"Had not Jehovah God of Hosts left us a remnant, We had soon become as Sodom; We had been like unto Gomorrah. Hear the word of Jehovah, O you princes of Sodom! Give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah! What have I to do with the multitude of your sacrifices? says Jehovah; I am cloyed with the burnt-offerings of rams, And the fat of fed beasts; And in the blood of bullocks, and of lambs, and of goats, I have no delight. When you come to appear before me, Who has required this at your hands? Tread my courts no more; bring no more vain oblation; Incense! It is an abomination unto me. The new moon, and the Sabbath, and the assembly proclaimed. I cannot endure; the fast, and the day of restraint. Your months and your solemnities, my soul hates; They are a burden upon me; I am weary of hearing them. When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; Even when you multiply prayer; I will not hear; For your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove far away the evil of your doings from before my eyes; Cease to do evil; learn to do well; Seek judgment; amend that which is corrupted; Do justice to the fatherless; defend the cause of the widow. Come on now, and let us plead together, says Jehovah; Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; Though they be red like crimson, they shall be like wool. If you shall be willing and obedient, You shall feed on the good of the land; But if you refuse, and be rebellious, You shall be food for the sword of the enemy; For the mouth of Jehovah has pronounced it." (Isaiah 1:9-20,Lowth)
Whoever would get the full benefit of these verses must not fail to read them in connection with the verses that precede, which were quoted in the last week's lesson. In studying these it will be necessary to make frequent reference to them.
The Remnant
"Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah." (Isaiah 1:9)
They were utterly destroyed. But, "Though the number of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved." (Romans 9:27)
Because it is written, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." (Malachi 4:5-6)
Or, as the words really signify, "lest I come and smite the earth with utter destruction." Thus we see that this prophecy of Isaiah, which we are studying, has special reference to the last days. The remnant is the last, and the words describe the condition just before the coming of the Lord, when iniquity will abound, and the love of many will wax cold: "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." (Matthew 24:12)
When faith will be so scarce in the earth that one must enquire for it: "Nevertheless when the Son of man comes, shall He find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8)
And when even the professed church will be very like the heathen. Compare the following: "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away." (2 Timothy 3:1-5) "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." (Romans 1:28-32)
So full of wickedness does the church become, that the Lord addresses it as Sodom and Gomorrah. "Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah." (Isaiah 1:10)
Let the reader pay special heed to this fact, for it is not cited for the purpose of accusation, but of emphasizing the mercy of God, of which we come to speak.
Vain Worship
Compare Isaiah 1:11-15 with Amos 5:21-24: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? says the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When you come to appear before me, who has required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you: yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood." (Isaiah 1:11-15) "I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though you offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, Iwill not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take away from me the noise of your songs; for I will not hear the melody of your viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream." (Amos 5:21-24)
Although we are exhorted not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, religion does not by any means consist in going to meeting. There are times when all religious services are an abomination to the Lord. Singing is called noise, and prayer is disgusting to Him.
Yet let no one think that this means that there is ever a time when the Lord refuses to listen to a sinner's plea for pardon, on the ground that he is too sinful to be forgiven. Far from it; this portion of Scripture which we are studying teaches us exactly the opposite.
But the Lord cannot be deceived with honied phrases that mean nothing. Flattery does not tickle His ear. The double-minded man--who does not know his own mind, but the one who wants the evil even while asking the good--receives nothing from the Lord. Hypocrisy is detestable.
The self-righteous Pharisees, whose lives were outwardly models of propriety, but who were hypocrites, were objects of the Lord's most scathing rebukes, while He most tenderly drew to himself the publicans and harlots, whose lives were one mass of guilt, and who sincerely longed for something better.
Useless Prayers
"When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear." (Isaiah 1:15)
What a terrible statement that is! Yet it need not discourage a single soul. Not one who asks pardon of the Lord will ever be turned away. The Lord calls all to come, and He says, "Him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out." (John 6:37) "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." (Revelation 22:17)
But the Lord does not like to look upon blood, that is, upon bloody deeds; and when men stretch out their bloody hands to Him, offering Him wickedness as if it were righteousness, He cannot but turn away His eyes. That is not real praying, but simply the making of prayers.
To "say a prayer" is vastly different from praying. One man may say a prayer that somebody else has prepared for him, and put into his mouth, or which he himself has devised and learned so that he can repeat it from memory, but that is not praying. Nobody in the world is so ignorant that he does not know how to pray acceptably to the Lord. The man who depends upon somebody else to make a prayer for him, would not be praying if he should repeat it a thousand times a day.
Prayer is simply the asking for what one wants. Prayer to God must of course be the asking for goodness, since He has nothing else to give. Now if a person wants a thing, he knows that he wants it, and then it is as simple a thing to ask for it, as it is for a child to ask for a piece of bread when it is hungry. No one who is hungry needs to have somebody tell him how to ask for something to eat; even so whoever hungers and thirsts after righteousness knows how to ask for it successfully better than anybody can tell him.
No true parent ever refuses to give his child food when it is hungry; but there is not another in the world who would not very often let a child's request for food go unheeded if it were in the habit of coming to her many times a day, regardless of whether it were hungry or not, and formally reciting to her a request for something to eat. She would regard the condition of its stomach, rather than its words.
Verse 12 is thus rendered in the Danish and Swedish: "When you come to be seen before my face, who has required this of you, that you should trample upon my courts?" (Isaiah 1:12)
The last part of the 13th verse is by these and other versions rendered, "I cannot endure unrighteousness and a festival." (Isaiah 1:13)
Thus does the Lord make emphatic His desire for sincerity. The man who would cover his sins with a cloak of piety, multiplying religious forms in order to divert attention from his wicked deeds is loathsome to the Lord, while the vilest sinner who desires freedom from his wicked ways, is the object of the Lord's tenderest love.
Sacrifices of Righteousness
"Bring no more vain oblations." (Isaiah 1:13)
Vanity is emptiness. A vain oblation is an offering which contains nothing. Here we learn that the Lord has no delight in empty forms and ceremonies. In the true worship of God there is no place for the doing of a thing merely to represent something else. God desires the thing itself.
When David had committed a grievous sin, he knew that an offering would not please the Lord: "You desire not sacrifice; else would I give it; You delight not in burnt offering." (Psalm 51:16) "To obey is better than sacrifice." (1 Samuel 15:22)
When a man has sinned, God does not wish him to come before Him with something as a substitute for righteousness, but with righteousness itself. "Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord." (Psalm 4:5)
Put your trust in the Lord, who provides the righteousness which we need, so that none need come before Him empty. "Then shall You be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness." (Psalm 51:19)
Wash and Be Clean
"Wash, make yourself clean." (Isaiah 1:16)
To whom is this said? To those who are as bad as they can be. To a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers, children that are corrupters. It is spoken to those who are so full of the loathsome leprosy of sin, that from the sole of the foot even to the head there is nothing in them but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores. Even such may be "as white as snow." (Isaiah 1:18)
Of the reality of this cleansing we have ample evidence in the Scriptures. Naaman the Syrian was a leper. He went to the prophet Elisha, who, as the servant of the Lord, spoke the word of the Lord to him, saying, "Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall come again to you, and you shall be clean." (2 Kings 5:10)
He said, in short, just what we have in the text we are studying, "Wash, and be clean." (2 Kings 5:13)
Naaman, after a little sulking, did as he was commanded, "And his flesh came again as the flesh of a little child, and he was clean." (2 Kings 5:14)
Was it the water of the Jordan that effected the cure? Was it true that the water of the Jordan was so much better than the waters of the rivers of Damascus? Certainly not; that which cleansed him was the word of the Lord, which he listened to. The prophet did not tell him to cleanse himself, nor did he expect him to, but he gave him the word of the Lord, and that made the leper clean. In that case we see the cleansing power of the word of the Lord.
But the case is not yet complete. There came a man "full of leprosy" and said to Jesus, "Lord, if You will, You can make me clean." (Matthew 8:2)
Jesus instantly said, "I will; be clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed." (Matthew 8:3)
The same thing was done for this man that was done for Naaman, only in this case no visible means was used. If we had only the story of Naaman, then we might think that the water was what did the cleansing; and if we had only the case of the man who came to Jesus, then we should lose the impressive lesson taught in the first instance. But the two taken together teach us that the Lord cleanses us by "a water bath in the word," for so Ephesians 5:26 is properly translated in many versions. "Now are you clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." (John 15:3)
We are full of the uncleanness of sin, and the Lord says to us, just as He did to the man full of the uncleanness of leprosy, "Be clean." Did the Lord expect that the leper was to go away and cure himself? Certainly not; He knew that it was impossible. What had the man to do? Only to accept the word of the Lord. In his case the faith was already present, while the proud officer Naaman was required to give evidence that he did accept the word in humility; but both were cleansed in exactly the same way--by the word of the Lord.
The word of the Lord is healing medicine. The words of the Lord "are life unto those that find them, and medicine to all their flesh." (Proverbs 4:22,margin) "His commandment is life everlasting." (John 12:50)
God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass ... and it was so." (Genesis 1:11)
He said "Be light;" and instantly light was. Jesus said to the leper, "Be clean;" and immediately he was clean. So He says to us, "Wash; make yourself clean;" and if we are not too proud to accept the word, we are instantly clean. It matters not how sinful we are; the greater our need, the greater our recommendation to the mercy of the Lord. He pardons our iniquity just because it is great. "For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity; for it is great." (Psalm 25:11)
A Case in Court
"Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord." (Isaiah 1:18)
Pay particular attention to this verse as it is given in the translation at the head of this study: "Come on now, and let us plead together, says Jehovah."
This is the language of the courts, and is in harmony with the German, Swedish, and Danish translations, which have it, "Come now, and let us go into court together, says the Lord."
This is a strictly literal rendering of the Hebrew. The expression is the same as in Job 23:7, where we have unmistakably a court scene. "Oh that I knew where I might find Him! that I might come even to His seat! I would order my cause before Him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would know the words which He would answer me, and understand what He would say unto me. Will He plead against me with His great power? No; but He would put strength in me. There the righteous might dispute with Him; so should I be delivered for ever from my judge." (Job 23:3-7)
In no place in the Bible is the Hebrew word that occurs here used in the sense that is ordinarily conveyed by the word "reason," and in no other place than this is it so rendered in our version. It occurs in: "Set it here before my brethren and your brethren, that they may judge between us both," (Genesis 31:37)
Here the idea of a decision of a case at law is clearly indicated. The idea that a trial in court is in progress is indicated in the very first verse of the prophecy: "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth." (Isaiah 1:1)
The call is for "Silence in the court;" for a great case is on, which involves the whole universe. This thought, introduced in the very beginning of the prophecy of Isaiah is very prominent throughout, and we shall have frequent occasion to refer to it, so that it is worthwhile to give it a little special study now. When we have once grasped the thought, we shall see that it appears throughout the whole Bible.
Two texts set the whole matter briefly before us. In Psalm 51 we read: "Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in your sight; that You might be justified when You speak, and be clear when You judge." (Psalm 51:4)
Turn now to Romans 3, where we have this verse quoted thus: "Let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That You might be justified in your sayings, and might overcome when You are judged." (Romans 3:4)
In the first instance we have God as the Judge, and in the second we have Him as the one judged, yet winning His case. The same Spirit that inspired the words in the first place, also inspired the quotation, so that both expressions must mean the same thing. Therefore we learn that when God judges the world, He is at the same time judged.
That is to say, the Judgment is simply the summing up of a case that has been pending since sin entered the universe of God. God has been declared to be unjust, not only by Satan, but by everyone who has committed sin. "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
Therefore everyone who justifies himself, thereby declares that God is wrong; and whoever refuses to acknowledge himself to be a sinner, thereby justifies himself. But every man is unlike God. Therefore if men were right, that would prove God to be in the wrong.
Everybody who refuses to confess his sins, by that very refusal charges God with being unjust. And the same thing is done by those who acknowledge themselves to be sinners, but who doubt God's willingness to forgive.
It is evident that if God could be convicted of one act of injustice, He could not judge the world. In order that rebellion shall be put down for ever, never more to have any possibility of arising, every creature in the universe must see and acknowledge the righteousness of God. Few of the inhabitants of this world do that now; but the Judgment is to make it plain. The great Judgment is not for the purpose of enabling God to judge of the character of men, but to cause all men to see the true character of God.
Men are now taking sides for and against Him. The time will come when every secret thing will be brought to light. Then all will see that God has always been true and good. Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess. But it will be too late for those who have waited until then; they have taken sides against the Lord, and when He wins His case, they necessarily lose.
On the other hand, those who now put themselves on the side of the Lord, declaring that His way is right, which means that theirs is wrong, and who maintain their loyalty to Him against opposition, and even when they cannot explain some of His acts, will of course share in His triumph.
The details of this great case, the matter of witnesses, etc., will come in later on in our study; what we wish to keep before our minds is that the great question at issue is the character of God. He has infinitely more at stake than any man can possibly have.
This is our strong consolation. God's righteousness is revealed in the forgiveness of sin. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)
Whoever declares that God will not forgive sins, no matter whose, charges Him with being unjust. He forgives by His righteousness, His justice, and when we confess our sins, we become partakers of His righteousness. This assures our standing in the Judgment. Now God challenges us to try the case in court, and calls upon heaven and earth to act as jury, to see if there is a single case of acknowledged sin that He does not forgive. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as wool; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as white as snow." (Isaiah 1:18)
This is His case. He stakes His life upon that. That is the thing upon which He bases His claim to righteousness, and His right to judge the world. If God is willing to risk His case upon that claim, cannot we? Our life stands with His if we do.
We will trust Him, believing that His character will stand every test. Indeed, that is the only sensible thing to do; for if it were possible that we could prove Him unjust, we should gain nothing, since that would mean the end of His Government, so with that would go our lives and the life of all creatures.
So we see that it is the height of folly to try to pick flaws in God's character. It is like a man trying to saw off the limb upon which he is sitting over an abyss. But no fault can be found in God. "There is no unrighteousness in Him." (Psalm 92:15) "Trust in the Lord for ever; for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength." (Isaiah 26:4)
This call to come and be forgiven is to those who are as bad as they can possibly be. Every sin has produced its sore, and the result is that there is not a sound spot in the whole body. There is not a spot on which a stroke of correction could be laid, if sin were to be increased. To such ones He calls, in order that all may have hope, and may come with confidence.
With what boldness we may come! How it enlarges our view of the Gospel, and lifts the whole subject to a plane infinitely beyond the mere selfish inquiry, "Is it possible for me to be saved?"
It is God's case, not ours. He must forgive, or lose His life; for He gave His life for the express purpose of cleansing sins, and if He should not do it the life would be thrown away. Let us then come boldly to the throne of grace, fully assured that we shall obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.--Present Truth, January 5, 1899--Isaiah 1:9-20.