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I. THE DIVINE COMMAND. God demands the glory which is his due (ver. 8). His claim is based on:

1. What he is in himself. "I am the Lord (Jehovah); that is my Name." As the Eternal One, who only hath immortality, the Underived and Everlasting One, who in the very fullest, deepest, and highest sense is God over all, he rightly demands our reverence, our homage, our worship.

2. What he has done for our race. He has "created the heavens," etc. (ver. 5). He is the Divine Author of our own human spirits, the Divine Originator of all material things, the Divine Giver of all surrounding comforts. As the Father of our souls and as the Source of all our good of every kind, God righteously demands our thought, our gratitude, our love, our service.

II. OUR GUILTY REFUSAL. Of whatever crimes, or vices, or follies we are guiltless, there is one sin which we must all acknowledge - we have not rendered unto our God "the glory due unto his Name." "The God in whose hand our breath is, and whose are all our ways, we have not glorified" as we might have done and should have done. In this matter all, even the best, have "come short" (Romans 3:23). The great multitudes of mankind have been sadly and guiltily negligent, and we have had to pay -

III. THE PENALTY OF OUR GUILT. This penalty is very severe; it is manifold; it comprises:

1. Forfeiture of the Divine favour.

2. Fear of final condemnation and banishment from the Father's presence.

3. The various ills and evils, including sickness, and sorrow, and death, which befall us here.

4. Spiritual deterioriation. This is, perhaps, the saddest and most serious part of our penalty. He that sins against God "wrongs his own soul;" he dyes that which inflicts on himself most grievous wounds; his own soul suffers harm, the extent and the pitifulness of which no mind can measure, no words express. The text (ver. 7) points to two of these spiritual evils.

(1) Mental blindness. The commission of any sin has a far worse result than that of enfeebling bodily health or injuring the circumstances of a man. It clouds his mind; it dulls his spiritual apprehension; he gradually loses his power of distinguishing between what is right and wrong, pure and impure, reverent and profane, kind and unkind, true and false. Ultimately his vision is confused, and mental obliquity takes the place of clear perception. "His eye is evil, and his whole body is full of darkness;" he "calls good evil, and evil good;" he has "blind eyes" (ver. 7).

(2) Bondage of the soul. Sin leads down to servitude - to a bondage of which all bodily slaveries and imprisonments are only types and shadows. For, to be held in the bars of a spiritual captivity, of an unholy lust. of a depraved habit, of an irresistible tendency of mind, to struggle more and more feebly and ineffectually against this, and at last for the soul to surrender itself a hopeless captive, - this is a degradation beyond and beneath which it is impossible for man to pass. But we have the promise of -

IV. DIVINE RESTORATION. "I have called thee... to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners," etc. (vers. 6, 7). Jesus Christ came "to preach deliverance to the captives" (Luke 4:18). This he does by

(1) his enlightening truth;

(2) his renewing and redeeming Spirit. - C.

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KJV: Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:

WEB: Thus says God Yahweh, he who created the heavens and stretched them out, he who spread out the earth and that which comes out of it, he who gives breath to its people and spirit to those who walk in it.