The character of Jehovah
I. HIS EXALTATION. "High and holy:" high because holy, exalted far above the meanness of human thoughts and the impurity of human ways. Far above creatures of all species and all ranks, it is needless further to designate him. He is the Incomparable One. He dwells in eternity (cf. Isaiah 9:6). His Name is "the Holy One" (Isaiah 1:4; Isaiah 30:11; Isaiah 40:25; Isaiah 41:14; Isaiah 43:3, Isaiah 43:8; Isaiah 47:4); his place the high and holy place, or temple (Isaiah 6:1).
II. HIS CONDESCENSION "Wherever the Scripture bears witness to the Divine mightiness, it brings out side by side with it the Divine humbleness (Deuteronomy 10:17, Deuteronomy 10:18; Isaiah 57:15; Psalms 68:4, Psalms 68:5). It is not an Epicurean view of God (Acts 17:18), nor the Gnostic view that God had left the world to the management of inferior beings, by himself created. Though illimitable and unapproachable, he delights to make his abode with men. "He cannot direct the affairs of his people from without. He desires to be enthroned in their hearts." He is with them that are of a contrite, or crushed, spirit—souls bowed down with a sense of sin and unworthiness (Psalms 34:18; Psalms 138:6), to make alive their spirit, to impart strength and comfort, even as genial rains and dews fall upon the drooping plant. Such a lowly state of mind can only have been produced by affliction (Isaiah 61:1; Isaiah 65:14;Isaiah 66:2; Psalms 34:18; Psalms 147:2, Psalms 147:3).
III. HIS FAITHFULNESS AND LOVE. He will not be angry with his people for ever (Psalms 103:9). The soul could not hold out in a prolonged contention with its Maker. Its power must fail; it must sink into destruction. "If we are God's children, we are safe. We may suffer much and long. We may suffer so much, it may seem scarce possible we should endure more. But he knows how much we can bear, and will lighten the burden and remove the load" (Psalms 128:1-6:38, 39). Why has he smitten them at all? It is because of their sin. Unjust gain is put for sin in general (cf. Jeremiah 6:13; Jeremiah 5:1; Ezekiel 33:31; Psalms 119:36), even, as in other places, the shedding of blood, He has seen their ways, both of sin and aberration, of suffering and amendment. Having hidden himself, he will now interpose to heal their wounds, and to guide them by a clearer path (Isaiah 58:11). (For sin as disease, and pardon as healing, cf. Jeremiah 33:6; 2 Chronicles 7:14; Psalms 41:4; Jeremiah 3:22; Jeremiah 17:4; 53: Jeremiah 14:4.) And as the result of all this, he creates the "fruit of the lips" (cf. Hosea 14:2), i.e. praise and thanksgiving; of which the subject would be peace (cf. Ephesians 2:14-17) to the near and remote, Jew and Gentile, or with reference to the holy city; no degree of remoteness was to disqualify true Israelites from the enjoyment of the promise.
IV. THE CONTRAST. The impure and the unpardoned alone shall know no peace. Those who are in a state of alienation from Jehovah shall be, on the contrary, like the restless, ever-shifting sea (Jude 1:13; cf. Ovid, 'Tristia,' 1.10. 33). They have no fixed happiness, no substantial peace; a rage of passion ever ferments within them; past guilt casts up its mire in memory; feat's of the future torment. How different from the scene where "the good man meets his fate, quite in the verge of heaven"!
So fades a summer cloud away;
So sinks the gale when storms are o'er;
So gently shuts the eye of day;
So dies a wave along the shore.
J.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
Three pictures of the human.
Our attention is called to—
I. A PICTURE OF HUMAN GOODNESS. A good man is represented as "the righteous," as "the merciful," as one who "walketh in uprightness." These characterizations include:
1. The fear of God—reverence for his Name, the worship of his Divine Spirit, the recognition of his righteous claims, a supreme regard for his holy will.
2. The love of man—a practical acknowledgment of his claims on our sympathy and our succour, a hearty and practical desire to promote his well-being.
3. The regulation of daily life, in all stations and spheres, by the laws of truth, purity, honesty, sobriety. A righteous, merciful, and upright man is one who will be making an honest and earnest endeavour to realize all this in his character and his career. Nothing less will satisfy his aspiration.
II. A PICTURE OF HUMAN THOUGHTLESSNESS. "The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart." When a community—nation or Church—has not been living and walking in the light of the Lord, it becomes dull of apprehension, spiritually blind, incapable of estimating the true character of events.
1. It fails to appreciate the worth of one good man's life. What an incalculable blessing a single true, pure, and holy life may be, and indeed must be! and what a fountain of good is dried up when one who leads such a life is taken away! It is a bad time, indicative of evil and prophetic of decline and death, when human worth is disregarded.
2. It fails to feel the injury and wrong done by arbitrary violence; it ought to resent it with keenest indignation, and to take vigorous steps to arrest and remove it.
3. It fails to recognize a valuable mitigation: "None considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come." It is natural enough for men to wish to go on into the future, that they may see what is coming, and that they may help to shape the event; but the wise and thoughtful will consider that there may be a future impending from which they would earnestly pray God to save them. It was not a threat, but a promise, sent to Josiah, "I will gather thee to thy fathers … neither shall thine eyes see all the evil which I will bring upon this place" (2 Kings 22:20). Many are they who have outlived the period of prosperity and peace, to whom an earlier death would have been a happier lot. We cannot be sure that a sudden and even (what we call)a premature death may not be a most merciful removal from intolerable pain, or from overwhelming temptation, or from grievous burdens and sorrows. We sing, "Our times are in thy hand," and we do well to continue, "O God, we wish them there."
III. A PICTURE OF HUMAN REPOSE. "He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds." From the tumult and the strain, from the battle and the burden of life, even the rest of the grave is welcome. But how much more welcome to the weary spirit is that rest which Jesus Christ has revealed, and which remaineth for the people of God!—rest in the home, in the likeness, in the glory, in the untiring service of the ascended Saviour.—C.