Isaiah 51:1-8 Listen to me, you that follow after righteousness, you that seek the LORD: look to the rock from where you are hewn… It is doubtless serviceable for each of us, however devoted and pure, to be now and then presented with a photograph of our former selves. We can thus see what we should have remained if grace had not refined us. We can measure our growth and development. We can certainly better understand the obligations arising from improved conditions. I. THE RETROSPECT THAT WAS RECOMMENDED to this godly remnant of Israel. In all ages have existed those to whom God could thus appeal. Their characteristics are ever the same — viz, the endeavour to live righteously and the instinctive craving for a fuller knowledge of God. Such were here bidden to recall the period when their great father, Abraham, had been separated from heathen surroundings, led, and instructed by the Divine Spirit till worthy of the appellation, Friend of God. The nation had been a stone cut out of the mountain without hands and fashioned into something like beauty and grace. In regard to individual stones, it would appear that the work of the Divine statuary is threefold — 1. Detachment from the common mass of material. A stone has no ability to leap from its place. The quarryman must by pick and gunpowder and hammer set the granite free. There is grace at the outset, either in national or individual life. People need graciously saving. You have to be rescued, separated from the power of death, lifted from the sphere of human passion. To do this, various agencies are employed — some almost dynamic, others more gentle. 2. Moulding by religious education and attrition of association. Quarried stones need moulding, whether granite, limestone or freestone. Hammer and chisel must be applied. So, when detached must expect to submit to peculiar processes. Some stones necessitate great labour; others can easily be wrought to any form. Heaps of stones about and in every one an angel! — only the angel requires to be modelled out, chiselled out, filed out. We can't see the angel; God can. None can be a holy person without pain. Salvation is not the deed of a moment, but is a gradual work, stage by stage, here a little and there a little. 3. Vivification of spiritual faculties by the Holy Ghost. Many of you have been extracted from the quarry and rough-hewn by Christian civilization; but you require the grandest thing of all, the breath of spiritual life. Like the child-delighting marionettes that are so skilfully moved by invisible machinery, but which have no appreciation of the part they play, you may be actuated by the forces of custom, or ambition, or fear, but remain dead to all sensations of a purely spiritual nature. II. THE PURPOSES OF THE SUGGESTED RETROSPECTION. Judging from the context, the intention was — 1. To promote humility. 2. To stimulate hopefulness.We instinctively argue, "If so much, why not more?" God has always some better thing in store for us. Have we not a sure word of prophecy which declares that Christ is able to present each one of us faultless before the throne? (W. J. Acomb.) Parallel Verses KJV: Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. |
    |