God can wait.
"I will rest." God was apparently inactive and unobservant, while the Assyrian was maturing his plans and taking all his first steps. But God watches the influences gathering round the growing-time of the trees, though men trace his working almost only in their fruitage. The words of this passage "paint with marvelous vividness the calmness and deliberation of the workings of Divine judgments. God is at once unhasting and unresting. He dwells in his resting-place (i.e. his palace or throne) and watches the ripening of the fruit which he is about to gather. While there is a clear heat in sunshine, while there is a dew-cloud in harvest-heat, through all phenomenal changes, he waits still" (Dean Plumptre). The figure of a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest is well illustrated by Thomson, in 'The Land and the Book,' who writes of a cloud which "absolutely reposed upon the vast harvest-fields of Philistia, lying on the corn serene and quiet as infancy asleep. I have never seen such a cloud in this country except in the heat of harvest." Cheyne brings out the point of this verse. "In the midst of all the excitement, of the Assyrians on the one hand, and of the Ethiopians on the other, Jehovah is calmly waiting till the fruit of Assyrian arrogance is all but ripe. Favoring circumstances are hastening the process (clear heat, etc.), and when perfection seems just within reach, God will interpose in judgment." God can wait—quietly wait—until the fullness of time has come. God reproaches our restlessness by his example, for our time is "always ready," and by our impatience and failure in self-control we spoil a thousand things. This subject may be opened in the following way.
I. IN SECURING MATERIAL ENDS THERE IS OFTEN GREAT NEED FOR WAITING. Illustrate from the failure of the general, because he did not wait until preparations were complete; or from the farmer who loses his crops by cutting them too soon, before the weather has become settled; or the artist who cannot wait to give his work the perfecting touches of his own criticism; or the pastor who injures the young blade by worrying anxiety over it, and cannot wait to let young soul-life gather quiet strength in its own simple ways. The wisdom of waiting is harder to learn and practice than the wisdom of acting and working. Yet the motto, by no means untruthfully, says, "All things come round to him who can wait."
II. IN SECURING MORAL ENDS THERE IS OFTEN ABSOLUTE NEED FOB WAITING. Because moral processes can never bear forcing. They vary in different individuals. The lesson of virtue which one person learns at once, another grasps only as a final result of the training of a long life. This point may be opened up in relation to the work of mothers and teachers. They seek moral ends. They are often distressed by the slowness of the approach to the end. They must learn the importance of active, watchful waiting. And in the highest sense, in relation to God's moral working, we all need to hear the voice that pleads, "Wait thou his time." Marvelous is the long-suffering patience of him who waited while the ark was building, and waited through the ages until the "fullness of times" for his Christ had come.
III. IN MAN WAITING MAY BE EITHER STRENGTH OR WEAKNESS. It may be "masterly inactivity," and it may be that "procrastination" which loses golden opportunities.
IV. IN GOD WAITING IS ALWAYS WISDOM AND STRENGTH. So we never need fret under it, or make mystery of it, or think untrustful things about it. God acts on the absolutely best moment, and we should wait on for ages, and never want a thing until God's best moment for it has come. Because God can wait, we should trust.—R.T.
God can work.
When his time has come. Then, before man can do his harvesting work; when the blossoming and the growing times are over, through which God had waited; when the fruit becomes the full ripe grape,—then God will show how he can work, putting in his implements, and proving himself to be a Deliverer and a Judge. God's working here referred to is doubtless the sudden, unexpected, and complete overthrow of the Assyrian army under Sennacherib, which came at the time when it would prove absolutely overwhelming, and perfectly effective as a deliverance. Matthew Henry states the case in this way: "When the Assyrian army promises itself a plentiful harvest in the taking of Jerusalem and the plundering of that rich city, when the bud of that project is perfect, before the harvest is gathered in, while the sour grape of their enmity to Hezekiah and his people is ripening in the flower, and the design is just ready to be put into execution, God shall destroy that army as easily as the husbandman cuts off the vine with pruning-hooks, or because the grape is sour and good for nothing, and will not be cured, takes away and cuts down the branches. This seems to point at the overthrow of the Assyrian army by a destroying angel, when the dead bodies of the soldiers were scattered like the branches and sprigs of a wild vine, which the husbandman has cut to pieces."
I. GOD'S WORKING IS WELL-TIMED. This is the point made specially prominent here. What was needed, for the due impression of Judah and the surrounding nations, was some startling deliverance; something that should be at once complete, and yet should be manifestly beyond man's accomplishing. Such a working must be exactly timed. When the success of Assyria seemed assured, when its prey seemed within its grasp, and when men's hearts were failing them for fear,—just then the wild hot Simoom blast swept over the army, and as in a moment there were heaps of dead men, and few escaped to tell the awful story. For the timeliness of God's judgment-workings find illustration in the Flood, the destruction of Sodom, the extirpation of the Canaanites, the captivities, and the final siege of Jerusalem.
II. GOD'S WORKING IS FULL OF ENERGY. Ever setting before us the example of thoroughness in the doing of whatever work has to be done. This is in great part the reason why, in making Israel his executioner, God required Israel to treat everything belonging to the Canaanites as accursed, and doomed to destruction. It was, for the first ages, a Divine lesson in thoroughness, energy, and promptitude. God never works with a slack hand, and his servants must not.
III. GOD'S WORKING IS ALWAYS EFFECTIVE TO ITS END. And that, not because it is almighty working, so much as because it is all-wise working. Power is quite a secondary thing to adaptation. A thing fitted to its end will accomplish it, and it will be accomplished better through the fitness than by any displays of power. The end here designed was an adequate impression of the sole and sovereign rights of Jehovah, and a loud call to the nations to put their trust in him. The overthrow of a mighty army, in the fullness of its pride, by purely natural—which are purely Divine—forces, was exactly adapted to secure this end. Illustrate by the moral impression produced by great and destructive earthquakes. When the end of God's working is the persuasion of his fatherly love, then we find his means marvelously adapted and effective. "He gave his Son, his only begotten Son." And herein we say is love, "not that we loved God, but that lie loved us, and sent his Son to be the Propitiation for our sins." Be it work of judgment or work of mercy, of this we may be quite sure—God accomplishes that which he pleases, and his work prospers in that to which he sends it.—R.T.
Isaiah 17
Isaiah
Isaiah 19
Isaiah 18 - isaiah-18 - worlddic.com