Isaiah 1:31

THE SINNER AND HIS WORKS DESTROYED

‘And the strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it’ [his work] ‘as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them.’

Isaiah 1:31

There are those who glory in outward greatness. They are (they think) ‘strong as the oaks,’ but that strength, when not supported by righteousness, is only like the coarse, unwoven flax, easily broken and easily consumed. Wickedness shall perish, though it sit on thrones. ‘An empire based upon the wrong is rotten through and through.’ The lesson of the text is, that the sin of the evil-doer becomes his scourge. The work of the strong shall be as a spark of fire to him, and both shall burn, and burn inextinguishably. The words look at the Advent of the Lord purely on the side of judgment.

I. It is God’s law that wickedness shall be destroyed.—(1) History of nations proves this, and all such history is a prophecy of the Great Judgment. The Jewish nation has been effaced from history as a nation. See the fate of the empires of all the past—Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon, Greece, Rome. Think of Napoleon I, and his successor in the empire. (2) History of individual men. Have you ever seen it? Say not ‘Where is the promise of His coming?’ for every such instance is a promise.

II. It is God’s law that a man’s own sin shall be his destruction.—‘His work is as a spark.’ Ambition lights up the penal retribution of one man; sensuality is the spark to the tow of another; and avarice works the ruin of a third. Our pleasant vices are made our scourges (Psalms 9:16; Psalms 28:4).

III. It is God’s law that this destruction shall be irretrievable.—‘They shall both burn together, and none shall quench them.’ There is a time when even tears and penitence would seem to be vain.

Illustration

‘The principle in this passage teaches us the following things: (1) That the wicked, however mighty, shall be destroyed. (2) That their works shall be the cause of their ruin—a cause necessarily leading to it. (3) That the works of the wicked—all that they do and all on which they depend—shall be destroyed. (4) That this destruction shall be final. Nothing shall stay the flame. No tears of penitence, no power of men or devils shall put out the fires which the works of the wicked shall enkindle.’