These two thoughts act and re-act upon each other. The lie in the right hand fetters, hopelessly fetters, the soul, while the enslaved soul, because it is enslaved, cannot discover "the lie" of its hand.
I. Consider what is the force of that expression, "a lie in the right hand." A lie in the hand must mean a lie concealed a lie inside the hand, held, but covered. And as the right hand is the emblem of strength in a man, it conveys that the lie is strongly and resolutely held. The right hand is what God has promised to hold, therefore the right hand shadows out that by which God apprehends us, and by which we apprehend God. But how shall God hold that which is preoccupied? How shall God guide or comfort or uphold a man who has a lie in his right hand? Such a man shuts himself out, at once, of all contact with God, and therefore out of all blessing; and leaving himself to himself, necessarily falls.
II. The religion of many of us is, simply, a passive thing that is, it begins and ends in impressions and feelings which we have received; or if it go further at all, it is only in acts of worship and devotion. It does not lead to self-denying acts of love it does not include separation from the world it is the same sort of religion which heathen religions generally are, religions of worship and feeling, and not religions that affect the life. But while you only so worship and feel, while the kingdom of God is never advanced by you, you may indeed call yourselves religious, but that word is a lie in that idle right hand of yours. It needs but very little to be honest in the search of truth, and you will find truth; it needs very little else but simplicity of faith, with earnestness to be saved; it needs nothing but to be true to God, to receive His blessing, and to be admitted into all His promises.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,1874, p. 360.
References: Isaiah 44:20. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. i., p. 299; J. Thain Davidson, ForewarnedForearmed,p. 163.Isaiah 44:21; Isaiah 44:22. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. xii., p. 18. Isaiah 44:21-23. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxii., No. 1895.