vii. 3-25. _Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, &c._
In this interview of Isaiah with Ahaz we have an instance--+I. Of
God's efforts to turn men from ruinous courses.+ God is the great
Lawgiver, and the Judge before whose bar all impenitent transgressors
of His law will have to stand. Absolute inflexibility is necessarily
His characteristic in both these capacities. But these are not the
only capacities He seeks to sustain to us. It is His ambition to be
the Saviour of men from sin and ruin. Consequently, He does not
merely lay down His law and stand coldly by, to see whether men will
keep it or not. He plies them with inducements to keep it. When He
sees them bent on transgression, He endeavours to arrest them in
their foolish and fatal purpose. Short of that destruction of the
freedom of their will, which would be the destruction also of their
responsibility and of their possibilities of virtue, He leaves
nothing undone to turn them from the broad road that leads to
death.[1] By adverse providences, by the strivings of His Holy
Spirit, by awakening conscience to an active exercise of its
functions, He works upon and in them to will and to do His good
pleasure. No sinner has ever gone down to perdition unheeded,
unpitied, without attempts to rescue him. Your own experience attests
the truth of these statements: you know you had to fight your way
through to those transgressions of which you are now ashamed. God's
"preventing grace" is a great fact of which we should take reverent
heed, and for which we should give fervent thanks.[2] +II. Of the
manner in which sinners, by insincere pretences, resist God's saving
purposes.+ The stubbornness and insincerity of Ahaz are obvious.[3]
But in neither of these is he singular. Sinners who are bent on their
sins not seldom go on to the under pretexts of righteousness, with
which they endeavour to deceive themselves and others. The greatest
crime ever committed was done under a pretext of righteousness (Matt.
xxvi. 65). So has it been with countless crimes since. Let us be on
our guard against our own hearts (Jer. xvi. 9; Prov. xiv. 12) Let us
not act upon any reason which we do not really believe will bear the
scrutiny of God. +III. Of the twofold result which always follows
such resistance to the Divine purposes.+ 1. _The sinner is, ere long,
compelled to confess that the counsels he set aside were counsels of
truth and wisdom._ In less than three years, Ahaz had cause to
acknowledge the soundness of the advice to which on this memorable
day he refused to listen.[4] A typical case. 2. _The obstinate sinner
is left to the ruin from which he would not permit God to deliver
him._ There is no salvation by force. God acts upon our will, but He
will not save us against our will. Neither shall those who refused to
be saved from sin be saved from its consequences. If we choose evil,
no act of omnipotence will render the choice harmless (chap.
iii. 11). Ahaz chose the help of Assyria rather than the help of
Jehovah, and with the help of that great and unscrupulous power he
had to take its domination and destructiveness (2 Chron. xxviii. 16,
20). Again a typical case. The retributive justice of God is a fact
of which it behoves us to be heedful.