Sowing Disobedience, Reaping Judgment
Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man reyarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but 1 will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.” — i. 24-28.
IT sundry times and in divers manners, the Omniscient Witness of men’s wickedness has invited the evil doers to draw near, ere yet the judgment should be set and the books opened, that he may “reason together” with them on their state and prospects. One of those marvellous reasonings of the Judge with the criminal is recorded here.
I. God in mercy visits a rebellious generation. — Four terms are employed to describe this visit, and although they are arranged to suit the exigencies of Hebrew poetry, they follow each other in natural order, and issue in a climax. He calls, stretches out his hands, gives counsel, and administers reproof.
1. The call. — Men with one consent were departing from the living God. They had turned the back on him, and not the face. He does not leave himself without a witness, and he has many ways of uttering his voice. It is in the earthquake and in the storm: day unto day proclaims it, and night unto night: there is no speech nor language where it is not heard. Even where it3 only effect is to drive the scared culprit to superstitious observances, it has been heard, and the superstitious are accountable. The call has come with more distinct articulation from the lips of prophets and apostles. It sounds with authority in a human conscience. Whether men obey the call or disobey it, they are secretly conscious that the call has reached them, and are left without excuse.
2. The hands stretched out. — When the call has come and startled the prodigal; when the prodigal, aroused, looks toward the quarter whence the voice proceeds, lo, a Father whom he has offended is opening his arms wide to clasp the outcast in the embrace of an everlasting love (Isa. lxv. 1, 2). When busy men lift up their heads from the dust to which their souls are cleaving, and listen to the voice of God, they find out that He is not yet against them a consuming fire. His hands are outstretched: there is a way, and the way is open unto the Father. There is no obstruction: there is no forbidding: there is no upbraiding. Chief sinners are even now entering in. Behold, they are arising and going to the Father. They are converging frequent and swift, as doves to their windows. They are neither kept back nor thrust down among hired servants; they are welcomed as sons and daughters; they are made heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; their sins are remembered no more.
3. The counsel. — Some who have heard the call and lifted up their heads and looked, and seen the door of mercy open, are glad, and take encouragement to continue a little longer far from God and righteousness. They see the arms of mercy stretched out all day long, although a people continue disobedient. Seeing this, they secretly feel, if they do not venture to say, that there is no cause for alarm. The door will remain open to-day, and to-morrow, and the next day: we shall run in before it be shut. What does God do for these deceivers 1 He does not let them alone: He counsels them: “Flee to the stronghold, prisoners of hope;” “Wherefore spend ye your money for that which is not bread ]” “Come unto me, ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” If they resist still, will He shut the door now, and shut them out 1 No, not yet: He will administer,
4. Reproof. — Mercy interposes with the plea, Let them alone yet this once. There is One yearning over the callous, who have no mercy on their own souls. “How can I give thee up 1” He remembers mercy, and makes judgment stand back. He makes judgment his strange work, not permitting it to appear early or often to strike the decisive blow. He has yet another resource: when counsel is despised, He will bring forward reproof: if they will not be enticed by the promise of heaven, He will threatoo them with the fear of hell. “The wicked shall be turned into heil, and all the nations that forget God.” “Except ye repent, ye shall perish.” “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Inconceivably great is the weight of that wrath which is treasured up against the day of wrath, to be poured all on the impenitent then; but that reserved wrath is not left meantime lying useless in its treasure-house. Everlasting love needs a strong hard instrument wherewith to work out her blessed purposes on an unpliant race; and mercy, in this the day of her reign, sovereignly seizing judgment before its time, works that mighty lever to move mankind. The terrors of the Lord are not permitted to sleep unnoticed and unknown, till the day when they shall overflow and overwhelm all his enemies: they are summoned forth in the interval, and numbered among the all things that work together for good. Though kept like a reserve in the rear, their grim hosts are exposed to view, in order that they may co-operate with kindlier agencies in persuading men to yield, and fight against God no more. “Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.” Kindly plies the sweet promise next to a wounded heart: but the gentle promise is backed by a terrible reproof: Cast out — there it is; judgment looming in reserve; serving meantime by its blackness to make the invitation more winning; but there, unchangeable, omnipotent, to receive on its awful edge the crowds that rush reckless over the intervening day of grace, and fall into the hands of the living God.
He suffers long, and pleads: but even in Him compassions will not, cannot further flow. He calls, stretches out his hands, counsels, and, when men still refuse, He makes the threat of wrath mercy’s instrument to compass them about, and compel them to come in: but He stops there. God will not put forth a band to lift a man to heaven in his sleep; or drag him in against his will When counsel and reproof are rejected, then “there remaineth nothing but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversary.” Those who withstand all these means and messages, will be left like Esau without the blessing. “He cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, oh, my father:” but the time was past, and the door was shut.
IL A rebellions generation neglect or resist the gracious visitation of God. — “I have called, and ye refused: I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded: ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof.” This is an appalling indictment uttered by the God of truth. Who are the guilty? “Lord, is it I? Lord, is it 1 1”
“He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith.” Men have ears and stop them. The Lord made the ear of man, and a wonderful work it is; strange that it should be open to every voice but the entreaty of its Maker. In times when vile men held the high places of this land, a roll of drums was employed to drown the martyr’s voice, lest the testimony of truth from the scaffold should reach the people. Thus they closed the ears of the multitude against the voice of the servants: not by a roll of drums at a single tyrant’s bidding, but by a strong deep hum of business, kept up through common consent, is the ear closed now against the Master’s own word. So constant is the noise of Mammon, humming day and night, that the partial silence of the Sabbath is felt an unwelcome pause. As arts advance, and more is crammed into the six days, so much the more eager are Mammon’s worshippers to fill the Sabbath with the same confused noise. The word says, “Be still, and know that I am God:” those who don’t want this knowledge are afraid to be still, lest it should steal in and disturb their peace. God’s mighty hand sometimes interferes to quiet this hubbub in a heart, or a house. It is when the inmates are compelled to go about the house with whispers, that his voice is best heard. I know of nothing more fitted to touch a conscience than this tender complaint from our Judge. He stretched out his hands: no man regarded. What then 1 He complains of the neglect, and addresses his complaint to the neglecters. Here is mercy full, pressed down, and running over. He whom men reject, pleads with men for rejecting him. When he so stretched out himself to us, how shall we answer if we turn our back on Him?
III. They shall eat the fruit of their own ways, and be filled with tkdr own devices. — This life is the spring time of our immortal being; the harvest is eternity. Harvest is not the time for sowing; we shall reap then what we sow now. This law is of God and it is like the laws by which He regulates all nature. If a man sow tares or thistles in his field in spring, it is probable that a bitter regret will seize upon him in the harvest day. He will loathe the worthless crop that he gets to fill his bosom; but he cannot, by a sudden and energetic wish, change all the laws of nature, and make his field wave with ripened grain. Aa certainly as a husbandman in harvest reaps only what he sowed in spring, shall they who in life sow sin, reap wrath in the judgment. The provisions of his covenant are steadfast as the laws of his world. His promises are sure as the ordinances of heaven, and his threatenings too.
It is true that God destroys his enemies: but it is also true that they destroy themselves. They throw themselves into the fire, and by his laws they are burned. He has laws that are everlasting and unchangeable; and He has not hidden them from men: He has plainly declared them. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Those who cast themselves on revealed wrath are their own destroyers. These outstretched hands of his are clear of a sinners blood.
Judgment will be an exact answer to disobedience, as fruit answers the seed, or an echo the sound. The strictness of retribution at last will correspond to the freeness of mercy now. There would be no glory in God’s present compassion, if it had not the full terror of immutable justice behind it to lean upon. Even the divine longsuffering would lose its loveliness if it did not stand in front of divine wrath. You cannot paint an angel upon light: so mercy could not be represented — mercy could not be, unless there were judgment without mercy, a ground of deep darkness lying beneath, to sustain and reveal it. That there may be a day of grace pushed forward within the reach of men on earth, there must be a’throne of judgment as its base in eternity. When the day of grace is past, the throne of judgment stands alone, and the impenitent must meet it.
The anguish comes first within the conscience of the ungodly, when the life course is drawing near its close. Desolation comes like a whirlwind. The body is drooping: the grave is opening: the judgment is preparing. He has no righteousness, and no hope. Behold now the prospect before the immortal, when death, like a rising wave, has blotted out the beams of mercy that lingered to the last. It is now the blackness of darkness. Hope, that flickered long, has gone out at length. And how rigidly strict must the retribution be! They would not hear God in the day of mercy: in the day of vengeance God will not hear them. They laughed at His threatenings: He will mock their cry. This reciprocity is the law of his kingdom: it cannot be changed.
Let those who live without God in the world mark what it is that He counts the heaviest retribution upon sin: it is this — “They shall call upon me, but I will not answer.” When, groping darkling on the shore of eternity, they cry in terror, “0 God, where art Thou ]” only their own voice, mocking, will return from the abyss, “Where art thou?” A man’s life has a language which the Judge understands. The life utterance of the carnal, when divested of all its pretences, and gathered into one, is, “No God!” That concentrated, intensified expression, issuing forth from time, has generated an echo in the receptive expanse of eternity. That echo meets the entrant on the border; and conscience, not clouded now, is constrained to acknowledge it a truthful answer to the essence of his life. It is a fruit exactly after the kind of the seed which he had sown. “No God!” was the meaning of his course in time: “No God!” rebounding from the judgment-seat, at once fixes his place for eternity, and proclaims that it is the fruit of his own doing. Consider this, ye who live for your own pleasure, and leave the long-suffering Saviour stretching out his hands to you all day in vain: your life, thrown up, a sullen, bold, defiant no, from you to God in the day of his mercy, will rebound from the throne a no unchangeable, eternal, from God to you in the day of your need. Reciprocity runs through. When mercy was sovereign, mercy used judgment for carrying out mercy’s ends: when mercy’s reign is over, and judgment’s reign begins, then judgment will sovereignly take mercy past and wield it to give weight to the vengeance stroke.
This terror of the Lord in eternity is clearly set forth in time, with the gracious design of persuading men to flee to the hope set before them.
At the close of this line of terrors there is a sweet and gentle word. It is a Father’s voice, this still small voice that speaks when the storm and the thunders have passed by: “Whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from the fear of evil.” A safe dwelling-place! There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. No plague shall come nigh them there. One would think this is enough. Himself our everlasting portion, if now we yield unto Him; and a rest remaineth for the people of God. Enough, indeed: sinners saved could not of themselves expect more: but He provides and promises more. He will give them not only deliverance from death at last, but freedom from fear now; safety from evil to come, and safety from the apprehension of its coming; justification at the throne of God, and peace within the conscience. When Christ came to work deliverance for all his own, he expressly provided both these blessings. It is not only to deliver them from death by receiving himself its sting but also to deliver them from that fear of death, which otherwise would have held them all their lifetime subject to bondage (Heb. ii. 15). “Godliness is profitable unto all things.” Eternal life secure in the world to come casts a beam of bright hope across, sufficient to quiet the anxieties of a fainting, fluttering heart, in all the dangers of the journey through. For his Redeemed Israel, who have already passed over the divided sea, he has provided a safe dwelling-place beyond the Jordan; and under the shade of the Almighty, the pilgrims, even iii the wilderness, will be quiet from the fear of evil.