vii. 12. _But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I
tempt the Lord._
Ahaz here poses as a better man than the prophet. He refuses to
follow the direction which Isaiah has given him, and refuses, because
he alleges, to do so would be wrong. His disregard of what he knows
to be a Divine direction, he covers by an appeal to a general
principle which God has been pleased to give for our guidance (Deut.
vi. 16). Thus he sought to silence the reproaches of conscience
within, and of good men without. We may take him as the
representative of that large class of persons who for their actions
assign reasons that really are not their governing motives, and cover
wrong actions by what appear to be cloaks of righteousness, but
really are cloaks of hypocrisy.
How numerous these people are! We find them in all ranks of life;
there is this skilful use of pretexts in all realms of human
activity. +1. Social life,+--_e.g.,_ A man rejects a suitor for his
daughter's hand, the suitor being forty-five years of age and the
daughter twenty-two, professedly for the excellent reason that too
great a disparity in age between man and wife is not desirable but
really because the suitor is not sufficiently wealthy.
+2. Business,+--_e.g.,_ A man refuses to become security for another,
because, he says, he has entered into an undertaking with his
partners not to incur any such responsibility, and because it is
important that deeds of partnership should be honourably observed;
really because he had no wish to oblige the man who asks his aid.
+3. Politics.+--Why, this is a form of activity which has to a large
extent ceased to be care for the welfare of the city or of the
community, and has to the same extent become a game of pretexts, in
which broad and great principles are used to cover petty and personal
ends. +4. Religion.+--Alas! into this realm also men carry the same
spirit and practices. Let us look at some of the prevalent forms of
irreligious piety. (1.) There is the man who will not make any
confession of Christ, because "religion is a thing between a man's
own soul and God." (2.) There is the man who will not join the
church, because the members of the church are so inconsistent, and
inconsistent Christians are among the greatest of all hindrances to
the progress of Christianity. (3.) There is the man who never attends
a week-evening service, because "there is no real religion in
neglecting one's daily duties, and we are expressly told that we are
to be diligent in business." The same man, however, finds it neither
impossible nor inconsistent with his duties to attend political
meetings and popular concerts. (4.) There is the man who never
subscribes to any foreign missionary society, because "religion, like
charity, should begin at home, and even in this so-called Christian
land there are millions of practical heathen who need to have the
Gospel preached to them." How much does this man contribute towards
home missions? (5.) There is the man who will not contribute towards
any church-building fund, because he does not "believe in bricks and
mortar," and because "true religion before God and the Father is--not
to build costly sanctuaries--but to help the fatherless and widows in
their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world" (cf.
John xii. 4-6). (6.) There is the man who has no hesitation in
joining in a Sunday excursion, because "the Sabbath was made for man,
not man for the Sabbath," and because--the two pleas almost always go
together--"it is possible to worship God as truly in the great temple
of nature as in any temple built by man." Picture the man as he
actually "worships God in the great temple of nature;" and inquire
how he feels on Monday after what he calls "a little relaxation on
the Sunday." (7.) There is the man who indulges freely in what many
people consider worldly amusements, because "it is not well to be too
strait-laced; Solomon, indeed, warns us against being righteous
over-much; and there is nothing so likely as Pharisaism to disgust
young people with religion" (H. E. I. 5038-5043).
So we might go on with this miserable catalogue. Satan, we are told
appears sometimes in the guise of an angel of light, and in this
respect his children are wonderfully like him; they are marvellously
ingenious in using holy principles to cover unholy purposes. But what
does all this ingenuity amount to? Whom do they succeed in deceiving?
Not men for any length of time. The wolf never succeeds in long
completely covering itself with the sheep's clothing. The mask of the
hypocrite will slip aside. And when it does so, men despise him for
wearing it. Did he show himself as he is, men might, would, condemn
him; but they would not despise him so much. And God--He is never
deceived. He loathes the false pretenders to righteousness; and ere
long He will strip them bare, and expose them to the execration of
the universe (H. E. I., 3017-3032; P. D., 1923, 1924, 1930).
What is the practical lesson to be learned from the whole? To pray
that God will help us in all things to be sincere; to live, "as
seeing Him who is invisible," remembering that _He_ sees what is
invisible--the motives underlying the actions that are seen of men.
Nothing else can win for us from Christ the priceless commendation,
"Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!"