1/9/55

Scripture: Isaiah 38: 1-16

Text: Isaiah 38: 16; “O Lord, by these things men live.”

This is a time in the year when a great deal of attention gets focused on basketball games. A large number of fans watch, with eagerness, the progress of their favorite team. And the fellows who make up a team, or would like to be part of a team, keep themselves in shape for the game by vigorous training.

Now and then, at one place or another in the country, some coach feels that the members of his squad are not keeping fit because of violations of training rules. When that becomes apparent, there is usually a drastic revision of membership on the squad until the team is made up of members who all accept the discipline that keeps them in top shape for their performance.

When we go to a musical concert we look for the perfection in tempi, harmony, and interpretation that makes fine music a re-creation for us. But no concert is presented without long hours of discipline in study and practice by the performer over a great period of time.

High school and college debaters spend long and conscientious hours reading in the field of their debate topic and practicing in the presentation of facts and persuasions, before entering the competition of debate tournaments.

Every dramatic play offered to the public by school group or professional theater means preparation, training, work and more work.

Civilized living means preparation and training. No one expects to get far in his or her chosen vocation without education for it -- either in formal schooling or on-the-job training or both. And one needs to accept, mentally and spiritually, the disciplines necessary to achieve and maintain the skills for his living. This acceptance is best achieved not as mere obedience, but as something positively desired.

Some of the disciplines of army life are accepted by the soldier trainee as if they were thrust upon his unwilling self. But the best soldier is the fellow whose morale is high with the desire to do his task well, and with the will to prepare himself for it.

Keeping one’s self fit for a positive kind of living may mean a recognition of what it is that mankind lives by. The secret of a great life is usually found in recognizing what it is by which one must live.

A Russian novelist of the past century, Leo Tolstoy, is regarded as one of the great among men. Probably not many read his books these days, though he had a considerable influence among earlier readers. For several decades in the 19th century, before his death in 1910, Tolstoy’s genius at writing made him quite the idol of his people. Yet, for a long time he was, inwardly, terribly unhappy. He explored every sin and vice he knew with a thoroughness that might be likened to the waywardness of the youthful Augustine. But when he later wrote about it in his “Confessions” he said, “My life, a life of indulgence and desires, was meaningless and evil.”

In fact a mental depression settled upon him so heavily, and miserably, that he was tempted to take his own life. He lived in a room where a piece of knotted rope was the old-fashioned make-shift for a fire escape. This rope he would lock in the closet at night, and he would give the key to a friend, lest he should yield during long and sleepless nights to an impulse to hang himself. He later said: “I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.”

Then Tolstoy began to take long walks in fields and forest. He mingled with people who lived simply and without sophistication. Often unlettered, they nonetheless developed something of solid character as they struggled for bread under conditions more harrowing than slavery. He discovered that these peasants had a real faith in God, and that this was the only thing that gave their life meaning and thus made it possible for them to live.

So he set out to find their solace for himself. Three years later, at a time when he was alone in the woods, he knew that God had come to him. His doubt, his despair and his harassing speculation were resolved. He later said: “The glad waves of life rose within me.”

Still later, he put it in very simple yet profound words. In this classic utterance, he said, “To know God, and to live, is one and the same thing. God is life. Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God.”

What are the things by which you live? What is it that keeps you in training, or could keep you in training for your life? Suppose we take a further look at living and ask ourselves: What are the things by which people try living today, day by day?

(1) One fellow claims to live by sheer luck. He considers life a gamble and plays it that way. He is reckless about the rules of life, yet almost everything to which he sets his mind, or lays his hand, comes out on top. He thinks he was born under a lucky star. So he plays life’s market with careless abandon, and kids or chides those whom he calls “cautious.” He would surely scoff at Emerson’s dictum that “shallow men believe in luck.”

(2) Another man claims that he lives by his own wits. He says that times are tough. Only the fellow who grinds and grubs and figures and plods can hope to outwit the other fellows and carry off the prize. He channels all his powers into a single groove where he sweats, and works, and tenses -- every gain accounted for and each loss lamented.

(3) Still another fellow may live by his successes. “He is on his way up;” so say his friends. “He’s got something on the ball and there’s no stopping him.” Everything he says or does is geared to his next step on the ladder of success. He’s a climber. His eye is steadily on promotion. And his theme song is “Everything’s goin’ my way.”

These may offer, to some, pictures of satisfactory means by which to live. But what happens when suddenly, for some unknown or unrecognized reason, a man’s luck runs out, or he comes to his wit’s end, or the escalator of his successes stops? By what does he then live?

In the book of Isaiah, the prophet recounts the story of King Hezekiah who ruled over Judah seven centuries before Jesus of Nazareth was born. King Hezekiah was a good ruler, who had instituted many reforms for the betterment of his people. But at the time referred to in the reading of this morning’s Scripture lesson, the bottom had dropped out of everything for him. Other nations around his own were boiling with tumult and revolt. Judah had been long under the threatening shadow of Assyria’s army, so that it was like living under siege.

Now another trouble beset Hezekiah; he had no son to succeed him as ruler of Judah -- and he was gravely ill! In middle life, with a good record of faithful work behind him, he could see ahead only the solemn reminder from Isaiah the prophet: “Set your house in order, because you are going to die.”

Confronted with the shortness of his life, the suddenness of death, the mystery of the unseen, and the need for completion of work already underway, Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and wept, and prayed, and asked the age-long question: “Why?”

Then, as the account goes, the Lord came to Isaiah the prophet to go and tell the king that the Lord had heard and heeded his prayer, and that, after all, he would live. Out of the valley of that shadow came Hezekiah, with a song of thanksgiving in his heart. And there was upon his lips this testimony: “O Lord, by these things men live.”

What did he bring back from his experience that may be a word for us today; -- something by which we may be in training for the obligations and opportunities of our living? By what things did he believe men do live?

(1) For one thing, Hezekiah learned that men do not really live without God. Can you picture him in the prosperity of his reign? Things were going along well. He was surrounded by the wealth of art collections and the beauty of his palace. The people were amiable and content with his reforms. Then the blow fell upon him. He was faced with untimely death, and out of this shattering knowledge, he learned that the ultimate reality in life is God.

This experience is not far from you and me. We go through life fairly light-hearted, absorbed in our business and hobbies and casual interests, and least concerned with Him whose will made us. Some of us take God for granted as though the creator were a mascot taken along for luck, or a fire escape to use when things get hot. Others admire the Deity, but never open themselves to His moral claims. Others try to fashion God in their own image, being too selfish or lazy to meet the requirements of a God who made them in His image.

Then life falls to pieces; a loved one dies; or the apple of one’s eye is permanently stricken with disease or disfigurement; or some trusted friend proves faithless and one is left with a disillusioned ache in his heart. This experience of catastrophe is not far from either you or me. Ought we not be ready for it when we are called upon to meet it?

When A. J. Gossip lost his wife suddenly, he mounted to his pulpit the very next Sunday to preach a sermon on the topic: “When Life Tumbles In -- what Then?” He referred to a painting in the National Gallery which portrays Jesus Christ on the cross. Around him is the dense darkness of Calvary. But when one studies the picture he sees that the artist wants him to see that there is another figure there, indistinct to the physical eye, but very real as a Presence -- the form of God. His hands support the hands of Christ. His face is more pain-wracked than the face of His crucified Son. And from the depths of his own experience, Gossip said: “The presence, sufficiency, and sympathy of God, these things grow very real and very sure and very wonderful.”

(2) Hezekiah learned that one cannot really live without forgiveness. He discovered that God was a first necessity in his life; that only God could give him a fresh start; that only God can completely forgive. He said: “O Lord, thou hast cast all my sins behind my back.”

Now he was to have a new beginning. And it is with fresh, and forgiven beginnings that each of us really live.

How can one rise up in the morning with old grudges smoldering and smoking in his heart and go to work with all the blackness of yesterday festering in his heart? Does it add anything but more trouble to spend the day insulting and upsetting others, never bowing the knee to God or to others with the desire to be forgiven?

The world is full enough of touchy, irritated and irritable people without you or me unnecessarily adding our own alum to life’s potion. It washes the heart to say, “I’m sorry, please forgive me” now and then. And actually it is impossible to go along as happily as you really want to do without such an occasional cleansing of the soul.

“O Lord, by those things men live” when God comes and says, in the words of his son, “Your sins are forgiven you. Go and sin no more.” [John 8: 11].

(3) Hezekiah learned, further, that you cannot really live without a thankful heart. When he returned from the portals of death, knowing himself saved from an early grave by the will of the omnipotent, this king said, “We will sing -- all the days of our life, at the house of the Lord.”

This radiant note runs through much of the Bible. The Psalmist, after plumbing the depths, sings: “Thou hast delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling -- what shall I render unto the Lord for all his bounty to me --- I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving -- Praise the Lord.” [Psalm 116: 8, 12, 17, 19].

But note this carefully; that when you enter the fullness of the New Testament, the praises and thanksgivings of redeemed men are not just a way of saying to God, “Thanks for your favors.” They are not a mere bow as if to acknowledge that God got them out of a jam.

These are thankful for the fact that, even at the cost of their lives, God’s name and cause have been vindicated before the world, God’s purpose for men strengthened, God’s goodness has triumphed.

The old Scotch covenanter, Alan Cameron, was tossed into a stinking cell in an Edinburgh prison. Presently the gate opened and in strode hard and grim soldiers carrying something. Tearing off the covering cloth they asked, “Do you know these?” He recognized the head and hands of his own son, Richard, slain for his stand for Jesus Christ. The elder Cameron bent and kissed the dead head and said, “I know them! I know them! They are my son’s, my dear son’s.” Then he looked up and continued, “It is the Lord. Good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me or mine, but has made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days.”

Can you picture any evil of men darker than that? And can you think of any thing less touchable by all evil conniving than the old man’s trust in a God of forgiveness and mercy -- a God by whose presence men can live though they slay the body.

Out of the experiences of God’s presence, his forgiveness and our responding gratitude to Him is born the training that makes of us good soldiers of Christ, as indeed we ought, and I trust want to be.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, January 9, 1955