Rom. x. 20, 21. Esaias is very bold, and saith, I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me. But to Israel he saith, All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gain- saying people.
IT is scarcely to be conceived to what a degree prejudice will close both the eyes and ears of men against the plainest truths. Nothing could be plainer than the avowed purpose and determination of God
to cast off the Jews in the event of their continued impenitence, and to admit the Gentiles to a partici- pation of those privileges of which the Jews in the first instance had the exclusive enjoyment. Moses had declared it in the most direct terms ; that " God would provoke the Jews to jealousy by those who were not a people, and by a foolish nation he would anger them:" the plain import of which was, that he would transfer his favours to the Gentiles, in case the Jews should continue to abuse them. But Isaiah, as my text expresses it, was very bold ; affirming in a way of prophetical anticipation, that God was already found of the Gentiles, to whom his Gospel, so long slighted by the Jews, was now proclaimed3. Yet strong as these assertions were, the Jews could not for a moment admit the idea, that the Gentiles should be admitted to a participation of their privi- leges. But St. Paul assures them, that so it had been determined many centuries before, and, in fact, that so it had been done.
In discoursing on the predictions here cited, we shall consider them, I. As prophecies fulfilled —
In them we see,
1. God's promise to the Gentiles — [The Gentiles are here plainly designated. They " sought not God, nor asked after him " at all : they were altogether ignorant of God, and unconcerned about him. They did not regard the notices of him which were visible in all the works of his hands. They were contented to live without him in the world ; and so far did they put him from them, that " lie was not in all their thoughts."
Yet to these was God now made known in the person of his Son : the glad tidings of salvation had been proclaimed to them ; the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon them ; and Christ, in all his fulness, and in all his glory, had been revealed in their hearts. God had now been found of them, not as a Creator merely, but as a Saviour ; a Father, a Friend, a Portion, " an everlasting great Reward." Though they had been in darkness and the shadow of death during all the time that God had made himself known to the Jews, yet at last
a See Isai. lxv. 1, '2.