'For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My
kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My
peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.'--ISAIAH liv,
10.--
There is something of music in the very sound of these words. The
stately march of the grand English translation lends itself with
wonderful beauty to the melody of Isaiah's words. But the thought that
lies below them, sweeping as it does through the whole creation, and
parting all things into the transient and eternal, the mortal and
immortal, is still greater than the music of the words. These are
removed; this abides. And the thing in God which abides is all-gentle
tenderness, that strange love mightier than all the powers of Deity
beside, permanent with the permanence of His changeless heart. The
mountains shall depart, the emblems of eternity shall crumble and
change and pass, and the hills be removed; but this immortal,
impalpable, and, in some men's minds, fantastic and unreal something,
'My loving kindness and the covenant of My peace,' shall outlast them
all. And this great promise is stamped with the sign manual of Heaven,
being spoken by the Lord that hath mercy on thee.'
So then, dear friends, I think I shall most reverentially deal with
these words if I handle them in the simplest possible way, and think,
first of all, of that great antithesis that is set before us here--what
passes and what abides; and, secondly, draw two or three plain, homely
lessons and applications from the thoughts thus suggested.
I. First, then, we have to deal with the contrast between the
apparently enduring which passes, and that which truly abides.
'The mountains depart, the hills remove, My loving-kindness shall not
depart, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed.' Let me then
say a word or two about that first thought--'the mountains shall
depart.' There they tower over the plains, looking down upon the flat
valley beneath as they did when the prophet spoke. The eternal
buttresses of the hills stand to the eyes of the fleeting generations
as emblems of permanence, and yet winter storms and summer heats, and
the slow processes of decay which we call the gnawing of time, are ever
working upon them, and changing their forms, and at last they shall
pass. Modern science, whilst it has all but incalculably enlarged our
conceptions of the duration of the material universe, emphasises, as
faith alone never could, the thought of the ultimate perishing of this
material world. For geology tells us that 'where rears the cliff there
rolled the sea,' that through the cycles of the shifting history of the
world there have been elevations and depressions so that the ancient
hills in many places are the newest of all things, and the world's form
has changed many and many a time since first it circled as a planet.
And researches into the ultimate constitution of matter have taught us
to think of solids and liquids and gases, as being an infinite
multitude of atoms all in rapid motion with inconceivable velocity, and
have shown us the very atoms in the act of breaking up. So that the old
guess of the infancy of physical science which divined that 'all things
are in a state of flux' is confirmed by its last utterances. Science
prophesies too, and bids us expect that the earth shall one day become,
like some of the stars, a burnt out mass of uniform temperature,
incapable of change or of sustaining life, and shall end by falling
into the diminished sun, and so the old word will be fulfilled that
'the earth and the works that are therein shall be burnt up.' None
should be able to utter the words of my text, 'The mountains shall
depart and the hills be removed,' with such emphasis of certitude as
the present students of physical science.
But our text does not stop there. It brings into view the transiency of
the transient, in order to throw into greater relief and prominence the
perpetuity of the abiding. If we had nothing abiding beyond this
perishable material universe, it would indeed be misery to exist. Life
would be not only insignificant but wretched, and a ghastly irony, a
meaningless, aimless ripple on the surface of that silent, shoreless
sea. The great 'But' of this text lifts the oppression from humanity
with which the one-sided truth of the passing of all the Visible loads
it.
And so turn for a moment to the other side of this great text. There
stands out above all that is mortal, which, although it counts its
existence by millenniums, is but for an instant, visible to the eye of
faith, the Great Spirit who moves all the material universe, Himself
unmoved, and lives undiminished by creation, and undiminished if
creation were swept out of existence. Let that which may pass, pass;
let that which can perish, perish; let the mountains crumble and the
hills melt away; beyond the smoke and conflagration, and rising high
above destruction and chaos, stands the calm throne of God, with a
loving Heart upon it, with a council of peace and purpose of mercy for
you and for me, the creatures of a day indeed, but who are to live when
the days shall cease to be. 'My kindness!' What a wonderful word that
is, so far above all the cold delusion of so-called theism! 'My
kindness!' the tender-heartedness of an infinite love, the abounding
favour of the Father of my spirit, His gentle goodness bending down to
me, His tenderness round about me, eternal love that never can die; the
thing that lasts in the universe is His kindness, which continues from
everlasting to everlasting. What a revelation of God! Oh, dear friends,
if only our hearts could open to the full acceptance of that thought,
sorrow and care and anxiety, and every other form of trouble, would
fade away and we should be at rest. The infinite, undying, imperishable
love of God is mine. Older than the mountains, deeper than their roots,
wider than the heavens, and stronger than all my sin, is the love that
grasps me and keeps me and will not let me go, and lavishes its
tenderness upon me, and beseeches me, and pleads with me, and woos me,
and rebukes me, and corrects me when I need, and sent His Son to die
for me. 'My kindness shall not depart from thee.'
But even that great conception does not exhaust the encouragement which
the prophet has to give to souls weighed upon with the transiency of
the material. He speaks of 'the covenant of My peace.' We are to think
of this great, tender, changeless love of God, which underlies all
things and towers above all things, which overlaps them all and fills
eternity, as being placed, so to speak, under the guarantee of a solemn
obligation. God's covenant is a great thought of Scripture which we far
too little apprehend in the depth and power of its meaning. His
covenant with you and me, poor creatures, is this, 'I promise that My
love shall never leave thee.' He makes Himself a constitutional
monarch, so to speak, giving us a plighted word to which we can appeal
and go to Him and say, 'There, that is the charter given by Thyself,
given irrevocably for ever, and I hold Thee to it. Fulfil it, O Thou
God of Truth.'
'My covenant of peace.' Dear friends, the prophet spoke a deeper thing
than he knew when he uttered these words. Let me remind you of the
large meaning which the New Testament puts into them. 'Now the God of
Peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the Great
Shepherd of the Sheep, through the blood of the everlasting Covenant,
make us perfect in every good work, to do His will.' God has bound
Himself by His promise to give you and me the peace that belongs to His
own nature, and that covenant is sealed to us in the blood of Jesus
Christ upon the Cross, and so we sinful men, with all the burden of our
evil upon us, with all our sins known to us, with all our manifest
failings and infirmities, can turn to Him and say, 'Thou hast pledged
Thyself to forgive and accept, and that covenant is made sure to me
because Thy Son hath died, and I come and ask Thee to fulfil it.' And
be sure of this, that no poor creature upon earth, however lame his
hand, who puts out that hand to grasp that peaceful covenant--that new
covenant in the blood of Christ--can plead in vain.
My brother, have you done that? Have you entered into this covenant of
peace with God--peace in believing, peace by the blood of Christ, peace
that fills a new heart, peace that rules amidst all the perturbations
and disappointments of life? Then you may be sure that that covenant
will stand for evermore, though the mountains depart and the hills be
removed.
II. Now turn with me to a few practical lessons which we may gather
from these great contrasts here, between the perishable mortal and the
immortal divine love.
Surely the first plain one is a warning against fastening our love, our
hope, or our trust on these transient things.
What folly it is for a man to risk his peace and the strength and the
joy of his life upon things that crumble and change, when all the while
there is lying before him open for his entrance, and wooing him to come
into the eternal home of his spirit, this covenant! Here are we, from
day to day, plunged into these passing vanities, and always tempted to
think that they are the true abiding things, and it needs great
discipline and watchfulness to live the better life. There is nothing
that will help us to do it like a firm grasp of the love of God in
Jesus Christ. Then we can hold these mortal joys with a loose hand,
knowing that they are only for a little time, and feeling that they are
passing whilst we look at them, and are changing like the scenery in
the sky on a summer's night, with its cliffs and hills in the clouds,
even while we gaze. Where there was a mountain a moment ago up there,
there is now a depression, and the world and everything in it lasts
very little longer than these. It is only a film on the surface of the
great sea of eternity--there is no reality about it. It is but a
dream--a vision, slipping, slipping, slipping away, and you and I
slipping along with it. How foolishly, how obstinately, we all cling to
it, though even the very grasp of our hands tends to make it pass away,
as the children coming in from the fields with their store of
buttercups and daisies in their hot hands, which by their very clutch
hasten the withering. And that is just our position. We have them for a
brief moment, and they all perish in the using. Oh, brother, have you
set your heart on that which is not, when all the while there, longing
to bless and love us, stands the Eternal God, with His unchanging love
and faithful covenant of His perpetual peace? Surely it were
wiser--wiser, to put it on the lowest ground--to seek the things that
are above, and, knowing as we do that the mountains shall depart and
the hills be removed, so make our portion the kindness which shall not
depart, and seek our share in the peace that shall not pass away.
But there is another lesson to be put in the same simple fashion.
Surely we ought to use thoughts like these of my text in order to stay
the soul in seasons which come to every one sometimes, when we are made
painfully conscious of the transiency of this Present. Meditative hours
come to us all--moments when perhaps some strain of music gives us back
childhood's days; when perhaps some perfume of a flower reminds us of
long-vanished gardens and hands that have crumbled into dust; when some
touch of a sunset sky, or some word of a book, or some providence of
our lives, comes upon the heart and mind, reminding us how everything
is passing. You have all had these thoughts. Some of us stifle
them--they are not pleasant to many of us; some of us brood over them
unwholesomely, and that is not wise; but the best use of them is to
bear us onward into the peaceful region where we clasp to our troubled
hearts that which cannot go. If any of us are making experience to-day
of earthly change, if any of us have hearts heavy with earthly losses,
if any of us are bending under the weight of that awful law, that
everything becomes part and parcel of that dreadful past, if any of us
are looking at our empty hands and saying, 'They have taken away my god
and what have I more?' let us listen to the better voice that says, 'My
kindness shall not depart from thee, and so, whatever goes, thou canst
not be desolate if thou hast Me.'
And then, still further, let me remind you that this same thought may
avail to give to us hopes of years as immortal as itself. We do not
belong to the mountains and hills that shall depart, or to the order of
things to which they belong. There is coming a very solemn day, I
believe, not by any mere processes of natural decay as I take it, but
by the action of God Himself, the Judge that 'day of the Lord that
shall come as a thief in the night'--when the mountains shall depart,
and the hills be removed, and the throne of judgment shall be set, and
you and I will be there. My brother, lay your hand on that covenant of
peace which is made for us all in Christ Jesus the Lord, and then 'calm
as the summer's ocean we shall be, and all the wreck of nature' cannot
disturb us, for we shall abide unshaken as the throne of God. The
mountains may pass, the hills be removed, but herein is our love made
perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of 'judgment,' for that
kindness shall not depart from us, and God's gentle tenderness is
eternal as Himself. Then we shall not depart from it either, and we are
immortal as the tenderness that encloses us. God's endless love must
have undying creatures on whom to pour itself out, and if to-day I
possess--as we all may possess in however feeble a measure--some sips
and prelibations of that great flood of love that is in God, I can look
unblanched right into the eyes of death and say, 'Thou hast no power at
all over me, I am eternal because the God that loves me is so, and
since He hath loved me with an everlasting love, His loving-kindness
shall not depart from me. Therefore, seeing that all these things shall
be dissolved, I know that I have a building of God, a house not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens, and because He lives I shall live
also.' The hope that is built upon the eternal love of God in Christ is
the true guarantee to me of immortal existence, and this hope is ours
if, and only if, we come into the covenant--the covenant of peace. God
says, 'I will love thee, I will bless thee, I will keep thee, I will
pardon thee, I will save thee, I will glorify thee, and there is My
bond on that Cross, the new covenant in His blood.' Close with the
covenant that God is ready to make with you, and then 'life and death,
principalities and powers, things present and things to come, height
and depth, and every other creature shall be impotent to separate you
from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'
'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath
no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without
money and without price. 2. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which
is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken
diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul
delight itself in fatness. 3. Incline your ear, and come unto Me, hear,
and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with
you, even the sure mercies of David. 4. Behold, I have given him for a
witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. 5. Behold,
thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew
not thee shall run unto thee because of the Lord thy God, and for the
Holy One of Israel; for He hath glorified thee. 6. Seek ye the Lord
while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near: 7. Let the
wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let
him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our
God, for He will abundantly pardon. 8. For My thoughts are not your
thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. 9. For as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your
ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. 10. For as the rain cometh
down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth
the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to
the sower, and bread to the eater: 11. So shall My word be that goeth
forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall
accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing
whereto I sent it. 12. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth
with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you
into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
13. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the
brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a
name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.'--ISAIAH lv.
1-13.
The call to partake of the blessings of the Messianic salvation
worthily follows the great prophecy of the suffering Servant. No doubt
the immediate application of this chapter is to the exiled nation, who
in it are summoned from their vain attempts to find satisfaction in the
material prosperity realised in exile, and to make the only true
blessedness their own by obedience to God's voice. But if ever the
prophet spoke to the world he does so here. It is no unwarranted
spiritualising of his invitation which hears in it the voice which
invites all mankind to share the blessings of the gospel feast.
The glorious words need little exposition. What we have to do is to see
that they do not fall on our ears in vain. They may be roughly divided
into two sections--the invitation to the feast, with the promises to
the obedient Israel (verses 1-5), and the summons to the necessary
preparation for the feast, namely, repentance, with the reason for its
necessity, and the encouragements to it in the might of God's faithful
promises (verses 6-13).
I. Whose voice sounds so beseechingly and welcoming in this great call,
which rings out to all thirsty souls? If we note the 'Me' and 'I' which
follow, we shall hear God Himself thus taking the office of summoner to
His own feast. By whatever media the gospel call reaches us, it is in
reality God's own voice to our hearts, and that makes the
responsibility of hearing more tremendous, and the folly of refusing
more inexcusable.
Who are invited? There are but two conditions expressed in verse 1, and
these are fulfilled in every soul. All are summoned who are thirsty and
penniless. If we have in our souls desires that all the broken cisterns
of earth can never slake-and we all have these-and if we have nothing
by which we can procure what will still the gnawing hunger and burning
thirst of our souls--and none of us has--then we are included in the
call. Universal as are the craving for blessedness and the
powerlessness to satisfy it, are the adaptation and destination of the
gospel.
What is offered? Water, wine, milk--all the beverages of a simple
civilisation, differing in their operation, but all precious to a
thirsty palate. Water revives, wine gladdens and inspirits, milk
nourishes. All that any man needs or desires is to be found in Christ.
We shall not understand the nature of the feast unless we remember that
He Himself is the 'gift of God.' What these three draughts mean is best
perceived when we listen to Him saying, in a plain quotation of this
call, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.' Nothing
short of Himself can satisfy the thirst of one soul, much less of all
the thirsty. Like the flow from the magic fountain of the legend, Jesus
becomes to each what each most desires.
How does He become ours? The paradox of buying with what is not money
is meant, by its very appearance of contradiction, to put in strongest
fashion that the possession of Him depends on nothing in us but the
sense of need and the willingness to accept. We buy Christ when we part
with self, which is all that we have, in order to win Him. We must be
full of conscious emptiness and desire, if we are to be filled with His
fulness. Jesus interpreted the meaning of 'come to the waters' when He
said, 'He that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth
on Me shall never thirst.' Faith is coming, faith is drinking, faith is
buying.
The universal call, with is clear setting forth of blessing and
conditions of possessing, is followed by a pleading remonstrance as to
the folly of lavishing effort and money on what is not bread. It is
strange that men will cheerfully take more pains to continue thirsty
than to accept the satisfaction which God provides. They toil and
continue unsatisfied. Experience does not teach them, and all the while
the one real good is waiting to be theirs for nothing.
''Tis heaven alone that is given away;
'Tis only God may be had for the asking.'
Christ goes a-begging, and we spend our strength in vain toil to
acquire what we turn away from when it is offered us in Him. When the
great Father offers bread for nothing, we will not have it, but we are
ready to give any price for a stone. It is not the wickedness, but the
folly, of unbelief, which is the marvel.
The contrast between the heavy price at which men buy hunger, and the
easy rate at which they may have full satisfaction, is further set
forth by the call to 'incline the ear,' which is all that is needed in
order that life and nourishment which delights the soul may be ours.
'Hearken, and eat' is equivalent to 'Hearken, and ye shall eat.' The
real 'good' for man is only to be found in listening to and obeying the
divine voice, whether it sound in invitation, promise, or command. The
true life of the soul lies in that listening receptiveness which takes
for one's own God's great gift of Christ, and yields glad obedience to
His every word.
The exiled Israel was promised an 'everlasting covenant' as the result
of their acceptance of the invitation; and we know whose blood it is
that has sealed the new covenant, which abides as long as Christ's
fulness and men's need shall last. That covenant, of which we seldom
hear in Isaiah, but which fills a prominent place in Jeremiah and
Ezekiel, is further explained as being 'the sure mercies of David.'
This phrase and its context are difficult, but the general meaning is
clear. The great promises of God's unfailing mercy, made to the
historical founder of the royal house, shall be transferred and
continued, with inviolable faithfulness, to those who drink of the gift
of God.
This parallel between the great King and the whole mass of the true
Israel is further set forth in verses 4 and 5. Each begins with
'Behold,' and the similar form indicates similarity in contents. The
son of Jesse was in some degree God's witness to the heathen nations,
as is expressed in several psalms; and, what he was imperfectly, the
ransomed Israel would be to the world. The office of the Christian
Church is to draw nations that it knew not, to follow in the blessed
path, in which it has found satisfaction and the dawnings of a more
than natural glory transfiguring it. They who have themselves drunk of
the unfailing fountain in Christ are thereby fitted and called to cry
to others, 'Come ye to the waters.' Experience of Christ's
preciousness, and of the rest of soul which comes from partaking of His
salvation, impels and obliges to call others to share the bliss.
II. The second part of the chapter begins with an urgent call to
repentance, based upon the difference between God's ways and man's, and
on the certainty that the divine promises will be fulfilled. The
summons in verses 6 and 7 is first couched in most general terms, which
are then more closely defined. To 'seek the Lord' is to direct conduct
and heart to obtain possession of God as one's own. Of that seeking,
the chief element is calling upon Him; since such is His desire to be
found of us that it only needs our asking in order to receive. As
surely as the mother hears her child's cry, so surely does He catch the
faintest voice addressed to Him. But, men being what they are, a change
of ways and of their root in thoughts is indispensable. Seeking which
is not accompanied by forsaking self and an evil past is no genuine
seeking, and will end in no finding. But this forsaking is only one
side of true repentance; the other is return to God, as is expressed in
the New Testament word for it, which implies a change of mind, purpose,
and conduct. The faces which were turned earthward and averted from God
are to be turned God-ward and diverted from earth. Whosoever thus seeks
may be confident of finding and of abundant pardon. The belief in God's
loving forgivingness is the strongest motive to repentance, and the
most melting argument to listen to the call to seek Him. But there is
another motive of a more awful kind; namely, the consideration that the
period of mercy is limited, and that a time may come, and that soon,
when God no longer 'may be found' nor 'is near.'
The need for such a radical change in conduct and mind is further
enforced, in verses 8 and 9, by the emphatic statement of present
discord between the exiled Israel and God. Mark that the deepest seat
of the discord is first dealt with, and then the manifestation of it in
active life. Mark also that the order of comparison is inverted in the
two successive clauses in verse 8. God's thoughts have not entered into
Israel's mind and become theirs. The 'thinkings' not being regulated
according to God's truth, nor the desires and sentiments brought into
accord with His will and mind, a contrariety of 'ways' must follow, and
the paths which men choose for themselves cannot run parallel with
God's, nor be pleasing to Him. Therefore the stringent urgency of the
call to forsake 'the crooked, wandering ways in which we live,' and to
come back to the path of righteousness which is traced by God for our
feet.
But divergence which necessitates repentance is not the only relation
between our ways and God's. There is elevation, transcendency, like
that of the eternal heavens, high, boundless, the home of light, the
storehouse of beneficent influences which fertilise. If we think of the
dreary, flat plains where the exiles were, and the magnificent sweep of
the sky over them, we shall feel the beauty of the figure. If 'My
thoughts are not your thoughts' was all that was to be said, repentance
would be of little use, and there would be little to encourage to it;
but if God's thoughts of love and ways of blessing arch themselves
above our low lives as the sky bends, pitying and bestowing, above
squalor, barrenness, and darkness, then penitence is not in vain, and
the low earth may be visited with gifts from the highest heaven.
The certainty that such gifts will be bestowed is the last thought of
this magnificent summons. The prophet dilates on that assurance to the
end of the chapter. He seems to catch fire, as it were, from the
introduction of that grand figure of the lofty heavens domed above the
flat earth. In effect, what he says is: They are high and inaccessible,
but think what pours down from them, and how all fertility depends on
their gifts of rain and snow, and how the moisture which they drop is
turned into 'seed to the sower, and bread to the eater.' Thinking of
that continuous benefaction and miracle, we should see in it a symbol
of the better gifts from the higher heavens. So does God's word come
down from His throne. So does it turn barrenness into nodding harvest.
So does it quicken undreamed of powers of fruitfulness in human nature
and among the forces of the world. So does it supply nourishment for
hungry souls, and germs which shall bear fruit in coming years. No
complicated machinery nor the most careful culture can work what the
gentle dropping rain effects. There is mightier force in it than in
many thunder-clouds. The gospel does with ease and in silence what
nothing else can do. It makes barren souls fruitful in all good works,
and in all happiness worthy of men. Therefore the summons to drink of
the springing fountain and to turn from evil ways and thoughts is
recommended by the assurance that God's word is faithful, and all His
promises firm.
The final verses (verses 12, 13) give the glowing picture of the return
from exile amid the jubilation of a transformed world, as the strongest
motive to the obedient hearkening to God's voice, to which the chapter
has summoned, and as the great instance of God's keeping His word.
The flight from Egypt was 'in haste' (Deut. xvi. 3); but this shall be
a triumphal exodus, without conflict or alarms. All nature shall
participate in the joy. Mountains and hills shall raise the shrill note
of rejoicing, and the trees wave their branches, as if clapping hands
in delight. This is more than mere poetic rhetoric. A redeemed humanity
implies a glorified world. Nature has been involved in the consequences
of sin, and will share in the results of redemption, and have some
humble reflected light from 'the liberty of the glory of the sons of
God.'
The fulfilment of this final promise is not yet. All earlier returns of
the exiled Israel from the Babylon of their bondage to God and the city
of God, such as the historical one which the prophet foretold, and the
spiritual one which is repeated age by age in the history of the
Christian Church and of single penitent souls, point on to that last
triumphant day when 'the ransomed of the Lord shall return,' and the
world be transfigured to match the glory that they inherit. That fair
world without poison or offence, and the nations of the saved who
inhabit its peaceful spaces, shall be, in the fullest stretch of the
words, 'to the Lord for a name, and for an everlasting sign that shall
not be cut off.' The redemption of man and his establishing amid the
felicities of a state correspondent to His God-given glory shall be to
all eternity and to all possible creations the highest evidence of what
God is, and His token to all beings.