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Isaiah Chapter
Sixty-six
Isaiah 66
Chapter Contents
God looks at the heart, and vengeance is threatened for
guilt. (1-4) The increase of the church, when Jew and Gentile shall be gathered
to the Redeemer. (5-14) Every enemy of the church shall be destroyed, and the
final ruin of ungodly men shall be seen. (15-24)
Commentary on Isaiah 66:1-4
(Read Isaiah 66:1-4)
The Jews gloried much in their temple. But what
satisfaction can the Eternal Mind take in a house made with men's hands? God
has a heaven and an earth of his own making, and temples of man's making; but
he overlooks them, that he may look with favour to him who is poor in spirit
and serious, self-abasing and self-denying; whose heart truly sorrows for sin:
such a heart is a living temple for God. The sacrifice of the wicked is not
only unacceptable, but a great offence to God. And he that now offers a
sacrifice after the law, does in effect set aside Christ's sacrifice. He that
burns incense, puts contempt upon the incense of Christ's intercession, and is
as if he blessed an idol. Men shall be deceived by the vain confidences with
which they deceive themselves. Unbelieving hearts, and unpurified consciences,
need no more to make them miserable, than to have their own fears brought upon
them. Whatever men put in the place of the priesthood, atonement, and
intercession of Christ, will be found hateful to God.
Commentary on Isaiah 66:5-14
(Read Isaiah 66:5-14)
The prophet turns to those that trembled at God's word,
to comfort and encourage them. The Lord will appear, to the joy of the humble
believer, and to the confusion of hypocrites and persecutors. When the Spirit
was poured out, and the gospel went forth from Zion, multitudes were converted
in a little time. The word of God, especially his promises, and ordinances, are
the consolations of the church. The true happiness of all Christians is
increased by every convert brought to Christ. The gospel brings with it,
wherever it is received in its power, such a river of peace, as will carry us
to the ocean of boundless and endless bliss. Divine comforts reach the inward
man; the joy of the Lord will be the strength of the believer. Both God's mercy
and justice shall be manifested, and for ever magnified.
Commentary on Isaiah 66:15-24
(Read Isaiah 66:15-24)
A prophetic declaration is given of the Lord's vengeance
on all enemies of his church, especially that of all antichristian opposers of
the gospel in the latter days. Verses 19,20, set forth the abundance of means
for conversion of sinners. These expressions are figurative, and express the
plentiful and gracious helps for bringing God's elect home to Christ. All shall
be welcome; and nothing shall be wanting for their assistance and
encouragement. A gospel ministry shall be set up in the church; they would have
solemn worship before the Lord. In the last verse the nature of the punishment
of sinners in the world to come is represented. Then shall the righteous and
wicked be separated. Our Saviour applies this to the everlasting misery and
torment of impenitent sinners in the future state. To the honour of that free
grace which thus distinguishes them, let the redeemed of the Lord, with
humility, and not without holy trembling, sing triumphant songs. With this
affecting representation of the opposite states of the righteous and wicked,
characters which include the whole human race, Isaiah concludes his prophecies.
May God grant, for Christ's sake, that our portion may be with those who fear
and love his name, who cleave to his truths, and persevere in every good work,
looking to receive from the Lord Jesus Christ the gracious invitation, Come, ye
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Isaiah》
Isaiah 66
Verse 1
[1] Thus
saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where
is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?
The heaven —
The highest heaven, is the place where I shew myself in my majesty. So Psalms 11:4; Psalms 103:19; Matthew 5:34. Hence we are taught to pray; our
father which art in heaven.
And the earth is my footstool — Or a place wherein I set my feet, Matthew 5:35.
The house —
Can there be an house built, that will contain me? My rest - Or where is the
place wherein I can be said to rest in a proper sense?
Verse 2
[2] For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been,
saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a
contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.
Have been —
They were not only made by God, but kept in being by him.
Look —
Yet God will look with a favourable eye to him that hath a broken and contrite
spirit, whose heart is subdued to the will of God, and who is poor, and low in
his own eyes.
Trembleth —
Who trembleth when he hears God's threatening words, and hears every revelation
of his will with reverence.
Verse 3
[3] He
that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he
cut off a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine's
blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed an idol. Yea, they have chosen
their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations.
He that, … —
Solomon, Proverbs 15:8, gives a full commentary on the whole
verse; The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.
As if —
From hence it is plain, that the prophet is not here reflecting upon idolatrous
worship, but formal worship: upon those who in a formality worshipped the true
God, and by acts which he had appointed. God by the prophet declares, that
these mens services were no more acceptable to him than murder, idolatry, or
the most horrid profanation of his name.
Own ways —
They live as they lust.
Delight —
They take pleasure in their sins.
Verse 4
[4] I
also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because
when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did
evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.
Chuse —
They have chosen to mock and delude me, I will chuse to suffer them to delude
themselves; they have chosen to work wickedness, I will chuse the effect.
Their fears —
That is, the things which they feared.
Did not hear —
God accounts that those do not hear, who do not obey his will.
Verse 5
[5] Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble at his word; Your brethren that
hated you, that cast you out for my name's sake, said, Let the LORD be
glorified: but he shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed.
You —
That truly fear God.
Your brethren — By
nation.
Cast you out —
That cast you out of their synagogues, cast you out of their city, and some of
you out of the world.
For my names sake —
For my sake; for your adherence to my law.
Glorified —
Thinking they did God good service, John 16:2.
Verse 6
[6] A
voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of the LORD that
rendereth recompence to his enemies.
A voice —
The expression of a prophetical extasy, as if he said, I hear a sad and
affrighting noise; it comes not from the city only, but from the temple,
wherein these formalists have so much gloried. There is a noise of soldiers
slaying, and of the poor people shrieking or crying out.
Of the Lord — A
voice of the Lord, not in thunder, but that rendereth recompence to his
enemies. Thus he seems to express the destruction of the Jews by the Roman
armies, as a thing at that time doing.
Verse 7
[7]
Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was
delivered of a man child.
Before —
The whole verse is expressive of a great and sudden salvation, which God would
work for his church, like the delivery of a woman, and that of a man-child,
before her travail, and without pain. Doubtless it refers to the coming of
Christ, and the sudden propagation of the gospel.
Verse 8
[8] Who
hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to
bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion
travailed, she brought forth her children.
For — As
soon as the voice of the gospel put the church of the Jews into her travail, in
Christ's and the Apostles time, it presently brought forth.
Verse 9
[9]
Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith the LORD: shall
I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb? saith thy God.
Shall I — I,
that in the ordinary course of my providence use to give a birth to women, to
whom I have given a power to conceive, shall I not give a birth to my people,
whom by my promises I have made to conceive such expectations? And shut - Nor
shall Zion once only bring forth, but she shall go on, her womb shall not be
shut, she shall every day bring forth more and more children, and my presence
shall be with my church, to the end of the world.
Verse 11
[11] That
ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may
milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory.
Consolations —
The gospel doctrine was their breasts of consolation.
Her glory —
Christ was the glory of the people of Israel, though he was also a light to the
Gentiles.
Verse 12
[12] For
thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the
glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream: then shall ye suck, ye shall be
borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees.
Like a river — It
is plain this prophecy relates to a farther conversion of the Jews than hath
been yet seen.
Ye — Ye Jews also.
Her sides —
The Gentiles were borne upon the sides of Jerusalem and dandled upon her knees,
as first hearing from the Apostles (who were members of the Jewish church) the
glad tidings of salvation.
Verse 13
[13] As
one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be
comforted in Jerusalem.
As one whom, … —
That is, in the most tender, and compassionate way.
Verse 14
[14] And
when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like
an herb: and the hand of the LORD shall be known toward his servants, and his
indignation toward his enemies.
Rejoice —
The peace of the church and the propagation of the kingdom of Christ, is always
the cause of an heart rejoicing to such as fear God, so that they flourish like
an herb in the spring.
The hand —
The power, protection, and influence of God.
Verse 15
[15] For,
behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind,
to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.
With fire —
With terrible judgments, or with fire in a proper sense, understanding it of
the fire with which enemies use to consume places brought under their power.
Whirlwind —
With a sudden sweeping judgment.
Fury —
That is, with fervour; for fury properly taken is not in God.
Rebukes —
They had contemned the rebukes of the law, now God will rebuke them with fire,
and sword.
Verse 16
[16] For
by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of
the LORD shall be many.
Plead —
God at first pleads with sinners by words, but if he cannot so prevail, he will
plead with them in a way by which he will overcome; by fire, pestilence and
blood.
All flesh —
Thus he threatens to do with all the wicked Jews.
The slain —
Those whom God should cause to be slain.
Verse 17
[17] They
that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree
in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall
be consumed together, saith the LORD.
Gardens — In
which they worshipped idols.
In the midst —
Behind one of the trees, or one by one behind the trees.
The abominations —
All those beasts forbidden the Jews for meat. God will not only destroy gross
idolaters, but all those who make no conscience of yielding obedience to the
law of God in such things as seemed to them of a minute nature, and such as
they easily might have obeyed.
Verse 18
[18] For
I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all
nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory.
Come — It
shall come to pass that I will cast them off, and then l will gather all
nations, etc.
My glory — My
oracles, my ordinances, which hitherto have been locked up in the church of the
Jews, and been their glory, shall be published to the Gentiles.
Verse 19
[19] And
I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto
the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan,
to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory;
and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles.
A sign — By
this may be understood Christ, Luke 2:34, or the ministry of the word attended
with miracles, these were set up among the Jews first, then among the Gentiles.
Afar off — To
all the quarters of the world.
They shall —
This was eminently made good after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the
believers among the Jews, as well as the apostles went about publishing the
gospel to all people, which was declaring the Lord's glory.
Verse 20
[20] And
they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto the LORD out of all
nations upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon
swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the LORD, as the children of
Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the LORD.
Your brethren —
Those who are the children of Abraham, not considered as the father of the
Jewish nation only, but considered as the father of many nations, and as the
father of the faithful, and so are your brethren, shall be brought out of all
nations for an offering to the Lord.
Holy mountain —
And they shall be brought into the church, which began at Jerusalem.
As — And they shall come
with as much joy and gladness, with as much sincerity and holiness, as the
Godly Jews do when they bring their offerings in clean vessels.
Verse 21
[21] And
I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the LORD.
For priests —
God will find among the converted Gentiles those who though they are not of the
tribe of Levi, yet shall do the true work of priests and Levites.
Verse 22
[22] For
as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before
me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain.
The new heavens —
The new state of the church to be raised up under the Messiah.
Remain — As
I intend that shall abide, so there shall be a daily succession of true
believers for the upholding of it.
Verse 23
[23] And
it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath
to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD.
And, … — In
the gospel-church there shall be as constant and settled a course of worship
(though of another nature) as ever was in the Jewish church: Christians are not
bound to keep the Jewish sabbaths or new-moons. But New Testament worship is
expressed by Old Testament phrases. The Jews were only obliged to appear three
times in a year at Jerusalem, but (saith the prophet) the gospel-church shall
worship God from one sabbath to another.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Isaiah》
66 Chapter 66
Verse 1-2
Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is My throne
The eternal blessedness of the true Israel; the doom of the
apostates
This chapter continues the antithesis that runs through chap.
65., carrying it onward to its eschatological issues. The connection of ideas
is frequently extremely difficult to trace, and no two cities are agreed as to
where the different sections begin and end. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Temple building
Hitzig thinks (and with him Knobel, Hendewerk) that the author
here begins quite abruptly to oppose the purpose of building a temple to
Jehovah; the builders are those who meditated remaining behind in Chaldea, and
wished also to have a temple, as the Jews in Egypt, at a later time, built one
in Leontopolis. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
The offerings of the impenitent offensive to God
The address, directed to the entire body ready to return, says
without distinction that Jehovah, the Creator of heaven and earth, needs no
house made by men’s hands; then in the entire body distinguishes between the
penitent and those alienated from God, rejects all worship and offering at the
hand of the latter, and threatens them with just retribution. (F. Delitzsch,
D. D.)
The inward and spiritual preferred by God to the outward and
material
[These great words] are a declaration, spoken probably in view of
the approaching restoration of the temple (which, in itself, the prophet
entirely approves, Isaiah 44:28, and expects, Isaiah 56:7; Isaiah 55:7; Isaiah 62:9),reminding the Jews of the
truth which a visible temple might readily lead them to forget, that no earthly
habitation could be really adequate to Jehovah’s majesty, and that Jehovah’s
regard was not to be won by the magnificence of a material temple, but by
humility and the devotion of the heart. How needful the warning was history
shows. Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:1-15) argues at length against
those who pointed, with a proud sense of assurance, to the massive pile of
buildings that crowned the height of Zion, heedless of the moral duties which
loyalty to the King, whose residence it was, implied. And at a yet more
critical moment in their history, attachment to the temple, as such, was one of
the causes which incapacitated the Jews from appropriating the more spiritual
teaching of Christ: the charge brought against Stephen (Acts 6:13-14)is that he ceased not “to
speak words against this holy place and the law;” and, the argument of
Stephen’s defence (Acts 7:1-60.) is just to show that in the
past God’s favour had not been limited to the period during which the temple of
Zion existed. Here, then, the prophet seizes the occasion to insist upon the
necessity of a spiritual service, passing on (verses 3-5) to denounce, in
particular, certain superstitious usages which had apparently, at the time,
infected the worship of Jehovah. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
The inwardness of religion
1. The tendency to make religion consist in external actions, apart
from the inward dispositions which should accompany them, is very common. The
reason for this is discovered from the fact that outward actions are easier
than inward. It is easier, for instance, to become outwardly poor than to
become poor in spirit; easier to adore with the body than to worship with the
soul. The tendency is observable in all dispensations. For instance, whatever
other differences there may have been between the sacrifices of Cain and Abel,
we are expressly told that it was “by faith Abel offered unto God a more
excellent sacrifice ‘ (Hebrews 11:4). The outward act was linked
with the right inward disposition. So, again, in the time of the Levitical Law,
the tendency often manifested itself to put ceremonial above moral obligations
(Psalms 1:1-6.). And Isaiah, in his first
chapter (verses 11-18), shows how an outward service, without the putting away
of evil, is an abomination to God. In the same way our Lord condemned the
Pharisees Matthew 15:8).
2. This closing prophecy of Isaiah seems to contain a warning against
formalism. It is not that the outward is unimportant, for this would be to run
from one extreme to the other, but that the outward will not avail. The return
of Israel from captivity will be followed by the building of a new temple, as
the event has shown; and the warning of the text is twofold--one, to remind the
Israelites that Jehovah had no need of a temple; the other, to impress them
with a truth they were very apt to forget, that religion must be a matter of
the heart.
I. A REVELATION OF
GOD. “Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool.”
1. These words, or the substance of them, are again and again
repeated in Holy Scripture (1 Kings 8:27; Matthew 5:34; Acts 7:49). Repetitions in the Bible show
the importance of a truth, or our difficulty in remembering it.
2. What is the truth? That God is incomprehensible. He is everywhere
and cannot be localized (Jeremiah 23:24). There is nowhere where
Cod’s power and essence and presence do not reach. He knows no limit of space
or time, of knowledge or love.
II. THE REFERENCE
TO THE EXTERNAL TEMPLE. “Where is the house that ye build unto Me?”
1. These words are not intended to deter Israel from building a
material temple when they had returned to their own land. The prophet would be
contradicting himself (Isaiah 56:5-7; Isaiah 60:7); and he would be running
counter to the solemn injunctions of other prophets, such as Haggai and
Zechariah, who were in part raised up by God to further the work of building
the temple. What the words are intended to rebuke is the falseness of the ideas
that God requires a temple, and that His presence can be restricted to its
walls. God does not need a temple, but we do. In heaven there will be no
necessity for any temple (Revelation 21:22), where the glory of God
and of the Lamb floods with its radiance the whole place.
2. Here the church, with its sacred objects and associations, appeals
to us and excites our devotion; here in the sacred place there is a distinct
promise to prayer; here God acts upon us, and we upon God, through prescribed
ordinances; here He promises to be present in some especial manner; here we act
upon one another, and kindle fervour, and therefore must not forsake “the
assembling of ourselves together” in the house of Hebrews 10:25).
III. BUT THE TEXT
ALLUDES TO THE INTERNAL TEMPLE--THE DISPOSITIONS OF THE SOUL OF THE WORSHIPPER,
WHICH ATTRACT THE FAVOUR OF GOD. “To this man will I look,. . . who is poor,. .
. contrite, and who trembleth at My word.”
1. Poor, not merely outwardly, but poor in spirit (Psalms 138:6). The man who at all
realizes the Divine majesty will have a sense of his own nothingness.
2. Of a contrite spirit. A perception” of the Divine holiness brings
self-humiliation by force of contrast (Job 42:6).
3. “Trembleth at My word. Fear is ever an element of the spirit of
worship. A sense of the Divine justice and judgments fills the soul with awe in
approaching God. The Word or revelation of God is received, not in the spirit
of criticism, but with reverence and godly fear.
IV. LESSONS.
1. The remembrance of the all-pervading presence of God should be a
deterrent from evil, and an incentive to good.
2. The obligation of regularity in attendance at Divine worship ought
to be insisted upon, both as a recognition of God and our relations with Him,
and for the sake of the subjective effects on human character.
3. But outward worship is of no avail without inward. There are
tests, in the text, of the presence of the spirit of worship--lowliness,
contrition, and awe, as products of the realization of God’s presence and
perfections. (The Thinker.)
God’s elevation and condescension
1. The subject of remark--God Himself. “Thus saith the Lord, The
heaven is My throne, the earth is My footstool.” The attention is turned simply
to God--His grandeur, His magnificence, His immensity, His omnipresence. He
abides in heaven, He puts the earth under His feet.
2. The manner in which the remark about God is conducted, is that of
a kind of contrast betwixt Him and men. “Where is the house that ye build unto
Me, and where is the place of My rest?” God is unlike man. He challenges any
comparison. “The heaven, even the heaven of heavens, cannot contain Him.
Ancient kings aimed often to Impress their subjects with an idea of their
magnificence, and surrounded themselves with a solemn and salutary awe, by
rearing palaces of the most imposing splendour and magnificence. They wished to
overawe the multitude. On this ground, God Himself, seems to have ordered the
unequalled grandeur of the ancient temple. But in doing it, He took care that
its dazzling beauty and stateliness should only be an aid, a stepping-stone, to
assist the imagination in its upward reach towards the grandeur of God. In the
prayer of the dedication, Solomon’s devotion soars infinitely above the temple.
Here, the majesty of God, and the littleness of man, stand side by
side. After mentioning the earth and the heaven, God says, “All these things
hath My hand made.”
3. But yet, lest dread should too much terrify the worshipper, or a
high and just idea of God’s infinite majesty lead the humble into the error of
supposing that such an august Being would not regard such an insignificant
creature as man, he adds, “To this man will I look, even to him that is poor
and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at My word.” A turn of thought well
worthy of our admiration. A contrite sinner has nothing to fear from God. His
very majesty need not terrify him. Indeed, His majesty constitutes the very
ground for his encouragement. It can condescend. Just as much does the King of
kings and Lord of lords glorify Himself, when He consoles, by the whisperings
of His Spirit, the poorest and most unworthy sinner that ever felt the pangs of
a bruised heart, as when He thunders in the heavens as the most High, and gives
His voice, hail-stones and coals of fire. With this idea, sinners
should-approach Him and meditate His grandeur. (I. S. Spencer, D. D.)
The magnificence of God
I. THE STYLE OF
THE TEXT. God speaks of Himself. “The heaven is My throne, the earth is My
footstool.” This style of religious address is especially common in the
Scriptures (Psalms 137:1-9.; Job 11:7-8; Job 26:6-14; Isaiah 40:1-31.). These passages all
speak of God in a style which we cannot attempt to analyze. Their aim appears
to be twofold.
1. To lead us to make the idea of God Himself the leading idea in
religion.
2. To have this idea, which we are to entertain about God, an idea of
the utmost grandeur, of the most amazing magnificence, and solemn sublimity.
II. THE DESIGN IN
VIEW CANNOT EASILY BE MISTAKEN. They would give us just ideas of God. The
impression they aim to make is simply this, that God is incomparably and
inconceivably above us--an infinite and awful mystery!
III. THE NECESSITY
OF THIS MAY EXIST OH DIFFERENT GROUNDS.
1. Our littleness. In the nature of the case, there can be no
comparison betwixt man and God. All is contrast--an infinite contrast.
2. Our sinfulness. Sin never exists aside from the mind’s losing a
just impression of the Deity; and wherever it exists, there is a tendency to
cleave to low and unworthy ideas of Him.
3. Our materiality, the connection of our minds with material and
gross bodies. This connection renders it difficult for us to soar beyond
matter. We are in danger of introducing the imperfections of our existence into
our religion, even into our ideas of God. Consequently, when God speaks to us
of Himself, He speaks in a manner designed to guard us from error. He says to
us, “The heaven is ,My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where is the
house ye build unto Me? We are limited to the world. We cannot get foothold
anywhere else. We are circumscribed within very narrow limits. But God asks,
“Where is the place of My rest?” He would elevate our conceptions of Him beyond
matter, out of the reach of its bounds.
4. The nature of God. Man is only a creature. He owes his existence
to a cause without him. That cause still rules him. That cause allows him to
know but little, and often drops the veil of an impenetrable darkness before
his eyes just at the point, the very point, where he is most desirous to look
further, and it drops the veil there, in order to do him the twofold office of
convincing him of the grandeur of God and his own littleness, and of compelling
him, under the influence of those convictions, to turn back to a light which
concerns him more than the darkness beyond the veil can, to a light where are
wrapped up the duties and interests of his immortal soul. God would repress his
curiosity, and make him use his conscience. Therefore, He makes darkness preach
to him.
IV. APPLICATION.
1. Let us be admonished to approach the study of religion with a
solemnity of mind which belongs to it. It is the study of God. The voice comes
from the burning bush, “Draw not nigh hither, put off thy shoes from off thy
feet, for the ground whereon thou standest is holy ground.’ How unlike all
other subjects is religion! How differently we should approach it!
2. This mode in which God teaches us--this grandeur and magnificence
which belong to Him--ought to remove a very common difficulty from our minds,
and prepare us to receive in faith, those deep and dark doctrines, whose
mystery is so apt to stagger us. What can we expect?
3. Since God is so vast a being, how deep should be our humility!
4. How deep should be our homage.!
5. The greatness of God should gauge the depth of our repentance. Our
sin is against Him.
6. The greatness of God should invite our faith. “ If God be for us,
who can be against us?”
7. The magnificence of God should be a motive to our service. He is
able to turn our smallest services to an infinite account.
8. The greatness of God ought to encourage the timid. Because He is
great, His regard reaches to every one of your annoyances. Your enemies cannot
hurt you.
9. The grandeur of God ought to rebuke our reliance upon creatures. (I.
S. Spencer, D. D.)
What God does not, and what He does, regard
I. WHAT THE LORD
DOES NOT REGARD. He speaks quite slightingly of this great building. But is it
not said elsewhere that “the Lord loved the courts of Zion”? Did He not
expressly tell King Solomon when his temple was completed, “Mine eyes and Mine
heart shall be on it perpetually”? He did; but in what sense are we to
understand those words? Not that He delighted in the grandeur of the house, but
in as much of spiritual worship as was rendered there. The temple itself was no
otherwise well pleasing to Him than as it was raised in obedience to His
orders, and as it served, in its fashion and its furniture, for “an example and
a shadow of heavenly things;” but the Lord “loved the gates of Zion” because
the prayers of Zion were presented there. He points out to us two things--His
throne, and His footstool! and then He leaves it to ourselves to say whether
any building man can raise to Him can be considerable in His eyes.
II. Hear from the
Lord’s own lips THE DESCRIPTION OF THE MAN WHO DRAWS HIS EYE. “To this man,”
etc.
1. The sort of character described.
2. What does the Lord mean when He saith, “To this man will I look?
He evidently means, “To this man will I look with an eye of notice and regard.”
The Lord’s favourable look, be it remembered, is quite another thing from
man’s; there is help, and comfort, and support conveyed by it Isaiah 57:15). The Lord but looked on
Gideon, and Gideon, weak before, was wonderfully strengthened ( 6:14). (A. Roberts, M. A.)
God’s greater glory
Here are described two phases of the Divine greatness, one
material, and the other moral; the superiority of the latter being clearly
implied.
I. THE MATERIAL
GREATNESS OF GOD. “Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is My throne, and the earth
is My footstool.” Here God represents Himself as a mighty potentate, leaving us
to infer the measure of His kingly glory and the extent of His dominion from
these two things--His throne and His footstool. Thus the glory of the whole is
indicated by the glory of the part.
1. The throne. We must note carefully the full extent and purport of
the figure, “The heaven is My throne. It is not that the heaven is the place of
His throne, but that the heaven is itself the throne. The conception, bold as
it is, strikingly agrees with another figure used by inspiration to set forth
the transcendent majesty of God, “Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens
cannot contain Thee.” The figure is a bold one. The human imagination, daring
as its flights often are, could never have conceived it. It is purely a Divine
conception, and the text is careful to say so, “Thus saith the Lord.”
2. His footstool. “The earth. ‘ We know very little of the heaven. We
know a great deal about the earth. Men have taken its dimensions, explored its
resources, and discovered its glories. Yet this magnificent object is but His
footstool. The footstool is the humblest article of furniture in the household;
so needless is it deemed that thousands of houses dispense with it altogether.
Others easily convert the thing nearest to hand into a footstool, as occasion
may require. Nevertheless, some have expended no little skill and expense upon
the construction even of footstools. There is preserved as a relic in Windsor
Castle such an article, once belonging to the renowned Hindoo prince, Tippoo
Sahib. It is in the form of a bear’s head, carved in ivory, with a tongue of
gold, teeth of crystal, and its eyes a pair of rubies. This article is adjudged
worth £10,000. It is after all but a footstool. If Tippoo Sahib’s footstool were
so magnificent, what must have been the splendour of his throne! Yet, were all
the thrones of the world collected together into one vast pile, they would form
but a heap of rubbish as compared with God’s footstool.
II. THE TEXT
PRESENTS US WITH ANOTHER PHASE OF HIS GLORY--THE MORAL, WHICH IS ALSO HIS
GREATER GLORY. “But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a
contrite spirit, and trembleth at My word.” What a contrast we have presented
to us here. God, the Mighty Potentate, from the height of His heavenly throne,
looking down with yearning, compassionate regard upon such objects as are here
described, the very dust of His footstool. There is a moral grandeur in this
far transcending the power of language to describe. In order to appreciate
fully the beauty and glory of this act, we must notice particularly the
characters which are its special objects. They are described as those who are
“poor” and are “of a contrite spirit,” and that “tremble at His word.” These
several expressions do not describe one and the same condition. They indicate
three distinct and progressive stages of spiritual experience.
1. Destitution. “Poor.” It is not physical poverty that is
meant, for the wealthiest, those who abound most in worldly possessions, are equally
with the most destitute in the condition here indicated by the term “poor. It
describes a spiritual condition--the spiritual poverty into which all men are
reduced through sin--the wretched, the miserable, the oppressed of sin and
guilt--the poor in the sense of being without hope, destitute of true peace and
happiness.
2. The second stage indicated is one of conviction--the misery
becoming a felt fact. “ And of a contrite spirit.” In these words we have
indicated that condition of the mind when the all-crushing fact of its poverty
and wretchedness has come home with overwhelming conviction.
3. The third stage is one of hope. “Trembleth at My word.” God, out
of the infinite depth of His compassion, hath spoken to this poor, wretched,
sin-convicted creature, and the word spoken is a word of hope. The “trembling”
at the word does not mean regarding it with fear, terror, or dismay, but
solemnly, feelingly, and trustingly. It is the trembling of gratitude and of an
awakened hope--an exquisite thrill of gratitude piercing the whole soul,
causing it to vibrate with responsive joy to the message of hope. This
wonderful condescension of God in relation to sinful men is His greater glory,
it redounds to His honour far more than His conversion of the heavens into His
throne and of the earth into His footstool. (A. J. Parry.)
Worship and ritual
The desire for Divine communion has ever been strong in man. This
desire was originated by God Himself. If not from God, whence could it come? We
have no right to suppose it to be self-originated. That finite man should
conceive an infinite Deity is an incredible supposition, for, to use the words
of Pascal, “the infinite God is infinitely inconceivable.” The manner in which
God has thus revealed Himself in response to the passionate desire which He
originated in man is a study fraught with a singular interest. He made Himself
known to our first parents in Eden’s garden, and in our first Scriptures we
have several examples recorded of revelations made by Him after the banishment
to the fathers of our race. By tradition these revelations were spread
throughout the earth, and so we find the earliest religious faiths of our world
abounding in sublime truths. But He specially revealed Himself to a chosen
people. Israel lived under the very shadow of Jehovah, for God dwelt in that
temple ann specially manifested His presence in it. But that presence did not
restrain the people from rebellion. When not open followers of the idolatries
of the surrounding nations, they left worship for ritual and forsook God for
observances, and so made that temple to be at once their glory and their shame.
It was at such time as this that the words of our text were uttered. Thus are
we taught that Divine worship is not material, but spiritual, and that
the habitation of God is not the building, but the soul.
I. THE NATURE OF
THE BEING WHOM WE WORSHIP. Our text brings before as His omnipresence. He is in
heaven, and He is on earth. We have a revelation also of the Divine
omnipotence. Not only is He in heaven, not’ only is He on earth, but He has a
throne. Of course the one includes the other. If He be the omnipresent One, He
is also the omnipotent One. That which is Infinite must be Absolute. We,
however, distinguish, so as to obtain clearer conceptions. We are in danger of
supposing that amidst all this vastness we can be but of little consequence.
But mind is greater than matter, and such ideas immediately vanish when we
remember that the vastest material substance can never outweigh a holy thought,
a feeling of devotion, a thrill of love. The man who can tell the motions of
the stars is greater than the stars. And thus looking at the question, what
shall we say of that man in whom God dwells? He who lives in a palace is
greater than the palace, no matter how gorgeous it may be; and in the presence
of a holy man the whole material creation is dwarfed into nothingness.
II. THE NATURE OF
THAT WORSHIP WHICH THIS GREAT GOD REQUIRES. It must be something more than
outward. Of all ceremonialism the Jewish was the most gorgeous. It was also of
Divine appointing. The temple was built according to Divine plan and under
Divine direction. The services were divinely commanded. The priests belonged to
a Divinely set apart; tribe. Tokens of the Divine presence were given. But
although this ceremonial was thus gorgeous, and of Divine appointment, yet God
rejected it so soon as it lost its spiritual significance. All true religion
begins in poverty of spirit. There must be a sense of natural defect and a
consciousness of our own inability either to atone for the past or to deliver
in the future. And with this poverty of spirit there must be contriteness. The
heart needs to be broken before it can be bound up. (Allan Rees.)
A transcendent existence and a transcendent doctrine
I. AN EXISTENCE
THAT STANDS IN CONTRAST WITH ALL THAT IS CREATED.
1. Here is an omnipresent Existence. One whose throne is heaven,
whose footstool is earth, and to whom all places are alike. One who fills
heaven and earth, not merely with His influence, but with His actual presence,
as much at all times in one point of space as in another. The incommensurable
One, not only everywhere, as the pantheists teach, as a substance, but
everywhere as a Personality, free, conscious, active. All created existences
are limited by the laws of space, and those that occupy the largest space are
mere specks in immensity. Concerning the stupendous fact of God’s Omnipresence,
observe--
2. Here is a creative Existence. “For all those things hath Mine hand
made,” etc. Because He made all, He owns all. Creatorship implies Eternity,
Sovereignty, Almightiness, and Proprietorship.
II. A DOCTRINE THAT
TRANSCENDS HUMAN DISCOVERY. “To this man will I look,” etc. The doctrine is
this,--that this Infinite Being, who is everywhere, who created the universe
and owns it, feels a profound interest in the individual man whose soul is in a
humble, contrite, and reverent state. Could reason ever have discovered such a
truth as this? Never. Although this doctrine transcends reason it does not
contradict it. (Homilist.)
Living temples for the living God
I. GOD’S REJECTION
OF ALL MATERIAL TEMPLES. There was a time when it could be said that there was
a house of God on earth. That was a time of symbols, when as yet the Church of
God was in her childhood. She was being taught her A B C, reading her
picture-book, for she could not as yet read the Word of God, as it were in
letters. She had need to have pictures put before her, patterns of the heavenly
things. Even then, the enlightened amongst the Jews knew well that God did not
dwell between curtains, and that it was not possible that He could be
encompassed in the most holy place within the veil It was only a symbol of His
presence. But the time of symbols is now passed altogether. In that moment when
the Saviour bowed His head, and said “It is finished! “ the veil of the temple
was rent in twain, so that the mysteries were laid open. So, one reason why God
saith He dwelleth not in temples made with hands, is, because He would have us
know that the symbolical worship is ended and the reign of the spiritual
worship inaugurated at this day (John 4:21; John 4:23). But our text gives,from God’s
own mouth, reasons why there can be no house at the present time in which God
can dwell; and, indeed, there never was any house of the kind in reality--only
in symbol For, say now, where is the place to build God a house? In heaven? It
is only His throne, not His house! On earth? What, on His footstool? Will ye
put it where He shall put His foot upon it and crush it? Fly through infinite
space, and ye shall not find in any place that God is not there. Time cannot
contain Him, though it range along its millenniums! Space cannot hold Him, for
He that made all things greater than all the things that He has made. Yea, all
the things that are do not encompass Him. But then, the Lord seems to put
it,--What kind of a house (supposing we had a site on which to erect it) would
we build God? Sons of men of what material would ye make a dwelling-place for
the Eternal and the Pure? Would ye build of alabaster? The heavens are not
clean in His sight, and He charged His angels with folly! Would ye build of
gold? Behold, the streets of His metropolitan city are paved therewith, not
indeed the dusky gold of earth, but transparent gold, like unto clear glass.
And what were gold to Deity? Find diamonds, as massive as the stones whereof Solomon
built his house on Zion, and then lay on rubies and jaspers - pile up a house,
all of which shall be most precious. What were that to Him? God is a Spirit. He
disdaineth your materialism. And yet men think, forsooth, when they have put up
their Gothic or their Grecian structures, “This is God’s house.” And then the
Lord shows that the earth and the heavens themselves, which may be compared to
a temple, are the works of His hand. How often I have felt as if I were
compassed with the solemn grandeur of a temple, in the midst of the pine
forest, or on the heathery hill, or out at night with the bright stars looking
down through the deep heavens, or listening to the thunder, peal on peal, or
gazing at the lightning as it lit up the sky! Then one feels as if he were in
the temple of God! Afar out on the blue sea, where the ship is rocking up and
clown on the waves foam--then it seems as if you were somewhere near to
God--amidst the sublimities of nature. But what then? All these objects of
nature He has made, and they are not a house for Him.
II. GOD’S CHOICE OF
SPIRITUAL TEMPLES. “To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a
contrite spirit, and trembleth at My word.”
III. THOSE THAT ARE
OF THIS CHARACTER SECURE A GREAT BLESSING. God says He will “look” to them.
That means several things.
1. Consideration.
2. Approbation.
3. Acceptance.
4. Affection.
5. Benediction. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The greatness and condescension of God
That is an excellent answer which was given by a poor man to a
sceptic who attempted to ridicule his faith. The scoffer said, “Pray, sir, is
your God a great God or a little God? The poor man replied, “Sir, my God is so
great that the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him; and yet He condescends to
be so little, that He dwells in broken and contrite hearts. Oh, the greatness
of God, and the condescension of God! (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Verses 1-24
Verse 2
To this man will I look
God’s regard for the humble
I.
THE
CHARACTER MENTIONED.
II. JEHOVAH’S
ATTENTION TO SUCH AN ONE. (H. Davis.)
Religious affections attended with humility
Those that are destitute of true humility have no true religion.
It is the object of the Gospel to produce this effect in the heart.
I. LEGAL HUMILITY.
This attends the natural workings of the conscience, and the perception of
God’s greatness, power and terrible majesty. It has in it no virtue; but yet it
may be useful as a means to produce what is gracious.
II. EVANGELICAL
HUMILITY. This arises from a “sense of the transcendent beauty of Divine things
in their moral quality, and a sense that a Christian has of his own utter
insufficiency, despicableness and odiousness, with an answerable frame of mind.
1. It is the chief part in the doctrine of the Christian duty of
self-denial.
2. Many hypocrites profess great humility and are loud in declaring
their vileness. Yet, if a minister were to use, as Edwards suggests, the same
language to them in private, and should signify that he feared they were very
low and weak Christians, they would feel themselves highly injured, and ever
after cherish a deep-rooted prejudice against that minister.
3. It is flee from the spirit of pride in one’s own righteousness,
goodness and the like. Some think themselves very humble and make a boast of
it. This is spiritual pride.
III. SOME
APPLICATIONS.
1. True humility is fundamental to the Christian life.
2. It is a bad sign to think we are better Christians than others.
3. If we think “none are so bad as I, ‘ then have a care lest
you think yourself better than others on this account.
4. Have a care also of self-conceit, lest you think too highly of
your humility.
5. Let us think meanly of our attainments in religion and in
humility.
6. Blessed are the poor in spirit. (Homiletic Review.)
The contrite heart
1. Such a spirit is the very essence of the religion of Christ.
2. There is no surer test of the genuineness of one’s religious
experience.
3. The exceeding value of this spirit in God’s sight, and the
imperative duty of cultivating it, are too much lost sight of in this age of
the world. (J. M. Sherwood, D. D.)
Poor and contrite spirits the objects of Divine favour
I. THE POOR MAN.
This does not principally refer to those that are poor in this world: for
though it be very common that “the poor of this world are chosen to be rich in
faith, and heirs of the kingdom,” yet this is not an universal rule. The “poor”
here signifies such as Christ characterizes more fully by “the poor in spirit”
(Matthew 5:3). And this character implies
the following ingredients.
II. CONTRITION OF
SPIRIT. The word “contrite” signifies one that is beaten or bruised with hard
blows, or a heavy burden. And it belongs to the mourning penitent whose heart
is broken and wounded for sin. Sin is an intolerable burden that crushes and
bruises him, and he feels himself pained and sore under it.
III. Consider the
remaining character of the happy man to whom the Lord will look: “HIM THAT
TREMBLETH AT MY WORD.” This character implies a tender sense of the great
things of the Word, and a heart easily impressed with them as the most
important realities. This was remarkably exemplified in the tender-hearted
Josiah (2 Chronicles 34:19-28). The
threatenings of the Word do not appear vain terms, nor great swelling words of
vanity, but the most tremendous realities. Such an one cannot bear up under
them, but would tremble, and fall, and die away, if not relieved by some happy
promise of deliverance. (S. Davies, M. A.)
God’s look towards the humble
1. He looks upon you with acceptance.
2. He looks to you so as to take particular notice of you. He sees
all the workings of your hearts towards Him.
3. He looks to you so as to look after you, as we do after the sick
and Psalms 84:11). (S. Davies, M. A.)
Humility essential to success in prayer
The “Times” once, in recording petitions presented to the House of
Lords, mentioned one which was rejected on account of an omission--the word
“humble” was left out. How many petitions to a higher tribunal must be rejected
for lack of humility in the hearts of those presenting them! (Free
Methodist.)
The humility of Godliness
In the evening of the morning that Gordon, when in Palestine,
received a telegram from England, asking him to undertake a mission which he
had all his life longed to undertake, he was found outside the city wall,
kneeling in prayer. When remonstrated with on account of the place being
dangerous from Arabs, he replied, “The telegrams from England this morning
filled me with such elation, I felt I might get into trouble by being proud,
and I thought I would just get upon my horse and go away by myself and humble
myself before God.” (Sunday School Chronicle.)
And trembleth at My word
Trembling at the word of the Lord
I. WHO ARE THESE
PEOPLE THAT TREMBLE AT GOD’S WORD.
1. Who they are not.
2. Who they are.
II. WHY DO THEY
TREMBLE!,
1. Because of His exceeding majesty.
2. Because of the searching power of God’s Word.
3. They tremble at the word when it is in the form of threatening.
4. They tremble with fear lest they should break God’s law.
5. They tremble lest they should miss the promises when they are
spread out before them. We hear of some who “could not enter in because of
unbelief;” and we are taken with trembling lest we should be like them.
III. WHAT DOES GOD
COMPARE THEM TO? To a temple (Isaiah 66:1-2). He prefers us to the
temple; and, further, He prefers us even to the great temple of the universe,
not made with human hands, which He Himself sets so much above the house that
Solomon built. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Trembling at God’s Word
What meaneth this trembling? It does not mean a slavish fear. They
that tremble at God’s Word at the first may do so, because the word threatens
them with death. But afterwards as they advance, and become familiar with the
God of love, and enter into the secret of His covenant, they tremble for a very
different reason. They tremble because they have a holy reverence of God, and
consequently of that Word in which resides so much of the power and majesty of
the Most High. (Ibid.)
Trembling at God’s Word
It was our privilege once to witness a very curious experiment by
a scientific lecturer on the effects of musical sounds. The lecturer showed a
disc of thin glass, delicately poised on a suitable apparatus. On this disc was
spread a thin layer of very rink dust. A musical note was sounded underneath
the disc, and the waves of sound caused the glass to vibrate, which again
caused the fine dust on its surface to tremble and form itself into every
conceivable shape of exquisite beauty, much after the manner of frost on the
window pane. Thus, we presume, it is with the “poor” of the text, the dust of
God’s footstool. The musical note of hope will cause them to vibrate and
tremble and throb into the various forms of reverence, hope, joy, and
gratitude. It implies precisely a similar attitude to that manifested on the
memorable day of Pentecost. Here we have the multitude as “the dust of the
balance,” and Peter, the Gospel experimentalist, sounding the musical note of
Gospel hope, and behold! how the dust trembles and vibrates into such forms of
spiritual beauty as faith and hope and gratitude and obedience. (A. J. Parry.)
Verse 3
He that killeth an ox
Worship and wickedness
Our prophet affirms, that the sacrifices offered by the wicked and
hypocritical among the Jews, being attended with enormous crimes and profane
rites, and not presented with pure hearts, according to the Divine appointment,
were an abomination to the Lord.
They intermixed impious ceremonies and odious superstitions with the sacrifices
which they offered to the Most High. (R. Macculloch.)
Hateful sacrifices
The first part of the verse runs literally thus: “The slaughterer
of the ox, a slayer of a man; the sacrificer of the sheep, a breaker of a dog’s
neck; the offerer of an oblation, swine’s blood; the maker of a memorial of
incense, one that blesseth vanity (i.e an idol);” four legitimate sacrificial
acts being bracketed with four detestable idolatrous rites. The first member of
each pair is probably to be taken as subject, the second as predicate, of a
sentence. But this leaves open a choice between two interpretations.
1. That the legal sacrificial action is as hateful in the sight of
God as the idolatrous rite, so long as it is performed by unspiritual
worshippers.
2. That he who does the first series of actions does also the second,
i.e combines the service of Jehovah with the most hateful idolatries. It
is extremely difficult to decide which is the true sense. The words “as if” in
E.V. are, of course, supplied by the translators, but the
rendering is aperfectly fair one. The one fact that favours the second explanation
is that the latter part of the verse speaks of those who “delight in their
abominations. Unless there be a complete break in the middle of the verse,
which is unlikely, this would seem to imply that the abominations enumerated
were actually practised by certain persons, who at the same time claimed to be
worshippers of Jehovah (cf Isaiah 66:17, Isaiah 65:3-5; Isaiah 57:3-9). (Prof. J. Skinner, D.
D.)
Unacceptable sacrifices
I regard Vitringa’s exposition as the most exact, profound and
satisfactory. He agrees with Gesenius in making the text the general doctrine
that sacrifice is hateful in the sight of God if offered in a wicked spirit,
but with a special reference to those who still adhered to the old sacrifices
after the great Sacrifice for sin was come and had been offered once for all.
Thus understood, this verse extends to sacrifices that which the foregoing
verse said of the temple, after the change of dispensation. (J. A.
Alexander.)
As if he slew a man
The reference may be either to murder merely or to human
sacrifice; most probably the latter, since every other member of the sentence
expresses a religious act. That human sacrifice was actually perpetrated by
those spoken of may be safely inferred from Isaiah 57:5.(Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
“As if he cut off (breaketh) a dog’s neck”
This sacrifice . . . seems . . . to be alluded to as a Punic rite
in Justin 18. I. 10, where we read that Darius sent a message to the
Carthaginians forbidding them to sacrifice human victims and to eat the flesh
of dogs. In the connection a religious meal must be understood. (W.
Robertson Smith.)
Formal worship
I. ITS FEATURES.
II. ITS
OFFENSIVENESS TO GOD.
III. ITS UTTER
WORTHLESSNESS. (Homiletic Commentary.)
Verse 4
I also will choose their delusions
Sin and penalty
I.
THE
OFFENCE. Impenitence, aggravated transgression, wilful contempt.
II. THE PUNISHMENT.
Delusion, fear, ruin. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Verse 5
Hear the word of the Lord
A godly minority
From the majority of the whole body, godless and heathen in
character, the prophet now turns to the minority, who tremble with reverence
when they hear God’s word.
Let them hear how Jehovah will help them against their persecutors. (F.
Delitzsch, D. D.)
Hatred of the godly
They who hate them are their own brethren and, what aggravates the
sin still more, Jehovah’s name is the ground (cf. Luke 21:12) on which they are hated by
them. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
“Let the Lord be glorified”
“Be glorified” means, Show His glory. They speak in incredulous
mockery. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
Acceptable worship
I. THE
DISTINGUISHING CHARACTER OF ACCEPTABLE WORSHIPPERS. They “tremble at His word.”
This fear arises from--
1. Their tender love and reverence for the Author of the Word.
2. A settled delight in the holiness of that Word.
3. Produced alike by the terror of the threatenings and the sweetness
of the promises.
II. THE SPIRITUAL
REGARD WHICH GOD PAYS TO THEM.
1. He looks upon them.
2. He dwells with them.
3. He vindicates their cause from the rebuke of enemies.
4. He brings them for ever to dwell with Him. (S. Thodey.)
Verse 6
A voice of noise from the city
Social degeneracy, national apostasy, and the voice of God
It is well for us to look around upon the things that are done in
the midst of us as a people; well, because we must give no connivance at evil
thinking or teaching or doing; well, because we must be careful about
ourselves; well, because we must be truthful towards our neighbours; well,
because we must be faithful toward our God.
This text suggests three different voices which thoughtful men should hear: “A
voice of noise from the city,” etc. In other words, our ear must listen to the
state of society and the state of religion amongst us, and then consider what
the Lord has to say concerning both.
1. What is the voice which comes from the city, from the secular
pursuits, the social habits, the business transactions, the political doings of
men? There is a voice of noise, as of men that laugh, as of men that strive, as
of men that boast. Luxury, with all its attendant evils, has come up as a cry
from all our land, into the ears of earnest and anxious men, who know how
foolish it is to be “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” It has
carried with it a hasting to be rich; and out of that has grown a covetousness,
a cold system of reckless speculation, a hard system of indifference, to the
ruin of many for the enrichment of a few, which have made our age and our
country a by-word amongst men. What awful accounts of utter contempt for human
sufferings! What sad chronicles of entire forgetfulness of human wrongs have
become the familiar subjects of every-day knowledge amongst us! These are
crying evils in our days; the voice of noises from the city, symptoms of our
social life, of which all true patriots ought to be blushingly ashamed. Yet,
over the moanings of the oppressed, and the sorrows of the forsaken, the roar
still rises. I ask every pious parent to keep a jealous and watchful eye upon
the children growing in their simplicity at home, and to protect them against
the strange fascination which has come over the land. I call upon all true
servants of Christ to come out and be separate, and touch not the unclean
thing. The Lord’s people should be often with their God, seeking protection
against the prevailing current of evil in men’s hearts, minds, and ways. Expect
no sympathy, because everything seems to say that faithful men must suffer for
their faithfulness in the evil day. Fall back upon the right, the true, the
good, the pure; fall back upon the oath and covenant and power and promise of
God; but make no compromise with Satan.
2. But the prophet heard a voice out of the temple, and so may we.
The luxury of the nation has had its influence upon the nation’s faith. Men who
will not shape their conduct by God’s law will soon find means of accommodating
their creed to their conduct. The pure Gospel is too plain-spoken for the
consciences of men who desire to quarrel with God rather than with themselves.
What is the voice from the temple in this our day? The great feature is a real
indifference, not an avowed unbelief, not a bold blasphemy, not a studied
contempt, not an entire ignoring of religious things, but a real indifference.
There is an evil spirit abroad which takes to itself the blessed name of
charity. It has always an excuse for evil, but it has little patience with
truth. It has no strong convictions and no real love. There is a voice to be heard
from the temple which may well make thoughtful people tremble. Men are falling
again to their old and mischievous work of tampering with God’s Word.
Multitudes, it is to be feared, have lost their reverence, if not their faith.
3. This brings me to the third voice, which the prophet heard in the
days of Israel’s decline and fall: “A voice of the Lord that rendereth
recompence to His enemies.” In the written Word we have warning about evil
time. (1 Timothy 4:1; 2 Timothy 3:1.) The voice of God is
against all such evil 2 Timothy 4:1-4). “The voice of Him
that rendereth recompense unto His enemies is, Woe unto you.” What, then,
should God’s servants do?
The voice from the city suggests that they must make their healthy
influence felt in social life by a solemn and sacred protest against things
which frivolize, secularize, materialize men’s minds and ways. The voice from
the temple suggests that all who love the pure Gospel truth must search it out
so as to boldly set it forth, stand by it, speak for it, identify themselves
with its honour, its advance, its defence. And the voice of the avenging God
suggests that all who know Him should humble themselves before Him, and plead
with Him that He would have mercy. (J. Richardson, M.A.)
Verses 7-9
Before she travailed, she brought forth
The new Israel
The predictive message of our prophet is now so far advanced that
the future promised is at the door; the Church of the future is already like a
child ripe for birth, and about to separate from the womb of Zion hitherto
barren.
The God, who has already prepared everything so far, will suddenly make Zion a
mother; a man-child, i.e a whole nation after Jehovah’s heart, will suddenly
lie in her lap; and this new-born Israel, not the corrupt mass, will build
Jehovah a Temple. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
The birth of the Gentile Church
It is perfectly sufficient to understand the parturition as a
figure for the whole eventful crisis of the change of dispensations, and the
consequent change in the condition of the Church. This indestructible ideal
person, when she might have seemed to be reduced to nothing by the defection of
the natural Israel, is vastly and suddenly augmented by the introduction of the
Gentiles, a succession of events which is here most appropriately represented
as the birth of a male child without the pains of child-birth. (J. A.
Alexander.)
The birth of the Christian Church
The children born to Christ were so numerous, and so suddenly and
easily produced, that they were rather like the dew from the morning’s womb
than like the son from the mother’s womb (Psalm Exodus 3:1-22). (M. Henry.)
Verse 8
Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day?
--
The acceleration of God’s movements
We are taught that in these latter days God is to shorten normal
processes, accelerate events, and so “make a short work in righteousness.”
I. THE TRUTH OF
GOD HAS WEIGHT, THEREFORE MOMENTUM.
II. THIS INHERENT
MOMENTUM INCREASES WITH THE PROGRESS OF GOD’S TRUTH, IN HARMONY WITH THE
NATURAL LAW OF FORCES.
III. GOD IS
BEGINNING TO GIVE IT NOW AN ADDED CELERITY. (E. W.Thwing, M. D.)
As soon as Zion travailed,
she brought forth her children
Travailing for souls
I. THERE MUST BE
TRAVAIL BEFORE THERE WILL BE SPIRITUAL BIRTH.
1. Let me, first, establish this fact from history. Before there has
fallen a great benediction upon God’s people, it has been preceded by great
searchings of heart. Israel was so oppressed in Egypt, that it would have been
very easy, and almost a natural thing for the people to become so utterly
crushed in spirit as to submit to be hereditary bondslaves, making the best
they could of their miserable lot: but God would not have it so; He meant to
bring them out “with a high hand and an outstretched arm.” Before, however, He
began to work He made them begin to cry. Let us take a long leap in history to
the days of David. The era of the son of Jesse was evidently a time of
religious revival. But David was the subject of spiritual throes and pangs of
the most intense kind. What petitions he poured forth that God would visit
Zion, and make the vine which He had planted to flourish once again. Now, David
was only the mouth of hundreds of others, who with equal fervency cried unto
God that the blessing might rest upon His people. Remember also the days of
Josiah, the king. The book of the law was found neglected in the temple, and
when it was brought before the king, he rent his clothes, for he saw that the
nation had revolted, and that wrath must come upon it to the uttermost. The
young king’s heart, which was tender, for he feared God, was ready to break
with anguish to think of the misery that would come upon his people on account
of their sins. Then there came a glorious reformation, which purged the land of
idols, and caused the passover to be observed as never before. Travail of heart
among the godly produced the delightful change. It was the same with the work
of Nehemiah. In the early dawn of Christian history, there was a preparation of
the Church before it received an increase. The like living zeal and vehement
desire have always been perceptible in the Church of God before any season of
refreshing. Think not that Luther was the only man that wrought the
Reformation. There were hundreds who sighed and cried in secret. And this,
while true on the large scale, is true also in every individual case. As a
rule, those who bring souls to Christ are those who first of all have felt an
agony of desire that souls should be saved. This is imaged to us in our
Master’s character. His ministering servants who have been most useful have
always been eagerly desirous to be so.
2. The reasons for it. Why is it that there must be this anxiety
before desirable results are gained? It might suffice us to say that God has so
appointed it. It is the order of nature. The child is not born into the world
without the sorrows of the mother, nor is the bread which sustains life
procured from the earth without toil. As it is in the natural, so is it in the
spiritual; there shall not come the blessing we seek, without first of all the
earnest yearning for it. It is so even in ordinary business. We say, “No sweat
no sweet,” “No pains no gains,” “No mill no meal.” But better still, He has
ordained this for our good. Every grace within the man is educated and
increased by his travail for souls. Besides, the zeal that God excites within
us is often the means of effecting the purpose which we desire. The Holy Ghost
usually breaks hard hearts by tender hearts. Besides, the travail qualifies for
the proper taking care of the offspring. Who is so fit to encourage a new-born
believer as the man who first anguished before the Lord for his conversion? The
Church that never travailed, should God send her a hundred converts, would be
unfit to train them. Once more, there is it eat benefit in the law which makes
travail necessary to spiritual birth, because It secures all the glory to God.
Your longing that others should be saved, and your vehemence of spirit, shall
secure to God all the glory of His own work.
3. Notice how this travail shows itself. Usually when God intends
greatly to bless a Church, it will begin in this way: Two or three persons in
it are distressed at the low state of affairs, and become troubled even to
anguish. Perhaps they do not speak to one another, or know of their common
grief, but they begin to pray with flaming desire and untiring importunity. The
passion to see the Church revived rules them. They suffer great heaviness and
continual sorrow in heart for perishing sinners; they travail in birth for
souls. By degrees the individuals are drawn together by sacred affinity, and
the prayer-meetings become very different. Meanwhile, not with the preacher
only will be the blessing, but with his hearers who love the Lord. One will be
trying a plan for getting in the young people: another will be looking after
the strangers in the aisles, who come only now and then. One brother will make
a vehement attempt to preach the Gospel at t e corner of the street; another
will open a room down a dark court; another will visit lodging-houses and
hospitals: all sorts of holy plans will be invented, and zeal will break out in
many directions. All this will be spontaneous, nothing will be forced.
II. THE RESULT IS
OFTEN VERY SURPRISING.
1. Frequently for rapidity. “As soon as Zion travailed, she brought
forth her children.” During the ten years which ended in 1870 such wondrous
changes were wrought throughout the world that no prophet would have been
believed had he foretold them. Reforms have been accomplished in England, in
the United States, in Germany, in Spain, in Italy, which, according to ordinary
reckoning, would have occupied at least one hundred years.
2. For the greatness of it. It is said, “Shall a nation be born at
once?” for as soon as ever Zion was in distress about her children, tens of
thousands came and built up Jerusalem, and re-established the fallen state. So
in answer to prayer, God does not only give speedy blessings, but great
blessings. There were fervent prayers in that upper room “before the day of
Pentecost had fully come, and what a great answer it was when, after Peter’s
sermon, some three thousand were ready to confess their faith in Christ, and to
be baptized.
III. THIS TRAVAIL
AND ITS RESULT ARE ABUNDANTLY DESIRABLE. There is no hope for China, for the
world, for our own city, while the Church is lethargic. It is through the Church
the blessing is bestowed. Besides this, when a Church is not serving God,
mischief is brewing within herself. The Church must either bring forth children
unto God, or die of consumption: she has no alternative but that. A Church must
either be fruitful or rot, and of all things a rotting Church is the most
offensive. And then, worst of all, God is not glorified.
IV. THE WOE WHICH
WILL SURELY COME TO THOSE WHO HINDER THE TRAVAIL OF THE CHURCH, and so prevent
the bringing forth of her children. An earnest spirit cannot complete its
exhortations to zeal without pronouncing a denunciation upon the indifferent.
What said the heroine of old who had gone forth against the enemies of Israel,
when she remembered coward spirits? “Curse ye, Meroz, saith the angel of the
Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the
help of the Lord, against the mighty.” Some such curse will assuredly come upon
every professing Christian who is backward in helping the Church in the day of
her soul’s travail. Who are they that hinder her Every worldly Christian
hinders the progress of the Gospel. They are also guilty who distract the mind
of the Church from the subject in hand. Above all, we shall be hindering the
travail of the Church if we do not share in it. Many Church-members think that
if they do nothing wrong, and make no trouble, then they are all right. Not at
all.
V. I shall close
with A WORD OF BLESSING. There shall come a great blessing to any who feel the
soul travail that brings souls to God. Your own heart will be watered.
Moreover, will it not be a joy to feel that you have done what you could? (C.
H. Spurgeon.)
Verse 10
Rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her
A dirge for the down-grade, and a song for faith
A mourner is always an interesting person.
The highest style of mourner is one whose griefs are neither selfish nor
grovelling. He who bears spiritual sorrow on account of others is of a nobler
order than the man who laments his personal woes. The most excellent style of
mourner is the mourner in Zion, the mourner for Zion, the mourner with Zion.
I. WHO ARE THOSE
THAT MOURN WITH JERUSALEM? Those that love the Church of God, and desire her
prosperity; and when they do not see that prosperity, are depressed in spirit.
1. nothing can make the heart of the people of God more heavy than to
think that the Gospel glory of the Church is declining.
2. Another cause of mourning is when we see the holiness of the
visible Church beclouded.
3. Moreover, we see her sacred ardour is cooling.
4. There is grave cause of mourning in Zion because the services of
God’s house are neglected.
5. Another very grave cause for mourning to all true Christians is
the multitude of sinners that remain unsaved.
II. WE MAY YET
REJOICE WITH JERUSALEM.
1. When we remember that God has not changed, either in nature or in
love to His people, or in the purpose of His grace.
2. We may expect the Lord to appear. “He shall appear to your joy,
etc. (Isaiah 66:5.)
3. When the Lord shall put on strength, then shall His Church be
aroused.
4. Then shall the Church have many converts.
5. Then shall she nourish them well.
6. At such times there is an abundant degree of peace and joy in all
believing hearts (Isaiah 66:12).
7. God will raise up men fitted to do His work (Isaiah 66:21).
III. WHY SHOULD WE
PERSONALLY BE OF THE NUMBER THAT’ MOURN WITH THE CHURCH, AND THAT REJOICE WITH
HER?
1. There is our own sin and ruin to mourn over.
2. We might wisely become mourners when we think of our own want of
zeal.
3. May we not add to this our own failures in the matter of holiness?
4. We have all a great concern in this matter, and we ought,
therefore, to join with the Church in all her griefs. If the ministry of our
pastors be not successful, we shall lose by its want of power. If the Gospel is
not preached our souls will not be fed. Suppose the Gospel is not preached with
saving power, then we shall have our children unconverted, and they will not be
our joy and crown. There cannot be a deficiency in the pulpit without its
bringing mischief to our households. We are members of one body, and if any
part of the body suffers, every other part of the body will have to suffer too.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Verse 12
For thus saith the Lord, Behold I will extend peace to her like a
river
The Church in peace and prosperity
The members of the Church can then revel in peace and wealth, like
a child on its mother’s breast; the world belongs entirely to the Church, for
the Church belongs entirely to God.
(F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
The peace of the river
The illustrations which Grace borrows from Nature are strikingly
appropriate. The history of this appropriateness is that Nature and Grace
proceed from one and the same Hand, are children of one and the same Parent.
You have in the text two objects compared and put side by side--the peace of
God’s Church and a river. The quietness of a river is perhaps the most obvious
ground of the comparison. The peace of God’s Church resembles a river--
I. IN ITS SOURCE.
The source of a river is hidden. It wells up from the fountains of the great
deep beneath the earth. And even the spot where it first rises is often inaccessible,
being situated in the heart of tangled brushwood, or beneath the perilous vault
of an ice-cave. The source of peace to God’s children is God Himself. And God
is a God who hides Himself--a God who is apprehended only by those into whose
hearts the light of the glorious Gospel has shined. And the spot, too, whence
the peace of God’s children takes its rise lies not open to the scrutiny of
man’s eye, or the passage of man’s footstep. That spot is the heart, the inmost
spirit. Accordingly, men can see that peace only in its effects. And there is
yet another sense in which the source of the Christian peace is hidden. The
events, the great historical facts, which lie at the root of it--the means by
which God ministers it--are by-gone and accomplished. The great central facts
of the death and resurrection of Jesus are now, if I may say so, buried and out
of sight, and centuries are piled upon them, like rocks and icebergs on the
soot where some mighty river takes its rise. But these events, nevertheless,
are God’s instruments, whereby He exerts a mighty influence on many a heart
even at the present day.
II. IN THE METHOD
OF ITS NOURISHMENT. It is true that rivers are fed perpetually by their
springs. But an external nourishment is also supplied to them by occasional
rains and land floods. The river of the Christian’s peace--I do not say flows
from, but is augmented by contrition. Strangeparadox this, that what seems to
destroy peace should promote it! But so it is.
III. IN ITS COURSE.
1. A river in its course is quietly progressive. Its quietness is not
the quietness of stagnation, but of advancement. The Christian’s peace is a
peace of progress in grace. It is not a peace which leaves him where it found
him, but a peace which bears him on silently towards the bosom of his God.
2. It is exceeding deep. And the peace of God is said to “pass all
understanding.” This may be understood in two ways. The nature and character of
this peace is unintelligible to those who have not tasted it, and by those who
have tasted it its depth is unfathomable.
3. It is fertilizing and enriching. The country smiles with plenty
along its banks. It is also the great medium of commerce and traffic, whereby
men are made rich and their estate and substance is increased. It is a means of
communication for those who live on its margin with the ocean and with one
another. The peace of God is at the root of all holy fruitfulness. Many people
accept the truth that “the fruit of righteousness is peace, and the effect of
righteousness quietness and assurance for ever,” while they discard the
truth--equally important and Scriptural--that peace is the root, as well as the
fruit of righteousness, and that the Lord Jesus Christ promises to give rest to
the weary and heavy laden, before they can and in order that they may, submit
themselves to His yoke. At the root of the Christian’s love is peace--at the
root of his joy is peace--at the root of his long-suffering, gentleness and
goodness is peace--at the root of his meekness and temperance is peace. Peace
it is which, like the broad bosom of a fair river, quietly undulates along and
ministers nourishment to the roots of all these graces, nor is it possible that
the leaf of any of them should be green, were the streams of this river
diverted another way. This peace is enriching as well as fertilizing, because
it opens into the ocean; it is the medium of communicating with God and with
the saints of God. It is on the broad bosom of this peace--even because it is
through Jesus Christ alone that our prayers float towards our heavenly Father.
And I need not tell you what a peculiarly rich traffic is the traffic with
heaven. Then, again, this peace of God is enriching, in that it is a medium of
communication between us and those who have obtained like precious faith with
ourselves. It is a pleasant river, on whose margin both I and my brother
dwell--and which conveys from me to him sympathies, and prayers, and outgoings
of the heart, and brings back the same from him to me. And when my prayers and
missives are sent forth on their way towards heaven, my brother’s meet and join
them--and both perform the voyage side by side--and no sooner shall both return
than he shall send me notice of the treasure he hath acquired, and demand on
his part an account of mine. Such is in a figure that doctrine which we
profess, when we say/’ I believe in the communion of saints.”
4. It is clean and cleansing. And we need not to be told that the
peace of God’s Church is a clean and holy (because a living) peace--clear as crystal
and perfectly alien from all defilement. The slightest allowed filthiness of
flesh or spirit is abhorrent to the nature of this peace. “There is no peace,
saith my God, to the wicked.” And as this peace is clean, so also it makes
clean. As soon as it enters into the conscience, it cleanses it:5. It bears
burdens. Barges and ships of many tons’ weight float on its bosom down to the
ocean. It is one of the most delightful characteristics of the Christian’s
peace that its buoyancy supports many and grievous burdens. Into God’s bosom
they are carried in the exercise of confession and faithful repentance; in His
breast they must be lodged, if we desire them to be finally obliterated and
annulled. But surely, if it were not for His peace within, we could neither
have courage to lodge them there, nor strength to support the burden of them
ourselves.
IV. AT ITS MOUTH It
expands. For the last few miles of its progress, the distance between its banks
becomes wider, till at length it pours itself with a full flood into the ocean.
So it is as a matter of fact in the Christian’s experience. The peace of the
true believer is enlarged as he draws near to the heavenly goal, and
accordingly the country of his soul is more abundantly fertilized. Who shall
say how wide its flood may not extend, when it pours itself into His bosom in
eternity, from whom it issued forth in time? (Dean Goulburn, D. C. L.)
Verse 13
As one whom his mother comforteth
Isaiah’s figure of motherhood
(verses 7-13):--The prophet reawakens the figure, that is ever
nearest his heart, of motherhood--children suckled, borne and cradled in the
lap of their mother fill all his view; nay, finer still, the grown man coming
back with wounds and weariness upon him to be comforted of his mother.
(Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)
The exiles’ horns in Jerusalem
Israel then will be like a man returned from foreign soft, escaped
from captivity, full of sad remembrances, whose echoes, however, completely
vanish in the mother-arms of Divine love in Jerusalem, the beloved home that
was the home of their thoughts even on foreign soil. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
The Motherhood of God
God is Creator, Preserver, Father, but something more.
I. A good mother
has a wonderful fund of SYMPATHY so has God.
II. Motherhood is
wonderful in its CONSTANCY so is God.
III. Motherhood is
GRIEVED OVER SIN So is God.
IV. A mother’s love
is often REDEMPTIVE God’s love is redemptive ten thousand times more. (D. J.
Rounsefell.)
Divine comfort most endearing and efficient
God will comfort His people--
1. With all the affection and solicitude of a mother. See the mother
how she loves, strives, labours, suffers, and sacrifices for her child.
2. With all the long-suffering and forbearance of a mother.
3. With all the forgiveness and consolation of a mother. How ready to
forgive her erring, wandering child--and ready to console in trouble.
4. With all the instruction and correction of a mother. God teaches
in various ways, and whom He loveth He chasteneth.
5. With all the constancy of a moter. (Helps for the Pulpit.)
Divine consolation
I. THE CONSOLATION
PROMISED. “I will comfort you.” It is the character of Divine promises that
they apply to real cases they meet the condition and circumstances of man. Are
we ignorant? “I will instruct thee.” Are we weak? “I will strengthen thee; yea,
I will help thee.” Are we in danger? “I will deliver thee.” Are we
disconsolate? “I will comfort you.” The discouragements of life are many,
trials are various: the fears to which we are subject, and the sins which
easily beset us, who can number? These all impair our comfort, and have a
natural tendency to sink us in despondency. But the Gospel provides a cordial.
1. This consolation is Divine in its origin. It springs not from
creatures, not from earthly good, or from carnal gratifications. The Most High
claims the prerogative as His own.
2. It is rational in its nature; not consolation visionary and
enthusiastic, but intelligent, consistent with reason as well as according to
faith.
3. Free in its bestowment.
4. It is select in its subjects. All are not partakers of heavenly
consolation, for all are not qualified to enjoy it. Penitence of disposition is
requisite: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. ‘ Earnest
desire also is implied; for who can be supposed to possess Divine comfort who
are indifferent about it, who are living without prayer, or whose petitions are
languid and lifeless? “Ask, and you shall receive, that your joy may be full.”
Holy- watchfulness is likewise supposed; for whoever is careless and slothful
must be deceived if he imagine himself to be comforted of the Lord. The Holy
Spirit is “the Comforter,” but “grieve” Him not; otherwise He with draws His
influence, and all is darkness or delusion.
II. THE MANNER IN
WHICH CONSOLATION IS AFFORDED. “as one whom his mother comforteth, so will I
comfort you.” A stranger may administer comfort, but it is in a distant way; a
friend may console us, and this with kindness; a father also, with tenderness
still more impressive; but none comforts like a mother.
1. The affection of a mother is warm; she loves her child, loves it
as part of herself.
2. The care of a mother is indulgent.
3. The condescension and self-denial of a mother are not small.
4. The assiduity of a mother is unwearied.
III. THE MEANS BY
WHICH CONSOLATION IS ENJOYED, “Ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” The pious
Jews were comforted when in Babylon, and during their dispersion among the
nations; but their comfort in such circumstances was attended with much
affliction: it was when returned to Jerusalem, when resettled in their own
country, and among their own people, that their enjoyment rose the highest, and
was most regular. This teaches--
1. The importance of separation from an ensnaring world.
2. The propriety of regular attendance on religious worship. It was a
high privilege to dwell in Jerusalem, because of attendance on religious
worship.
3. The duty of Church-membership. Jerusalem was not only the scat of
Divine worship, but an emblem of the Christian Church, and they who constitute
this Church are particularly authorized to plead the promise of the text, “You
shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”
4. It suggests the worth of a right spirit in attending Christian
ordinances. The form of godliness is nothing. (Anon.)
The Motherhood of God
Readers of such writers as Theodore Parker, Frances Power Cobbe,
and Chunder Sen must often have been struck with the frequency with which these
theists address invocations or prayers to God as the Father and Mother of our
spirits. Why should they not? There are surely as valid reasons for our
thinking and speaking of God as our Perfect Mother as there are for claiming
Him as the Perfect Father of us all.
1. Even if there were no hint or smile to this effect in the
Scriptures we should still find it necessary to predicate it of God in order to
perfect our conceptions of Him. What these conceptions are will best be
understood by a disclosure of their basis. To our thinking, the ultimate source
of our knowledge of God is the intuitions of the human heart. The instincts,
the qualities, the affections in human nature (though these are at a very great
remove from those in God) are the truest indications and interpretations to us
of what God is; if the revelation recorded in the Bible be the light (as it
undoubtedly is), these things in us are the eye to which that light appeals and
by which we see; in fact, if we cannot argue from our own spiritual natures up
to God’s, then, all metaphysical reasoning and the Christian Scriptures
notwithstanding, we have no reliable knowledge of God, faith is presumptuous,
worship delusive, and the ground of personal responsibility crumbles away- from
under our feet. Further, a philosophical interpretation of the person of the
Christ, as well as the Scriptural declaration that man is made in the image of
God, warrants the assertion that in a very true sense one of the worthiest
conceptions of the Divine nature is that of a fully-developed, completely
perfected, human nature. On this ground we believe we are justified in
regarding God as our Father; or, to put conversely what this implies, we do
right in assuming the fatherly elements in men to be the best index or
guarantee of what God is. But whilst the Fatherhood of God is the perfection of
our human nature, so far as man is concerned, it is not the crown of our
humanity in its totality, that is to say, so far as human nature includes
womanhood as well as manhood. God, in the very nature of the case, must gather
up in Himself all the essential qualities of the mother no less than of the
father. That this is so, is in a measure evidenced by the facts of our human
experience. Take, for example, the evidence deducible from the case of a family
where the children have been deprived of either parent, say the mother; in this
instance, not only do the boys lose the beneficial effect of the softening and
refining atmosphere of their mothers presence, but the girls also, however wise
and fond their father may be, become prudish and unnaturally grave. In like
manner, if the children are left fatherless, both sons and daughters suffer
from the loss of their father’s sobering, restraining influence, while the
daughters especially miss the strengthening force derivable from acquaintance
with his life and character. Yes, that child only is rightly trained and fully
educated who has had the good fortune to know both the gentler sway of a
mother’s and the severer rule of a father’s nature. We see, then, that in
actual life only that parentage is normally complete which is the blending of
the two complementing sides, the fatherly and the motherly. And since of
necessity the ideal in heaven cannot be less perfect than the actual on earth,
and since, moreover, God is the source whence all the phases of our humanity
have sprung, we may reverently address God in our prayers as being both the
Perfect Father and Mother in whom we confide.
2. Nor is this idea of the Divine Motherhood as unserviceable as at
first sight it may seem. It may be urged as affording one practical way of
escape from the beautiful but blinding web, so to say, which the thoughts of
many are busily weaving. It not unfrequently occurs that men, whose scientific
tastes or pursuits change rather than destroy their hold on religion, find
their thoughts of nature, life, and God taking a purely pantheistic colouring.
To highly imaginative minds, to devout poetic temperaments, this habit of
deifying everything is not a little fascinating. If God be thought of as He who
is nature itself, then the more sensuous sides of our being will be appealed to
and quickened, we grant, as will our intellectual needs in many respects be met
and fostered. But the deep hunger and thirst of our more human natures will be
unappeased, the more spiritual and practical cravings of our personal life will
be slighted and wronged. For how little will such a pantheistic faith,
beautiful as it is, and true in part though it be, serve and console the heart
when it is beset with agonizing doubt or disheartened by the strength and shame
of its sin, or well-nigh crushed by a fatalistic sense of the hard, merciless
rule of the inevitable! Nature in some of her moods is anything but pitiful.
Besides, what does a religion of this kind avail for those who have not been
endowed with a lively imagination, or with poetic insight, or with mental
vigour; what will or can it mean to those whose ideas and impressions of life
are chiefly toned and tempered by poverty or pain or thankless toil, or misery
or crime? With such an abstract God as this, we shall feel ourselves before
long like to one wearied, oppressed with all the recherche elegance of a
palace, and yearning for the real and simple comfort of a home. See now the
remedy the truth under discussion affords. Let it be granted that God is the
stun total of all the beauty and order, and music and life of the universe, but
then surely He is more than this. He is the source and crown of all the human
affections that have scattered themselves like so many sun’s rays throughout
the fatherhoods and motherhoods, and childhoods and friendships of the world.
These intensely real elements in our,, experience must have a living background
m” God from whom all things issue. He that made the ear, shall He not hear; He
that made the eye shall He not see J” and shall not He who bestowed on us so
personal and potent a divinity as our mother, “the holiest thing on earth,” be
Himself equally personal and motherly? (J. T. Stannard.)
Divine comfort
I. A DIRE
NECESSITY. Comfort.
II. A DEPLORABLE
INCAPACITY.
We are helpless as babes.
III. AN ABSOLUTE
IGNORANCE. A babe does not know its griefs. It can only realize a sense of
discomfort. Its complaints are often unmeaning, foolish, needless. In this way
many of us live and die.
IV. A CONSIDERATE
COMFORTER. What a charm there is in the mother’s voice! So in the Divine voice
of the Holy Spirit He comforts--
1. With the solicitude of a mother. How a mother loves, strives,
labours, and sacrifices for her child.
2. With the forgiveness and consolation of a mother.
3. With the instruction and correction of a mother. A good and wise
mother will instruct and correct.
4. With the constancy of a mother (Isaiah 49:14-15). God loves to the end.
V. AN IMPORTANT
MEANS. “Ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” The promise is not without
limitations. This expression means that the consolations of God come to those
who are in His Church, who are in Christ Jesus. This is the place for us to
rest in.
1. It is the place which He has appointed.
2. The place where He delights to dwell.
3. The place where His spirit is poured out.
4. The place where, by our own acts of devotion and hearing, we
derive peace and rest. (Homilist.)
The Divine Motherhood
Is not the highest use of human relationships to reveal God? Are
not the genuine king, judge, friend, father, so many mirrors in which the
Divine character is, in some degree, reflected? And if this be true of all
other human relationships, especially of those most natural and elemental, is
it not emphatically thus in the unique, peerless one of mother Indeed, since
there is need of all human relationships combined to reveal God, it is most
clear that this one cannot be omitted. And if even idolaters have ever fell
they must select the best material at their command to adumbrate the deity they
worship, we may surely lay our hands on this highest thing we call motherhood,
to illustrate something of the attributes and the ways of “our own God.” His
love transcends all motherhood. It is a relationship marked by--
I. CLOSEST
INTIMACY. The child’s life, especially at its beginning, is a part of its
mother’s life. Supported by maternal sustenance, watched by maternal wisdom,
embosomed in maternal love, the child has more from its mother, and owes, more
to her, than science can analyze or poetry,, describe. Thus intimate is Gods
relationship to us. “We are His offspring.
II. INTENSE
INDIVIDUALISM. In two aspects there is an individualizing element and habit in
motherhood that is on the very surface of the relationship, and that yet is one
of its profoundest realities.
1. The mother individualizes her child. So both the Old and New
Testament revelation, and indeed all His dealings with us, discover how
individual all men arc to God.
2. Then, the child individualizes its mother. “Our own God.”
III. UNWEARIEDNESS
OF CARE. The devotion of a mother is not that of hours, but of days--not of
days only, but of nights also. It is not exhausted when its object has passed
through infancy, but is active and anxious over its youth; yearns fondly, even
when it can accomplish little, over its manhood or womanhood; lives and
reigns in the heart till the mother herself dies; and--who can tell?--perhaps
may still watch and guide and bless from the world of spirits. All human
history gives emphasis to the question, “Can a woman forget her child?” Others
may degrade and desecrate the meaning of the word “love,” by saying profanely,
“I loved once.” The mothers of the world are the monuments of the
perpetuity--one had almost said, of the eternity--of love. Yet the highest
authority says, they may forget, yet will not God.
IV. SACRIFICIALNESS
OF LOVE. Probably all true love is sacrificial. Anyway, it is beyond
contradiction that a mothers love is. Conclusion:
1. Lessons for parents.
2. Remonstrance with sinners. The most heinous sins are sins against
love. All transgression against this God of Divine motherliness, is such sin.
It is folly to rebel against the God of all wisdom; the rebellion will
ultimately he thwarted. It is madness to rebel against the God of all power He
must reign till His enemies be made His footstool. But it is darkest sin to
rebel against “the God of all comfort.” (U. R. Thomas, B. A.)
God comforting as a mother
1. God comforts like the ideal mother. The only perfect mother is in
the mind and heart of God. And He comforts as that image might be expected to
comfort and would be capable of comforting.
2. God comforts as the mothers comforted of whom the prophet spoke.
No mother is perfect, but every true and good mother is a great consoler. God
comforts.
(1) Naturally.
(7) Effectually. (S. Martin.)
God our Mother
The Bible is a warm letter of affection from a parent to a child;
and yet there are many who see chiefly the severer passages. As there may be
fifty or sixty nights of gentle dew in one summer, that will not cause as much
remark as one hailstorm of half-an-hour; so there are those who are more struck
by those passages of the Bible that announce the indignation of God than by
those that announce His affection.
1. God has a mother simplicity of instruction. A father does not know
how to teach a child the A B C. Men are not skilful in the primary department.
But a mother has so much patience that she will tell a child for the hundredth
time the difference between F and G and between I and J. She thus teaches the
child, and has no awkwardness of condescension in so doing. So God, our Mother,
stoops down to our infantile minds. God has been teaching some of us thirty
years, and some sixty years, one word of one syllable, and we do not know it
yet--f-a-i-t-h, faith. When we come to that word, we stumble, we halt, we lose
our place, we pronounce it wrong. Still, God’s patience is not exhausted. God,
our Mother, puts us in the school of prosperity, and the letters are in
sunshine, and we cannot spell them. God puts us in the school of adversity, and
the letters are black, and we cannot spell them. If God were merely a king, He
would punish us. If He were simply a father, He would whip us. But God is a
mother, and so we are borne with and helped all the way through. A mother
teaches her child chiefly by pictures. God, our Mother, teaches us almost
everything by pictures. Is the Divine goodness to be set forth? How does God
teach us? By an autumnal picture. The barns are full. The wheat-stacks are
rounded. The orchards are dropping the ripe pippins into the lap of the farmer.
Does God, our Mother, want to set forth what a foolish thing it is to go away
from the right, and how glad Divine mercy is to take back the wanderer? How is
it to be done? By a picture.
2. God has a mother’s favouritism. A father sometimes shows a sort of
favouritism. Here is a boy--strong, well, of high forehead and quick intellect.
The father says, “I will take that boy into my firm yet; or, “I will give him
the very best possible education. There are instances where, for the culture of
the one boy,, all the others have been robbed. A sad favouritism; but that is
not the mother’s favourite. I will tell you her favourite. There is a child
who, at two years of age, had a fall. He has never got over it. The scarlet
fever muffled his hearing. He is not what he once was. The children of the
family all know that he is the favourite. So he ought to be; for if there is
any one in the world who needs sympathy more than another, it is an invalid
child. Weary on the first mile of life’s journey; carrying an aching head, a
weak side, an irritated lung. So the mother ought to make him a favourite. God
loves us all; but there is one weak, and sick, and sore, and wounded, and
suffering, and faint. That is the one who lies nearest and more perpetually on
the great,, loving heart of God. There is not such a watcher as God.
3. God has a mother’s capacity for attending to little hurts. The
father is shocked at the broken bone of the child, or at the sickness that sets
the cradle on fire with fever, but it takes the mother to sympathize with all
the little ailments and little bruises of the child. If the child has a
splinter in its hand, it wants the mother to take it out, and not the father.
So with God our Mother: all our annoyances are important enough to look at and
sympathize with.
4. God has a mother’s patience for the erring. If one does wrong,
first his associates in life cast him off; if he goes on in the wrong way, his
business partner cuts him off; if he goes on, his best friends cast him off.
But after all others have cast him off, where does he go? Who holds no grudge,
and forgives the last time as well as the first? Who sits by the murderer’s
counsel all through the long trial? Who tarries the longest at the windows of a
culprit’s cell? Who, when all others think ill of a man, keeps on thinking well
of him? It is his mother.
5. God has a mother’s, way of putting a child to sleep. You know
there is no cradle-song like a mother s. The time will come when we will be
wanting to be put to sleep. Then we want God to soothe us, to hush us to sleep.
(T. De W. Talmage, D. D.)
God’s motherly comfort
A mother comforts--
1. By her presence. It is always to her children a benediction--a
comfort.
2. By her love. Of a mother’s love the child becomes deeply conscious
as she strokes gently his fevered brow, or lifts upon him the light of her
loving eyes.
3. By her food. She knows their needs and their tastes, and she gives
nourishing and satisfying food.
4. By her words. There are three different kinds of experience common
to men in this life which seem to require the presence of our mothers, and in
each of these God has promised to be near us.
1. When troubles come.
2. When we are sick.
3. When death is nigh. (Christian Age.)
God both Father and Mother
Broadly we may state the contrast of these relations in two
well-known and exceeding precious Old Testament sayings “Like as a father
pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. For He knoweth
our frame; He remembereth that we are dust.” “As one whom his mother
comforteth, so will I comfort you.” The father pities, the mother comforts, her
children. The father in his strength stoops in gracious kindliness to succour
them in their need; the mother holds them in a warm, eager embrace to comfort
them in their pain. So we come to speak amongst ourselves of the father’s hand,
but always of the mother’s arms. The father leads by the hand; the mother
soothes and carries in her arms. Jesus did both. He was in His own person the
perfect revelation at once of the Father-God and the Mother-God. He took God’s
little ones up into His arms, laid His hands upon them, and blessed
them--blessed them with the double blessing of hand and arms. We find it easy
to speak of the Almighty Father, but we are conscious of a dissonance of
thought in saying the Almighty Mother. Almightiness is not an attribute of
motherhood. But “everlastingness is; and the “everlasting arms are the arms of
the Mother-God. There is, therefore, the rare insight of truth as well as rich
beauty and pathos in Isaiah’s imagery, “As one whom his mother comforteth.” The
glorious prophecies of evangelical blessedness which Isaiah proclaimed had
reached their close. The final results to faithful and unfaithful of the
revelation of the grace of God mingle in the last two chapters. As we read
especially Isaiah 65:17-25; Isaiah 66:10-13, we feel that this figure
of theMotherhood of God touches the climax of the writing. The prophet’s swift
imagery halts here. It has no farther flight. The evolution of a mother is the
vanishing-point in nature and art, where human comfort melts away into the
infinite comfort of the Divine. (F. Platt.)
The Mother-God in Scripture
The Mother-God in Scripture several great Oriental scholars
believe that in the earliest times the Semitic religions had a goddess, but no
god. The matriarchal state of society came before the patriarchal. Whatever
historic value this opinion may have, there can be little doubt, to a careful
reader, that much of the Old Testament imagery and poetry, which seek to cheer
the hearts of men with promises of Divine comfort, can be best realized as we
read into them the idea of the Motherhood of God. There is a New Testament
reference to those wilderness ways in which the children of God were led in
ancient days which at least suggests a lingering recognition of this idea. The
margin of Acts 13:18 reads--and the reading has
considerable support: “About the time of forty years He bore or fed them as a
nurse beareth or feedeth her child.” Much more definite, however, is Deuteronomy 32:11 : “As an eagle stirreth
up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her ,wings, taketh
them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead him.’ We scarcely
need to remind ourselves that it is the mother-eagle that fluttereth over her
young, and beareth them in safety on her broad pinions whither she will. A
similar fidelity to nature should always be borne in mind that we may interpret
the inner meaning of the well-known psalms of comfort, which tell us of a
hiding-place and a refuge beneath the shadow of God’s wings, or under the
covering of His feathers (Psalms 18:8; Psalms 57:1; Psalms 61:4; Psalms 91:1-4). It is of course the
mother-bird that gathers her brood under her wings, and hides them in warmth
and safety beneath her fluffy feathers. Nor can we ever forget that when our
Lord was leaving the great city of human sorrow He had yearned in vain to
comfort, when He strove in His anguish of weeping to leave some picture in the
mind of her people of the infinite wealth of the Divine tenderness of comfort
to which they had been blind, the passion of the great mother-soul within Him
could find no more perfect imagery than that familiar to them and their fathers
in the psalmists of Israel: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the
prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her
wings and ye would not! All nature is plaintive with an instinctive mother-cry,
from the bleating cry of the lost lamb to the lonely cry of the lost child of
the Mother-God. And instinct should count for something in interpreting the God
whose children we are. The lad dying of fever in some rude, rough shanty at the
gold diggings, or tossing in thirst in the hospital of a far-off foreign port,
cries in his delirium for his mother. It is his deepest instinct. It wasalways
his mother’s touch which brought coolness to his brow, and his mother’s voice
that had a witchery of comfort in its whisper in the old village home. And in
that other sickness of the mind, in the soul’s day of fever and fret, it is a
true spiritual instinct we obey as our lonely or wearied spirits cry aloud for
the arms of the Mother-God. (F. Platt.)
Paul’s conception of the Motherhood of God
There are glimpses here and there in the writings of St. Paul,
revealed by subtle delicacies of speech, which more than suggest that the
Motherhood of God was a flitting presence of grace and tenderness in his thought.
We recall how when he wrote to the Thessalonian Church, he turned for a time
from ministering the needed tonic of rebuke to the sweeter ministry of the
comfort of hope. Our version reads: “Them also which sleep in Jesus will God
bring with Him.” St. Paul wrote: “Them also which have been laid to sleep by
Jesus will God bring with Him.” “Laid to sleep by Jesus.” There is a picture in
the words--a homely and familiar one. The day is done. The tiny feet of
children, which all day long have pattered to and fro within the home, are
tired. As the darkness falls their prattle grows drowsy. Then they are hushed
to sleep in the mother’s arms, and laid in their cradle-bed until morning. We
see it all. We are God’s children of an older growth. While it is called day we
spend our strength in toils and journeyings. As the shadows lengthen we grow
aweary. It is time to rest. In the arms of the Mother-God, who stoops over us
in the Saviour’s condescending ways, we arc put to sleep, and laid in stillness
to rest “until the day break, and the shadows flee away.” Perhaps even more
literally than we thought, our dead “die into the arms of God.” (F. Platt.)
The Motherhood of God
There are old lessons of the love of God we may learn in a fresh
light as we interpret them through the thought of the Motherhood of God.
1. The intensity of the Divine self-sacrifice grows keener through
it. All love gives itself, but its climax of self-renunciation is motherhood.
2. The sense of the inalienableness of the Divine love is deepened
also by the thought of the Motherhood of God. Does a mother’s love ever die?
When every other love expires, it lives its secret life. Its
patience is infinite. A mother may forget. Her motherhood may prove false. But
it is not likely. It is the most unnatural thing in nature. It is as if the sun
should rise in the west, and set in the east. A lioness will fight to the death
for her whelps, and the she-bear for her cubs. It is the first and last
instinct creation knows. But let nature have denied herself, let her have given
the lie to her primal instincts, let the stars have gone backward in their
courses, and all the settled order of the universe have returned to chaos, yet
even then, saith the Lord, will I not forget thee
3. Possibly also the Divine yearning over the wayward and prodigal
may find a fresh setting in the idea of the Motherhood of God. When a father’s
love does not easily forgive, because his sense of justice and order and true
discipline in the family, of which he is the responsible governor, are
hindrances, the mother’s love deviseth prevailing persuasions, and intercedes
with tears. And in unknown depths of a common love of the prodigal the justice
and the mercy somehow meet and are reconciled. Evangelical theologians arc ever
conscious of two elements in the character of God, whose nature and whose name
is Love. The law of righteousness and the ministry of mercy are always present.
And the problem of their reconciliation is the problem so much profound and
noble thought has striven to solve in the doctrine of atonement. They arc both
true. The Lord our God is one God; but He is Father-God and Mother-God. We
wonder at times whether the prodigal son of our Lord’s parable had a mother. It
is not difficult to suggest reasons why, in an Oriental country, where the
position of woman is so different from her place in our own, the father’s love
should wisely be Christ’s type of the Divine. But there is a fragment of
further meaning hidden in the story for these who remember that the prodigal
may not have been motherless. Certain it is that, if his father climbed to the
house-top to gaze expectant in the direction of the far country, his mother
crept into her chamber alone to pray. As the father commands, “Bring forth the
best robe, and put it on him,” the mother’s eyes are homes of silent tears. And
who shall say that the rejoicing of the home-coming was not tenderer in the
mother’s heart, and that tender joy the last balm of healing to the prodigal
son? (Ibid.)
The craving for the feminine in God
The Rev. John Watson (In Maclaren)--he told me the story
himself--was once in a Roman Catholic church in Italy. Before the altar to the
Virgin knelt a woman, her lips moving devoutly- in prayer, her eyes alight with
wondering worship and love. As she was making her way to the door, after ending
her devotion, Dr. Watson asked her in Italian some question about the points of
interest in the building. The woman seemed pleased to find an English visitor
(or perhaps I should say a Scot) who could converse in her own language, and
the two fell to chatting about the scenery and show-places of the
neighbourhood. By and by the conversation turned upon the differences between
the Roman Catholic and Protestant religions, especially in regard to the fact
that Protestants do not address prayers to the Virgin. “Don t you ever pray to
the Mother of God?” she asked. “No,” said Dr. Watson, very gently, “for it
seems to me that all you find which is holy and helpful and adorable in the
character of that most revered and beautiful of women--all that, and infinitely
more, I find in her Divine Son.” “Yes, sir,” shesaid,, wistfully. “I understand
that for you, but you see you are a man, and you don t know how a woman needs a
woman to pray to.” “And although I should be the last man in the world ever to
become a Roman Catholic,” said Dr. Watson, when telling the story, “you’ll
believe me when I assure you that I hadn’t the heart to add another word.” (Coulson
Kernahan.)
“As one whom his mother comforteth”
At a summer resort a clergyman and a lady sat on the piazza of the
hotel. The lady’s heart was heavily burdened, and she talked of her sorrows to
the aged minister, who tried to lead her in her hour of need to the Great
Comforter. His efforts seemed to be in vain; the lady had heard all her life of
the promise that if a tired soul casts its burden on the Lord it will be
sustained, no matter how heavy that burden may be, but she seemed to lack the
faith to thus cast herself upon the Lord. A half-hour afterward a severe
thunderstorm came up in the western sky. With the first flash of lightning the
mother jumped out Of her chair and ran up and down the piazza, exclaiming:
“Where is Freddie? Where is Freddie? He is so terribly frightened in a
thunderstorm I don’t know what he will do without me.” In a few moments
afterward her boy came running up the walk, almost breathless, and his face
plainly showing the great fear that was in his heart. “Oh, mother,” he
exclaimed, “I was so frightened, I ran just as fast as ever I could to get to
you.” The mother sat down and took the frightened child into her arms. She
allayed his fear and quieted him, until his head rested calmly on her loving
heart. The good clergyman stepped up gently, and, putting his hand on the
mother’s shoulder, he whispered: “As one Whom his mother comforteth, so will I
comfort you.” “I understand it now,” she replied, as she looked up with tearful
face. “I will throw myself into His arms as a little child, and remember His
promise. I never felt the depth of Divine love as shown in that promise
before.” (Susan T. Perry.)
A mother’s self-sacrificing love
In the buried city of Pompeii, that was destroyed by an eruption
of Mount Vesuvius, I was shown a place where had been found the remains of a
lady and her three children. She had tried to gather two of her little ones in
her arms, and the babe was hid on her breast in the folds of her robe. And when
the scorching dust came down, every one fled; but the mother could not leave
her children, and she died with them. A mother would give her own life to save
her child. The Lord is as a mother. He did die to save you! And He now lives to
comfort you as a mother comforteth her child. (W. Birch.)
Verse 14
The hand of the Lord shall be known toward His servants
The Lord’s hand revealed
I.
SOME
OF THE WAYS THE HAND OF THE LORD MAKES ITSELF KNOWN TOWARDS HIS SERVANTS.
1. In the character they bear.
2. In the work they do.
3. In the sufferings they endure.
4. In all the triumphs of their faith and patience.
II. THE CONDITION
OF THIS VISIBLE DISPLAY OF GOD’S POWER. Simply to let it operate upon us and
through us. We can, and often do, prevent His hand from being known. There must
be humble recptiveness, believing prayer.
III. THE EFFECTS OF
THIS MANIFESTATION OF THE LORD’S HAND.
1. It encourages the Lord’s servants.
2. It rebukes the unbelief of the ungodly. Conclusion: Unconverted
sinner I the Lord desires to show forth the power of His grace in you. Will you
not allow Him to work upon you this miracle of His saving power? (W.
Guthrie, M. A.)
Verses 18-24
It shall some, that I will gather all nations and tongues.
The conversion of the world
I. FUTURE
PROSPECTS OF PROVIDENCE RESPECTING THE GLORIOUS WORK OF THE CONVERSION OF THE
WORLD TO CHRIST.
II. THE MEANS BY
WHICH IT SHALL BE ACCOMPLISHED.
III. THE EXTENT TO
WHICH IT SHALL REACH.
IV. THE HOLY AND
BLESSED EFFECTS WHICH SHALL BE PRODUCED BY IT. (J. Snodgrass, D. D.)
The Gospel to be preached to the uncivilized
No regard seems here to be paid to that favourite maxim with many,
that the Gospel can only be successfully preached to a people already in a
civilized state. It is certain that the first preaching of the Gospel to the
nations of the world was not conducted upon any such narrow principle. On the
contrary, it is mentioned by some of the early apologists for Christianity, as
one of its honourable achievements, that it has turned even the most cruel and
barbarous people into mildness and docility. If any intimation is given, in
prophecy, upon this point, it seems rather to reverse the above-mentioned
maxim. Were Pul and Lud, and Tubal and Tarshish, civilized countries in the
days of this prophet T yet God is represented as sending messengers to them, to
declare His glory among the Gentiles. Is there a more unfavourable manner of
life for receiving instruction than that of a people wandering about, without
any fixed residence? or is there any state of society more base than that of
men living in eaves and rocks of the earth? yet the glad tidings of the Gospel
will make the villages, or clustered tents, of Kedar to rejoice, and the
inhabitants of the rock to sing. (J. Snodgrass, D. D.)
Verse 19
And I will set a sign among them
Missions
I.
THE
MANNER IN WHICH THE NATIONS WERE TO BE GATHERED INTO THE CHURCH OF GOD.
II. THE INSTRUMENTS
TO RE EMPLOYED IN EFFECTING THIS GREAT WORK. (R. Macculloch.)
Tarshish . . . Javan
That is, to far Spain, and the distances of Africa, towards the
Black Sea, and to Greece, a full round of the compass. (Prof. G. A. Smith,
D. D.)
“The isles afar off”
Coastlands (Isaiah 40:15). This distinctionbetween
the nearer nations who have experienced something of the greatness of Jehovah
through contact with His people Israel, and the remoter nations who have not
heard His name, orginates with the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 38:1). But while the distinction
is common to the two prophets, the development of the idea is strikingly
different. In Ezekiel Gog’s Ignorance of Jehovah tempts him to an act of
sacrilege on the land of Israel which is avenged by the annihilation of him and
his host. The spirit of this passage is more evangelical. Jehovah sends
missionaries from the nearer nations to those who have not heard His fame nor
seen His glory; and the report carries conviction to their minds, so that they
restore the Israelites exiled amongst them, as an offering to the Lord. (Prof.
J. Skinner, D. D.)
And they shall declare My
glory among the Gentiles
Missionary responsibility
I. THE STATE OF
THE HEATHEN WHO KNOW NOT GOD.
1. Their present state. They know nothing of the God of love. The
weary and heavy-laden among them never heard Christ’s “Come unto Me. The
sorrowful among them never heard His “Blessed are they that mourn.” They know
nothing of the Paraclete, the Comforter, the Strengthener, although their need
as urgent aa ours, of comfort and of strength. They do not know what prayer is.
They do but send up deprecations to demons. They, as we, are bereaved of dear
ones; but the grand music of those words, “I am the Resurrection and the
Life,”- never hushed the discords of their wailing, nor lifted the darkness of
their silent despair.
2. Their future. All is to them wrapt in gloom impenetrable.
II. OUR
RESPONSIBILITY. Imagine the plague once more devastating our cities. Suppose
you knew of an infallible remedy. Then suppose utter indifference on your part
in imparting it. What a monster you would be! No one really loves the Lord Jesus
who is not zealous to make others love Him. If you do love Him, and are anxious
to make others love Him, what are you doing for the spread of His kingdom?
III. WHAT CAN WE DO?
We can pray for the full coming of Christ’s kingdom, for the sending more labourers
into the harvest. We can provoke others to pray. We can try to realize this
truth, that our Lord makes the evangelization of the world to depend, in we
know not what degree, upon faithful, earnest prayer. (J. R. Vernon, M. A.)
Verse 21
And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites
Taken for priests and for Levites
Those taken to be priests and Levites might be the Gentiles who
bring back the dispersed of Israel, or the restored Israelites themselves.
The latter is the more probable meaning. (A. B.Davidson, D. D.)
“From them” refers to the converted heathen, by whom the
Israelites were brought back to their home. (F. Delitzsch,. D.D.)
Incorporated in Jehovah’s priestly Church (Isaiah 61:6), the heathen are not now
excluded even from priestly and Levitical service in the temple. (F.
Delitzsch,. D.D.)
A new order of priests and Levites
Under the Gospel dispensation God will select both out of Jews and
Gentiles a chosen people, who shall stand before Him spiritually as the priests
and the Levites stood before him typically. The connection leads us to see that
not only a great promise but likewise a great privilege is herein implied. It
is that we shall be priests and Levites. Now, the priests or Levites were
persons set apart to be God’s peculiar property. Being thus set apart they
lived only for Divine service. Further, they enjoyed the privilege of drawing
near to God--nearer than the rest of people in that typical dispensation. In
like manner there is a people to be found on earth at this day whom God has
chosen to draw near unto Him. But priests and Levites had two works to do. They
were engaged to do something towards God for men, and so they offered the
sacrifices that were brought to the door of the tabernacle, whether according
to the general ordinances, or to any special vows. Spiritually minded, they
much engaged in intercession for the rest of Israel. So there is a people to be
found this day who offer unto God acceptable prayer and praise, and in answer
to their prayer, unnumbered blessings come down upon the sons of men. Another
,part of their office consisted in speaking for God to the people: “For the
priest’s lips should keep knowledge.” As for the Levites, they were as ushers
in the schools and tutors in the families of Israel. Amongst the Levites were
found those scribes who became the instructors of the people, the copyists of
the law, and the expounders of its statutes and ordinances; ministers who
opened up to the people, as Ezra did, the knotty points of the old covenant,
and expounded the Word. So, not all of us in the same degree, but all of us in
a measure, are to be teachers of God’s revealed truth, even as He has taught
us. The great point is this. It seems to be mentioned here as a matter of
surprise that God should take any of the persons here mentioned--of the sinful,
backsliding, transgressing Jews, or of the blinded, dark, benighted, heathen
Gentiles--and make them to be priests and Levites before Him. That is parallel
to the fact that God does take some of the most unlikely persons, who seem to
be the most unsuitable of all, and make these to be His faithful and honoured
servants among the sons of men.
I. THE FACT.
According to the text, men have nothing to do with the selection; for it is
said, “I will also take of them”--not, “their parents shall bring them up to
it;” not, “those who shall be looked out as the most fit and proper men on
account of some natural bent and bias, or gift and talent,” but, “I will take.”
God’s priesthood in the world is a priesthood of’ His own choosing, of His own
setting apart, of His own anointing. “He hath made us kings and priests unto
God. ‘ In their case, it appears that whatever was unfit in their character has
been overcome by Divine grace. If God takes them for Levites, He makes them
Levites; if He chooses them for priests, He makes them priests.
II. THE REASON OF
THE FACT. Does not He do this to display His infinite mercy? And His power? And
His sovereignty? Does He not thereby secure to Himself the most loving service?
Another reason why the Lord takes the vilest of men to make them the saintliest
is, that He might openly triumph over Satan. And do not you think this is done
very much for the encouragement of the Church of God?
III. WHAT IS THE
LESSON FROM THIS? Remember what state you were in before God’s grace took you
in hand. Then consider what you are called to be; you are made priests and
Levites. Then ask yourself what you would soon become if His grace were to
depart from you. And what humility this vocation of God should produce! However
high we may be raised, we must remember whence the honour cometh. And since He
hath taken us for priests and for Levites, let us do every office heartily as
unto the Lord. Let us serve Him with great thankfulness and joy. (C. H.
Spurgeon.)
Verse 22
For as the new heavens and the new earth
The perpetuity of the true Israel
The bulk of the heathen world and also of Israel perish, but
Israel’s name and seed, i.. Israel as a nation with the same ancestors
and an independent name, remains for ever (cf. Jeremiah 31:35 f.; 33:20-26), as the new
heaven and the new earth. And just because Israel’s calling in regard to the
heathen world is now fulfilled and all things are made new, the old fencing off
of Israel from the heathen now comes to an end; and what qualifies for priestly
and Levitical service in God’s temple is no longer mere natural descent, but
inner nobility The prophet thus represents to himself the Church of the future on
a new earth and under a new heaven; but he is unable to represent the eternal
in the form of eternity; he represents it to himself merely as an unending
continuation of temporal history (Isaiah 66:23). (F. Delitzch, D. D.)
A figure of the spiritual
The thought of Isaiah 56:7 is here (verse 23) expressed
by a figure, which, understood literally, involves a physical impossibility;
but the prophet cannot altogether emancipate himself from the forms of the
Jewish economy, and clothes a spiritual truth in a garb which in strictness is
too narrow for it (cf. Zechariah 14:16-19). (Prof. S. R.
Driver, D. D.)
The stability of the Christian Church
(with Isaiah 60:20-21):--The Christian Church
is not the conqueror of the Jewish polity, but the heir and successor. The new
covenant has been developed out of the old. There was no break when Christ
came, but a fulfilment and a completion. And so the promises were handed down
in the Christian line, among which these from the latter part of Isaiah,
relating to the “stability’ of the ancient Church, are not the least
remarkable. They declare that God is an “everlasting” light to His
people, that their permanence is like the permanence of the creation of God. (T.
D. Woolsey.)
The Christian Church not a human institution
The permanence of the Christian Church in the world, if it be a
fact, is unlike all facts of history. Everything human decays and passes away.
All institutions, forms of government, civilizations, have their day and
decline. No one doubts that the old religions of India and its castes are
doomed to perish. We cannot, therefore, be assured from history that
Christianity may not perish also. Still when you look at its origin, its power
of growth, its vitality, when everything around was dead; its changes of form
joined to unchangeableness of principle; its power to correct evils within its
pale; its predominance among the influences that act on mankind; its universal
character, and its consciousness--so to speak--that the world is its own, you
cannot feel it to be otherwise than quite probable that it is to be man’s guide
to the end of time. (T. D. Woolsey.)
The history of the Church augurs its permanence
Though history is not prophecy, though it cannot with authority predict
the universal and final sway of Christ’s Gospel and of Christian institutions,
it reveals, at the least, a working power, a tenacity of life, a hopefulness, a
benevolent energy which are not inconsistent with stability and with
continuance until the end of time. (T. D. Woolsey.)
The stability of the Christian Church
I. WE SHALL LOOK
AT SEVERAL CAUSES TO WHICH IT IS NOT DUE: but to which, on a superficial view,
it might be ascribed.
1. It is not owing to strength borrowed from governments, the Church grew
without help from the government; it grew also in spite of long efforts of the
government to destroy it.
2. For is the stability of the Church due to the stability of its
forms of discipline and order. These have passed through a great variety of changes,
from the times of the nascent Church, when there was little of established
order, down through the ages of hierarchy, to our times, when the Church
thrives in a great variety of forms, and with varied theories of government.
3. Nor yet is the stability of the Church owing to the stability of
theological systems. It grew, it almost reigned, before any received dogmatic
statements of its sacred truth were current. It has outlived theories and
expositions innumerable, and indeed nothing connected with Christianity has
been more changing than the scientific arrangements of its truths.
4. Nor can the stability of the Church be explained by saying that it
got the control of opinion and kept thought in leading strings, so that when
science was emancipated, new conditions full of danger to the Church began. It
arose in spite of a reigning heathen opinion and philosophy, which it overthrew
and put another in the place. It has in its healthiest state favoured all
knowledge in the confidence of being itself together with every other true
thing from God.
5. Nor can the stability of the Church be attributed to the
condescending patronage of large-minded men, who saw in its justice and
humanity a help for the world to be found nowhere else, but yet did not believe
in it themselves.
II. TO WHAT, THEN,
IS THE STABILITY OF THE CHURCH DUE? To this question it is no sufficient answer
that the Holy Spirit is ever in and with the Church. For the Spirit’s office is
to act on men according to the laws of character by Divine realities. It
is due--
1. To this: that the Gospel, on which the Church is built, works out
some of the great problems which lie on the heart of man, in a way to give
lasting peace and satisfaction to the soul. I refer to practical rather than to
intellectual problems, although even the restless questionings of the mind
either meet with an answer from the Divine oracles, or are carried up into a
higher realm of truth. The power inherent in Christianity itself, as a way of
reconciling God and man, and of raising man above sin by great truths and great
hopes, is a real and permanent power. It is suited to all natures and
capacities, to all races and times.
2. To those permanent features of the Gospel, which bind men together
in a brotherhood pervaded by the spirit of love and fellowship.
3. To its self-reforming capacity. The human and the Divine have ever
mingled and will ever mingle in the historical progress of Christianity, as
they mingle in the development of a Christian life. There are unavoidable sources
of corruption in the revolutions of society, in the growth of wealth, in the
love of self-gratification, in the increase of worldly comforts. There are
other sources in the ignorance of untrained Christians, in the ambition of the
clergy and their love of dominion, in the rewards offered within the Church to
the aspiring, in formalism, in a dead orthodoxy. At the lowest ebb of Christian
life and knowledge there remain within the reach of the Church the sources of a
better spiritual state, so that it can reform itself as it has done more than
once.
4. The stability of the Church is ensured by the stability of Christ.
“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day and for ever.” Doubt is of to day,
but He is of all time. He is a permanent possession for the soul. He does not
wear out in a lifetime. He is the permanent possession of the Church in all its
ages and changes He does not wear out while there are men to long for
redemption. (T. D. Woolsey.)
Verse 24
And they shall go forth
Transgressors punished
Those that transgressed or “rebelled” against the Lord are the
obstinate idolaters referred to in chaps, 65.
, 66. Their carcasses lie’s spectacle to all who come up to worship at
Jerusalem, subject to never-ending corruption and never-ending burning.
According to the prophet’s conception, the scene takes place on the earth, in
me vicinity of Jerusalem, probably in the Valley of Hinnom, but the language
may have suggested a punishment by everlasting fire in the world to come. (A.
B.Davidson, D. D.)
Gehenna
This verse is the basis of the later Jewish conception of Gehenna
as the place of everlasting punishment (see Salmond’s “Christian Doctrine of
Immortality”). Gehenna is the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom (Valley of Hinnom), the
place where, of old, human sacrifices were offered to Moloch, and for this
reason desecrated by King Josiah (2 Kings 23:10). Afterwards it became
a receptacle for filth and refuse, and Rabbinical tradition asserts that it was
the custom to cast out unclean corpses there, to be burned or to undergo
decomposition. This is, in all probability, the scene which had imprinted
itself on the imagination of the writer, and which was afterwards projected
into the unseen world as an image of endless retribution. The Talmudic theology
locates the mouth of hell in the Valley of Hinnom. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
The eternal imaged by the temporal
The prophet blends temporal and eternal This world and the next
coalesce to his view. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
Hell
Hell is of both worlds, so that in the same essential sense,
although in different degree, it may be said both of him who is still living
but accursed, and of him who perished centuries ago, that his worm dieth not
and his fire is not quenched. (J. A. Alexander.)
Doom following unfaithfulness and transgression
1. It is a terrible ending, but it is the same as upon the same floor
Christ set to His teaching--the Gospel net cast wide, but only to draw in both
good and bad upon a beach of judgment; the wedding feast thrown open and men
compelled to come in, but among them a heart whom grace so great could not awe
even to decency; Christ’s Gospel preached, His example evident, and Himself
owned as Lord, and nevertheless some whom neither the hearing nor the seeing
nor the owning with their lips did lift to unselfishness or stir to pity-.
Therefore He who had cried, “Come all unto Me,” was compelled to close by saying
to many, “Depart.”
2. It is a terrible ending: but one only too conceivable. For though
God is love, man is free--free to turn from that love; free to be as though he
had never felt it; free to put away from himself the highest, clearest, most
urgent grace that God can show. But to do this is the judgment.
3. “Lord, are there few that be saved?” The Lord did not answer the
question but by bidding the questioner take heed to himself “Strive to enter in
at the strait gate,” (Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)
Eternal punishment
I. THE WICKEDNESS
OF THE WICKED. II. ITS PUNISHMENT. Certain. Terrible. Without alleviation or
hope.
III. THE
PERPETUATION OF ITS MORAL LESSONS. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
The goodness and severity of God
The public reading of the synagogue repeats once more after Isaiah 66:24, on account of its terrible
import, the encouraging words of Isaiah 66:23 “in order to conclude with
words of comfort.”(F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》