Isaiah 7:13

TRIALS OF THE DIVINE PATIENCE

Isaiah 7:13. Will ye weary my God also?

In this chapter we are told under what circumstances this question came to be asked. An astonishing assumption underlies it, viz., that anything can be a weariness to God, that anything can be a trial of the Divine patience. Let us think of this.

I. It is a wonderful and glorious thing that there is a Divine patience to be tried. This is a distinctively Biblical idea. Uninstructed by the Scriptures, men naturally think of God as doing as He pleases and when He pleases,—His pleasure being always a selfish one; a Divinity of Power who permits nothing to arrest or delay His purposes, crushing every obstacle as an express train dashes through or over a flock of sheep that has strayed on to its track. Or if men seem with impunity for a time to disregard or defy Him, this is only because He is indifferent to them, caring nothing what they do, because He knows that whensoever He pleases He can destroy them. But in this Book we are taught to think of Him as profoundly interested in what men do, as grieved and provoked by what they do, and as not merely resisting the impulse to destroy them, but as feeling no such impulse; as longing over them with yearning desire that they would, by repentance and reformation, render it possible for Him righteously to abstain from dealing with them according to their deserts. The forbearance of God is a conception which we find only in this book, and that should excite our wonder, our thankfulness, our love. This forbearance of God—this marvellous Divine patience with sinful men—what is its secret and explanation? It is the love which God has for us. Love is slow to strike [799]

[799] H. E. I. 2295.

II. It is a sad and terrible thing that the Divine patience should be tried. There are some offences that are horrible, because they outrage even our imperfect sense of what is fitting, e.g., to falsely direct a blind man, so that he shall fall over a precipice; to kill a hunted creature that has fled to us for protection. But of all these outrages, the vilest are sins against love. This is the supremely loathsome thing in seduction, that it is a sin against uninstructed but trustful love. Our whole soul rises in disgust against the brutal wretch who smites to the earth the mother who bore and nursed him. But when we think of what God is, as He is presented to us in Scripture, we see that that heedlessness to His appeals, and warnings, and entreaties, of which we are apt to think so little, is really a horrible offence, because it is a sin against a love the depth and tenderness of which is but faintly imaged forth to us by the purest and most fervent human affection. Persistence in wrongdoing—we see its hatefulness even when it is maintained in spite of human love: the prodigal hardening himself against his mother’s entreaties to reform. But what must we say of it as maintained against the entreaties of a love that is more sensitive than any mother’s, and that it is rendered so wonderful by the fact that it is associated with a power that could instantly destroy? It is so startling and so horrible that it ought to be impossible. But—

III. The Divine patience is often tried. Sins against it are common. In this respect Ahaz does not stand alone. Men commit such sins without compunction. Have we not done so? With what contempt and indifference we have treated God’s expostulations with us! We have deferred the duty of repentance. Why? Very much because we know that God is patient, and will not be swift to take vengeance upon us. We have practised on His forbearance, and thus have been guilty of the basest crime that is possible; we have deliberately sinned against love. Yet we are not troubled; so possible is it to drug conscience; so delusive is peace of conscience in the impenitent. But let us look at our conduct as God must regard it, as any reasonable and holy intelligence must regard it, and let us humble ourselves before Him against whom we have sinned so basely [802]

[802] H. E. I. 2350.

Where men are bent upon wrong, there is always a strong tendency to elect a character of God that is not very just, but that is very kind—so kind that behind it they may gain some security in their wrong course. And when God’s long-suffering and patience are opened up to men they often say, “Well, if God is a being that is tender and loving, I need not be in a hurry to leave off my evil ways. He will bear with me a little longer, and I do not believe that He will account with me for my petty transgressions.” Men deliberately employ God’s mercy and goodness to violate His feelings.… That is infernal; it is inhuman, because kindness seems to lay almost every man under a debt of gratitude. A dog, even, feels itself laid under a debt of gratitude by kindness. It is only men who are corrupted that would ever think of making goodness, and kindness, and generosity towards them the ground on which to base a violation of these qualities. And yet hundreds say, “God is good, and we will go on a little while longer in sin.” Yes, He is infinitely good. He has been patient with you; He has longed for you; He has sent ten thousand invisible mercies to you, besides those visible mercies he has showered upon you; He has been long-suffering and forgiving; He has sunk in the depths of the sea thrice ten thousands of transgressions; He did it yesterday, He is doing it to-day, and He will do it to-morrow; and shall you argue with yourself that because God is so good you will go on and insult Him, and wound Him, and injure Him? Or shall the goodness of God lead you to repentance and newness of life? I beseech of you, for the sake of honour and manhood, do not tread upon God’s goodness, and generosity, and magnanimity to offend Him more.—Beecher.

IV. Those who tire out the Divine patience shall find themselves righteously confronted by the Divine justice [805] God will not be permanently mocked. He would be unworthy of His position if He permitted sin to go unpunished [808] What the punishment of sin is we do not know, because we are now living in an economy in which justice is tempered by mercy. Yet in the calamities and unspeakable woes that here and now befall obdurate transgressors, we have some faint intimation of what will be their doom when, having rejected mercy, they find themselves given over to the unmitigated rigours of justice. Of these things God has spoken, because He would save us from them. All the threatenings of Scripture are merciful warnings [811] Let us give heed to them, and return to Him who has declared with equal clearness and emphasis that He will by no means clear the guilty, and that He has no delight in the death of the sinner [814]

[805] H. E. I. 2296–2301, 2349.
[808] H. E. I. 2316, 2317.
[811] H. E. I. 604, 605.
[814] H. E. I. 2283, 2284.