Isaiah 29:11,12

The vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed

The universality of spiritual blindness

What is affirmed in these verses holds so strikingly true of God’s general revelation to the world, that we deem the lesson contained in them to be not of partial, but permanent application.

I. There is A COMPLAINT uttered in these verses

(1) by the learned,

(2) by the unlearned.

1. If a book be closed down by a material seal, then, till that seal be broken, there lies a material obstacle even in the way of him who is able to read the contents of it. Is there any hindrance in virtue of which the critics, and the grammarians, and the accomplished theologians of our age, are unable to reach the real and effective understanding of the words of this prophecy? Yes, and it is wonderful to tell, how little the mere erudition of Scripture helps the real discernment of Scripture. The learned just labour as helplessly under a want of an impression of the reality of this whole matter, as the unlearned; and if this be true of many a priest and theologian, with whom Christianity is a science, and the study of the Bible the business of their profession, what can we expect of those among the learned, who, in the pursuits of a secular philosophy, never enter into contact with the Bible, either in its doctrine or in its language, except when it is obtruded on them? To make the wisdom of the New Testament his wisdom, and its spirit his spirit, and its language his best-loved and best-understood language, there must be a higher influence upon the mind, than what lies in human art, or in human explanation. And till this is brought to pass, the doctrines of the atonement and of regeneration, and of fellowship with the Father and the Son, and of a believer’s progressive holiness, under the moral and spiritual power of the truth as it is in Jesus, will, as to his own personal experience of its meaning, remain so many empty sounds, or so many deep and hidden mysteries: and just as effectually, as if the book were held together by an iron clasp, which he has not strength to unclose, may he say of the same book lying open and legible before him, that he cannot read it, because it is sealed.

2. As for the complaint of the unlearned, it happily, in the literal sense of it, is not applicable to the great majority of our immediate countrymen, even in the very humblest walks of society. They can read the book. There may remain a seal upon its meaning to him, who, in the ordinary sense of the term, is learned, while the seal may be removed, and the meaning lie open as the light of day to him, who in the same sense is unlearned. In pressing home the truths and overtures of Christianity on the poor, we often meet with the very answer of the text, “I am not learned.” They think that there is an ignorance which necessity attaches to their condition, and that this should alleviate the burden of their condemnation, in that they know not God. Now we refuse this apology altogether. The Word of the Lord is in your hands, and you can at least read it. The Gospel is preached unto you as well as unto others--and you can, at least, attend to it.

II. Let us now proceed to EXPLAIN A CIRCUMSTANCE which stands associated in our text with the incapacity both of learned and unlearned to discover the meaning of God’s communications--that is the spirit of deep sleep which had closed the eyes of the people, and buried in darkness and insensibility the prophets, the rulers, and the seers, as well as the humblest and most ignorant of the land. The connection between the one circumstance and the other is quite palpable. If a peasant and a philosopher were both literally asleep before me--and that so profoundly, as that no voice of mine could awaken them--then they are just in the same circumstances, with regard to any demonstration which I addressed to their understandings. Neither would it at all help the conveyance of my meaning to their mind, that while dead to all perception of the argument which issued from my lips, or even of the sound which is its vehicle, the minds of both of them were most busily alive and active amongst the imagery of a dream--the one dreaming too, perhaps, in the style of some high intellectual pursuit, and the other dreaming in the style of some common and illiterate occupation. Such, it is possible to conceive, may be the profoundness of this lethargy, as to be unmoved by the most loud and terrifying intimations. That the vast majority of the world are, in truth, asleep to all those realities which constitute the great materials of religion, may be abundantly proved by experience. Now, the question comes to be, how is this sleep dissipated? Not, we affirm, and all experience will go with us, by the power of natural argument--not by the demonstrations of human learning, for these are just as powerless with him who understands them, as with him who makes his want of learning the pretence for putting them away. There must be a something equivalent to the communication of a new sense, ere a reality comes to be seen in those eternal things. It is true, that along the course of our ordinary existence, we are awake to the concerns of our ordinary existence. But this is not a wakefulness which goes to disturb the profoundness of our insensibility as to the concerns of a higher existence. We are in one sense awake; but in another most entirely, and, to all human appearance, most hopelessly and irrecoverably asleep. We are just in the same condition with a man who is dreaming, and so moves for the time in a pictured world of his own. And the transition is not greater from the sleeping fancies of the night to the waking certainties of our daily business, than is the transition from the daydreams of a passing world to those substantial considerations which wield s presiding authority over the conduct of him who walketh not by the sight of that which is around him, but by the faith of the unseen things that are above him, and before him. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)

The voices of life

Here, we find the picture of the two great classes of excuses men make today, when duties are urged upon them.

I. The first great answer of human nature to the call of duty--the first and readiest excuse which the easy-going, self-indulgent life has to offer--is this first excuse of the men of Jerusalem to the unpleasant vision of the future. It is as a book which is sealed, and he who is able to read it does not read it, simply because it is closed, or sealed. Here we have a definite excuse given, which looks plausible enough, but which only means, after all, the lack of will power, which so frequently lodges behind some prominent excuse. POWERLESSNESS OF WILL! Who does not make this excuse in life?

II. The other great excuse which is so freely given is the LACK OF OPPORTUNITY. He who has the will has not the one requisite, the one condition of success, the longed for opportunity. The poor man with his tastes envies the rich their command over the forces of life. The struggling student by his midnight lamp, with his book borrowed from the library, sighs as he sees the elegantly bound but unopened volumes of those who have abundant opportunities but no appreciation of their hidden treasures, or will to read them. The invalid upon the bed of pain, whose life is a dream of impossible realities, cherishing noble yearnings for the strife, sees life passing by, padlocked and bound, with every aspiration chained and fettered by the hopeless impossibility of ever achieving anything. Practical lessons--

1. This very incompleteness of our nature shows us the soul’s rightful demand for another life without these limiting human conditions.

2. Right in the midst of these voices of life, these excuses for our failure, from whatever source these excuses come, the religion of Jesus Christ appears as a new creation of power.

3. Just when we feel that our motive power is failing us, or that we are helpless in our surroundings, and are lacking an opportunity for the exercise of our suppressed faculties, the Spirit of God, who is the Comforter of the sanctified heart of man and the Inspirer of his better nature, appears with His Divine mission, and opens the way out of dead levels and land-locked vistas, into new and unforeseen stretches of existence. What a power there is in this thought of the soul’s higher deliverance by the interposing hand of the Spirit of God, lifting us out of our poor everyday life! (W. W. Newton.)

Bible neglect reproved

The general division of “the learned” and “the unlearned” is introduced as offering an excuse for the not understanding the revelation of God. There is diversity, indeed, in the excuse itself, but there is thorough agreement upon the point, that, from some reason or another, the Bible is unintelligible; the one class taking refuge in the alleged obscurity of Scripture, and the other in their own defective education. None are represented as actually throwing scorn upon the book, but all render it a kind of involuntary homage. And we believe that no truer description could be given of the great body of men, considered relative to the light in which they view Scripture. If there were anything like a general suspicion that the Bible is not what it professes itself--a revelation from God, there would be nothing to surprise us in the general neglect with which it is treated; we should quite expect that if there were doubt as to the origin there would, for the most part, be indifference as to the contents; but with the great body of men its origin is no more brought into question than is the duty of preparing for eternity. And here we have a manifest inconsistency, to be accounted for only on the supposition that men have provided themselves with some specious apology.

I. We shall consider, therefore, THE CASE AND APOLOGY OF THE LEARNED. There is something of truth in the representation that the Bible is a sealed book. We always regard it as a standing proof of the divinity of the volume, that it is not to be unfolded by the processes which we apply to a mere human composition, and that every attempt to enter deeply into its meaning, without the assistance of its Author, issues in nothing but conjecture and confusion. But in all these excuses, however specious, and however, in a certain sense, grounded on a truth, there is nothing to warrant that refusal to examine Holy Writ which they are invented to justify. We know of no conclusion which can be fairly drawn from the confessed mysteriousness of Scripture, and the consequent need of a superhuman interpreter, but that the volume should never be approached in our own wisdom, and never without prayer for the teaching of God’s Spirit. If it would be our duty to study the volume were it not sealed, it must be equally our duty to study it when, though sealed, the way is prescribed in which it may be opened. We have only to bring this consideration into the account, and there is an end of all arguing from the obscurity of the study of Scripture.

II. THE CASE AND APOLOGY OF THE UNLEARNED MAN. Here, again, the excuse is based on a truth, but nevertheless, it in no degree justifies neglect. It is of vast importance that the poor be set right in this matter, and that they be taught that there is no necessary connection, as they seem to suppose, between scholarship and salvation. It is easier for the educated man to become, what is called a skilful divine, but it is not one jot easier for him to discover and follow the narrow path of life. Indeed, if there be advantage at all, it is on the side of the unlearned. If the understanding the Bible, so as to become morally advantaged by its statements, depend on the influences of the Holy Ghost, it is clear that the learned may read much and gain no spiritual benefit, and the unlearned read little and yet be mightily profited. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

Learned and unlearned

The passage is interesting as illustrating the diffusion of literary education in Isaiah’s time (Jeremiah 5:4).(Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)

Gradual revelation

Sir Joshua Reynolds says that when he first visited Italy to make the acquaintance of the celebrated masterpieces of art he was much cast down. The renowned masters maintained towards him quiet and dignified silence; they refused to confide to him their thoughts. He gazed steadfastly at the wondrous pictures whose fame had filled the world, and could not behold their glory. Persevering, however, in his studies, the pictures gradually began, one after another, to raise their veils and permit him to have an occasional peep at their rare beauty; they softly whispered to him a few of their secrets; and as he continued unwavering in his devotion, they at last flung away their reserve, showed themselves with an open face, and revealed to him the wealth of beautiful ideas that was lodged in them. (J. C. Jones.)

The Holy Spirit the Illuminator

I remember to have heard from one who was a spectator at the time, of his having once seen a little child playing upon a headland over the sea, who took a telescope from the hand of one near him, and handed it to a blind old sailor who was sitting on the cliff, and the child asked the blind man to sweep the far horizon and tell him with the glass what ships were them. The old man, however, could only turn bitterly towards the child with those sightless eyes of his; and, it seems to me, that you might as well give a telescope to a sightless man as to give the Bible to a man whom you do not suppose to possess the guidance of the Spirit. (Bp. W. Alexander.)