Isaiah 26:11

Lord, when Thy hand is lifted up they will not see

Man’s blindness to the Divine working

Modern scepticism seeks to undeify the Deity; and yet, feeling that man must have a god of some sort, it deifies nature, and invests matter and the laws of the universe with the attributes of Divinity.

This is no new form of scepticism. The same evil existed among the Jews in the days of Isaiah. To this the prophet emphatically refers in our text. The lifting up of the hand refers to the gracious and loving tokens He had given of Himself; but a wilful blindness hid the Divine glory from the people.

I. MAN’S BLINDNESS TO THE DIVINE WORKING--

1. In the realm of matter. There are men who, while they behold and admire the work, care not to see or own the Worker.

2. In the realm of history. Men who look at events, whether small or great, in the lives of individuals or of nations, and are content to account for them by alluding simply to second causes, without learning to trace the hand of God, are guilty of the sin to which the text refers. National sins bring national judgments. One wicked king is often employed to scourge another, and when the scourger has done his work, then he himself in turn is also scourged. One wicked nation is employed to punish another for its sins, to humble its pride, and to check its guilty ambition.

3. In the realm of spirit. A vile and wicked person enters the sanctuary. His character is notoriously bad. He takes his seat in the pew beside you. During the service, God by His Spirit comes down upon him with mighty power. In answer to his prayer he experiences a renewal of heart. He announces the fact to you. And yet you think little or nothing about it. This does not affect you half as much as if you were told that you had made a hundred pounds by some fortunate speculation. Look at the Lord Jesus in Gethsemane. The ease is unique. Innocence is in agony. A merciful God pours the sorrows of abandonment and death into the soul of our holy Substitute. Yet His friends, His disciples, for whom He suffers, are fast asleep. But the disciples are only types of other men.

II. THE CAUSES OF THIS BLINDNESS.

1. Ignorance. The heathen, having no direct written revelation, are in darkness, and know not the truth. But their blindness to the supernatural can scarcely be pronounced wilful or criminal; it must be regarded as the fruit of ignorance. But as ignorance cannot be pleaded in our case, with our fulness of light, our blindness is wilful.

2. Indifference.

3. Absorption of thought in other things.

4. Pride of intellect. This reason reveals itself in the undue homage rendered to human reason. “Thus saith the Lord” must give way to “Thus saith human reason.”

5. Pride of heart. It develops itself in an obstinate refusal to submit to the authority of God.

III. THE REMOVAL OF THIS BLINDNESS. “They shall see, and be ashamed,” etc.

1. Sometimes men are brought to see by sad calamities and sore judgments.

2. Men are also brought to see by the agency of the Holy Spirit.

3. Many will see God in the hour of death. At the moment of dissolution, who will venture to say what strange visions of the supernatural will people the whole scene around them? Every object then will seem full of God.

4. In the day of judgment all men shall see. God will vindicate Himself, and overthrow the unbelief of His deniers by a personal revelation of Himself.

5. The result of all this unveiling will be shame and envy.

(1) Whether the discovery of God is made here or hereafter, shame must inevitably be the result. In the one ease it will be the shame of the penitent returning to God, full of conscious guilt; in the other it will be the shame of utter despair. It is to the latter our text refers. It is the shame of those who shall discover that they have wronged God, when there is no possibility of repairing the wrong. When the man discovers in the light of the future how full everything is of God, how God pervades all, he will be covered with shame--shame at his folly in resisting evidences so clear and conclusive; shame for having denied and rejected so reasonable and so elevating a system as Christianity; shame for having espoused so unreasonable and so degrading a theory as infidelity.

(2) Another result will be envy. They shall “be ashamed for their envy at the people.” In the margin it is rendered, “Ashamed of their envy toward Thy people.” It seems a startling truth, that the wicked, at some future period of their history, shall have such an insight into the glorious inheritance of the good as to have a clear conception of what they themselves might have obtained by grace, and of what they have lost by sin. This solemn truth is alluded to several times in the sacred Scriptures. Our Saviour saith, “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.” The rich man saw Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. When the unbelieving shall see the glorious portion of those who have believed, and contrast it with their own degrading wretchedness, they will envy the glorified, and be ashamed of that very envy. (R. Roberts.)