Isaiah 8:19-22 And when they shall say to you, Seek to them that have familiar spirits, and to wizards that peep, and that mutter… The prevalence of the evil and sinister arts of necromancy is exceedingly significant. The attempt to supply knowledge for the living by appealing to the dead (ver. 19) has been made in every latitude and longitude, in every age, in every condition of society. What is the significance of this fact? We have here - I. THE CONFESSION OF UNGODLINESS AND ITS DEGRADATION. When men have thrown off their allegiance to God, when they have denied the existence of their Creator, when they have explicitly refused to seek and to serve him "in whom they live and move and have their being," they may imagine themselves to be free from all spiritual bonds; but they are miserably mistaken. They forsake a homage which is honorable and a service which is ennobling, to fall into a superstition which is contemptible and degrading. So closely, so inseparably is man associated with the spiritual world, that, try how he may, he cannot escape from it. He that will not serve God must honor demons or consult spirits, or engage in some "cultus" which is discreditable to his intelligence and injurious to his moral nature. It is notorious that Rome never sank so low as when, losing its faith in the gods, it sank into debasing superstitions of this kind. And in this respect a corrupted civilization and an unredeemed barbarism "meet together." The penalty of ungodliness is terrible. Corruptio optimi pessima. II. THE DEMAND OF INTELLIGENT PIETY. "Should not a people seek unto their God?... To the Law and to the testimony" (Vers. 19, 20). A right-minded, rational people, possessed of that fear of God which is the beginning and also the end of wisdom, wilt ask - What does God say? For they will consider that: 1. He who made them knows, as they cannot know, what are the capacities of their nature, and what is the purpose of their life. 2. He who has all power in his hand, and who makes large requirements of his creatures, both can anal will bless those whom he approves, and ban those whom he condemns. 3. Therefore it is infinitely desirable to secure his approbation and his help. Such a people will, consequently, ask - What does his Word state? What can we gather from his "Law" as to his will concerning us? An intelligent piety will resort to "the Law and to the testimony," not that it may find minute correspondences and detailed injunctions, but that it may light on living principles which it may itself apply to all new forms and changing conditions. III. THE HOPELESSNESS OF SIN. If we read the prophet thus, "There is no light in them," we reach the truth that sin brings men down to a condition in which the light that has shone from reason, conscience, revelation, has gone out; in that ease the sources of enlightenment are stopped, and our Lord's graphic and painful picture is realized (Matthew 6:22, 23). But if we take the words of the text thus, "They are a people for whom no morning dawns," then we arrive at another, though a kindred truth, that sin leads down to utter spiritual hopelessness, to evil without prospect of amendment, to death without hope of life, to darkness without gleam of morning light. Men do, by the path of refusal and delay, reach a moral condition in which: 1. Privilege does not benefit them; additional services only add to their accountability without touching their soul. 2. Chastisement does not awaken, but only aggravate them (see Isaiah 1:5). 3. Direct Divine influence fails to lead them into the path of life. The night of spiritual death only deepens and darkens; there dawns no morning of the eternal life which is in Christ Jesus. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? |
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