Isaiah 64:11 Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste. The ordinances of religion are, to the Israel of God, "pleasant things." I. WHAT ARE THEY? 1. In the number of their pleasant things, they include the sanctuary. To them the temple is not a ]prison, a place of confinement and correct!on; but the house of their heavenly Father, their "holy and beautiful house; beautiful because holy. 2. In the number of their "pleasant things they include Sabbaths. To many, indeed, God's holy day is uninviting, and even irksome. But the Christian "calls the Sabbath a delight, and considers the holy of the Lord honourable." To him it is a time of refreshing from the presence of the Lord; a weekly jubilee: and, wearied with the toils, and follies, and vexations of the world, he hails a day of seclusion from it. 3. Are not the Scriptures some of their "pleasant things"? 4. This too will apply to the preaching of the Word. 5. They find it a pleasant thing to approach God in prayer, and to "come before His presence with singing" — a pleasant thing to surround His table, and to refresh their minds with the memorials of a Saviour's dying love — to be in the circle of pious friends, and hear from their lips "what God has done for their souls. II. HOW THEY BECOME SO POWERFULLY ATTRACTIVE. For it is certain they are not so universally: by numbers they are not only neglected, but despised. Whence, then, do real Christians find them so pleasing? 1. There is in them a suitableness to their dispositions. Thus we know music charms those who have an ear for it. Money is a pleasant thing to the covetous; honour to the ambitious; scandal to the slanderous. In all these instances there is something that meets the taste; and that which gratifies always delights. So it is here. The pleasure of the Christian does not depend upon persuasion — but inclination. 2. experience is another source of this pleasure. 3. Continual need also renders them pleasant things. III. REVIEW WHAT WE HAVE SAID — and learn — 1. To justify religion from the reproaches of the world. The world pretends that the services which religion demands of us are all slavery and gloom. But if you are willing to enter in, "let no man's heart fail him." 2. Let us try ourselves by this rule. A man may want assurance and still be in a state of safety: but if he be habitually a stranger to pleasure in Divine things, and can pass through all the services of religion as a mere formalist, it is an awful proof that "he has no part nor lot in the matter; his heart is not right in the sight of God." A number of speculative opinions, cold ceremonies, cheap moralities, in which the affections have no share, can never be a substitute for real devotion. 3. What an affliction do Christians sustain when they are deprived of their" pleasant things"! This may be done in two ways. (1) By the removal of these privileges from them. Thus persecution has sometimes forbidden them to assemble together, and has silenced their preachers, destroyed their sanctuaries, and banished all religious ordinances from a neighbourhood. God sometimes inflicts His judgments upon a place for neglect and abuse of Gospel privileges. (2) By removing Christians from these privileges. Thus business may call them away from a favoured situation, accidents or sickness may detain them prisoners from the courts of the Lord. 4. Let us be very thankful that these "pleasant things" are within our reach — that we have been so long favoured with them — that we have them in so rich an abundance — that we have liberty to partake of them — and strength to go forth and enjoy them. 5. Let us raise our thoughts and desires after the "pleasant things of heaven." Philip. Henry. often, said, when he had finished the delightful exercises of the Sabbath, Well, if this be not the way to heaven, I know not what is." These are introductory to the glory that shall be revealed: they are foretastes to endear it, and earnests to insure it. (W. Jay.) Parallel Verses KJV: Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste. |
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