vii. 13. _Will ye weary my God also?_
In this chapter we are told under what circumstances this question
came to be asked. An astonishing assumption underlies it, viz., that
anything can be a weariness to God, that anything can be a trial of
the Divine patience. Let us think of this.
+I. It is a wonderful and glorious thing that there is a Divine
patience to be tried.+ This is a distinctively Biblical idea.
Uninstructed by the Scriptures, men naturally think of God as doing
as He pleases and when He pleases,--His pleasure being always a
selfish one; a Divinity of Power who permits nothing to arrest or
delay His purposes, crushing every obstacle as an express train
dashes through or over a flock of sheep that has strayed on to its
track. Or if men seem with impunity from a time to disregard or defy
Him, this is only because He is indifferent to them, caring nothing
what they do, because He knows that whensoever He pleases He can
destroy them. But in this Book we are taught to think of Him as
profoundly interested in what men do, as grieved and provoked by what
they do, and as not merely resisting the impulse to destroy them, but
as feeling no such impulse; as longing over them with yearning desire
that they would, by repentance and reformation render it possible for
Him righteously to abstain from dealing with them according to their
desserts. The _forbearance_ of God is a conception which we find only
in this Book and that should excite our wonder, our thankfulness,
our love. This forbearance of God--this marvellous Divine patience
with sinful men--what is its secret and explanation? It is the _love_
which God has for us. Love is slow to strike.[1]
+II. It is a sad and terrible thing that the Divine patience should
be tried.+ There are some offences that are horrible, because they
outrage even our imperfect sense of what is fitting, _e.g.,_ to
falsely direct a blind man, so that he shall fall over a precipice;
to kill a hunted creature that has fled to us for protection. But of
all these outrages, the vilest are sins against love. This is the
supremely loathsome thing in seduction, that it is a sin against
uninstructed but trustful love. Our whole soul rises in disgust
against the brutal wretch who smites to the earth the mother who bore
and nursed him. But when we think of what God is, as He is presented
to us in scriptures, we see that most heedlessness to His appeals,
and warnings, and entreaties, of which we are apt to think so little,
is really a horrible offence, because it is a sin against a love the
depth and tenderness of which is but faintly imaged forth to us by
the purest and most fervent human affection. Persistence in
wrong-doing--we see its hatefulness even when it is maintained in
spite of human love: the prodigal hardening himself against his
mother's entreaties to reform. But what must we say of it as
maintained against the entreaties of a love that is more sensitive
than any mother's, and that it is rendered so wonderful by the fact
that it is associated with a power that could instantly destroy? It
is so startling and so horrible that it ought to be impossible. But--
+III. The Divine patience is often tried.+ Sins against it are
common. In this respect Ahaz does not stand alone. Men commit such
sins without compunction. Have we not done so? With what contempt and
indifference we have treated God's expostulations with us! We have
deferred the duty of repentance. Why? Very much because we know that
God is patient, and will not be swift to take vengeance upon us. We
have practised on His forbearance, and thus have been guilty of the
basest crime that is possible; we have deliberately sinned against
love. Yet we are not troubled; so possible it is to drug conscience;
so delusive is peace of conscience in the impenitent. But let us look
at our conduct as God must regard it, as any reasonable and holy
intelligence must regard it, and let us humble ourselves before Him
against whom we have sinned so basely.[2]
+V. Those who tire out the Divine patience shall find themselves
righteously confronted by the Divine justice.+[3] God will not be
permanently mocked. He would be unworthy of His position if He
permitted sin to go unpunished.[4] What the punishment of sin is we
do not know, because we are now living in an economy in which justice
is tempered by mercy. Yet in the calamities and unspeakable woes that
here and now befall obdurate transgressors, we have some faint
intimation of what will be their doom when, having rejected mercy,
they find themselves given over to the unmitigated rigours of
justice. Of these things God has spoken because He would save us from
them. All the threatenings of Scripture are merciful warnings.[5] Let
us give heed to them, and return to Him who has declared with equal
clearness and emphasis that He will by no means clear the guilty, and
that He has no delight in the death of the sinner.[6]