Listen, O Isles, Unto Me!

Posted on by Ps JJ Lim

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By Rev Samuel Rutherford
a Preparation Sermon, before the communion, at [Church]mabreck, 19 July 1634
published by Rev. Andrew A Bonar, Glasgow, 1876 (reproduced in https://archive.org/stream/fourtcomm00ruth);
minimally modernised, edited and footnoted by JJ Lim
Part 3 of 3: Christ’s Complaint & Confidence

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. 2 And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me; 3 And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified. 4 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” (Isaiah 49:1-4).

[Ed. In this final instalment of Rutherford’s preparatory sermon on Isaiah 49:1-4, he shows us how Christ’s complaint about the Jews’ rejection of Him ought to spur us not only to receive Him, but to rest in Him and hope in Him. —JJL

PS. If you wish, you may read the full sermon here:

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3. Christ’s Complaint & Confidence (v. 3-4a)

“And said unto Me, Thou art My Servant” (v. 3a)—Christ was not indeed hired by any, but by His Father. His Father sent Him and He [was pleased with1] the hire, saved the [Church], and was very faithful; but the world gave Him the devil for His thanks. God behoved to have service, and a hard piece of service out of the Man, Christ; even such a service as made Him sweat the best blood of His body. It was dear service to Christ but (so to speak) considering the way that God had laid down to bring man to heaven and satisfy justice, it was not possible that He could get the work done without a servant. The work would have lain, and our redemption ceased forever. Man nor angel, neither would nor could look upon the bargain. Then Christ, God-man, behoved to be hired, and He sought no wages of His Father, but a [Church], a seed, and the place in glory, for Himself and His which He had with the Father from eternity (Jn 17:5). From you He seeks no hire, but faith and obedience; and it in a manner, breaks Christ’s heart, to consider what service He undertook for you, and how [cold2] and indifferent you are in His service! He ran till He swat3 for you; but alas! you have neither heart nor hand in His service. He is, by His infinite benevolence, forcing good-will, kindness, love, and friendship out of us! but alas! He comes ill speed. Men will not want their pleasures, nor deny themselves for Him. Christ may say, Why, and what ails you at Me? I veiled My glory, and made Myself of no reputation, yea a curse for you! And is this your kindness to your Friend?

Truly men [fail to recognise4] Christ, in His sufferings. He came so far below His place, was so ill handled, that they all said, This is not the Messiah. Let me see who will come beneath their place, or quit an inch of their will, for Him; or cast away their lusts, deny this world’s glory, and take up their cross and follow Him? He left heaven for you; but you will not quit the earth for Him, and yet there is no comparison betwixt the two.

“Thou art My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (v. 3b)—That is, it is the nation of the Jews, to whom I will first shew My glory: “Go first to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” For you [know], when a kinsman is to sell anything, reason is he gives his friend the first offer before ever he offers the bargain to any other. So Christ came into the world to sell Himself to man. But the Jews were His brethren by birth: He took on Him the Jew’s flesh and blood, for He was a born Jew. So Christ said to the Jews, You are My friends, you shall get the first offer of Me. I will not begin with the Gentiles, till [you say no5]. Christ was even like a great market town, the [gates6] were closed upon us poor Gentiles; and upon all Britain, while the Jews got the morning of the market. But they made few or no bargains in the morning: there was no sale for Christ among the Jews. Then, on the afternoon, Christ bade open the [gates], and let the poor Gentiles come in. He said to His servants, Go your way, bid the isles come; bid Scotland and England, and the land of Sinim, and the utmost ends of the earth come. Wherefore? The Jews will not have Me: I will bargain with the Gentiles. There was a fair, and rich table covered for the Jews, God’s fair high board, and He called them to the first mess: but they, like daft bairns, ran to the play, and had more mind of their play than of their meat. They did let their meat turn cold, and ran after salvation in Moses’ law, and would not take the new feast of slain Christ; but loathed at their meat, and spilt Christ’s blood. He held the cup of His blood to them, but they did cast it all back in His face again. God said, their by-board7 might serve the Gentiles: but when the Lord saw that Israel would have none of Him, He shut out the [rude and ill-disciplined children8]; and turned them to the broad fields to shift for themselves; their Father scourged them to the door, and said, Bring in the poor hungry Gentiles. Call in the hungry isles-men, bring in the poor, the lame, the cripples, and blind beggars. Now, Scotland and England, Take your meat, and eat, and grow. God be thanked we got the cold meat: the Lord did fetch us to the first mess.

Now be not high-minded, but fear. Learn a lesson of the Jews, and be not spoilt [children9]. Eat your meat and grow thereby; take this afternoon’s market of Christ. But alas! The fair is [now dispersed10]. Alas! it is now growing like old sour drink in Scotland: and we are beginning to play with our meat. We are now beginning to clip Christ’s ordinances, and to add to, and part from His Testament. Indeed, I think Scotland is making a quarrel with Christ: they say, Our religion is naked, and clipped like, wanting the [ornaments11]; it must have ceremonies to [adorn12] it with. The gospel was sweet to us at the beginning; but now men have no [relish for13] the word; our zeal is away and dead, we have fallen from our first love. Jezebel, the false prophetess, and false apostles, are come in among us. It is a marvel, and may be a marvel, if there be not bloody heads for this labour. I fear we will be sent to the hills, as well as the Jews were: mourn for the abominations of the land. If ever you awake till the last trumpet, awake now, and look about you; and see where Christ was hidden; even in the hollow of God’s hand. Flee to Him and He shall hide you, the members, there also.

“Then I said, I have laboured in vain” (v. 4a).—See Christ is brought in here complaining of the Jews to His Father. Take heed He makes not His moan of Scotland and England (for Britain is one of the chief isles). Is He not saying even to you who are here, Will you play Me the same measure that the Jews played Me? O play it not! Many a dirty armful I had of them; long did I bear them in My arms, and yet they gave Me small thanks. So Christ is here, as it were, sorry that He had lost His travel, and spent the strength of His body, in seeking the Jews, and saying, “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida!” (Mt 11:21) “Jerusalem, Jerusalem” (Mt 23:37). “And He came to His own, and His own received Him not.” And this complaint He bears to His Father; He is even, as it were, saying, Take up the welcome the house of Israel gave Me: they pierced My hands and My feet. And here is a help and encouragement to all God’s faithful ministers, after their taking pains, and having spent their strength in vain, and seeing little fruit of their labours. Lo, here Christ in Isaiah’s days making the same complaint.

There is an ordinary word of the Papists, “If your doctrine be the truth, where is the power of it?” How comes it that there are so few gained to Christ by the power of it? Answer. Surely the Jews might have said the same of Christ? If you are the Messiah, where are all who follow You? We see only twelve men and seventy disciples, and some few women: but what are they to all Israel and Judah, who are not brought in? Christ says it is very true, few follow Me, I have spent My strength in vain, and for nothing. What then? “My reward is with the Lord.” Jesus Christ is not the worse, that few follow Him, that few will take Him. Although only two in a kingdom take Christ, Christ is not to be [cast14] away. Neither will Christ rue because the Jews will not take Him, or because few follow Him. But when Christ comes with His sword and bow to a land, if we, like as many wild beasts, run into the woods, and our consciences flee into dens and caves of the earth; one to his pride, another to his den of covetousness, a third to the wilderness of vanity as we do, and refuse to abide the shot of Christ’s bow, yet He will do the office of a Mediator and Saviour, and say of us to His Father, as He said of the Jews, I have spent My strength in vain: and will give in a heavy complaint of us to His Father. And God will read and hear Christ’s bill, and give Him justice. It will be a hard matter, if our Saviour turn our pursuer; if our Advocate, who should plead for us, turn a complainer, plead against us, and say, Father, I came to them, and knocked till My head was bedewed with rain, and they would not let Me in.

See then; if Christ preach, and say, I got the wind for My pains, none were converted, it is not the power and holiness of the preacher that convert men. Nay, men think it is the want of ministers that undoes us. If I had (say they) heard Christ from the pulpit, as Mary and Peter did, I would then soon have been converted. Nay, Judas heard Christ, but what the better was he? I grant if a minister be not called, and graced with God’s Spirit to preach, he who made him a preacher might as well have made a swine-herd of him. But when God’s chosen servants cast out the net, they take not aye in fish. Christ went through the seas, and shot His lines seeking fishes, and sometimes caught nothing. Peter (Acts 2) shot his line, and caught three thousand. What is the want of success, but God’s saying, It is not the preacher, but the Spirit of God that does it? Then call no man Rabbi: we take God to witness, that we would have you off our hand. We say not, Christ is only with us. Read the King’s letter, carry it who will, if they have God’s calling. And yet I tell you it is possible when Christ preaches, your tide of conversion is not yet come; may be it is not marrying time; it is not time to shake the tree. you have not gotten play enough yet, and therefore no marvel you are not yet converted. Will not one fisher fish a pool, roll over the streams, and get nothing; and another of less skill may come and catch the fishes? “I have laboured in vain.”—When Christ came to the world in His flesh and preached; did they receive Him as Mediator? He had no greater errand in the world; all was against Him. In His cradle they sought His life; He had as many sore temptations in the world as He had even of the devil himself. Nay the world so tempted Him, in His calling, that He and they were [always] at holding and drawing. They could never agree any time. What ailed them at Him? for He came a good errand to the world, to bring them home to His Father. He wronged no man, yet they say He is a deceiver. The best work that could be, was to forgive sins: yet they called that blasphemy. They mistook the casting out of devils. No, say they, He has the master devil, Beelzebub, the captain of all the rest, who commands all the little ones, and by him He casts out devils. And they slew the Heir, and cast Him out of the inheritance. So if Christ found the world a hard bed, I think all His friends have cause to think so of it too. For badly were His friends treated. Jeremiah cries out, “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast born me, a man of strife, and a man of contention to the whole earth” (Jer 15:10). All the people cursed Jeremiah: and see how the apostles were treated and what they met with, 1 Corinthians 4:11, 12, 13, “Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place; and labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth and offscourings of the world:—We become all things to all men.”

Was not that a sad welcoming, that He and His got in the world? Christ owned all His members: but they will be [disregarded and frowned upon15] here. You know the mother will not let her own child want; but cares not how long her [step-children16] be both naked, and starving for hunger, because she is a step-mother. So the world is a step-mother to Christ, and all His children; it cares not to see them, naked, poor, and hungry, persecuted and heart-broken.

I like it not, when the world handles you as her own children, and casts a piece to you when you weep. Better be God’s sons, and the world’s step-[children], than the world’s [darlings17]. I love it not ill that all God’s children get a hard bed, and ill cheer in this world. Christ had not a house amongst them: they would not give Him a drink of water in His thirst: they would not welcome Him and His doctrine: they gave Him but cold cheer when He came to the house of His friends. David was once that he could neither get bread nor water in the wilderness, and said, he was a sojourner here, as all his fathers were Abraham dwelt in tents; and Jacob was a herd to Laban, a broken stranger, and was glad to lodge in the fields, with a stone under his head for a pillow. Israel lodged forty years in the wilderness, like the beggars, not two nights in one place. Moses wanted father and mother to bring him up. Christ and His disciples could not get lodging in Samaria. Woe worth Esau, but the world plays him a slip, and makes him sell his birthright for his breakfast. I think all God’s children may call the world an [unpleasant inn18]: but they must [nevertheless19] take it as they get it, as their Master before them did.

Let us carry ourselves like the good natured stranger, who resolves never to quarrel, nor fight with his host; howbeit his meat be ill, and his reckoning dear, and he have to sleep on a straw bed. He says, What the matter, for all my time, I will never make a noise about it: I am but to stay for a night. Surely Christ and His Spouse get but a cothouse20, and a straw bed here. [Do you not see21] how all the wicked have their horns out against Him and His silly lambs. They are chasing them from one kingdom to another, and hunting them out at the town’s end; just as if you saw a poor man going through a town, sad, weary, and hungry; this [scoundrel22] and that [scoundrel] hound their dogs at him; the poor man is glad to get away with a whole skin. Christ and His dear children are going through this world, sad, weary, and heart-broken; and the indwellers of this city send out all their dogs after them. O, if you were at home. O fy! sleep not in this dear inns. I dare say, Cain, Saul, and Judas have not reason to speak good of it, but to say as men say of a dear bargain: Woe be to it, we spent much on it, but got little good in it. Esau may say, I lost my soul for a breakfast in it. Judas may say, Woe worth it; for I lost my soul in it, for thirty pieces of silver. All men may say, We got a crack in our conscience for our pleasures, and all was but vanity; a broken tooth, a snow ball, a feather. Alas! That we love it so well, make it our darling and sit down upon it. Elijah was a heart-broken man, and would fain have been out of the world. Job was in it like an old ship, that gets a dash on this rock and that rock; and would fain have been hidden in the grave. Daniel was a poor persecuted man, and a captive under the enemy’s feet. And what should I say of the rest? They all got ill cheer in the world. See Hebrews 11:38, “Of whom the world was not worthy; they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth,” and there had no light. John the Baptist lived in the wilderness, a friendless man; and at last they took off his head.

It is good if the old ship comes in at the port, ere she be driven all to flinders. If a man was riding through his enemies, and every one shooting at him, he would spur his horse fast, till he came in to his own ground. I think the believer’s poor soul is like a ship among rocks; it gets dash after dash. O that we were in Christ’s good searoom23, then we should defy them all.

4. Confidence in God’s Judgement & Reward (v. 4b)

“Yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God” (v. 4b).—Lest men should think Christ did rue the bargain, lo, here He sorrows not, nor rues. He says not, Let Israel go to hell! No; but My conscience says to Me, I have done the work, and My God will reward Me. So, then, in a temptation, when you are ill handled by the world, when you have a sore heart, and you cannot get matters as you would have them, fear not; a good conscience will get comfort. When the people were wrong (1 Saml 12:3), and wronged Samuel, they would have another judge, he mends himself well, and says, “Whose ox or ass have I taken; or whom have I defrauded?” Job, when he was tempted by his friend, said, “My witness is in heaven, and my record is on high” (Job 16:19). And David, when He was accused of treason by Saul, when he might not clear himself, prays, “O Lord, my God, if I have done this; if iniquity be in my hands; let the enemy persecute my soul” (Ps 7:3, 5).

That which is called a good conscience is like a glass, wherein a man may see his face. Whereas, the wicked have a conscience like a foul, muddy fountain, where the bottom cannot be seen. Nay, he dare not in a heavy temptation, or in death, go into his conscience; for it is like a smoky house all full of reek, that a man who has tender eyes cannot abide it, nor be able to hold up his head in it. But when all the people are cursing Jeremiah, and he thinks he has a hard lot of it, he goes into his conscience, and takes it before the Lord, and says, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart” (Jer. 15:16). Now, I think the wicked man’s conscience is like a dung-hill, all full of filth; he dare not, he cannot take it up: his old adulteries; his old rotten falsehood that he committed twenty years ago. So his thefts, his blood-shed, his covetousness, his oppression, his backbiting, and his wrongs done to this man and that man, are such nauseous things, that he dare not turn them up, for fear they cause him vomit. When Judas looked into his conscience, he wakened a sleeping lion; for out came falsehood to his Master; out came blood-shed; and out came love to the thirty pieces of silver like three furious lions, and devour and tear him to pieces. See that you keep your consciences void of offence towards God and man.

Make your life a fine, good, and sound building, reared up upon a good foundation, for the time to come: that when your life is ended, and your work done, you need not think shame of your work. But you must not essay this on your own strength, for that will be of no avail; but only in the strength of Jesus Christ and Divine aid. It is in the Lord only that there is righteousness and strength. Man’s free will is not able to effectuate a saving change upon any person. You might as well say that the Ethiopian could change his skin, and the leopard his spots.

But, oh! woe’s me to see so many men land masters of their consciences: as if their conscience was so great that they might sell part of it in fairs and markets to the best bidder. Some count little of their conscience: they will take an edge thereof to augment their house. Another will dispense with part thereof to enlarge his possession. Another will part with half of his conscience to enhance his credit. Many pay little respect to their conscience in buying and selling if they can get gain. The merchant wastes his conscience; for before he quit an inch of his credit, he would rather quit an ell24 of his conscience. The proud man wastes his conscience, to carry on his pride. Many now, for the world, and the standing of their estate, can sell both goods, truth, and three or four ells of their conscience. Thus, the [church]-man wastes his conscience; as if his conscience were a long web of an hundred ells; he may throw away part thereof, and it never be missed. And [you know25] what some men have now devised? They have devised what they are pleased to call indifferent things, indifferent truths in religion; and think that they may sell twenty stone weight of them, and have enough behind. But in Moses’ days truth was scarcer: Moses behoved to make all things according to the pattern he saw in the mount: and he would not leave a hoof behind. But it is a wealthier world now! We have broad fair fields, broad and long indifferent things: we may sell acres of them good and cheap. But how anything lawful, or unlawful, can be indifferent, we have yet to learn. Sin is still sin, and truth truth; and none of them a matter of indifference. Lord, help this nation to prepare for the awakening storm that is coming to bring us to our right senses. And I pray you, take His word along with you, as a means of preparation. Keep your conscience clean and undefiled. Christ kept His conscience to the latter end of the day, till He had spent His strength, done His work, and finished His talk; and then He got joy of it. Keep your conscience pure, as much as possible, to the end of your day: for a clear conscience in a dying hour, will give more satisfaction than all that this world can afford. And beware of the devil’s or the world’s hammer of covetousness, lest it light on your conscience, and break it all to pieces: and then see how all the craft you have will mend it. To God only wise, be praise. Amen. Ω

  1. Orig. “wan.” ↩︎
  2. Orig. “coldrife.” ↩︎
  3. Prob. “sweat.” ↩︎
  4. Orig. “misken.” ↩︎
  5. Orig. “ye say nay.” ↩︎
  6. Orig. “ports.” ↩︎
  7. I.e., side-table where the leftovers are laid. ↩︎
  8. Orig., “misleared bairns.” ↩︎
  9. Orig. “bairns.” ↩︎
  10. Orig. “like to skail.” ↩︎
  11. Orig. “busking.” ↩︎
  12. Orig. “busk.” ↩︎
  13. Orig. “list to.” ↩︎
  14. Orig, “casten.” ↩︎
  15. Orig. “flouted at, and gloomed at.” ↩︎
  16. Orig. “step-bairns.” ↩︎
  17. Orig. “daties.” ↩︎
  18. Orig. “uncouth inns.” ↩︎
  19. Orig. “e’en.” ↩︎
  20. I.e., “a small, humble cottage.” ↩︎
  21. Orig. “See ye not.” ↩︎
  22. Orig. “blackguard.” ↩︎
  23. I.e., we have space to maneuver. ↩︎
  24. A measure of length. A Scottish ell is about 94 cm. ↩︎
  25. Orig. “ken ye.” ↩︎