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I. THE CHARACTER DESCRIBED AS NEEDING THE SAVIOUR'S GRACE. "Him that is weary." This description includes a very large class. All may not ascribe their weariness to the same cause, nor may all be sensible of their weariness to the same extent. Yet all are weary.

1. Not in the world of sense only do you complain of weariness. It is impossible for the unrenewed heart to find rest even in things that are Spiritual. Heaven itself would to such a one cease to be heaven. What a weariness do you find in the religion of Jesus Christ! Of prayer, of public worship, of hearing sermons, of religious conversation, of the service and work of the Lord you say, "What a weariness!"

2. The description, certainly, includes those who are truly anxious about the salvation of their souls.

3. The Lord's weary ones include His own quickened people, who feel the burden of the body of sin, and are cast down because of their difficulties.

4. The assaults of the adversary, too, contribute not a little to the sense of weariness, which often prostrate a child of God.

5. Add to these the numerous and varied trials and afflictions which beset his pathway to heaven, and you have in outline the picture of his case.

II. CHRIST'S QUALIFICATIONS TO MEET THE CASE OF SUCH.

1. His participation of our nature. Absolute Godhead could not of itself have conveyed to us sinners one word of sympathy or comfort. Neither could the angels do it. They are total strangers to the weariness to which sinful children of men are heirs. But, the man Christ Jesus becomes a partaker of the very nature whose burdens He sought to relieve. "Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, He also took part in the same."

2. As He thus took upon Him our nature, so He also endured our sinless though humbling infirmities.

3. In addition to all this, the Lord God had given Him the tongue of the learned in another sense. I refer to the communication of the Divine Spirit (Isaiah 61:1). Never was there a tongue like Christ's — so learned, so skilled, so practised, and so experienced. "Never man spake like this man."

4. The purpose for which this tongue of the learned was given Him is thus described — "That He should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary."

(1)  A word,

(2)  a word in season,

(3)  that He should know how to speak.

5. But when Christ speaks to the weary, it is not to the outward ear merely, but to the heart — with almighty power. And the result is rest.

III. THE REST WHICH JESUS IMPARTS, when He speaks the word in season.

1. We are seeking rest by nature everywhere, and in everything but in Jesus. We seek it in the outward world, in the moral world, in the religious world — and we find it not. We seek it in conviction, in ordinances, in doing the works of the law — and still it evades us. We go from place to place, and from means to means, and still the burden presses, and we find no rest. No, and never will, until it is sought and found in Jesus.

2. Yet, in the case of a tried believer, the rest that Jesus imparts does not always imply the removal of the burden from which the sense of weariness proceeds. The burden is permitted to remain, and yet rest is experienced. Wonderful indeed! How is it explained? That burden takes us to Jesus. He pours strength into our souls, life into our spirits, and love into our hearts, and so we find rest. It is also matter of much practical importance, that you take heed not to anticipate or forestall His promised grace. For every possible emergency in which you can be placed, the fulness of Christ and the supplies of the Covenant are provided. But that provision is only meted out as the necessity for which it was intended occurs.

3. There is an hour approaching — the last great crisis of human life — when, we shall all, more than ever, need Him who hath the "tongue of the learned." It will be of all seasons the most trying and solemn — the season that separates the soul from the body, and ushers the immortal spirit into eternity. Is it not our highest wisdom to know this Saviour now?

(C. Ross M. A.)

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KJV: The Lord GOD hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.

WEB: The Lord Yahweh has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with words him who is weary: he wakens morning by morning, he wakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.