Living near to God.
Jehovah has uprisen; he has revealed his might in the destruction of the Assyrian host; he calls through the prophet upon all the nations to acknowledge him.
I. THE AWFULNESS OF GOD. We see it reflected from the horror-struck faces of the ungodly and the profane, He is indeed seen to be a "consuming Fire," having his "furnace in Jerusalem" (Isaiah 31:1-9 :19). And all the immoral and the unprincipled, the heedless and the worldly, feel themselves as fuel for his wrath—they whom the continual returns of the Word preached do not alter, so that their old sins remain firm, entire, and unbattered, the baseness of their inclinations unchanged, the levity of their discourse and behavior; those whose former distresses and disasters have not laid low in the valleys of humility, nor circumscribed the lashings out of their luxury; they whose past miseries and restraints give only a relish instead of a check to present pride and intemperance; those whom all the caresses of Providence have not been able to win upon, so as to endear them to a virtuous strictness, or deter them from a vicious extravagance;—all such—unless the great God be trivial and without concern in his grand transactions with our immortal souls—during this condition, so far as we can judge, are fashioning for wrath. "He is a probationer for hell, and carries about with him the desperate symptoms and plague-tokens of a person likely to be sworn against by God, and hastening apace to a sad eternity" (South).
II. DWELLING NEAR TO GOD. Who can endure the vicinity of this devouring Fire? Only they who have intrinsic spiritual worth, which when tried by fire will appear unto "praise and glory." "Only that which yields itself willingly to be God's organ can abide those flames (cf. on the burning bush, Exodus 3:2)." Of all else, like briars and thorns, the "end is to be burned" (Isaiah 10:17; Isaiah 30:27). The fire ever burning on the altar (Le Isaiah 6:13) is the symbol of him in whose nature wrath and love unite; the wrath being the symptom of love, which must ever glow against evil. The answer to the question is given in the picture of the good man which follows; his character positively and negatively, his consequent security.
III. PICTURE OF TRUE PIETY.
1. Its completeness. He walks in "perfect righteousness." Not so the righteousness of "scribes and Pharisees," partial and imperfect, but rounded out to the full requirements of the Divine Law. The hypocrite "singles out some certain parts, which best suit his occasions and least thwart his corruptions." The proud or impure man may be liberal to the poor, may abhor lying and treachery, and may be ready in the fulfillment of duties which do not jostle his darling sin. But it "will not suffice to chop and change one duty for another; he cannot clear his debts by paying part of the great sum he owes" (South). To offend in one is to be guilty of all (James 2:10). The chain of duty is broken by the removal of a single link. "Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments" (Psalms 119:6). It is not a handsome feature or a handsome limb which makes the handsome man, but the symmetry and proportion of all. So, not the practice of this or that virtue, but an entire complexion of all, can alone render a man righteous in the sight of God.
2. Its leading characteristics. It unites what human corruption is ever tending to dissever, religion and morality. It imitates the Father in heaven in the justice of his perfect Being. It rejects unjust gain, flings the bribe as a thing of pollution from the hand. It is abstinent from the greed of gold, that most downward and degrading vice, making the soul all earth and dirt, burying that noble thing which can never die." "Thou shalt not take a gift, because a gift blinds the eyes of the wise" (Deuteronomy 16:9; cf. 1 Samuel 12:3; Ecclesiastes 7:7). Covetousness is a thing directly contrary to the very spirit of Christianity; which is a free, a large, and an open spirit—open to God and man, and always carrying charity in one hand, and generosity in the other (South). It is exclusive in reference to evil, as inclusive in reference to good. The good man walks with ear and eye shut against the moral contagion around him. As the leaven of disease will not develop save in the unhealthy body, so moral evil will not grow to a head in the soul antipathetic to it. He "seals up the avenues of ill." By listening and looking come all our best and all our worst inspirations. Dead to sin, he "neither hears nor sees;" alive to God, he is all ears and all eyes, for his words, his inspirations. The chastity of the spirit extends to the senses, and if the mind be full of the love of purity, "each thing of sin and guilt" is driven far from it. Itself remains intact as the sunbeams glancing on the garbage-heap.
3. Its security and satisfaction. The good man dwells on the heights (cf. Psalms 15:1-5; Psalms 24:3, Psalms 24:4), inaccessible to miasmata from the poisonous swamps below, braced by the different air, enlivened by glorious prospects. He will have food, and that in abundance. To "eat and be satisfied" is the simplest and strongest figure for intellectual satisfaction, for a rich inner life; as hunger that of an empty, distressed, self-torturing spirit. But as food is of no service without an appetite for it, so this spiritual satisfaction can only be theirs who hunger and thirst after righteousness, who have fixed their minds upon an Object, which still invites the most boundless and unlimited appetite. The nobler senses are never weary of exercise upon objects which delight them. We do not surfeit upon noble music, nor do rare pictures cloy. The desires of the righteous are so agreeable to the ways of God that they find a continual freshness growing upon them in the performance of duty; like a stream, which, the further it has ran, the more strength and force it has to run further (South).—J.