Isaiah 50:7-9 For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint… One and the same Divine Person speaks in all this section of the prophet Isaiah. One and the same Being is He, throughout this section, who speaks as "I;" "I came," "I called:" One who asks, "Is My hand shortened that it cannot save?" and then, without break, without transition, speaks of His meritorious obedience, His sufferings, and His shame. Our Lord Himself, when prophesying of Himself the specific humiliations which are here spoken of by the prophet, speaks of them as foretold (Luke 18:31, 32). But how then as to the words which follow? Our Lord came into the world to suffer; His human spirit was straitened until those sufferings were accomplished; His daily sufferings in doing the will of His Father were His daily bread. How then to Him belong those words which seem to speak of human struggle, as well as of victory: "I have set My face like a flint, and I know that I shall, not, be ashamed"? It is perhaps best explained by that great rule of St. : The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the Body. For He willed to speak too in us, who vouchsafed to die for us. He made us His members. Sometimes therefore He speaks in the person of His members; sometimes in His own Person, as our Head;" "and the whole He speaketh, as though it were one Person." The words of prophecy seem to be tempered, so as to include us His members, nay rather to speak of our victories in Christ, and of our strength supplied by Him, the Christian's unashamed boldness in the cause of Christ. Those holily unashamed of God now, God will keep from shame: on those ashamed of Him, He will bring the shame they shrink from. It is startling to see how, in the account of the last severing off of those who are cast out for ever from the sight of God, the first place is occupied by cowards (Revelation 21:7, 8). There must, then, be something far more malignant, far more offensive to God, and more destructive to salvation, than men think of, in this false shame before men. And yet no one scarcely gives it more than a passing thought; few question earnestly their own consciences about it; few repent of it towards God, or ask His forgiveness of it. It is of moment to know the intensity of the first temptation. First, men cowardly disavow what they know to be right; then they profess what they know to be wrong; then, having disavowed God, they are open to temptation, from whatever quarter of occasion, or surprise, or passion, the impulse may come. They have kindled their fire: they have despised the grace which would quench it: it remains, that it should consume them. And yet, while its influence is so subtle, that it escapes men's observation, unless they are declaring war against it, it is the earliest, the latest, the most infectious, the most universal, the most overspreading, the deadliest disease of the soul. It antedates passion, and it outlives it; it occasions countless sins, but itself is hid under the sins which it occasions; it destroys the goodness of all which seems good, hut is unfelt like paralysis; it nips all wakening good, but is unseen like the frost-wind; it pleads a hatred of hypocrisy and of profession, and is itself the worse hypocrisy of the two, a hypocrisy of evil; to the young, it puts on the appearance of good-nature; to the elder, of courtesy; to the saint, of charity: nothing is too low, nothing too high for its attacks. The senselessness of the sin aggravates its enormity. What is it, of which man is ashamed? It is (and this is a yet deeper aggravation), it is uniformly some gift or grace of Almighty God. In childhood, it was some early habit of piety, which God had vouchsafed to teach, which others had not been taught or had violated. The phases of the sin change with changing years; its essence is unchanged. It is the law of God, or the truth of God, or the friendship of God, and God Himself in all, of whom man stands ashamed before man. And what is this world, before which a man stands ashamed of the Infinite God? Away with such cowardly thoughts of worshipping God, as a sort of Penates, a household god who is to be owned in private and set up within doors, to receive his lip-homage there, and be forgotten or ignored in the face of men. Accustom thyself to the thought of the ever-present Presence of thy God; look to that Eye which recalled Peter to Himself, and which rests on thee; be ashamed to be ungrateful to thy Redeemer, a recreant to thy God; and another fear will displace human fear, another shame will dispel human shame, a shame which maketh not ashamed, a shame which is the earnest of everlasting glory, the shame to be ashamed of thy God. (E. B. Puscy, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. |
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