Isaiah 55:8-9

Isaiah 55:8

I. The errors, in opposition to which the doctrine of the text is to be asserted, are those connected with what has been technically termed anthropomorphism.

II. The testimony of the text is not to be overstrained. There are qualifications and limitations that must be practically observed in applying it. (1) We are expressly taught to judge of the heart of God by what is in the heart of man. "Like as a father pitieth his children," etc. (2) But for such a liberty and warrant as we now contend for some of the most affecting of the inspired pleadings and promises of the Bible would be cold and heartless. (3) There is a great truth to be brought out here, that the perfection of God, in respect of which He is to be contrasted with man, consists not in the absence of sensibility, but in its very intensity and purity and power.

II. The applications of this truth are as manifold as are the exigencies of human experience. (1) It is because His thoughts are not your thoughts that God justifies freely. (2) For the same reason the pardon He dispenses is very free, unreserved, as well as unconditional. (3) But most peremptory, authoritative, sovereign, is the Gospel call, as a call to repentance as well as to reconciliation. (4) The promises of God are and must be most faithful, because His thoughts are not our thoughts.

R. S. Candlish, The Gospel of Forgiveness,p. 264.

I. The mystery of Christ's birth and of our new birth. As in many other places of the prophet Isaiah, so here in the text, the Almighty commends to us this thought, that we should learn from the very sight of the heaven above us, not to lose, in our sense of God's mercy, the deep trembling awe and reverence with which we ought to regard all His doings; not to dream that we understand them; nor to conclude that they fail because we do not yet see the fruit of them, but to labour diligently in the way of our duty, and for the rest to be silent before Him, and wait on Him with adoring patience.

II. This same lesson, which the very height of the heaven was intended to teach all mankind, seems to be brought before us Christians in a wonderful, unspeakable way, when we are called on to remember our Lord's nativity. The very thing by itself, God Incarnate, was the wonder of all wonders a matter surely as much above the thoughts and conjectures of man as the heaven is higher than the earth: that the Creator should become a creature; that the Lord most holy and true should join Himself to a sinful race and become one of them, to deliver them from the evil consequences of their sin. But even suppose the thought of God's becoming man had entered into any man's heart, the circumstances of His coming into the world were far unlike what we should have imagined. Consider the quietness of this great event. How in the silence of the night, in a town of no great size or wealth, in an outhouse of an inn, the great God came visibly among His creatures, as it had been prophesied concerning Him. How poor and lowly was everything around Him who was come to bring us all the treasures of heaven!

III. From this great event we learn: (1) Not to doubt that God's purposes, however to us unlikely, will be one way or another accomplished. (2) Not only in the great concerns of the world and of the kingdom of God, but also in what relates to each of us particularly, we are to be quite sure that the Almighty has His own purpose concerning us, and that He is working around us and within us even in the most ordinary things. (3) The Collect for Christmas Day teaches that our Lord's taking our nature upon Him, and His birth on this day of a pure virgin, answers in some remarkable way to our being regenerate and made His children by adoption and grace, i.e.,our baptism. As Christ at His nativity showed Himself in our human nature, so we at our new birth, St. Peter tells us, are made partakers of His Divine nature.

Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times" vol. iv., p. 302.

References: Isaiah 55:8; Isaiah 55:9. J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany,p. 27; C. Morris, Preacher's Lantern,vol. ii., p. 60; J. Foster, Lectures,2nd series, p. 129. Isaiah 55:8. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 13; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xii., No. 676, vol. xxiii., No. 1387. Isaiah 55:10; Isaiah 55:11. T. P. Boulver, Old Testament Outlines,p. 232; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 272; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 201; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 204; Ibid., Sermons,1870, p. 149. Isaiah 55:10. C. Short, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 173.Isaiah 55:11. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 162; D. Moore, Penny Pulpit,No. 349.