Homilist Isaiah 29:7-8 And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her and her fortification… There are two grand truths of a most stirring import unfolded in the text. 1. That wicked men are frequently employed to execute the Divine purpose. The Almighty determined to humble Jerusalem, and He employed Sennacherib as the engine of His justice. "He makes" the wrath of man to praise Him. What a revelation is this of His absolute command over the fiercest and freest workings of the most depraved and rebellious subjects! 2. That whilst wicked men execute the Divine purpose, they frustrate their own. Sennacherib worked out the Divine result, but all his own plans and wishes were like the visions of the famished traveller on the Oriental desert, who, hungry, thirsty, and exhausted, lies down and dreams, under the rays of a tropical sun, that he is eating and drinking, but awakes and discovers, to his inexpressible distress, that both his hunger and thirst are but increased. Hell works out God's plans and frustrates its own; Heaven works out God's plans, and fulfils its own. Let us look at the vision before us as illustrating the visions of sin. I. IT IS A DREAMY VISION. It is "as a dream of a night vision." There are waking visions. The orient creations of poetry, the bright prospects of hope, the appalling apprehensions of fear — these are visions occurring when the reflective powers of the soul are more or less active, and are, therefore, not entirely unsubstantial and vain. But the visions which occur in sleep, when the senses are closed, and the consciousness is torpid, and the reason has resigned her sway to the hands of a lawless imagination, are generally without reality. Now, the Scriptures represent the sinner as asleep. But where is the analogy between the natural sleep of the body and the moral sleep of sin? 1. Natural sleep is the ordination of God, but moral is not. 2. Natural sleep is restorative, but moral is destructive. 3. In both there is the want of activity. The inactivity of the moral sleep of the sinner is the inactivity of the moral faculty — the conscience. 4. In both there is the want of consciousness. With the sinner in his moral slumbers — God, Christ, the soul, heaven, hell, are nothing to him. II. IT IS AN APPETITIVE VISION. What is the dream of the man whom the Almighty brings under our notice in the text, who lies down to sleep under the raging desire for food and water? It is that he was eating and drinking. His imagination creates the very things for which his appetite was craving. His imagination was the servant of his strongest appetites. So it is ever with the sinner: the appetite for animal gratifications will create its visions of sensual pleasure: the appetite for worldly wealth will create its visions of fortune; the appetite for power will create its visions of social influence and applause. The sinner's imagination is ever the servant of his strongest appetites, and ever pictures to him in airy but attractive forms the objects he most strongly desires. III. IT IS AN ILLUSORY VISION. The food and water were a mirage in the visionary desert, dissipated into air as his eye opened. All the ideas of happiness entertained by the sinner are mental illusions. There are many theories of happiness practically entertained by men that are as manifestly illusive as the wildest dream. 1. Every notion of happiness is delusive that has not to do more with the soul than the senses. 2. Every notion of happiness is delusive that has not more to do with the character than the circumstances. 3. Every notion is delusive that has not more to do with the present than with the future. He that is preparing intentionally for happiness is not happy, nor can he be: the selfish motive renders it impossible. "He that seeketh his life shall lose it." Heaven is for the man that is now blessed in his deeds, and for him only. The present is everything to us, because God is in it, and out of it starts the future 4. Every notion is delusive that has not more to do with the absolute than the contingent. IV. IT IS A TRANSITORY VISION. In the text, the supposed dreamer was led to feel the illusion which his wayward imagination had practised upon him. "He awaketh, and his soul is empty." Every moral sleeper must awake either here or hereafter; here by disciplinary voices, or hereafter by retributive thunders. (Homilist.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her and her munition, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision. |
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