Isaiah 36:19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? : — This part of the subject is not free from difficulty. Many a man has felt the most intense pain on observing what he supposed was God's absence from the scene of human affairs. This difficulty must be grappled with if we would be honest to all sides of our great subject. In reply to this difficulty I suggest three things. 1. As a mere matter of fact, attested by a thousand histories known in our own experience, God has appeared in vindication of His name and honour. 2. As a first principle in sound theology, it must be admitted that God Himself is the only true judge as to the best manner and time of interposition. By so much as He is God this point at least must be conceded. Let us be fair to the Almighty, as we would be fair to man. Stephen was taken by the mob, dragged out and stoned. "Where was his God then?" was once the mocking inquiry of a well-known freethinker. Go to Stephen himself for an answer; and when he, outraged and dishonoured, said with his dying breath, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge," — to have wrought in the human soul, under circumstances so tragic and terrible, a desire like that, was to do more for Stephen than if he had been lifted up by myriads of angels out of the hands of his murderers and set in the sun! Do not let us forget God's spiritual gifts to us. Though the stones were falling upon him and he was in the last agonies, he said in a whisper, the sound of which shall survive the voices of all thunders and floods, "I see heaven opened, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God." It is only in crises, in extremities such as these, that the highest reach of faith is realised, and that faith itself becomes victory. 3. Then the very absence of God, being dictated by wisdom and controlled by love, must be intended to have a happy effect upon human faith. When God is absent, what if His absence is intended to excite inquiry in our hearts? It is in having to grope for God we learn lessons of our own blindness and weakness and spiritual incapacity. (J. Parker, D.D.). Parallel Verses KJV: Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? |
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