Isaiah 2:12-17

The day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon everyone that is proud and lofty

Scepticism discomfited by Christ’s advent

I. Among THE CAUSES OF THE SPIRIT OF RELIGIOUS SCEPTICISM there are--

1. An early habit of spiritual negligence.

2. A state of exaggerated and credulous belief.

II. Consider THE INSEPARABLE CONSEQUENCES OF SUCH A STATE, whatever be the peculiar causes out of which it springs.

1. He who is in suspense about the truth of the Gospel cannot pray. “He that cometh to God must believe that He is.” He who feels that he has sinned, and that God is holy, knows that he needs a mediator; and he that would trust in a mediator must believe that He is.

2. He cannot resist sin. He who is in suspense about the truth of Christ’s Gospel is as weak as he who denies it, yea, weaker. For the other knows that he is thrown upon the resources of his own unaided strength, and he summons them all together for his support. But the man who doubts is a divided man. He has cast off his other armour; and this, the armour of God, he cannot take, for he has not proved it.

III. THINK WHAT THE ADVENT WILL BE TO SUCH A MIND. The day of the Lord of hosts will be “upon” it, and will bring it low. We inquired whether there was a day coming; and behold, it is come. While we inquired and reasoned and speculated, He of whom we doubted was carrying on His judgment upon us. (C. J. Vaughan, D. D.)

The day of the Lord

The flood, the destruction of Sodom, the invasion of Judaea in the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah, the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar or by Titus, were held by the Jewish prophets and preachers--as the like national crises in ancient and in modern history have ever been held by Christian philosophers and historians--to be “days of the Lord,” in which He has come to judge the earth; and partial anticipations of the last judgment of the world. (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)

The day of the Lord and the majestic beauty of nature

(Isaiah 2:13):--Has this language a merely figurative meaning?.. .In order to understand the prophet we must bear in mind what sacred Scripture assumes throughout, that all nature is joined with man to form one common history; that man and the whole world of nature are inseparably connected as centre and circumference; that this circumference likewise is under the influence of the sin which proceeds from man, as well as under the wrath and the grace which proceed from God to man; that the judgments of God, as proved by the history of nations, bring a share of suffering to the subject creation, and that this participation of the lower creation in the corruption and the glory of man will come into special prominence at the close of this world’s history, as it did at the beginning; and lastly, the world in its present form, in order to become an object of the unmixed good pleasure of God, stands as much in need of a regeneration (παλλιγγενεσία) as the corporeal part of man himself. In accordance with this fundamental view of the Scriptures, therefore, we cannot wonder that, when the judgment of God goes forth upon Israel, it extends to the land of Israel, and, along with the false glory of the nation, overthrows everything glorious in surrounding nature which has been forced to minister to the national pride and love of display, and to which the national sin adhered in many ways. What the prophet predicts was already actually beginning to be fulfilled in the military inroads of the Assyrians. The cedar forest of Lebanon was being unsparingly shorn; the hills and vales of the country were trodden down and laid waste, and, during the period of the world’s history, beginning with Tiglath-Pileser, the holy land was being reduced to a shadow of its former predicted beauty. (F. Delitzsch.)

The Lord of hosts

All the creatures in the universe are the hosts or armies of Jehovah; angels, who excel in strength; the sun, the moon, and the stars; the thunder and the lightning; the wind, the hail, and the rain; the storm and the tempest; the most insignificant insects, such as the flies and the caterpillars; yea, the sand of the sea and the dust of the earth. (R. Macculloch.)

The day of the Lord upon the proud and lofty

Is it personal strength, vigour, and firmness of constitution with which he is elated? Though he be among the sons of the mighty, strong as the children of Anak, the weakness of God is stronger than men; before the Almighty, he is only as a grasshopper, and is easily crushed as the moth. Is it courage and fortitude which hath rendered him valiant, and made his heart as the heart of a lion? He who saith to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, can quickly deprive him of his courage, and render him timorous and faint-hearted, so as to tremble at the shaking of a leaf. Is it riches which are reckoned a strong tower, a defence, and the sinews of strength! The day of the Lord shall blow upon them, and they shall pass away as the flower of the field, or an eagle flying toward heaven. Is it honour and renown that hath lift him up to the pinnacle of earthly glory? God, who overthroweth the mighty, shall bring down all that dignity, on account of which he highly valued himself, and reduce him to the most humiliating condition. History, sacred and profane, confirms the truth of this prediction. (R. Macculloch.)

Man humiliated

Zedekiah, King of Judah, deprived of his royal dignity, of his sons, who were slain before his eyes, and then of his eyesight, was bound in fetters of brass, and carried to Babylon.. Bajazet, the Emperor of Turkey, was bound with fetters of gold, by the victorious Tamerlane, and carried along with him in his march through Asia, in an iron cage, as an object of ridicule. Henry V, Emperor of Germany, was reduced to such poverty, that he went to the great church which he himself had built at Spires, begging the place of a chorister, to keep him from starving. (R. Macculloch.)

Ships of Tarshish

Ships of Tarshish are deep sea ships. Possibly Tartessus, west of the straits of Gibraltar. (A. B. Davidson, LL. D.)