The Shadow of Sacred Truth
W. Clarkson Isaiah 6:9-13 And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear you indeed, but understand not; and see you indeed, but perceive not.… We may view these words in - I. THEIR NATIONAL ASPECT. Thus regarded, they point to: 1. Painful and guilty obduracy. The prophet should speak, but the people would disregard; all that was froward and perverse in them would repel and reject the Divine message; their reception of the truth would only end in spiritual deterioration and greater moral distance than ever from deliverance (vers. 9, 10). 2. Protracted impenitence and Divine judgment (vers. 11, 12). 3. Long-lingering mercy ending in partial restoration (ver. 13). But we shall gain most from these verses by regarding them in - II. THEIR INDIVIDUAL ASPECT. The ninth and tenth verses have the most direct and serious bearing on our condition now. They suggest to us that sacred truth not only sheds a bright light, but casts a deep shadow where it falls. 1. It casts the shadow of solemn responsibility everywhere. When a greater than Moses legislates, and a wiser than Solomon speaks to us, we have more to be responsible for than they who received the Law from Sinai, and they who lived under the reign of the son of David. From those to whom much is given will much be required. 2. It casts the shadow of a heavy condemnation on those who reject it. "Of how much sorer punishment," etc. "It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment," etc.; "This is the condemnation, that light is come," etc.; "He that knew his Lord's will and did it not shall be beaten with many stripes." 3. But the special lesson from our text is that it casts the shadow of spiritual deterioration on those who refuse it. "Make the heart of this people fat... shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes," etc. The apparent sense of these words cannot be, and is not, the one that should be accepted. They cannot possibly be meant to signify that God desired his prophet deliberately and intentionally to cause moral obtuseness, spiritual blindness, in order that the people of Judah might be prevented from repenting and so from being saved. Such a thought not only outrages every reverent idea of the Divine character, but flatly contradicts the most express statements of the Divine Word (see Ezekiel 18:23; 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9; James 1:13). There is one sense of which the words are susceptible, and which is in accordance with the plainly revealed character of God; it is that the prophet was to declare such truth as would actually result in spiritual blindness, and therefore in incapacity for repentance and redemption, Now, it is the solemn duty of the minister of Christ to do the same thing continually. He knows that, as his Divine Master was "set for the fall" as well as for the "rising again of many in Israel" (Luke 2:34), and as he had occasion to say, "For judgment am I come into this world, that they who see may be made blind" (John 9:39), that as his gospel was in earliest times a "stone of stumbling and a rock of offence" (Isaiah 8:14; and see Matthew 21:44; 1 Corinthians 1:23; 2 Corinthians 2:16), so now the truth of the living God must prove, to those who reject it, the occasion of moral and spiritual degeneracy. He must lay his account with this sad fact, must go forth, like Isaiah, well aware that it is a two-edged sword he wields. But let the sons of sacred privilege understand what is their peril as well as their opportunity. Deliberately rejected truth leads down to (1) a diminished sensibility, the lessening of pure religious emotion; (2) loss of spiritual apprehension, an enfeebled capacity to perceive the mind and meaning of the Divine Teacher; (3) a vanishing likelihood of personal salvation. When the ear is shut and the eye is closed, is it likely that the feet will be found in the way of life? Will they not wander off to the fields of folly, up to and over the precipice of ruin? - C. Parallel Verses KJV: And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. WEB: He said, "Go, and tell this people, 'You hear indeed, but don't understand; and you see indeed, but don't perceive.'