He burns half of it in the fire, and he roasts meat on that half. He eats the roast and is satisfied. Indeed, he warms himself and says, "Ah! I am warm; I see the fire." Sermons
This passage is interesting, as containing the most pungent and effective sarcasm in holy writ. There are indeed the finest conceivable materials for the sarcastic in the practice of idolatry; i.e. in all those cases in which idolatry has sunk into its lowest stage. Where a statue is understood to be nothing more than the memorial or visible representation of the Divine, the language of the Hebrew prophet would not apply; but where it is regarded, as it has been and still is regarded by millions of mankind, as not only suggestive of but identical with the Deity, then these strong and scorching words are most appropriate, most crushing. They may suggest to us thoughts respecting - I. RELIGION TRAVESTIED BY IRRATIONALISM. Some caricatures are clever and amusing enough, but a caricature of the sacred and the religious is both sinful and hurtful. Idolatry has gone far to dishonour and to discredit religion. The fact that men have committed such gross absurdities in connection with religion as these which Isaiah exposes and ridicules, and the fact that they have thus associated the utmost credulity with religious faith for hundreds of years under many skies, - this has done much to prejudice the minds of men against the highest and purest forms of piety. So far is ignorance from being the "mother of devotion," that it is the prolific parent of infidelity. The irrational is the best friend of the sceptical and the atheistic. It is well that we understand and appreciate this now. For though the grosser forms of incredulity have disappeared, the superstitious is with us still; and superstition, though it be baptized with a Christian name and wear Christian garments, will be recognized as the irrational thing it is; it will be transfixed by the modern reformer, and be shown in its true colours, and it will weigh down the truth which it was supposed to be sustaining. II. RELIGION REPRESENTED BY REASONABLE SERVICE. AS nothing can be more utterly irrational than the conduct here described and satirized, so, on the other hand, nothing can be more reasonable, more perfectly conformed to the fitness of things, than intelligent, spiritual devotion. What can be more right and reasonable than that the creature should worship the Creator; than that the finite mind of man should seek to be instructed in the wisdom of God; than that the recipient of innumerable and inestimable mercies should offer deepest gratitude and render heartiest thanksgiving to the Author of all his mercies; than that they who have most serious duties to discharge, difficulties to surmount, burdens to bear, obligations to meet, should seek the guidance and support of the Lord of life, the Source of strength and righteousness; than that they who are daily travelling to the grave, and have no light of experience to tell them what is beyond it, should make their appeal to One who has given us such strong reasons to accept him as the Resurrection and the Life? - C. He burneth part thereof in the fire. This is an expression of that natural joy which will escape from one in some way or other, when from a comfortless apartment, or from a frosty street, or from some wintry office of obligation, he sees the shining of his own hearth. If it could be introduced thus with an exclamation in the land of Judea, that mild land, it should certainly be repeated in this stern climate with a deep feeling of relief and thankfulness. The household gods of ancient Italy were set up about the fireplace of each dwelling, as about a sacred spot, deserving to be surrounded with the images of a divine protection; and even now, all over the world, altar and hearth are but another phrase for home. "Who," asks the psalmist, "can stand before His cold?" God sends it; and He has filled the earth with materials, and the mind of man with resources, to repel and overcome it. He is the same Sovereign Wisdom and Goodness in this as in every other part of His works. And yet we must confess that it is one of His unwelcome ministers; but, like all the rest of what we account so in the natural world, subservient to high purposes in the holy providence of the Lord. Let us turn to the various instrumentality by which its vigour is mitigated and its power for mischief broken. "I am warm," says the speaker in the text. So would the ground say if it had a tongue, while it lies sheltered under the fleecy garments of dazzling whiteness, which the very cold has woven for it out of the dark mists. "I am warm," say the beast and the bird of the frozen zone, as the one lies close in his furry coat or the locks of his long hair, and the other is not afraid to cleave the inexorable sky with his breast of down. "I am warm," repeat the animals who are natives of our own temperate circle, as they take shelter in the hollow retreats which their industry has contrived, or make their way towards the more genial countries whither their instincts direct them. "I am warm," say the lake and the stream, while they are armed with the polished breast-plate which has been forged for them, not among furnaces of glowing heat, but in the "magazines of the haft." "I am warm," says man; he who commands the inferior creatures, he who makes a path for himself even over the deep, he who compels into his bond-service the substances and the elements of the world. He cuts clown the trees, and makes them do him a kinder office by their blaze than they had done before by their shadow. And better than this; he opens the dark treasures with which a gracious providence has stored the lower parts of the earth, and he finds them more precious than the "vein for the silver," than "the place of sapphires and dust of gold." What are the feelings which the consideration of the cold and all its alleviating circumstances should impress upon the mind? 1. Thankfulness towards God. There is no small danger of losing sight of the Almighty Benefactor in partaking of His benefits. There is no small danger of even turning those very benefits into a sort of idols that we substitute in His place. This was precisely and literally the case with the person whom the prophet describes as speaking in the text. You are like him, who transform your interest into your religion; making a show of worship, when you are thinking only how to be warmed and fed. You, too, are like him who shape your faith and your convenience out of the same material; making the concerns of the soul but part and parcel with common necessities. We are all like him, so far as we turn our comforts into our divinities. 2. Sympathy with His suffering creatures. () I cannot omit calling your attention to a remarkable fact in the freezing of water, which has nothing to surpass it in the surprising wisdom of its ordination, even if it has any perfect parallel in the whole economy of nature. We know it to be a general law of material substances, that they expand with the heat and contract with the cold. The particles of water are subjected to this rule, like all other particles of matter. But if this were allowed to hold on throughout, giving way to no exception, do but reflect what would be the consequences. The drops at the surface, as they were successively congealed, would sink. The process of freezing would begin at the bottom. Layer after layer would thus be deposited, which no returning suns could penetrate to dissolve; and the most that the summer could do would be to wet the face of the flinty mass. The water-courses would be for ever stopped in their glad and wholesome flow; and many a broad river would scarcely float a boat upon its plashy shallows. And now what has been done to avert such a calamity? A new law has been instituted, in direct contravention of the old, to meet the exigency of the case. The water, precisely at the moment of congelation, breaks away into the line of an opposite decree. It expands and grows lighter. It refuses to descend. It rests fixed upon the top, an ornament and a defence. I know not how others may be affected by a view like this; but it seems to me to call for an adoring acknowledgment of that all-pervading design which thus supplies the wants of its creation by a special departure from its own method, as invariable in its action as the method itself. () People Cyrus, Isaiah, JacobPlaces Israel, JerusalemTopics Ah, Aha, Burneth, Burns, Burnt, Cooked, Eateth, Eats, Enjoyed, Fill, Fire, Flesh, Full, Gets, Half, Makes, Meal, Meat, Prepares, Roast, Roasteth, Roasting, Roasts, Satisfied, Says, Takes, Thereof, Warm, Warmeth, Warms, Wood, Yea, YesOutline 1. God comforts the church with his promises
7. The vanity of idols
9. And folly of idol makers
21. He exhorts to praise God for his redemption and omnipotence
Dictionary of Bible Themes Isaiah 44:16 5268 cooking Isaiah 44:8-20 6708 predestination Isaiah 44:9-20 5211 art
7324 calf worship
8748 false religion Isaiah 44:12-17 8816 ridicule, nature of Isaiah 44:12-19 5356 irony Isaiah 44:13-20 4552 wood Isaiah 44:14-19 5222 baking Isaiah 44:15-18 8771 idolatry, objections Isaiah 44:16-18 5038 mind, the human Isaiah 44:16-20 1657 numbers, fractions Library Feeding on Ashes
'He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?'--ISAIAH xliv. 20. The prophet has been pouring fierce scorn on idolaters. They make, he says, the gods they worship. They take a tree and saw it up: one log serves for a fire to cook their food, and with compass and pencil and plane they carve the figure of a man, and then they bow down to it and say, 'Deliver me, for thou art my god!' He sums up the whole …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy ScriptureWriting Blotted Out and Mist Melted
'I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.'--ISAIAH xliv. 22. Isaiah has often and well been called the Evangelical Prophet. Many parts of this second half of his prophecies referring to the Messiah read like history rather than prediction. But it is not only from the clearness with which the great figure of the future king of Israel stands out on his page that he deserves that title. Other thoughts belonging to the very substance of the gospel appear in …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Jacob --Israel --Jeshurun
'Yet now hear, O Jacob My servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen.... Fear not, O Jacob, My servant; and thou, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen. --ISAIAH xliv. 1, 2. You observe that there are here three different names applied to the Jewish nation. Two of them, namely Jacob and Israel, were borne by their great ancestor, and by him transmitted to his descendants. The third was never borne by him, and is applied to the people only here and in the Book of Deuteronomy. The occurrence of all three here …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Source of My Spirit's Deep Desire
"I will pour water on him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground." -- Isaiah 44:8. Source of my spirit's deep desire For living joys that shall not perish, The patient hope Thy words inspire, Still let Thy tender mercy cherish. On Thee my humbled soul would wait, Her utmost weakness calmly learning, And see Thy grace its way create, Through thorns and briers which Thou art burning. Gladly my inmost heart would know The love that now it faintly traces, And see the streams from Zion flow …
Miss A. L. Waring—Hymns and Meditations To the Afflicted, Tossed with Tempests and not Comforted. Isa 44:5-11
To the afflicted, tossed with tempests and not comforted. Isa 44:5-11 Pensive, doubting, fearful heart, Hear what CHRIST the Savior says; Every word should joy impart, Change thy mourning into praise: Yes, he speaks, and speaks to thee, May he help thee to believe! Then thou presently wilt see, Thou hast little cause to grieve. "Fear thou not, nor be ashamed, All thy sorrows soon shall end I who heav'n and earth have framed, Am thy husband and thy friend I the High and Holy One, Israel's GOD by …
John Newton—Olney Hymns Fourteenth Day for the Church of the Future
WHAT TO PRAY.--For the Church of the Future "That the children might not be as their fathers, a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God."--PS. lxxviii. 8. "I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thy offspring."--ISA. xliv. 3. Pray for the rising generation, who are to come after us. Think of the young men and young women and children of this age, and pray for all the agencies at work among them; that in association and societies …
Andrew Murray—The Ministry of Intercession The Nature of Justification
Justification in the active sense (iustificatio, {GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA}) is defined by the Tridentine Council as "a translation from that state wherein man is born a child of the first Adam, to the state of grace and of the adoption of the sons of God through the second Adam, …
Joseph Pohle—Grace, Actual and Habitual Catalogue of his Works.
There is no absolutely complete edition of Eusebius' extant works. The only one which can lay claim even to relative completeness is that of Migne: Eusebii Pamphili, Cæsareæ Palestinæ Episcopi, Opera omnia quæ extant, curis variorum, nempe: Henrici Valesii, Francisci Vigeri, Bernardi Montfauconii, Card. Angelo Maii edita; collegit et denuo recognovit J. P. Migne. Par. 1857. 6 vols. (tom. XIX.-XXIV. of Migne's Patrologia Græca). This edition omits the works which are …
Eusebius Pamphilius—Church History Moses' Prayer to be Blotted Out of God's Book.
"And Moses returned unto the Lord and said. Oh! this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou--wilt, forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray they, out of thy book which than hast written." In the preceding discourse we endeavored to show that the idea of being willing to be damned for the glory of God is not found in the text--that the sentiment is erroneous and absurd--then adduced the constructions which have been put on the text by sundry expositors, …
Andrew Lee et al—Sermons on Various Important Subjects Centenary Commemoration
OF THE RETURN OF BISHOP SEABURY. 1885 THE RT. REV. SAMUEL SEABURY, D.D. FIRST BISHOP OF CONNECTICUT, HELD HIS FIRST ORDINATION AT MIDDLETOWN, AUGUST 3, 1785. On the ninth day of June, 1885, the Diocesan Convention met in Hartford. Morning Prayer was read in Christ Church at 9 o'clock by the Rev. W. E. Vibbert, D.D., Rector of St. James's Church, Fair Haven, and the Rev. J. E. Heald, Rector of Trinity Church, Tariffville. The Holy Communion was celebrated in St. John's Church, the service beginning …
Various—The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary "But if Ye have Bitter Envying and Strife in Your Hearts, Glory Not," &C.
James iii. 14.--"But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not," &c. It is a common evil of those who hear the gospel, that they are not delivered up to the mould and frame of religion that is holden out in it, but rather bring religion into a mould of their own invention. It was the special commendation of the Romans, that they obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine into which they were delivered, (Rom. vi. 17) that they who were once servants, or slaves of sin, had now …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning Impiety of Attributing a visible Form to God. --The Setting up of Idols a Defection from the True God.
1. God is opposed to idols, that all may know he is the only fit witness to himself. He expressly forbids any attempt to represent him by a bodily shape. 2. Reasons for this prohibition from Moses, Isaiah, and Paul. The complaint of a heathen. It should put the worshipers of idols to shame. 3. Consideration of an objection taken from various passages in Moses. The Cherubim and Seraphim show that images are not fit to represent divine mysteries. The Cherubim belonged to the tutelage of the Law. 4. …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion The Unity of God
Q-5: ARE THERE MORE GODS THAN ONE? A: There is but one only, the living and true God. That there is a God has been proved; and those that will not believe the verity of his essence, shall feel the severity of his wrath. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.' Deut 6:6. He is the only God.' Deut 4:49. Know therefore this day, and consider it in thy heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath, there is none else.' A just God and a Saviour; there is none beside …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity Hiram, the Inspired Artificer
BY REV. W. J. TOWNSEND, D.D. The Temple of Solomon was the crown of art in the old world. There were temples on a larger scale, and of more massive construction, but the enormous masses of masonry of the oldest nations were not comparable with the artistic grace, the luxurious adornments, and the harmonious proportions of this glorious House of God. David had laid up money and material for the great work, but he was not permitted to carry it out. He was a man of war, and blood-stained hands were …
George Milligan—Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known A Few Sighs from Hell;
or, The Groans of the Damned Soul: or, An Exposition of those Words in the Sixteenth of Luke, Concerning the Rich Man and the Beggar WHEREIN IS DISCOVERED THE LAMENTABLE STATE OF THE DAMNED; THEIR CRIES, THEIR DESIRES IN THEIR DISTRESSES, WITH THE DETERMINATION OF GOD UPON THEM. A GOOD WARNING WORD TO SINNERS, BOTH OLD AND YOUNG, TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION BETIMES, AND TO SEEK, BY FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST, TO AVOID, LEST THEY COME INTO THE SAME PLACE OF TORMENT. Also, a Brief Discourse touching the …
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3 In the Last, the Great Day of the Feast'
IT was the last, the great day of the Feast,' and Jesus was once more in the Temple. We can scarcely doubt that it was the concluding day of the Feast, and not, as most modern writers suppose, its Octave, which, in Rabbinic language, was regarded as a festival by itself.' [3987] [3988] But such solemn interest attaches to the Feast, and this occurrence on its last day, that we must try to realise the scene. We have here the only Old Testament type yet unfilfilled; the only Jewish festival which has …
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah The Song of the Redeemed
And they sung a new song, saying, Thou ... hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation ... T he extent, variety, and order of the creation, proclaim the glory of God. He is likewise, ^* Maximus in Minimis . The smallest of the works, that we are capable of examining, such for instance as the eye or the wing of a little insect, the creature of a day, are stamped with an inimitable impression of His wisdom and power. Thus in His written Word, there …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2 Of the Decrees of God.
Eph. i. 11.--"Who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will."--Job xxiii. 13. "He is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth." Having spoken something before of God, in his nature and being and properties, we come, in the next place, to consider his glorious majesty, as he stands in some nearer relation to his creatures, the work of his hands. For we must conceive the first rise of all things in the world to be in this self-being, the first conception …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning Third Stage of the Roman Trial. Pilate Reluctantly Sentences Him to Crucifixion.
(Friday. Toward Sunrise.) ^A Matt. XXVII. 15-30; ^B Mark XV. 6-19; ^C Luke XXIII. 13-25; ^D John XVIII. 39-XIX 16. ^a 15 Now at the feast [the passover and unleavened bread] the governor was wont { ^b used to} release unto them ^a the multitude one prisoner, whom they would. { ^b whom they asked of him.} [No one knows when or by whom this custom was introduced, but similar customs were not unknown elsewhere, both the Greeks and Romans being wont to bestow special honor upon certain occasions by releasing …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel The Water of Life;
OR, A DISCOURSE SHOWING THE RICHNESS AND GLORY OF THE GRACE AND SPIRIT OF THE GOSPEL, AS SET FORTH IN SCRIPTURE BY THIS TERM, THE WATER OF LIFE. BY JOHN BUNYAN. 'And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.'--Revelation 22:17 London: Printed for Nathanael Ponder, at the Peacock in the Poultry, 1688. ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. Often, and in every age, the children of God have dared to doubt the sufficiency of divine grace; whether it was vast enough to reach their condition--to cleanse …
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3 The Being of God
Q-III: WHAT DO THE SCRIPTURES PRINCIPALLY TEACH? A: The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man. Q-IV: WHAT IS GOD? A: God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Here is, 1: Something implied. That there is a God. 2: Expressed. That he is a Spirit. 3: What kind of Spirit? I. Implied. That there is a God. The question, What is God? takes for granted that there …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity Links Isaiah 44:16 NIV
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