The great preparation.
"Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel," etc. Here an important duty fathers itself on a stupendous fact. An omnipotent God is in judgment with sinful Israel. His wrath has expressed itself in bolt after bolt of judgment already hurled. But these measures are far from embodying all his punitive resources. In the failure of these to bring repentance there are woes unnamed, because unutterable, still in store. If Israel, then, would have the heaviest artillery of retribution kept out of action, they had need bestir themselves in the matter of a duty the further neglect of which must precipitate disaster.
I. GOD AND MEN LIVING APART. The enjoyment of God's presence was paradise (Genesis 3:8), and will be heaven (1 Thessalonians 4:17); that privilege lost is death (Genesis 3:24), and will be hell (Luke 16:26).
1. The wicked neither have God's presence nor desire it. "God drove out the man," when he became a sinner; and all men, as sinners, are "afar off." Purity and impurity are incompatible, and there can be no fellowship between them. Righteousness and unrighteousness are antagonistic, and cannot come together without coming into collision. Man's instinctive consciousness of this led him to anticipate expulsion from God's presence by trying to run away (Genesis 3:8). The separation between God and the sinner is thus by consent, and in the nature of the case, and so inevitable during the status quo.
2. The righteous enjoy it in the imperfect measure in which they desire it. The need of Divine fellowship, universal with men, becomes conscious when they become spiritual (Psalms 42:2). As supply everywhere meets demand (Philippians 4:19), and measures it, the drawing near of God is synchronous with the springing of desire for it (Matthew 5:6), as well as proportioned to its strength (Revelation 21:3). To each of us God comes when we desire him, and as we desire him. If the presence be intermittent or incognizable, it is because appreciation is inadequate, and the longing for it irregular or weak (Isaiah 57:15; Isaiah 43:22).
3. To desire it perfectly and possess it fully is heaven. "Heaven is endless longing accompanied with an endless fruition" (Maclaren). In it there is perfection of the faculties which commune with God. There is perfection of opportunity for their exercise. Accordingly, there is perfect attainment of the normal result. We are "with Christ," and "know even as also we are known."
II. CERTAIN OCCASIONS ON WHICH THEY NEVERTHELESS MEET. The wicked fear God (Romans 8:15) and bate him (Romans 8:7), would be miserable in his presence (Revelation 6:16), and so do all they can to keep away from it (Job 22:17; Job 21:14). But:
1. They meet him in the dispensations of providence. He is their King. He rules their life. All the events in it are of his disposing. He is where he operates, and so in each operation of which they are the subjects they meet him. Especially does he come to them in his judgments, which they are provoking every day. Misfortune, sickness, death,—these in their order, for a widening circle, and at ever closer quarters, are occasions of meeting God which none would choose, yet none can shun.
2. They meet him in the influences of his grace. "No one's salvation is so desperate, no one is so stained with every kind of sin, but that God cometh to him by holy inspirations to bring back the wanderer to himself" (Jerome, in Pusey). The strivings of the Spirit are unnoticed often, and resisted often (Luke 19:44; Acts 7:51), and so are in the end withdrawn (Genesis 6:3); but, so far as we know, they are universal. As truly as he met the Prophet Balaam in the way does God meet men in the exercise of constraining or restraining grace.
3. They shall meet him in the judgment day. "Before him shall be gathered all nations." This meeting is sure, and will be unutterably momentous. All other meetings are preliminary and preparatory to it. It will gather up and declare and finally administer their cumulative results, The wicked shall be finally banished from God's presence, and the righteous be finally admitted to it; and so for each it shall be the great meeting and the last meeting.
III. THE PREPARATION NEEDED FOR SUCH ENCOUNTERS. Israel was evidently deficient in this; not expecting the meeting and not furnished for it. In making it we must:
1. Prepare a character. To meet God satisfactorily men must be like him. To see him on the one hand, or relish him on the other, or be capable in any sense of holding communion with him, a man must be pure (Matthew 5:8; 2 Corinthians 6:14). He must bring to the meeting a character in sympathy with God's, if he would bring a blessing away.
2. Prepare a case. Man before God is a criminal, guilty, condemned, and sentenced. He wants all this reversed, and he must be able to show reason before it can be done. And what are the elements essential to his ease? Clearly the penalty he was under must have been exhaustively endured (1 Peter 2:24); the Law he is under must have been perfectly obeyed (Isaiah 42:21); both these things must have been done with the approval and by the appointment of God (Hebrews 5:4, Hebrews 5:5); and the man must be intelligently resting his case on these facts. In other words, there must be Divine vicarious obedience and death, divinely recognized, and rested in by faith. Any appearance before God apart from these must end in confusion.
3. Prepare an advocate. Man cannot plead his own case. lie has no locus standi. He can approach God only through a mediator (1 John 2:1). This mediator, to be admissible, must have Divine recognition (Isaiah 42:1; Hebrews 5:4, Hebrews 5:5); to be efficient, must have Divine power (Psalms 89:19; Matthew 28:18); and to be available, must have Divine sovereign love for men (Ephesians 5:2). These conditions meet, and meet only, and always met, in Jesus Christ. He is the one Advocate of every dispensation. Access into the antitypical holiest of all has been one thing and by one way always (Hebrews 9:8; Hebrews 10:19-22). It is and was and shall be only spiritual and through the Son of God.
4. Prepare at once. To Israel a meeting in judgment had been long foreshadowed, and was now overdue. It might be any time, and must be soon. A surprise—and in like circumstances it is the same with all—was probable, and would be disastrous (Revelation 3:3). To prepare immediately was, therefore, a duty as urgent as it was clear (Matthew 24:44). It is ill beginning to dig a well when the house of life is already on fire.
IV. THE CONSIDERATIONS THAT MOVE US TO PREPARE. In the context these are written large. There is:
1. An implied promise. "It has hope in it to be bidden to prepare" (Pusey). The person so enjoined is not yet given up. The menaced doom is not yet inevitable. The way in which God shall be met, and so the result of the meeting, is still capable of being modified. Every call to action is an implicit promise of the result to which it naturally leads. There is also:
2. An explicit threat. "Thus will I do unto thee." There is a vagueness here that is far more terrible than the most explicit denunciation. A series of woes already sent has just been named. But there is a woe that is unutterable in reserve, and already on its way. This, because words are too weak to express it, is left to the imagination to picture. "Thus will I do unto thee," he says, and attempts to particularize no further, where the sentiment is too terrible for words. And so it is with the woe in store for all the impenitent wicked. It cannot be literally defined, and so is suggested by figures such as "the blackness of darkness" (Jud Amos 1:13), "the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched" (Mark 9:48). But, however figuratively represented, the woe is real, is prepared, is being kept in store, is incomparably great, and shall fall as God is true.
3. Whether we are prepared or not, the meeting with God must come. "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." There is a needs be in the case. The purpose of God must be fully carded out in issuing all the matters that go down unsettled to the grave. The righteousness of God must conclusively be vindicated in meting out to all rewards according to their works. The truth of the Divine Word, pledged in promise and in threat, must be established forever in the answering of event to explicit prediction. The meeting may be a joy to us or a shame, as we choose to have it; but it must be a fact.
4. A feeling of unreadiness is a necessary step to preparation. The measure of a sinner's fancied readiness to face his Maker is the measure of his ignorance as to what real fitness implies. The man who has been brought to say, "I dare not face God," has made one step in advance. He is disillusionized. His eyes are open and his conscience awake. Self-deception and false security are at an end (Revelation 3:17, Revelation 3:18). The first step toward grappling with the facts has been taken when once we have fairly faced them. Realize that you are sinners, and the grace of God that bringeth salvation will find appreciation and an open door.