PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Isaiah and Jeremiah
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 230,785 words · 340 reading sections
The Sunlit Church
I take both these methods of fulfilling the command into my view, in the further remarks that I make, and I put that which I have to say upon this into three sentences: if we are light, we shall be able to shine; if we are light, we are bound to shine; if we are light, we shall wish to shine. We shall be able to shine.…
900 wordsSECTION 242The Sunlit Church
III. Lastly, notice here the confident promise. 'The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.' If we have the light we shall be light; if we are light we shall shine, and if we shine we shall attract. Certainly men and women with the light of Christ in them will draw others to them,…
789 wordsSECTION 243Walls And Gates
'Thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise'--ISAIAH lx. 18. The prophet reaches the height of eloquence in his magnificent picture of the restored Jerusalem, 'the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.' To him the city stands for the embodiment of the nation, and his vision of the future…
659 wordsSECTION 244Walls And Gates
II. Praise is to be the city's gate. As to the Church, this prophecy anticipates the Apostle's teaching that the whole divine work of Redemption, from its fore-ordination before the foundation of the world, to its application to each sinful soul, is 'to the end that we should be unto the praise of His glory' or, as he…
353 wordsSECTION 245The Joy-Bringer
'To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.'--ISAIAH lxi. 3. In the little synagogue of Nazareth Jesus began His ministry by laying His hand upon this great prophecy and saying, 'It is Mine! I have fulfill…
657 wordsSECTION 246The Joy-Bringer
Of course, there are many of us who feel that life is sufficiently comfortable and moderately happy, or at least quite tolerable, without any kind of reference to God at all. And in this day of growing materialism, and growing consequent indifference to the deepest needs of the spirit and the claims of religion, more a…
700 wordsSECTION 247The Joy-Bringer
Brethren, "the paradox of the Christian life" is, 'as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.' Christ calls for no hypocritical insensibility to 'the ills that flesh is heir to.' He has sanctioned by His example the tears that flow when death hurts loving hearts. He commanded the women of Jerusalem to 'weep for themselves and…
653 wordsSECTION 248The Joy-Bringer
And may I say one last word? My text suggests not only these two points to which I have already referred--viz. that Jesus Christ is the Joy-bringer because He is the Emancipator, and that He transforms sorrow by transforming the mourner--but, lastly, that III. Jesus gives joy after sorrow. 'Nevertheless, afterward' i…
641 wordsSECTION 249The Heavenly Workers And The Earthly Watchers
'For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest ... I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give Him no rest'--ISAIAH lxii. 1, 6, 7. Two remarks of an expository nature…
921 wordsSECTION 250The Heavenly Workers And The Earthly Watchers
But whilst on the one side Christ rests as from a perfected work which needs no addition nor repetition, on the other He 'rests not day nor night.' And this aspect of His present state is as distinctly set forth in Scripture as that is. Indeed the words already quoted as embodying the former phase contain the latter al…
717 wordsSECTION 251The Heavenly Workers And The Earthly Watchers
'I will not rest.' Through all the ages His power is in exercise. He inspires in good men all their wisdom, and every grace of life and character. He uses them as His weapons in the contest of His love with the world's hatred; but the hand that forged, and tempered, and sharpened the blade is that which smites with it;…
720 wordsSECTION 252The Heavenly Workers And The Earthly Watchers
So we have not only to look back to the Cross, but up to the Throne. From the Cross we hear a voice, 'It is finished.' From the Throne a voice, 'For Zion's sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest.' II. Secondly, Christ's servants on earth derive from Him a like perpetual activity for th…
777 wordsSECTION 253The Heavenly Workers And The Earthly Watchers
Our voices should ever be heard in heaven. They who trust God remind Him of His promises by their very faith; it is a mute appeal to His faithful love, which He cannot but answer. And, beyond that, their prayers come up for a memorial before God, and have as real an effect in furthering Christ's kingdom on earth as is …
665 wordsSECTION 254The Heavenly Workers And The Earthly Watchers
Christ asks no romantic impossibilities from us, but He does ask a continuous, systematic discharge of the duties which depend on our relation to the world, and on our relation to Him. Let it be our life's work to show forth His praise; let the very atmosphere in which we move and have our being be prayer. Let two grea…
711 wordsSECTION 255The Heavenly Workers And The Earthly Watchers
God is always the same--equally near, equally strong, equally gracious. But our possession of His grace, and the impartation of His grace through us to others, vary, because our faith, our earnestness, our desires, vary. True, these no doubt are also His gifts and His working, and nothing that we say now touches in the…
805 wordsSECTION 256Mighty To Save
Alas! alas! have we not all been like those three apostles whose eyes were heavy with sleep even while the Lord was wrestling with the tempter under the gnarled olives in the pale moonlight of Gethsemane? Let us arouse ourselves from our sloth. Let us lift up our cry to God: 'Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the…
685 wordsSECTION 257Mighty To Save
He is mighty to save, and is able to save unto the uttermost, because He lives for ever, and His power is eternal as Himself. II. The mighty Saviour as to be manifested in the future. Clearly the imagery of the context describes a tremendous act of judgment. And as clearly the Apocalyptic Seer understood this prophec…
631 wordsSECTION 258The Winepress And Its Treader
'Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat? I have trodden the winepress alone.'--ISAIAH lxiii. 2, 3. The structure of these closing chapters is chronological, and this is the final scene. What follows is epilogue. The reference of this magnificent imagery to the s…
669 wordsSECTION 259The Winepress And Its Treader
But the access of majesty does not imply the putting off of lowliness and meekness. There is much that is severe and terrible in the figure that rises here before the prophet's vision, but both aspects equally belong to the glorified Christ, and that duality in His character makes each element more impressive. His long…
742 wordsSECTION 260The Sympathy Of God
'In all their afflictions He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them'--ISAIAH lxiii. 9. I. The wonderful glimpse opened here into the heart of God. It is not necessary to touch upon the difference between the text and margin of the Revised Version, or to enter on the reason for preferring the former. …
792 wordsSECTION 261The Sympathy Of God
For the present I go no further than this. It is clear, then, that our text is at all events remarkable, in that it ascribes to this 'angel of His presence' the praise of Jehovah's saving work. The loving heart, afflicted in all their afflictions, sends forth the messenger of His face, and by Him is salvation wrought. …
640 wordsSECTION 262How To Meet God
'Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember Thee in Thy ways.'--ISAIAH lxiv. 5. The prophet here shows us how there is a great staircase which we ourselves build, which leads straight from earth to heaven, and how we can secure that we shall meet with God and God with us. 'Isaiah' i…
710 wordsSECTION 263How To Meet God
Many voices preach to-day many duties for Christians. Let me plead for times of quiet, for times of 'doing' nothing, for fruitful times of growth, for times when we turn all the rout and rabble of earthly things, and even the solemn company of pressing duties, out of our hearts and thoughts, and shut up ourselves alone…
781 wordsSECTION 264How To Meet God
And the gladness which is wholesome and blessed, and is 'joy in the Lord,' will manifest itself by efflorescing into all holiness and all loftiness and largeness of obedience. You may try to frighten men into righteousness, you will never succeed. You may try to coerce their wills, and your strongest bands will be brok…
543 wordsSECTION 265'The God Of The Amen'
'He who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth.'--ISAIAH lxv. 16. The full beauty and significance of these remarkable words are only reached when we attend to the literal rendering of a part of them which is obscured in …
860 wordsSECTION 266'The God Of The Amen'
Ah! my friend, what a miserable contrast there is between the firm, unshaken, solid security of the divine word upon which we say that we trust, and the poor, feeble, broken trust which we build upon it. 'Let not that man think that He shall receive anything of the Lord'; but let us expect, as well as 'ask, in faith, n…
741 wordsSECTION 267'The God Of The Amen'
III. Lastly, note how the God of the Amen should be the pattern of His servants. 'He that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth,' or, 'of the Amen.' The prophet deduces from the name the solemn thought that those who truly feel its significance will shape _their_ words accordingly, and act and speak so…
422 wordsSECTION 268Stiff-Necked Idolaters And Pliable Christians
'Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the Lord, and with your children's children will I plead.'--JER. ii. 9. Point out that 'plead' is a forensic term. There is a great lawsuit in which God is plaintiff and men defendants. The word is frequent in Isaiah. I. The reason for God's pleading. The cause--'wherefore…
759 wordsSECTION 269Stiff-Necked Idolaters And Pliable Christians
Think, then, of the rebuke which the obstinate adherence of idolaters to their idols gives to the slack hold which so many professing Christians have on their religion. Think of the way in which these lower religions pervade the whole life of their worshippers, and of how partial is the sway over a little territory of…
515 wordsSECTION 270Fountain And Cisterns
'They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water'--JER. ii. 13. The proclivity of the Jews to idolatry is an outstanding fact all through their history. That persistent national tendency surely compels us to recognise a divine inspiration as th…
678 wordsSECTION 271Forsaking Jehovah
We recall the New Testament modification of this metaphor, 'The water that I shall give him shall be _in_ him a fountain of water.' Arabs in desert round dried--up springs. Hagar. Shipwrecked sailors on a reef. Christ opens 'rivers in the wilderness and streams in the desert.' 'Know therefore, and see, that it is an e…
651 wordsSECTION 272A Colloquy Between A Penitent And God
'A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the Lord their God. Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto Thee; for Thou art the Lord our God.'---JER. iii. 21, 22. …
707 wordsSECTION 273A Question For The Beginning
The answer and the invitation here are immediate. There is often a long period of painful struggle. It looks as if the answer were not immediate. But that is because we do not listen to it. III. The happy response of the returning soul. That too is immediate. The soul believes God's promises. It recognises God's cla…
655 wordsSECTION 274A Question For The Beginning
But whilst all that is true, and many deductions must be made from the principle which I have laid down, that the consideration of circumstances is a good guide in life, yet there are regions in which the question comes home with direct and illuminating force. Let me just illustrate one or two of these. Take the lower…
779 wordsSECTION 275A Question For The Beginning
And so, brother, 'What will ye do in the end--which is not an end, but which is a beginning? 'Surely every wise man will take that question into consideration. Surely, if it be true that we all of us are silently drifting to that one little gateway through which we have to pass one by one, and then find ourselves in a …
672 wordsSECTION 276A Question For The Beginning
It is not altogether sinful or bad that we should live, to some extent, under the illusion of a fixity and a perpetuity which has no real existence, for it helps to concentrate effort and to consolidate habit, and to make life possible. But for men to live, as so many of us do, never thinking of what is more certain th…
794 wordsSECTION 277A Question For The Beginning
And it is so because, with your buoyancy, with your necessarily limited experience, with the small accumulation of results that you have already in your possession, and with the tendencies of your age to live rather by impulse than by reflection, you are specially tempted to forget the solemn significance of this inter…
726 wordsSECTION 278Possessing And Possessed
'The portion of Jacob is not like them--for He is the former of all things: and Israel is the tribe of His inheritance. The Lord of Hosts is His name.'--JER. x. 16, R.V. Here we have set forth a reciprocal possession. We possess God, He possesses us. We are His inheritance, He is our portion. I am His; He is mine. Th…
661 wordsSECTION 279Possessing And Possessed
II. The human response by which God becomes ours and we His. That response is first the act of faith, which is an act of both reason and will, and then the act of love and self-surrender which follows faith, and then the continuous acts of communion and consecration. All must commence with recognition of His free gif…
492 wordsSECTION 280Calms And Crises
'If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and though in a land of peace thou art secure, yet how wilt thou do in the pride of Jordan?'--JER. xii. 5, R.V. The prophet has been complaining of his persecutors. The divine answer is here, reproving his impatien…
717 wordsSECTION 281An Impossibility Made Possible
III. Think of the power that will fit us for all crises. With the power of Jesus in our spirits we shall never have to attempt a duty for which we are not strengthened, nor to front a danger from and in which He will not defend us. With His life in us we shall be ready for the long hours of uneventful, unexciting duti…
735 wordsSECTION 282An Impossibility Made Possible
The change to good is further made difficult because liking too often goes with evil, and good is only won by effort. It is a proof of man's corruption that if left alone, evil in some form or other springs spontaneously, and that the opposite good is hard to win. Uncultivated soil bears thistles and weeds. Anything ca…
675 wordsSECTION 283An Impossibility Made Possible
It puts all life under the influence of a new love. 'The love of Christ constraineth.' As is a man's love, so is his life. The mightiest devolution is to excite a new love, by which old loves and tastes are expelled. 'A new affection' has 'expulsive power,' as the new sap rising in the springtime pushes off the lingeri…
727 wordsSECTION 284Triumphant Prayer
Begin with trusting to Him to help you to change a deeper blackness than that of the Ethiopian's skin, and to erase firier spots than stain the tawny leopard's hide, and He will make you a new man, and set you in His own time in a 'new heaven and earth, where dwelleth righteousness.' 'O Lord, though our iniquities tes…
687 wordsSECTION 285Triumphant Prayer
Glancing over these clauses, then, and trying to put them into something like order for our purpose, there are four things that I would have you note. The first is the mysterious contradiction between the ideal Israel and the actual state of things; the second is the earnest inquiry as to the cause; the third the penit…
767 wordsSECTION 286Triumphant Prayer
And look at what we are doing: scarcely holding our own numerically. Here and there a man comes and declares what God has done for his soul. But what is the Church, what are the Christian men of England, with all their multifarious activities, performing? Are we leavening the national mind? Are we breathing a higher go…
822 wordsSECTION 287Triumphant Prayer
Nor do we believe, I suppose, any of us, that we are to look for any part of the reason in failure of the adaptation of God's work and God's ordinances to the great work which they have to do. Other people may tell us, if they like--it will not shake our confidence--that the fire that was kindled at Pentecost has all d…
1,015 wordsSECTION 288Triumphant Prayer
IV. And so, finally, look at the wonderful way in which in this text of ours the prophet fuses together into one indistinguishable and yet not confused whole, confession, and pleading remonstrance and also the confidence of triumphant prayer. I cannot touch upon the various points of that as I would gladly do; but I m…
969 wordsSECTION 289Sin'S Writing And Its Erasure
'The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars.'--JER. xvii. 1. 'Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in …
653 wordsSECTION 290Sin'S Writing And Its Erasure
Consider the illustrations of this law in regard to our sins. Now the last thing people think of when they hear sermons about 'sin' is that what is meant is the things that they are doing every day. I can only ask you to try to remember, while I speak, that I mean those little acts of temper, or triflings with truth, …
652 wordsSECTION 291Sin'S Writing And Its Erasure
The writing may be with invisible ink, but it will be legible one day. So, then, all this solemn writing on the heart is done by ourselves. What are you writing? There is a presumption in it of a future retribution, when you will have to read your autobiography, with clearer light and power of judging yourselves. At an…
662 wordsSECTION 292Sin'S Writing And Its Erasure
II. Sin's writing may be erased, and another put in its place. The work of Christ, made ours by faith, blots it out. (a) Its influence on conscience and the sense of guilt. The accusations of conscience are silenced. A red line is drawn across the indictment, or, as Colossians has it, it is 'nailed to the cross.' The…
459 wordsSECTION 293The Heath In The Desert And The Tree By The River
'He shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited...He shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be gre…
878 wordsSECTION 294The Heath In The Desert And The Tree By The River
If that be so, brethren, what insanity the lives of multitudes of us are! As well might bees try to suck honey from a vase of wax flowers as we to draw what we need from creatures, from ourselves, from visible and material things. What would you business men think of some one who went and sold out all his stock of Gov…
775 wordsSECTION 295The Heath In The Desert And The Tree By The River
Turn to the other side. 'He shall not fear when heat cometh,' which is evil in those Eastern lands, 'and shall not be careful in the year of drought.' The tree, that sends its roots towards a river that never fails, does not suffer when all the land is parched. The man who has driven his roots into God, and is drawing …
702 wordsSECTION 296The Heath In The Desert And The Tree By The River
'A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine,' said good old George Herbert. And any act, however humble, on which the light from God falls, will gleam with a lustre else unattainable, like some piece of broken glass in the furrows of a ploughed field. Sure I am that if we Christian people had a deeper faith, w…
654 wordsSECTION 297A Soul Gazing On God
'A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.'--JER. xvii. 12. I must begin by a word or two of explanation as to the language of this passage. The word 'is' is a supplement, and most probably it ought to be omitted, and the verse treated as being, not a statement, but a series of exclamati…
723 wordsSECTION 298A Soul Gazing On God
This, then, is the first of Jeremiah's great thoughts of God, and it means--'The Lord God omnipotent reigneth,' there is none else but He, and His will runs authoritative and supreme into all corners of the universe. But it is 'glory' that is throned. That is equivalent to the declaration that our God has never spoken …
698 wordsSECTION 299A Soul Gazing On God
'The place of our sanctuary,' then, declares that God Himself, like some ancestral dwelling-place in which generation after generation of fathers and children have abode, whence they have been carried, and where their children still live, is to all generations their home and their fortress. The place of our sanctuary i…
812 wordsSECTION 300Two Lists Of Names
But such confidence which makes all these things my own possessions, which makes Him 'a throne of glory,' to which I have access; which makes Him a place in which I dwell by this exercise of personal faith; which makes Him my hope, has for its other side the turning away from all other grounds of confidence and securit…
660 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.