Isaiah 49:4 Then I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the LORD… Assuming that these words express Christ's experience, they cannot be taken in an absolute sense. He laboured in vain, compared with what the kind and amount of agency employed were suited to effect. We shall look at this fact as revealing certain other facts in relation to human nature. I. IT REVEALS MAN'S FREEDOM OF ACTION. We cannot conceive of a mightier moral energy being brought to bear upon mind than that which Jesus brought to bear upon the Jewish mind, and yet it was resisted. The Jews resisted moral omnipotence. He appealed in the most powerful way to three of the most influential principles in our nature. 1. Belief. If you want to influence men, you must take your stand upon their faiths. There were, especially, two faiths which Christ appealed to; the one instinctive, and the other attained. The former was, that miracles are the works of God; the latter, that their Scriptures predicted a Messiah. Christ appealed to these predictions. 2. Conscience. His character, doctrines, and precepts bore directly on the conscience. 3. Interest. He revealed the judgment-day, unfolded heaven, uncovered hell. Thus He assailed their souls; and yet they resisted. Do not say that man has no moral power; he has proved himself, by the comparative ineffectiveness of our Saviour's labours, to have power to resist the mightiest moral influences of God. II. IT REVEALS MAN'S PERVERSITY OF CHARACTER. The possession of the capacity to resist the highest moral influences is the gift of God. It is neither subject for blame nor praise, but for thankfulness to God. But the using of that capacity to oppose holy and Divine influences is our guilt and ruin. There were three perversities in the Jews that led to this resistance. 1: Perversity of judgment. (1) Their judgments were sensuous. They "judged after the flesh," In the Scriptures they read of a coming king, priest, conqueror; they identified that king with pageantry — that priest, with flowing robes and sacrifices — that conqueror, with mighty armies. When the true King, Priest, and Conqueror came, He had none of these, and they would not have Him. (2) Their judgments were servile. The Scribes and Pharisees were their theological masters. They allowed them to manufacture their creed. Christ came and denounced their great leaders as heretics and hypocrites, and they waxed indignant. This sensuous, servile judgment in religion is ever an obstruction to the spread of truth. 2. Perversity of feeling. There were two perverse feelings, especially, that led them to reject Christ. (1) An undue reverence for the antique. They loved the antiquity of Judaism. Men who tie themselves to precedents rather than principles, can never advance. (2) An undue respect for worldly greatness. They thought a deal about worldly wealth and pomp; Christ had none. 3. Perversity of life. Josephus informs us that so corrupt was the Jewish nation in the time of Christ, that had not the Romans come and destroyed them, God would have rained fire from heaven, as of old, to consume them. These perversities of judgment, feeling, and life, have ever been impulses stimulating man to oppose Christianity. III. IT REVEALS MAN'S EXCLUSIVE SUPPORT IN HIS HIGHEST LABOURS. The highest labour is that in which Christ was engaged. What was His support? Not adequate success; for He complains of not having it. Here it is, "Surely My judgment is with the Lord, and My work with My God." Two supporting ideas are here involved — 1. That the cause in which we are engaged is the cause of God. "My work is with my God" 2. That the reward of our efforts is from God. "My judgment" (reward) "is with the Lord." The good will he rewarded, not according to the success of their labours, but according to the purity of their motives, and the devotion of their power. (D. Thomas, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the LORD, and my work with my God. |
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