Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 444
Isaiah 47:14.
THIS text is part of a terrible description of God’s judgment upon Babylon and Chaldea. The Prophet had clearly written out the indictment of the Lord against that tyrannical people, and having proved their guilt he pronounces their sentence. He accused them of showing no mercy to the inheritance of the Lord which, in His wrath, He had given into their hands. He charges them with pride and boastfulness, for Chaldea had said in her heart, “I am and there is none beside me.” And Babylon had boasted, “I shall be a lady forever. I shall see no sorrow.”
He testifies against their over-boldness and presumption. For they were given to pleasures and lived carelessly, expecting no ill. Thus said the Prophet, speaking in the name of the Lord, “You have trusted in your wickedness: you have said, None sees me. Your wisdom and your knowledge, it has perverted you. And you have said in your heart, I am and none else beside me.” On account of these iniquities the destruction of Chaldea and Babylon was to be sudden, terrible and complete.
They were to be so utterly destroyed, that there should not be one single comfortable rejection connected with their state. There should be a fire to consume but none to warm at. The burning should not be as when wood crackles in the flame, when glowing ashes or a charred log may be left, but they should be as stubble, utterly consumed, without vestige or remembrance. How to the very letter this has been fulfilled let the modern discoveries of our great travelers tell.
We want no better evidence of the truthfulness and Divinity of Scripture than that which is furnished by prophecies which have been fulfilled in lands concerning which we had no knowledge until of late. In the good Providence of God there have been dug out from mounds of rubbish and heaps of decayed matter, slabs and stones, bearing in their carvings and inscriptions, the most wonderful proofs what the Lord has said and has fulfilled—what He has spoken has come to pass. O virgin daughter of Babylon! You have been made to sit on the ground. There is no throne—O daughter of the Chaldeans! You are no more tender and delicate, but your nakedness is uncovered and your shame is seen. Sit silently and get into darkness, O daughter of Chaldea, for you shall no more be called the lady of kingdoms.
It is a truth beyond dispute, that God’s justice is not partial. That the description of the destruction which He awards to one class of sinners is a most fair picture of what He will do with others, for God has two or three ways of dealing with men in His justice. He has not many different weights and measures, for these things are an abomination unto the Lord. He lays righteousness to the line and judgment to the plummet and He awards vengeance unto impenitent men by an established and an invariable rule. So, then, the ruin of Chaldea is to us, today, a representation and metaphorical description of the destruction which shall surely come upon impenitent sinners in that day when the Lord comes out of His place to judge His enemies and to rid Himself of His adversaries.
It is with great trembling of heart that I come to this subject this morning. I have preached to you, lo, these many months in this Tabernacle and I have delighted most to lift up my Master’s Cross and to speak of the sufficiency of His blood and of the fullness and freeness of His Divine Grace. But there are times when the Lord’s hand lies upon us, and we cannot refuse to speak of His terrible things in judgment. I feel today somewhat like the Apostle when he said, “Knowing therefore the terror of Lord, we persuade men … as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s place, be you reconciled to God.”
We believe that the Lord would not have said so much about the terrible things of His Law and justice in Scrip-ture—for He has said more about them than any other subject, except the Cross—if it had not been that there is a healthy use to be made of the vengeance which the Lord executes upon the wicked. It will be both for the benefit of the righteous and for the awakening of the ungodly, sometimes to thunder out the sentence of the Lord. Be it, therefore, known unto you, O sons of men, that Ebal and Gerizim still stand, both the blessing and the curse—and either the one or the other must be yours.
To look at our text at first sight, the figures seem contradictory, for the first metaphor is, “They shall be as stubble. The fire shall burn them. They shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame.” But the next figure is apparently opposite to it—“It shall not be a coal to be warmed by, nor a fire to sit before.” We shall first take the first figure and then the second. And thirdly, we shall close by endeavoring to dwell upon that important word with which the verse begins, which is put there like a hand in the margin to draw our attention to it, put there as a sort of signal hung out from Heaven to tell us that there is something here upon which we ought to meditate with attention—I mean the word “Behold”!