He hath withdrawn Himself from them.
Divine withdrawal
“Withdrawn” is a word that may well chill our heart. It would be enough to express intolerable displeasure, if it stood just as it stands in this verse; but a larger meaning belongs to the word. “Withdrawn” is in some senses a negative relation, but it was a distinctly positive and we may add repelling action which the Lord meant to convey by the use of the term. All words were originally pictures, and the real dictionary when it appears will be pictorial. The Lord in this instance frees Himself from them. That is the literal and broader meaning of the prophecy. He releases Himself, He detaches Himself, He shakes off an encumbrance, a nuisance, a claim that is without righteousness. This may be taken in two senses.
1. The people are going with flocks and herds as if bent on sacrificial purpose; they will give the Lord any quantity of blood--hot, reeking blood; but the Lord says, I will have no more of your sacrifices; they are an abomination to Me; I hate all the programme of ritual and ceremony and attitude, if it fail to express a hunger and a reverence of the heart and mind. So the Lord is seen here in the act of taking up all these flocks and herds, and all these unwilling priests, and freeing Himself from them, throwing them away, as men pass out of their custody things that are offensive, worthless, and corrupting. Or--
2. It may mean that the Lord shakes Himself free from the clutch of hands that have no heart in them: He will walk alone. He will not give up His shepherdliness, though He have no flock to follow Him. Every woman is mother, every man is father, and a man is not the less father that all his children are thrice dead, and are as plants plucked up by the roots, and cast out to the burning. The shepherdliness is not determined by the number of sheep following or going before; shepherdliness is a quality, a disposition, an inspiration, an eternal solicitude. If need be God will continue His shepherdliness though every sheep go astray, and every lamb should die. Mark the disastrous possibility! Men may be left without “God; the Almighty and All-merciful may have retired, gone away; away into the shade, the darkness of night; He may have enshrouded Himself in a pavilion of thick darkness, where our poor prayers are lost on the outside. To this dreadful issue things may come. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Unacceptable sacrifices
The heap of their sacrifices should not recall the sentence against them, nor bring any mitigation of their trouble, nor procure access to God and His favour, who had justly deserted them.
1. The greatest contemners of God may at last stand sensibly in need of Him.
2. Impenitent sinners may make offer of many things, when they do not give themselves to God.
3. It is a very sad stroke, when the Lord is not only away, but has really deserted a people, “withdrawn Himself from them.” (George Hutcheson.)
But they shall not find Him.
Too late
I. The most important of all works. “Seek the Lord.” This implies a distance between man and his Maker. It is not the distance of being, but the distance of character. The great work of man is to seek the Lord morally, to seek His character.
1. This is a work in which all men should engage.
2. This is a work which all men must attend to sooner or later.
II. The most important of all works undertaken too late. “They shall not find Him.” “He will withdraw Himself from them.” This is the language of accommodation. He puts forth no effort to conceal Himself, He alters not His position, but He seems to withdraw from them. As the white cliffs of Albion seem to withdraw from the emigrant as his vessel bears him away to distant shores, so God seems to withdraw from the man who seeks Him “ too late.” (Homilist.)
Repenting too late
The main truth in this and other passages of Holy Scripture which speak of a time when it is too late to turn to God, is this; that it shall be “too late to knock when the door shall be shut, and too late to cry for mercy when it is the time of justice.” God waits long for sinners; He threatens long before He strikes; He strikes and pierces in lesser degrees, and with increasing severity, before the final blow comes. In this life He places man in a new state of trial, even after His first judgments have fallen on the sinner. But the general rule of His dealings is this; that when the time of each judgment is actually come, then, as to that judgment, it is too late to pray. Not too late for other mercy, but too late as to this one. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
Too late
About thirty years ago, a gentleman from New York, who was travelling in the South, met a young girl of great beauty and wealth, and married her. They returned to New York, and plunged into a mad whirl of gaiety. The young wife had been a gentle, thoughtful girl, anxious to help all in suffering or want, and to serve her God faithfully. But as Mrs. L. she had troops of flatterers; her beauty and dresses were described in the society journals; her bon-mots flew from mouth to mouth; her equipage was one of the most attractive in the park. In a few months she was intoxicated with admiration. She and her husband flitted from New York to Newport, from London to Paris, with no object but enjoyment. There were other men and women of their class who had some worthier pursuit--literature, or art, or the elevation of the poorer classes--but L. and his wife lived solely for amusement. Mrs. L. was looked upon as the foremost leader of society. About ten years ago she was returning alone from California, when an accident occurred to the railroad train in which she was a passenger, and she received a fatal internal injury. She was carried into a wayside station, and there, attended only by a physician from the neighbouring village, she died. The doctor said that it was one of the most painful experiences of his life. “I had to tell her that she had but one hour to live. She was not suffering any pain. Her only consciousness of hurt was that she was unable to move; so that it was no wonder she could not at first believe me.” I have but an hour, you tell me? “Not more” And this is all that is left me of the world. It is not much, doctor, with a half smile. The men left the room, and I locked the door, that she might not be disturbed. She threw her arm over her face and lay quiet a long time; then she turned on me in a frenzy. ‘To think of all that I might have done with my money and my time! God wanted me to help the poor and the sick! It’s too late now! I’ve only an hour’, She struggled up wildly. ‘Why, doctor, I did nothing--nothing but lead the fashion! The fashion! Now I’ve only an hour! An hour!’--But she had not even that, for the exertion proved fatal, and in a moment she lay dead at my feet.. No sermon that I ever heard was like that woman’s despairing cry, ‘It’s too late now!’”