Isaiah 25:7 And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations.… Anything interposed between the eye and the object of vision may be called a veil; designed for the purpose of convenience or of modesty, the veil has often been the cause of unsightliness and inconvenience - it has been abused almost as much as it has been used. In Scripture the word has a moral significance, indicating something which intercepts the truth, and blinds the soul to the will of God and to its own duty and interest. I. THE EXISTENCE OF SPIRITUAL VEILS. They are those of: 1. Credulity. Often the mind freely accepts all kinds of irrational, superstitious errors, which coat and cover the truth of God, rendering it invisible beneath a mass of error. 2. Prejudice. Men who act as did the Jews in our Lord's time, determining beforehand and judging irrespective of the evidence before their eyes, making up their minds in advance of any facts or reasons which have to be alleged, are sure to miss their way. They cannot see through the veil of prejudice. 3. Intellectual pride: unwillingness to believe anything which our finite faculties cannot comprehend; practical forgetfulness that the heavenly Father must have many more truths that we can only very dimly discern to reveal to his children, than earthly fathers have to make intelligible to their sons. 4. Worldliness: allowing the interests, occupations, gratifications, of this world to assume a magnitude and importance to which they have no claim; and allowing the conventional maxims of society to pass current as heavenly truth, when they are only too often misleading and even deadly errors. 5. Passion. The false glare of passion hides from many souls the truth which otherwise they would see and by which they' would live. II. THEIR REMOVAL God "will destroy... the veil that is spread over all the nations." 1. It is a blessed fact, in the far future, which God will establish. By means he is now employing, and perhaps by ways and methods of which we may have no conception now, he will bring it to pass; the day will come when the nations shall walk in the light of the Lord; both Jew (2 Corinthians 3:16) and Gentile (Isaiah 60:3). 2. We may contribute our share toward this happy issue: there are mental errors and spiritual delusions which we can help to expose, both by enlightening words and convincing action. 3. We are bound to make every effort to put away whatever veil may be over our own eyes. Unconscious spiritual blindness is sin (see John 9:41). It may be in part a man's misfortune, but it is partly his fault. There may be that which palliates it, but nothing will excuse it. We must betake ourselves to God (Psalm 139:23, 24). - C. Parallel Verses KJV: And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. |
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