Divine reservation and consistency.
"Yet he … will bring evil, and will not call back his words" Doubtless God seems to call back his words. "The Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do" (Exodus 32:14; 2 Samuel 24:16; 2:18, etc.). "He heard their cry … and repented, according to the multitude of his mercies", (Psalms 105:44, Psalms 105:45). Yet, says the prophet, "he will bring evil and not call back his words." How explain this? The explanation of it is found in the fact that there is some necessary reservation understood, if not expressed, in the Divine promise and in the Divine threatening.
I. HIS RESERVATION AND CONSISTENCY IN PROMISE. God promises life to the obedient and the faithful; yet there are those who believe themselves, and are believed, to be among this number, whose end is destruction. Has God called back his word? No; for his promise was contingent on their steadfastness, and they have forfeited all claim on his promised word (Joshua 24:20; Psalms 85:8; Ezekiel 33:13; John 15:6; Hebrews 6:4 :8).
II. HIS RESERVATION AND CONSISTENCY IN THREATENING. Although God may seem to call back his words of solemn threatening, yet he "will bring evil;" he is not inconsistent with himself.
1. God reveals his wrath against sin. He declares that it shall not go unpunished; that the soul that sinneth shall die; that the wages of sin is death.
2. God offers pardon. The message of the gospel of Christ is essentially and emphatically one of Divine mercy.
3. His mercy in Christ Jesus is large and free. It is not grudging, half-hearted. It is not like the forgiveness we extend to one another (Isaiah 55:7-9). It means a complete restoration of the estranged but reconciled child to full parental favor (Luke 15:22, Luke 15:23). Where, then, is the Divine consistency? It is found in the consideration that:
4. His declaration of penalty was always contingent on the attitude of the sinner. (Ezekiel 33:14, Ezekiel 33:15.) It is not intended to be absolute and unalterable, whatever be the future career of the guilty. Like all his promises, God's warnings are conditional. God does not call back his own words from their meaning or their fulfillment, he calls us back, through them, to our duty and to our right relation to himself. And, besides:
5. He does bring evil in some serious measure. For:
Deep disloyalty.
The children of Israel had "deeply revolted" from God by preferring Egyptian cavalry to the defense of almighty power. This preference of the human and the material to the Divine is only too common everywhere.
I. THE DISLOYAL ATTITUDE OF MANKIND TOWARDS GOD. Mankind is in revolt against the Divine rule. We have all said in our hearts, "We will not have this One to reign over us."
1. God righteously claims our allegiance—the homage of our hearts, the subjection of our will, the obedience of our life.
2. We have deliberately refused it, we have practically disallowed his claim; we have retained our power for our own enjoyment, to be spent according to our own tastes and choices. Amid various forms of iniquity there is one which is common to the race-we have all withheld from the Divine Father of our spirits the willing and practical allegiance for which he has looked.
II. HUMAN DISLOYALTY IN ITS DEPTH There are many degrees of rebelliousness. Only he who searches the hearts and knows the real nature of righteousness and iniquity can accurately measure them, but we can form an approximate idea. Men may be deeply disloyal by going far in the direction of
III. THE DIVINE SUMMONS TO RETURN. "Turn ye unto him."
1. God's message through inspired men. At sundry times God spake by the prophets. Then and thus he spoke in very clear and in very gracious tones; he said emphatically and repeatedly, "Return unto me" (see text; Isaiah 1:16-18; Isaiah 55:6-9; Jeremiah 3:12-16; Ezekiel 18:30-32; Hosea 14:1, Hosea 14:2, etc.).
2. God's invitation through his Son, our Savior.
IV. THE SPIRITUAL CONSEQUENCE OF RETURN. "In that day every man shall cast away his idols." Return to the service of Jehovah and to a sincere trust in him certainly meant the utter abandonment of idolatry. Our restoration to the favor and friendship of God in Jesus Christ must also mean the putting away of every form of idolatry; e.g.
Fleeing away.
Here is a prophetic vision of flight, which may suggest other kinds and instances of "fleeing away." Sennacherib comes up vain-gloriously against Jerusalem, confidently reckoning on complete success, thinking to swallow up Judah as a pleasant morsel; and, behold! he is found hurrying homewards as one that is pursued by overtaking legions, not staying at his first fortification, but, in his terror and humiliation, "passing on beyond his stronghold" for fear, his princes "frightened away by the flags" of the enemy that was to have been so easily and so utterly subdued. Our thoughts may be directed to—
I. THE VANQUISHED FLEEING FROM THE VICTORIOUS. The annals of human history, which have hitherto been principally the record of human strife, are only too full of heart-rending illustrations (see, among others, Erckmann-Chatrian's 'Waterloo').
II. CRIME FLEEING FROM THE FEET OF JUSTICE. Both fact and fiction will supply abundant illustrations of the intolerable wretchedness of those who, pursued by the officers of law, are dogged by apprehension and alarm at every step they take. "Let no man talk of murderers escaping justice, and hint that Providence must sleep: there were twenty score of violent deaths in one long minute of that agony of fear."
III. WRONG FLEEING FROM REVENGE. See the vivid picture of Carker fleeing from Dombey (Dickens): "Shame, disappointment, and discomfiture gnawing at his heart, a constant apprehension of being overtaken: the same intolerable awe and dread that had come upon him in the night returned unweakened in the day … rolling on and on, always postponing thought, and always racked with thinking … pressing on … change upon change … long roads and dread of night … and still the old monotony of bells and wheels and horses' feet, and no rest."
IV. GUILT FLEEING FROM THE FACE OF GOD. Guilt fleeing:
1. Weakly and vainly. Long before Jonah, in the hour of self-reproach that followed his act of disobedience, "fled from the presence of the Lord," men had tried to put a distance between their sin and its rightful Judge. And long since then have they tried to escape his eye and his hand. Saddest of all vain endeavors is the thrice-guilty deed of the suicide, who acts as if, by entering another world, he could flee from the face of the Omnipresent One.
2. But there is a sense in which guilt flies away from the face of God really and most blessedly. When God's conditions of penitence and faith have been fulfilled, then is our guilt "purged away," our transgressions are "removed from us as far as the east is from the west," our sins are "hidden from his face," they are "cast into the depths of the sea" (Psalms 65:3; Psalms 103:12; Psalms 51:9; Micah 7:19). Moreover, we look forward to the time when there shall be a glorious fulfillment of the Divine promises, and we shall have—
V. EVIL DISAPPEARING FROM THE FACE OF MAN; when "sorrow and sighing shall flee away," when "death and hell shall be cast into the lake of fire," when "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying … for the former things are passed away" (Isaiah 35:10; Revelation 20:14; Revelation 21:4).—C.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK