Isaiah 53 comments by Charles H. Spurgeon

"As a Sheep Before her Shearer is dumb."

(I will type what I can read, even if I have misspellings. DRM)

    I consider our Saviours patience - "He was dumb and opened not His Mouth." and did not accuse one of them of cruelty or injustice . Look and see your Lord and Saviour lying down in passive resignation beneath the shearers as they take everything away that was dear to Him, and yet "He opened not His mouth."

    I see in this in Christ our Lord complete submission. He gives Himself up there is no reserve about it, oh to submit our whole spirit, soul, and body, to resign ourselves completely, to learn self conquest and then the delivering up of conquered self entirely to God. 

    And just as a sheep is taken by the shearers, and its wool is all cut off, so doth the Lord take his people and shear them but we open our mouths a great deal.

    Here comes the Shearer, He takes the Sheep, and begins to cut, cut, cut. taking away the wool by wholesale.

    Affliction is often used as the big shears - dear ones taken away, health, property, sometimes even slander comes, and cuts off our good name, oh, that we may feel we are not our own but bought with a price, so cheerfully yield to anything by which God can get honour.

    Notice that the sheep itself is benefited by the operation of shearing before they begin to shear the sheep, the wool is long and old. and gets entangled with every bush and thistle it comes in contact, and the sheep looks ragged and forlorn. 

    Some do not like the operation any more than the sheep do but first it is in His (cut off 4 words) our benefit.

    Before the sheep are shorn, they are always washed, I want to suggest to you, that whenever a trial threatens to overtake you before it actually arrives you should ask the Lord to sanctify you. If He is going to clip the wool ask Him to wash it before He takes it off. Asked to be cleansed Spirit, Soul and Body. 

    Remember every comfort is only a loan. There is nothing our own but our God. We foolishly consider that our mercies belong to us, and when the Lord takes them away we half grumble.

    He gives and blessed be His name He takes but what He gave.

    Be ye sure that when the Lord is clipping and shearing us He will not hurt us. "In the world ye shall have tribulation, but in Me ye shall have peace."

    If ever the Shears do make us bleed, it is because we kick, because we struggle. If we were patient as the sheep, we should just lie still, and the process would cost us very little pain.

    Pain grows into pleasure when you come to feel that God wills it, you are glad to suffer, because He ordains you should.

    It is the kicking and the struggling that make the shearing work so hard.

    You will notice about sheepshearing that the shearers always shear at a suitable time.

    The Lord does not send us two burdens at a time, and if He does, He sends double strength. "He stayeth His rough wind in the day of His East Wind." He knows how to present our suffering more tribulation than we can bear. He shears us, but not to injure us. He clips away the wool, but sends the genial temperature, so that we may be able to flourish under our loss.

    When He takes away our mercies He is ready to supply us with more. It is with us, as with the sheep, there is more wool coming.

    Whenever the Lord takes away our earthly comforts with one hand, one, two, three, He restores with the other hand sic, twelve, scores, a hundred; he takes away by spoonfuls and He gives by cartloads, "Yes joy cometh in the morning."

    There is always as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. The great sea of Divine Love has bigger fish in it, than ever we have taken out of it.

    If we have lost our position, there is another position for us. God opens another door when He shuts the first.

    If He has taken away The Manna, it is because they have the corn of Canaan for them to live upon. 

    If the water of the Rock did not follow the tribes any longer, it was because they could drink of the Jordan and of the Brooks that flowed in that land of hills and valleys.

    God is the best judge of the suitability of our trial. Lie still, lie still, lie quite still! Alas you say - my grief comes from the most cruel quarter, this grief does not come directly from God, it comes from those who ought to have treated me with gratitude. Remember (cut off three words) bottom of all your tribulation. Look through the second causes to the first great cause.

    It is a great mistake when we fret over the human instrument which smites us, and forget the hand which uses the rod.

    God uses the staff tho' it be of Ebony or black thorn. It is well to have done with all this picking and choosing, and to leave the whole matter in the hand of Infinite wisdom.

    This is the pith of my sermon on sheep, yield thyself, yield thyself, oh believer lie passive, struggle not. He must have His own way with us so what is the good of rebellion? If you and I struggle against God we shall get into troubles instead of one and after all there is not half so much trouble in a trozzble, as there is in our kicking against the trozzble.