Isaiah 40:4

Straightening It Out

That which is crooked cannot be made straight. Ecclesiastes 1:15.

The crooked shall be made straight. Isaiah 40:4.

Those two texts look like a contradiction, don't they? The second seems to say the very opposite of the first. But you see they were spoken by two different people. The first man looked on the black side. He didn't see any hope of a wrong thing being put right. The second man looked on the bright side. He knew that things could and would be put right.

Now I want to speak to you about making crooked things straight.

1. And will you notice first that there art some crooked things we can't put straight. What is a crooked thing? Well, it is something that has gone out of shape. It was meant to be straight and beautiful, but it has grown twisted and ugly. You have seen a tree that got a twist when it was young and pliable. Something interfered with it and made it grow that way, and now that it is old it looks all crooked and gnarled. It still bears the mark of the twist it got in its young days.

It is just like that with our characters. They were meant to be beautiful and straight. God meant them to be like that. But we have made them ugly and crooked by wicked tempers, and bad thoughts and desires.

When we speak about a straight boy or girl we usually mean a boy or girl whom we can trust one who will always be upright and reliable and who is warranted to do nothing mean or underhand. I expect you all want to be straight in that way. You want to be the kind of boy or girl that people can depend upon. And if anyone accused you of lying or cheating you would want to hit them.

Well, I am glad you are straight in that way. It's a splendid sign, and I wouldn't give much for the boy or girl who wasn't trustworthy. But you may be very straight in that way and very crooked in another. Because it isn't just doing dishonorable things that makes us grow crooked. Wrong-doing of all kinds twists and warps our character. Ill-temper, and pride, and selfishness, and greed, and unkindness, and spite, and jealousy, all make us crooked. They leave their mark upon us, and it is a mark we cannot take out. We cannot make our crooked characters straight again any more than we can straighten the crooked old tree. We may improve our outward conduct, we may appear less crooked on the outside, but we cannot make ourselves straight within. And so long as we are crooked within we are never really straight and we are never really safe.

2. God can make all crooked things straight. He can do what we can't do He can make us straight and beautiful within and He can take away from us the love of crooked things.

There was once an old Indian woman who took Jesus as her Friend and Savior, and one day she was describing her life before she knew Jesus. She said, “I was like an unraveled spool of thread that had become so tangled that nobody could straighten it. So I brought my tangled self to Jesus, and He loosened the knots and straightened out the tangle.”

Jesus came into the world to unravel all the tangles, to take away all the ugly crookedness. He can make you straight and beautiful if you will let Him.

3. There are some crooked things we can make straight. There are a great many crooked things in the world that want straightening out, and we can help to straighten them. Wherever there is a wrong to be righted, or a wound to be healed, or a sorrow to be comforted, we can help to make the crooked straight.

And when we do that we are really helping God. He can put the crooked world straight, but He sometimes uses boys and girls, and men and women to do it. Don't you think it is splendid work helping God to put the crooked world straight?

But how can we do it?

First of all, by our sympathy. I read a story the other day about a very small boy who pinched his finger. And because he was a very small boy the tears came to his eyes and he ran to show the wound to his father. “Look, Dad,” he said. But Dad was busy writing at his desk and he answered, “Run away, boy. I can't make it better.” “Oh yes, you could,” said the tiny chap. “You might have said, ‘Oh!' and looked sorry.”

Remember it often makes things much straighter for the people whose lots are crooked if we just say something kind to them and look sorry.

But we must be ready to help as well as to sympathize. There is a kind of sympathy that means nothing because it costs nothing.

Once a gentleman was walking along the streets of an American city when he saw, hawking shoestrings on the pavement, a man who had fought side by side with him in the Civil War. He spoke to the man and told him how sorry he was to see an old soldier in such a plight. Then he walked on. Suddenly he heard the voice of his old comrade behind him. “I'm thankful for your pity,” it said, “but how many shoestrings will you buy?”

Don't stop short at mere feeling. Do what you can to help. And some day the crooked old world will come untwisted when everybody is doing their best to help God to straighten it out.