Expositions of Holy Scripture: Isaiah and Jeremiah Part 43

G.o.d'S WAYS AND MAN'S

'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. 9. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.'--ISAIAH lv. 8, 9.

Scripture gives us no revelations concerning G.o.d merely in order that we may know about Him. These words are grand poetry and n.o.ble theology, but they are meant practically and in fiery earnestness. The 'for' at the beginning of each clause points us back to the previous statement, and both of the verses of our text are in different ways its foundation. And what has preceded is this: 'Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, for He will have mercy upon him, and to our G.o.d, for He will abundantly pardon.' That is why the prophet dilates upon the difference between the 'thoughts' and the 'ways' of G.o.d and of men.

If we look at these two verses a little more closely we shall perceive that they by no means cover the same ground nor suggest the same idea as to the relationship between G.o.d's 'ways' and 'thoughts' and ours.

The former of them speaks of unlikeness and opposition, the latter of elevation and superiority; the former of them is the basis of an indictment and an exhortation, the latter is the basis of an encouragement and a promise. The former of them is the reason why 'the wicked' and 'unrighteous man' ought to and must 'turn' from 'his ways'

and 'thoughts,' the latter of them is the reason why, 'turning,' he may be sure that the Lord 'will abundantly pardon.'

And so we have here two things to consider in reference to the relation between the divine purposes and acts and man's purposes and acts.

First, the antagonism, and the indictment and exhortation that are based upon that; second, the a.n.a.logy but superiority, and the exhortation and hope that are built upon that. Let me deal, then, with these separately.

I. We have here an unlikeness declared, and upon that is rested an appeal.

Notice the remarkable order and alternation of p.r.o.nouns in the first verse. '_My_ thoughts are not _your_ thoughts,' saith the Lord. The things that G.o.d thinks and purposes are not the things that man thinks and purposes, and therefore, because the thoughts are different, the outcomes of them in deeds are divergent. G.o.d's 'ways' are His acts, the manner and course of His working considered as a path on which He moves, and on which, in some sense, we can also journey. Our 'ways'--our manner of life--are not parallel with His, as they should be.

But that opposition is expressed with a remarkable variation. Observe the change of p.r.o.nouns in the two clauses. First, '_My_ thoughts are not your thoughts'--you have not taken My truth into your minds, nor My purposes into your wills; you do riot think G.o.d's thoughts.

Therefore--'_your_ ways (instead of 'My,' as we should have expected, to keep the regularity of the parallelism) are not My ways'--I repudiate and abjure your conduct and condemn it utterly.

Now, of course, in this charge of man's unlikeness to G.o.d, there is no contradiction of, nor reference to, man's natural const.i.tution, in which there are, at one and the same time, the likeness of the child with the parent and the unlikeness between the creature and the Creator. If our thoughts were not in a measure like G.o.d's thoughts, we should know nothing about Him. If our thoughts were not like G.o.d's thoughts, we should have no standard for life or thinking.

Righteousness and beauty and truth and goodness are the same things in heaven and earth, and alike in G.o.d and man. We are made after His image, poor creatures though we be; and though there must ever be a gulf of unlikeness, which we cannot bridge, between the thoughts of Him whose knowledge has no growth nor uncertainty, whose wisdom is infinite and all whose nature is boundless light, and our knowledge, and must ever be a gulf between the workings and ways of Him who works without effort, and knows neither weariness nor limitation, and our work, so often foiled, so always toilsome, yet in all the unlikeness there is (and no man can denude himself of it) a likeness to the Father. For the image in which G.o.d made man at the beginning is not an image that it is in the power of men to cast away, and in the worst of his corruptions and the widest of his departures he still bears upon him the signs of likeness 'to Him that created him.' The coin is rusty, battered, defaced; but still legible are the head and the writing. 'Whose image and superscription hath it?' Render unto G.o.d the things that are declared to be G.o.d's, because they bear His likeness and are stamped with His signature.

But that very necessary and natural likeness between G.o.d and man makes more solemnly sinful the voluntary unlikeness which we have brought upon ourselves. If there were no a.n.a.logy, there could be no contrast.

If G.o.d and man were utterly unlike, then there would be no evil in our unlikeness and no need for our repentance.

The true state for each of us is that we should, as the great astronomer said he had done in regard to his own science, 'think G.o.d's thoughts after Him,' and have our minds filled with His truth and our wills all harmonised with His purposes, and that we should thus make our ways to run parallel with the ways of G.o.d. The blessedness, the peace, the true manhood of a man, are that his ways and thoughts should be like G.o.d's. And so my text comes with its indictment--You who by nature were formed in His image, you to whom it is open to sympathise with His designs, to harmonise your wills with His will, and to bring all the dark and crooked ways in which you walk into full parallelism with His way--you have departed into darkness of unlikeness, and in thought and in ways are the opposites of G.o.d.

Mark how wonderfully, in the simple language of my text, deep truths about this sin of ours are conveyed. Notice its growth and order. It begins with a heart and mind that do not take in G.o.d's thoughts, truths, purposes, desires, and then the alienated will and the darkened understanding and the conscience which has closed itself against His imperative voice issue afterwards in conduct which He cannot accept as in any way corresponding with His. First comes the thought unreceptive of G.o.d's thought, and then follow ways contrary to G.o.d's ways.

Notice the profound truth here in regard to the essential and deepest evil of all our evil. '_Your_ thoughts'; '_your_ ways,'--self-dependence and self-confidence are the master-evils of humanity. And every sin is at bottom the result of saying--'I will not conform myself to G.o.d, but I am going to please myself, and take my own way.' My own way is never G.o.d's way; my own way is always the devil's way. And the root of all sin lies in these two strong, simple words, '_Your_ thoughts not Mine; _your_ ways not Mine.'

Notice, too, how there are suggested the misery and retribution of this unlikeness. 'If you will not make My thoughts your thoughts, I shall not take your ways as My ways. I will leave you to them.' 'You will be filled with the fruit of your own devices. I shall not incorporate your actions into My great scheme and purpose.' Men

'Would not know His ways, And He has left them to their own.'

So here we have the solemn indictment brought by G.o.d's own voice against us all. The criminality of our unlikeness to Him rests upon our original likeness.

The unlikeness roots itself in thought, and blossoms in the poisonous flower of G.o.d-displeasing acts. It brings down upon our heads the solemn retribution of separation from Him, and being filled with the fruit of our own devices. Such is the indictment brought against every soul of man upon the earth, and there is built upon it the call to repentance and change,' let the wicked forsake his _way_, and the unrighteous man his _thoughts_.' The question rises in many a heart, 'How am I to forsake these paths on which my feet have so longed walked?' And if I do, what about all the years behind me, full of wild wanderings and thoughts in all of which G.o.d was not?

II. The second verse of our text meets that despairing question. It proclaims the elevation of G.o.d's ways and thoughts above ours, and thereon bases the a.s.surance of pardon.

The relation is not only one of unlikeness and opposition, but it is also one of a.n.a.logy and superiority. The former clause began with thoughts which are the parents of ways, and, as befits the all-seeing Judge, laid bare first the hidden discord of man's heart and will, ere it pointed to the manifest antagonism of his doings. This clause begins with G.o.d's ways, from which alone men can reach the knowledge of His thoughts. The first follows the order of G.o.d's knowledge of man; the second, that of man's knowledge of G.o.d.

It is a wonderful and beautiful turn which the prophet here gives to the thought of the transcendent elevation of G.o.d. The heavens are the very type of the unattainable; and to say that they are 'higher than the earth' seems, at first sight, to be but to say, 'No man hath ascended into the heavens,' and you sinful men must grovel here down upon your plain, whilst they are far above, out of your reach. But the heavens bend. They are an arch, and not a straight line. They touch the horizon; and there come from them the sweet influences of sunshine and of rain, of dew and of blessing, which bring fertility. So they are not only far and unattainable, but friendly and beneficent, and communicative of good. Like them, in true a.n.a.logy but yet infinite superiority to the best and n.o.blest in man, is the boundless mercy of our pardoning G.o.d:

'The glorious sky, embracing all, Is like its Maker's love, Wherewith encompa.s.sed, great and small In peace and order move.'

'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways.' _The_ special 'thought' and 'way' which is meant here is G.o.d's thought and way about sin. There are three points here on which I would touch for a moment. First, G.o.d's way of dealing with sin is lifted up above all human example. There is such a thing as pardoning mercy amongst men. It is a faint a.n.a.logy of, as it is an offshoot from, the divine pardon, but all the forgivingness of the most placable and long-suffering and gladly pardoning of men is but as earth to heaven compared with the greatness of His. Our forgiveness has its limitations. We sometimes cannot pardon as freely as we thought, because there blends with our indignation against evil a pa.s.sionate personal sense of wrong done to us which we cannot get rid of, and that disturbs the freeness and the joyfulness of many a human pardon. But G.o.d's pardon is undisturbed and hindered by any sense of personal resentment, though sin is an offense against Him, and in its freeness, its fulness, its frequency, and its sovereign power to melt away that which it forgives, it towers above the loftiest of earth's beauties of forgiveness, as the starry heavens do above the flat plain.

G.o.d's pardon is above all human example, even though, having once been received by us, it ought to become for us the pattern by which we shape and regulate our own lives. Nothing of which we have any experience in ourselves or in others is more than as a drop to the ocean compared with the absolute fulness and perfect freeness and unwearied frequency of His forgiveness. 'He will abundantly pardon.' He will multiply pardon. 'With Him there is plenteous redemption.' We think we have stretched the elasticity of long suffering and forgiveness further than we might have been reasonably expected to do if seven times we forgive the erring brother, but G.o.d's measure of pardon is seventy times seven, two perfectnesses multiplied into themselves perfectly; for the measure of His forgiveness is boundless, and there is no searching of the depths of His pardoning mercy. You cannot weary Him out, you cannot exhaust it. It is full at the end as at the beginning; and after all its gifts still it remains true, 'With Him is the multiplying of redemption.'

Again, G.o.d's way of dealing with sin surpa.s.ses all our thought. All religion has been pressed with this problem, how to harmonise the perfect rect.i.tude of the divine nature and the solemn claims of law with forgiveness. All religions have borne witness to the fact that men are dimly aware of the discord and dissonance between themselves and the divine thoughts and ways; and a thousand altars proclaim to us how they have felt that something must be done in order that forgiveness might be possible to an all-righteous and Sovereign Judge. The Jew knew that G.o.d was a pardoning G.o.d, but to him that fact stood as needing much explanation and much light to be thrown upon its relations with the solemn law under which he lived. We have Jesus Christ. The mystery of forgiveness is solved, in so far as it is capable of solution, in Him and in Him alone. His death somewhat explains how G.o.d is just and the Justifier of him that believeth. High above man's thoughts this great central mystery of the Gospel rises, that with G.o.d there is forgiveness and with G.o.d there is perfect righteousness. The Cross as the basis of pardon is the central mystery of revelation; and it is not to be expected that our theories shall be able to sound the depths of that great act of the divine love. Perhaps our plummets do not go to the bottom of the bottomless after all; but is it needful that we should have gone to the rim of the heavens, and round about it on the outside, before we rejoice in the sunshine? Is it needful that we should have traversed the abysses of the heavens, and pa.s.sed from star to star and told their numbers, before we can say that they are bright, or before we can walk in their light? We do not need to understand the 'how' in order to be sure of the fact that Christ's death is our forgiveness. Do not be in such a hurry as some people are nowadays, to declare that the doctrine of the Cross is contrary to man's conceptions. It _surpa.s.ses_ them, and the very fact that it surpa.s.ses ought to stop us from p.r.o.nouncing that it _contradicts_. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My thoughts higher than your thoughts.'

Lastly, we are taught here that G.o.d's way of dealing with sin is the very highest point of His self-revelation. There are many glories of the divine nature set forth in all His ways, but the loftiest of them all is this, that He can neutralise and destroy the fact of man's transgressing, wiping it out by pardon; and in the very act of pardon reconst.i.tuting in purity, and with a heart for all holiness, the sinful men whom He forgives. This is the shining apex of all that He has done, rising above creation and every other 'way' of His, as high as the loftiest heavens are above the earth.

Therefore, have a care of all forms of Christianity which do not put G.o.d's pardoning mercy in the foreground. They are maimed, and in them mist and cloud have covered with a roof of doleful grey the low-lying earth, and separated it from the highest heavens. The true glory of the revelation of G.o.d gathers round that central Cross; and there, in that Man dying upon it in the dark--the sacrifice for a world's sin--is the loftiest, most heavenly revelation of the all-revealing G.o.d. Strike out the Cross from Christianity, or weaken its aspect as a message of forgiveness and redemption, and you have quenched its brightest light, and dragged it down to be but a little higher, if any, than many another scheme of other moralists, philosophers, poets, and religious teachers. The distinctive glory of Christianity is this--it tells us how G.o.d sweeps away sin.

And so my last thought is that, if we desire to see up on the highest heavens of G.o.d's character, we must go down into the depths of the consciousness of our own sin, and learn first, how unlike our ways and thoughts are to G.o.d, ere we can understand how high above us, and yet beneficently arching over us, are His ways and thoughts to us. We lie beneath the heavens like some foul bog full of black ooze, rotten earth and putrid water, where there is nothing green or fair. But the promise of the bending heavens, with their sweet influences, declares the possibility of reclaiming even that waste, and making it rejoice and blossom as the rose. Spread yourselves out, dear friends, in lowly submission and penitent acknowledgment beneath the all-vivifying mercy of that shining heaven of G.o.d's pardon; and then the old promise will be fulfilled in you: 'Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven; yea, the Lord shall give that which is good, and our land'--barren and poisoned as it has been--responding to the skyey influences, 'shall yield her increase.'

WE SURE OF TO-MORROW? A NEW YEAR'S SERMON

'To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.'--ISAIAH lvi.

12.

These words, as they stand, are the call of boon companions to new revelry. They are part of the prophet's picture of a corrupt age when the men of influence and position had thrown away their sense of duty, and had given themselves over, as aristocracies and plutocracies are ever tempted to do, to mere luxury and good living. They are summoning one another to their coa.r.s.e orgies. The roystering speaker says, 'Do not be afraid to drink; the cellar will hold out. To-day's carouse will not empty it; there will be enough for to-morrow.' He forgets to-morrow's headaches; he forgets that on some tomorrow the wine will be finished; he forgets that the fingers of a hand may write the doom of the rioters on the very walls of the banqueting chamber.

What have such words, the very motto of insolent presumption and short-sighted animalism, to do with New Year's thoughts? Only this, that base and foolish as they are on such lips, it is possible to lift them from the mud, and take them as the utterance of a lofty and calm hope which will not be disappointed, and of a firm and lowly resolve which may enn.o.ble life. Like a great many other sayings, they may fit the mouth either of a sot or of a saint. All depends on what the things are which we are thinking about when we use them. There are things about which it is absurd and worse than absurd to say this, and there are things about which it is the soberest truth to say it. So looking forward into the merciful darkness of another year, we may regard these words as either the expressions of hopes which it is folly to cherish, or of hopes that it is reasonable to entertain.

I. This expectation, if directed to any outward things, is an illusion and a dream.

These coa.r.s.e revellers into whose lips our text is put only meant by it to brave the future and defy to-morrow in the riot of their drunkenness. They show us the vulgarest, lowest form which the expectation can take, a form which I need say nothing about now.

But I may just note in pa.s.sing that to look forward princ.i.p.ally as antic.i.p.ating pleasure or enjoyment is a very poor and unworthy thing.

We weaken and lower every day, if we use our faculty of hope mainly to paint the future as a scene of delights and satisfactions. We spoil to-day by thinking how we can turn it to the account of pleasure. We spoil to-morrow before it comes, and hurt ourselves, if we are more engaged with fancying how it will minister to our joy, than how we can make it minister to our duty. It is base and foolish to be forecasting our pleasures; the true temper is to be forecasting our work.

But, leaving that consideration, let us notice how useless such antic.i.p.ation, and how mad such confidence, as that expressed in the text is, if directed to anything short of G.o.d.

We are so const.i.tuted as that we grow into a persuasion that what has been will be, and yet we can give no sufficient reason to ourselves of why we expect it. 'The uniformity of the course of nature is the corner-stone, not only of physical science, but, in a more homely form, of the wisdom which grows with experience, We all believe that the sun will rise to-morrow because it rose to-day, and on all the yesterdays.

But there was a today which had no yesterday, and there will be a to-day which will have no to-morrow. The sun will rise for the last time. The uniformity had a beginning and will have an end.

So, even as an axiom of thought, the antic.i.p.ation that things will continue as they have been because they have been, seems to rest on an insufficient basis. How much more so, as to our own little lives and their surroundings! There the only thing which we may be quite sure of about to-morrow is that it will not be 'as this day.' Even for those of us who may have reached, for example, the level plateau of middle life, where our position and tasks are pretty well fixed, and we have little more to expect than the monotonous repet.i.tion of the same duties recurring at the same hour every day--even for such each day has its own distinctive character. Like a flock of sheep they seem all alike, but each, on closer inspection, reveals a physiognomy of its own. There will be so many small changes that even the same duties or enjoyments will not be quite the same, and even if the outward things remained absolutely unaltered, we who meet them are not the same. Little variations in mood and tone, diminished zest here, weakened power there, other thoughts breaking in, and over and above all the slow, silent change wrought on us by growing years, make the perfect reproduction of any past impossible. So, however familiar may be the road which we have to traverse, however uneventfully the same our days may sometimes for long s.p.a.ces in our lives seem to be, though to ourselves often our day's work may appear as a mill-horse round, yet in deepest truth, if we take into account the whole sum of the minute changes in it and in us, it may be said of each step of our journey, 'Ye have not pa.s.sed this way heretofore.'

But, besides all this, we know that these breathing-times when 'we have no changes,' are but pauses in the storm, landing-places in the ascent, the inters.p.a.ces between the shocks. However hope may tempt us to dream that the future is like the present, a deeper wisdom lies in all our souls which says 'No.' Drunken bravery may front that darkness with such words as these of our text, but the least serious spirit, in its most joyous moods, never quite succeeds in forgetting the solemn probabilities, possibilities, and certainties which lodge in the unknown future. So to a wise man it is ever a sobering exercise to look forward, and we shall be nearest the truth if we take due account, as we do today, of the undoubted fact that the only thing certain about to-morrow is that it will not be as this day.

There are the great changes which come to some one every day, which may come to any of us any day, which will come to all of us some day. Some of us will die this year; on a day in our new diaries some of us will make no entry, for we shall be gone. Some of us will be smitten down by illness; some of us will lose our dearest; some of us will lose fortune. Which of us it is to be, and where within these twelve months the blow is to fall, are mercifully hidden. The only thing that we certainly know is that these arrows will fly. The thing we do not know is whose heart they will pierce. This makes the gaze into the darkness grave and solemn. There is ever something of dread in Hope's blue eyes.

True, the ministry of change is blessed and helpful; true, the darkness which hides the future is merciful and needful, if the present is not to be marred. But helpful and merciful as they are, they invest the unknown to-morrow with a solemn power which it is good, though sobering, for us to feel, and they silence on every lip but that of riot and foolhardy debauchery the presumptuous words, 'To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.'

II. But yet there is a possibility of so using the words as to make them the utterance of a sober certainty which will not be put to shame.

So long as our hope and antic.i.p.ations creep along the low levels of earth, and are concerned with external and creatural good, their language can never rise beyond, 'To-morrow _may_ be as this day.'

Oftenest they reach only to the height of the wistful wish, 'May it be as this day!' But there is no need for our being tortured with such slippery possibilities. We may send out our hope like Noah's dove, not to hover restlessly over a heaving ocean of change, but to light on firm, solid certainty, and fold its wearied wings there. Forecasting is ever close by foreboding. Hope is interwoven with fear, the golden threads of the weft crossing the dark ones of the warp, and the whole texture gleaming bright or glooming black according to the angle at which it is seen. So is it always until we turn our hope away from earth to G.o.d, and fill the future with the light of His presence and the certainty of His truth. Then the mists and doubts roll away; we get above the region of 'perhaps' into that of 'surely'; the future is as certain as the past, hope as a.s.sured of its facts as memory, prophecy as veracious as history.