All the many nations going out to battle against Ariel--even all who war against her, laying siege and attacking her--will be like a dream, like a vision in the night, Sermons
I. PARTICULAR EVILS IN ARIEL. Perhaps the point of reproach here is the insincerity attending the reformation which Hezekiah instituted. There is an important difference between a reformation which starts from the people and reaches to affect the throne, as in the case of Nineveh in the time of Jonah; or as in the case of the German Protestant Reformation, which was in the heart and purpose of the people before Luther found it voice; and a reformation which starts from the throne and tries to carry the people with it, as in the cases of Hezekiah and Josiah. There is the grave danger of the people's acceding to the wish of the sovereign, and the example of the court, apart from their own convictions. This was the particular evil of the time which needed correction. There were signs of religious awakening which were insincere. How insincerity in the leaders was shown in the efforts of a considerable party to turn from Jehovah and negotiate for help with Egypt! Still, we may observe the prevalence of insincerity, and the fact that "distresses are just the fitting corrective of this evil. II. THE DELUSION OF KEEPING UP SACRIFICES IN ARIEL. An important part of prophetical work was the denunciation of sacrifices and religious rites when the soul of meaning was lost out of them, and they expressed no devotion, no thankfulness, no love, and no consecration (see Isaiah 1:11-15). Here Isaiah intimates that increasing the number of festivals and multiplying sacrifices could not deceive God or hide from him the real moral and religious condition of the people. Keeping up the formalities of religion is often successful in deceiving men, but it never deceives God. This is his absolute condition, They that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." III. THE FORMS IN WHICH ARIEL MIGHT BE HOPEFULLY DISTRESSED. The Mosaic system had established the idea that men would be sure to get good things by being good. This was founded in truth, but it involved men's having right ideas of what are "good things," and what is "being good." Men made it mean that they would be sure to get temporal blessings if they made large outward show of goodness. And therefore temporal distresses and anxieties were precisely the things that would awaken men to a sense of their mistake, and to a worthier apprehension of Divine claims. Temporal safety and blessing did not attend such goodness as theirs, and so they were led to suspect their goodness. So we, finding our religion fail us in the evil day, are brought to see that formal religion never can be acceptable unto him who "desires truth in the inward parts." IV. THE ISSUE OF DIVINE DEALINGS WITH ARIEL. Here we must distinguish between the issue which God designs, and for the accomplishment of which the means he uses are appropriate, and the issue which is actually attained in consequence of man's resistant willfulness. One of the saddest things in all human lives is the contrast between the results of distressful dispensations and the gracious designs contemplated by God in sending them. Corrections that fail to humble succeed in hardening. - R.T.
As a dream of a night vision. Homilist. There are two grand truths of a most stirring import unfolded in the text.1. That wicked men are frequently employed to execute the Divine purpose. The Almighty determined to humble Jerusalem, and He employed Sennacherib as the engine of His justice. "He makes" the wrath of man to praise Him. What a revelation is this of His absolute command over the fiercest and freest workings of the most depraved and rebellious subjects! 2. That whilst wicked men execute the Divine purpose, they frustrate their own. Sennacherib worked out the Divine result, but all his own plans and wishes were like the visions of the famished traveller on the Oriental desert, who, hungry, thirsty, and exhausted, lies down and dreams, under the rays of a tropical sun, that he is eating and drinking, but awakes and discovers, to his inexpressible distress, that both his hunger and thirst are but increased. Hell works out God's plans and frustrates its own; Heaven works out God's plans, and fulfils its own. Let us look at the vision before us as illustrating the visions of sin. I. IT IS A DREAMY VISION. It is "as a dream of a night vision." There are waking visions. The orient creations of poetry, the bright prospects of hope, the appalling apprehensions of fear — these are visions occurring when the reflective powers of the soul are more or less active, and are, therefore, not entirely unsubstantial and vain. But the visions which occur in sleep, when the senses are closed, and the consciousness is torpid, and the reason has resigned her sway to the hands of a lawless imagination, are generally without reality. Now, the Scriptures represent the sinner as asleep. But where is the analogy between the natural sleep of the body and the moral sleep of sin? 1. Natural sleep is the ordination of God, but moral is not. 2. Natural sleep is restorative, but moral is destructive. 3. In both there is the want of activity. The inactivity of the moral sleep of the sinner is the inactivity of the moral faculty — the conscience. 4. In both there is the want of consciousness. With the sinner in his moral slumbers — God, Christ, the soul, heaven, hell, are nothing to him. II. IT IS AN APPETITIVE VISION. What is the dream of the man whom the Almighty brings under our notice in the text, who lies down to sleep under the raging desire for food and water? It is that he was eating and drinking. His imagination creates the very things for which his appetite was craving. His imagination was the servant of his strongest appetites. So it is ever with the sinner: the appetite for animal gratifications will create its visions of sensual pleasure: the appetite for worldly wealth will create its visions of fortune; the appetite for power will create its visions of social influence and applause. The sinner's imagination is ever the servant of his strongest appetites, and ever pictures to him in airy but attractive forms the objects he most strongly desires. III. IT IS AN ILLUSORY VISION. The food and water were a mirage in the visionary desert, dissipated into air as his eye opened. All the ideas of happiness entertained by the sinner are mental illusions. There are many theories of happiness practically entertained by men that are as manifestly illusive as the wildest dream. 1. Every notion of happiness is delusive that has not to do more with the soul than the senses. 2. Every notion of happiness is delusive that has not more to do with the character than the circumstances. 3. Every notion is delusive that has not more to do with the present than with the future. He that is preparing intentionally for happiness is not happy, nor can he be: the selfish motive renders it impossible. "He that seeketh his life shall lose it." Heaven is for the man that is now blessed in his deeds, and for him only. The present is everything to us, because God is in it, and out of it starts the future 4. Every notion is delusive that has not more to do with the absolute than the contingent. IV. IT IS A TRANSITORY VISION. In the text, the supposed dreamer was led to feel the illusion which his wayward imagination had practised upon him. "He awaketh, and his soul is empty." Every moral sleeper must awake either here or hereafter; here by disciplinary voices, or hereafter by retributive thunders. (Homilist.) I. PLEASURE. 1. How comes it to pass that people can live such lives, dreaming all the while that they are fulfilling the true purpose of their existence, or, at least, without any uneasy sense that they are criminally failing to do so?(1) One cause of it is that the thing in question is pleasure. "Nothing succeeds like success."(2) Another explanation is, that many of the pleasures for which men live make great demands on their exertions. Some kinds of play are harder than work. Men, therefore, feel it difficult to believe that what bears so near a resemblance to work is not work, and that very work which they were sent into the world to do.(3) A great many of the pleasures of life are enjoyed in association with others. And amidst the exhilaration of spirits, the brisk laughter, the friendly encounters, it is very difficult to believe that a life made up largely of such occupations is not the life we were intended to live.(4) Then, a great deal of the pleasure is intimately associated with fashion.(5) The alleged innocence of the pleasures indulged in contributes also to the deception.(6) Again, it is sometimes said that, however censurable a life of pleasure may be for those in advanced life, it is innocent and even suitable for the young. 2. But it may be said, What is there to show that such a life is only a dream-like substitute for our real life?(1) It leaves our best faculties unused.(2) A life of pleasure, moreover, is a selfish life.(3) A life of pleasure also exposes to temptation.(4) A life devoted to pleasure, too, unfits men for another world. II. WORK. By "work" is meant some secular occupation by which money, or its equivalent, is gained. The Bible praises work. Work keeps us from being dependent on others. It tends to the benefit of those dependent on us. And work is good as furnishing a man with the means of helping his neighbours, and of contributing to the support of the great movements in operation for lessening the suffering and the sin of the world. And work is good, as giving a man influence by means of the wealth it produces. It is also in favour of a life of diligent employment, that it keeps from much evil. And yet neither is work, any more than pleasure, the great end of man; and those who deem it so are indulging in a baseless dream. The moral value of work is to be measured by its motive and its influence. A life of excessive devotion to work is hostile to the higher life of a man. It leaves but little time for those exercises which are found so essential to a life of godliness. It indisposes for such employments. It shuts out the other world by the undue prominence it gives to this. It banishes God from the thoughts. It is a practical neglect of the soul. Others suffer also. Such a life makes us indifferent to the interests of others. III. RELIGION. And this time, you will perhaps say, they are likely to be right. On the contrary, there is more danger of their going wrong here than in either of the previous cases. And for this reason — that the sacred name of religion disposes men to think all is as it should be if they can persuade themselves that they are religious. Religion assumes a great variety of forms, and some of them not only worthless, but pernicious. 1. Can it be questioned that a great deal of the religion of England now is nothing more than amusement, and often amusement of the most childish nature? 2. If religion in other cases seems to go deeper, it is too often only another name for superstition, where chief importance is attached to the conventional sanctity of the persons who officiate, the garments they wear, the sacraments they administer, the postures they adopt, the seasons they observe. 3. Then there is the religion of sentiment, of which the chief object is to awaken certain emotions. 4. There is also a religion in which the intellect performs the principal function. 5. We might speak of that religion which is hereditary, where a man adopts a particular faith or worship because his ancestors did so before him. 6. We might speak of the religion of fashion, where the fashionable gathering forms the great attraction. 7. We might speak of the religious observances in which men engage to fill up time which they are forbidden by custom to employ in secular pursuits; or of the religion which is only occasional and spasmodic; or of that which consists in bustle and superficial activity. These religions all agree in being good for nothing. Some of them do harm. Religion is a life. Religion has two sides. On the one it turns toward God, on the other toward man. But all dreams must come to an end. There is a dread awaking in prospect. Think of the disappointment that will attend the awaking! Let us not be deceived by the apparent reality of the life we are leading. What can seem more real than a dream? yet what more unsubstantial? With the feeling of disappointment will be mingled one of contempt. As a dream when one awaketh, so, O Lord, when Thou awakest, Thou shalt despise their image." We experience a sort of resentment on finding that we have been so deceived by that which had no reality. Will there be nothing like this on awaking from a life wasted in trifling? (D. P. Pratten, B. A.) I. THE VERY NATURE OF SIN SUGGESTS THIS FACT. 1. Sin is a wandering from the way which God has appointed for us — the way which was in His mind when He made man — the only way which has ever been in His mind as the right way. There is no adaptation in man's real nature to any way but one, and that is obedience to a Father in Heaven, the result and fruit of true love for that Father. 2. Sin is a practical withdrawing from the protection of Divine providence. It thus wounds, sometimes instantly, and always eventually, the transgressor himself. It is as when a hungry man dreameth, and awaketh, and behold, he is faint. II. LOOK AT A FEW RECOGNISED FACTS ABOUT SIN. 1. The angels who kept not their first estate left their own habitation. So far as we can understand the matter they sought freedom, but they found chains. They sought light; they found darkness. They sought happiness; they found misery, — as when a hungry man dreameth and eateth, and awaketh and finds himself famishing. 2. Our first parents, in yielding to the first temptation, soughs equality with God; but they soon found themselves fallen below the natural human level 3. The general history of sin is found in epitome in the life of every sinner. In families and Churches and nations, in societies of all kinds, we see illustrated the truth that sin everywhere, by whomsoever committed, is the occasion of most bitter disappointment. (S. Martin.) Lord Brougham relates an occurrence which strikingly shows how short a thing a dream is. A person who had asked a friend to call him early in the morning, dreamed that he was taken ill, and that, after remedies had been tried in vain by those about him, a medical man was sent for who lived some miles away, and who did not arrive before some hours had elapsed. On his arrival he threw some cold water upon the face of the patient. Thereupon the sleeper awoke. The water was, in fact, applied by his friend, for the purpose of awaking him. The inference is that this apparent dream of hours was the affair of a moment. Such is human life.(D. P. Pratten, B. A.) The figure of the dream is applied in two ways.1. Objectively, to the vanishing of the enemy. 2. Subjectively, to his disappointment. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.) (ver. 8): — A more vivid representation of utter disenchantment than this verse gives can scarcely be conceived.(Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.) Mungo Park's Journal. No sooner had I shut my eyes than fancy would convey me to the streams and rivers of my native land. There, as I wandered along the verdant bank, I surveyed the clear stream with transport, and hastened to swallow the delightful draught; but alas! disappointment awakened me, and I found myself a lonely captive, perishing of thirst amid the wilds of Africa.(Mungo Park's Journal.) People Ariel, David, Isaiah, JacobPlaces Ariel, Lebanon, Mount ZionTopics Ariel, Attack, Besiege, Bulwark, Bulwarks, Distress, Distressing, Dream, Fight, Fighting, Fortifications, Fortress, Making, Multitude, Munition, Nations, Night-vision, Shutting, Stronghold, Towers, Vision, Wage, War, Warring, WarriorsOutline 1. God's heavy judgment upon Jerusalem7. The insatiableness of her enemies 9. The senselessness 13. And deep hypocrisy of the people 17. A promise of sanctification to the godly Dictionary of Bible Themes Isaiah 29:1-8 1409 dream Library I am Told, Further, that You Touch with Some Critical Sharpness Upon Some Points of My Letter13. I am told, further, that you touch with some critical sharpness upon some points of my letter, and, with the well-known wrinkles rising on your forehead and your eyebrows knitted, make sport of me with a wit worthy of Plautus, for having said that I had a Jew named Barabbas for my teacher. I do not wonder at your writing Barabbas for Baranina, the letters of the names being somewhat similar, when you allow yourself such a license in changing the names themselves, as to turn Eusebius into Pamphilus, … Various—Life and Works of Rufinus with Jerome's Apology Against Rufinus. Thou that Dwellest in the Gardens, the Companions Hearken to Thy Voice; Cause Me to Hear It. If it is Objected, that the Necessity which Urges us to Pray is not Always... The Hardening of Nations. Christ Teaching by Miracles The Upbringing of Jewish Children The New Testament Canon in the First Three Centuries. Covenanting a Privilege of Believers. Jesus Fails to Attend the Third Passover. Of Prayer --A Perpetual Exercise of Faith. The Daily Benefits Derived from It. "To what Purpose is the Multitude of Your Sacrifices unto Me? Saith the Lord," Of the Power of Making Laws. The Cruelty of the Pope and his Adherents, in this Respect, in Tyrannically Oppressing and Destroying Souls. The Third Commandment Intercourse of Jesus with the Pagans and the Samaritans. Letter ii (A. D. 1126) to the Monk Adam "And There is None that Calleth Upon Thy Name, that Stirreth up Himself to Take Hold on Thee," "But it is Good for Me to Draw Near to God: I have Put My Trust in the Lord God, that I May Declare all Thy Isaiah Links Isaiah 29:7 NIVIsaiah 29:7 NLT Isaiah 29:7 ESV Isaiah 29:7 NASB Isaiah 29:7 KJV Isaiah 29:7 Bible Apps Isaiah 29:7 Parallel Isaiah 29:7 Biblia Paralela Isaiah 29:7 Chinese Bible Isaiah 29:7 French Bible Isaiah 29:7 German Bible Isaiah 29:7 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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