Isaiah 34:16, 17 Seek you out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it has commanded… These words are called forth by - I. ANTICIPATED INCREDULITY. The prophet thinks that the solemn threatenings he has uttered will not be credited. He seems to say, "You heard these awful utterances, but you will not heed them; you will indulge the thought that they are nothing more than a fanatic's dream; you think in your hearts that they will never be fulfilled; you imagine that you can afford to disregard them; but you are mistaken, there will be the closest correspondence between what is written in 'the book of the Lord' and what shall one day be witnessed in the experiences of Edom." There is a great deal of unwarranted incredulity in the hearts of men respecting the penal purposes of God. He has spoken, has warned men, has clearly intimated what will be the consequences of crime, of vice, of ungodliness, of the rejection of the gospel of Christ, of unfaithfulness and disloyalty in the Christian life. But men's hearts are hard, their understanding is veiled so that they do not see. 1. They delude themselves with the thought that, though other men suffer the penalty of their sin or folly, they will, in some way, escape. 2. Or they deceive themselves by holding up before their minds one-half only of the truth; they dwell on the graciousness and mercy of God, and act as if he were not as righteous as he is tender, as pure as he is pitiful. 3. Or they misrepresent the character of their misdeeds to their own minds, persuading themselves that they are slight and venial, however serious they may be in the sight of God. It is a melancholy fact, calling for utmost vigilance, that the frequent repetition of sin and ultimate familiarity with it reduce its apparent guiltiness to the smallest fraction. II. THE PROPHETIC ASSURANCE. The prophet says, "Compare what is written in the 'book of the Lord' with the facts, and they shall tally with one another - not one shall fail; for the command shall go from heaven, and these wild beasts, whose presence has been threatened as a dire scourge and as the mark of saddest degeneracy, shall possess the holy land, and 'from generation to generation shall dwell therein;' the very worst that has been foretold shall happen, and what the Divine Word has predicted shall be endured in its most grievous form." They who now speak for God have to give similar assurance: they have to warn men that the worst must be expected if they remain impenitent and disobedient; they have to insist upon it, sorrowfully but emphatically, that everything threatened in the "book of the Lord" will compare with the experiences of the persistently obdurate and disloyal. It is their duty to show: 1. That, sooner or later, men may expect the righteous retribution of God to overtake them; "the sword of heaven is not in haste to smite, nor yet doth linger;" that, though God keeps silence long, he will reprove men, and set their sins in order before their eyes (Psalm 1:21). 2. That, if not here, yet hereafter, the judgments of God will reach the guilty, and then, if not now, "every one will receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." 3. That Divine retribution will take some other form if it come not in the one men have expected. There are other "wild beasts," and worse, than those which are here referred to (vers. 14, 15). There are other evils, and worse, than the poverty, the diseases, the mortality, from which sinners shrink and from which they may long escape. There are evils which haunt the heart, calamities which afflict the soul, ruin which reaches the character, death which overtakes the man himself, - judgments which God in righteousness "hath commanded," and which more than fulfill the saddest and strongest word he has instructed his spokesmen to employ. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them. |
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