THE DOOM OF DESPISERS
Isaiah 5:24. Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
Shut God out of the heart, and this is what it comes to at last. In Jewish history, we have a commentary on the judgments announced in the text, written in fire and blood. We have here—
I. God’s merciful approaches to the soul.
1. God begins with law. In the present day there is a nervous dread of law, as if it were the offspring of severity rather than of grace [679] But law checks, rectifies, and blesses in innumerable ways (Psalms 19:7-11; Psalms 119:105, &c).
2. To His law, He adds His word; His “word” of persuasion, exhortation, promise, and especially the great “word” of the Gospel.
[679] The spring of the law is love. With its “Thou shalt not do this,” and “Thou shall not do that,” the law presents rather an ungracious aspect. We like ill to be bidden, but worse to be forbidden. But does love never forbid? A mother, does she never forbid her child; but, on the contrary, indulge every caprice and grant all its wishes? How disastrous the fate, and brief the life, of a child denied nothing, indulged in everything, allowed to play with fire, or fire-arms; to devour the painted but poisonous fruit—to bathe where the tide runs like a racehorse or the river rushes roaring into the black, swirling pool. And he who frets against the restraints of God’s holy law because it forbids this and the other thing, is no wiser than the infant who weeps, and screams, and struggles, and perhaps beats the kind bosom that nurses it, because its mother has snatched a knife from its foolish hands.—Guthrie.
II. God’s merciful approaches rejected. “They have cast away the law,” &c. Man meets God’s law with resistance, His love with contempt.
III. God’s merciful approaches giving place to indignation and wrath. “Therefore as the fire devoureth,” &c. Law being resisted, and love despised, things cannot be as they were before; one of two things must happen—there must be either pardon or punishment. If pardon be rejected, only punishment remains. The images under which this is set forth in the text are most alarming. They show—
1. That at last God’s anger strikes at the root of our being—at the very substance of our life. The wrath of man at the worst rages only on the surface, but God strikes at the root (Luke 12:4; Matthew 10:28).
2. God’s anger smites the blossom of our being. All that constitutes the show, promise, and pride of our life, is scattered like dust.
3. When God smites in anger, He smites suddenly and swiftly, “as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff.
4. When God smites in anger, man can offer no resistance. What power to resist a hurricane has a tree whose roots are not only rotten, but “rottenness”? How can the stubble withstand the fire, or the chaff defend itself against tongues of flame?—J. R. Wood.