Too late.
"They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the Lord; but they shall not find him; he hath withdrawn himself from them." This verse directs us to two subjects of thought.
I. THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL WORKS. "They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the Lord." "Seek the Lord:" this implies a distance between man and his Maker. The Bible abounds with allusions to this distance. What is it? It is not the distance of being, for both are in close vital contact. "In him we live and move and have our being." It is the distance of character. Between the sympathies, principles, and aim of the two there is a distance vast as infinitude. "His thoughts are not our thoughts," etc. Hence the great work of man is to seek the Lord morally—to seek his character, and thus become a "partaker of the Divine nature."
1. This is a work in which all men should engage. The grand duty of all souls is to be "holy, even as he is holy." Holiness is the condition of fellowship with him in "whose presence there is joy, and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore."
2. This is a work which all men must attend to sooner or later. The time hastens on when the most wicked and worthless man on earth will wake up to the importance of holiness, and strenuously try for his friendship. Of all works, then, this is the most important. Every ether avocation of life is puerile compared with this. Man's great want is the Lord—the Lord's character, the Lord's fellowship. Without this, whatever else he has, he is lost—lost to happiness, to usefulness, and to the grand ends of his being.
II. The most important of all works UNDERTAKEN TOO LATE. "They shall not find him; he hath withdrawn himself from them." Though they take with them their flocks and their herds, and are prepared to make the greatest sacrifices, their efforts are fruitless—"He hath withdrawn himself from them." This is the language of accommodation. He puts forth no effort to conceal himself, he alters not his position, but he seems to withdraw from them. As the white cliffs of Albion seem to withdraw from the emigrant as his vessel bears him away to distant shores, so God seems to withdraw from the man who seeks him "too late."
CONCLUSION. "Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord: they would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices." D.T.