Isaiah in his day saved Jerusalem by teaching the people a better idea of their God. For forty years he had been witnessing to a truer thought of God, and at last the crisis and the triumph of his religious statesmanship came. Jerusalem would have surrendered to Assyria had not Isaiah at last brought king and people, in their despair, to the faith in God to which for forty years he had borne witness. At an hour when the Assyrian was making his rapid march towards the city, two props of the people’s confidence had entirely given way: their reliance upon Egypt, and their confidence in their religion. Isaiah had told them over and over again that these supports were rotten, and would give way when the crash came. And they did when at last came the scourge of the nations which had swept other cities before it reached Jerusalem. For a moment the luridness of the popular despair was lit up by a wild light of passion and revelry: “Let us eat and drink,” they said, “for to-morrow we shall die.” Then the hour for the triumph of the prophet’s lifelong truth was come. He led a sobered people and a humbled king to the Holy One of Israel (Newman Smyth, D. D.)
The Divine holiness and Fatherhood
The historic truth is that wherever a better idea of God prevails men are delivered. The deep, permanent, at all times greatly needed lesson is, that the prophet’s truer teaching of God is for the salvation of a city. The subject for us to inquire concerning is, whether we are being saved by any truer, stronger ideas of our God? Are we saving our society, our neighbour-hood, our city, our land by nobler knowledge of God?
1. Do you hope to work out the redemption of men by education? It is a means, a sharp instrument for good or evil, but Rabshakeh could blaspheme in two languages. We have to face the question: “What leaven is to keep the school itself from moral corruption?”
2. But much, it is said, may be accomplished through sanitary and political science. Undoubtedly. Even Ahaz did a good thing when he looked after the water supply of Jerusalem in fear of a siege, although he would not hear a word that Isaiah was saying to him by the upper pool in the fuller’s field. But if Isaiah had not been the heart and the soul of the city in its critical hour, all the work that the kings had done in repairing the walls and looking after the watercourses, would never have kept the Assyrian out. Sooner or later we shall have to go down to the God on whom we depend, if we are to build anything of permanent worth.
3. What, then, is our better saving thought of God?
(1) We are coming to know better the Divine Fatherhood of men.
(2) Yet, this first truth of the Divine Fatherhood of men, and His special Fatherhood towards the son of His trust and love, does not exhaust our redeeming knowledge of God. Our text exalts the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah’s vision of Him whose glory fills the whole earth was the vision of the Holy One. In the holiness of the prophet saw the falsehoods of the court and the people burning as with everlasting fire. And when Jesus Christ in that sublime moment to which St. John has borne witness in the seventeenth chapter of his Gospel, summed up His whole lifelong teaching in His last prayer for the disciples, He lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, Holy Father, O righteous Father.
(3) There is one way in particular by which we, with all our worldliness, may be brought more fully into the saving power of these truths of God. It is through our increasing sense of God’s omnipresence, of the Divine immanence, of Immanuel, God with us. (Newman Smyth, D. D.)
God His people’s defence
A magistrate in Hamburg once held up his finger and said to Mr. Oncken, the Baptist preacher: “Do you see that finger, sir? As long as I can hold up that finger I shall put you down.” “I can see,” said Mr. Oncken, “what you cannot see; I can see the mighty arm of God, and as long as that arm is held up for my defence, you will never be able to put me down.” (Christian Age.)
