(1) The text may lead our minds to other deities as opposed to
Jehovah. They shall indeed be gone; in that day they shall be seen to
be less than the least of all their worshippers.
(2) It will be the great day of the disclosure of all things; and all
creatures shall see the Lord as He is, and themselves also as they
are. Therefore shall all the highest orders of celestial
intelligences, the cherubim and seraphim, and all the ranks of
existence which may occupy the interval between man and His Maker,
veil their faces before His throne; they shall be as nothing in _His_
sight. Then shall all creatureship fall low before the one Creator;
all derived, dependent being shall shrink into its true dimensions
before the Absolute, the Eternal, the I AM.
(3) Even Christ Himself, His office as the Messiah having been
accomplished, and His administration of the Church, in His human
character, being brought to a close, shall resign His mediatorial
sway (1 Cor. xv. 24-28; H. E. I. 985).
(4) But our chief concern, as we are men, is with humanity: "The
lofty looks of _man_ shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of _man_
shall be bowed down; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day."
That day shall indeed declare the impotence of human power, the
emptiness of human ambition, the nothingness of human renown.[3] The
very circumstances on account of which men have most lifted
themselves up in their lifetime will be the occasions of their
profoundest humiliation then.
In that day our sinfulness shall sink us into the dust, and cover us
with shame and confusion even more than our vanities. Shall any one
of us hope then to be exalted, when the memories of us all shall
retrace so many sterile and unproductive intensions, so many good
impressions never fostered and ripened into fruits of righteousness,
so many talents misused by our iniquity, or buried by our idleness?
Then there shall be no more concealments, no more deceits, no more
false excuses, no more of those pretences, equivocations,
subterfuges, and sophisms which our reason is now so fatally
ingenious in playing off upon itself (P. D. 661, 2106). Oh, think of
these things, and let not your sins be dearer to you than your
salvation. Think of them ere the night cometh, and the sun of your
probation has quite gone down.
"The Lord _alone_ shall be exalted in that day." Will He then
confound the righteous with the wicked? As compared with God there
shall be no distinctions between men. All men on that great day at
the bar of the Omniscient and the All Holy shall have upon them a
universal sense of imperfection, unworthiness, insufficiency,
nothingness. But as compared with each other there will be immense
differences between them. It is one purpose of the great day to make
manifest to all orders of being the infinite value and superiority of
moral goodness, the infinite preciousness of a holy obedience above
and beyond all else; then God, who sees it in secret, will reward it
openly. When the wicked shall be turned into hell, with all the
people that forget God, the righteous shall shine forth as the stars
of heaven. Therefore estimate all things _now_ as you will estimate
them then. Lean less upon earth and man and the things present, set
your affections more upon the things to come, upon heaven, and upon
the Ruler of heaven. Cultivate diligently those dispositions which
are pleasing in His sight. For then, when all social forms shall have
vanished away, when all material substances shall have been
obliterated, as the shapes in a cloud, and dissipated as the morning
dew, your moral temper will abide with you, and your spiritual state,
as discerned by the unerring Judge, will decide, and will attend,
your immortal destiny (H. E. I. 720).--_James Shergold Boone, M.A.:
Sermons,_ pp. 359-399.