"As they go forth, they will see the corpses of the men who have rebelled against Me; for their worm will never die, their fire will never be quenched, and they will be a horror to all mankind." Sermons
From one sabbath to another, shall an flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord. I. IN MEETING TOGETHER FOR PUBLIC WORSHIP WE FOLLOW THE NATURAL IMPULSE OF OUR OWN HEARTS, AS WELL AS OBEY THE COMMANDMENTS OF OUR GOD. To look up and pray is one of the most original and essential impulses of humanity, one of the commonest characteristics of the race. Prayer is properly associated with the whole circle of our relations with God. As spirits we are God's children, and God's erring, wilful children; we must find expression for our conscious need of spiritual blessings. Our bodies are the Divine creation, the care of Divine Providence, and out of the sense of the relation of our bodily life to God we are impelled to pray for temporal blessings. We are set in close associations one with another, as families; and as those having similar preferences and convictions; out of such relations come our united family and sanctuary worship. There are even larger associations into which we enter as fellow-citizens, fellow-countrymen, fellow-men. Our welfare in all these relationships directly depends on him who is Lord of natural laws, Lord of storms, Lord of pestilences, Lord of harvests, Lord of sunshine, Lord of the wrath of men, and Lord of their wealth. So far as we feel this aright we shall be impelled to say to every fellow-creature, made in the image of God, and made for God even as we are, "O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker." We have not to seek for reasons that may prove persuasions to worship. What men have to seek for is excuse for their neglect of the universal worship. It is not sufficiently recognized that God deals with us collectively here on earth. We have no reason for assuming that there are separate churches in heaven; or organized families; or towns with local interests; or nations with national interests and national characteristics. These are all earthly conditions; and in these conditions is laid the basis for collective prayer, for public and united worship. The man that refuses to unite in public worship is breaking away from the claims of his common humanity; refusing to recognize the conditions under which God has placed him; and withholding the sympathy which his fellow-creatures have a right to demand from him. Further, it may be shown that in meeting for public or universal worship, we do but follow the indications that have been given us of the Divine will. In Jewish history great importance attached to large national gatherings for acts of worship. From the time of the great meeting between the Mounts Ebal and Gerizim down to the times of Messiah, there were three great religious meetings of the people every year, besides occasional special gatherings. The Jewish service included praise and prayer, in which the whole people might unite. The best men, such as David, turned from the joys of private devotion to the yet higher joys of God's house and worship. Our Lord set the example of private prayer, but the evangelists are careful to remind us that "he went, as he was wont, into the synagogue on the sabbath day." And the apostles urge the early Christians "not to forsake the assembling of themselves together." II. IN NEGLECTING PUBLIC WORSHIP WE HAVE TO DELUDE OURSELVES BY MAKING VERY UNWORTHY EXCUSES. TO put our reasons out into the light, to get them fairly expressed, is to make us feel ashamed of them. Some incline to say, "Your worship is not intended for us; it is meant only for those whom you call specially Christians, and we do not call ourselves by that name." Our worshipping arrangements have certainly been made on this principle; but the worship of God is for men, all men, everywhere. Whether men agree with our ideas or not, let them come and worship the God that made them, clothes them, feeds them, cares for them, loves them, and would save them from their sins. Perhaps most of those who stay away from worship do so in sheer heedlessness; they yield to the indifference which settles down on men who are simply living to self and sin. The real evil is that sinful man is indisposed to worship; the only shrine be cares for is the shrine of ease and self-indulgence. We must try to make God more real to men, and so get the persuasion of his love as the constraint, urging men to offer to him their "gold, frankincense, and myrrh." We must try to make the services of our sanctuaries more suitable for the expression of the universal dependence and the universal praise. Christian worship should be the best possible medium for lifting up the hearts of men, as men, unto God; the best utterance of the universal sense of the Divine Creator-hood. It should be man's acknowledgment of God, our God, the one God, the holy God, the redeeming God. It is "he that hath made us, and not we ourselves." It is he that "redeemeth our life from destruction." It is even he "that sent his Son into the world, that we might live through him." "Let us kneels" let us all kneel together, "before the Lord our Maker." - R.T. And they shall go forth. Those that transgressed or "rebelled" against the Lord are the obstinate idolaters referred to in chaps, 65., 66. Their carcasses lie's spectacle to all who come up to worship at Jerusalem, subject to never-ending corruption and never-ending burning. According to the prophet's conception, the scene takes place on the earth, in me vicinity of Jerusalem, probably in the Valley of Hinnom, but the language may have suggested a punishment by everlasting fire in the world to come. () This verse is the basis of the later Jewish conception of Gehenna as the place of everlasting punishment (see Salmond's "Christian Doctrine of Immortality"). Gehenna is the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom (Valley of Hinnom), the place where, of old, human sacrifices were offered to Moloch, and for this reason desecrated by King Josiah ( 2 Kings 23:10). Afterwards it became a receptacle for filth and refuse, and Rabbinical tradition asserts that it was the custom to cast out unclean corpses there, to be burned or to undergo decomposition. This is, in all probability, the scene which had imprinted itself on the imagination of the writer, and which was afterwards projected into the unseen world as an image of endless retribution. The Talmudic theology locates the mouth of hell in the Valley of Hinnom. () () is of both worlds, so that in the same essential sense, although in different degree, it may be said both of him who is still living but accursed, and of him who perished centuries ago, that his worm dieth not and his fire is not quenched.() 1. It is a terrible ending, but it is the same as upon the same floor Christ set to His teaching — the Gospel net cast wide, but only to draw in both good and bad upon a beach of judgment; the wedding feast thrown open and men compelled to come in, but among them a heart whom grace so great could not awe even to decency; Christ's Gospel preached, His example evident, and Himself owned as Lord, and nevertheless some whom neither the hearing nor the seeing nor the owning with their lips did lift to unselfishness or stir to pity-. Therefore He who had cried, "Come all unto Me," was compelled to close by saying to many, "Depart."2. It is a terrible ending: but one only too conceivable. For though God is love, man is free — free to turn from that love; free to be as though he had never felt it; free to put away from himself the highest, clearest, most urgent grace that God can show. But to do this is the judgment. 3. "Lord, are there few that be saved?" The Lord did not answer the question but by bidding the questioner take heed to himself "Strive to enter in at the strait gate," () I. THE WICKEDNESS OF THE WICKED. II. ITS PUNISHMENT. Certain. Terrible. Without alleviation or hope.III. THE PERPETUATION OF ITS MORAL LESSONS. () The public reading of the synagogue repeats once more after ver. 24, on account of its terrible import, the encouraging words of ver. 23 "in order to conclude with words of comfort."()
People Isaiah, Israelites, Javan, Levites, Lud, Lydians, Meshech, Pul, Rosh, Tarshish, TubalPlaces Javan, Jerusalem, Lud, Pul, Tarshish, Tubal, ZionTopics Abhorrence, Abhorring, Bodies, Carcases, Carcasses, Corpses, Dead, Die, Dieth, Evil, Fear, Fire, Flesh, Forth, Loathsome, Mankind, Quenched, Rebelled, Transgressed, Transgressing, WormOutline 1. The glorious God will be served in humble sincerity
5. He comforts the humble by showing the confusion of their enemies
7. With the marvelous growth
10. And the gracious benefits of the church
15. God's severe judgments against the wicked
18. The Gentiles shall have an holy church
24. And see the damnation of the wicked
Dictionary of Bible Themes Isaiah 66:24 1075 God, justice of
2333 Christ, attitude to OT
4826 fire
5561 suffering, nature of
6026 sin, judgment on
6040 sinners
6139 deadness, spiritual
6222 rebellion, against God
6227 regret Library A New Order of Priests and Levites
Think for a minute of the compass of this great promise. Evidently a high honor is here conferred. The connection leads us to see that not only a great promise but likewise a great privilege is herein implied. What is this privilege? It is that we shall be priests and Levites. Now, the priests or Levites were persons set apart to be God's peculiar property. When the firstborn were spared in Egypt, God claimed the firstborn to be his own, and he took the tribe of Levi to represent the firstborn; they …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 17: 1871Travailing for Souls
I. It is clear from the text, "As soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children," that THERE MUST BE THE TRAVAIL before there will be the spiritual birth. Let me first establish this fact from history. Before there has fallen a great benediction upon God's people, it has been preceded by great searchings of heart. Israel was so oppressed in Egypt, that it would have been very easy, and almost a natural thing, for the people to become so utterly crushed in spirit as to submit to be hereditary …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 17: 1871 "All Our Righteousnesses are as Filthy Rags, and we all do Fade as a Leaf, and Our Iniquities, Like the Wind, have Taken us Away. "
Isaiah lxiv. 6, 7.--"All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." Not only are the direct breaches of the command uncleanness, and men originally and actually unclean, but even our holy actions, our commanded duties. Take a man's civility, religion, and all his universal inherent righteousness,--all are filthy rags. And here the church confesseth nothing but what God accuseth her of, Isa. lxvi. 8, and chap. i. ver. …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning And what Members of the Holy Body, which is the Church...
40. And what members of the holy body, which is the Church, ought more to take care, that upon them the holy Spirit may rest, than such as profess virginal holiness? But how doth He rest, where He findeth not His own place? what else than an humbled heart, to fill, not to leap back from; to raise up, not to weigh down? whereas it hath been most plainly said, "On whom shall rest My Spirit? On him that is humble and quiet, and trembles at My words." [2157] Already thou livest righteously, already thou …
St. Augustine—Of Holy Virginity. The Universal Church. --Isa. Lxvi. 12, 23
The universal Church.--Isa. lxvi. 12, 23. Thus saith the Lord, "My Church, to thee Peace, like a river, I will send; The Gentiles, in a stream, shall see My mercy flowing without end. The isles, that never heard my fame, Nor knew the glory of my might, They shall be taught to fear my name, Call'd out of darkness into light. And it shall come to pass, that vows From sabbath unto sabbath-day, From moon to moon, in mine own house, All nations, tribes, and tongues shall pay." …
James Montgomery—Sacred Poems and Hymns Synagogues: their Origin, Structure and Outward Arrangements
It was a beautiful saying of Rabbi Jochanan (Jer. Ber. v. 1), that he who prays in his house surrounds and fortifies it, so to speak, with a wall of iron. Nevertheless, it seems immediately contradicted by what follows. For it is explained that this only holds good where a man is alone, but that where there is a community prayer should be offered in the synagogue. We can readily understand how, after the destruction of the Temple, and the cessation of its symbolical worship, the excessive value attached …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life Peace
Grace unto you and peace be multiplied. I Pet 1:1. Having spoken of the first fruit of sanctification, assurance, I proceed to the second, viz., Peace, Peace be multiplied:' What are the several species or kinds of Peace? Peace, in Scripture, is compared to a river which parts itself into two silver streams. Isa 66:12. I. There is an external peace, and that is, (1.) (Economical, or peace in a family. (2.) Political, or peace in the state. Peace is the nurse of plenty. He maketh peace in thy borders, …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity Here Some one Will Say, this is Now not to Write of virginity...
52. Here some one will say, This is now not to write of virginity, but of humility. As though truly it were any kind of virginity, and not that which is after God, which we had undertaken to set forth. And this good, by how much I see it to be great, by so much I fear for it, lest it be lost, the thief pride. Therefore there is none that guardeth the virginal good, save God Himself Who gave it: and God is Charity. [2211] The Guardian therefore of virginity is Charity: but the place of this Guardian …
St. Augustine—Of Holy Virginity. Fifth Sunday in Lent
Text: Hebrews 9, 11-15. 11 But Christ having come a high priest of the good things to come, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, 12 nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh: …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. II In the Dungeon of Giant Discourager
IN THE DUNGEON OF GIANT DISCOURAGER I feel very discouraged at times, and sometimes the spells of discouragement hang on for a long while. I wonder if I am sanctified. From unaccountable sources, bad feelings of every description depress my soul, and along with these bad feelings come doubts that cast gloom over me. I have prayed and prayed that these feelings of discouragement might leave me; but they have not done so. I despair of prayer bringing me the help I need. Really, I know not what to do. …
Robert Lee Berry—Adventures in the Land of Canaan How the Humble and the Haughty are to be Admonished.
(Admonition 18.) Differently to be admonished are the humble and the haughty. To the former it is to be insinuated how true is that excellence which they hold in hoping for it; to the latter it is to be intimated how that temporal glory is as nothing which even when embracing it they hold not. Let the humble hear how eternal are the things that they long for, how transitory the things which they despise; let the haughty hear how transitory are the things they court, how eternal the things they …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great The Knowledge that God Is, Combined with the Knowledge that He is to be Worshipped.
John iv. 24.--"God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." There are two common notions engraven on the hearts of all men by nature,--that God is, and that he must be worshipped, and these two live and die together, they are clear, or blotted together. According as the apprehension of God is clear, and distinct, and more deeply engraven on the soul, so is this notion of man's duty of worshipping God clear and imprinted on the soul, and whenever the actions …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning "To what Purpose is the Multitude of Your Sacrifices unto Me? Saith the Lord,"
Isaiah i. 11.--"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord," &c. This is the word he calls them to hear and a strange word. Isaiah asks, What mean your sacrifices? God will not have them. I think the people would say in their own hearts, What means the prophet? What would the Lord be at? Do we anything but what he commanded us? Is he angry at us for obeying him? What means this word? Is he not repealing the statute and ordinance he had made in Israel? If he had reproved …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning Bunyan's Last Sermon --Preached July 1688.
"Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God;" John i. 13. The words have a dependence on what goes before, and therefore I must direct you to them for the right understanding of it. You have it thus,--"He came to his own, but his own received him not; but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them which believe on his name; which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God." In …
by John Bunyan—Miscellaneous Pieces The Knowledge of God
'The Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.' I Sam 2:2. Glorious things are spoken of God; he transcends our thoughts, and the praises of angels. God's glory lies chiefly in his attributes, which are the several beams by which the divine nature shines forth. Among other of his orient excellencies, this is not the least, The Lord is a God of knowledge; or as the Hebrew word is, A God of knowledges.' Through the bright mirror of his own essence, he has a full idea and cognisance …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity Mr. Bunyan's Last Sermon:
Preached August 19TH, 1688 [ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR] This sermon, although very short, is peculiarly interesting: how it was preserved we are not told; but it bears strong marks of having been published from notes taken by one of the hearers. There is no proof that any memorandum or notes of this sermon was found in the autograph of the preacher. In the list of Bunyan's works published by Chas. Doe, at the end of the 'Heavenly Footman,' March 1690, it stands No. 44. He professes to give the title-page, …
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3 "So Then they that are in the Flesh Cannot Please God. "
Rom. viii. 8.--"So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." It is a kind of happiness to men, to please them upon whom they depend, and upon whose favour their well-being hangs. It is the servant's happiness to please his master, the courtier's to please his prince; and so generally, whosoever they be that are joined in mutual relations, and depend one upon another; that which makes all pleasant, is this, to please one another. Now, certainly, all the dependencies of creatures one upon …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning Union and Communion with God the End and Design of the Gospel
Psalm lxxiii. 24-28.--"Thou wilt guide me with thy counsel, &c. Whom have I in heaven but thee? &c. It is good for me to draw near to God."--1 John i. 3. "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ."--John xvii. 21-23. "That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, &c." It is a matter of great consolation that God's …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning False Ambition Versus Childlikeness.
(Capernaum, Autumn, a.d. 29.) ^A Matt. XVIII. 1-14; ^B Mark IX. 33-50; ^C Luke IX. 46-50. ^c 46 And there arose a reasoning among them, which of them was the greatest. ^b 33 And he came to Capernaum: ^c 47 But when Jesus saw the reasoning of their heart, ^b and when he was in the house [probably Simon Peter's house] he asked them, What were ye reasoning on the way? 34 But they held their peace: for they had disputed one with another on the way, who was the greatest. [The Lord with his disciples was …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel Necessity of Contemplating the Judgment-Seat of God, in Order to be Seriously Convinced of the Doctrine of Gratuitous Justification.
1. Source of error on the subject of Justification. Sophists speak as if the question were to be discussed before some human tribunal. It relates to the majesty and justice of God. Hence nothing accepted without absolute perfection. Passages confirming this doctrine. If we descend to the righteousness of the Law, the curse immediately appears. 2. Source of hypocritical confidence. Illustrated by a simile. Exhortation. Testimony of Job, David, and Paul. 3. Confession of Augustine and Bernard. 4. Another …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion The Great Teacher
Teaching was the great business of the life of Christ during the days of his public ministry. He was sent to teach and to preach. The speaker in the book of Job was thinking of this Great Teacher when he asked--"Who teacheth like him?" Job xxxvi: 22. And it was he who was in the Psalmist's mind when he spoke of the "good, and upright Lord" who would teach sinners, if they were meek, how to walk in his ways. Ps. xxv: 8-9. And he is the Redeemer, of whom the prophet Isaiah was telling when he said--He …
Richard Newton—The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young The Necessity of Regeneration, Argued from the Immutable Constitution of God.
John III. 3. John III. 3. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. WHILE the ministers of Christ are discoursing of such a subject, as I have before me in the course of these Lectures, and particularly in this branch of them which I am now entering upon, we may surely, with the utmost reason, address our hearers in those words of Moses to Israel, in the conclusion of his dying discourse: Set your hearts unto all …
Philip Doddridge—Practical Discourses on Regeneration How Christ is to be Made Use of as Our Life, in Case of Heartlessness and Fainting through Discouragements.
There is another evil and distemper which believers are subject to, and that is a case of fainting through manifold discouragements, which make them so heartless that they can do nothing; yea, and to sit up, as if they were dead. The question then is, how such a soul shall make use of Christ as in the end it may be freed from that fit of fainting, and win over those discouragements: for satisfaction to which we shall, 1. Name some of those discouragements which occasion this. 2. Show what Christ …
John Brown (of Wamphray)—Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life Epistle xviii. To John, Bishop.
To John, Bishop. Gregory to John, Bishop of Constantinople [1586] . At the time when your Fraternity was advanced to Sacerdotal dignity, you remember what peace and concord of the churches you found. But, with what daring or with what swelling of pride I know not, you have attempted to seize upon a new name, whereby the hearts of all your brethren might have come to take offence. I wonder exceedingly at this, since I remember how thou wouldest fain have fled from the episcopal office rather than …
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