Isaiah 18:4-5 For so the LORD said to me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat on herbs… I. THE DWELLING PLACE OF GOD AND HIS REPOSE. Let me ask where the queen rests in her love: You must pass and press beyond the regalia, beyond the throne-room, beyond the council, beyond the levee, there in the family, amidst her children, in a charmed family circle, — there she rests in love. And has not God such a circle, such a dwelling place, and home? "The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him." God has revealed to us this great thing, that He, too, lives in the sympathies and affections of His intelligent creatures. God's Church is His dwelling place. God descends to dwell in us, as we ascend to dwell in Him. I have been struck with a thought like this, when I have been on some quiet village hill, or in the deeps of some country forest, when, beneath me, or away from me, all the villagers were in the booths of some fair. I saw it, perhaps, at my feet, or heard the sounds dying away on my ear. So it is, as we rise to rest in God. At our feet the uproar the vice — the vanity — of the Babel booths — the dissoluteness and the song, — but with us deep peace, and quiet, and the rest of heart and soul, and the prospect of the glory and the vistas beyond; it is even so, as the world lies beneath us, and above us spreads the calm — when the soul possesses God, and God sinks into the soul — what does the soul look out upon: what does the soul look down upon? what does the soul look in upon: the soul one with God. II. "I WILL CONSIDER." "So the Lord said unto me, I will take My rest." Exceedingly sublime are all those magnificent passages in which the calm of the Divine mind is contrasted with the passion and the agitation of human affairs. This is the connection of the preceding verses (chap. 17:12, 13). It is amidst that turbulence of the oceans of the population that God says, "I will take My rest, and consider." III. THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF DIVINE CONSIDERATION, the loving and beautiful result. (E. Paxton Hood.) Parallel Verses KJV: For so the LORD said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. |
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