ISAIAH'S MESSAGE TO JUDAH.

(Isa. i:1-9, 16-20.)

I. The Analysis.

1. The Condition of Judah (verses 1-4).—This is a cry-out of the heart of God; His children have rebelled; they are more brutish than the ox or the ass.

2. The Failure of Chastisement (verses 1-8).—That great charge to Israel, Deut. xxvii-xxix, holds a warning that if the people should become disobedient and apostate, increasingly severe chastisements should fall upon them in the land (Deut. xxix:22-25); and that, failing these, the people should be cast out of the land (verses 26-28). Isaiah announces the failure of the chastisements to restore Judah; there remains only dispersion.

3. The Mention of the Remnant (verse 9).—The doctrine of the remnant is one of the most important in Scripture. There is always in Israel a remnant, as in the church there are always some who are of the Philadelphian spirit (Rev. iii:8) and whether in Israel or the church, God's fellowship and testimony are always with the remnant.

4. The Offer of Mercy (verses 16-20).—Before resorting to the terrible judgment of dispersion God sends tender appeals. Even in their depth of iniquity He will save. See 2 Chron. xxxvi:15-17.

II. The Heart of the Lesson.

Neither the disclosure of the heart of God in verses 2 and 3, nor of the compassion of God in verses 16-20, wonderful as these are, can be considered the distinctive truths of this lesson, because these two revelations of God are everywhere, from Genesis to Revelation. Never do "we-weary of them; never do we get beyond the need of being reminded that our sins afflict the Father's heart, nor beyond the need of assurance that for the greatest of those sins pardon and cleansing may be found in the sacrifice provided by the Father's love.

But in verse i8 something is said concerning our sins which is wholly lost sight of in our common way of dealing with that text. We read it as if it said: ''Though your sins be as scarlet," you "shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson" you "shall be as wool"; but that is not what is said. It is the scarlet sins which are to be white; the crimson sins which are to be as wool. Is not here something which should arrest our attention? Have we not here, if only we may come at it, the heart of this lesson?

But, we ask, how can sin be anything but sin, loathsome, guilty, abhorred of God? A thousand times let it be repeated—sin as sin can never be anything else. But the divine thought here seems to go back of the act into origins. This is our Lord's way in that most searching of all scriptures—the very point of the two-edged sword—the Sermon on the Mount; the guilt is there in all its unspeakable vileness—only it is traced back to its origin.

But the sex instinct is not evil; it is holy and good. Upon it God has built the holiest thing on earth, the family. About it cluster the sacredest, sweetest words. Husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister, child, home. And, by as much as the instinct is pure and ineffably beautiful, by so much is its perversion the most infernal and loathsome of all the sins possible to man.

But suppose the redemptive processes, tracing a hateful sin back to its origin the instinct perverted, degraded, fallen, propose to preserve the instinct, the foundation of all social order and of all manliness and womanliness, but to free it absolutely from evil? to make it as white as snow?

Take, again, the capacity for forming moral judgments. That capacity implies the capacity for wrath, for noble indignation. That capacity inheres in God Himself. But, fallen, degraded, perverted and centered on self, wrath murders. Suppose God has lodged in the blood of Christ and in the power of the Spirit power to preserve wrath, but to make it like wool—the wrath of the Lamb!

And so with all the primal instincts. And the wonderful heart of this lesson is that God in saving us does not dehumanize, but rather rehumanizes us.