthened in a moment
to be so heavy, so downcast, so discouraged, and yet just
in a moment the Lord use an instance of providence or through his
word to pick us up to, instead of having the whole day with
a great cloud over it, to have a spring in our step and the
joy and love of God and to be really encouraged. And it's good to remember these
things. and to trace the source and trace
it up to God himself. So dear friend, if you are faint,
if you have no mind, here we're pointed to our Lord and Saviour,
Jesus Christ, the Eternal God. May it be spiritually, may it
be physically, May it be numerically in the
churches, may it be in the things of the Lord, a deepening of our
knowledge of the truths of God and of the hold that the Lord
has of his people, their security in him.