Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? Sermons
I. CALM INDIFFERENCE. Very many of the bravely uttered scepticisms of our time are only designed to draw attention to those who utter them. They are in the nature of personal advertisements. Leave them alone. They are nothing; we must take care not to swell them into something by directing attention to them. Sometimes these insults are petty and nagging, but continuous. Again, indifference is the best treatment. Those who have faith in God make grave mistakes when they too vigorously defend God against the arrows of mere children. To noisy antagonism we may calmly say, "It doesn't matter." II. NOBLE TESTIMONY. There is a time to speak. When insults have grown to such power that the faith of the young, or the work of grace in the world, is imperilled, we must speak out. The Christian apologist has his time and his sphere, especially when a kind of mania of unbelief seems to seize upon a people. Illustrate from the three Hebrew youths; the apostles before the Sanhedrini; Paul before Agrippa; Luther at the Diet of Worms, etc. Firm testimony of our personal convictions will often silence the scoffer. III. ACTIVE VINDICATION. By reasonable judgments on those who offer the insult. Blasphemy ought to he a crime. By withdrawal from association with those who thus walk disorderly. The man who has no reverence for God has no basis of character which makes friendship with him safe. And by using all available means for clearing the outraged name, and upholding the imperilled honour of him who is our "All and in all." - R.T.
Where are the gods? at the north border of the Holy Land, a large town on the Orontes, depopulated by the Assyrian in 720. Arpad, Aradus, a town on the coast, now a heap of ruins. Sepharvaim, or Sipar, a town to the north of Babylon, built on both sides of the Euphrates.(B. Blake, B.D.) (J. Parker, D.D.) (J. Parker, D.D.) 1. Some people have made money their god, and there is not a more helpless god in all the temples of idolatry. He will never come to you in the crisis of your life. He will make little compromises with you, help you over divers stiles, solve certain little problems for you. But when your soul is in agony, when your life has wrought itself down to the one last spasm, he will be a dumb god. We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. If you could take a five-pound note with you across the grave into yonder invisible mysterious world, nobody would know what it was. You would have to explain it, and nobody would believe you. You might hold it up, and show the watermark, and lecture upon it, and turn it round and round, and nobody could change it.2. There is another god that some men are making. Its name is Luck! Some men say, "Things will not turn out so badly after all. I have always been able to get upon the sunny side of the road, and something will occur to get me upon that side again. I have trusted the chapter of accidents. My chances have always turned out right, and they will turn out right again." There never was so mocking an idol as luck. The young man who throws in a game of that kind and is lucky, will have another game to play. He has another competitor who will force him, and say, "Now you must have the dice out again." The name of that last competitor is Death, and he will play you. The young man says, "I do not want to play." Death grasps him by the throat, and says, "You shall play!" Now he gets hold of his dice-box, and Death always wins. 3. Some men's god is a well-favoured countenance. They trust to their shape, figure, bearing, expression. They say, "My face is an introduction, a certificate, a guarantee: wherever I go a space is cleared for me." A very superficial god! I can imagine such persons brought into circumstances which will try their god severely. Yonder is a man lofty in stature, portly in bearing, commanding in all the attributes of external person. He says that he feels a pain piercing him. He is taken home, and betakes himself to his bed. His physician comes to his room and says, "This is a case of small-pox." That god of his will be dug in the face till the man's own mother will not know him, and the sister who loved him best will pray to escape from his presence. God can blotch your skin! God can send poison into your blood! And you, who sneered at ungainly virtue, at unfavoured honesty, may be a corrupt, worm-eaten, pestilent thing in the dirt! What, then, if any man should say to you, Where is thy God? (J. Parker, D.D.) : — 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.). People Asaph, Eliakim, Hezekiah, Hilkiah, Isaiah, Joah, Pharaoh, Rabshakeh, Sennacherib, ShebnaPlaces Arpad, Assyria, Egypt, Hamath, Jerusalem, Lachish, Samaria, Sepharvaim, Washer's FieldTopics Arpad, Arphad, Delivered, Gods, Hamath, Kept, Rescued, Samaria, Sama'ria, Sepharvaim, Sepharva'imOutline 1. Sennacherib invades Judah2. Rabshakeh, sent by Sennacherib, solicits the people to revolt 22. His words are told to Hezekiah Dictionary of Bible Themes Isaiah 36:1-20 5956 strength, human Library A Sermon on Isaiah xxvi. By John Knox. [In the Prospectus of our Publication it was stated, that one discourse, at least, would be given in each number. A strict adherence to this arrangement, however, it is found, would exclude from our pages some of the most talented discourses of our early Divines; and it is therefore deemed expedient to depart from it as occasion may require. The following Sermon will occupy two numbers, and we hope, that from its intrinsic value, its historical interest, and the illustrious name of its author, it … John Knox—The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. Jesus Heals Multitudes Beside the Sea of Galilee. Sennacherib (705-681 B. C. ) The Holy City; Or, the New Jerusalem: Isaiah Links Isaiah 36:19 NIVIsaiah 36:19 NLT Isaiah 36:19 ESV Isaiah 36:19 NASB Isaiah 36:19 KJV Isaiah 36:19 Bible Apps Isaiah 36:19 Parallel Isaiah 36:19 Biblia Paralela Isaiah 36:19 Chinese Bible Isaiah 36:19 French Bible Isaiah 36:19 German Bible Isaiah 36:19 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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