Charles Spurgeon Commentary Isaiah 51

This is for your comfort, dear friends. If God could make from Abraham and Sarah so great a nation as Israel, what is there that he cannot do?

Do you say that the cause of God is brought very low in these evil days? It is not as low as when there seemed to be no one but Abraham faithful in the whole world. Yet God made that one mighty man to be like a foundation upon which he built up the chosen people, to whose keeping he committed the sacred oracles. And if he did that, what can he not do?

However low you may individually sink, or however weak you may feel, look back to Abraham, and learn from his experience what God can do with you.

For the Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord;

Then what will her gardens be in those glorious days? When her very wilderness is like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord, what will her cultivated places be? Oh, what grand times are yet in store for the Church of the living God! Let us hope on, and pray on, and work on, never doubting; for, as John Wesley said, "the best of all is, God is with us;" and if he is with us, all must be well.

Joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.

For God's Church is no prison-house, no den of dragons, or cage of owls: it is a place for joy and gladness, for thanksgiving, and the voice of melody. Come, then, and let us bless the Lord with all our hearts. God is still good to Zion, and he will not desert her. He did much for Abraham; he will do much for us. We may find many precious things in the hole of that pit whence we were digged.

God will not always be forgotten; man will not always trust in his fellow man to save him, or put his confidence in the idols he has himself made. The day is coming when the King of Kings shall come to claim his own again, and his loyal people shall see the kingdom spread as it never has before.

Blessed be his name, this promise shall certainly be fulfilled: the isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they trust. It is remarkable that there are so many prophecies made concerning the isles, and that it is in islands, today, that the gospel seems to have spread so marvelously. In our own British Isles, in the isles of the southern seas, and in Madagascar, what wonders of grace have been worked!

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.

What a mercy it is to lay hold of something that will never wear out, and that can never be dissolved—something against which the tooth of time may fret itself in vain! This abiding, indestructible thing is the eternal salvation—the everlasting righteousness—which the Lord Jesus has accomplished and brought in for his people. Happy people who have this treasure for their eternal heritage!

Hearken unto me, you that know righteousness,

In the first verse of this chapter, there is a message for those who follow after righteousness; here is a word for those who know it: Hearken unto me, you that know righteousness,

the people in whose heart is my law; do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their revilings.

If you are true to God, they will be sure to revile you. A Christian should not expect to go to heaven in a whole skin; it is a part of the nature of serpents and snakes in the grass to try, if they can, to bite at the heel of the child of God, even as that old serpent, the devil, bit at the heel of him who has broken the dragon's head.

Do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their revilings, for your Master suffered in the same fashion long ago.