Isaiah lix. 15, 16.
And the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there
was no judgment. And he saw that there was no
man, and wondered that there was no intercessor:
therefore his arm brought salvation unto him, and
his righteousness it sustained him.
This text is often held to be a prophecy of the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ. I certainly believe
that it is a prophecy of his coming, and of something
better still; namely, his continual presence; and
a very noble and deep one, and one from which we may
learn a great deal.
We may learn from it what ‘salvation’
really is. What Christ came to save men from,
and how he saves them.
The common notion of salvation now-a-days is this.
That salvation is some arrangement or plan, by which
people are to escape hell-fire by having Christ’s
righteousness imputed to them without their being
righteous themselves.
Now, I have nothing to say about that this morning.
It may be so; or, again, it may not; I read a good
many things in books every week the sense of which
I cannot understand. At all events it is not
the salvation of which Isaiah speaks here.
For Isaiah tells us very plainly, from what God
was going to save these Jews. Not from hell-fire—nothing
is said about it: but simply from their sins.
As it is written, ’Thou shalt call his name
Jesus, for he shall save his people from their
sins.’
The case is very simple, if you will look at Isaiah’s
own words. These Jews had become thoroughly bad
men. They were not ungodly men. They were
very religious, orthodox, devout men. They ’sought
God daily, and delighted to know his ways, like a
nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the
ordinances of their God: they asked of him the
ordinances of justice; they took delight in approaching
unto God.’
But unfortunately for them, and for all with whom
they had to do, after they had asked of God the ordinances
of justice, they never thought of doing them; and
in spite of all their religion, they were, Isaiah
tells them plainly, rogues and scoundrels, none of
whom stood up for justice, or pleaded for truth, but
trusted in vanity, and spoke lies. Their feet
ran to evil, and they made haste to shed innocent
blood; the way of peace they knew not, and they had
made themselves crooked paths, speaking oppression
and revolt, and conceiving and uttering words of falsehood;
so that judgment was turned away backward, and justice
stood afar off, for truth was fallen in the street,
and equity could not enter. Yea, truth failed;
and he that departed from evil made himself a prey
(or as some render it) was accounted mad.
And this is in the face of all their religion and
their church-going. Verily, my friends, fallen
human beings were much the same then as now; and there
are too many in England and elsewhere now who might
sit for that portrait.
