ISAIAH’S INTERVIEW WITH AHAZ
Isaiah 7:3-25. Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, &c.
In this interview of Isaiah with Ahaz we have an instance—
I. Of God’s efforts to turn men from ruinous courses. God is the great Lawgiver, and the Judge before whose bar all impenitent transgressors of His law will have to stand. Absolute inflexibility is necessarily His characteristic in both these capacities. But these are not the only capacities He seeks to sustain to us. It is His ambition to be the Saviour of men from sin and ruin. Consequently, He does not merely lay down His law and stand coldly by, to see whether men will keep it or not. He plies them with inducements to keep it. When He sees them bent on transgression, He endeavours to arrest them in their foolish and fatal purpose. Short of that destruction of the freedom of their will, which would be the destruction also of their responsibility and of their possibilities of virtue, He leaves nothing undone to turn them from the broad road that leads to death [784] By adverse providences, by the strivings of His Holy Spirit, by awakening conscience to an active exercise of its functions, He works upon and in them to will and to do His good pleasure. No sinner has ever gone down to perdition unheeded, unpitied, without attempts to rescue him. Your own experience attests the truth of these statements: you know you had to fight your way through to those transgressions of which you are now ashamed. God’s “preventing grace” is a great fact of which we should take reverent heed, and for which we should give fervent thanks [787]
[784] Augustine, in his Confessions, makes thankful note of the manner in which, in the years of his ungodliness, God had raised up obstacles in his path of sin. When sinful desires raged within him, he says, the means for gratifying them were absent; or when the desires and the means of gratifying them came together, some witness was present to deter him; and when the means were present, and no witnesses stood by to hinder him, the desire to transgress was wanting. He rightly judged that these were no mere accidents or coincidences.
[787] The preventing methods of grace may deservedly pass for some of the prime instances of the divine mercy to men in this world. For though it ought to be owned for an eminent act of grace to restore one actually fallen, yet there are not wanting arguments to persuade, that it is a greater to keep one from falling. Not to break a limb is more desirable than to have it set and healed, though never so skilfully and well. Preservation in this, as in many other cases, being better a great deal than restoration; since after all is done, it is odds but the scar will remain when the wound is cured and the danger over.—South.
II. Of the manner in which sinners, by insincere pretences, resist God’s saving purposes. The stubbornness and insincerity of Ahaz are obvious [790] But in neither of these is he singular. Sinners who are bent on their sins not seldom go on to them under pretexts of righteousness, with which they endeavour to deceive themselves and others. The greatest crime ever committed was done under a pretext of righteousness (Matthew 26:65). So has it been with countless crimes since. Let us be on our guard against our own hearts (Jeremiah 17:9; Proverbs 14:12). Let us not act upon any reason which we do not really believe will bear the scrutiny of God.
[790] Ahaz listened in sullen and incredulous silence; and the prophet resumes—“Ask thee a sign of Jehovah thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.” But Ahaz, who looked on Jehovah not as his God, but only (like any of his heathen neighbours) as the god of Judæa, and as such inferior to the god of Assyria; and who had determined to apply to the king of Assyria, or perhaps had already applied to him, as a more trustworthy helper than Jehovah, in the present strait; declines to ask a sign, excusing himself by a contrary use of the words of Moses, “Thou shalt not tempt Jehovah.” He refused the sign, because he knew it would confirm the still struggling voice of his conscience; and that voice he had resolved not to obey, since it bid him give up the Assyrian, and trust in Jehovah henceforth.—Strachey.
III. Of the twofold result which always follows such resistance to the divine purposes.
1. The sinner is, ere long, compelled to confess that the counsels he set aside were counsels of truth and wisdom. In less than three years, Ahaz had cause to acknowledge the soundness of the advice to which on this memorable day he refused to listen [793] A typical case.
2. The obstinate sinner is left to the ruin from which he would not permit God to deliver him. There is no salvation by force. God acts upon our will, but He will not save us against our will. Neither shall those who refused to be saved from sin be saved from its consequences. If we choose evil, no act of omnipotence will render the choice harmless (chap. Isaiah 3:11). Ahaz chose the help of Assyria rather than the help of Jehovah, and with the help of that great and unscrupulous power he had to take its domination and destructiveness (2 Chronicles 28:16; 2 Chronicles 28:20). Again a typical case. The retributive justice of God is a fact of which it behoves us to be heedful.
[793] Within the space of time figuratively indicated by the time necessary for the child of the prophet to become capable of discerning between good and evil,—i.e., in about three years,—Rezin and Pekah were slain, and the fact that they were but “two tails of smoking firebrands” demonstrated. (See 2 Kings 15:27-30; 2 Kings 16:1-9.)