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These words are grand poetry and noble theology, but they are meant practically and in fiery earnestness. The "for" at the beginning of each clause points us back to the previous statement, and both of the verses of our text are in different ways its foundation. So we have here two things to consider in reference to the relation between the Divine purposes and acts and man's purposes and acts.

I. THE ANTAGONISM, AND THE INDICTMENT AND EXHORTATION THAT ARE BASED UPON THAT.

1. Notice the remarkable order and alternation of pronouns in the first verse. "My thoughts are not your thoughts," saith the Lord. The things that God thinks and purposes are not the things that man thinks and purposes, and therefore, because the thoughts are different, the outcomes of them in deeds are divergent. God's "ways" are His acts, the manner and course of His working considered as a path on which He moves, and on which, in some sense, we can also journey. Our "ways" — our manner of life — are not parallel with His, as they should be. But that opposition is expressed with a remarkable variation. Observe the change of pronouns in the two clauses. First, "My thoughts are not your thoughts" — you have not taken My truth into your minds, nor My purposes into your wills; you do not think God's thoughts. Therefore — "your ways (instead of "my", as we should have expected, to keep the regularity of the parallelism) are not My ways — I repudiate and abjure your conduct and condemn it utterly. Now, of course, in this charge of man's unlikeness to God there is no contradiction of, nor reference to, man's natural constitution, in which there are, at one and the same time, the likeness of the child with the parent and the unlikeness between the creature and the Creator. If our thoughts were not like God's thoughts we should know nothing about Him. If our thoughts were not like God's thoughts we should have no standard for life or thinking. Righteousness and beauty and truth and goodness are the same things in heaven and earth, and alike in God and man. We are made after His image, poor creatures though we be. But that very necessary and natural likeness between God and man makes more solemnly sinful the voluntary unlikeness which we have brought upon ourselves. Mark how wonderfully, in the simple language of my text, deep truths about this sin of ours is conveyed. Notice its growth and order. You begin with a heart and mind that does not take in God's thoughts, truths, purposes, desires, and the alienated will and the darkened understanding and the conscience which has closed itself against His imperative voice all issue afterwards in conduct which He cannot accept as in any way corresponding with His. First, the thought unreceptive of God's thought, and then the ways contrary to God's ways.

2. Notice the profound truth here in regard to the essential and deepest evil of all our evil. "Your thoughts;" "your ways." Self-dependence and self-confidence are the master-devils of humanity. And the root of all sin lies in these two strong, simple words, "Your thoughts not Mine; your ways not Mine."

3. Notice, too, how there are suggested the misery and retribution of this unlikeness. "If you will not make My thoughts your thoughts, I shall not take your ways as My ways; I will leave you to them. You will be filled with the fruit of your own devices. The question rises in many a heart, "How am I to forsake these paths on which my feet have so long walked? And if I do, what about all the years behind me, full of wild wonderings and thoughts, in all of which God was not?" The second verse of our text meets that despairing question.

II. THE ANALOGY BUT SUPERIORITY, AND THE EXHORTATION AND HOPE THAT ARE BUILT UPON THAT. This clause begins with God's ways, from which alone men can reach the knowledge of His thoughts. The first follows the order of God's knowledge of man; the second, that of man's knowledge of God.

1. God's way of dealing with sin is lifted up above all human example. There is such a thing as pardoning mercy amongst men. It is a faint analogy of, as it is an offshoot from the Divine pardon, but all the forgivingness of the most placable and long-suffering and gladly pardoning of men is but as earth to heaven compared with the greatness of His.

2. Again, God's way of dealing with sin surpasses all our thought. All religion has been pressed with this problem, how to harmonize the perfect rectitude of the Divine nature and the solemn claims of law with forgiveness. We have Jesus Christ. The mystery of forgiveness is solved, in so far as it is capable of solution, in Him and in Him alone.

3. We are taught here that God's way of dealing with sin is the very highest point of His self-revelation. If we want to see up into the highest heavens of God's character, we must go down into the depths of the consciousness of our own sin, and learn first how unlike our ways and thoughts are to God, ere we can understand how high above us, and yet beneficently arching over us, are His ways and thoughts to us.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

WEB: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," says Yahweh.