The Evangelist Isaiah 45:21-22 Tell you, and bring them near; yes, let them take counsel together: who has declared this from ancient time?… I. These words present, in part at least, AN ASPECT OF APPALLING TERROR — "a just God." It is necessary to attend to this with becoming reverence and awe. Some deny it, or overlook it, regarding nothing but His mercy, and forgetting, that there could be no occasion for the exercise of mercy did not His justice consign guilty men to punishment. 1. The fallen angels who have been cast down from their first estate, and are reserved in chains of darkness to the judgment of the last day, are monuments of His avenging justice. Adam and his transgressing partner exiled from Paradise, and that paradise accursed for their sakes; the inhabitants of the world before the flood, with the exception of a single family, swept away into a watery grave by a single stroke; Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain overwhelmed by a torrent of liquid fire from the skies; Mount Sinai itself with its clouded summit and trembling base, its flashing lightnings, its rolling thunders, and trumpet voices, all bespeak the terrors of that inflexible justice which overlooks no sin of men or angels, and suffers no transgression against the eternal authority and sovereignty of God to go unpunished. 2. Consider further what proofs are afforded of the justice of God in His dispensations with the offending race of men. The lot of the progenitor has now become that of all his posterity; and man everywhere is a suffering and dying creature, because he is everywhere a sinner. Consider the awful calamities which have attended the human race, from the first generations to the present. 3. These proofs of Divine justice may be further strengthened and enlarged by considering the very method He has chosen for displaying His mercy. Is He not a just God? Let the agonies of His beloved Son declare — let the cross of Jesus stand as a witness. II. THE DEEP AND GLORIOUS MYSTERY which, under another view, these words present. This glorious mystery consists in the union of these two characters in the one God of revelation — two characters which it appeared were hostile to each other — two characters which no other system ever did or ever could reconcile — and the difficulty of reconciling which has led some to deny the one, and some to deny the other. The mystery ties in the union of these two perfections of the Divine nature, justice and mercy — and in their united exercise towards the same sinful creatures. This the Gospel fully develops in the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son of God, in His substituted obedience, His voluntary submission, His vicarious sacrifice. III. These words possess AN ASPECT OF DIVINE COMFORT FOR THE SOUL OF MAN. 1. The comfort depends on your reception of the salvation, which is essentially a salvation from sin, in all those respects in which it has affected our nature, whether by guilt, pollution, degradation, or separation from God. 2. This Divine comfort is open to all. 3. The comfort never fails — never fluctuates — will accompany through life, and abound even in death — when all other sources of comfort fail. (The Evangelist.) Parallel Verses KJV: Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. |
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