Expositions of Holy Scripture: Isaiah and Jeremiah Part 27

But the metaphor carries with it, too, a suggestion of the limitations of the power of sin. For when the cloud is thickest and most obscuring it only hugs the earth, and rises but a little way Into the heavens; and far above it the blue is as blue, and the sunshine as bright, as if there were no mist or fog in the lower regions. Therefore, let us remember that, while the cloud must veil us from the light, the light is above it, and 'every cloud that veileth love' may some day be thinned away by the love it veils.

IV. That brings me to the last word of my text,--viz. the prophet's teaching as to the removal of the sin.

We have to carry both the metaphors together with us here. 'I have blotted out'--that is, as erasing from a book. 'I have blotted out as a cloud'--that is, the thinning away of the mist. The blurred and stained page can be cancelled. Chemicals will take the ink out. 'The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin'; and it, pa.s.sed over all that foul record, makes it pure and clean. 'What I have written, I have written,'

said Pilate in his obstinacy. 'What I have written, I have written,'

wails many a man in the sense of the irrevocableness of his past.

Brother! be not afraid. Christ can take away all that stained record, and give you back the page ready to receive holier words.

The cloud is thinned away. What thins the cloud? As I have said, the light which the cloud obscures, shining on the upper surface of it, dissipates it layer by layer till it gets down at last to the lowermost, and then rends a gap in it, and sends the shaft of the sunbeam through on to the green earth. And that is only a highly imaginative way of saying that it is the love against which we transgress that thins away the cloud of transgression, and at last, as the placid moon, by simply shining silently on, will sweep the whole sky clear of its clouds, dissipates them all, and leaves the calm blue.

G.o.d forgives. The ledger account--if I may use so grossly commercial a figure--is settled in full; the indictment is endorsed, 'acquitted.' He remembers the sins only to breathe into the child's heart the a.s.surance of pardon, and no obstacle rises by reason of forgiven transgression between the sinning man and the reconciled G.o.d.

Now, all this preaching of Isaiah's is enlarged and confirmed, and to some extent the _rationale_ of it is set before us in the great Gospel truth of forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ. Unless we know that truth, we may well stand amazed and questioning as to whether a righteous G.o.d, administering a rigorous universe, can ever pardon sin.

And unless we know that by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, granted to our spirits, our whole nature may be remade and moulded, we might well be tempted to say, Ah! the Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots. But Jesus Christ can change more than skin, even the heart and spirit, the inmost depths of the nature.

Now, brother, my text speaks of this great blotting out as a past fact.

It is so in the divine mind with regard to each of us, because Christ's great work has made reconciliation and atonement for all the sins of all the world. And on the fact that it is past is based the exhortation, 'Return unto Me, for I have redeemed thee.' G.o.d does not say, 'Come back and I will forgive'; He does not say, 'Return and I will blot out'; but He says, 'Return, for I _have_ blotted out.' Though accomplished, the forgiveness has to be appropriated by individual faith. The sins of the world have been borne, and borne away, by the Lamb of G.o.d, but your sins are not borne away unless your hand is laid on this head.

If it is, then you do not need to say, 'What I have written is written, and it cannot be blotted out.' But as in the old days a monk would take some ma.n.u.script upon which filthy stories about heathen G.o.ds and foolish fables were written, and erase these to write the legends of saints, or perhaps the words of the Gospels themselves; so on our hearts, which have been scribbled all over with obscenities and follies, He will write His new best name of Love, and we may be epistles of Christ, written with the Spirit of the living G.o.d.

HIDDEN AND REVEALED

'Verily thou art a G.o.d that hidest Thyself, O G.o.d of Israel, the Saviour.... I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye Me in vain: I the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.'--ISAIAH xlv, 15,19.

The former of these verses expresses the thoughts of the prophet in contemplating the close of a great work of G.o.d's power which issues in the heathen's coming to Israel and acknowledging G.o.d. He adores the depth of the divine counsels which, by devious ways and after long ages, have led to this bright result. And as he thinks of all the long-stretching preparations, all the apparently hostile forces which have been truly subsidiary, all the generations during which these Egyptian and Ethiopian tribes have been the enemies and oppressors of that Israel whom they at last acknowledge for the dwelling-place of G.o.d, and enemies of that Jehovah before whom they finally bow down, he feels that he has no measuring-line to fathom the divine purposes, and bows his face to the ground in reverent contemplation with that word upon his lips: 'Verily Thou art a G.o.d that hidest Thyself, O G.o.d of Israel, the Saviour.' It is a parallel to the apostolic words, 'O the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of G.o.d. How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out.'

But such thoughts are but a half truth, and may very easily become in men's minds a whole error, and therefore they are followed by a marvellous section in which the Lord Himself speaks, and of which the whole burden is--the clearness and fulness with which G.o.d makes Himself known to men. True it is that there are depths inaccessible in the divine nature. True it is that there are mysteries unrevealed in the method of the divine procedure, and especially in that of the relation of heathen tribes to His gospel and His love. True it is that there are mysteries opened in the very word of His grace. But notwithstanding all this--it is also true that He makes Himself known to us all, that He declares righteousness, that He calls us to seek Him, and that He wills to be found and known by us.

The collocation of these two pa.s.sages may be taken, then, as representing the two phases of the Divine Manifestation, the obscurity which must ever be a.s.sociated with all our finite knowledge of G.o.d, and the clear sunlight in which blazes all that we need to know of Him.

I. After all revelation, G.o.d is hidden.

There is revelation of His Name in all His works. His action must be all self-manifestation. But after all it is obscure and hidden.

1. Nature hides while it reveals.

Nature's revelation is un.o.btrusive.

G.o.d is concealed behind second causes.

G.o.d is concealed behind regular modes of working (laws).

Nature's revelation is partial, disclosing only a fragment of the name.

Nature's revelation is ambiguous. Dark shadows of death and pain in the sensitive world, of ruin and convulsions, of shivered stars, seem to contradict the faith that all is very good; so that it has been possible for men to drop their plummet in the deep and say, 'I find no G.o.d,' and for others to fall into Manichaeism or some form or other of dualism.

2. Providence hides while it reveals.

That is the sphere in which men are most familiar with the idea of mystery.

There is much of which we do not see the issue. The process is not completed, and so the end is not visible.

Even when we believe that 'to Him' and 'for good' are 'all things,' we cannot tell how all will come circling round. We are like men looking only at one small segment of an ellipse which is very eccentric.

There is much of which we do not see the consistency with the divine character.

We are confronted with stumbling-blocks in the allotment of earthly conditions; in the long ages and many tribes which are without knowledge of G.o.d; in the sore sorrows, national and individual.

We can array a formidable host. But it is to be remembered that revelation actually increases these. It is just because we know so much of G.o.d that we feel them so keenly. I suppose the mysteries of the divine government trouble others outside the sphere of revelation but little. The darkness is made visible by the light.

3. Even in 'grace' G.o.d is hidden while revealed.

The Infinite and Eternal cannot be grasped by man.

The conception of infinity and eternity is given us by revelation, but it is not comprehended so that its contents are fully known. The words are known, but their full meaning is not, and no revelation can make them, known to finite intelligences.

G.o.d dwells in light inaccessible, which is darkness.

Revelation opens abysses down which we cannot look. It raises and leaves unsettled as many questions as it solves.

The telescope resolves many nebulae, but only to bring more unresolvable ones into the field of vision.

Now all this is but one side of the truth. There is a tendency in some minds to underrate what is plain because all is not plain. For some minds the obscure has a fascination, apart altogether from its nature, just because it is obscure. It is a n.o.ble emulation to press forward and 'still to be closing up what we know not with what we know.' But neither in science nor in religion shall we make progress if we do not take heed of the opposing errors of thinking that all is seen, and of thinking that what we have is valueless because there are gaps in it.

The constellations are none the less bright nor immortal fires, though there be waste places in heaven where nothing but opaque blackness is seen. In these days it is especially needful to insist both on the incompleteness of all our religious knowledge, and to say that--

II. Notwithstanding all obscurity, G.o.d has amply revealed Himself.

Though G.o.d hides Himself, still there comes from heaven the voice--'I have not spoken in secret,' Now these words contain these thoughts--

1. That whatever darkness there may be, there is none due to the manner of the revelation.

G.o.d has not spoken in secret, in a corner. There are no arbitrary difficulties made or unnecessary darkness left in His revelation. _We_ have no right to say that He has left difficulties to test our faith.

_He_ Himself has never said so. He deals with us in good faith, doing all that can be done to enlighten, regard being had to still loftier considerations, to the freedom of the human will, to the laws which He has Himself imposed on our nature, and the purposes for which we are here. It is very important to grasp this. We have been told as much as _can_ be told. Contrast with such a revelation the cave-muttered oracles of heathenism and their paltering double sense. Be sure that when G.o.d speaks, He speaks clearly and to all, and that in Christianity there is no esoteric teaching for a few initiated only, while the mult.i.tude are put off with shows.

2. That whatever obscurity there may be, there is none which hides the divine invitation or Him from those who obey it.

'I have never said ... seek ye Me in vain.' Much is obscure if speculative completeness is looked for, but the moral relations of G.o.d and man are not obscure.

All which the heart needs is made known. His revelation is clearly His seeking us, and His revelation is His gracious call to us to seek Him.

He is ever found by those who seek. They have not to press through obscurities to find Him, but the desire to possess must precede possession in spiritual matters. He is no hidden G.o.d, lurking in obscurity and only to be found by painful search. They who 'seek' Him know where to find Him, and seek because they know.

3. That whatever may be obscure, the Revelation of righteousness is clear.

We have to face speculative difficulties in plenty, but the great fact remains that in Revelation steady light is focussed on the moral qualities of the divine Nature and especially on His righteousness.