Isaiah 52:1-2 - Homiletics

God helps those who help themselves.

It is a law of God's providence to require of men, as conditional to his assisting them, some corresponding effort. " Ask , and it shall be given you; seek , and ye shall find; knock , and it shall be opened unto you" ( Matthew 7:7 ). He is always ready to give; but he will have men stretch out their hand to receive. For the careless and the apathetic, he will—perhaps we might say, he can—do nothing. Thus he calls men into his Church, but they must arise and obey the call; he offers them grace, but they must use the means of grace; he is willing to grant them eternal life, but upon this life they must "lay hold" ( 1 Timothy 6:12 ). When he delivered his people out of Egypt, he required them to "rise up, and go forth," and make long and toilsome marches through a dreary wilderness; and only after forty years of effort did he bring them to Canaan. So, too, when he would deliver them from Babylon, those only were delivered who braced themselves for a great exertion, left all that they had, affronted peril ( Ezra 8:31 ), undertook the difficult and wearisome journey ( Isaiah 43:19 ) from Chaldea to Palestine. The reason would seem to be that God, in all his dealings with man, is disciplining him and training him, eliciting the good that is in him, and causing it to acquire strength by active exercise, thus fitting him for a higher state of existence than the present, and leading him onward toward the perfection which he designed him to reach.