Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1984
“Cease you from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for of what account is he?” Isaiah 2:22.
MAN, especially since the Fall, is a very unspiritual creature. His disposition is animal. He is made up, as the old writers used to say, of soul and soil. Alas, the soil terribly soils his soul! “My soul cleaves to the dust” might be the confession of every man in one sense or another. We bear the image of the first Adam, who was of the earth, earthy—and earthy enough are we.
One consequence of the prevailing materialism of our corrupt nature is our craving for something tangible, audible, visible, as the object of our confidence. We need something which can be touched, heard, seen, or felt—we cannot be content with that which appeals only to the soul or the spirit. It seems as if man is so unspiritual that he cannot believe in a spiritual God and yet, any other than a spiritual God is an absurdity! Man cannot see God, therefore he will not trust in Him. He cannot hear His voice, therefore he will not attend to the movement of the Holy Spirit upon his soul. Humanity is carnal, sold under sin, infected with idolatry—and this fact remains true, in a measure, even of the regenerate. Their old nature is not other than it was, save that it is held in check by the new nature. So long as sin remains in us—and this will be so long as we are in this body—our tendency will be to be weary of God, who is a Spirit and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. We seek after something to worship, something to love, something to rely upon which is so near akin to the coarser part of our nature that we may commune with it through the senses. It is sad that it should be so, but it has always been so throughout the history of man—and sad traces of it are to be seen, even, in the history of God’s own Church.
Man is by nature an idolater. Under the most favorable circumstances he flies to his idols, even as the dog seeks after carrion, or the vulture hastens to its prey. The Lord’s people, Israel, were delivered out of Egypt with a high hand and with an outstretched arm. And by many signs and tokens, God’s Presence among them was abundantly certified. This was a noble beginning. The circumstances which afterwards surrounded them were especially helpful. They were placed in the wilderness where, if they lived at all, they must live through the special protection and provision of God, for they reaped no harvests and they gathered into no barns. The bread they ate fell from Heaven! The water they drank came from a Rock which had been smitten by command of God through the rod of Moses. All day long they were sheltered from the burning sun by a canopy of clouds. And at night the canvas city was made bright with that same canopy turned into a flame of fire! They were alone in the wilderness and apart—shut out from the rest of the world—surrounded, as it were, by the Lord, Himself, who was a wall of fire round about them and the Glory in their midst.
Nothing could have been more favorable for faith in God. Yet they must have a god that they can see! “Make us gods to go before us,” they cried with such furious clamor that Aaron yielded to their evil desires and made them the image of an ox. Behold the people of God, whom He had brought out of Egypt, bowing before the image of an ox that eats grass—an image which Moses, in sarcasm, styled a calf! They turned the Glory of the invisible God into that of a brute beast and said—“These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” Then they degraded themselves and laid their manhood prostrate on the ground in adoration of the image of a bull. How is humanity fallen!
For century after century this was always the tendency of Israel, the most spiritual race of men upon the face of the earth. This race, educated by miracle and instructed by Revelation, continually went aside after the gods of the heathen! Abraham, among his own descendants after the flesh, had few who were like he in his high spiritual faith. The world of spiritual realities seems to be too bright, too holy for the best of such gross and carnal beings as we are.
The people of Isaiah’s day were like the rest of their race—they showed their unspiritualness and their inability to walk in the light of the Lord by making their own wealth their chief confidence. We read at verse seven—“Their land is also full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures.” And then it is added, “Their land is also full of idols.” Alas, this idolatry of wealth is common among God’s people even at this day! “Give us this day our daily bread” is a prayer which falls far short of the general desires even of Christian people! Our demands are for luxuries—and plenty of them. Many would be coming down very terribly in the world if they had to receive from hand-to-mouth fashion— day by day their daily bread! Yet the Lord Jesus has put these words into our mouth. The Providence of God is, to some professing Christians, a mere dream—they cannot rest till they have something more substantial to rely upon than the care of Heaven. You think I am sarcastic? Is it not true? See how your professed Believers hunger to make sure of the main chance—as eagerly as the merest worldlings, they scrape and they hoard! I have not a word to say against that Scriptural prudence which bids us, like the ant, lay by in store for wintry times. But I speak of the hunger to be rich and of the selfish expenditure which entirely forgets that our substance is to be used for the Glory of God, and that we are only stewards. I ask again, do not many slave, hoard and grasp as if there were no promise in the Scriptures of temporal provision from God’s own right hand—and no exhortation to lay up our treasures in Heaven? Are we liars? Do we say that all that we are and have is the Lord’s—and do we, after saying this, live for ourselves as if there were no redemption and no hereafter? That there should be need for the preacher to raise such questions is an indication that there is a common tendency to worship wealth, or at least to regard it as a substantial support.