Isaiah 48:18 O that you had listened to my commandments! then had your peace been as a river, and your righteousness as the waves of the sea: 1. Religion being the supreme act of the soul, it is not strange that its highest product should claim the grandest symbol in the vocabulary of God for its utterance. Isaiah, whose mind was more ocean-like in grand unity and rich variety of colour than any other prophet, saw so deeply into the nature of righteousness that not the plain, or sky, or mountain, with which he was familiar, offered him so complete a definition of its quality, or so full a suggestion of its life in the soul, as the wonderful sea. Poets have always sought the melodies of ocean to reinforce and complete their own especially when the deeper and larger experiences and hopes of man are touched. 2. Innocence is not righteousness, though many a soul thinks because it has not been stained by sin it is righteous. Innocence has no waves, no perils, no tragedies, no gulf streams, nothing so stormy as a plunging breaker. Innocence is a plain of white snow. The rosy hues of sunset do not glimmer down into its deeps! No one is engulfed in its splendour; no one can sail upon its bosom. It is passionless, without a yearning or a song. Righteousness is like a sea, full of currents; it is restless and restful with living energies. It has perils, and means storm and stress, as well as peace and beauty. It offers opportunities to its sailor for heroisms and enterprises of soul. A mountain can describe justice; it is its portrait, bard, unmovable, grand, crystalline. But righteousness is mobile, just as grand, but full of movement. 3. Even Jesus sought the seaside because He felt most of all souls how something above His soul influenced it as the moon influences the ocean. All nation-builders, poets, great achievers of the intellectual and spiritual wealth of the race know that not from within, or from beneath, but from above the long, sweet influences work to lift the life to its sublime heights. Part of the secret of a strong and blessed life lies in knowing the tides, in counting upon them, and in relying on the fact that these influences from above will do more for our exaltation and joy than any of our own efforts may do. At low tide, with a fresh east wind, a white-capped wave seems to try to reach some beautiful Place on the shore. It yearns and strains and fails. Let it wait till the moon-drawn tide comes under it with soft, strong advances, and lo, the walls of the land are washed to jasper, and the wave has mounted where it never could have reached alone. Wait until God sends His tide and you will reach your highest goal. 4. Righteousness has majestic unity and richest variety, like the waves of the sea. Men would often make one type or aspect of righteousness the judge of all others, and call it alone perfect. The sea is so much like man's soul because it is so much a changeful unit; so like man's righteousness because every man's righteousness takes on all the hues of his personality. At all moments of the day and night the sea is a palette of colours, yet one sea rolls in all this marvel of changing tints. Righteousness is equally variant; it takes on the sky's hues above the soul, and the wonderful tints of the bottom of the sea. The sea is a challenge to man's sense of infinity. It whispers of eternity. So does all genuine righteousness, for it is ageless, and seems to rely on the life everlasting. Its whole mission is to fling us out on the forever of God and the soul. So the sea shall be no more when we have learned its lesson. (F. W. Gunsaulus, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea: |
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