Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 610
“O that you had hearkened to My commandments! Then your peace would ha ve been like a river and your righteousness as the waves of the sea.” Isaiah 48:18.
FROM this verse we may learn that when God smites men on account of sin it gives Him no pleasure. The voice which speaks is not that of the seraphic Prophet, but it is the voice of the Lord God of the prophets Himself. The manner is not merely the majestic formula, “Thus says Jehovah,” but it is supplemented with words intended to remind us of His graciousness and His goodwill. “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,” He who rescued you from perils past, “the Holy One of Israel,” the faithful Promiser, who has shown you His counsels and His statutes. Moreover, He challenges attention with more simple, touching mementoes of His kindness when He adds, “I am the Lord your God which teaches you to profit, which leads you by the way that you should go.”
As the Instructor of their childhood and the Guide of their riper years, He first expresses the most natural interest in their welfare and then pitifully bewails the folly of His children. Speaking after the manner of men, to chasten His own people is a pain and a grief to His heart—“Like as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him.” John Knox said that he never chastised his children without tears in his own eyes. Jeremiah, in the bitterest chapter of his unparalleled Lamentations, bears this grateful witness to our Covenant God—“He does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.”
And surely if in the gentler chastisement of His hands the Most High takes no pleasure, much less can He find delight in that withering curse which destroys the finally impenitent. Beloved, the eternal torment of men is no joy to God! The ruin of a sinner gives Him no satisfaction. While the calamity is such as He only can estimate, the warnings, expostulations and entreaties He has spoken furnish proof upon proof of His pity. Hear His own words, no, listen as He swears, listen to His own oath—“As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.”
Not vengeance, but mercy—to kiss the returning prodigal! To wash the feet of the guilty sinner! To press the rebel to His bosom and to adopt Him into His family—this is happiness to God! When, therefore, He rises to judgment and pronounces the fearful sentence, “Depart, you cursed,” and casts down the transgressor to Hell and delivers him over to the tormentors—though He vindicates the justice of His Throne, it is—“His strange work, to bring to pass His act, His strange act.”
Even the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction have experience of God’s longsuffering. How tardily He puts off the time! How often He tarries before He inflicts the stroke! How He hides His power while He unfolds His patience! He refrains the fierceness of His anger because He is “God, and not man!” “How shall I give you up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver you, Israel? How shall I make you as Admah? How shall I set you as Zeboim? My heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together.”
Let me appeal to you then, my Hearers, those of you who have entertained hard thoughts of God—correct them now—banish them from your breasts tonight! You may take pleasure in the damnation of your fellow men—my God has no such pleasure! You may find gratification in your sins, but He grieves over them, for as He sees your course, He foresees your end! Nor is this the only lesson which lays on the surface of the text. Still speaking after the manner of men, I beg you to observe that the Lord addresses words of poignant regret over the prize the sinner has lost, as well as the penalty he has incurred.
So did Jesus Christ look upon Jerusalem. Musing on the desolation to which she should shortly come, He reflected on the preservation in which she might have safely stood. Just as little chickens cluster under the hen’s wings, nestling there in genial warmth and peaceful security, so might Israel have found prosperity in her own borders and protection against foreign invaders under the shadow of the wings of the Lord God Almighty. You remember how He burst into tears? Can you ever forget that cry of His, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the Prophets and stone them which are sent unto you, how often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings and you would not”?
Such, too, are the words of my text—words which I pray God may rouse your thoughts and be engraved deeply on your hearts. God looks upon the “peace” you might enjoy and the “righteousness” that would enrich you—if you would just hearken to His commandments and obey His great mandate, “Believe and live.” He sees you afar off from peace! He beholds what you cannot yet discern—the clouds gathering round your head. It may be you feel in a dead calm. He utters this pathetic exclamation, “O that you had hearkened to My commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river and your righteousness as the waves of the sea.”