I. Consider how great degrees of love and anxiety for us are expressed in these few words. The Almighty Lord of heaven and earth represents Himself as watching with anxiety the hearts and consciences of us His creatures, His sinful creatures; as listening after any, the least, expression of penitence, so it be sincere; as having joy in any expressions of returning love in the cold and hardened heart. When we reflect on this, when we consider what forbearance and parental anxiety the great God of heaven shows for us, our hearts must indeed be hardened, our natural affections deadened by long intercourse with a cruel, deceitful world, if we feel not at least some desire to be worthy to be called the sons of so kind, so tender, so good a Father.
II. The question, then, which it concerns us to put impartially to our consciences is, Whether we do habitually endeavour to pray? Whether, in the midst of the daily cares and business of life, our minds habitually ascend to our God and Saviour, and with Him continually dwell; whether our desires, hopes, and wishes are in the right direction, namely, towards God and heaven and heavenly things; whether we habitually express these our feelings and affection in such ways as our heavenly Father has directed and sanctioned, namely, by the practice of deliberate, earnest, importunate prayer.
III. If we will not look to God as our Father, what other hope or dependence can we be trusting to? Our having a good character in the world for morality or religion will avail us nothing; our thinking favourably of ourselves will avail us nothing; our occasional regard to good forms, or occasional indulgence of seeming religious feelings, will avail us nothing. If we do not love and adore and devote ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, we are surely not in the safe way to salvation; and without leading a life of prayer, how can we flatter ourselves that we love our God?
Plain Sermons by Contributors to " Tracts for the Times" vol. x., p. 208.
References: Isaiah 65:24. Preacher's Monthly,vol.i.,p. 34.Isaiah 66:1; Isaiah 66:2. E. Roberts, Penny Pulpit,No. 3504; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xviii., No. 1083.Isaiah 66:5. S. Cox, Expositor,1st series, vol. ix., p. 53; J. B. Heard, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 225.Isaiah 66:8. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvii., No. 1009.