I. Ever since the fall of man, there has been a natural tendency in the human heart to "limit the Holy One of Israel." This is the crime of idolatry and of heathenism. This was the contest of the Hebrew worship with the surrounding nations. Let usbeware how we create an image of God in our minds dishonourable to Him, and by its limitation to our poor faculty become the means of limiting the Holy One of Israel.
II. For idolatry is not its own root; it is the growth of a seed deeper than itself, and that seed is sin.Sin limits the Holy One of Israel, the corrupt influence in the mind and in the heart, the perverted imagination, the perverted will. Sin closes the avenues by which God enters the human soul, and narrows the Divine Being in the conception.
III. There is no power so subtle as unbelief, doubt. By this we limit the Holy One of Israel. Doubt makes the Divine Being subservient to our own estimate of what He is. How frequently Christian men walk amidst the very mysteries and eternities of Godhead only to limit the Holy One of Israel.
IV. Some philosophers limit the Holy One of Israel even in the operations of nature. There is a feeling that as we enlarge the boundaries of the universe God is carried to a more remote distance from us. The past fills the soul ever with fear. It is so whenever we are led out into infinity. Night has had three daughters: Religion, Superstition, and Atheism.
V. Again, when on behalf of God we appeal to man as free,and invite him to love, and trust, and believe, doubt says, In what way can man's responsibility so act as not to limit God's royalty, if we are ambassadors for Christ? God Himself anticipates these objections; in prayer He aids: in speaking He aids. He is on the side of the freedom of man; He, too, will aid man to assert his freedom: and he who doubts the possibility of this limits the Holy One of Israel, who giveth His Holy Spirit to them that ask.
E. Paxton Hood, Sermons,p. 365.
References: Psalms 78:41. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. v., No. 272.Psalms 78:41; Psalms 78:42. J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. v., p. 241.