Isaiah 55:8, 9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, said the LORD.… Man was made in the image of God, and once bore his likeness; then his spirit was like that of the Spirit of God. Under the debasing influences of sin he has become utterly unlike his Maker, and, instead of being compared with him, he is placed in sad and painful contrast with his heavenly Father. "My thoughts are not your thoughts," etc. I. THE SPIRIT OF THE HUMAN. 1. The spirit of man is selfish. Not that he is incapable of generosity, but the prevailing and penetrating spirit which runs through his acts and his institutions is that of self-love, self-interest. What will it profit me? What shall I gain by it? How will it affect my interests? These are the questions which come up from the depths of the human heart, and are perpetually recurring. 2. The spirit of man. is vindictive. Men hate their enemies; they wish ill to those who have in any way done them an injury. Men are secretly if not openly glad when any harm happens to those who have successfully opposed them, or to those who have outstripped them in the race, or to those whose material interests clash with theirs, or to those who have rebuked and shamed them, or to those whom they have wronged and thus made their enemies. Their thoughts are vindictive and malignant, and their ways answer to their thoughts. By pronounced hostility, or by artful intrigue, or by a criminal silence and inaction, they further the end for which they look, - the discomfiture of their fellows. II. THE SPIRIT OF THE DIVINE. 1. The Spirit of God is beneficent. God lives to bless - to communicate life, love, beauty, joy, throughout his universe. That Son of man who "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister" perfectly represented the Spirit of the Father, who occupies his eternity and expends his omniscience in doing good to all his creation. 2. The Spirit of God is magnanimous. God delights not to give pain or to send sorrow to those who have offended him; that is his "strange work." He delights to pardon. He "abundantly pardons." He receives back and reinstates his penitent children with abounding joy. His mercy, his grace, is inexhaustible ? it is an overarching sky with no horizon-line; it is a sea without a bottom or a shore. III. THE DIVINE OFFER. So great, so surpassing, so all-sufficient, is the magnanimity of God that we may east ourselves on his mercy with the utmost confidence. "Iniquities may prevail against us," but the pardoning grace of God will prevail against them. IV. THE HUMAN ASPIRATION. Jesus Christ summons us to rise from the level of the human to the height of the Divine; to breathe his spirit of forgiveness, to live his life of love, to move on the noble and lofty plane of a sustained magnanimity, "that we may be the children of our Father who is in heaven;" that we may "be perfect as he is perfect." - C. Parallel Verses KJV: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.WEB: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," says Yahweh. |
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