Isaiah 64:7 And there is none that calls on your name, that stirs up himself to take hold of you: for you have hid your face from us… Thou hast bid thy face from us. If so we cannot be happy. The universe itself will refuse to strike out its sweetest notes of joy for us. It is a Father's world, and must have a Father's love in it all to make us blessed! One of the oldest, sweetest prayers in the Bible is, "God be merciful to us, and bless us, and cause his face to shine upon us." The Christian must have this blessing. You say, "Ah! but men of the world can enjoy nature and society without God." It is manifest, you declare, that they do. Certainly; but even then it is a surface-joy, even then it may be disturbed by the Egyptian death's-head at the feast; by memories flashing across the mind; some vulture may suddenly swoop down upon its prey in their hearts. But a Christian has his joy in God, and without him he is out of health, sick, faint, weary, sad. Spiritual health is necessary to the soul who has known God, to make enjoyment complete and real. I. THIS IS NOT AN ARBITRARY ACT. Some parents are by turn tender and severe; they indulge and they punish in hasty moods. Their frame of mind is not regulated by high principle, by a healthy estimate of things. It is otherwise with God. The earliest records tell us that to deal with the righteous as with the wicked is far from him. Yes, very far! We read in Isaiah that God had hidden his face from the house of Jacob, but it was because they had "sought out them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards." "Should not," says the prophet, "a people seek unto their God?" And again Isaiah says, "But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you" This is the secret of the hiding. Sin is against the peace, purity, beauty, order of the universe, and it wrongs a man's own soul. Would it be right to smile, then? Mark, God does not hide his face because of old sins that have been repented of and forgiven. Remember that there is no human meanness in God's nature. He does not touch the heart with pain about old delinquencies. "Thy sins and thine iniquities will I remember no more." I am told that there are some people who do not pray for the forgiveness of sins, because they are Christians, and all has been forgiven them unto the end. What a perversion! Is not the very test of their being Christ's at all something more than present feeling; viz. that enduring unto the end they shall be saved? Then they find the Lord's Prayer a difficulty - "Forgive us our trespasses," and they suggest that that was only a provisionary prayer, until the dispensation of the Spirit came! Such methods would destroy the whole authority of Scripture. A man might hear me take a text and say, "That was said to apostles," implying it was only meant for them. No! we sin every day, and we need a fountain ever open for sin and uncleanness. We need as much the prayer for daily forgiveness as we do for daily bread. It is when sin is indulged in by us who profess to love him - when it becomes sweet, when it becomes habitual, when it has withdrawn us from the Divine fellowship - that God hides his face. II. THIS IS DETRIMENTAL TO ALL JOY. We are made to enjoy nature and men. We are constituted for every variety of joy. But as one nerve in agony can destroy all the rest of night, so a sin that separates us from God can darken all other joy. Even in the sweet summer-time, when holiday comes, we still need him. The golden-sanded bay, the landscape full of greens and greys, the iridescence of light through the clouds above the mountains, the scent of the pines, the delicate harmonies of colour in the fields, the mossy carpet of the woods, the russet roofs of cottages half hidden in the blossoms of summer, - all these, so restful and refreshing, lose their charm if the Saviour's smile be absent, if we cannot hear his voice amid the groves and hills, and at evening feel "we have walked with God to-day." It was true in the old dispensation, when the revelation was through patriarchs, and prophets, and symbols, and sacrifices; but it is intensely true now, that we have seen God in the face of Jesus Christ - that God's averted face is the soul's severest punishment. We have come very near to God. No human priesthood intervenes now. We have boldness of access by faith to the throne of God. No veil is over the holy of holies now. We draw near through the rent veil - that is to say, Christ's flesh. Consequently enjoyment deepens; consequently also the sorrow deepens when I sin. Why? Because the more clearly I have seen the face, the more I feel its averted glance. III. THIS IS THE MOST SPIRITUAL OF ALL TESTS. It has to do with the life within as well as the conduct without. There, where no eye of man reaches - there, in the galleries where no foot of man ever treads - are the sights and sounds which may drive away the Divine Guest. Long before sin incarnates itself in deeds, before it becomes actual and open, the evil is at work. The tree is rotten while the bark is sound. First make the tree good. Yes; and remember that decay always begins at central points outside the reach of man's observation. Yes, and outside the reach of our own observation sometimes. Hence the prayer, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any evil way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." 1. Men like other tests. Their "opinions," their attendance at sacraments, their absolution by confessors, their consistency of conduct. 2. Men realize the power of this in times of anxiety and trial, Now that they are brought low in sickness; now that friends are separated from them who used to cheer and inspire them; now that they are very near to the valley of the shadow of death - nothing will do but reality then. The words of others, their good opinions of us, - all these stand for less than nothing then. May God's face shine in again upon our souls now! That is heaven - at least, it is the premonition of it. All our worst sorrows will flee like the weird shadows on the mountains before the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness. It is pleasant for others to smile on us - to walk in the light of human appreciation and love. Households feel this; Churches feel it. Sometimes noble and valiant men in great Reformation eras have to do without it. The light varies so, too; it is so uncertain at the best. But this shining of the face of God makes the heart restful and gladsome everywhere. We shall one day enjoy it to the full. No clouds of sin or doubt will intervene between us and God. So is it with the blessed dead. Many times the beautiful descriptions St. John gives of heaven in the Apocalypse are negative. "No curse," "no night," "no sorrow," "no more death." But once it is positive: "They shall see his face, and his Name shall be in their foreheads." - W.M.S. Parallel Verses KJV: And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. |
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