GOD AVENGING HIS OWN ELECT
Isaiah 33:7-12 Behold, their valiant ones shall cry without, &c.
I. A PICTURE OF DESOLATION.
The picture has two distinct points of interest—
1. Man (Isaiah 33:7). Desolation receives nowhere so strong and pathetic expression as in the strong cries and tears of a man. The purer and nobler the man, so much the more affecting is it to hear his despairing cry and look upon his tears. The child cannot bear to see his father weep, because his father is to him the ideal man. Eliakim’s grief, on returning from the interview with Rabshakeh, would be more grievous to Hezekiah than Shebna’s. Peter’s repentant tears were bitter; but by the cry of the Christ, “Eloi! lama sabacthani?” and His tears at the grave of Lazarus, we are much more affected.
2. Nature (Isaiah 33:8-9). The world is partly bright and beautiful, because noble men of God dwell in it; Nature reflects and interprets man. The Assyrian invader weighed heavily on Jewish hearts (Isaiah 36:22, Isaiah 37:1) and the Jewish land.
II. THE REDRESSER OF WRONG.
“Now will I rise, saith the Lord,” &c.
1. God rules the world in the interests of His people. “Now will I rise.” Democrats are fond of saying, “The Queen may reign, but she does not govern;” but the reins of government are firmly held by the great I Amos
2. God’s interposition comes at the right moment: “Now will I rise.” Man’s extremity is often God’s opportunity; because not until his case is desperate, will he cast himself unreservedly upon God. So man often retards the arrival of the right moment. Meanwhile the innocent (comparatively) suffer for the guilty, the good for the bad, the just for the unjust. If it is the teaching of Scripture that God’s people are “the salt of the earth,” preserving it from destruction, it is no less the doctrine of the Bible that untold sorrows are to the righteous because they dwell on the earth with the wicked. The Isaiahs and Hezekiahs of the world feel something of the weight of the world’s sin. But there is always a “thus far and no farther.” “Now will I rise, saith the Lord.”
III. THE DESOLATOR DESOLATED.
Cf. Luke 18:8; Isaiah 42:1. The greater wickedness is employed by God to be the scourge of the less, until its own time comes to be scattered as chaff, and destroyed as fire destroys (Isaiah 33:11-12). To one whose “eyes are in his head,” it is sad to hear the ambassador of Sennacherib saying, “The Lord said unto me, Go up against this land and destroy it.” In the midst of this judgment of God—in which the righteous suffer most—meted out instrumentally by wicked hands, we do well to remember the words of Christ: “Knowest thou not, said Pilate to Him, that I have power to release thee? Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above.”
Note that where the avenging is pictured in this passage, the two sides spoken of in the former part of it—man and nature—are summed up in the terrible destruction of the human. So terrible is this, that a burning world is lost sight of! The first picture of desolation is as nothing to the second; and the woe is seen to reach its intensity in this regard.—J. Macrae Simcock.