Bible Commentaries

The Day of the East Wind

Isaiah 27:8

I take our text as a poet's thought. Translated, then, I read these meanings in it: Firstly, Our trials are timed. Secondly, Our sufferings are measured. Thirdly, Our lives are compensated.

I. Our Trials are Timed.—"He stayeth His rough wind in the day of the east wind." It is something to know the east wind has its day. To everything under heaven, even the blighting scourge out of the east, there is a time.

In its larger aspects we are all agreed on that There are whole classes of trials that have their season as surely as seed-time and harvest have. God in the life means order, means succession, means changing discipline for changing years. When I once see that trials have their times, I gain a new stability and peace.

Take no anxious thought about tomorrow. Do not go out to meet your troubles half-way. Till the day of the east wind dawns it cannot blow. When its morning comes, a sovereign God will summon it

II. Our Sufferings are Measured.—The rough, rude, boisterous gale is on a man. He never could stand the blight of the east wind now. God sees: God knows: God willeth not that any man should perish. If the east wind must blow, the rough wind shall be called home that morning. And that is a poet's image of God's tender mercy.

III. Our Lives are Compensated.—The east wind blows. Is life worth living Today? Can there be any compensation for that searching gale? Just on account of that east wind, God kept the rough wind in its chains this morning. It is heaven's compensation for the one that the other shall have no liberty to blow Today.

I want you to believe God's ways are equal. We should fret less, we should worry less, we should have sweeter hearts, and far, far kindlier tongues, if we but realized God's compensating hand. You have been crying out bitterly against the east wind; you have quite forgotten that the rough wind is stayed. You have no iron will, no masterful character; you are impressionable, yielding, almost weak. So is the sea impressionable, yet there are glories unspeakable of light and shadow on it, and a highway for the great navies there.

—G. H. Morrison, Flood-Tide, p220.

References.—XXVII:12.—J. A. Baird, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxx1906 , p148. XXVII:13.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol1. No2868. XXVIII:1-13.—A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— is, p125. XXVIII:3-5.—Ibid. p132. XXVIII:5.—Ibid. p136. XXVIII:5 , 6.—J. M. Neale, Sermons on the Prophets, vol. i. p85. T. McCrie, Sermons, p304. XXVIII:10 , 13.—D. Fraser, Outlines of Sermons on the Old Testament, p189.