Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2459
Isaiah 26:20. Come, my people, enter into your chamber, and shut your doors about you: hide yourself, as it were, for a little moment, until the indignation is past. There is never a flood for the wicked without an ark for the righteous! Never shall a storm sweep over the earth till God has prepared a great rock wherein His people may be hidden.
21. For, behold, the LORD comes out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain. The earth has often covered up the evidences of human guilt. Blood shed in battle has soaked into the soil and men have forgotten the violence of tyrants and conquerors, but the earth shall disclose her blood. Sin, though it is sown in the earth, shall spring up like wheat, but to a terrible harvest. “Be sure your sin will find you out.”
Isaiah 27:1. In that day the LORD, with His sore and great and strong sword, shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent. That is to say, He will punish those who are like leviathan—the proudest, the greatest and the most powerful sinners shall not escape Divine Justice. God’s Laws are not like cobwebs, meant to catch the little flies while the great ones break through—He will strike leviathan—He will surely punish the mightiest sinners of the earth.
1. Even leviathan that crooked serpent. Hard to come at, difficult to find, he shall not escape the sword of the Lord.
1. And He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. If men should try to hide from God in Hell, itself, yet would He find them. There is no possibility that any offender shall escape His all-seeing eyes.
2, 3. In that day sing you unto her, A vineyard of red wine. I the LORD do keep it; I will water it every moment; lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day. Thus the Lord reveals the tenderness of His love to His Church. Then follows a remarkable passage in which, it seems to me, we have the plan of salvation plainly set out. First, here is man at enmity with his Maker.
4. Fury is not in Me: who would set the briers and thorns against Me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together. Men who are at enmity with God little know how terrific is the force of His strength. They are like dry thorns when the fire catches them and nothing burns more readily. The bush upon the common, when some wild youth sets fire to it, suddenly blazes up, crackles and is gone—so will it be with the ungodly. God has but to go through them and they shall be destroyed. But now comes a message of mercy.
5. Or let him take hold of My strength. This is what the repenting and believing sinner does—he lays hold of Christ—he takes the strength of God to be his defense and then the strong God, instead of being a terror, becomes a comfort to him.
5, 6. That he may make peace with Me and he shall make peace with Me. He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root. Taking root should be well looked after by the Christian. Some professors have no root—they are all leaf and flower, but they have no root and, consequently, they soon wither and die. Happy is that man who is rooted and grounded in the faith!
6, 7. Israel shall bloom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. Has He struck Israel as He struck those that struck him? No. God strikes His people, but He never strikes them as He does their enemies. He strikes His people, as old Trapp says, with the palm of His hand, as a man may strike His child, but He strikes His enemies with His fist, as one would dash His foe to the ground! There is a great difference between the chastisements of God’s people and the righteous judgments that fall upon the wicked.
7, 8. Or is Israel slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by Him? In measure, when it shoots forth, You will debate with it. God always chastens His people in measure. He makes a debate about it. He weighs their troubles in scales and their sorrows in balances.
8, He stays His rough wind in the day of the east wind. He never sends too many troubles at a time. If the east wind is blowing, He does not send His rough wind. We have much to thank God for, that He times our troubles. Had they come an hour before, they might have been too much for us. Had they been kept back a week longer, they might have overthrown us. God knows when to chasten His people and He will always chasten them at the right time.
9, By this, therefore, shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin. When one of the old Puritans was afflicted with a very painful disease—perhaps the most painful to which flesh is heir—he kept crying out, “The use, Lord? The use, Lord? Show me the use of it.” This should be the point at which the Christian should always aim.
9. When he makes all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up. You see, the Israelites had piled up stones and held them in veneration. But when God brought them back to Himself, they counted those stones to be but as common chalkstones of the valley. It is a good thing for us, when our sins bring us no pleasure, when they are only like common stones of the street. When we break our images and dash down our idol gods, we show that we prize them no longer. The Lord make this to be the issue of all our trials! Then will we bless Him for our troubles as for our chief mercies.