1. The Lord threatens them _with the loss of that which they
despised._ He has sent them a message of rest and they will not have
it, and therefore in the 20th verse He warns them that they shall
have no rest henceforth: "For the bed is shorter than that a man can
stretch himself on it; and the covering narrower than that he can
wrap himself in it." All those who wilfully reject the Gospel and
take up with philosophies and speculations will be rewarded with
inward discontent. Ask the preachers of that kind of doctrine whether
they themselves have found an anchorage, and as a rule they will
answer, "No, no; we are in pursuit of truth; we are hunting after it,
but we have not reached it yet." They are never likely to reach it,
for they are on the wrong track. The Gospel was made to rest
conscience, soul, heart will, memory, hope, fear, yes, the entire
man; but when men laugh at all fixity of belief, how can they be
rested? This is the condemnation of the unbeliever, that he shall
never find a settlement, but, like the wandering Jew, shall roam for
ever. Leave the Cross, and you have left the hinge of all things, and
neglected the one sure corner-stone and fixed foundation, and
henceforth you shall be as a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
2. _They shall be punished by a gradual hardening of heart._ They
said that Isaiah's message was "precept upon precept, line upon line,
here a little and there a little," and justice answers them, "Even so
it shall be to you a thing despised and ridiculed, so that you will
go farther away from it; you will fall backward and be broken, and
snared and taken" (ver. 13). A fall backward is the worst kind of
fall. If a man falls forward, he may somewhat save himself and rise
again; but if he falls backward, he falls with all his weight and is
helpless. Those who stumble at Christ, the sure foundation-stone,
shall be broken. When oppressors hope to retrieve their position,
they find themselves snared by their habits, entangled in the net of
the great fowler, and taken by the destroyer. This downward course is
followed full often by those who begin cavilling at the simple
Gospel; they cavil more and more, and become its open enemies to
their eternal ruin.
3. This is to be followed by _a growing inability to understand._
"For with stammering lips and another tongue will He speak to this
people." Since they would not hear plain speech, God will make
simplicity itself to seem like stammering to them. Men that cannot
endure simple language shall at last become unable to understand it.
If men will not understand, they shall not understand. A man may shut
his eyes so long that he cannot open them. In India many devotees
have held up their arms so long that they can never take them down
again. Beware lest an utter imbecility of heart come upon those of
you who refuse the Gospel.
Lastly, this warning is given to those who object to the Gospel, that
_whatever refuge they choose for themselves shall utterly fail them._
Thus saith the Lord, "Judgment will I also lay to the line, and
righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the
refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-place." Down
come the great hailstones dashing everything to shivers, the
threatenings of God's Word breaking to pieces all the false and
flattering hopes of the ungodly. Then comes the active wrath of God
like an overwhelming flood to sweep away everything on which the
sinner stood, and he, in his obstinate unbelief, is carried away as
with a flood into that utter destruction, that everlasting misery,
which God has declared shall be the lot of all those who refuse the
living Christ.--_C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit,_ No.
1593.