facts. He is the great Prophet and Teacher, the perfect Revealer of Divine truth to mankind, of everything necessary to salvation. By the fall man has lost the knowledge of God, and Christ is the only source of spiritual light (Jno. i. 9; viii. 12). All who lived before His advent were enlightened by Him (1 Pet. i. 10, 11). He bore witness even unto death (1 Tim. vi. 13). (1.) To the beneficence of God's laws. (2.) To the mercifulness of God's character, manifested especially in His gracious provision for man's salvationprovision full and free, &c. (3.) To the justness of God's claims--based upon redeeming love. (4.) To the reliableness of God's promises. (5.) To the condemnation of the unbelieving and disobedient (Jno: iii. 16-19, 36, and others). As a witness He is (1.) credible and competent; His credentials are supreme; He is thoroughly acquainted with everything of which He testifies; He can be trusted implicitly without fear. (2.) Faithful and final, because Divine. False witnesses abound -beware! But this witness cannot be deceived, nor can He deceive us. Thank God for such a "faithful and true witness." Listen to, and confide in His testimony as recorded in the Scriptures of truth (Jno. viii. 12). 2. For a Leader. The same word is translated 66 Captain," "Ruler," "Prince (2 Sam. v. 2; 1 Sam. xxv. 30; Ezek. xxviii. 2; Dan. ix. 25), The expression may be understood in such an extensive meaning, as applied to Christ as possessed of supreme authority and jurisdiction over the Church, and over the world, in His mediatorial capacity. This is the grand glory of Christ our King (Eph. i. 20– 23; Rev. xix. 16). The office of a leader is to go before, to conduct, &c. As such Christ executes this office(1.) By the instructions of His Word. (2.) By His perfect example (Jno. xiii. 15; 1 Pet. ii. 21; Heb. xii. 2). He never says go, always come; because He has gone before us in hardship and suffering, &c. "He leads us through no darker rooms (3.) By the light of His Spirit. (4.) By the events of His providence. He has never led one astray, but millions to a glorious character and heaven. Is He your Leader? Can you say, "He leadeth me"? What an unspeakable blessing is a Divinely-guided life (P. D. 1640). III. FOR A COMMANDER (Zec. vi. 13; 1 Chron. xvi. 15, 16; Ps. xxxiii. 9; cx. 2, 3; ch. ii. 3, 4). As Commander -(1.) He enlists for the conflict against foes. (2.) He trains for service. (3.) He gives orders. (4.) He provides the weapons-not carnal. (5.) He encourages by His presence. (6.) He leads and goes forward to victory. Are you submitting to His rule, obeying His commands, fighting under His banner, &c. (2 Tim. ii. 3, 4)? Let not "other lords" have dominion over you-He only has the right. You have been called into His kingdom. But you cannot have Him as your Saviour unless you take Him as your Sovereign. "Where Jesus comes He comes to reign." Trajan won the heart of his soldiers by tearing up his royal robe to bind a soldier's wound. "The King Immortal" gave His life for you ! But if you refuse His righteous reign your danger and doom cannot be exaggerated.-A. Tucker. I. THE GRAND BESTOWMENT. Christ is the greatest gift God could bestow, or man receive. All that He is, has done, has obtained, is given. This is a gift-1. We could not claim. 2. We did not deserve. 3. We did not ask. 4. We cannot adequately estimate. "God only knows the love of God.". II. THE SPECIAL CHARACTERS UNDER WHICH CHRIST IS PRESENTED. 1. As a Witness to the people. 2. As a Leader, &c. 3. As a Commander, &c. III. THE REGARD DUE TO HIM 1. Is He a Gift Receive Him with cheerfulness, gratitude, affection. 2. Is He a Witness? Believe and rest upon His faithful word. 3. Is He a Leader? Follow Him in every conflict. Rely upon His presence and wisdom in every emer UNDER THESE CHARACTERS. gency, &c. I. The representation afforded of the Mediatorial offices of the Saviour. Numerous and varied epithets are employed in sacred Scripture to describe Christ. They are not empty and unmeaning, as among men; but describe a corresponding variety and excellence in His Person and work. Examine the several terms used in the text, and mark their mutual relation and bearing on each other. 1. As a Witness. 2. As a Leader. 3. As a Commander. II. The circumstances connected with His designation to these offices. They are remarkable, and claim our best attention. 1. He is Divinely appointed. 2. He is graciously bestowed. 3. He was given for the advantage of a countless number. 4. He was given in such a way as to demand our attention. "Behold!" Contemplate the fact with astonishment. Put yourself under the guidance and control of this great Leader. Confide in Him. "Follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth."— George Smith, D.D. THE CALLING OF THE GENTILES. lv. 5. Behold, Thou shalt call a nation that Thou knowest not, &c. It early obtained belief in the Christian Church, that Isaiah was sawn assunder for predicting so freely the vocation of the Gentiles by Messiah. Paul mentions it as a proof of his moral heroism (Rom. x. 20, 21, with Ch. xlix. 6). These words were uttered long after this country was a part of the Gentile world; and perhaps, in importance, it is the principal instance of it, considering what we have become, what we have done, what we are doing, and what we seem destined to accomplish. The text calls for our attention -"Behold!" And what you are to behold regards the Messiah, and consists in these four things I. HIS AUDIENCE. 1. A nation that He knew not. This seems a paradox. Did He not know all His creatures? The apparent difficulty may be easily solved, when you remember that the word "knowledge," in the Scriptures, signifies not merely intelligence, perception, apprehension; but approbation, regard, due acknowledgment (1 Thess. v. 13, and others). The Messiah did not, and could not, view the Gentiles with regard and complacency; He could not thus know them. There was everything among them offensive to the eyes of His holiness. Idolatry is the essence of all evil -accompanied with cruelty, impurity, &c. Yet we do not deem it impossible that the heathen should be saved. 2. Nations that knew Him not. It is true, they did not love Him, but they could not, because they were destitute of the knowledge of Him, "sitting in darkness," &c. It is not the reality of things, therefore, but the knowledge of them, which must affect and influence us (Rom. x. 13-15; Ch. liii. 11, and others). This implies, therefore, the importance of what follows; viz.— II. HIS WORK. He will "call." This takes in very much. He calls by the blessings of His gracious providence; by affliction, &c. You are all, therefore, among the called of God. Perhaps you have never, to this hour, obeyed His voice. But the calling here intended, is principally by preaching of the Gospel; for "faith cometh by hearing," &c. His calling by the Gospel is not only to inform, but to accomplish their pardon. His calling was to awaken their attention, and to justify the appropriation of the blessings displayed. a man to run, that might not be applied in a much higher degree to sinners, who are seeking salvation? The nearness of the danger? The magnitude of the object? The extreme want of it? The strength of their desire? The shortness and uncertainty of their opportunity? IV. THE CAUSE OF HIS SUCCESS. 1. The glorification of the Messiah. 2. The season "hath," marks the certainty of the accomplishment. 3. The connection this glory has with, and the influence it has over, this conversion of sinners. His glorification is the ground of all our confidence in God. Surely this is enough to induce and encourage them. This glorification furnishes Him as Mediator with His power to save, and it ensures the salvation of sinners. I. The Father speaking to the Messiah, assures Him of success. 1. The Call.-Behold, Thou shalt call a nation that Thou knowest not. Does not mean that Christ is ignorant of any nation, but that He does not know them as His followers, since they are not His followers. And nations that know not Thee. Perhaps, absolutely ignorant of Him; ignorant of Him, however, as the Messiah, the Son of God, their Saviour. He shall call them by His servants, His Spirit. 2. The result. They shall, not walk, but run unto Him, indicating their eagerness and joy to receive Him. Has been partially realised in the past, is being realised somewhere every day, will be fully realised in the future. Every habitation of cruelty in the world to become the abode of peace and love. The dark places of the earth, to be lit up with the light of His Gospel. The knowledge of the Lord to cover the whole earth. Nations to be born to Him in a day. The kingdoms of this world, &c. II. The cause of His success. The nations will see by the agency of the Holy Spirit that God had appointed Christ to be the Saviour of man, and had glorified Him. May we give, labour, and pray, to hasten the dawn of this glorious day.-A. M'Auslane, D.D. I. The condition of the Gentiles. Unknown. Unknowing. II. Their call. Effected by the Gospel. Eagerly received. III. The cause. Displays of Divine power. Diffusion of the Divine Spirit. Consequent on Christ's glorification.-J. Lyth, D.D. I. The gospel is for the world. II. The world is ready to receive it. III. Divine power accompanies it. IV. Therefore send it.-J. Lyth, D.D. GOD UNKNOWN YET KNOWN. lv. 6-9. Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, &c. There is a paradox in these words. They invite us to seek a God who yet cannot be found, to know a God who yet cannot be known. For where should we seek God if not in His "ways;' or how shall we know Him except by coming to know His "thoughts"? And yet, while we are urged to seek Him, we are expressly told that His thoughts and ways are as high above ours as the heavens are high above the earth. Is God, then, unknowable absolutely? Consider I. THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION RETURNED BY SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. Science says, or some of her disciples say for her: "In the whole range of visible and observed phenomena we find no proof of God." What then? men will go to the visible for the invisible, to phenomena for realities, how can they hope to If find what they seek? They might as well go to the sand of the desert for water, or to the troubled sea for a solid foundation. Votaries of philosophy say: "In the whole range of human experience and knowledge we can find no proof that God is, or no means of coming to know Hin as He is." What then? So far as their affirmation is true, do they say anything the world has not heard on still higher authority before anything which the Bible does not say again and again! "Canst thou by searching find out God!" No doubt we know Him, in part, by our reason. According to one great thinker, the starry heavens and the law of conscience are a sufficient proof of the being and rule of God to the thoughtful and susceptible heart. Still, it is an open question whether the logic and researches of reason can carry us further than the position assumed by one of the leading expositors of modern science, who says, "that there is a God I can neither affirm nor deny; that we can discover and know Him I wholly doubt: and yet in my most open and best moods I am dimly aware of the Creative Power which we call God." And perhaps we shall never be able to prove the existence of God any more than we can prove our own. II. THE ANSWer returned BY REVELATION. The Scriptures, in a great variety of forms, do proclaim God to be above our reach. The Bible nowhere undertakes to demonstrate His existence, though it everywhere assuines and asserts it; and God Himself has warned us that we must wait for a full and perfect knowledge of Him until this mortal put on immortality. Admitting God to be unknowable, the Bible yet affirms that He may be known. We cannot find Him out to perfection, but He sufficiently and most truly reveals Himself to us in His works, in His Word, in His Son. Take the illustration of the text. God's thoughts and ways, we are told, are as high above ours as the heavens above the earth. But the heavens, high as they are, are yet known to us, and, though known, are yet unknown. The most accomplished astronomer will tell you that in the heaven above, as in the earth beneath us, there is very much more to be learned than he has acquired or hopes to acquire. But though heaven" be so imperfectly known to us, does any sane man doubt that there is a heaven, or that it holds within it the sun, moon, and stars? We know at least enough of the heavens to guide us in all the practical purposes of life. And it is precisely in the same sense that God is both known to us and unknown. We cannot learn all that He is, all that He does, or all the reasons which determine the several aspects of His provideuce; but we may know, we do know and are sure, that He is, and that He rules over all. For consider III. THAT IN MAN TO WHICH GOD REVEALS HIMSELF. The pure in heart shall see God. The Bible says: "The righteous God reveals Himself to righteousness, the pure God to purity, the kind God to kindness." In proportion as we approach to moral purity and perfection, we possess ourselves of the organ or instrument by which we may see Him. Paul affirms that as we nourish ourselves in faith, in hope, in charity, we shall come to know Him even as also we are known by Him; and John, that if we purify ourselves we shall hereafter see Him as He is, and be like Him. Is not that the way in which we come to know all persons, and especially good persons? The child does not know his father perfectly; but need he doubt that he has a father? Do we not know that God is, although we are but children in understanding? not this scriptural, this Divine way of coming to know God the natural and reasonable Is way? It is not by arbitrary caprice that God often hides Himself from the wise who want to find Him out by logic, by quest of intellect, by force of reason and induction, and reveals Himself to the "babes" who keep a simple, sincere, and loving heart. It is only because goodness and purity and kindness can only reveal themselves to kindness and purity and goodness. The true way to know God is by the heart, by the great moral qualities and emotions through which we are most closely akin to Him.-Samuel Cox, D.D.: Genesis of Evil, pp. 61-76. The incredible Mercy of God. If there be some who find it hard to believe that there is a God, there are others who find it equally hard to believe that He is good, -so good that He can forgive all sius, even theirs, and cleanse them from all their iniquities. The Prophet had been commissioned to carry a message to the captive Jews. It was that, heinous as their iniquity had been, it was pardoned; and that to the merciful and relenting heart of Jehovah it seemed as if they had already endured "double for all their sins, i.e., twice as much as their sins had deserved (xl. 2). Hence He was about to appear for them, to appear among them, delivering them from their captivity (xl. 3-11; lv. 12, 13). In this message, God was drawing near to them; finding them, that they might find Him. But sinful men, especially when they are suffering the bitter punishment of their sins, are apt to be hopeless men. As nothing is possible to doubt and despair, God sets Himself to remove the natural incredulity and hopelessness of the men He was about to save. That His mercy is incredible, He admits; but He affirms that it is only incredible in the sense of being incredibly larger and better than they imagine it to be. They might have found it impossible to forgive those who had sinned against them as they had sinned against Him. "But," pleads God, 'My thoughts are not your thoughts," &c. The main point of these verses is not so much that God Himself is unknowable to us, as that His mercy is incredible to us. If, then, we would learn the lesson of these words, and take their comfort, what we have to do is, I. TO CONVINCE AND PERSUADE OURSELVES THAT THE MERCY OF GOD IS IMMEASURABLY, INCALCULABLY, GREATER THAN WE HAVE CONCEIVED IT TO BE, SO MUCH GREATER THAT IT NATURALLY APPEARS TO BE ALTOGETHER IN CREDIBLE TO US. We must get ourselves to believe, that the more largely we think of the Divine Mercy the more truly we think of it, if only we remember that it is a mercy which does not condone men's sins, which calls upon them and compels them to abandon their "wicked ways and their "unrighteous thoughts." No mercy short of this would be true mercy. To make men happy in their sins is impossible, as impossible as to make them good in their sins. For sin is misery, And even if this ignoble miracle were pos sible, who that is capable of reflection, of virtue, of goodness, would care to have such a miracle wrought upon him? To be happy in sin he must cease to be himself, cease to be a man. What we really desire when we ask for mercy is a mercy that will be at the pains to cleanse us from the soils of evil and strike its fetters from our souls. And so long as we cherish this desire, we may be sure that the mercy of God stands waiting to meet it, to outrun all our thoughts and expectations, all our wishes and hopes. The very punishments that wait on sin, since they wait on it by a constant and invariable law are designed for our good. This law makes us terribly aware that we have sinned,—a fact we are very slow to realise. We ought to take the retributions which wait on sin, not as proofs that God has abandoned us and ceased to care for us, but as proofs that He is near us, so near that, if we seek, we shall find Him, that, if we call on Him, He will answer us. By His merciful punishments God is at once convicting us of sin and calling on us to repent, that, repenting, we may be forgiven, purged, saved. II. WE MUST EXPECT TO BE CONVINCED OF THE PITY AND COMPASSION OF GOD, NOT SO MUCH BY HAVING THE KINDNESS OF HIS LAWS DEMONSTRATED TO US, AS BY LISTENING TO THE MEN WHOM WE BELIEVE TO HAVE HAD THE LARGEST EXPERIENCE OF HIS WAYS AND TO ENJOY THE PROFOUNDEST SYMPATHY WITH HIS THOUGHTS. This is a corollary from the conclusion, that it is not by arguments addressed to the understanding that we come to know God, or the mercy of God, but by experience and sympathy. Just as we come to know the righteous God by becoming righteous, so we may hope to learn more of Him from the men whose righteousness is far more eminent and conspicuous than our own. Just as we come to know the mercy of God by becoming merciful, so we may hope to acquaint ourselves more fully with Him by listening to men fat more merciful and gracious than ourselves. Such a man, and teacher, was the prophet who penned these words. This man has a claim to speak of God with an authority which few can rival. And this is what he has to say to you of God,-that God's mercy transcends all your conceptions of mercy, that it seems incredible to you only because it is so large and rich and free that you can very hardly bring yourselves to believe in it. Isaiah's testimony is, that in all those painful, restless, self-despairing moods bred in you by the sense of sin, God is drawing near to you, and calling on you to seek His face; and that, if you do seek Him, you shall find Him.-Samuel Cox, D.D., Genesis of Evil, pp. 77-90. SEEKING THE LORD. lv. 6-8. Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, &c. The previous context was addressed, in the first instance, to the Jews; and now the prophet seems to press upon them the practical question-What, then, ought you to do? Shall the Gentiles (ver. 5) enter the kingdom of heaven before you? How will you prevent it? By excluding them? No; the true course is to enter with them, or, if you will, before them. But it may be doubted whether this is the chief meaning of the text. Its terms are in no respect more restricted than those of the preceding verses, and especially the first part of the chapter, which obviously relates to the wants of men in general, and the best way to supply them. Notice in this passage I. THE REASON IMPLIED FOR THE COMMAND. If the words "while He is near" denote "while He continues in a special covenant relation to the Jews," then the command would seem to imply that by seeking the Lord and calling upon Him, that peculiar, exclusive covenant relation might be VOL. II. rendered perpetual, which was not the case. Or if, on the other hand, "while He may be found" denotes in a general way the possibility of finding favour and forgiveness at His hands, then the reason suggested is in no respect more applicable to the Jews than to the Gentiles. In this sense God was just as near to the one as to the other. The principles on which He would forgive and save were just the same in either case. The necessity of seeking, the nature of the object sought, the way of seeking it, are wholly independent of external circumstances. There is a limit to the offer of salvation, which is made to all. If there were not, sin would be without control. If the sinner could suspend his choice for ever, there would be no punishment. Even in this life there is a limit. There is a time when God is near, and when He may be found. There must be a time, therefore, when He is no longer near, and is no longer to be found. II. THE MANNER IN WHICH GOD IS TO BE SOUGHT. Not in this or that 20 573 |