Isaiah 54:12 And I will make your windows of agates, and your gates of carbuncles, and all your borders of pleasant stones. In my text it is not a solitary specimen that I hand you, as the keeper of a museum might take down from the shelf a precious stone and allow you to examine it. Nor is it the panel of a door that you might stand and study for its unique carvings or bronzed traceries, but there is a whole gate of it lifted before our admiring and astounded vision, ay! two gates of it: ay! many gates of it: "I will make thy gates of carbuncles." What gates Gates of the-Church. Gates of anything worth possessing. Gates of successful enterprise. Gates of salvation. Gates of national achievement. Isaiah, who wrote this text, wrote also all that about Christ "as the lamb to the slaughter," and spoke of Christ as saying, "I have trodden the winepress alone," and wrote, "Who is this that cometh from Eden, with dyed garments from Bozrah. And do you think that Isaiah in my text merely happened to represent the gates, as red gates, as carmine gates, as gates of carbuncle? No. He means that it is through atonement, through blood-red struggle, through agonies we get into anything worth getting into. Heaven's gates may well be made of pearl, a bright, pellucid, cheerful crystallization, because all the struggles are over and there is beyond those gates nothing but raptures and cantata and triumphal procession and everlasting holiday and kiss of reunion, and so the twelve gates are twelve pearls, and could De nothing else than pearls. But Christ hung the gates of pardon in His own blood, and the marks of eight fingers and two thumbs are on each gate, and as He lifted the gate it leaned against His forehead and took from it a crimson impress, and all those gates are deeply dyed, and Isaiah was right when he spoke of those gates as gates of carbuncle. (T. D. W. Talmage, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. |
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