Isaiah 33:14,15

The sinners in Zion are afraid

“The sinners in Zion”

What a contradiction in terms! what a shock to the fancy! Zion! fair Zion, a dewdrop, a glittering star, a garden of beauty, a sweet flower, porcelain without a flaw, honey without wax--Zion! Then, “sinners in Zion”--sinners out of place; they spoil the situation; they are an evil blot in the fair landscape.

Sinners in the wilderness, sinners in polluted cities, sinners in hell--there you have a kind of music that has an accord and consonance of its own; but sinners in Zion! (J. Parker, D. D.)

The devouring fire

I. THE CHARACTERS REFERRED TO. “Sinners in Zion,” and “the hypocrites.” Those who are in Zion by a mere profession of religion. The self-righteous. Proud formalists.

II. THEIR PRESENT STATE. “Afraid,” &c. If temporal judgments, like those which God wrought upon the Assyrian army, had such an effect upon the sinners in Zion, what will be the terror of transgressors in prospect, of the everlasting judgments of God?

III. THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS. “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?” &c. (J. E. Starey.)

Security in testing times

It is certain that no man shall find his profession to be of use to him in testing times but he that is true in it, he that is thorough in it, he that is neither a sinner nor a hypocrite in the sense in which those words are here used. Safety in Zion belongs to those born in her by regeneration, reared in her by sanctification, enfranchised in her by faith in the Son of God, settled in her by fixed principles, confirmed in her by obedience to her laws, and bound to her by intense love of her King and her citizens. Such “shall dwell on high” secure from danger, and only such: the aliens and foreigners within her gates shall ere long be driven forth with shame. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The hypocrite

The man that stole the livery of heaven to serve the devil in. (Robert Pollok.)

Hypocrisy detected

A large price was demanded for a picture as being the work of an old master. It was on a panel, and some one looking behind it saw that the panel was mahogany. The picture was at once seen to be a fraud, for mahogany was not known in Europe until long after the death of the artist who was said to have painted it. A man by craft and hypocrisy may make himself look beautiful to his fellowmen, and be honoured for saintliness of character, but God looks behind the goodly show and detects the imposture at a glance. Only what is real will bear His inspection. (Gates of Imagery.)

Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?--

How to dwell in the fire of God

(with 1 John 4:16 : “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God”):--These two passages, striking as is the contrast, refer to the same subject, and substantially preach the same truth. A hasty reader, who is more influenced by sound than by sense, is apt to suppose that the solemn expressions in my first text--“the devouring fire” and the “everlasting burnings”--mean hell. They mean God, as is quite obvious from the context. The man who is to “dwell in the devouring fire” is the good man; he that is able to abide the “everlasting burnings” is “the man that walks righteously and speaks uprightly,” that “despises the gain of oppression, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil.” So that, plainly, here the fire is the destructive side of that Divine nature which, in its flashing brightness of holiness, cannot but burn up and consume evil. And the question of my text is in effect equivalent to this question: “Who among us can abide peacefully, joyfully, fed and brightened, not consumed and annihilated, by that flashing brightness and purity?” The prophet’s answer is the answer of common sense. Like draws to like. If the fire of God be the holiness of God in its lustrous brilliance, then a holy God must have holy companions. But that is not all. The fire of God is the fire of love as well as the fire of purity; a fire that blesses and quickens, as well as a fire that destroys and consumes. So the Apostle John comes with his answer, not contradicting the other one, but deepening it, expanding it, letting us see the foundations of it, and proclaiming that as a holy God must be surrounded by holy hearts, which will open themselves to the flame as flowers to the sunshine, so a loving God must be clustered about by loving hearts, who alone can enter into deep and true fellowship with Him. The two answers, then, are one at bottom; and when Isaiah asks, “Who shall dwell with the ever-lasting fire?”--the perpetual fire, burning and unconsumed, of that Divine righteousness--the deepest answer, which is no stern requirement but a merciful promise, is John’s answer, “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The fire of God

I. THE WORLD’S QUESTION. Frequently in the Old Testament the emblem of fire is employed to express the Divine nature. In many places, though by no means in all, the prominent idea in the emblem is that of the purity of the Divine nature, which flashes and flames as against all which is evil and sinful. So we read in one grand passage in this very book, “the Light of Israel shall become a fire.” And we read, too, in the description of the symbolical manifestation of the Divine nature which accompanied the giving of the law on Sinai, that “the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mountain,” and yet into that blaze and brightness the Law-giver went and moved in it. There is in the Divine nature a side of antagonism and opposition to evil, which fights against it, and flames against it, and labours to consume it. But then, on the other side, the fire is also the fire of perfect love that quickens and blesses. And these two are one. God’s wrath is a form of God’s love; God hates because He loves. Well, that being so, the question rises to every mind of ordinary thoughtfulness: “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” A God fighting against evil; can you and I hope to hold familiar fellowship with Him? To “dwell with everlasting burnings” means two things--first, to hold familiar intercourse and communion with God. What sort of a man will do that? Can you? Is it likely that you should? The second of the things that it means is to face and bear the action of the fire, the judicial action, the judgment of the present and of the future.

II. THE PROPHET’S ANSWER. He says if a man is to hold fellowship with, or to face the judgment of the pure and righteous God, the plainest dictate of reason and common sense is that he himself must be pure and righteous to match. And the details into which his answer to the question runs out are all very homely, prosaic, pedestrian kind of virtues, nothing at all out of the way, nothing that people would call splendid or heroic. If you will turn to the Psalms 24:1. you will find there two other variations of the same questions, and the same answer, both of which were obviously in our prophet’s mind when he spoke. The requirements of the most moderate conscience are such as none of us is able to comply with. And what then? Am I to be shut up to despair? am I to say, then, nobody can dwell with that bright flame?

III. THE APOSTLE’S ANSWER. “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.” Now, to begin with, let us distinctly understand that the New Testament answer, represented by John’s great words, entirely endorses Isaiah’s; and the difference between the two is not that the Old Testament, as represented by Psalmist and Prophet, said: “You must be righteous in order to dwell with God, and that the New Testament says: You need not be!” Not at all! John is just as vehement in saying that nothing but purity can bind a man in thoroughly friendly and familiar conjunction with God as David or Isaiah was. What, then, is the difference between them? It is this, for one thing. Isaiah tells us we must be righteous; John tells us how we may be. And now you have got to the very bottom of the matter. That is the first step of the ladder--faith: the second step is love, and the third is righteousness. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

God’s anger

If you will only remove from that word “anger” the mere human associations which cleave to it, of passion on the one hand, and of a wish to hurl its object on the other, then you cannot, I think, deny to the Divine nature the possession of that passionless and unmalignant wrath without striking a fatal blow at the perfect purity of God. A God that does not hate evil, that does not flame out against it, using all the energies of His being to destroy it, is a God to whose character there cleaves the fatal suspicion of indifference to good, of moral apathy. If I have not a God to trust in that hates evil because He loveth righteousness, then “the pillared firmament itself were rottenness, and earth’s base built on stubble”; nor were there any hope that this damnable thing that is killing and sucking the life-blood out of our spirits should ever be destroyed and cast aside. It is short-sighted wisdom, and it is cruel kindness, to tamper with the thought of the wrath of God, the “everlasting burnings” of that eternally pure nature wherewith it wages war against all sin! (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

God’s justice in human life

To Isaiah, life was so penetrated by the active justice of God, that he described it as bathed in fire, as blown through with fire. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)