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Isaiah Chapter
Forty-five
Isaiah 45
Chapter Contents
The deliverance of the Jews by Cyrus. (1-4) God calls for
obedience to his almighty power. (5-10) The settlement of his people. (11-19)
The conversion of the Gentiles. (20-25)
Commentary on Isaiah 45:1-4
(Read Isaiah 45:1-4)
Cyrus is called God's anointed; he was designed and
qualified for his great service by the counsel of God. The gates of Babylon
which led to the river, were left open the night that Cyrus marched his army
into the empty channel. The Lord went before him, giving entrance to the cities
he besieged. He gave him also treasures, which had been hidden in secret
places. The true God was to Cyrus an unknown God; yet God foreknew him; he
called him by his name. The exact fulfilment of this must have shown Cyrus that
Jehovah was the only true God, and that it was for the sake of Israel that he
was prospered. In all the changes of states and kingdoms, God works out the
good of his church.
Commentary on Isaiah 45:5-10
(Read Isaiah 45:5-10)
There is no God beside Jehovah. There is nothing done
without him. He makes peace, put here for all good; and creates evil, not the
evil of sin, but the evil of punishment. He is the Author of all that is true,
holy, good, or happy; and evil, error, and misery, came into the world by his
permission, through the wilful apostacy of his creatures, but are restrained
and overruled to his righteous purpose. This doctrine is applied, for the
comfort of those that earnestly longed, yet quietly waited, for the redemption
of Israel. The redemption of sinners by the Son of God, and the pouring out the
Spirit, to give success to the gospel, are chiefly here intended. We must not
expect salvation without righteousness; together the Lord hath created them.
Let not oppressors oppose God's designs for his people. Let not the poor
oppressed murmur, as if God dealt unkindly with them. Men are but earthen pots;
they are broken potsherds, and are very much made so by mutual contentions. To
contend with Him is as senseless as for clay to find fault with the potter. Let
us turn God's promises into prayers, beseeching him that salvation may abound
among us, and let us rest assured that the Judge of all the earth will do
right.
Commentary on Isaiah 45:11-19
(Read Isaiah 45:11-19)
Believers may ask in prayer for what they need; if for
their good, it will not be withheld. But how common to hear God called to
account for his dealings with man! Cyrus provided for the returning Jews. Those
redeemed by Christ shall be provided for. The restoration would convince many,
and convert some; and all that truly join the Lord, find his service perfect
freedom. Though God be his people's God and Saviour, yet sometimes he lays them
under his frowns; but let them wait upon the Lord who hides his face. There is
a world without end; and it will be well or ill with us, according as it shall
be with us in that world. The Lord we serve and trust, is God alone. All that
God has said is plain, satisfactory, and just. As God in his word calls us to
seek him, so he never denied believing prayers, nor disappointed believing
expectations. He gives grace sufficient, and comfort and satisfaction of soul.
Commentary on Isaiah 45:20-25
(Read Isaiah 45:20-25)
The nations are exhorted to draw near to Jehovah. None
besides is able to help; he is the Saviour, who can save without the assistance
of any, but without whom none can save. If the heart is brought into the
obedience of Christ, the knee will cheerfully obey his commands. To Christ men
shall come from every nation for blessings; all that hate his cause shall be
put to shame, and all believers shall rejoice in him as their Friend and
Portion. All must come to him: may we now come to him as the Lord our
Righteousness, walking according to his commandments.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Isaiah》
Isaiah 45
Verse 1
[1] Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose
right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the
loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall
not be shut;
His anointed — His king, whom God has designed,
and separated, and fitted, in all respects, for this work.
Loose — I will take away their girdle, which was about their
loins; their power and authority, whereof that was an ensign.
Gates — The great and magnificent gates of their cities and
palaces, which shall be opened to him as conqueror.
Verse 2
[2] I will go before thee, and make the crooked places
straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars
of iron:
Go — To remove all obstructions, to destroy all them that
oppose thee, and carry thee through the greatest difficulties.
Verse 3
[3] And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and
hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which
call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.
The treasures — Such as have been long kept in
dark and secret places.
Verse 4
[4] For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I
have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not
known me.
I have — I knew, and called thee by thy name, when thou didst
neither know nor think of me; nay, when thou hadst no being.
Verse 5
[5] I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God
beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:
I girded — I made thee strong and active, and disposed thee for
these great and warlike enterprizes.
Verse 6
[6] That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from
the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else.
That — That all nations may know it by my foretelling these
things so long before, and by the wonderful success that I shall give thee, and
by my over-ruling thine heart and counsels, to the deliverance of my people.
Verse 7
[7] I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and
create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
Light — All mens comforts and calamities come from thy hand.
Verse 8
[8] Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies
pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth
salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created
it.
Drop — The righteous and gracious acts of God for his people,
shall be so many, as if God rained showers of righteousness out of heaven.
Open — Open itself to bring forth those fruits which may be
expected from such showers.
Them — The heavens and the earth conspiring together.
Together — Together with salvation.
It — This great work of salvation and righteousness;
whereof, tho' Cyrus is the instrument, I am the author.
Verse 9
[9] Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the
potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that
fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?
Woe — As God here makes many glorious promises to Cyrus, so
he pronounces a curse upon them, who should endeavour to hinder him.
Contend — Contend, if you please, with your fellow creatures,
but not with your creator.
Or — He turns his speech to the potter.
Verse 11
[11] Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his
Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of
my hands command ye me.
Thus saith — Will you not allow me that
liberty which yourselves take, of disposing of my own children and works, as I
see fit?
Verse 13
[13] I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct
all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for
price nor reward, saith the LORD of hosts.
Him — Cyrus.
In righteousness — Most justly, to
punish the wicked Babylonians, to plead the cause of the oppressed ones, to
manifest my righteousness, and truth, and goodness.
Verse 14
[14] Thus saith the LORD, The labour of Egypt, and
merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over
unto thee, and they shall be thine: they shall come after thee; in chains they
shall come over, and they shall fall down unto thee, they shall make
supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in thee; and there is none else,
there is no God.
The labour — The wealth gotten by their
labour.
Thee — Jerusalem shall not only be rebuilt, but the wealth
and glory of other countries shall be brought to it again. This was in part
verified in Jerusalem; but it was much more fully accomplished in the church of
the gospel, in the accession of the Gentiles to that church which began in Jerusalem,
and from thence spread itself into all the parts of the world.
Come over — They shall be taken captive by
thee, and willingly submit themselves to thee.
Verse 15
[15] Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of
Israel, the Saviour.
Verily — These are the words of the prophet, on contemplation
of the various dispensations of God towards his church, and in the world.
Hidest — Thy counsels are deep and incomprehensible, thy ways
are past finding out.
Verse 19
[19] I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the
earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain: I the LORD speak
righteousness, I declare things that are right.
In secret — The Heathen idols deliver oracles
in obscure cells and caverns: but I have delivered my oracles to Israel
publickly and plainly.
In vain — Serve and worship me for nought. As I appointed them
work, so from time to time I have given them abundant recompence.
Right — I require nothing of my people which is not highly
just and good.
Verse 20
[20] Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye
that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that set up the wood of
their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save.
Draw near — To hear what I have said, and am
now about to say.
Of the nations — The remnant of the Gentiles, who
survive the many destructions, which I am bringing upon the Heathen nations.
Verse 21
[21] Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel
together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that
time? have not I the LORD? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a
Saviour; there is none beside me.
Take counsel — To maintain the cause of their
idols.
This — This great work, Babylon's destruction, and the
redemption of God's people.
Verse 23
[23] I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth
in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear.
In righteousness — It is what I will
faithfully perform.
Return — Without effect. It is a metaphor from ambassadors, who
sometimes return to their princes without any success in their business.
Every tongue — Not only the Jews, but all
nations.
Verse 24
[24] Surely, shall one say, in the LORD have I righteousness
and strength: even to him shall men come; and all that are incensed against him
shall be ashamed.
In the Lord — By or from God alone, or the
Messiah, who is the true Jehovah as well as man.
Righteousness — To justify me from all things
which I could not be justified by the law of Moses.
Strength — Support and assistance to bear all my burdens,
overcome all my enemies, and perform all my duties.
Men — The Gentiles shall come to Christ.
Ashamed — But all his implacable enemies shall be brought to
shame.
Verse 25
[25] In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified,
and shall glory.
All — All Israelites indeed, whether Jews or Gentiles.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Isaiah》
45 Chapter 45
Verses 1-25
Verses 1-6
Thus saith the Lord to His anointed
Cyrus
The name of Cyrus is written Kuras in Babylonian cuneiform, Kurush
in Old Persian.
Ctesias stated on the authority of Parysatis, the wife of the Persian king
Ochus, that her younger son was named Cyrus from the sun, as the Persians
called the sun Kupos (Epit. Phot. 80; Plut. Artax. 1)
. In Zend, however, the sun is hware, which could not take the form Kupos
in Old Persian, though in modern Persian it is khur, khir, and kher.
The classical writers have given extraordinary accounts of his birth and rise
to power All these versions have been shown to be unhistorical by
contemporaneous cuneiform inscriptions. The most important of these are
(1) a cylinder inscription of Nabonidus, the last king of the
Babylonian Empire, from Abu Habba (Sippara);
Cyrus: his character
To Greek literature Cyrus was the prince pre-eminent,--set forth
as the model for education in childhood, self-restraint in youth, just and
powerful government in manhood. Most of what we read of him in Xenophon’s Cyclopaedia
is, of course, romance; but the very fact that, like our own king Arthur,
Cyrus was used as a mirror to flash great ideals down the ages, proves that
there was with him native brilliance and width of surface as well as fortunate
eminence of position. He owed much to the virtue of his race. (Prof. G. A.
Smith, D. D.)
Cyrus, God’s tool
Cyrus is neither chosen for his character, nor said [in the Isaiah
passages] to be endowed with one. But that he is there, and that he does so
much, is due simply to this, that God had chosen him. What he is endowed with
is force, push, swiftness, irresistibleness. He is, in short, not a character,
but a tool; and God makes no apology for using him but this, that he has the
qualities of a tool. Now, we cannot help being struck with the contrast of all
this, the Hebrew view of Cyrus, with the well-known Greek view of him. To the
Greeks he is first and foremost a character. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)
The victories of Cyrus
We have vividly described to us the victories of Cyrus; in his
whirlwind career, subduing the nations before him, loosing the loins of kings
(that whole troop of vassal empires enumerated by Xenophon), and opening before
him the hundred brazen gates of Babylon (also minutely described by Herodotus,
as guarding alike the approaches to the river and the temple of Belus), and cutting
in sunder the bars of iron. The spoil amassed on that occasion was probably
unexampled in the annals of war; for besides the enormous wealth of palatial
Babylon itself, it included the fabulous riches of Croesus, king of Lydia, who
brought waggon-load after waggon-load to lay at the feet of the conqueror. The
aggregate was computed to be equivalent to upwards of a hundred and twenty-six
millions of our money. Well, therefore, might the prophet here chronicle, among
the predestined exploits of this mighty prince (Isaiah 45:3), “the treasures of darkness,
and hidden riches of secret places.” (J. R.Macduff, D. D.)
Loosing the loins of kings
The monarchs of eastern nations were accustomed to wear girdles
about their loins, which were considered as giving strength and firmness to
their bodies; and, being richly decorated, served as badges of royal dignity.
When, therefore, God declares that He would deprive them of their girdles and loose
their loins, the expression imports that He would divest them of their power
and majesty, and reduce them to a mean and contemptible condition. (R.
Macculloch.)
Special Divine instrumentalities in the world’s renovation
1. For the enlargement of His Church, God often selects special
instruments. In setting into motion a whole system of agencies this is almost
uniformly the case. We recognise the fact all along the history of the Church.
We see men raised up with peculiar gifts and clothed with peculiar powers to
effect certain great works. The text gives us a remarkable illustration of this
method of Divine procedure. In the bosom of the Church itself there are two
still more remarkable examples of this law; the two men who bore the largest
part in the inauguration and establishment of the chief dispensations. Moses
and Paul were not indifferent characters; nor were their training and position
like that of the multitude. They stand out boldly in history as men of peculiar
natural gifts and attainments. Their early discipline exalted their intrinsic
power; while their relation to the people among whom their work was to be
performed, and to the science of the age in which they lived, imparted special
qualifications for their great mission, it is not that the human is thus
exalted above the Divine, but simply that the Divine uses that kind and measure
of humanity which are best fitted to accomplish its purposes.
2. It is just as certain that the great Sovereign chooses particular
nations to effect certain parts of His work in the final triumph of the Gospel,
as that He chooses certain individuals for some special operation “This people
have I formed for myself; they shall show forth My praise.” His sovereignty
reaches back of the immediate work. It chooses according to the character of
the nation; it reaches to the antecedent training and the natural
characteristics which combine to prepare the nation most fully for the work;
nay, this sovereignty in its far-reaching wisdom has been busy all along the
history of the people in so ordering the moulding influences under which
characters and position are attained, that when the time comes for them to
enter into His special work, they will be found all ripe for His purpose. This
nation, to whom the passage before us refers, is a marked illustration of this
thought. The Jew was designed to be the conservator of the Word of God. He was
chosen for this purpose. The object was not propagation, but conservation. The
race by nature and education had just those qualities which fitted it for this
work. Its wonderful tenacity of impression, its power to hold what once had
fairly been forced into it by Divine energy, like the rock hardened around the
crystal, belongs to its nature, reveals itself after Providence had shattered the
nation, in that granite character which, under the fire of eighteen centuries,
remains unchanged. At every step of the progress of Christianity since,
illustrations multiply of the truth that God forms nations to His work, and
chooses them because of their fitness to accomplish certain parts of that work.
The Greek with his high mental culture and his glorious language--fit
instrument through which the Divine Word breathed His life-giving truth; the
Roman sceptred in power over the whole realm of civilisation, and undesignedly
constructing the great highway for the Church of Jesus; the German, with his
innate freedom of spirit, nourishing the thoughtful souls whose lofty
utterances awoke, whose wondrous power disenthralled a sleeping and captive
Church. (S. W. Fisher, D. D.)
Verse 2-3
I will go before thee
God going before
Man must go.
Each man is accomplishing a journey, going through a process. The only question
is, How? Man may go, either with God or without Him. Whether we go with God or
without Him, we shall find crooked places.
I. We should
regard the text as A WARNING. There are crooked places.
II. The text is
also A PROMISE. “I will go before thee.” God does not say where He will
straighten our path; He does not say how; the great thing for us to believe is
that there is a special promise for us, and to wait in devout hope for its
fulfilment. He who waits for God is not misspending his time. Such waiting is true
living--such tarrying is the truest speed.
III. The text is
also A PLAN. It is in the word “before” that I find the plan, and it is in that
word “before” that I find the difficulty on the human side. God does not say, I
will go alongside thee; we shall go step by step: He says, I will go before
thee. Sometimes it may be a long way before us, so that we cannot see Him; and
sometimes it may be just in front of us. But whether beyond, far away, or here
close at hand, the great idea we have to live upon is that God goes before us.
1. Let us beware of regarding the text as a mere matter of course.
There is an essential question of character to be settled. “The steps of a good
man are ordered by the Lord.”
2. Let us beware of regarding this text as a licence for carelessness
Let us not say, “If God goes before me, and makes all places straight why need
I care?” To the good man all life is holy; there is no step of indifference; no
subject that does not bring out his best desires. “The place whereon thou standest
is holy ground” is the expression of every man who knows what it is to have God
going before him. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Treasures of darkness
If we be Zion’s pilgrims, heavenward bound, we shall find the need
of such promises, in their spiritual fulfilment, as God here gave to Cyrus.
I. GOD’S
PRELIMINARY WORK in “going before His people, making for them crooked places
straight, breaking in pieces gates of brass, and cutting in sunder bars of
iron.”
1. The first promise lays a foundation for all the rest; “I will go
before thee.” How great must those difficulties be which need God Himself to go
before us in order to overcome them! Surely they must be insuperable by any
human strength. If we are rightly taught, we shall feel a need for the Lord to
go before us, not only now and then, but every step of the way, for unless led
and guided by Him, we are sure to go astray. How strikingly was this the case
with the children of Israel. You may apply this promise to a variety of things.
2. “And make crooked things straight.” This promise springs out of
the former, and is closely connected with it; for it is only by the Lord s
going before that things really crooked can be straightened. But what is meant
by crooked places, and whence come they?
3. But the Lord also promised Cyrus that He would, by going before
him, break in pieces the gates of brass, &c. Cyrus longed to enter the city
of Babylon; but when he took a survey of the only possible mode of entrance, he
saw it firmly closed against him with gates of brass and iron. Can we not find
something in our experience which corresponds to this feeling in Cyrus? There
is a longing in the soul after a certain object. We press forward to obtain it,
but what do we find in the road? Gates of brass and bars of iron. Look, for
instance, at our very prayers. Are not the heavens sometimes brass over our
heads, so that, as Jeremiah complains, “they cannot pass through”? Nay, is not
your very heart itself sometimes a gate of brass, as hard, as stubborn, and as
inflexible? So the justice, majesty, and holiness of God, when we view these
dread perfections of Jehovah with a trembling eye under the guilt of sin, stand
before the soul as so many gates of brass. The various enemies, too, which
beset the soul; the hindrances and obstacles without and within that stand in
the path; the opposition of sin, Satan, self, and the world against all that is
good and godlike--may not all these be considered “gates of brass” barring out
the wished-for access into the city?
4. But there are also “bars of iron.” These strengthen the gates of
brass and prevent them from being broken down or burst open, the stronger and
harder metal giving firmness and solidity to the softer and weaker one. An
unbelieving heart; the secret infidelity of the carnal mind; guilt of
conscience produced by a sense of our innumerable wanderings from the Lord;
doubts and fears often springing out of our own want of consistency and
devotedness; apprehensions of being altogether deceived, from finding so few
marks of grace and so much neglect of watchfulness and prayer--all these may be
mentioned as bars of iron strengthening the gates of brass. Now, can you break
to pieces these gates of brass, or cut in sunder the bars of iron? Here, then,
when so deeply wanted, comes in the promise, “I will break,” &c.
II. THE GIFTS WHICH
THE LORD BESTOWS UPON THEM, when He has broken to pieces the gates of brass,
and cut in sunder the bars of iron, here called “treasures of darkness and
hidden riches of secret places.”
1. “Treasures of darkness.” But is not this a strange expression? How
can there be darkness in the city of Salvation of which the Lord, the Lamb, is
the eternal light? The expression does not mean that the treasures themselves
are darkness, but that they were hidden in darkness till they were brought to
light. The treasures of Belshazzar, like the Bank bullion, were buried in
darkness till they were broken up and given to Cyrus. It is so in a spiritual
sense. Are there not treasures in the Lord Jesus? Yet, all these are “treasures
of darkness,” so far as they are hidden from our eyes and hearts, till we are
brought by His special power into the city of Salvation.
2. But the Lord promised also to give to Cyrus “the hidden riches of
secret places,” that is, literally, the riches of the city which were stored up
in its secret places. But has not this, also a spiritual meaning? Yes. Many are
“the hidden riches of secret places” with which the God of all grace enriches
His believing family. Look, for instance, at the Word of God. But observe, how
the promises are connected with “crooked places,” “brazen gates,” and “iron
bars,” and the going before of the Lord to remove them out of the way. Without
this previous work we should be ignorant to our dying day of “the treasures of
darkness”; we should never see nor handle “the hidden riches of secret places.”
III. THE BLESSED
EFFECTS PRODUCED by what the Lord thus does and thus gives--a spiritual and
experimental knowledge, that “He who has called them by their name is the God
of Israel.” Observe the expression, “I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name.”
What an individuality it stamps on the person addressed! How it makes religion
a personal thing! But what is produced by this special, individual, and
personal calling? Knowledge. What knowledge? Spiritual, heartfelt, and
experimental. Of what? “That the Lord who called them by name is the God of
Israel.” It is as “the God of Israel” that He manifests mercy and grace; that
He never leaves nor forsakes the objects of His choice; that He fulfils every
promise, defeats every enemy, appears in every difficulty, richly pardons every
sin, graciously heals every backsliding, and eventually lands them in eternal
bliss. Now, perhaps, we can see why God’s people have so many gates of brass
and bars of iron, so many trials and severe temptations. This is to bring them
into personal acquaintance with God, the covenant God of Israel; to make
religion a reality. (J. C. Philpot.)
Verse 3
And I will give thee the treasures of darkness
Spiritual mineralogy
There is a whole library of sacred philosophy in the words of the
Psalmist on the relation subsisting between God and His creatures.
“That Thou givest them, they gather. Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled
with good.” Perhaps one is hardly ever reminded more strongly of this
fellowship of Providence and industry than when passing through a district
seamed and bored and blackened by the mining operations in search of the metals
which yield the wealth of a country, or of the hardly less precious coal, by
the aid of which the iron, the copper, or the silver is smelted into useful
forms. The ore, it is beyond the miner s province to fashion; God makes it to
him a free present; but the digging, and the hoisting, and the smelting, and
the moulding, and the chasing, and the carving, and the coining into currency,
these things God no more does for man than man, in the beginning, created the
heavens and the earth. Let us learn to be grateful without being indolent. Let
us equally take care to be diligent without being proud. There is a high moral
and spiritual mineralogy, wherein we may become rich, “not with corruptible
things, such as silver and gold.” There are caverns of unimaginable wealth,
every grain of which comes from God’s free bounty, but not one grain of which
man can touch, except he do it “in the sweat of his brow.” Bring to the text
not only faith in God’s promise, but strong hands and swift feet to do
according to God’s commandment. We are now ready to follow on into the figure
we have borrowed, and show how frequently God blesses His people, as He
provides for the workers or the owners of mineral quarries, fetching
“treasures” out of “darkness,” and “hidden riches” out of “secret places.”
I. St. Paul
represents THE CHRISTIAN FAITH as a secret which is now for the first time
discovered and made known, and the implication of the apostle, whenever he
employs the term, is that the great blessing which prophecies and types had
contained, but, containing, had concealed, was now in Christ Jesus brought out
as into open daylight for all men to behold and possess. It has never been
questioned that this truth was the real meaning of the rending of the veil in
the Temple at the moment of our Lord’s giving up of the ghost. For three hours
there had been suspended over Mount Calvary a thick curtain of darkness; but at
the ninth hour that veil, like the other close by, was “rent” also “in twain,
from the top to the bottom.” I find in that darkness the awful symbol of the
misery, and the ignorance, and the confusion whereof the world itself had been
the victim all through the ages preceding the Advent. But the very same fact
which tore down the rich drapery in the building dispelled the dense blackness
on the mountain, and declared the very same doctrine that “Christ Jesus was the
Saviour of all men, and specially of them that believe.” Learn to ascribe your
redemption to the clouds of-misery behind which your Surety laid down His life.
II. Somewhat in
this way it would not, perhaps, be extravagant to represent any one of
ourselves, at the crisis of his CONVERSION, as looking towards the Saviour much
as one of those spectators literally did when the darkness was beginning to
clear off from the crucifixion. When the veil is rent, and the power of faith
scatters the clouds, and the soul peering through catches the first glimpse of
a Saviour, the rapture of being forgiven has, so to speak, been quarried and
hewn out of the black deep pit of conviction and remorse.
III. It will be far
less difficult to show that all along the journey of the Christian he digs his
BEST AND BRIGHTEST MERCIES out of thick, and often terrible, gloom. I find some
of you shut up in the deep pit of constant bodily pain, or infirmity. I find
others of you wandering through the pitch dark avenues of a recent family
funeral. There is a time for the digging of the gold. That is yours now. And
there is a time for the burnishing and the chasing, and the putting on of the
gold. That is not yet come. There is a place, says Solomon, for the sapphires
in the stones of the earth; but the men who take the sapphires first out of the
stones need all their skill and practice to tell which is which, and you would
not thank the miner for the jewellery just left as he gets it. You must allow a
fair time for the lapidary or the goldsmith to take up the business where the
rough black denizens of the pit leave off--and “no affliction for the present
seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless, afterwards it yieldeth the
peaceable fruits of righteousness to them who are exercised thereby.” (H.
Christopherson.)
Treasures of darkness
As Cyrus, as a deliverer, was but a type of the Messiah, this
promise has been, and is being, fulfilled in Christ in His great triumph over
the powers of darkness. These words present a special phase of His triumphs.
The preceding words have already found striking fulfilment, “I will go before
thee, and make the crooked places straight,” &c. But to Christ God has also
given the treasures of darkness and the hidden riches of secret places.
I. In one sense,
THIS IS TYPICAL OF ALL GOD’S DISCLOSURES. Those things which men discover
to-day are treasures which have been in darkness for countless generations,
jewels which have been concealed in hidden places during millenniums.
II. This is
supremely true of THE ADVENT AND REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST. Look at the manner
of His coming. See the poverty which surrounded His birth. Look at the nature
of His life--“Without a place to lay His head”; “a Man of Sorrows, and
acquainted with grief.” He was, more-over, “obedient unto death, even the death
of the cross.” There is nothing very bright in that record. When Christ, in the
hour of utter loneliness, uttered that piercing cry, “My God! My God! why hast
Thou forsaken Me?” and darkness covered earth and heaven, then out of that
dense gloom He who in the beginning made light to shine out of darkness, made
the most glorious light to shine; so that from the Cross to-day there streams
the greatest revelation with which God has ever enriched our race. Again, how
graciously true this is of Christ’s redemptive work in view of the spiritual
darkness of the world which He came to save! What a revelation of the world’s
night we find in the advent of our Lord. Until then men knew not how dark this
world was. These words only gain their full significance in the story of
Christ’s redemption When He came the world was hopeless and undone. It had
exhausted its energies in its numberless attempts to save and ennoble itself,
and down deep in recesses of darkness and iniquity were buried the brightest
talents with which humanity had been enriched--so many glorious impulses and
high capacities prostituted to the vilest uses, or paralysed in the dark and
made utterly useless. Oh, the countless lost pieces of silver, and the
priceless jewels which He has rescued since then from hopeless degradation and
sin!
III. This is
gloriously true in THE EXPERIENCE OF THOSE WHO ACCEPT CHRIST AS THEIR SAVIOUR.
1. Was not the first hour of our spiritual enlightenment and
enrichment a fulfilment of the same Divine promise?
2. Then, again, you have had your doubts and fears. They were
terrible to bear at the time; yet out of them you were at length permitted to
snatch a new wealth of assurance and joy.
3. This is true also, in the life of every one who has accepted
Christ, of that other experience which darkens our vision, namely, that of
sorrow in its many and varied forms. It is in darkness, too, that we learn
trustfulness and faith. (D. Davies.)
Treasures of darkness
We cannot hear of the “treasures of darkness” without finding our
interest quickened. We seem suddenly made aware of treasures we had never
dreamed of; and aware, too, that what we had deemed empty, and even repellent,
may be made to yield up most surprising wealth, not that merely of a temporal,
perishable kind, such as some would call “treasures,” but what the wisest and
most spiritual men would call such, under the blessed teaching of the Master (Matthew 6:19).
1. It ought not to be difficult for us to believe that there are
spiritual treasures that we have never even got a glimpse of yet. Christ spoke
of treasure “hid in a field.” That surely must have been among the treasures of
darkness. And the Apostle Paul, long after, spoke of the “unsearchable riches
of Christ.” What he had himself freely taken from this store made him feel
himself rich indeed; so rich, that he had not the least inclination for
anything that the world could give. One of the saddest and most mournful of all
things for us would be to settle down contentedly with the notion that God had
no treasures to bestow but what we see all about us with the utterly inexperienced
eye! To think the common experience of life, to think our own experience, the
limit of all things, would be to make life a very poor thing indeed.
2. God must have infinite treasures and pleasures which He does not
want to keep in darkness unused. That ought to be an axiom with us. If we
should never dream of speaking of ourselves as spiritually rich, it cannot be
because either God has nothing better to bestow, or that He grudges to bestow
it.
3. We seem to believe readily enough that the future may reveal to us
glories that we cannot forecast. But why be content to postpone to a future
state the higher degrees of true blessedness? Why not possess some of the
treasures now?
4. The phrase suggests to us that what we deem empty, void, and even
repellent as darkness, may contain things unspeakably precious. We speak of the
“night of sorrow.” But it only requires a very moderate faith in God to believe
that He is too good and kind ever to let a single sensitive being pass through
such trials as are the lot of not a few, unless it were that only so can they
be prepared for, and put in possession of, choicer good. But there is a
darkness far blacker than the night of affliction and sorrow. It is this awful
gloom, this darkness that may be felt, which we all feel at times to involve
the moral world. This is a world of tremendous mystery to the morally sensitive
soul. Let a man ever come to see that a world which he cannot but feel to be
evil to the core, is nevertheless the very best possible school for man in the
early stage of his training for immortality; that this discipline of evil is
absolutely essential for a while; that he would clearly be a poorer creature
without it; that it is the conflict with evil which brings out some of the most
precious qualities of the soul; that without evil, good itself could not be
known; that God Himself could not be so gloriously revealed to the heart as He
is through the occasion that every man’s sin affords; that the greatest proof
that God is Love must have been for ever wanting, had He, by restraint and
force, mechanically prevented the entrance of evil into the universe. Only let
one--this one--little ray of light fall upon the darkness, and you will feel
how priceless are the treasures of darkness!
5. But the darkness can be made to yield up treasures only to those
who will listen for the voice Divine. To the upright there will arise light in
darkness. It is only the children of light who can go into the darkness, and
from it fetch out the hid treasures. “God is light: in Him is no darkness at
all.” Christ is the Light of the World: whoso walketh with Him shall have the
Light of Life. (H. H. Dobney.)
Did Cyrus acknowledge Jehovah?
The prophet apparently expects that Cyrus will come to acknowledge
Jehovah as the true God and the author of his success. Whether this hope was
actually realised is more than ever doubtful since the discovery of cuneiform
inscriptions, in which Cyrus uses the language of crude polytheism. (Records
of the Past.)
Verse 4-5
For Jacob My servant’s sake
Great men the servants of God
It appears from this prediction, taken in connection with its
wonderful accomplishment, that God justly claims a sovereign right to make
great men the instruments of executing His wise and benevolent designs.
God claims a supreme right to the services of great men, in almost every page
of His Word. How often do we hear Him saying of this, of that, and of the other
great character, He is My servant! How often do we meet with this sovereign
language, My servant Moses; My servant Job; My servant Jacob; My servant
Israel; My servant Isaiah; My servant Nebuchadnezzar! But He more fully
displays this prerogative by publishing to the world what great men shall do,
before they are brought into being. He claimed the services of Solomon, the
wisest of men, and appointed the business of his life, before he was born (1 Chronicles 22:9-10). In the
prediction concerning Nebuchadnezzar, God claimed a sovereign right to employ
him as the minister of His vengeance, in punishing the people of His wrath. He
asserted His absolute Divinity and sovereignty, in His prophetic address to
Cyrus. And He displayed the same sovereign right to the powers and influence of
great men, in His predictions of Alexander the Great, of Augustus Caesar, of
John the Baptist, of Constantine the Great, of Mohammed, and of the Man of Sin.
1. He gives men their superior natural capacity for doing good.
2. He presides over their education, and gives them the means of
improving their superior talents, and forming themselves for eminent
usefulness.
3. God gives them the disposition, which they at any time have, to
employ their superior abilities in promoting the happiness of mankind.
4. God gives great men the opportunity of employing all their power
and influence in executing His wise and benevolent designs.
5. It is God who succeeds their exertions for the benefit of the
world. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
Verse 5
I girded thee, though thou hast not known Me
Cyrus girded by God
The contrast to “loose the loins of kings” (Isaiah 45:1).
(Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
The girdings of Jehovah
I. GOD’S PLAN, AS
IT AFFECTS SOCIETY.
1. It is comprehensive, sweeping from age to age, threading
millenniums, building its structure from the dust of earth’s earliest age to
the emergence of the new heavens and earth at the close of time. But it is
minute and particular.
2. He works through individuals. The story of man is for the most
part told in the biographies of men. It is through human instruments that God
executes His beneficent purposes, His righteous judgments. Through Columbus, He
draws aside the veil from the coast-line of America. Through a Watt and a
Stephenson, He endows men with the co-operation of steam; through a Galvani and
an Edison, with the ministry of electricity. Through a De Lesseps, He unites
the waters of the eastern and western seas, and brings the Orient and Occident
together. Through a Napoleon He shatters the temporal power of the Pope; and by
a Wilberforce strikes the fetters from the slave. Men do not know the purpose
of God in what they are doing.
3. God’s use of men does not interfere with their free action. This
is clearly taught in more than one significant passage in Scripture--Joseph’s
brethren. Herod, Pilate, and the religious leaders of the Jews, were swept
before a cyclone of passion and jealousy; and it was with wicked hands that
they crucified and slew the Lord of glory: but they were accomplishing the
determinate counsel of God.
II. GOD’S PLAN, AS
IT AFFECTS INDIVIDUALS. We are all conscious of an element in life that we
cannot account for. Other men have started life under better auspices, and with
larger advantages than we, but somehow they have dropped behind in the race,
and are nowhere to be seen. Our health has never been robust, but we have had
more working days in our lives than those who were the athletes of our school.
We have been in perpetual peril, travelling incessantly, and never involved in
a single accident; whilst others were shattered in their first journey from
their doorstep. Why have we escaped, where so many have fallen? Why have we
climbed to positions of usefulness and influence, which so many more capable
ones have missed? Why has our reputation been maintained, when better men than
ourselves have lest their footing and fallen beyond recovery? There is not one
of us who cannot see points in the past where we had almost gone, and our
footsteps had well-nigh slipped: precipices along the brink of which we went at
nightfall, horrified in the morning to see how near our footprints had been to
the edge. Repeatedly we have been within a hair-breadth of taking some fatal
step. How strangely we were plucked out of that companionship! How marvellonsly
we were saved from that marriage, from that investment, from embarking in that
ship, travelling by that train, taking shares in that company! It is God who
has girded us, though we did not know Him. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
The girding of the Almighty
Christ Himself testifies to the girding of the Almighty when He
says, “To this end was I born, and for this purpose came I into the world.”
Abraham was girded for a particular work and mission, in what is otherwise
denominated his call. Joseph, in Egypt, distinguishes the girding of God’s
hand, when he comforts his guilty brothers in the assurance, “So it was not you
that sent me hither, but God.” Moses and Samuel were even called by name, and
set to their great life-work in the same manner. And what is Paul endeavouring
in all the stress and pressure of his mighty apostle-ship, but to perform the
work for which God’s Spirit girded him at his call, and to apprehend that for
which he was apprehended of Christ Jesus? (H. Bushnell, D. D.)
Every man’s life a plan of God
God has a definite life-plan for every human person, girding him,
visibly or invisibly, for some exact thing, which it will be the true
significance and glory of his life to have accomplished.
1. The Holy Scriptures not only show us explicitly that God has a
definite purpose in the lives of men already great, but they show us how
frequently, in the conditions of obscurity and depression, preparations of
counsel are going on, by which the commonest offices are to become the
necessary first chapter of a great and powerful history. David among the sheep;
Elisha following after the plough; Nehemiah bearing the cup; Hannah, who can
say nothing less common than that she is the wife of Elkanah and a woman of a
sorrowful spirit,--who, that looks on these humble people, at their humble post
of service, and discovers, at last, how dear a purpose God was cherishing in
them, can be justified in thinking that God has no particular plan for him,
because he is not signalised by any kind of distinction?
2. Besides, what do the Scriptures show us, but that God has a
particular care for every man, a personal interest in him, and a sympathy with
him and his trials, watching for the uses of his one talent as attentively and
kindly, and approving him as heartily, in the right employment of it, as if He
had given him ten; and what is the giving out of the talents itself, but an
exhibition of the fact that God has a definite purpose, charge, and work for
every man?
3. They also make it the privilege of every man to live in the secret
guidance of God; which is plainly nugatory, unless there is some chosen work,
or sphere, into which he may be guided.
4. God also professes in His Word to have purposes prearranged for
all events; to govern by a plan which is from eternity even, and which, in some
proper sense, comprehends everything. And what is this but another way of
conceiving that God has a definite place and plan adjusted for every human
being?
5. Turning now from the Scriptures to the works of God, how
constantly are we met here by the fact, everywhere visible, that ends and uses
are the regulative reasons of all existing things?
6. But there is a single but very important and even fearful
qualification. Things all serve their uses, and never break out of their place.
They have no power to do it. Not so with us. We are able, as free beings, to
refuse the place and the duties God appoints; which, if we do, then we sink
into something lower and less worthy of us. That highest and best condition for
which God designed us is no more possible. And yet, as that was the best thing
possible for us in the reach of God’s original counsel, so there is a place
designed for us now, which is the next best possible. God calls us now to the
best thing left, and will do so till all good possibility is narrowed down and
spent. And then, when He cannot use us any more for our own good, He will use
us for the good of others--an example of the misery and horrible desperation to
which any soul must come, when all the good ends, and all the holy callings of
God’s friendly and fatherly purpose are exhausted. Or it may be now that,
remitting all other plans and purposes in our behalf, He will henceforth use
us, wholly against our will, to be the demonstration of His justice and
avenging power before the eyes of mankind; saying over us, as He did over
Pharaoh in the day of His judgments, “Even for this same purpose have I raised
thee up, that I might show My power in thee, and that My name might be declared
throughout all the earth.” (H. Bushnell, D. D.)
Finding God’s life-plan
But the inquiry will be made, supposing all this to be true, how
can we ever get hold of this life-plan God has made for us, or find our way
into it?
1. Observe some negatives that are important, and must be avoided.
2. But we must not stop in negatives. How, then, or by what more
positive directions can a man, who really desires to do it, come into the plan
God lays for him, so as to live it and rationally believe that he does?
God in the world? The best end, the next best, and the next are
gone, and nothing but the dregs of opportunity are left. And still Christ calls
even you. There is a place still left for you; not the best and brightest, but
a humble and good one. (H. Bushnell, D. D.)
Cyrus directed, equipped, and prospered by God, though not one of
God’s enlightened worshippers
Idolatry in its grosser forms was unknown in Persia. The religion
of Persia recognised one God, beneficent in character and work and purpose,
revealed under the symbol of light. This one God, however, was not clothed with
infinite attributes. His dominion was limited by the existence and activity of
a rival spirit of evil, equally great and unbegotten with Himself. It was in
this imperfect faith that the great and noble Cyrus was trained. Till after his
contact with the Jews, he did not know God in His essential nature as spirit
without symbol, supreme in His sovereignty, and infinite in the attributes that
clothed Him. And yet in his temper there was a ready answerableness to the
unseen touch of God’s hand, an unconscious obedience to sacred purposes he but
dimly discerned, and a providential sanctification for the fulfilment of God’s
counsels, in spite of his imperfect conceptions of God. (T. G. Selby.)
Irresponsible ignorance
Ignorance that is inseparable from the circumstances in which men
are cradled, ignorance that is entirely involuntary, does not disqualify men
from being the instruments of God’s will, and receiving some of the most
lustrous honours dispensed by His hand. (T. G. Selby.)
The worth of our several ministries
The worth of our several ministries cannot always be tested by the
degree of knowledge that informs them. Some men, like the bees, do much of
their work in the sunshine. They fulfil the tasks of life in the light of a
clear illumination. For them the knowledge of God always precedes a vocation
from God. There are men also who are like the coral insect, which works a
fathom or two below the surface of the sea, and dies when the reef upon which
it has laboured is just beginning to tower into the sunlight. (T. G.Selby.)
The characteristic distinction between inspiration and
providential equipment
Providential equipment consists in being girded by a God who may
be more or less unknown. Inspiration implies that God’s chosen agent has all
his faculties filled with God’s presence as He girds. (T. G.Selby, D. D.)
The providence of the unknown
I. Is it not A
REASONABLE AND A CONSISTENT THOUGHT, that the providential equipment, vocation,
and sovereignty in a man’s life should transcend his knowledge of God and God’s
purpose?
1. God may sometimes use a man who seems half a heathen, to remind
His people that His providential sovereignty is larger than all finite thought.
In the early days of the British rule in India, the old Mogul at Delhi, and the
mediatised native sovereigns in other cities, were allowed independent rights
within their own palace precincts. The British rule did not intrude there. Now
and again half-clad slave girls and palace dependents, in terror for their
lives, and wretches waled and trembling with recent chastisements, would escape
the palace precincts and seek protection under the humane governments that had
been planted in the surrounding cities. These spacious palaces were like little
islands of the old despotisms, cruelties, and oppresssions bristling above the
tide of constitutional right and privilege and liberty that was rising far and
near. In God’s empire there are no spots of organised diabolism of that sort,
that are separated from the control, direction, and over-rule of providential
law. Alas! it is only too easy to find signs of individual and collective
resistance to God’s law; but there are no indrawn spheres or reservations,
dominated by pagan ignorance, from which His power, sovereignty, and
prerogative are shut out. He rules where He is not worshipped, directs where He
is not recognised, girds where He is not known.
2. In going beyond the circle of the elect nations to choose an
instrument for the fulfilment of His counsels, God seems to remind us that the
motive of His providential activity is altogether Divine. He uses the
imperfectly taught Gentile, and puts upon him honour that might seem to belong
to the Jew, to illustrate the sovereignty of His grace.
3. Partial ignorance of God may be an appointed condition for the test
and development of faith. It is not only the virtuous heathen who is girded by
an unrecognised Hand and made the agent in providential plans and purposes he
cannot fathom. The distinction between Isaiah and Cyrus, between Cyrus and
ourselves, is one of degree. On its intellectual side, at least, our religious
knowledge is still imperfect, fragmentary, hesitating. God suffers it to be so,
possibly that we may be the better disciplined in that humility which is the
basis of faith. I have sometimes thought that so long as heathen darkness does
not involve a gross and demoralising misrepresentation of God, but only a
partial privation of knowledge, it offers the occasion for the exercise of a
higher faith than that which is possible amidst the breaking twilights of
Christian knowledge. The devout and pure-minded pagan, like Cyrus, who trusts
his moral instincts without any adequate knowledge of their Divine origin, who
with touching fidelity follows an unsyllabled vocation from heavens that have
not yet opened themselves in revelation and definite testimony, who accepts an
equipment from a Hand that has touched and guided him out of the darkness, is
perhaps a more splendid example of faith than the man who manifests the same
trust and loyalty and obedience in the midst of clearer intellectual
conceptions of God. The puzzle of the long pagan centuries is not so painful
and oppressive if we look at it from this standpoint.
II. EXAMPLES OF
THIS PROVIDENTIAL GIRDING BY AN UNKNOWN GOD will readily occur to us that seem
to conform to the type represented by Cyrus.
1. If we think of the men, the tradition of whose teaching and
example is intertwined with all that is highest and best in the life of the
nations outside the range of Christendom, we shall see that these men have been
girded for their moral conquests and guided to their ascendencies over their
fellow-men by the same unrecognised Hand that guided and girded this elect
Persian. It is, perhaps, impossible to recall the name of a great and
permanently honoured teacher in the past history of India, China, Persia,
Egypt, Greece or Rome, whose influence rested upon an immoral doctrine or a
contradiction of conscience. There must have been such leaders in the
insignificant races that relapsed into cannibalism, scalp-hunting, and animal
debasement. But no such names appear in the histories of the great civilised
empires.
2. We must not judge the issues of the social and political movements
of the present and past times by the measure of Divine knowledge they exhibit.
Some of these movements, however little they seem to recognise God, are
empowered by His mysterious hand, and minister to the accomplishment of His
secret purpose. The dark despotisms enthroned over the ancient world annealed
men into stable communities. And there are doubtless providential issues of the
highest value in the democratic movements that are agitating Europe to-day,
however reluctant those movements may be to recognise God.
3. Does not the fact that the theology of the modern scientist is sometimes
very dim and defective tempt us to deny the Divine authority of his vocation
and to discredit the providential issue in the special work he is called to do?
Some of the schools of research and experiment and invention to which we are
most deeply indebted are indifferent and even hostile to the claims of
religion. And yet God calls the man of science to his work, vouchsafes the
needful equipment for success, and guides all the far-off issues to which that
work may tend.
4. And all this is true for ourselves. The knowledge possessed by
those of us who know God best is, after all, infinitesimal in amount and
degree. It is nothing in comparison with what remains to be known. It seems we
can scarcely be the true servants of God and doing Divine work unless we have
broader and brighter and more penetrating views of God’s nature. We are crushed
by the inevitable secularisms of our life, and cannot believe that we are
breathing the sacred atmosphere that encircles God’s priests and kings. It
seems, at times, as though God, and providence, and supernatural vocation, and
the high sanctions under which we seek to bring ourselves, were dreams. We are
haunted by the thought that there is some subtle curse of ineradicable atheism
cleaving to our inmost souls. In spite of the limit in our vision and the
miserable failure in the spirit of our service, He is guiding us to beneficent
conquests, and strengthening us to achieve holy emancipations, and fitting us
for eternal honours. He was making us ready for service of some sort, when we
knew far less about Him than we know to-day. And it is so still. And even after
God seems to have been revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ, how often
do we find God becoming a hidden and an unknown God to us in His providential relations!
At times it may seem rather as though some malignant demon were presiding over
our lives, or at least sharing the sovereignty. But beyond the widest bound of
our faith and knowledge there is providential guiding and girding and victory.
And these words seem to suggest solemn comfort to us in view of the final
conflict to which we shall all one day be brought. We shall enter the world to
come as conquerors girded for our triumph by an unseen Hand. God’s elect
servants sometimes die in circumstances that make thoughts of God impossible.
Perhaps they are snatched away by unexpected accident. They leave life in a
struggle that petrifies thought and feeling. In that solemn hour of darkness
and humiliation and mental inaptitude, God, unknown and unrecognised, girds for
the victory still. Let us not forget that, though the girding is often in
darkness, the motive of this girding in shadows is the inbringing of the
perfect life. (T. G. Selby.)
The light of God’s love seen in pagan darkness
It is when the sun is in eclipse that the astronomer is able to
see the fountains of glowing hydrogen that rise out of the inner substance of
the sun and project their splendour for thousands and tens of thousands of
miles beyond its surface. The strange and superb spectacle is visible only on
the margin that lies between the incandescent body and the sphere of less
luminous space that surrounds it. And so there are sublime illustrations of
God’s providential love and care that can be most nobly seen in contrast with
pagan darkness. (T. G.Selby.)
Pagan teachers enlightened by God
Confucius was the instrument for keeping alive in China a morality
that was almost as pure as the morality of the decalogue. He stamped out all
traces of Moloch worship. He can be quoted with commanding effect against many
of the cruelties and superstitions of the present day. Gautama Buddha taught a
morality equally pure, and so emphasised the demerit of sin as to make his
teaching the best available basis that can be found for the evangelical doctrine
of the atonement. The well-considered and dispassionate and reverent scepticism
of Socrates acted as a solvent of Greek superstition, and prepared the way for
the thoughtful Christianity of Alexandria. Mohammed gave form and force to a
system which, in spite of its excesses and fanaticisms, has been a useful
protest against idolatry, and has gathered together into a simple civilisation
and worship tribes that would otherwise have been incurably degraded by fetich
worship. Now, are we to suppose that it was without any supreme direction or
control that these famous teachers conspired together to support these high
theories of life and conduct? They were not prophets, because they had not the
light which brought into view the mysterious Person who guided, equipped, and
succoured them. But they were providential instruments, instruments that in
spite of their defective discernments were plastic to God’s controlling
purpose. (T. G. Selby.)
God’s beneficent agency in the lives of those who ignore Him
“Man cannot exclude Me from his little universe; even though he
deny My existence and denounce My claim I am still there. I water the garden of
the atheist, and bring his flowers to summer bloom and his fruits to autumnal
glory. Men deny Me, curse Me, flee from Me I am still round about them, and
their life is more precious to Me than is their blasphemy detestable, and until
the very last I will work for them and with them, and if they go to perdition
it shall be through the very centre of, My heart’s tenderest grace.” “I girded
thee, though thou hast not known Me.” (J. Parker, D. D.)
A God-girded life
Who is that boy sitting on the steps there? He has a hat on that
was made for any head but his own; and his coat, who made it? His mother, very
likely--rough spun, not too well fitting. What is he waiting for? To get the
job of sweeping the steps he sits on? Perhaps. Years pass by, and a portly man
comes down those steps. Broad his face, a great round shining blessing,
kindness in his eye, power in the uplifting of his hand. Who is he? That is the
boy, grown now fully, physically, intellectually and socially. The boy and the
man are both Horace Greeley, an editorial prince, a man whose writings no one
among his countrymen can afford to decline to read. “I girded thee, I brought
thee to those steps, I set thee down upon them, I appointed an angel to watch
thee all the time: it was My way of nursing and caring for thee, and training
thee.” He bringeth the blind by a way that they know not. (J. Parker, D. D.)
God in national life
Nations are not cards, with which politicians play at gambling:
they may think they do, they may seem to do so, but the Lord reigneth. (J.
Parker, D. D.)
The unknown influence of God
Cyrus is now proved to have been a polytheist. Yet even he was girded
by the unknown God of heaven and earth. Let us consider this unknown influence
of God.
I. IT SPRINGS FROM
THE ALMIGHTY POWER OF GOD. God is not merely a passive object of worship. He
exerts active influence. He did not only work in the past in creating the
world. He is a living, active God now. Jesus said, “My Father worketh
hitherto.” Perhaps the poorest definition of God ever framed is that of “A
power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.” Still, even this meagre
description of Divinity recognises the fact of an active Divine influence is
not limited by our confession of it, nor by our willingness to submit to it. It
inspired the eye of the Greek artist and the tongue of the Greek orator as
truly as those of a Christian Chrysostom and Fra Angelico.
II. IT IS DIRECTED
BY THE INFINITE GOODNESS OF GOD. We circumscribe this goodness to a pale of
grace and a day of grace; but it overflows our boundaries and breaks out, free
as the air and broad as the sunlight. God does not wait to be called. He is the
first to awaken His slumbering children. God thinks of the heathen, and gives
strength to those who know Him not. Then no doubt if a Chinese Mandarin
pronounces a just sentence, or a Hindu Pundit utters a true thought, or an
African chief vindicates the rights of an oppressed tribe, the goodness of
these heathen men is an outcome of God’s goodness to them. Let us take heart:
there is more grace in the world than we know of.
III. IT AIMS AT THE
EXECUTION OF THE WILL OF GOD. Cyrus is called God’s shepherd (Isaiah 44:28). So even Nebuchadnezzar, a
man of a very different character, is called by God “My servant” (Jeremiah 43:10).
1. Some serve God when they think to oppose Him. As the gale that
seems to be tearing the ship to pieces may be driving her the faster to her
haven, so Satan, in Job, aiming at opposition to the right, occasioned the most
glorious vindication of it. Persecutors often help the cause they hate.
2. Many, like Cyrus, serve God unconsciously. As the corn ministers
to our sustenance unwittingly, and as science reveals the glory of God, even
when the naturalists who pursue it are agnostics. Lessons--
Verses 6-13
I am the Lord, and there is none else
The beneficent sovereignty of God
The key-thought to all the intricacies of the whole of this
passage is that God is the absolute Author of all that exists and the infinite
Supreme Ruler of all events; and the implied, though not expressed inference
from this claim is, that He is to be absolutely trusted in the matter and
manner of Israel’s redemption from Babylon.
In the 7 th verse, the attitude which the prophet makes the Almighty assume is
most absolute. Why summon Cyrus, a heathen prince? Why not one of their own
nation, a prince of their own people? The answer to this implied objection is
contained in Isaiah 45:9-11. “Woe unto him that
striveth with his Maker,” &c. Will Israel be more wise than God who made
him and the world and rules them in His own manner? The question in the 11 th
verse means, “Will ye take the disposition of things out of My hands, and
direct Me how I am to deal with My own chosen people?” The 12 th and 13 th
verses are intended to cairn the anxieties of the exiles in reference to Cyrus.
He who created all things had also raised up Cyrus, whose victorious career had
awakened the fears of the exiles; but Jehovah had in righteousness summoned him
to the work, and this was to be the guarantee that Cyrus would build up
Jerusalem again, and set the captives free, and that without redemption of
money. This whole passage may have its drift and meaning summed up in a single
sentence. It is an appeal of God to His people to leave the whole management of
their redemption in His hands, and to let His power, wisdom, and righteousness
reassure their minds under any difficulties or fears that may trouble them. (C.
Short, M. A.)
Verse 7
I form the light, and create darkness
Evil in the Old Testament
There is no thought in the Old Testament of reducing all evil,
moral and physical, to a single principle.
Moral evil proceeds from the will of man, physical evil from the will of God,
who sends it as the punishment of sin. The expression “create evil” implies
nothing more than that. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Evil and God
Certainly evil as an act is not God’s immediate work, but the
possibility of evil is, its self-punishment, and therefore the sense of guilt
and the evil of punishment in the broadest sense. (F. Delitszch, D. D.)
God’s relation to evil
Soften it down as we will, it is a tremendous claim, a claim which
plunges our thoughts into impenetrable mysteries, and suggests problems we
cannot solve. And yet, it must also be admitted, that it meets and satisfies
the cravings both of intellect and heart as no easier, no dualistic, theory
does or can do. The universe is so obviously one that the intellect demands
unity, and will be satisfied with nothing short of one Sovereign Lord, one
Supreme Governor of the universe. And how can our hearts be at rest until we
know and are sure that God rules over the kingdom of darkness as well as in the
kingdom of light; that the evils which befall us are under His control no less
than the blessings which enrich and gladden us; that wherever we wander, and
through whatever sorrowful changes we pass, we are never for a single moment
out of His hand? These mysteries will never become credible to us except as the
mysteries of Energy, Life, Thought become credible to us, by patient and
steadfast mental toil. On these terms, though on no other, the mystery here
announced by Isaiah--that darkness as well as light, evil as well as good, are
under the control of God, and must therefore be consistent both with His power
and His goodness--will, I believe, become credible to us. And in considering
this question it will be well for us to determine, first of all, what, and how
much, of the evil that exists we ourselves can honestly attribute immediately
to God our Maker.
1. For, obviously, much of the evil within and around us is of our
own making.
2. Much has also been of our neighbours’ making We inherited, with
much that was good, some evil bias from our fathers. We have often had to
breathe an atmosphere charged with moral infections which sprang from the
corrupt habits of the world around us. Our education was not good, or was not
wholly good and wise. We have had to live and trade, to work and play, with men
whose influence on us, if often beneficial, has also been often injurious. The
laws, maxims, customs of the little world in which we have moved have done much
to blunt and lower our moral tone, to encourage us in self-seeking or
self-indulgence, to countenance us in yielding to our baser passions and
desires. As we look back and think of all that we have lost and suffered, it is
probable that we attribute far more of the evils which have fallen on us to men
than to God.
3. Much that seems evil to us is not really evil, or is not
necessarily evil, or is not altogether evil. Cyrus and his Persians had such
evils as noxious plants and animals, excessive heat and cold, famine, drought,
earthquake, storms, disease, and sudden death in their minds mainly when they
spoke of the works of Ahriman, the eternal and malignant antagonist of God.
But, as we know, these apparent ills are not necessarily ills at all, or they
are the products of causes which work for good on the whole, or they carry with
them compensations so large that the world would be the poorer for their loss.
To take but a few illustrations. The storms, that wreck a few ships and destroy
a few lives, clear and revivify the air of a whole continent, and carry new
health to the millions in populous cities pent. The constant struggle for
existence among plants and animals is a necessary condition of the evolution of
their higher and more perfect species. To variations of heat and cold, and even
to excessive variations, we owe the immense variety of the climates and
conditions under which we live; and to these variations of climate the immense
variety and abundance of the harvests by which the world is fed. Is adversity
an evil? It is to the struggle with adversity that we owe many of out” highest
virtues. And as we are driven to toil by the sting of want, and trained to courage
by the assaults of adversity, so also we are moved to thought by the
perplexities of life, and to trust and patience by its sorrows and losses and
cares. We should not realise how much of good there is in our lives if the
current of our days were never vexed by ill winds. (S. Cox, D. D.)
Evil: its origin, junction, and end
There is a hypothesis, a theory of the origin, and function, and
end of evil suggested by Scripture which seems an eminently reasonable one; a
theory which confirms the claim of God to be the Creator and Lord of evil, and
disposes of that dualistic hypothesis which recognises two rival and opposed
Powers at work in the world around us and in the mind of man.
1. When we contemplate the universe of which we form part, the first
impression made on us is of its immense variety; but, as we continue to study
it, the final and deepest impression it makes upon us is that, under this
immense and beautiful variety, there lies an an-pervading unity. As it is with
us, so it has been with the race at large. At first men were so profoundly
impressed by the variety of the universe that they split it up into endless
provinces, assigned to each its ruling spirit, and worshipped gods of heaven
and of earth, gods of mountains and plains, of sea and land, of air and water,
of rivers and springs, of fields and woods, trees and flowers, of hearth and
home, of the individual, the clan, the nation, the empire. Yet even then there
hung in the dark background of their thoughts some conviction of the underlying
unity of the universe, as was proved by their conception of an inscrutable
Destiny or Fate, to which gods and men were alike subject, and by which all the
ages of time were controlled. This conviction grew and deepened as the world
went spinning down the grooves of change, until now Science herself admits
that, by a thousand different paths of investigation and thought, it is led to
the conclusion that, if there be a God at all, there can be but one God; that,
if the universe had a Maker, it could have had but one Maker; that if human
life is under rule, there can be but one ruler over all. There may be one
God,--that to Science is still an open question; but there cannot be more than
one,--that question is closed, and Science herself stands to guard the way to
it as with a sword in her hand. But if there be only one Supreme Lord, there
cannot, of course, be any rival Power to His, any Power that introduces alien
forces or works by other laws. There may be subordinate powers; and at times
these may seem to oppose Him, to contend against Him. But one Power or Will is
supreme; for, as the very word itself suggests, the universe is an unity,--a
vast complex of many forces perhaps and many laws, but still a single and
organised whole. In reverting to the Persian hypothesis of two antagonistic
Powers, therefore, Mill sinned against the most settled conclusion of modern
thought. Now, if we either believe in one supreme Creator and Lord, or,
following Mill’s advice, lean to that conclusion as hard as we can, our next
step is to conceive, as best we may, what this great first Cause, this creative
and ruling Power, is like. Accordingly, we look around us to find that which is
highest in the universe, sure that in that which is highest we shall find that
which most resembles the Most High. And in the whole visible creation we find
nothing so high as man, no force of so Divine a quality and temper as the will
of man, when once that will is guided by wisdom and impelled by love. To him
alone of all visible creatures is the strange power accorded of consciously and
intentionally arresting or modifying the action of the great physical forces,
of conquering Nature by obeying her, of changing her course by a skilfull
application of her own laws. So that, even though the Bible did not assure us
that man was made in the image of God, reason would compel us to conclude that,
since the Creator of all things must include in Himself all the forces
displayed in the work of His hands, and since we must see most of Him in the
highest of His works, we must see most of Him in man, and in that which is
highest in man,--namely, thought, will, affection. Reason has reached this
conclusion in that ancient oracle: “Would you know God? Look within.”
2. Now we are prepared to take our next step, and ask: How evil came
to be? and how, if God is responsible for it, we can reconcile it both with His
perfect goodness and His perfect power?
(1) For the origin of evil we must go back to the creation of all
things, and be content to use words which, though quite inadequate to the
subject, may nevertheless convey true impressions of it. If the conception of
God we have just framed be a true one, then there must have been a time when
the Great Creative Spirit dwelt alone. And in that Divine solitude the question
arose whether a creation, an universe, should be called into being, and of what
kind it should be. Or, perhaps, we may rather say, that, just as the
intelligent and creative spirit of man must work and act, so the creative
Spirit of God urged Him to commence “the works of His hands.” However we may
conceive or phrase it, let us suppose the physical universe determined upon as
the stage on which active intelligences were to play their part; and then ask
yourselves what is implied in the very nature of active intelligent creatures
such as we are, and whether anything less than such creatures could satisfy the
Maker and Lord of all. Would you have God surround Himself with
a merely inanimate world, or tenant that world with mere automata, mere
puppets, with no will of their own, capable, indeed, of reflecting His own
glory back on Him, but incapable of a voluntary affection, a spontaneous and
unforced obedience? Why, even you yourselves cannot gain full scope for your
powers until you are surrounded, or surround yourselves, with beings capable of
loving you freely, and obeying you with a cheerful and unforced accord, beings
whose wills are their own and who yet make them yours. How much less, then, can
you imagine that God should be content with a purely mechanical obedience, with
anything short of a voluntary obedience and affection? But if you admit so much
as this, consider, next, what is implied in the very nature of creatures such
as these. If free to think truly, must they not be free to think untruly? if
free to love, must they not be free not to love? if free to obey, must they not
be free to disobey? The very creation of beings in themselves good involves the
tremendous risk of their becoming evil. Nay, if we consider the matter a little
more closely we shall find that there was more to be confronted than the mere
risk of the introduction of evil. To me it seems a dead certainty, a certainty
which must have been foreseen and provided for in the eternal counsels of the
Almighty, that in the lapse of ages, with a vast hierarchy of creatures
possessed of freewill, some among them would assert and prove their freedom by
disobedience. How else could man, for instance, assure himself that he was
free, that his will was in very deed his own? Are we not impatient of any law
even by which we are bound, or suspect that we are bound, however good the law
may be in itself? Free creatures, again, creatures with intelligence, will,
passion, are active creatures: and there is something, as all observers are
agreed, in the very nature of activity which blunts and weakens our sense of
inferiority, dependence, accountability. The Bible affirms that what reason
might have anticipated actually took place. It tells us that both in heaven and
on earth the creatures God had made did thus fall away from Him, doing their
own will instead of His, taking their own course instead of the course marked
out and hedged in for them by His pure and kindly laws. And it moreover
asserts, in full accordance with the teachings of philosophy and science, that,
by their disobedience to the laws of their being and happiness, they jarred
themselves into a false and sinister relation to the material universe; that,
by introducing moral evil into the creation, they exposed themselves to those
physical ills from which we suffer to this day. It must be obvious to every
reflective mind that if the whole physical universe was created by the Word of
God, if it is animated by His Spirit and ruled by His will, then as many as
disobey that high will must put themselves out of harmony with all that obey
it, must find the very forces which once worked for them turned against them.
They are at war with the will which pervades and controls the universe: how,
then, can the universe be at peace with them? If, then, we now repeat the
question: In what sense may we reverently attribute evil to God? in what sense
can we concede His claim to be responsible for evil as well as for good? our
reply must be that, in creating beings capable of loving and serving Him of their
own choice, He created the possibility of evil, ran the risk of its existence,
and even knew beforehand that it would certainly enter in and mar the work of
His hands.
God’s love in relation to evil
The Bible goes on to teach us that, in His pity, the great Father
of our spirits came down to us His sinful children, virtually saying to us: “I
might much more reasonably attribute the evils from which you suffer to you
than you to Me; for you owe them to your disobedience and self-will. But, see,
I freely take them all on Myself. I claim to be responsible for them all. And
since you cannot drive it away, I take away the sin of the world by a sacrifice
so great and so far-reaching, by an atonement so potent, so Divine, that you
can but apprehend it afar off, and must not hope to fathom its full virtue and
extent. To brace you for your daily strife with evil, I foretell a final and
complete victory over it; I promise you that in the end I will sweep the evil
that harasses and afflicts you clean out of the universe it has marred and
defiled. And, meantime, it shall have no power to hurt or harm you if you will
but put your trust in Me. All that is painful in it, all the sting of it, I
take on Myself. For you, if you will but meet it wisely and trustfully, it shall
be nothing but a helpful discipline, a training in vigour, in holiness, in
charity.” (S. Cox, D. D.)
Pain and death co-existent with animal life
There is the strongest indirect evidence, and not a little direct,
that predacious animals have existed from a very early period in the world’s
history. The struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest mean the
suffering and the extinction of the weaker. Read the great stone book of
nature, that truth is sculptured deep in its pages in no illegible hieroglyphics.
Pain and death, then, if evils, must have been present in the world from the
date when organic life, or at any rate animal life, began. The inorganic world
being as it is, pain seems to be correlative with sensation, and death is but
the end of each individual paragraph in the history; and if this came by either
injury or violence, we cannot believe it at any rate to have been altogether
painless. Nay, we may go further, and assert that unless we suppose the laws of
Nature to have been wholly different from those which now prevail, we cannot
understand how organised beings could live without at any rate occasional
sensations of discomfort; they must have felt extremes of heat and cold; they
must have known hunger and thirst; and what are these but minor degrees of
pain? Perfection through suffering is a more general law of nature than we
commonly think. At the same time, I fully believe that to the majority of
living creatures life brings far more pleasure than pain; indeed, I think there
is much reason to suppose that the acuteness with which the latter is felt, and
the duration of its memory, is proportional to its possible disciplinary
effect. (T. G. Bonney, D. Sc. , LL. D.)
Evil
A vast moral gulf is fixed between what are popularly held to be
evils, things which have no deleterious effect on the spirit life, and those
which are called evils in revelation; the things which are fatal ultimately to
the spirit life. (T. G. Bonney, D. Sc. , LL. D.)
The real evils
The sins and wickedness of the world are the real evils, and it is
to these that the works of the spirit are opposed. But these--sensuality, lust,
selfishness, cruelty, injustice, oppression--whence are they? what are they?
St. Paul calls these the works of the flesh, and the more we ponder his words
the more far-reaching we shall usually find them. When we investigate these
evils, we can trace them back till we find they originate in yielding to
prompting of the nature which we have in common with the animal kingdom. A
member of this does what the organism of sensation demands, and we do not
designate the action as evil unless, either in earnest or in figurative speech,
we attribute to the creature some kind of moral consciousness, to which the
action is repugnant. The law of the animal would appear to be “gratify the
various desires of the body.” The only limitation is “abstain from excess,”
which seems more easily observed in its case perhaps because there is so little
opportunity of revolt against laws of a straiter character. Man, as sharing the
animal nature, is liable to a greater or less degree to each animal impulse,
but as possessing another and a higher nature he is called upon to control
these impulses, and if he do not obey this call, if he prefer to follow the
lower nature, he fails to accomplish the purpose and attain the goal set before
him, and thus his deeds are evil, his life is sinful. (T. G.Bonney, D. Sc. ,
LL. D.)
Evil in relation to good
In an order of things where choice exists and where there is a
scheme of progress, evil is as inevitable an antithesis to good as a shadow is
to light, because each time that the person either remains inactive where he
should have obeyed the call of the higher law, or where, if two definite
impulses are in conflict, he follows the lower, he does an evil act. Evil,
then, in the present state of things is as necessary a correlative to good as
decay is to growth, for good is obedience to the promptings of the spirit life,
and evil is the refusal to submit to this, and consequent yielding to the animal.
This view appears to me to be distinctly maintained by St. Paul in the seventh
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, a passage universally regarded as very
difficult, but one which I think becomes comparatively clear when considered in
this light. In it the apostle depicts the conflict between the animal life and
the spirit life. (T. G.Bonney, D. Sc. , LL. D.)
Evil,
Evil, in this world, lies not so much in the deed as in the doer.
(T. G.Bonney, D. Sc. , LL. D.)
The origin and prevalence of evil
I. THE QUANTITY OF
EXISTING EVIL IS NOT SO GREAT AS, AT FIRST VIEW, IT MAY APPEAR TO BE.
1. By a wise appointment of Providence, scenes of distress are made
to strike our minds more forcibly, and to awaken a far livelier fellow-feeling
in our breasts than any species of felicity which we witness; and for this
obvious reason, that distress stands in need of that active consolation and
relief which our compassion will naturally prompt, while happiness is more
independent of sympathy. Add to this, that misery, in consequence of the same
occasion for the participation of social natures in its feelings, is much more
clamorous, and therefore more noticed, than satisfaction. And the sum of evil
has been still further exaggerated by writers who were aware that the tale of
woe would find a chord more responsive to it in the human heart, than any which
vibrates in unison with the voice of joy; as well as by many mistaken devotees,
who have esteemed a gloomy discontent with the present life as essential to
piety.
2. To any calm and unprejudiced observer, however, the latent, but
multiplied, satisfactions of mankind will not fail to discover themselves; and
he will learn to look up with confidence to that all-gracious Being, who,
although He suffers, for wise ends, the existence of darkness and evil, creates
more of light than of darkness, and more of peace than of evil. To nearly all
natural evils, indeed, a compensation may be discovered. After all, however, it
cannot be denied that the world contains much real distress.
II. ITS ORIGIN.
Whatever evil afflicts the human race, is all, in one way or other, of their
own procuring. God “doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of
men.” When He first called the human race into existence, He designed them to
be happy, and He made them so. “By one man’s disobedience sin came into the
world,” and misery and death by sin. With respect to every species of evil, man
may be pronounced the author of his own tribulation.
III. By the gracious
interference of providence, IT TENDS TO A HAPPY ISSUE to an issue which, to say
the least of it, counterbalances the previous evil. Let us learn to improve our
confidence in the Divine goodness; to redress, as far as lies within our
capacity, the multiform evils that exist around us; and to convert to wise and
beneficial purposes such of these evils as affect ourselves. (J. Grant, M.
A.)
The mystery of evil
In the hour of pain, sickness, sorrow, death, our anguished nerves
and bleeding hearts make us cry out, “Why should we be smitten? Whose hand has
smitten us?” It is natural, as many of the heathen creeds show, to attribute
our suffering to some wrathful or malignant power. Many of our neighbours so
attribute it, either to an angry God, or to a malicious devil. The Bible
unhesitatingly attributes it to God, but is careful to remind us that “the Lord
is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.” There are two
points, a right view of which is essential to our getting at the truth of the
matter.
1. Death itself is not an evil. Simply because it is as common and as
natural to us as sleep, death is no more evil in itself than sleep. Continual
birth makes continual death necessary, if there is to be any such thing as
equal opportunities in the world. And what is death but a birth into another
life? Even in the case of the wicked, whom it introduces to evil beyond, death
is not in itself an evil, any more than the door is evil through which any
wrong-doer passes to trial or to imprisonment. Dying is simply going through
the door between two worlds.
2. Suffering is evil, but is worked by goodness to good ends. But, we
ask, couldn’t the good ends have been accomplished without the evil of
suffering? Well, put the question home. Could you have been made free from
faults and follies without suffering? Experience, both of ourselves and others,
answers, No. What the Bible affirms, in a certain point, of Jesus, must be much
more broadly affirmed of every man-“perfect through suffering” only. The only
conceivable way of dispensing with suffering is to dispense with imperfection.
But a creation in which there is nothing imperfect, but everything is finished,
is inconceivable. We cannot conceive what that state of things would be, in
which there was not only no infancy and childhood, but no growth of anything;
nothing to learn, because everything is known; and nothing to do, because
everything is done. But it is staggering to think of the amount of suffering
that this involves. Perhaps we may think that it might have been largely
prevented, if God had provided better instruction, had had guide-boards set up
to show the right way, and thorn-hedges to close up wrong ways. Well, has He
not done so? Have we never known people to take the wrong way in spite of wise
counsel, and to take it again and again in spite of bitter experience? What we
have to admit, then, is that suffering, though evil in itself, is a means to
good, and is an instrument in the hands of goodness. Our difficulty is, that
while we see this to be true to a certain extent, we do not see it in every
case. Nevertheless, it appears true, as far as we are able to trace the
connection of cause and effect. What is the most reasonable conclusion from
that? Simply this, that we should see the same if we were able to see further.
The great mystery of the evil in God’s world requires for its solution a right
answer to the supreme question, What is it that we are to be intent on as our
first aim? Not happiness, surely. Happiness for the imperfect means content
with imperfection. Perfection, rather than happiness, this is first; in order
to this, suffering; then, in proportion to the perfection attained thereby,
resulting blessedness. Nor is this a mere opinion. History, observation, and
experience point that way. It was in the intuition of this great truth that one
appointed to more hardship than is common to the lot of man bore his testimony
to the ages thus: “Our light affliction, which is for the moment,” &c. (J.
M. Whiton.)
Good out of evil
Here the familiar story of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England is
in point. They arrived on the American coast in the most unseasonable time, at
the setting in of winter. Their exposures and hardships consequently brought on
a fatal sickness. Before their first corn was planted half of them had been
buried. Seldom has a more pathetic tale been told than that of these poor,
pious exiles
A
screen of leafless branches
Betwixt
them and the blast.
But had it better not have been so? Is heroism worth so little
that there had better be no occasion made for it by the presence of great evils
calling out all the strength of spirit that man is capable of? Who can tell how
much that terrible suffering, met with such loftiness of spirit, has been worth
to the world, in kindling the same unquenchable fire of heroism in multitudes
of admiring beholders? (J. M. Whiton.)
Man and sin; the problem of moral evil
(with 1 John 3:4, R.V.):--The proper order
in which to investigate our experience of the subject is to begin with the
existence of moral evil, and from that standing-ground look out upon the larger
question of cosmical evil.
I. THE PRESENCE OF
MORAL EVIL IN HUMAN NATURE--THE SENSE OF SIN. By far the greatest amount of the
suffering of life is owing to the depravity of human nature. If men were good
and kind there would be little left to mourn over. Speaking generally, we may
say that human experience of this great fact runs from the crude and selfish
perception of the faults of other people up to the self-humiliation of the
saint in whom the sense of sin is strongly developed. To take the lower ground
first--there are some who are smarting under a sense of injury. It may be that
life is altogether sadder than it once was, because of the heart-breaking conduct
of some from whom a very different course of action might have been expected.
To such as these the fact that human nature is vitiated, and that the world is
made wretched in consequence, needs no complete demonstration. Or again, there
may be some who remember with pain and regret certain of their own mistakes
which have brought evil results in their train. Self-reproach, however, does
not put things right again. It is not only that the mistakes are beyond recall,
but that the character itself is intractable. No man who is true to himself can
escape the necessity of self-blame. This self-blame may be perfunctory and
imperfect, or it may be radical and strong. It may be only a form of self-pity,
or it may be a deep experience of guilt. Let me state a few things about this
sense of guilt. In the first place, we may recognise that it is not universal,
though in some form or other it is one of the most general of experiences. Some
of the great religions in the world are deficient in it: Confucianism. Confucius,
like so many of the world’s prophets, died a disappointed man. He had aimed at
something higher than the nature of his countrymen was prepared for. He had to
put up with opposition, slander, persecution, and poverty. We might think that
the problem of human sinfulness would have suggested itself to him, but we have
no such indication in his teachings. In these there is an utter absence of any
cognisance of sin as such. What is true of this religion is true of others.
Their recognition of faultiness is not a recognition of sinfulness. Even in our
own day, and amongst our circle of acquaintance, there are, no doubt, some who
are without the sense of sin, and who evince no consciousness of the need of
forgiveness. Men may be aware in a general way that things are not right in
their own dispositions or in those of their fellows, and yet be strangers to
the mood of contrition. Censoriousness and the sense of sin do not usually go
together. We come to another and higher order of experience when we enter the ranks
of those in whom perception of personal unworthiness is vivid. Especially has
this been the case where the idea of a righteous God has been powerfully
presented. It is within the circle of Christianity, however, that this
conviction has been quickened and deepened to the greatest degree. It has been
held that the sense of sin is a morbid development of religious life. We are
not better, but worse, than we think we are. The mood of contrition is a note
of awakening nobility. An accompaniment of the sense of sin is the depressing
discovery of our helplessness to escape it. To conclude this first point, then,
we may say that we are sadly aware of the presence of moral evil in human
nature, and we are also aware that it “ought not to be.”
II. ATTEMPTS TO ACCOUNT
FOR THE ORIGIN OF MORAL EVIL. That men should have been exercised in their
minds about the presence of moral evil in the world is not to be wondered at,
and it is instructive to notice some of the attempts that have been made to
account for it. In stating certain of the theories which have been projected to
explain human depravity, we may take them in the order of their relative
importance.
1. Let us note that sin has often been held to be a delusion, that it
is simply a form of mental experience, and no more real than a torturing dream.
Culpability is only a fancy; no one is to blame for anything; and if the soul
is to persist, and self-consciousness be continued in a higher state, man will
then discover that all his agony and tears and self-reproach had no sterner
cause than a little child’s dread of the dark. This explanation we can soon
dismiss. Self-blame is no fancy. Sin is not something negative, it is
positive--an enemy that we have to fight.
2. Further, right through human history a tendency is observable to
account for the presence of moral evil by a dualistic theory of existence.
Darkness has been represented as the foe of light, matter of spirit, and Satan
of God. The variations of these dualistic theories are manifold. Platonists,
Gnostics, Manichaeans are a great family who regarded matter as being in some
degree independent of God, and imperfectly under His control. All these
movements had something in common, and that something was the tendency to place
matter in opposition to spirit, and regard evil as resident in matter.
Thoroughgoing belief in such positions has, as a rule, run into the two
extremes of asceticism and license. Although Plato’s dualism was a very
different thing from the Gnostic heresies, the latter really sprang from it. It
has sometimes been thought that Scripture lends some countenance to the theory
here indicated. “The world,” for instance, is presented as antithetic to “the
kingdom,” and “the flesh” as antithetic to “the spirit.” This is undoubtedly
the case, but we must be warned against thinking that the New Testament
writings should be construed to mean that evil has its seat in the flesh, and
that the spirit only needs the liberation of death in order to be holy at a
bound.
3. Positivism, and all allied modes of belief, effect a practical,
though not theoretical, division of the universe. Humanity and the moral order
are represented as an entity apart from the hard background of nature, and we
are bidden to do our best to further the advance of everything that makes for
human good without seeking sanctions in nature or the supernatural. It is
curious to note that the advocates of this principle are usually the strongest
in the assertion that the universe is one and indivisible. One power is
observed to be at work within it, and not two powers pitted against each other.
4. This brings us to the consideration of the theory, which is
Christian as well as non-Christian, that in the universe we have a personal
dualism represented in the familiar names, God and Satan. We need not deny the
existence of a personal captain of the host of evil, but we are not prepared to
admit that there is room in the universe for a power whom God cannot overthrow.
This is a cursory summary of theories which have occupied the attention of men
from age to age. We may say of them all--
5. Allied with, but independent of, the foregoing, is the Christian
doctrine of the fall. It is remarkable that this doctrine is also
extra-Christian. It has a place, for instance, in the old Teutonic mythology. The
doctrine is also pre-Christian. It has a place in the Old Testament, though not
a large place. It is within the field of Christianity, however, that the theory
of a fall of the race from original purity has had its greatest vogue. About
this Prof. Orr says: “I do not enter into the question of how we are to
interpret Genesis
3.
whether
as history or allegory or myth, or, most probable of all, asold tradition
clothed in Oriental allegorical dress; but the truth embodied in that
narrative, namely, the fall of man from an original state of purity, I take to
be vital to the Christian view.” Upon this point, however, science is in direct
conflict with received theology, and in recent years the attempt to reconcile
the doctrine of the fall with the accepted theory of evolution has been felt as
a considerable difficulty. The way in which it has been sought to solve that
difficulty may be illustrated from a sermon preached by a friend of my own.
“The fact of the fall is simply in effect the statement of these biological
facts in the spiritual region. It is that there came, at the beginning of human
history, when man was physically complete, and had reached a stable
equilibrium, where his moral and spiritual development was to begin,--there
came, how we do not know, a backward step, and that backward step has been
perpetuated in the history of the race because of the scientific fact of the
solidarity of the race. What St. Paul would call the fall of man is simply the
statement of a spiritual fact which has its precise analogy in the very
doctrine of evolution that is supposed to contradict it.” The same preacher
goes on to say that through the entrance of sin into the world, by man’s fault
and in opposition to the purpose of God, there has come into the world, not the
fact of death, for death was here before, but the horror of it of which
humanity is conscious, and that the misery of humanity has only been alleviated
by second creation, as it were--the entrance of Christ into the world and the
proclamation of the good news of redemption. To these statements the one
sweeping objection may be taken that if they presume the historicity of the
story of Genesis and the theory of a fall in time, through man’s own fault and
against the intention of God, they are in direct contradiction to the judgings
of modern science, and no hypothesis about “a backward step” or “a new
creation” can get over the difficulty. Our theology must be in harmony with the
rest of our knowledge. We are on safer ground if we appeal once more to experience,
and say that the fall ought not to be regarded as an historical event, but a
psychological fact. In this connection we may observe that Jesus never says a
word about an historical fall of the race. The parable of the Prodigal Son has
been quoted as the analogue of the story in Genesis, but, on the face of it, it
is meant to be interpreted psychologically rather than historically. In
addition to this we must say that the theory of a fall in time is surrounded by
other and graver difficulties, which lead us to a view of the character of God
inconsistent with our Lord’s revelation of the nature of the Father. That God
should have made man so that he was not only liable but certain to fall, and
should then have visited the whole race with disastrous consequences, is
altogether incomprehensible. But, further, it is unthinkable that unbiassed
human nature would ever voluntarily choose evil. Speaking in all reverence, we
may say that as it is unthinkable that God should fall, so is it unthinkable
that man should fall, unless he were so made as to desire evil without knowing
good. To sum up this point, therefore, we may say that the presence of moral
evil cannot be accounted for either as a delusion, or by a dualistic theory of
the universe, or even by a fall in time. The explanation must be sought
elsewhere.
III. THE HYPOTHESIS
THAT THE ORIGIN OF MORAL EVIL IS IN GOD. We come, then, to the consideration of
a theory which, like the foregoing, is both Christian and non-Christian,
namely, that moral evil has its origin in the good purpose of God. This has
been held by some of the greatest of the teachers of the Christian Church, from
Augustine to the Reformation Fathers. Even later Roman Catholic theology has
lingered around it in the song, “O felix culpa” “which by so great a
fall has secured, a greater, redemption. Evil is an experience necessary for
the sake of good, and it must disappear when its work is done. For what is
good? No man knows save by the struggle to realise it. Every man is conscious
not only of the desire to choose evil, but of the obligation to choose good. To
sin is to follow the lower in presence of the higher; it is yielding to that
which is easy in opposition to that which is right. If evil within the
disposition supplies the tendency, sin is in yielding to that tendency. This
relieves no man of moral responsibility. Sin is real, and we are to blame for
it, but we are not qualified to judge one another. God, and God only, can
disentangle the threads of human motive, and estimate the amount of individual
culpability. Without Christ there would be but a feeble light on this world
problem. From what we know of Him we can look forward and upward. Primordial
evil is the appointment of our God and Father, who shares in every experience
of His children. Salvation is escape from sin; atonement escape from guilt; God
provides both. There is no longer room for despair, but only for solemn
gladness. “Let the wicked forsake his way,” &c. (R. J. Campbell, M. A.)
The Divine use of pain
(Hospital Sunday):--
I. DIVINE
SOVEREIGNTY IN RELATION TO DISEASE AND PAIN. What the apostle wrote in the
spirit of prophecy is confirmed by the page of history. “Of Him, and to Him,
and through Him are all things; to whom be glory for ever.” We do not find it
difficult to assent to this doctrine when all things go well with us. It is
when He says: I create darkness, I create evil, that we feel it strange and
shrink back from a full hearty assent. It has been suggested that this truth of
the text was given as a correction of the old Eastern myth of two gods, one
opposed to the other, and creating evil in opposition to the work of the good
god. The modern form of this theory, and one which prevails in certain circles
of Christian people, is that all disease and physical evil is by the work and
machination of Satan. This is equally contrary to the teaching of the text and
the whole of Scripture. These things perplex our thoughts and try our faith;
but it only increases the perplexity and trial to attribute them to Satan. We
are still in God’s hand.
II. THE USE THESE
THINGS SERVE IN THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. The question of the use which anything
serves, which God in His providence sends or permits, must ever be asked with
the humble consciousness that the thing may be too deep for us to understand.
Yet God does not leave us without some knowledge of His will, and of the use
which He makes off this suffering and pain.
1. For one thing is clear, pain and disease bade men to, respect
Divine law.
2. This evil often leads to the fuller manifestation of His power.
When the disciples asked concerning one born blind, “Who did sin, this man or
his parents?” our Lord replies that the man had the misfortune “that the works
of God should be made manifest in him.” Not merely or chiefly the opening of
the bodily eye, but the works of God to which our Lord referred were those
changes and that spiritual enlightenment which came to the man through
intercourse with Christ. So that the ignorant and poor blind beggar saw what
the well-instructed and self-righteous Pharisee did not see, and could answer
calmly the cavils of Christ’s opponents, and endure persecution for His sakes.
These works of God have often been manifested through the instrumentality of
fiery pain and disease. Days of sickness have been days when the wandering soul
has heard the voice of the Good
Shepherd, and returned from its wanderings, and has learned to
say, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted.”
3. Sometimes, also, pain and disease have been in God’s hand a
protection against sin. The curb which physical weakness puts upon us may be
the very check that is needed to keep us within the bounds of true moderation,
beyond which the path is strewn thick with temptations frequent and great, so
that escape were almost impossible.
4. In the same way these things are essential in the purifying
process which is being now carried on.
5. Beside all this, the pain and sorrow which sometimes nearly
overwhelm us, call out sympathy and compassion which unite men in this closest
of bonds.
III. OUR DUTY in
view of these truths.
1. There ought to be in connection with these things the distinct
recognition of His hand, which should extend to the whole circumstances of the
case. It is only a partial and untrue view that regards God’s hand in permitting
suffering, and refuses to acknowledge His goodness in the alleviations and
remedies which He provides, and the medical skill with which He endows men.
2. But most of all we need to cultivate tender sympathy for those who
suffer, and as far as may be to help them by kindly patient service. (W.
Page, B. A.)
Light and darkness in the universe
Interwoven with the texture of the revelation there is an element
of mystery to prove and humble and solemnise. I shall not soon forget a visit I
once paid in the dead of night to the Colosseum. The moon was just rising
behind the gigantic walls. Its light was almost golden in depth and richness.
The towering battlements cast shadows dense as a thundercloud. The vast circle
of masonry was all but; filled with gloom and darkness. By and by the light of
the rising moon fell in quivering bars through, the rents in the walls and the
doorways in the galleries. At last the whole place looked like a colossal wheel
with spokes of burnished metal divided off from each other by intervals of
ebony. In that vast, fan-like figure, quivering light and unbroken shadow, cast
by the piles of masonry, lay side by side with each other with an alternation
that was almost mathematical. Was not that a figure of the universe? Dazzling light
and impenetrable shadow, clear revelation and dim mystery, the comprehensible
and the incomprehensible, things of God’s love lie side by side with each
other, throughout the whole of the wonderful circle. “We know in part, and we
prophesy in part.” (T. G. Selby.)
Sorrow a shadow of the Divine love
I remember on a glorious day of all but cloudless sunshine passing
in view of a well-known line of bare and majestic downs, then basking in the
full beams of noon. But on one face of the hill rested a mass of deep and
gloomy shadow. On searching for its cause I at length discovered one little
speck of cloud, bright as light, floating in the clear blue above. This it was
which cast on the hillside that ample track of gloom. And what I saw was an
image of Christian sorrow. Dark and cheerless often as it is, and unaccountably
as it passes over our earthly path, in heaven its tokens shall be found, and it
shall be known to have been but a shadow of this brightness whose name is Love.
(Dean Alford.)
I make peace
God the Author of peace
The same power which placed the sun in the heavens, gives to the
nations of the earth the light and comfort of peace; and He who made the night
before the day, when darkness lay upon the face of the deep, creates the evil
of war.
I. THE CAUSES OF
WAR. Let but God leave men to themselves, and they fall into discord and
anarchy, as the elements of the world would sink into confusion without His
support, and return to their primitive chaos. As soon as two men appeared upon
earth in a state of equality and competition, war arose between them, and the
one slew the other.
1. No wonder there are wars without in the world, when there is an
inward war in the mind of man; a restlessness of appetite which breaks out into
acts of violence, and can never be satisfied.
2. But there is another principle in the world, which, if possible,
is productive of more mischief than all the rest; this is, false religion.
These are the principal causes of war on the part of man-
3. But war has another cause on the part of God. It is sent by Him
for the punishment of sin, and has never failed to chastise and reduce a people
when fallen into pride or disobedience.
II. THE EFFECTS OF
WAR. The words of the text are remarkable; for here war, as opposed to peace,
is called by the name of “evil”: and a dreadful evil it is, comprehending all
the evils that are to be found in the world, whether we consider it as a sin or
a punishment.
III. THE USE WE
OUGHT TO MAKE OF THE BLESSINGS AND OPPORTUNITIES AFFORDED US BY A TIME OF
PEACE. (W. Jones, M. A.)
I, the Lord, do all these
things
The agency of God universal
I. IN WHAT THE
AGENCY OF GOD CONSISTS. The agency of God consists in His will, His choice or
volition. God is a perfectly free agent. God is a moral agent. He perfectly
knows and loves moral good, and as perfectly knows and hates moral evil.
II. HIS AGENCY IS
UNIVERSAL. God claims to be the universal agent.
1. God has made all things.
2. This further appears from His upholding all things. God did not
and could not make any creature or object independent, and give it the power of
self-preservation.
3. God must extend His agency to all created objects in the universe,
because He has made all things for Himself. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
Verse 8
Drop down, ye heavens
Salvation comes of man’s response to God
To the eye of the seer the earth lies open to heaven as a wide
corn-land over which the clouds of heaven hang, the air breathes, and the sun
sheds sheets of light.
Those clouds are big with righteousness, the special term used throughout this
book of the faithfulness of Jehovah. At the call of prayer the skies pour down
their precious treasure, and the earth opens every pore to receive the
plentiful rain; presently every acre brings forth salvation, and righteousness
springs up in the hearts of men, as their answer to the descent of the
righteousness of God. It is the bridal of heaven and earth, a fulfilment of the
prediction of the psalm: “Truth springeth out of the earth; and righteousness
hath looked down from heaven.” The conception is one of surpassing beauty. The
brooding of heaven; the response of earth. Deep calling unto deep. The nature
of God originating and inspiring; the nature of man responding. And when the
descending grace of God is thus received by the believing yearning heart of
man, the result is salvation. As the margin of R.V. reads: “Let the skies be
fruitful in salvation, and let the earth cause righteousness to spring up
together.” The whole paragraph to the close of the chapter rings with salvation
as its keynote. Does God hide Himself? He is the God of Israel, the Saviour.
Are the makers of idols ashamed and confounded? Yet Israel is saved with an
everlasting salvation. Are graven images held up to contempt? It is because
they are gods that cannot save. Does God assert His unrivalled Deity? It is
because He is a just God, and a Saviour. Are men bidden to look to Him, though
they be far removed as the ends of the earth? It is that they may be saved.
Primarily, no doubt, this salvation concerns the emancipation of the chosen
people from the thraldom of Babylon, and their restoration to Jerusalem. “He
shall build My city; he shall let My exiles go free, not for price nor reward,
saith the Lord of hosts.” This deliverance, which is a type of the greater
deliverance from the guilt and power of sin, was, in the fixed purpose of God,
sure as the creation of the earth and man; guaranteed by the hands that
stretched out the heavens, and by the word that commanded all their host. (F.
B. Meyer, B. A.)
Verse 9
Woe unto him that striveth with Ms Maker!--
Striving with God
The strong word “strive,” and the emphatic reassertion of the
mission of Cyrus (Isaiah 45:13), as well as the connection
with Isaiah 45:1-8, show that deliberate
opposition to the Divine purpose, and not mere faint-hearted unbelief (as in Isaiah 40:27; Isaiah 51:13), is here referredto.
(Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Opposing the Divine purpose
Those who were primarily addressed were at variance with God their
Creator on two accounts--
1. Because He permitted His people to be led captive by their enemies
into a distant country, where they were oppressed.
2. Because, notwithstanding the servants of the Lord spoke much
concerning their liberation, the event seemed altogether improbable, and beyond
even the power of God to effect. (R. Macculloch.)
Contending with God
I. BY MURMURING AT
HIS DISPENSATIONS.
II. BY RESISTING
HIS AUTHORITY.
III. BY CONTEMNING
HIS INSTRUCTIONS. (R. Macculloch.)
Striving with our Maker
If we duly consider the life of man since the fall, we shall find
it to be one continued struggle. In the great and most momentous affair of
religion, upon which our whole happiness depends, what a domestic war do we
find within our own breasts! Happy are they who are successful in this
spiritual conflict; and are so wise as vigorously to join forces with the Lord
of hosts! But woe be to him who is of a party with the enemy, and “striveth
with his Maker.”
I. We will
consider WHAT IT IS TO STRIVE WITH OUR MAKER. In general it is to resist His
will, and oppose ourselves to His government, to struggle against the
dispensations of His providence.
II. THE EXTREME
VILENESS AND FOLLY OF SO DOING.
I. In general, if
the height of ingratitude be a vile thing, and if to oppose and contend with
our best Friend, who is infinitely wiser than we are, and loves us better than
we do ourselves, and whose power too is so irresistible, that after all our
strugglings His pleasure shall be accomplished one way or other, if not to our
happiness, as He at first intended, then to our ruin, since we are resolved to
have it so,--if this be a foolish thing, then to “strive with our Maker” does
imply all the folly and baseness that a man can possibly be guilty of.
2. But more particularly, to strive with our Maker is a most vile and
foolish thing, as it signifies--
III. THE MISERABLE
CONSEQUENCE of thus striving with our Maker. “Woe unto him.”
1. As it signifies disobedience to His commands. For who can imagine
but that a Governor so wise, and so powerful, and so just as God is, will in
due time assert His authority, and secure His laws and government from
contempt, by the condign punishment of those who have been so hardy as to
resist and rebel against Him, and made no account of the plainest and most
express declarations of His will? And when the Almighty shall proceed to do
justice, who can withstand Him, or hope to avoid the stroke, but must sink
under the weight of it for ever!
2. Nor will our discontents and murmurings at the Divine disposals
escape without due punishment. For suppose that God should be so far provoked
by our repinings as to throw us off from His care and protection, and leave us
to ourselves, and in His anger comply with our foolish desires, and give us
what we are so fond of, and which He sees will be our ruin, how sadly sensible
shall we then soon be of the vast difference between God’s government and our
own!
3. And so for impatience under troubles and afflictions, suppose our
outcries and strugglings and resistance should make God withhold His paternal
chastisements, and suffer sin upon us without correction, and disregard us as
desperate and incorrigible; what woe on earth could befall us greater than
this?
4. What but the extremest of all woes can be expected from our
rejecting those proposals of reconciliation to God, which are not only offered
but pressed upon us daily by the ministers of Christ, and to which we are
constantly moved by the workings of the Spirit of God within, upon our souls! (W.
Bragge.)
The misery of contending with God
I. SPECIFY SOME
INSTANCES IN WHICH THE SINNER MAY BE CONSIDERED AS STRIVING WITH GOD. I hardly
think it worth while to mention atheism, which opposes His very being, and
tries to banish Him from the world which He has made. Some, indeed, have
supposed that a speculative atheist is an impossibility. How far God may give
up a man “to strong delusion to believe a lie,” who has despised and rejected
the advantages of revelation, it is not for us to determine,--but “if the light
that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” It is undeniable,
however, that we have a multitude of practical atheists. That is, we have
thousands who live precisely as they would do if they believed there was no
God. They strive with Him--
1. By transgressing His holy and righteous law.
2. By opposing the Gospel.
3. By violating the dictates of conscience.
4. By refusing to resign themselves to the dispensations of His
providence.
5. By the persecution of His people.
6. By trying to hinder the spread of His cause.
II. CONSIDER THE
“WOE” WHICH HIS OPPOSITION NECESSARILY ENTAILS UPON HIM. This striving with God
is--
1. A practice the most shameful and ungrateful. What would you think
of a child who should strive with his father, reproach his character,
counteract all his designs, and endeavour to injure his concerns? But such is
your conduct towards God.
2. A practice the most unreasonable and absurd. For observe--in all
the instances in which you oppose Him He is aiming to promote your good: His
design is to make you wise, to make you holy, to make you happy; and the
advantages of compliance will be all your own. Besides, can you do without Him?
In life? In death?
3. Therefore nothing can be more injurious and ruinous. In striving
with Him, you only resemble the wave that dashes against the rock, and is
driven back in foam; or the ox that kicks against the goad, and only wounds
himself; or the thorns and briers that should set themselves in battle array
against the fire. To improve this awful subject let me ask--Whether you are for
God or against Him? There is no neutrality here. We have been speaking of a
striving with God which is unlawful and destructive--but there is a striving
with Him which is allowable and necessary. It is by prayer and supplication. (W.
Jay.)
The indelicacy of criticising God
(verse l 0):--That a child should so speak of father or mother is
unthinkably unnatural and impious. And such are they who criticise God’s method
of saving His people through Cyrus. (A. B.Davidson, D. D.)
Verse 11
Thus saith the Lord . . . Ask Me
Prayer and criticism
“Ask Me, but do not criticise Me.
” “Command Me” must mean “leave to My care.” (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Encouragement to pray from the names of God
“The Lord”--that is, God in His everlasting redemptive purpose;
“the Holy One of Israel”--that is, the moral perfections of Israel’s God, as
contrasted with the abominations perpetrated under the sanction of heathen
religions; “his Maker”--suggesting the purpose which from the clay gathered in
Abraham’s time from the highlands of Mesopotamia, was fashioning a fair vessel
meet for His use. This threefold description of God introduces the august
command which bade the people seek by prayer the fulfilment of the purpose on
which the Divine heart was set. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Putting forth of` God’s power dependent on prayer
In launching an ironclad, the pressure of a baby’s finger is not
infrequently required to put in operation the ponderous machinery by which the
iron leviathan glides evenly and majestically on to the ocean wave. So, if we
may dare to say it, all the purposes of God, and the providential machinery by
which they were to be executed, stood in suspense until the chosen people had
asked for the things which He had promised, and had even commanded Him
concerning the work on which His heart was set. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Asking and commanding
I. PRAYER IS A
NECESSARY LINK IN THE PERFORMANCE OF THE DIVINE PROMISES. “Ask Me of things to
come.” Even to the Son, Jehovah says,” “Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the
heathen,” &c. And to the chosen people, at the end of a paragraph beginning
with “I will,” and unfolding the work which He is prepared to do, not for their
sakes, but for His own--He says, “For this, moreover, will I be inquired of by
the house of Israel, to do it for them.” Our Lord is unremitting in the stress
He lays on prayer, and pledges Himself to do only whatsoever is asked in His
name.
1. Prayer is part of the system of co-operation between God and man
which pervades nature and life.
2. Prayer, when genuine, indicates the presence of a disposition to
which God can entrust His best gifts without injury to the recipient. To bless
some men, apart from humility and submission, and weanedness of soul from
creature aid, would only injure. And so, in His dear love, God withholds His
choicest gifts until the heart is sore broken, and cries to Him. That cry is
the blessed symptom of soul-health.
3. Prayer is also in its essence, when inspired by faith, an openness
towards God, a receptiveness, a faculty of apprehending with open hand what He
would impart. Let us pray--
(1) Unitedly. God would be inquired of by the “house” of Israel.
II. THE IMPERATIVE
ACCENT IN FAITH. “Concerning My sons, and concerning the work of My hands,
command ye Me.” Our Lord spoke in this tone when He said, “Father, I will.”
Joshua used it when in the supreme moment of triumph he lifted up his spear
towards the setting sun, and cried, “Sun, stand thou still!” Elijah used it
when he shut the heavens for three years and six months, and again opened them.
Luther used it when, kneeling by the dying Melanchthon, he forbade death to
take his prey. It is a marvellous relationship into which God bids us enter. We
are accustomed to obey Him. But with the single limitation that our biddings
must concern His sons, and the work of His hands, and must be included in His
word of promise, Jehovah says to us, His redeemed children in Jesus Christ,
“Command ye Me!” The world is full of mighty forces which are labouring for our
weal. How is it that these great natural forces--which are manifestations of
the power of God--so absolutely obey man? Is it not because, since the days of
Bacon, man has so diligently studied, and so absolutely obeyed, the conditions
under which they work? “Obey the law of a force, and the force will obey you,”
is almost an axiom in physics. So God gives the Holy Spirit to them that obey
Him. All the resources of God dwell bodily in the risen and glorified Lord.
Obey Him, and He pours such mighty energy into and through the spirit that men
are amazed at the prodigality of its supply; resist or thwart Him, and He
retires from the spirit, leaving it to struggle as best it may with its
difficulties and trials. But after our greatest deeds of prayer and faith we
shall ever lie low before God; as Elijah did, who, after calling fire from
heaven, prostrated himself on the ground, with his face between his knees. (F.
B. Meyer, B. A.)
Counsel for God’s people in trouble
(Isaiah 45:11-15):--
I. THE PEOPLE OF
GOD IN CAPTIVITY ARE INVITED TO INQUIRE CONCERNING THE ISSUE OF THEIR TROUBLES
(Isaiah 45:11). The Holy One of Israel,
though He doth not allow them to strive with Him, yet encourageth them--
1. To consult His Word. “Ask Me of things to come.”
2. To seek unto Him by prayer. “Command ye Me.”
II. THEY ARE
ENCOURAGED TO DEPEND ON THE POWER OF GOD WHEN THEY WERE BROUGHT VERY LOW, AND
WERE UTTERLY INCAPABLE OF HELPING THEMSELVES (Isaiah 45:12).
III. THEY ARE
PARTICULARLY TOLD WHAT GOD WOULD DO FOR THEM, THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW WHAT TO
DEPEND UPON (Isaiah 45:13-14).
IV. THEY ARE TAUGHT
TO TRUST GOD FURTHER THAN THEY CAN SEE HIM (Isaiah 45:15). (M. Henry.)
God’s abounding liberality
I am told that, in the olden times, on Christmas Day, it was the
custom in country villages for the squire always to fill with good things
whatever vessels the poor people brought up to the hall, that they might have a
Christmas dinner. It was strange how big the basins grew year after year.
Whenever the man came round with the crockery cart, every good housewife would
look all over his stock to see if there was not a still larger basin. It was a
rule that the squire’s servants should always fill the bowl, whatever size it
was, and thus the bowls grew bigger and bigger. God will fill your bowl,
however large it is! Get as big a bowl as you can; and when you bring it, if
ever there comes a whisper in your ear, “Now you have presumed upon God’s
benevolence, you have brought too big a bowl,” smile at yourself, and say,
“This is as nothing to His overflowing fulness.” If I said, “O poor sea, poor
sea, now thou wilt be drained dry, for they bring such big bowls to be filled
with thy waters”; the sea, tossing its mighty billows far and wide, would laugh
at my folly. Come, then, and bring your largest conceptions of God, and
multiply them ten thousandfold, and believe in Him as this Book would make you
believe in Him. Open thy mouth wide, and He will fill it. He bids you even to
command Him. He says, “Ask Me of things to come concerning My sons, and
concerning the work of My hands command ye Me.” That is a wonderful expression;
rise to the sublimity of faith, and be daring with your God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Verse 12
I have made the earth
Nature and Scripture
(with Isaiah 45:22):--The study of Nature
reveals a Creator.
This is the order: God, creation, fishes, animals, men, women, the human race,
the culture of the soil, the building of cities, the navigation of the sea,
and, in course of ages, the formation of society as we know it. But man as a
moral agent required moral laws; having also a capacity for religion, he needed
spiritual light. This made revelation from above necessary. Mankind have had
both vocal and written messages from God.
Creation tells of His power, and the Scripture tells of His
salvation--the two books together revealing His perfect glory.
I. A careful study
of nature and man will bring vividly before you THE LAW OF DEPENDENCE. The man
who would attempt to be independent of Nature would soon die of hunger and
thirst, and the soul that is arrogant enough to deem itself independent of
Christ will soon find that saying true, “He that hath not the Son of God, hath
not life.”
II. In nature you
see also THE LAW OF CULTIVATION. Every living thing needs cultivation, and is
improved, beautified, and perpetuated by it. Man, the “living soul,” is under
the same law. In a higher sense the soul of man is subject to this law of
cultivation. The fruits and flowers found in a cultivated soul are faith,
prayer, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness,
and charity.
III. Nature
conspicuously displays and relentlessly enforces THE LAW OF DEPRIVATION. In the
great eaves of Kentucky there are dark waters where the light never comes.
Eyeless fishes swim there. Their ancestors had eyes that could see; but their
descendants, choosing to dwell in lightless waters, have only rims and specks
in their heads v, here eyes might have been. Use well a sense, a faculty, a
power, and you increase it; neglect it, and it will die. That is the law of
Nature. Scripture teaches you the same lesson as to the spiritual world.
IV. Nature does
also undoubtedly embrace THE LAW OF TERMINATION. “The grass withereth and the
flower fadeth.” The bones of leviathan whiten the deep places of the sea. And
what of man? To him also the law of termination applies. Shall nature, man,
life as we know it, continue as they are for ever? No, for both Nature and
Scripture proclaim the law of termination (2 Peter 3:10).
V. But both
Scripture and Nature point us to another law--THAT OF CONTINUITY. And this
eternal law of continuity will be in existence after the present world is left
behind. Consider, then, these natural and spiritual truths. Let Nature teach
you how great the Creator is: let Scripture teach you that His salvation and
love and righteousness are for ever and ever. (G. W.M’Cree.)
Verse 14
Surely God is in thee
Jehovah Himself present in His Church
I.
THE
DIGNITY OF THE CHURCH. One cannot wonder that Solomon should have been
overwhelmed with astonishment when Jehovah promised His presence in the temple
that had just been erected for His worship and glory. But there is a nobler
temple building for God--even that Church which is composed of living stones.
It is to the presence of God therein that the text refers, and in vouch-sating
His presence we may remark that Jehovah is--
1. Doing honour to His own truth.
2. Exalting His own Son.
3. Imparting His own graces.
II. THE CONSEQUENT
SPIRITUALITY OF THE EXPERIENCE OF THE CHURCH. By no phrase could you more
accurately describe the real Christian than by the text--“Surely God is in
thee.” True religion is not an opinion merely of the understanding, nor
external decorum merely of life, nor ecstatic raptures merely of affection. But
it is nothing less than a union of our soul with God--a real participation of
the Divine nature.
III. Our text,
however, not only intimates the dignity of the Christian and the spirituality
of his experience, but also THE HOLINESS OF HIS CONDUCT. And unless there be
this there is nothing. (R. C. Dillon, D. D.)
Verse 15
Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself
The mystery of God’s ways
1.
Isaiah’s
mind is impressed with the fact that if God is “the God of Israel and the
Saviour,” He does some things scarcely in apparent consistency with that
character. How many times did He abandon His people Israel to their enemies!
And how was He about to suffer them to be led captive into Babylon for a long
threescore years and ten! And even when His ways to them were evidently merciful
and kind, God’s acts of kindness came at times, under circumstances, in ways,
by persons, that could not have been looked for; making His very mercies as
surprising on the one hand as His judgments might have been on the other.
“Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself”--that hidest Thy counsels, Thy
purposes, Thy mercies, Thy methods of operation.
2. A reflection of this sort might, with full as much justice, arise
from a contemplation of the ways of God towards His spiritual Israel--a people
to whom He is attached by still stronger ties than those which bound Him to
Israel of old. Precious is His mercy; and yet how severe some of His dealings
appear! And His mercies too!--how strangely they come; as though He would
choose the unlikeliest of all circumstances, the darkest of all seasons, the
most improbable of all means, for communicating them; as though He would make
us have mercies when we expect trials, and find out of the darkest cloud there
proceeds the brightest sunshine. And He works strange things--things not
apparently congruous or reconcilable with His character of covenant friendship
and love.
3. Nor is this any peculiarity at all, attaching itself to this part
of the ways and administration of God. The same feature of the Divine conduct
may be seen wherever else we look, whether at home or taking a wider circle.
1. They give occasion to men of sceptical minds to think and to say
hard things; they feed and nourish the enmity of their hearts against God.
2. They give occasion to many painful thoughts in the children of
God. (J. H.Hinton, M. A.)
Relief in contemplating the mystery of God’s ways
There are considerations by which the painfulness of such views
may be diminished and taken away.
I. TAKING THE CASE
AT THE VERY WORST, IT IS NOTHING BUT A CASE OF DIFFICULTY. It is not that the
ways of God are in any case such as yield demonstration of ill. It is admitted
that these difficulties may, for aught that appears, admit of a wise and happy
solution.
II. WE HAVE NO
REASON AT ALL TO COMPLAIN OF THE DIFFICULTIES, THE KIND AND DEGREE OF MYSTERY,
THAT NOW ATTACHES TO THE WAYS OF GOD, NOR ANY REASON TO EXPECT IT SHOULD BE
OTHERWISE.
1. The mystery which attaches to the ways of God arises in part from
physical, from natural causes. In fact, there is an impossibility of its being
removed. And this arises out of the great diversity of knowledge and
understanding that there is betwixt God and ourselves.
2. Then this mystery arises in part from the unfavourableness of our
position even for making use of what faculties we have. We do not stand so in
relation to God and His ways as to take the most clear and favourable view of
them. We are looking upon the ways of God from the earth; let us wait till we
get to a better position.
3. Then we have no reason to complain of this mystery, because God,
as the Governor of the world, has a right to work in darkness. The Foreign
Secretary of the English Government works in mystery. How the
world would laugh at him if he did not!--if he let all men, friends or foes,
know what he was about! And is the Governor of all things to have no mysteries?
“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing”; and that He can form designs and
work them out, and defy the whole universe to penetrate them, or to know what
He means to do till He sees fit to disclose His plan in all its completeness,
and lay bare the beauty in the eyes of all--there is His glory as a Governor.
And there is not any one of His friendly subjects that will ever complain of
this.
4. The provision of God’s government, as respecting ourselves, has a
probationary and disciplinary design.
III. THE WISDOM,
HOLINESS, AND GOODNESS OF GOD ARE IN POINT OF FACT ESTABLISHED SO FIRMLY BY
SOLID PROOFS AND ARGUMENTS THAT NOT ALL THE MYSTERY WHICH ATTACHES TO THE WAYS
OF GOD AT PRESENT CAN EVER DISTURB THE TRUTH OF THEM.
IV. WHEN WE LOOK AT
SUCH PARTS OF GOD’S WAYS AS ARE ALREADY FINISHED WE SEE THE MYSTERY DISAPPEAR
FROM THEM and however, if they had been looked at in their progress, they would
have seemed very mysterious and difficult to be understood, when they are
finished they appear wise and kind and good. For some parts of God s ways,
though small comparatively, are finished. Look at the history of Joseph, for
example, from the time when he provoked the jealousy of his brethren. Look at
the case of Job; the apostle notices it in this way--“Ye have seen the end of
the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.” Now from one,
judge all the ways of God.
V. THE MYSTERY
WHICH NOW ATTACHES TO THE WAYS OF GOD MUST BE EFFECTUALLY AND COMPLETELY DONE
AWAY HEREAFTER, because God Himself (if one may speak it reverently) stands as
a candidate for the applause of the universe. He is working out His designs in
the presence of beings whom He has made capable of understanding them in part;
ourselves, for example, and the devils, and the angels in heaven. He is working
out His designs in the presence of critical judges. Not that it is of any
consequence to God, one may say, what we think of His ways; but yet, inasmuch
as God has made us capable of appreciating His ways, and of deriving emotions
from understanding them, there can be no question but that God means to stand
well in the judgment of creatures whom He has thus made capable of judging.
Practical improvement--
1. One may learn hence the infinite importance of a spirit of
friendship with God.
2. The friends of God should learn to trust Him with unshaken
confidence. We have grounds for confidence--security that God’s character is
all that it should be.
3. Let us anticipate with joy the world that is to come. The world to
come will be the time (so to speak) for God’s turning towards us the tapestry
which He is working. (J. H. Hinton, M. A.)
God hiding Himself
1. God hid Himself when He brought them into the trouble, hid
Himself, and was wroth (Isaiah 57:17).
2. He hid Himself when He was bringing them out of the trouble Psalms 77:19). (M. Henry.)
The Lord a God that hideth Himself
When the Holy Scriptures represent the Lord to us, or describe any
of the more splendid manifestations of Himself, we find united together the
fire and the cloud, light and darkness. It is this union which Isaiah exhibits:
“Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.” The
phrase denotes the incomprehensibility of Providence, the obscurity of God’s
ways and dealings with the children of men.
I. GOD, THE
SAVIOUR OF ISRAEL, IS A GOD THAT HIDETH HIMSELF. That His dispensations, though
wise and merciful, are often mysterious--
1. Would be supposed by reason.
2. Is proved by experience.
II. THOUGH HE
HIDETH HIMSELF HE IS ALWAYS THE SAVIOUR OF HIS PEOPLE. Though the dispensations
of Providence towards them are inscrutable, they have a certain connection with
their salvation. (H. Kollock, D. D.)
The hidden God
In all times and circumstances this tendency of God to hide
Himself has been forced upon men. God hid Himself in the burning bush, in the
cloud of glory that rested over the tabernacle. He shined forth from Mount
Paran, and Sinai, and Seir, but no man beheld Him. Often were the tones of His
voice heard, but no form was seen. Often was His glory made manifest, but His
face concealed. Men like Enoch and Noah and Elijah walked with God and communed
with Him; yet upon the Almighty they gazed not. Often did God speak to men in
dreams and visions of the night, but none ever saw the face or distinguished
the form of the Eternal. Moses could sing his grand song, but God must put into
his mouth, “I will hide My face from them; I will see what their end shall be.”
Job inquires--and how pathetic is the question on this man’s lips!--“Wherefore
hidest Thou Thy face?” Even Isaiah, who enjoyed a clearer vision of God than
most men, makes Him out to be the Great Mystery of all things, and yet says: “I
will wait upon the Lord that hideth His face from the house of Jacob, and I
will look for Him.” Truly “no man can see God”; no man can see anything that is
really great. The invisible things are the greatest, and God is in them all. He
is nearer to you than your hands and feet, and closer to you than your
breathing; yet you cannot see Him. (G. FelixWilliams.)
God hiding Himself
I. NATURE is a house
of concealment for God.
II. PROVIDENCE is
also a house of concealment for God.
III. God was hidden
IN JESUS CHRIST. (G. Felix Williams.)
God hidden from the sinner
There is a hiding of Himself mentioned in the Scripture--God’s
spiritual withdrawal of Himself from our souls, which, far from being His
voluntary purpose concerning us, is a dire misfortune which we entail upon
ourselves,--a correcting punishment in all cases--a tremendous judgment in
some. It is most important, therefore, that we should consider the different
instances in which God may be said to be spiritually hidden from us, in order
that we may learn how to avoid falling into so heavy a calamity, as well as how
best to profit by it when God’s chastening hand so visits us.
1. God is often hidden from us in prayer.
2. He must be hidden from us whenever we presumptuously sin against
Him.
3. He is also hidden when we feel a want of reliance on Him, and
comfort in Him, under the ordinary trials and sufferings of the present life. (A.
Gatty, M. A.)
The hidings of Deity
The inspired writers dwell frequently and earnestly on the
inaccessible splendour that surrounds the Creator. “Clouds and darkness are
round about Him”; “touching the Almighty, we cannot find Him out”; “He made
darkness His secret place; His pavilion round about Him were dark waters, and
thick clouds of the skies.” It was a cloud which conducted the wanderings of
Israel; it was a cloud which filled the tabernacle of the Lord. The symbols of
God’s greatness wear the robes of concealment, and He demands homage, not so
much by what He has revealed as by what the revelation itself pronounces
obscure. And it should be observed that all this proceeded not from
unwillingness to disclose His brightness, but rather from the fact that since
this brightness was Divine it could not be endured by human vision. To this He
Himself referred when discoursing with Moses as His own friend. “Thou canst not
see My face, for there shall no man see Me and live”; and although He “made all
His goodness to pass before him,” as being that which the creatures of earth
might behold and yet breathe, when the august train of His glory swept by, He
hid His servant in the cleft of the rock, lest he should be withered to nothing
by the unearthly blaze. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
God hiding Himself
If we pass from the days of ancient Israel to our own, it is to be
remarked that we think much and speak much of the mysteries which undeniably
exist in the nature of God, and in His operations whether in providence or in
grace; but after all, it may be that we scarcely regard those mysteries in
their most important point of view,--that we rather consider them as secrets
which oppose our ingenuity thanas fields which yield a rich harvest of honour
to the Creator and of advantage to ourselves. There is a likelihood of our not
regarding these mysteries as necessary portions of the dealings between finite
beings and the Infinite; as forced, so to speak, into God’s dispensations by
His unmeasured superiority over the work of His own hands. Nay, we are well
aware that many go even so far as to denounce and decry revelation altogether,
just because it contains truths too big for human comprehension; forgetting or
overlooking that, since it is probably essential to the very nature of God that
He should hide Himself, their ground of rejection is virtually a ground of
belief and acceptance. Thus our text seems to breathe the language of
admiration and praise.
I. THAT OF GOD
HIDING HIMSELF IN REGARD OF HIS OWN NATURE AND PROPERTIES. In real truth, we
know nothing of God in Himself; we know Him only in His attributes, and His
attributes only as written in His Word and His works. Let it only be remembered
that we are a mystery to ourselves; that every object around us baffles our
penetration; that there is not an insect, nor a leaf, nor an atom, which does
not master us if we attempt to apprehend its nature and its growth, and we must
admit that there is a presumption which outbraves language in expecting that we
may ascertain what God is, and how God subsists. Even when God makes
announcements of His nature, they are such as quite baffle our reason!
1. Look at the doctrine of the Trinity.
2. So soon as God has been addressed as a “God that hideth Himself”
He is addressed as “the Saviour.” And we are free to own, in respect of the
scheme of our salvation, that whilst everything is disclosed which has
reference to ourselves, there is much hidden which has reference to God. We can
form no adequate notion of the Incarnation: how the Godhead could tabernacle in
flesh; how Divinity and humanity could coalesce to make a Mediator; how there
could be a bearing of sin and yet freedom from sinfulness; the impossibility of
being overcome by temptation, and yet such a capacity of being tempted as
should ensure sympathy to ourselves. It lies beyond human power, at least with
the present amount of revelation, to scan the wonders of the Person, and to
unravel the intricacies of the work of redemption. “Verily Thou art a God that
hideth Thyself” is what we are forced to exclaim even when contemplating God as
“the God of Israel, the Saviour.” But in what tone should we make the
exclamation? The points to which we have referred are not points which it
concerns men accurately to understand, though it is at their own peril not to
believe; and there is nothing by which God is so much honoured, and the soul so
much advantaged, as by our taking Him at His word.
3. We observe in reference to the Bible, as before in reference to
the Divine nature, that it is the sublimity which produces the obscurity.
4. And if God, when discovering Himself as the Saviour, hide much in
regard of the mysteries of redemption, does He not also hide much of its
individual application? How secretly the Holy Spirit enters into the heart of
man!
II. THAT OF HIS
HIDING HIMSELF IN REGARD OF HIS DEALINGS WITH HIS CREATURES.
1. God conceals much in the dispensations of His providence. He does
not lay open the reasons of His appointments; He does not explain why
prosperity should be allotted to one man and adversity to another.
2. God hides from His creatures the day of their death.
3. God has hidden muck from us with regard to a future state. (H.
Melvill, B. D.)
God a mystery
God is a mystery, unsearchable, unfathomable, inscrutable. So am I
so is everything. In his poem, “Flower in the crannied wall,” Tennyson stored
one of his profoundest thoughts: If I could explain God He would cease to be
God. An infinite subject can never come within the limitations of a finite
mind. It matters not whether we surround God with clouds and darkness, or
“light inaccessible”--He is equally hidden by either. Since the prophet uttered
the text, men have advanced no further into the sanctuary that veils from sight
the Deity. Science has made many discoveries, solved many mysteries, but upon
one subject sheds no light, and in the presence of God is “dumb with silence.”
I. GOD HIDES
HIMSELF IN NATURE. “In Him we live and move and have our being,” yet where is
He? Worlds move in their orbits and “stars in their courses,” because an unseen
hand upholds and guides. The telescope brings distant worlds in view and
reveals everywhere His presence and power, but no telescope is so powerful as
to bring God within range of our vision. Study the origin of life, and with aid
of the microscope gaze upon the simplest germs fresh from the hand of God, and
that hand seems almost in sight, but; still He eludes our sight.
II. THE GOD OF
PROVIDENCE HIDES HIMSELF. “Thy way is in the sea, and Thy footsteps are not
known.” His providences stagger human reason, and His purposes and ways are
past finding out (Psalms 73:1-28.). We look on the wrong
side of the pattern, but God is behind the curtain. His hand holds the shuttle,
His foot is on the treadle, He will weave the web of our life into a pattern
beautiful and glorious according to His Divine design. History is the unfolding
of His providence on a large scale, which “almost reveals, but does not quite
conceal,” the finger that writes its records.
III. THE GOD OF
GRACE HIDES BEHIND HIS PURPOSES OF GRACE. The analogy between nature and grace
is very striking.
IV. WILL GOD HIDE
HIMSELF IN HEAVEN ALSO OR WILL HE COME FORTH TO VIEW IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY?
“No man shall see Me and live” seems to imply a possibility after death.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” But do not the pure of
earth see God in that sense? In a certain sense we will “see His face,” but in
all probability He will even in eternity be a God that hideth Himself, in order
that eternity may be a continual revelation more and more of His beauty and
glory.
V. GOD HIDES
HIMSELF, BUT NOT HIS MERCY. His love shines on every page of the Scriptures,
and “His mercy is in the heavens,” above the brightness of the sun. Whatever
else may be dark, the way of life is plain. (S. L. Morris, D. D.)
Mysteries in religion
Verily, God hideth Himself. I AS REGARDS HIS PERSONAL EXISTENCE.
II. AS REGARDS THE
SOVEREIGNTY OF ALL HIS WORKS IN CREATION AND PROVIDENCE.
III. IN THE RICHES
OF HIS ATONING LOVE IN JESUS CHRIST.
IV. IN THE ENERGY
OF HIS SAVING POWER BY THE HOLY GHOST. (H. M‘Neile, M. A.)
God hides to reveal Himself
If the chapter is examined it will be seen that God’s hiding
Himself is regarded but as a preparation of manifestation, and as a means of
it. He hid Himself in employing Cyrus, but it was that He might be better
known, that His control over men and nations might be recognised. We have then
to consider the truth that God’s hiding of Himself is in order that He may be
better known, and that His great end in all is that all the ends of the earth
may look to Him and be saved.
I. THIS IS TRUE OF
THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE.
1. Think of an infinite Being, a perfect and eternal One, and of
dependent spirits created and sustained by Him. Should we not have expected
that this great and glorious Being would make Himself known to His creatures in
some direct, clear, unmistakable way? Instead of such a visible, unmistakable
appearance of God we have only a vast expanse of matter. Matter everywhere; God
nowhere to be seen. There are great forces moving around us; but they are not
God. We cannot see a face. We believe, we feel, we know that behind all a great
Will is working, but we cannot see or touch that Will. Matter in its dulness
and insensibility hides God. Its crassness and opacity keep the thought of God
out of our minds. We lose God in the multitudinousness of the forms He presents
to us. Beauty and grandeur even enchain our souls. We are delighted with the
picture, and never rise beyond.
2. Yet this matter, so often felt as a concealing of God, is truly a
revealing, a manifestation of qualities in God which otherwise would have been
hidden from us. How could God’s almighty power have been made plain to us
except through matter? The variety, which may seem to hide God, reveals the
inexhaustibleness of His resources. Minuteness reveals the greatness of His
care. And though God remains hidden, the fact of His existence is made clear
and certain to the practical reason of man. The marks of adaptation, purpose,
and design are so multiplied, so direct and obvious in some cases, and so
elaborate and complex in others, that conviction comes irresistibly on the
general mind. The destruction and pain that are found in some parts of nature
form a contrast needful to the setting off of the beneficence displayed in the
enjoyment that abounds. Would not the beauty of the world be tame and
unappreciated if it were confronted with no opposite? The very inexplicabeleness
of some parts of the universe, their apparent contradiction to the goodness of
God, are part of the lesson, and a most important part. They give us a sense of
the mystery of God. They are the very things that waken up certain classes of
minds. They serve, above all, to impress us with the thought that nature is no
sufficient manifestation of God. They render necessary a lofty faith in God,
and make welcome that higher revelation which is its nutriment.
II. IT IS TRUE OF
LAW, which is found everywhere in the material universe, that while it seems to
hide God it yet manifests Him in a higher way.
1. A system of law everywhere prevails. Each separate existence has
its own law, and all are bound together by general laws. The thought of this
all-pervading invariable law has something in it pleasing to the intellect of
man. It even gives him delight to contemplate the unvarying order, and to trace
regularity and harmony where at first there appeared only confusion. But the
human heart does not take kindly to this idea of law. It feels as if it were
imprisoned, and God put far away and deprived of power to help. It seems even,
at times, as if God were put out of the universe, and scarcely even the name of
Him left.
2. But it is a groundless alarm. The belief in law neither takes away
God, nor deprives Him of His freedom and power to help. To show that God’s
working is regular is not to make it less His working. Order is not force. The
channel in which power operates is not the power. The existence of law, then,
does not really hide God.. It reveals Him in a grand and elevating way. What
lessons it teaches of the Divine love for order, of the unity of God’s mind,
and His unchangeableness. What an impression it gives of the entire absence of
caprice in His nature, and His absolute reliableness. How grandly it shows the
subordination of all things, even the minutest, to one vast purpose.
III. IT IS TRUE OF
THE MEANS AND AGENTS EMPLOYED BY GOD that in them He hides Himself and vet
reveals Himself in a higher way.
1. God’s great channels of power in the moral world are two--truth
and men. The truth of God is so perfectly adapted to its purpose that; it seems
to be doing all the work. So also is it with the human agency that God employs.
The influence of men appears to depend so entirely on the energy they put
forth, upon their adaptation to particular classes of men, upon their
intellectual and moral incisiveness, upon a certain shining through of
conviction, and a contagiousness of nature, that it seems as if it were a thing
wholly in the human sphere. God is thoroughly hidden behind man.
2. But look what a grand revelation of Himself God gives by this
arrangement. What a regard He shows to the souls He has made in using such an
array of truth upon them. It is one of the greatest displays of God that He
condescends to win by truth, that He stoops to reason and plead. And what noble
qualities God shows in using human agents as He does. Does He not show His
desire to bring out of each creature all its capabilities, His desire to give
to the children the highest possible honour, to make them dear and honourable
to each other, by making them the channels of the very highest blessing?
IV. GOD HIDES
HIMSELF BEHIND DELAY AND DISASTER, AND YET REVEALS HIMSELF THROUGH THESE IN A
HIGHER WAY. It is an old cause of perplexity to men that one event happens to
the evil and the-good, and that God’s work moves with such incredible slowness.
And yet, in all this God is revealing Himself. He reveals His grand purpose and
determination that men shall walk by faith. Would it be a benefit to men to be
freed from the necessity of walking by faith? It would be stopping the channel
between us and all God’s blessings. God makes the world so full of
contradiction and disaster, makes it so incalculable and mysterious, just
because He loves us and does not wish us to stray away from Himself. What
wealth of consolation He spreads abroad in hearts through the occasion and
opportunity of sorrow. (J. Leckie, D. D.)
The Divine invisibility
We have in us from babyhood an irrepressible desire to know the
unknown. The unknown is the awful. And so in heathen religions there is always
some mysterious place into which only a high priest enters, some inner
sanctuary veiled from mortal eyes where the Divine presence is more perceptible
than elsewhere. Even Judaism had it and its veil of the temple was not rent in
twain till Christ came. Sacerdotal churches maintain the idea till this day.
Idolatry--what is it? What but the effort to make the invisible visible? When
Jesus the Christ came into this world’s life, He came to answer the longing of
the human heart after some such expression of Deity as should satisfy that
desire to make the invisible visible. In our noblest moments it must seem to us
that the demand for a full and perfect revelation of Deity is unreasonable, not
to use the stronger word, absurd. Reasonable enough is the demand, let us know
the heart of Deity. And so, while it is still true that the eternal One is a
God that hideth Himself it is also true that the prayer of man’s heart, “Lord,
show us the Father, and it sufficeth us,” has been answered. But can we not see
that the Divine invisibility has its uses in the development of this nature of
ours?
1. One use is to train us to reverence.
2. God’s hiding of Himself is necessary to our freedom. Our great
Teacher puts this thought, as is His wont, into the parable of an Eastern lord
going into a far country and delivering his goods into the custody of his
servants, that, in his absence, they may so use them as to increase them. In
order to the development of every human life a certain amount of freedom is
necessary. The over-awing sensible presence of God would completely destroy our
freedom. It would paralyse our activities.
3. It is necessary to our perfectness of nature. But perfectness in
man is not simply a matter of outward condition, it implies internal
correspondence with an environment in itself perfect. In order to perfectness
of inward condition there must be the ability of faith in a Power outside
ourselves, and of faith in all around us, the ability of perpetual hope, the
ability of undying love. And it is not possible, so far as we can see, to
develop these virtues unless we have room for their growth. The invisibility of
God is necessary to their growth. (R. Thomas, D. D.)
Withholding the law of revealing
I. SEE HOW
CONTINUOUS HAS BEEN THIS LAW.
1. The records of the world before the flood, scanty as they are,
show us that it was ever present in that earliest dispensation. Through that darkness
we can see man under the dispensation of an incomplete revelation; God, ever
present and yet ever hidden, and restraining His manifestation of Himself even
as He gives it. What an expression it is, “God looked upon the earth, and
behold it was corrupt.” That looking on it, His revelation; that turning aside
from it, His hiding of His face, because He could not endure its corruption and
its violence.
2. After the flood it is still the same; as to the world at large
most evidently so. How soon does the knowledge of God die out, even in the
family of Noah! Then the Lord calls Abraham, and reveals Himself to that one
chosen witness What a hiding of Himself, even in His revelation, does this
imply. Even more remarkable yet is the presence of this law amongst those to
whom the light was given. Marvellous communications of Himself were made by God
to Abraham. When the three mysterious strangers stood suddenly before him as he
sat in his tent-door in the heat of the day, how near he is to the knowledge of
the Divine Trinity; and when the men vanish out of his sight, and he is left
alone “before the Lord,” how is the Trinity gathered up again into the unity of
the Godhead. So again, when the assurance of his own acceptance is vouchsafed
to him as the lamp of God moves between the divided pieces of his sacrifice, a
horror of great darkness falls upon the spirit of the favoured man. In the
revelation of Himself God still hides Himself, even from the opened eye of
Abraham. So it continues all along the line.
3. So it was throughout the whole prophetic dispensation. What
growing light,--what remaining darkness meet us everywhere.
4. How plainly is the same feature to be traced in the personal
ministry of Our Lord Himself! This is everywhere discernible in His conduct to
the scribes and Pharisees, and even to the multitude. What else were those
charges to one and another not to make known His miraculous works of healing;
what else the wrapping up of His words in parables; that “seeing they might see
and not perceive, and hearing they might hear and not understand”? And even
with His own disciples He acted to a great degree on the same rule. How plainly
do their words and acts convey to us the idea of men living under a sense of
mystery which they could not fathom.
5. Is not the same law marked even upon the open revelation of the
dispensation of the Spirit? God’s sovereignty and man’s free agency; the
co-working of His almighty grace and our own personal responsibility; the
infinite love and power of God, and the origin and being of evil; who can
explain the co-existence of these wonders?
6. Nor is it otherwise, if from these unsolved difficulties of
thought we turn to the direct appointments of the Church of Christ. Do not the
blessed sacraments of the Gospel at once reveal and hide the Divine Presence?
7. Most signally, too, is this true as to God s dealings with
individual souls in the Church of the redeemed.
8. We may trace it in the Church at large. Bright as is the light,
where is it without the shadow following it?
II. ITS OBJECT.
Here, then, is the dispensation. Why we are put under it the fewest words may
safest tell Evidently it is of God’s love for us, and of His pity for our
weakness. It is because we cannot now bear more; and that we may be led on to
more.
III. ITS
CONSEQUENCES. What especially we should learn from His having placed us under
such a dispensation seems to be--
1. That if we would know Him we must follow hard after Him.
2. The need of reverence in seeking.
3. The true mode of treating these mysteries is neither to deny their
existence nor to fear their presence, still less to let them minister to the
production of doubt or unbelief, but to look at them as men look at the clouds
which fleck the heavens; which, though for the time they hide the sun, yet do
not make it the less present in the firmament, but which may themselves become
so full of its light as to give back its radiance with a beauty which, if its
burning brightness had not been broken by them into the infinity of light and
shade, it could not have possessed. (Bp. S. Wilberforce, D. D.)
The knowledge of a triune God
In this short verse there is contained the description of God in
two characters, as known and yet unknown, as revealed and yet a mystery, as
showing and yet hiding Himself. This comprehensive idea of God had been gained
from experience. The names “God of Israel” and “Saviour” embody the remembrance
of the many occasions when He had shown Himself identified with the nation’s
life and safety, as He had guided or protected them. And yet, running all
through that same history had been the feature of unexpectedness and
strangeness in His mode of working; so that at last the people felt that they
knew Him and yet did not know Him. Each new proof of His power and presence only
introduced a new point at which the mystery of His being and His ways was felt.
Our experience cannot be said to be greatly different from the prophet’s. We go
over the life of Christ, and each point of it is a revelation of our God; and
then we complete our thoughts with an expression of God’s being full of hard
thoughts and mystery.
1. Christ as the revelation of God leads to the doctrine of the
Trinity. Happy shall we be if we can feel the unity of the two aspects of
mystery and revelation as the prophet did, and join them, as he did, without
any sense of hostility between them.
2. If men would only see that the doctrine of a Trinity has its first
ground in the longing of God to get near to man, it would not so often be
pronounced hard, cold, and useless. We should all see how to use it. When life
and the world seemed cruel and disappointing, seemed to be discouraging us from
any attempt to find God, then we would turn to our doctrine of God and,
gathering re-assurance from the announcement that there is in the Godhead not
only the power of sitting afar off in mysterious grandeur, but also the power
of coming near to each one of us, and being one with us, we should take up our
life again with new courage, and go back to the world with new confidence, feeling
sure that God is in it, and is not beyond meeting us there.
3. Another characteristic of our search for God is, that we want Him
to be like us in character and feeling. If He is not, we do not see how we can
form any estimate of Him, and know Him at all. And yet that desire to have Him
like us has led to such evil results that men often distrust it. It has so
generally resulted in making a man’s God only an unnaturally magnified
reflection of his own character that the pictures thus produced have been anything
but attractive. They have so often had cruelty, hatred, and narrowness in them
that men, rejecting such representations, have said, “We cannot know God, He is
so different from us; He is a God that hideth Himself.
4. We turn again to that revealed picture of our God as it is given
in the thought of a Trinity, and we find that it contains the very central idea
of human life,--mutual feeling and relation. (A. Brooks, D. D.)
God hides Himself
It is supposed by some, that after Cyrus took possession of the
city he was shown this prophecy, probably by Daniel, and he was so impressed
with it that he resolved still further to fulfil it, by allowing the Jewish
captives to return to their own land; and the way in which God would accomplish
the work without openly appearing in it led the prophet to exclaim: “Verily
Thou art a God that hidest Thyself,” &c. This sentiment is often expressed
in God’s Word, and is still more frequently justified by His ways and works.
I. THE FACT HERE
STATED, that God hides Himself. This is a fact that none will dispute; for--
1. He is unseen.
2. God hides Himself, in that He has not reavealed Himself to us in
such a way as to render doubt and unbelief impossible. He has not left Himself
without witnesses. God may be known by His works, not must be. God has revealed
Himself in His Word. God Has revealed Himself in His Son. But the incarnation
is a concealment of God, as well as a manifestation.
II. REASONS WHY GOD
THUS HIDES HIMSELF. There must be some very sufficient reason for this conduct
on the part of God. There is a very deep sense in which God hides Himself from
us on account of our sins; that is, withdraws from us the sense of His
spiritual presence and the tokens of His favour (Isaiah 59:2). But that is not the hiding
to which the prophethere refers. He hides Himself because this is necessary for
our moral probation and discipline. He was not always visible to our first
parents in the garden; for when they heard His voice, after they sinned, they
hid themselves. They would scarcely have eaten of the forbidden fruit while
conscious that His eye was upon them. In like manner it is necessary for our
probation that God should not be seen. He hides Himself--
1. To try our faith. Jesus said to Thomas, “Because thou hast seen
thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”
Faith has reason and a sufficient revelation on which to rest; but if a man
does not wish to retain the knowledge of God, he may find room for doubt and
unbelief even in regions where the pure in heart see God.
2. To test our love. We must have a high and intelligent appreciation
of the character of a being, and our love to him must have its roots deep down
in our moral nature, if we are to continue to love him during a long absence,
even though at one time we have seen him; but how high must be our appreciation
of his character and work if we can say of him, “Whom having not seen, we love;
in whom, though now we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy
unspeakable and full of glory.” If we so love Christ when we do not see Him how
shall we love Him when we see Him as He is!
3. To test the strength of our principles. A master wishes to know
how his servant does when he is absent; a father wishes to know how his son
Conducts himself when from home. If he hears that his son is as pure and
upright and loving as he ever was when the eyes of his parents were upon him,
it fills his heart with satisfaction and delight; so God wishes to know what we
will do when we seem to be left to ourselves. It is then that our principles
are tested. God hides Himself to see what we will do. He sees us, though we
cannot see Him. No dispensation could be better than the one under which we
live, to develop our principles and form our character; it is a dispensation of
faith, not sight, in which we are being trained to do right because it is
right, even though we cannot at the time see the consequences that will follow
right or wrong.
4. To test our confidence in His arrangements, whether we will trust
Him even when we cannot trace Him. There are many who think that they could
bear the ills of life if they were sure that God appointed them, but their
trials seem to come so entirely from human sources that it seems to them as
though they were just left to be the victims of human caprice. But we must
endure as seeing the invisible, and say of man as Jesus said to Pilate: “Thou
couldest have no power against Me except it were given thee from above” (John 19:11).
5. In order that we may seek Him. We spare no pains in seeking that
which we highly value, and God will be appreciated. He seeks us, but we must
also seek Him. Lessons--
Verse 17
But Israel shall be saved in the Lord
A forecast of the Messianic age
As is usual in the prophets, the perfect dispensation, or what is
called the Messianic age, is conceived as issuing immediately from the
historical crisis which is the subject of the prophecy--in this case, the
deliverance from Babylon.
(Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Israel saved in the Lord
I. THE GLORIOUS
OBJECT. Everlasting salvation in the Lord.
1. Includes deliverance from ignorance, guilt, &c., and the
possession of light, peace, &c.; and this state continued and increased for
ever. It is grace consummated in eternal glory.
2. This salvation is “in the Lord”--the Lord Messiah.
II. THE CHARACTER
OF THE PERSONS TO WHOM EVERLASTING SALVATION IS PROMISED. “Israel.”
1. A name of great distinction in Scripture The Israelites, to whom
everlasting salvation is promised, are such as are so in a spiritual sense.
2. True Israelites are such as have given their unfeigned consent to
be God’s people, subjects, and servants; such as have “joined themselves to the
Lord in a perpetual covenant.”
3. True Israelites are such as live in an unreserved subjection to
the laws and government of God and the Redeemer (Romans 7:22). Through faith in Christ
they are vitally united to Him, and from Him receive those hourly supplies of
grace that qualify men for every good word and work.
III. THE GROUNDS OF
THE CERTAINTY OF THEIR SALVATION.
1. The possession Christ has taken of it in the name and nature of
all true believers in Him (Hebrews 6:20; John 14:2-3).
2. Christ’s intercession, which He ever lives in heaven to make for
them Hebrews 7:25).
3. His mighty power which is engaged for them (1 Peter 1:4-5).
4. God’s promise (Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:17-18). (Sketches of
Sermons.)
Saved in the Lord
That is, through Him (Romans 5:9). The elect of God dispersed
over the earth shall be saved through the powerful operation of His glorious
excellences, and in virtue of the perfect righteousness of the great Messiah.
They shall be saved--
1. Through the love of God (John 3:16).
2. In His infinite wisdom, which He hath wonderfully displayed in
devising and executing the astonishing plan of salvation.
3. Through His almighty power.
4. In His consummate righteousness; the rectitude of His nature, the
equity of His providence, and the faithfulness of His promises, being clearly
demonstrated by the accomplishment of this salvation. (R. Macculloch.)
Isaiah’s far-reaching glance
He foresaw the redemption of suffering Israel by the hand of
Cyrus, but uses terms that it would be a misleading and inexcusable blunder to
employ if they are intended to be restricted to those small bands of immigrants
returning under Ezra and Nehemiah, whose descendants rejected the Christ, and
went forth into the great and long-ending dispersion after the Romans had
destroyed the rebuilt city. Standing once, at sunrise, on a lower height of the
Himalayas--lower, though still 10,000 feet above the plains--we saw beneath us,
stretching away into the blue distance, leagues upon leagues of rolling country
clothed with evergreen forests of tree ferns, tree rhododendrons and magnolias,
till the view was lost in cloudland. But, behold, even as we watched, the
clouds broke and scattered, trooping away into the vault of heaven like hosts
of white-robed angels. Between their ranks were revealed, one after another,
the mighty flanks of Kinchinjunga and her sister mountains; then their
snow-peaks and glaciers. Another few minutes, and the last cloud had vanished,
and the glittering crest of Mount Everest, the loftiest summit in the world--we
know not how many hundreds of miles afield--flashed upon the horizon. The lower
and nearer landscape was not lost, it was there still, in all its beauty and
verdure, but we had no longer any eyes for it because of the glory that
exceeded. Something like that would have been the prospect unfolded to the
“rapt Isaiah’s” spiritual eyesight, could he have understood all that was
involved in his prophecies. He must have had at least a partial understanding
of their meaning, for we read that “these things said Isaiah because he saw
[Christ’s] glory, and he spake of Him.” Nevertheless, it is reserved for us to
see most distinctly the full extent of the prophetic landscape, because from
before our eyes even the remotest clouds that linger on the horizon have been
lifted by the sun-rising of New Testament teaching. (F. Sessions.)
“World without end”
“To eternal eternities.” (F. Delitzsch.)
The expression does not occur again. (J Skinner.)
Verses 18-25
For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens.
How God reveals Himself
The main current of the section may be thus expressed--
I. GOD’S
REVELATION OF HIMSELF IS OPEN AND TRUTHFUL. He has not spoken in secret; and He
has not bid men seek Him in vain.
II. GOD’S
REVELATION OF HIMSELF IS IN REFERENCE TO THE HIGHEST PRACTICAL OBJECTS. “Seek
ye My face; look unto Me, and be ye saved; He is a just God and a Saviour.”
III. GOD’S
REVELATION OF HIMSELF IS TO ISSUE IN THE SALVATION OF THE WHOLE EARTH. “Every
knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess to Him.” (C. Short, M.
A.)
The reasonableness of God’s procedure
We have here the repetition of that deep, strong note which Isaiah
himself so often sounded to the comfort of men in perplexity or despair, that
God is at least reasonable, not working for nothing, nor beginning only to
leave off, nor creating in order to destroy. The same God, says our prophet,
who formed the earth in order to see it inhabited, must surely be believed to
be consistent enough to carry to the end also His spiritual work among men. Our
prophet’s idea of God’s righteousness, therefore, includes the idea of
reasonableness; implies rational, as well as moral consistency, practical sense
as well as good faith; the conscience of a reasonable plan, and, perhaps, also
the power to carry it through. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)
Verse 19
I have not spoken in secret
“In a dark place of the earth,”
“In a dark place of the earth,” is an expression used for the
purpose of pointing out the contrast between the prophecies of Jehovah and the
heathen cave, oracles and spirit-voices of the necromancers, which seemed to
rise up from the interior of the earth.
(C. Short, M. A.)
God’s speech to men
Two thoughts branch off--
1. Prophecy, proceeding from Him is a thing of the light, no black
art, essentially different from heathen divination.
2. The same love of Jehovah which is revealed already in creation, is
also shown in His relation to Israel; He did not point Israel to Himself as
chaos (“I said not to the seed of Jacob; seek Me as chaos!”), even as He did
not create the earth a chaos (“He has not created it a chaos,” Isaiah 45:18). (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
I said not unto the seed
of Jacob, Seek ye Me in vain.
“Seek ye Me in vain,”
“Seek ye Me in vain,” literally, in waste, i.e where
there are no ways or indications how He is to be found. (A. B. Davidson, D.
D.)
Comfort to seekers from what the Lord has not said
We might gain much solace by considering what God has not said. We
have an assurance that God will answer prayer, because He hath not said unto
the seed of Israel, Seek ye My face in vain. The proposition is this: that
those who seek God, in God’s own appointed way, cannot, by any possibility seek
Him in vain; that earnest, penitent, prayerful hearts, though they may be
delayed for a time, can never be sent away with a final denial (Ro Matthew 7:8).
I. I SHALL PROVE
THIS BY THE NEGATIVE, as our text has it.
1. Suppose that sincere prayer could be fruitless, then the question
arises, Why are men exhorted to pray at all? Would it not be a piece of
heartless tyranny if the Queen should wait upon a man in his condemned cell,
and encourage him to petition her favour, nay, command him to do it, saying to
him, be importunate, and you will prevail; and yet, all the while, should
intend never to pardon the man, but had determined in her heart that his
death-warrant should be signed and sealed, and that on the execution morning he
should be launched into eternity? Would this be consistent with royal
bounty--fit conduct for a gracious monarch? Can you for a moment suppose that
God would bid you come to Him through Jesus Christ, and yet intend never to be
gracious at the voice of your cry?
2. If prayer could be offered continuously, and God could be sought
earnestly, but no mercy found, then he who prays would be worse off than he who
does not pray, and supplications would be an ingenious invention for increasing
the ills of mankind. For a man who does not pray has less woes than a man who
does pray, if God be not the answerer of prayer. He who has been taught to pray
has great desires and wants; his heart is an aching void which the world can
never fill; but he that never prays has no longings and pinnings after God. If,
then, a man may have these vehement longings, and yet God will never grant
them, then assuredly the man who prays is in a worse position than he who prays
not. How can this be?
3. If God do not hear prayer, since it is clear that in that case the
praying man would be more wretched than the careless sinner, then it would
follow that God would be the author of unnecessary misery. This is inconsistent
with the character of God.
4. Should there still be some desponding ones, who think that God
would invite them to pray and yet reject them, I would put it on another
ground. Would men do so? Would you? Can God be less generous than men?
5. This is God’s memorial by which He is distinguished from the false
gods Psalms 115:6; Psalms 65:2). One of the standing proofs
of the Deity of Jehovah is, that He does answer the supplications of His
people.
6. If God do not hear prayer what is the meaning of His promises?
7. What is the meaning of all the provisions which He has already
made for hearing prayer? Why a mediator, an intercessor? &c.
8. If God hear not prayer, what Gospel have I to preach?
9. Where, then, were the believer’s hope?
10. What would they say in hell, if a soul could really seek the Lord
and be refused? There are some who, when under conviction of sin, still cleave
to this dark delusion, that God will not hear them. Therefore, I have tried, by
blow after blow, to smite this fear dead.
II. THAT THE LORD
DOES HEAR PRAYER MAY BE POSITIVELY SUBSTANTIATED.
1. For the Lord to hear prayer is consistent with His nature.
2. It is harmonious with all His past actions (Psalms 107:3). Conclusion--Try for
yourself. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
God’s praying people
1. The seed of Jacob are a praying people; it is the generation of
them that seek Him (Psalms 24:6).
2. As He has invited them to seek Him, so He never denied their
believing prayers, nor disappointed their believing expectations.
3. If He did not think fit to give them the particular thing they
prayed for, yet He gave them that grace sufficient and that comfort and
satisfaction of soul which was equivalent. (M. Henry.)
God’s straightforwardness
“I, the Lord, speak righteousness.” The word is used in its
ethical sense of “trustworthiness,” or straightforwardness,--perfect
correspondence between deeds and words. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Verse 21-22
A Just God and a Saviour
The just God and the Saviour
To human apprehension, light and darkness are not more opposed
than justice and mercy.
We cannot conceive how they possibly can meet together. But God’s ways are not
our ways; He is “a just God,” leaving not the smallest possibility of escape
for the smallest sin; and He is” a Saviour,” freely and completely pardoning
the most atrocious sinner.
I. GOD IS A JUST
GOD. The law of God is holy, and just, and good. It is man’s plain, reasonable,
bounden duty to obey these commandments; and when he fails in the performance
of that duty, it is a righteous thing on the part of God to punish him. Some,
indeed, have objected to this principle, and have supported their objection by
perverting the Scripture doctrine of original sin, alleging that, if man’s
natural corruption render guilt inevitable, it is unjust in God to punish him
for that guilt. To meet this objection in a plain practical manner, we would
reply that, before any individual can reasonably plead this excuse in his own
case, he must be able to prove that he has never been guilty of any transgression,
except those only which were rendered inevitable by his original corruption;
for the moment that he knowingly and wilfully breaks the law of God in any one
instance, it becomes a righteous thing in the Lawgiver to inflict upon him the
threatened punishment.
II. GOD IN CHRIST
IS A JUST GOD AND A SAVIOUR Jesus Christ is an adequate substitute for the
sinner. Every impediment to the most unbounded exercise of mercy being thus
righteously removed, the invitation is given forth in all its blessed broadness
and fulness unto all lands, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the
earth.” (D. Dickson, D. D.)
The highest glory of the Divine character
I. These words
present, in part at least, AN ASPECT OF APPALLING TERROR--“a just God.” It is
necessary to attend to this with becoming reverenceand awe. Some deny it, or
overlook it, regarding nothing but His mercy, and forgetting, that there could
be no occasion for the exercise of mercy did not His justice consign guilty men
to punishment.
1. The fallen angels who have been cast down from their first estate,
and are reserved in chains of darkness to the judgment of the last day, are
monuments of His avenging justice. Adam and his transgressing partner exiled
from Paradise, and that paradise accursed for their sakes; the inhabitants of
the world before the flood, with the exception of a single family, swept away
into a watery grave by a single stroke; Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of
the plain overwhelmed by a torrent of liquid fire from the skies; Mount Sinai
itself with its clouded summit and trembling base, its flashing lightnings, its
rolling thunders, and trumpet voices, all bespeak the terrors of that
inflexible justice which overlooks no sin of men or angels, and suffers no
transgression against the eternal authority and sovereignty of God to go
unpunished.
2. Consider further what proofs are afforded of the justice of God in
His dispensations with the offending race of men. The lot of the progenitor has
now become that of all his posterity; and man everywhere is a suffering and
dying creature, because he is everywhere a sinner. Consider the awful
calamities which have attended the human race, from the first generations to
the present.
3. These proofs of Divine justice may be further strengthened and
enlarged by considering the very method He has chosen for displaying His mercy.
Is He not a just God? Let the agonies of His beloved Son declare--let the cross
of Jesus stand as a witness.
II. THE DEEP AND
GLORIOUS MYSTERY which, under another view, these words present. This glorious
mystery consists in the union of these two characters in the one God of
revelation--two characters which it appeared were hostile to each other--two
characters which no other system ever did or ever could reconcile--and the
difficulty of reconciling which has led some to deny the one, and some to deny
the other. The mystery ties in the union of these two perfections of the Divine
nature, justice and mercy--and in their united exercise towards the same sinful
creatures. This the Gospel fully develops in the doctrine of the incarnation of
the Son of God, in His substituted obedience, His voluntary submission, His
vicarious sacrifice.
III. These words
possess AN ASPECT OF DIVINE COMFORT FOR THE SOUL OF MAN.
1. The comfort depends on your reception of the salvation, which is
essentially a salvation from sin, in all those respects in which it has
affected our nature, whether by guilt, pollution, degradation, or separation
from God.
2. This Divine comfort is open to all.
3. The comfort never fails--never fluctuates--will accompany through
life, and abound even in death--when all other sources of comfort fail. (The
Evangelist.)
A just God and a Saviour
I. The grand truth
is manifestly this--that THERE IS IN GOD AN EVERLASTING HARMONY BETWEEN THE
JUST AND THE MERCIFUL. He is just, not in opposition to salvation, but because
He is a Saviour. He is a Saviour, not in opposition to justice, but because He
is justice seeking to save.
1. Let us mark the ground on which Isaiah founded that mighty truth,
the supreme and solitary sovereignty of God--“I am the Lord, and there is none
else; there is none beside Me.” He had looked over the conflict of nations and
the decay of empires, and seen one eternal God causing all to work His will. Realise
that vision of God, and then the idea that He needs reconciling to Himself must
instantly fall: for if God’s justice needs reconciling to His mercy, then we
have two Gods, the just and the merciful; and it is no longer true that He is
God, “beside whom there is none else.” Realise this, and the idea of the
atonement which represents Christ as simply appeasing God the just and inducing
Him to be merciful, passes away. God needs no reconciling to Himself: justice
is in everlasting union with mercy.
2. Let us ask what is God’s justice, and what His salvation? and then
we shall see how they are in perfect harmony. God’s justice is not merely the
infliction of penalty; God’s salvation is not merely deliverance from penalty.
It is true that He does execute penalty and award retribution. We see it in the
stern laws of life by which one error brings down life-long sorrow; one true
effort reaps, inevitably, its blessed reward. There is a just God over all, for
men ever reap just what they sow. But justice in God is something far grander
than the mere exercise of retribution; it is the love of eternal truth, purity,
righteousness; and the penalties of untruth, impurity, unrighteousness, are the
outflashings of that holy anger which is founded in His love of the right, the
pure, and the true. In the same way, God s salvation is more than the mere
deliverance from penalty. It is, at the same time, the deliverance from evil,
salvation from the cruel lusts of wrong; from the bondage of unholy passions
growing into the giant-life of eternity; from the deep degradation and horrible
selfishness of sin. Here, then, we see how His justice and His salvation are in
perfect harmony. His salvation is to free men from the penalties of justice by
making them righteous, true, and holy in Christ.
3. Take now one step further. Take the two great revelations of law
and mercy, and we shall see how the law is merciful and mercy holy.
(a) The sense of immortality. Man, feeling that life is bounded by the
present, will never be freed from evil. But sin destroys the sense of
immortality, confines him to the narrow circle of the earth, and dares him to
look beyond. Under its influence man forgets the grandeur of his nature, sinks
into a mere animal, and becomes the slave of material things. To awaken him
there is no other voice so powerful as that of the law he cannot obey--a law
majestic in purity, and thundering penalties on transgression. The Divine voice
in the law speaks to him, making him feel that he is greater than material
things--greater than his sinful idols. He asks: Why does it mark out me? And
the awful Sinai of conscience awakens at that voice, and the man feels the
sublimity of his nature; and there is the beginning of salvation.
(b) The sense of sin as a power in life. The voice of law shows him
that in him is the power which the just God hates in holy anger. Cursing evil,
it curses him. Thus law is the revelation of God the Saviour. Before its awful
majesty and impossible claims man learns the weakness, and slavery, and horror
of sin; and is prepared to accept the mercy that delivers him.
II. We infer TWO
LESSONS from this great truth.
1. The necessity of Christian endeavour. We are justified at once;
for the germ of a righteous manhood exists in the first act of faith. But the
realisation of it is progressive. The Christian ideal is to be as Christ was,
faithful, holy, and undefiled. Every day we have untruthfulness, selfishness,
unbelief, to overcome.
2. The ground of Christian trust. Some men find security in the
belief that they are delivered from the stern awards of justice. But we are not
delivered from God’s purity, we are reconciled to it. In the justice of God
lies our confidence now, for He will make us righteous and holy in Christ. And
this gives us hope in the midst of life’s discipline, and explains much of its
mystery. The object of His discipline is not to make us happy simply, but to
train us into holiness, which is blessedness. There are men who trust in the
infinite mercy of God, and feel that He will deliver them at last. Remember,
that to remain in unbelief is to adopt the spirit which killed Christ. To
refuse His salvation is to challenge the holy indignation of the Most High. (E.
L. Hull, B. A.)
“Look unto Me!”
Consider--
I. How GOD IS
JUST. He will not deal unfairly with His creatures. He will not ascribe a
single sin to them which they have not committed. He will not punish them
beyond what their iniquities deserve.
II. HOW HE IS AT
THE SAME TIME A SAVIOUR.
III. WHAT IS THE
INVITATION WHICH HE ADDRESSES TO A RUINED WORLD. Mark--
1. To whom it is addressed. “All the ends of the earth.” How broad an
invitation! Who is there who can say, “I am not called”?
2. What does He invite us all to do? “Look unto Me!” “Behold Me with
the eye of faith, as ‘the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world!’
‘Look unto Me’ as your refuge, your resource, your hope, your confidence your
almighty, all-sufficient, only Saviour! ‘Look unto Me’ for life, for pardon,
for righteousness, for peace on earth, for heavenly happiness hereafter! ‘Look
unto Me,’ by looking off from every object of your carnal confidence, from
every vain deceitful hope which you have invented for yourselves, and by
placing your entire, unbounded trust in the merits of My Cross!”
3. And what spiritual benefit shall that look of faith procure to
them? “Be ye saved.” Are there not those that look for mercy even though they
look not unto Jesus? Consider seriously that expression, “There is none beside
Me”--“A just God and a Saviour.” Ye that are looking unto Him for salvation!
remember that, in the very act by which the Lord hath delivered you from death
He hath shown you also His horror and His hatred of your sins. (A. Roberts,
M. A.)
Looking unto Jesus, the only Saviour
I. THE GRACIOUS
INVITATION. Notice--
1. The benevolent Being by whom the invitation is given.
2. To whom it is addressed. Not to the Jews only, but also to the
Gentiles: to every nation, and kindred, and tongue and people.
3. What is implied in the invitation.
4. What the invitation calls upon us to do in order to secure our
salvation. “Look unto Me.” In our natural state we are all looking from Him;
and even when we are convinced of our lost condition, how prone we are to look
to anything rather than to Him for salvation--our repentance, our obedience,
our duties, our morality, our usefulness! What then, is meant by looking to
Him? It signifies the same thing with believing in Him.
II. THE POWERFUL
REASONS BY WHICH THAT INVITATION IS ENFORCED.
1. He is God.
2. A just God.
3. A gracious God, for He is a Saviour.
4. The only God, and consequently the only Saviour. (D. Rees.)
Verse 22
Look unto Me
Turning to God
“Turn ye to Me and be saved.
” The first imperative exhorts, the second promises. Jehovah desires two
things--
1. All men’s turning to Him.
2. Their blessedness by so doing. (P. Delitzch, D. D.)
Look
The word does not correspond exactly to the English “look,” but
denotes the act of turning round in order to look in a different direction. The
text, therefore, bears a strong analogy to those in which the heathen, when
enlightened, are described as turning from their idols unto God (1 Thessalonians 1:9; Acts 14:15; Acts 15:19). (J. A. Alexander.)
The ends of the earth
The expression accords with the Jewish notion, that their land was
situated in the midst of the earth, and that the countries which lay most
remote from them, whose circumstances formed a contrast to theirs, were the
ends or extremities of the earth. (R. Macculloch.)
Sovereignty and salvation
It has ever been one of the objects of the great Jehovah to teach
mankind that He is God, and beside Him there is none else.
I. HOW HAS GOD
BEEN TEACHING THIS LESSON TO MANKIND?
1. He has taught it to false gods and to the idolaters who have bowed
before them. How hath God poured con tempt on the ancient gods of the heathen!
Where are they now?
2. Mark how God has taught truth to empires.
3. To monarchs. Nebuchadnezzar, Herod, &c.
4. To the wise men of this world.
5. “Surely,” says one, “the Church of God does not need to be taught
this” Yes, she does! How did the church in Canaan forget it when they bowed
before other gods: If God gives us a special mission, we generally begin to
take some honour to ourselves.
II. SALVATION IS
GOD’S GREATEST WORK, and in this He specially teaches us this lesson. Our text
tells us how He teaches it.
1. By the person to whom He directs us. “Me.”
2. By the means He tells us to use. “Look.”
3. By the persons whom He calls to look. “All the ends of the earth.”
(C. H.Spurgeon.)
Life for a look
The great sin of man, ever since he has fallen, has been that of
idolatry. He is ever seeking to get away from God, who is real, but whom he
cannot see, and to make for himself a god, which can only be an idol, but which
pleases him because he can gaze upon it. And thus it comes to pass that, some
with images of wood and stone, and others with carnal confidences and the like,
put something else into the place which should be occupied by God alone; and they
look to that something, and expect good from it, instead of looking for all
good to God, and to Him alone. This looking to anything which usurps the place
of God cannot but be most offensive to Him, and it must also be very
disappointing to ourselves, for it is impossible for the false god to yield us
any true comfort. Yet note the Lord s great patience even with those who are
thus provoking Him by this idolatry of theirs.
I. FOR SALVATION
OUT OF ANY TROUBLE, WE SHOULD LOOK TO GOD ALONE. There are some troubles in
which men do look to God alone. I have known even the most profane men turn to
God, after a fashion, in the hour of supreme peril. Now, if men will act thus
by the compulsion of great calamity, is there not sound reason why you should,
cheerfully and willingly, do the same, and resort to God in every trial, and
difficulty, and dilemma? Is any trial too slight for you to bring in prayer
before Him?
II. FOR ETERNAL
SALVATION, WE MUST LOOK TO GOD ALONE.
1. Salvation is not to be found in any mere agent.
2. The great thing that thou needest to know, and look at, and rely
upon, is the mercy of God.
3. Since God says, “Look unto Me,” let me ask you whether you are
looking unto Him as He has revealed Himself to us in His Word?
4. Especially is it intended that we should look unto God as He
reveals Himself in the person and work of His dear Son.
5. Settle this matter in your mind as an absolute certainty that,
whoever and whatever you are, you may look to God in Christ, and be saved.
6. Let no feeling of thine beat thee off from looking to Christ. (C.
H.Spurgeon.)
Characteristics of salvation
I. It is a SIMPLE
salvation-plain, clear, distinct, intelligible in its terms. It is, in this
respect, unlike the false religions referred to in Isaiah 45:19, whose utterances, being
involved in designed obscurity and ambiguity, are there represented as “spoken
in secret, and in dark places of the earth.” Such were the dubious responses
which came from the Delphic oracle, the Cave at Lebadea, the Cumean Sybil, the
Eleusinian Ceres, the soothsayers and necromancers of Egypt, Phoenicia, and
Persia. The salvation of the Gospel is so clear and perspicuous that “he who
runs may read.”
II. It is a FREE
salvation, uncumbered and unconditional in its offers. There is no costly,
protracted, elaborate preparation or probation needed. No painful penances; no
rites, no lastings, no lustrations, no priestly absolutions In Isaiah 45:13, God says of Cyrus (and He
says the same in a nobler sense of a Greater than the earthly liberator), “He
shall let go My captives, not for price nor reward.” This is not, indeed, after
the manner of men, nor in accordance with that natural legality of spirit which
loves to fetter itself with conditions and terms. If the prophet had bid the
Syrian leper of old “do some great thing,” Naaman would have cordially
assented; but he could not brook the trifling expedient of dipping himself in
the river Jordan. HI. It is a RIGHTEOUS salvation (Isaiah 45:19; Isaiah 45:21). See Ro
3:26. It is a salvation which has been secured in accordance with
theprinciples of everlasting truth and rectitude. Let us not, however,
misinterpret the relation of justice to mercy, as if between these two Divine
attributes there existed any antagonism,--as if they represented two
conflicting principles (similar to the Magian), one of which had to be
propitiated before the other could exercise its benignant will, or go forth on
its benignant behests. Nay, they are in perfect harmony. Love can hold out her
blissful sceptre only when standing by the throne of justice. In that glorious
salvation, every attribute of the Divine nature has been magnified and made
honourable.
IV. It is a SURE
salvation. The rites of the heathen leave their votaries in uncertainty,
groping in the dark. Their feelings and experiences are well described in Isaiah 3:16. In impressive and sublime
contrast with this, Jehovah avows in Isaiah 3:23, “I have sworn by Myself: the
word” or “truth” (Lowth) “is gone out of My mouth in righteousness”; and in Isaiah 3:19, “I said not unto the seed of
Jacob, Seek ye Me in vain”; or Isaiah 3:17, “Ye shall not be ashamed nor
confounded.” Truly the covenant of grace is a covenant “well ordered in all things,
and sure.”
V. It is here
further unfolded to us as the ONLY salvation (Isaiah 3:24). Bishop Lowth renders it,
“Only to Jehovah belongeth salvation and power.” “Neither is there salvation in
any other.”
VI. It is an
ETERNAL salvation (Isaiah 3:17). (J. R. Macduff, D. D.)
Looking to Christ
Faith is one of the principal subjects of sacred Scripture, and is
expressed in various forms: sometimes in plain terms, but more frequently in
metaphors borrowed from earthly things, and particularly from the actions of
the body.
I. EXPLAIN THE
DUTY HERE EXPRESSED BY THE METAPHOR OF LOOKING. Observe in general, that a man’s
looks often discover his condition and the frame of his mind. Hence we can
understand a look of surprise and consternation, of sorrow and compassion, a
look of joy, the look of a perishing supplicant, or of a needy, expecting
dependant. If an agonising patient casts an eager look upon his physician, we
understand it to be a silent petition for relief. Hence “looking to Christ
implies those suitable dispositions and exercises of heart towards Him, which
are expressed by the earnest and significant looks of persons in a distressed
condition towards their deliverer.”
1. Looking to Christ implies a particular notice and distinct
knowledge of Him.
2. An importunate eagerness for relief from Him (Psalms 25:15).
3. A wishful expectation of deliverance from Him (Psalms 69:3). It may be illustrated by
the history of the lame beggar (Acts 3:4-5).
4. A humble dependence upon Him for salvation (2 Chronicles 20:12).
5. A universal cheerful submission to His authority (Psalms 123:1-2).
6. A hearty approbation of Him as a Saviour, and supreme affection to
Him. Love is often expressed by looks.
7. Joy and gratitude for His delivering goodness.
II. URGE YOU TO
LOOK TO HIM BY SEVERAL WEIGHTY CONSIDERATIONS. This is the great duty of saints
and sinners, and consequently of every one in all ages and places, even to “the
ends of the earth.”
1. It is salvation we are called upon to pursue.
2. It may be obtained upon the easiest terms, without any personal
merit, viz., by a “look.”
3. It is Immanuel, the incarnate God, who commands and invites us to
look.
4. He is the glorious and affecting Object to which we are to look.
5. Our looking shall not be in vain, for He is God, who engages to
save those who look to Him.
6. It is vain to look elsewhere for salvation, and needless to fear
His grace should be controlled by another; for He is God, so there is none
else.
7. We, in particular, are invited, being especially meant by “the
ends of the earth.” (S. Davies, M. A.)
The saving look
I. THAT ALL
MANKIND ARE ENSLAVED TO SIN.
II. THAT THE
UNIVERSAL DESIRE OF MANKIND IS FOR HAPPINESS.
III. THAT THE ONLY
SOURCE OF REAL HAPPINESS IS TO BE FOUND IN GOD. “Look unto Me.” “I am God, and
beside me,” &c.
IV. THAT THE
SALVATION WHICH GOD HAS PROVIDED IS BOUNDLESS IN ITS PROVISIONS, AND UNLIMITED
IN ITS EXTENT. “All the ends of the earth.”
V. THAT THE
RECEPTION OF THIS BLESSING IS NEVERTHELESS CONDITIONAL. “Look unto Me,” &c.
What does this imply?
1. An apprehension of the object presented.
2. Of the good it proposes to impart.
3. An earnest desire to obtain it.
4. A vigorous use of appointed means.
VI. THE GROUND OF
ENCOURAGEMENT. “I am God”; and therefore, know that you need it--have prepared
it for you--invite you to partake of it--promise to impart it--warn you of the
consequences of refusing it.None other can save you. “Now is the accepted
time,” &c. (R. Shepherd.)
Life by looking
Sin came by an unbelieving look. Eve saw that the tree was good
for food and pleasant to the eyes. Distrusting God, she looked and plucked and
ate. Salvation comes from a believing and trustful look. “Look unto Me, and be
ye saved.” To those “who look for Him” will He appear with salvation.
I. AS SIN FIRST
ENTERED, SO IT STILL ENTERS. It enters through the eye. He who first saw the
wedge of gold and the Babylonish garment lusted for them, went after them, took
and hid them. Therefore it is wise to say “Look not upon the wine when it is red,”
for temptations come through the eye. The Scriptures tell of those whose “eyes
are full of sin” and cannot cease. This truth is realised in our own mournful
experience. We look on injuries and brood over them. We contemplate objects of
desire and lust after them. When it has conceived lust bringeth forth sin.
II. SALVATION COMES
BY THE SAME EASY METHOD. “Look unto Me and be ye saved.”
1. This is a spiritual vision. Some regard that which we call
spiritual as unreal and dreamy, whereas carnality is unreal, and spiritual
things are, of all, the most actual.
2. It is an immediate vision. Of our physical functions sight is the
most immediate. So faith is the most positive and assuring. You end a dispute
by saying, but I saw it with my own eyes and so I know it. The believer is able
to speak thus of Him whom he knows, for he has seen Him.
III. HOW ARE WE TO
SEE CHRIST? In what respects?
1. As a Saviour.
2. As an Intercessor.
3. As King and Master.
IV. THERE ARE
SPECIAL TIMES WHEN WE SHOULD LOOK EXCLUSIVELY TO CHRIST.
1. In all our acts of public worship.
2. In temptations. Are you injured? Nothing so cleanses the heart of
stinging pain as this. Do unholy desires annoy? Here is the remedy.
3. In approaching weakness.
Though the outward man perishes, the inward man is renewed day by
day. By looking the light will increase more and more to the perfect day. God
has promised to show us the path of life. Evangelist asked the Pilgrim, “Seest
thou yonder light?” “I think I do.” Evangelist by a long looking had acquired
keen vision, and Pilgrim found his eyes opened as he looked. The way grew
clearer, and you know the glorious end to which he came. His, weakness was
perfected in his Leader’s strength. The subject before us has a twofold
application.
1. For self-examination. In our worship have we been looking only to
God whom we have professed to address? In hymn and prayer and preaching have
our acts been merely formal and professional?
2. By way of invitation. The invitation is to all, even to “the ends
of the earth.” (A. Whyte, D. D.)
Salvation offered
These words show us that we have need to be saved. We have to be
saved from enormous evils. But there is a great change that must take place in
everyone before he can be saved. There is no salvation to an unregenerate man.
Let me remind you what God intends when He says, “Look unto Me.”
1. He bids you look to Him for mercy, to save you gratuitously,
without bringing to Him anything.
2. We should look to the Son of God, as well as to the Father--for
His meritorious intercession--that we may be saved.
3. Look to God the Spirit, as well as to the Father and the Son. He
who wrought mightily in the persecutor Saul, to make him an eminent trophy of
grace and a large benefactor to his fellow-creatures, has no less power,
condescension and goodness, to extend to you, and to give to you all the same
principle, the same courage, and the same perseverance.
4. The same blessed duty rests on all of you who by the grace of God
have looked to Him and lived. You are called to prosecute your journey
heavenwards, from one degree of faith and grace and comfort and joy to another,
till you reach your eternal home, every day looking to God that you may be
saved.
5. But He never meant His servants to be selfish, as He is beneficent
and good; and therefore let me bid you notice the extent of this invitation:
“All the ends of the earth.” Then it is God’s will that Japan, and China, and
India must look to Him and be saved, as well as we. At the time these words
were uttered by the prophet, we were the ends of the world to them, as China,
Japan, and Borneo are to us; yea, we were beyond the limits of the known world
at that time. And we have heard the good news and believed. (B. W. Noel, M.
A.)
A Saviour
I. The everlasting
God, He who alone is God, declares Himself to be THE SOURCE OF SALVATION.
II. THE
UNIVERSALITY OF THE PLAN OF SALVATION. “All the ends of the earth.” Men of all
tribes and kingdoms shall be made to feel the power of Almighty grace. The plan
of salvation is adapted to every variety of circumstance. The monarch on the
throne of vast empire--he is seated there in the sight of God a poor rebel, and
he needs salvation. Or take the other extreme--the lowliest and obscurest of
the children of men--he is a sinner before God, an immortal creature.
III. GOD’S SIMPLE
COMMAND to the guilty and the lost, while announcing Himself as the Source of
salvation, and while proclaiming its universality, is “Look unto Me.”
1. To look unto God, as the Source of salvation, implies knowledge of
Him.
2. The exercise of faith.
3. Confidence in God.
4. We may give emphasis to the expression, “Unto Me.” God requires
that you should look away from all other objects which would interfere with the
entire yielding up of the whole soul to Him.
5. There should be in the mind of the believer a full assurance that
He is able to save, and willing to save. (G. Fisk, LL. B.)
Salvation obtained only by looking unto Jesus
I. THE INVITATION,
“Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth,” may be regarded as
involving an offer of an invaluable blessing, a statement of the means by which
the blessing is secured, and finally, an intimation of the extent of the offer
made.
II. THE REASON WHY
THAT INVITATION SHOULD BE COMPLIED WITH. “For I am God, and there is none
else.” There are two ideas involved in this statement.
1. That Jesus is the true God, and therefore able to save.
2. That on Him only should we depend, for there is no other being in
the universe who is able to rescue an immortal soul from eternal ruin.
We see from this subject--
1. The folly and danger of unbelief.
2. The habitual duty of all true Christians. It is to look unto Jesus
at every stage of their spiritual history. (P. Grant.)
The Divine invitation
I. THE SPEAKER.
II. THE PERSONS
ADDRESSED.
III. THE BLESSINGS
PROMISED.
IV. THE MANNER OF
OBTAINING THEM. (Bp. R. Bickersteth, D. D.)
Looking to Christ
I. If you look
unto the Lord Jesus you will see GOD MANIFEST.
II. If you look to
Jesus you will see LOVE INCARNATE--Divine love. According to the medium through
which it shines, the same lamp can be made to give a radiance of a very
different colour, a cheering or a gloomy light. In a sinful world like this,
could you not easily imagine a vindictive incarnation and manifestation of the
blessed God, which would have brought into the midst of our sinfulness the
consuming fire of His holiness, which, thus coming in contact with our
combustible corruption, would have turned our earth into an early perdition?
But what was the actual fact? “The Word dwelt among us, full of grace and
truth.”
III. Looking unto
the Lord Jesus, there is yet another sight with which the earnest sinner is
regaled, and that is RIGHTEOUS RECONCILIATION.
IV. Whosoever looks
at Him long enough, simply enough, intently enough, will find in Him TRANSFUSED
IMMORTALITY, life transmitted from that Saviour unto his own soul.
V. If you look to
Jesus simply as God reveals Him in His Word, and as He is in Himself, you will
see A LOVE-ATTRACTING AND A LIFE-ASSIMILATING SAVIOUR a Saviour who, when he
attracts your love, will assimilate your life to His. (J. Hamilton, D. D.)
Looking unto Jesus
In these words, we have the same sort of invitation that we find
in the New Testament: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden”;
“Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith”; “Consider the
Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.” Such texts as these
contain the very secret of Christianity. They meet all our wants, they heal all
our sorrows, they save our souls. Christianity consists in having to do with
Christ, in having the love of Christ implanted in the soul, and then the spirit
of Christ guiding and influencing us every moment of our earthly history.
I. AS TO THE
PEOPLE WHO ARE ADDRESSED. “All the ends of the earth”--all men.
II. WHY ARE THEY TO
LOOK? “And be saved.” Now, under the New Testament you and I are directed
especially to Jesus Christ. He tells us that no man cometh unto the Father but
by Him. Look upon this for your encouragement, what faith sees when she looks
upon Jesus. She finds love in Jesus, pardon in Jesus, peace in Jesus, eternal
happiness in Jesus. And this is so with God. He sees the sinner in Jesus, He is
satisfied with His atoning work, and accepts the believing sinner for His sake.
III. HOW THEY ARE TO
LOOK. The term “look” in the Word of God is ordinarily intended to mean
“belief.” That we should look to the Lord Jesus expecting something, just as
the lame man looked at Peter and John at the Beautiful gate of the temple,
expecting to receive something of them.
1. If you can take this view of Christ, that He intends your
salvation, then there will be a look of real sorrow for sin. We shall mourn for
sin on the one hand, but rejoice in Christ Jesus on the other.
2. A look of acquiescence, of trust and confidence.
3. A look of prayer. (J. W. Reeve, M. A.)
The saving look
I. THE NATURE OF
THE COMMAND, or what it is to look at the Lord Jesus Christ.
1. The very idea of looking to the Saviour, implies a looking off
ourselves, our idols, our sins, our righteousnesses, and our unrighteousnesses.
It is to look off our duties, our prayers, our tears, our humiliations, our
resolutions, and simply and singly to look to Christ for salvation.
2. To look at Christ for salvation implies a conscious need of
salvation.
3. To look at Christ is to look at Him not only as the very Christ of
God, but as the Son of God.
4. To look at Christ is to look to Him for a whole salvation.
II. THE NECESSITY
OF THE PRECEPT. We have a natural disinclination to it; we naturally look at
any other object. When in the world, and of the world, this is grossly the
case. Our friends, our families, our prospects, profits, our pleasures, our
sins, form our world. If we withdraw from its grossness, and are mingled Up
with its more decent enjoyments, and add something of religion; its forms, its
ceremonies, its worship, quite occupy us. Our little orbit of vision is full,
quite full; we can look at nothing else. A mere hand before the eyes hides the
sun. We think ourselves far better than many, far from being so vile as some;
and even after the Holy Spirit has convinced us of sin, yet still what
backwardness to look to Christ!
III. THE BLESSED
EFFECT OF OBEYING THE PRECEPT. Salvation.
1. How wonderful is this salvation--that one real look at Christ has
eternal life in it; that if the vilest sinner do but look at Him, he is saved
even at the eleventh hour!
2. The longer thou livest, the more the Spirit will open the
depravities of thy nature to thee. As He does this, pray that He may open the
very grace and glories of Jesus to thee.
3. When, through the power of the Holy Spirit, this peace is
established in thy conscience, through the precious blood of the Cross, seek
its increase into the full assurance of hope, in all the ways of holy walking,
still looking to Jesus for all the supplies of His grace and Spirit. (J. H.
Evans, M. A.)
The extent of the Gospel call
I. AN OBJECT OF
ATTRACTION. “Me”; the true God--the one Saviour, and none else but Me. But in
what capacity is Christ exhibited in the Gospel?
1. As a Mediator.
2. As the Lord our righteousness.
3. As the Fountain to wash away sin.
4. As the sinner’s Life.
II. AN ACT CALLED
FORTH. “Look unto Me,” or as some would understand the original, “Turn your
face to Me from false idols.” This act implies--
1. Knowledge.
2. Faith.
3. Conversion. Every man has gone astray from God.
4. A waiting posture.
III. THE EXTENT OF
THIS CALL. “All the ends of the earth.” This phrase imples--
1. That all men have gone astray from God.
2. That God is no respecter of persons.
3. That there is salvation in no other.
4. The sufficiency there is” m” Christ” to every returning, soul.
IV. THE BENEFITS
inseparably connected with a looking to Jesus Christ. “And be saved”--not be
made rich for threescore years and ten. No! “and be saved.” (T. Jones.)
Looking unto Christ
I. IN WHAT MANNER
WE ARE TO LOOK TO CHRIST.
1. With an eye of faith. To direct our thoughts to Him in the same
manner as to any other person, is not enough.
2. With eager desire of relief.
3. With gratitude and love.
4. As an example of righteousness whom it behoves us to follow.
5. As our Intercessor.
II. SOME
CONSIDERATIONS TO ENFORCE THE DUTY.
1. Who is the glorious Object to which you are required to look? None
other than the Son of God.
2. Who it is that requires you to look.
3. It is salvation for which we are to look.
4. The facility of the duty here enjoined.
5. The boundless extent of the invitation. (A. Ramsay, M. A.)
Looking within, looking around, and looking up
Let us hear the story of the Look--a story in three chapters.
I. Chapter the
first. HOW HE LOOKED WITHIN. I do not know much about him, except this. How it
came about, indeed, I know not. Whether it was some sermon that smote him;
whether it was the death of some neighbour; whether it was some peril of his
own; whether it was some sharp sickness that overtook him, I know not; but so
it was. One day that man stopped and looked in at himself, and he said, “There
is no mistake about it; I am wrong, I can see. I am all wrong, and I will just
set to work, and I will make things right. I will turn over a new leaf.” And he
set to work, and he began to tie up his sins with the strong cords of his
resolutions and his good desires, and there he set them all of a row. This was
never going to be indulged any more, and this should not, and the other should
be denied. All went well for a day, and then something or other came across
him, and snap went the cords, and up sprang one old sin. Snap went the cords,
and another sprang at him. “There,” he said, “I knew that it was no good my
trying,” and he just gave it up. Who is that? You. I think I see here a man who
has turned over a new leaf. Here it is all white and clean without a blot. Ah,
there is a blot now. Oh, there is another smudge; there is a mistake. If we
cannot find a better way than turning over new leaves, we shall soon give it up
in despair. Besides, if thou couldst do so, what would it do for thee? Here is
a man who has got into low water, and he cannot make ends meet, and one day a
friend steps in to advise him and finds him in a state of glee, and the man
says, “I have got credit for this, and I have received this”; and there he is
filling up the column of his receipts. “Why, what does this mean?” says the
friend--“My dear fellow, you have forgotten the ‘brought forward.’ You have
left out the ‘carried over.’” That dreadful “carried over!” That awful “brought
forward!” What about the past? There it is, what can I do with it? We have not
done with that chapter yet, for there is a second part of it. You say to me,
“Yes; I can see that if I am ever going to be what I want to be, I must just
come right up to God, and let Him do it.” But, dear friend, what ails thee?
“Well, you see, I do not know. I have not got any faith. I have not got any
repentance I have not got any earnestness. What is a man like I am to do?” Hast
thou never learnt how to make thy hindrances into thy helps? Hast thou never
learnt how to make thy very need thy claim upon thy God? I pray thee now, just
as thou art, with all thy sense of want, lift up thine eyes. Why, the only
thing that I know about repentance is what I feel in my heart when I see Jesus.
I have never found any place of repentance except at the foot of the Cross. The
only thing that I know about faith is what springs up in my heart when I look
at Jesus. Faith does not come from looking within. Let thy whole soul say, “I
will look unto Him, and be saved.”
II. Chapter the
second. HOW HE LOOKED ROUND. You say, “There is to-morrow; people would notice
the change, and I should not like to tell them that I had given myself to the
Lord Jesus Christ, and how I was going to be His soldier and His servant; and
there would be the sneer, and scorn, and ridicule, and one would perhaps try
this temptation, and another would see whether I could bear the other, and I do
not know that I could.” The Gospel is, that Christ comes right to me and takes
my hand. He lives, and He comes to thee and me, and He saith, “Thou art setting
forth to be My child and My servant, and I am never going to let thee be
alone.” Now, wilt thou put thy hand in His? But we have not done with the
second chapter quite yet. I can think of some one going a step farther and
saying, “Well, I do look to Jesus, you know, and I am looking to Him, and I
have been trying to look to Him, but somehow or other I cannot get on.” Why
not? Well, it may be that you are looking around still. Some of you say to me,
“Well, you see, I look to Him, but I cannot rejoice. I do not feel happy.”
Well, I do not know that it says, “Feel happy.” It says, “Look unto Me, and be
ye saved.” I think that we must let the Lord Jesus Christ take care of our
feelings. All we have get to do is just to look to Him. But we look around at
one man and another. Somebody says to me, “John Bunyan went for three months
weeping and crying. I am a dry eyes; I cannot shed a tear.” Well, who wants you
to shed a tear? What have you got to do with other people? We will look no more
round.
III. Chapter the third.
HOW HE LOOKED UP. You must look up. Will you? (M. GuyPearse.)
Would you be saved?
The object of salvation is to bring a man into harmonious
communion with God.
I. ALL MEN NEED TO
BE SAVED. We need to be saved--
1. From our propensity to wrong-doing.
2. We need also to be saved from our spirit of unrest.
3. From our weakness in being overcome by pain and trouble.
4. From our fear of death.
II. GOD DOES NOT
FORCE ANY MAN TO BE SAVED AGAINST HIS WILL. In the occurrences of this life we
may have to employ force sometimes to save the body of a fellow-creature
against his will. But God cannot act so, because He is God, and would have men
love Him. The only way God has of compelling us to follow Him is through the
attraction of His love, as shown in Jesus Christ, who laid down His life on the
Cross for love of us. Love is the strongest power in the universe, for God is
Love.
III. THE POWER AND
SIMPLICITY OF THE SALVATION OFFERED TO US.
1. Its power. Salvation does not exist anywhere except in God. We ministers
are only like the boys with handbills inviting you in to buy salvation from our
Master without money.
2. The simplicity of the salvation. It is to be had for a look; but
it must be--
IV. IT IS A
UNIVERSAL INVITATION, embracing, “all the ends of the earth.” You know what the
“ends” are. When a coat becomes frayed, or a shawl worn, the ends are of no use
and you cut them off. The outcasts of men, of what use are they? This salvation
is for the despised ones, for the very “ends” that the world throws away; and,
better still, it is for you. (W. Birch.)
The Gospel simple, rich, universal
I. HERE IS THE
SIMPLEST METHOD. “Look unto Me.” I give the highest praise to the man of
science who can unify the manifold facts of the world, and to the philosopher
who can reduce to order the strange and complex phenomena of the mind. How I
should thank the God who expresses His will for me in a single word, and that
word so easy and unencumbered.
II. HERE IS THE
RICHEST BOON. “And be ye saved.” Salvation is a treasure unutterably and
inconceivably great. If it begins with “no condemnation,” it ends with “no
separation.” There is pardon in it, and holiness, and wisdom, and power; there
is the blessed life here, and hereafter there is the life of “full and
everlasting and passionless renown.”
III. HERE IS THE
WIDEST OUTLOOK. “All the ends of the earth”--thus far the love of the Father
and the grace of the Son and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit travel and
reach. There is nothing calculating, niggardly, arithmetical in God’s largesse
and bounty. (A. Smellie, M. A.)
Look and be saved
(Isaiah 45:22-25):--
I. A BLESSED
INVITATION. “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am
God, and there is none else.”
1. The subject to which it refers is unspeakably momentous. The word
“saved” is easily pronounced, but who can comprehend the fulness of its
meaning?
2. The duty it enjoins for securing this great blessing is
exceedingly simple. “Look unto Me.” Many are quite confounded at the simplicity
of the Gospel terms of salvation.
3. The range of this invitation is unlimited. “All the ends of the
earth.” The call is wide as the world.
4. The ground on which it rests is highly encouraging. “For I am God,
and there is none else.” In a previous verse it is said, “They have no
knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that
cannot save.” The idols of the heathen are altogether impotent. But our God is
able to save, and He alone is able. At the same time, something more than mere
power is necessary, and that something is not wanting in Him to whom we are
invited to look. He is “a just God and a Saviour.”
II. AN EMPHATIC
PROCLAMATION. “I have sworn by Myself, the word is gone out of My mouth in
righteousness, and shall not return; that unto Me every knee shall bow, every
tongue shall swear.” In reference to this subjection two things are stated--
1. Its universality. In the time of Elijah, God had reserved unto
Himself seven thousand men who had not bowed the knee to Baal; but here we have
a period predicted when idols shall be utterly abolished.
2. Its certainty. “I have sworn by Myself.” These emphatic
expressions denote that the purpose was made in the most solemn manner, and
ratified in the most sacred form. It is a purpose, therefore, that will be
infallibly executed. “From henceforth expecting.” says the apostle of the
enthroned Redeemer, “till His enemies be made His footstool.” And has He not
ample grounds for such an expectation? The desires even of the righteous shall
be granted, their hope will not be disappointed; how certain, then, must be the
fulfilment of the desires and hopes of Him whom the Father heareth always? Is
it not said, “Ask of Me”? &c.
III. A WISE
RESOLUTION. “Surely, shall one say,” &c. (Isaiah 45:24). The two blessings which
are here referred to, are absolutely necessary to salvation, and all who are
enlightened from above will be led to apply for them where alone they are to be
found. It is here stated, “Surely shall one say, in the Lord have I
righteousness and strength”: let each of us determine, by Divine aid, to be
that one. It must be a personal resolution, as the surrender is a personal
surrender. It is added, “Even to Him shall men come, i.e they will apply
to Him for these blessings. On the other hand, He will be made known by
terrible things in righteousness to those who refuse to seek His face, and continue
to rebel against His authority. “All that are incensed against Him shall be
ashamed.”
IV. AN IMPORTANT
DECLARATION. “In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall
glory.” (Anon.)
The metaphor of looking
In the language of metaphor the mind has got an eye as well as the
body. We say, “Look at this fact; look at this or that other historic
personage; look at Luther; look at Julius Caesar; look at Abraham”; and we all
understand what is meant when such language is employed. It is in some such a
way that we are told to look at the Saviour. (J. Hamilton, D. D.)
Looking to God
While the moon looketh directly upon the sun, she is bright and
beautiful; but if she once turn aside, and be left to herself, she loseth all
her glory, and enjoys but only a shadow of light, which is her own. (J.
Trapp.)
The contrite soul must look away from self
Passing through a graveyard with her parents, a little girl drew
them after her to look at a beautiful stone figure of the Christ, with a face
full of suffering and yet of tenderest pity, leaning upon a massive marble
cross. As they paused to look, she held her head down and said in a low voice,
“I can hardly lift up my eyes to look at Him, I have done so many wrong
things.” It is just because we have done so many “wrong things” that we have
need to lift up our eyes to look at Him. (Quiver.)
Looking
Some years ago I was asked by a workman to see a dying
fellow-creature, as this man said in his peculiar way, to “pilot him to
heaven.” I went, and found that the poor man was too far gone to speak. All he
could do was to look. I did not know whether he could hear, for when I spoke he
only looked at me. Wishing at least to show him the way of salvation, I took a
picture from the wall, turned it, and then drew on it with my lead pencil the
figure of the Cross with Jesus upon it. I held this picture before the man’s
eyes, and then he looked at me in an expressive way, and tried to nod his head.
Shortly after he died. (W. Birch.)
Looking up and lifted up
In Mrs. Fletcher’s biography she tells us of a convert who had a
strange dream. He thought he was down a very steep well in the night, and,
looking up, he saw a single star shining far above him, and it seemed to let
down lines of silver light that took hold upon him and lifted him up. Then he
looked down and began to go down. He looked up and began to go up, and he
looked down again and began to go down; and he found that by simply keeping his
eye on that star he rose out of the well, and his foot stood on the firm ground.
A parable is in the dream. If you look down, you go down; if you look up, you
go up. There must be first the looking up before there can be the lifting up. (J.
S. Drummond.)
Verse 24
Surely shall one say, In the Lord have I righteousness and
strength
Our righteousness and strength
It is important to us, in reading the Old Testament, and more
particularly its prophetical portions, to take with us as our guide the well-known
statement of the angel to the evangelist John: “The testimony of Jesus is the
spirit of prophecy.
” The preceding verse contains one of the most remarkable predictions
concerning the kingdom of Christ in the Old Testament, and in this prediction the
kingdom of Christ is described as becoming universal and permanent. After such
a prediction as that, we might have expected to find the prophet speaking of
numbers being brought to acknowledge and to bow the knee to Christ. Instead of
that, however, he speaks of one--a single, isolated, unknown individual; and he
introduces to us this solitary individual as if the state of his mind, the
subjugation of his heart to Christ, were an indication of the complete
fulfilment of the most glorious prophecies of the universality of Christ’s
kingdom. In looking for the progress of the Redeemer’s kingdom, we are too much
disposed to undervalue individual conversions. We may trace the progress of
Christ’s kingdom in the subjugation of a single heart to the Saviour.
I. THE STATE OF
THIS INDIVIDUAL’S MIND IN RELATION TO THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF CHRIST. The term
“righteousness” is one of those words in the Bible which it is of the first
importance that you should thoroughly understand. It includes all that the Lord
Jesus Christ has done and suffered for us. Mark three stages in the history of
this man’s mind.
1. The first thing a man does when he is awakened to a sense of his
need of some righteousness, is to try to find it in himself. But when once
brought to see his own righteousness aright, he sees innumerable defects.
2. Look at the second step in this man’s history. We might have
expected that the man would have received this righteousness with promptitude;
but he sets himself as deliberately against the righteousness of God as against
the law of God. Long will he struggle against the friendly hand that would lead
him to the Cross of Christ; but when brought there, he will exclaim, “In the
Lord have I righteousness and strength.”
3. Mark the third stage of the human mind in reference to the
righteousness of Christ. This man appropriates it.
II. HIS STATE OF
FEELING IN REFERENCE TO THE STRENGTH OF CHRIST. This latter word, “strength,”
conveys an idea totally distinct from, and additional to, that suggested by the
first. By the “righteousness” of Christ we always understand what the Lord
Jesus has done for us; by the “strength” of Christ we always understand what
the Lord has done in us; and it is the combination of these two that works out,
in all its completeness, the salvation of an individual sinner. When he is
first awakened to a sense of his own condition, he naturally tries to put forth
his own strength, but he soon discovers that this is the wrong order. It is
just in this way that the conviction is forced upon his mind that he has no
strength in himself, but that there is strength for him in Christ. If you have
sought Christ’s strength and are conscious that you possess it, you must arise
with vigour in the strength of the new man; and then, and not till then, will you
go forth free. Mark the connection between the strength of Christ and the
righteousness of Christ. The righteousness of Christ is laid hold of first, the
strength of Christ is appropriated next. “Unto Him shall men come.” That is the
practical conclusion of the whole matter.
Five Divine declarations
God s power over mankind is exerted in a way of grace, although it
is also true that His power is put forth in a way of judgment towards those who
reject His mercy. I read, with delight, the expressions of my text as the
decrees, and determinations, and promises, and declarations of the God of
grace, who affirms that men shall say, “In the Lord have we righteousness and
strength,” &c. There are five Divine declarations in the text.
I. THERE SHALL BE
A PEOPLE WHO SHALL OWN THE TRUTH CONCERNING GOD. Our version says, “Surely,
shall one say, In the Lord have I righteousness and strength”; but there are
other readings which appear to be more accurate. “Men shall say, In the Lord is
righteousness and strength,” would be quite as correct a rendering, or even
more so. It means that there shall be a people who shall confess that in God
there is righteousness and strength.
1. They shall see these to be His attributes.
2. They will see that all their righteousness and strength must be
found in God.
3. They shall be prepared openly to avow it. “Surely shall one say,”
&c.
II. Men will not
only own the truth concerning God, but THEY WILL ACT UPON IT. “Even to Him
shall men come.”
III. THOSE WHO DO
COME SHALL BE ASHAMED OF THEIR FORMER OPPOSITION. “All that are incensed
against Him shall be ashamed.”
1. There are some who are angry with God’s providence.
2. Some are incensed against God because of His law and its penalty,
3. Others are incensed against God because of the great plan of
salvation.
4. Some are even incensed against the Saviour Himself.
IV. The fourth
Divine declaration is, that THE LORD’S PEOPLE SHALL ALL BE JUSTIFIED. “In the
Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified.”
V. THOSE WHO COME
TO CHRIST, AND ARE JUSTIFIED IN HIM, SHALL GLORY. What does the text mean when
it says that they shall glory? Sometimes, when I have been preaching in Wales,
or among Methodists, when I have set before them good, rich, Gospel truth,
perhaps two or three have shouted, at the same time, “Glory!” And though it has
not increased the solemnity of the service, it has added a good deal of
vivacity to it. And, really, when we see what Divine grace has done for us, we
often feel inclined to cry out, “Glory! Glory be to God!”
1. Have not many of you felt the glory in your soul, even if you have
not uttered it with your mouth?
2. But the Lord’s true people will not keep that glory all to
themselves. They shall so glory that they shall speak about it to others.
3. Those who truly know Christ will glory in Him alone. (C. H.
Spurgeon.)
Even to Him shall men
come.
Men coming to Christ
The doctrinal truth, deduced from these words, is the certainty of
men, as sinners, coming to Christ, and being saved in Him. It is but necessary to
direct attention to the meaning and import of the terms, in the text, as seen
in their connection with the context.
I. The word “HIM”
viewed in its connection, points out several important particulars concerning
Christ, His person, office, and work.
1. His person. The word “Him” refers to Jehovah, as its antecedent.
Redemption is the work of Jehovah. Christ is Jehovah--our great God and
Saviour. But Christ is man, too. This constitutes the glory of Christ’s person.
He is a God-man.
2. His office The Mediator between God and man.
3. His work. The law is obeyed, magnified’ and made honourable, its
penalty borne, infinite justice satisfied, and everlasting righteousness
brought in.
II. They COME to
Him. To come to Christ is to believe upon Him.
III. They SHALL
come. The language expresses certainty. This certainty depends upon--
1. The purpose of God.
2. The work of Christ
3. The agency of the Holy Spirit.
IV. MEN shall come.
No sinner who comes to Christ will be lost. Men do come to Christ and are saved.
1. They are justified.
2. Sanctified.
3. Preserved. (J. I. Dunlop.)
Verse 25
In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified
The believer justified and glorying in the Redeemer
This passage is prophetic of the Messiah Isaiah 45:23 is quoted in Romans 14:11, and applied to Christ.
I. Let us then
attend to the assertion that “IN THE LORD SHALL THE SEED OF ISRAEL BE
JUSTIFIED.”
1. They are justified as it is through Him they obtain the
forgiveness of their sins, and the acceptance of their persons in the sight of God.
2. As it is through Him they acquire a right to all the privileges of
the children of God in a present and future state.
II. HOW WE OUGHT TO
GLORY IN HIM BY WHOM WE ARE THUS JUSTIFIED.
1. By entertaining suitable affections towards our Divine Redeemer.
2. Those who glory in Christ must avow their regard to Him before the
world, and particularly by a frequent and devout attendance on the ordinances
of the Gospel.
3. We must glorify Him by an active and steady zeal to promote the
interests of His kingdom.
4. The seed of Israel are to glorify Christ by their patience and
constancy under all their afflictions, especially those that are endured for
His sake. (A. Hunter, D. D.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》