Isaiah 48:7
They are created now, and not long ago; you have not heard of them before today. So you cannot claim, 'I already knew them!'
Sermons
Things Worth Heeding Concerning God and ManW. Clarkson Isaiah 48:1-9
Lessons from the Past to the FutureE. Johnson Isaiah 48:1-11














Hidden things. The earth is full of latent forces, These are concealed. Take beat, for instance: how it hides in the secret places more stealthily than the panther! Take electricity: here it is quite close to us - within us; and what a masterful power it is! - how it can rend the rock and lay low the lofty palaces! These are beneficent forces, though, and do their work well, for the security, health, and comfort of man. There are hidden forces that are baneful. The latent seeds of disease lie hidden behind that pearly skin - that pure and radiant complexion. And when we have to speak of sin, what a latent force that is hidden in the breast of a child! - concealing itself under the cloak of outward respectability in manhood, and by its manifestations here and there like the volcano, telling us what depths of evil there are in the human heart, which only Christ and his cross can overcome. Men understand much, but they do not understand themselves.

I. WE HAVE HIDDEN FORCES OF JOY IN US. In a human sense it is so. Look at those children, all eager for their own little possession, their own way; they know not now what love will do: how for that bright little maiden yonder, presently, in a few brief years, one human heart will give up time and thought, and all that earnest love can give! What a force! but hidden yet. So in marriage; that young wife cannot be informed, or instructed, or inspired by others to feel what maternal love is; but when the cry is heard, and a child is born into the world, the latent instinct leaps into life in the heart, and she knows for the first time what that slumbering force really is. So rare are in our souls hidden forces. We have latent faculties of faith in us which the Holy Ghost can call forth, whereby we walk in a new world of wonder and hope and joy in God. We have latent faculties of energy in us which, once awakened, will make us emulate the earnest of every age; and when religion sets a man to work, he finds that there is a joy in service which he was unconscious of before; he discerns that, whilst by love he serves others, he is also with each service opening up new joy-fountains in his own heart.

II. WE HAVE HIDDEN FORCES OF PAIN IN US. We know not what they are, it may be, at present; but we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and we shall be a surprise unto ourselves in this respect also.

1. There is the sorrow that hides in love. We know not the measure of love save by loss! Then we know. We are tempted to think in our youth that our older friends are too pensive sometimes, too little open to the all-gladdening influences around them. Alas! we know not the bread they eat. There are forces of memory in their hearts that we cannot see.

2. There is the sorrow that hides in sin. It is so bright-presenced at first, so fascinating, so attractive; speaks in such dulcet tones; no memory at work yet; no consciousness of shame yet; no sense yet of the disturbance that sin works in God's beautifully ordered universe. To-morrow the serpent that hides at the bottom of the cup will have stung!

3. The sorrow that hides in wrong or neglect in relation to others. While they were with us here we did not feel it so much; but now! Oh, the curtain that hides! the silence in which there is no voice! the quivering heart that puts out the untouched hand! Eternal Father, we were not what we wished, or all we wished, to them. But they are gone, and the place which knew them once shall know them no more. Death is not a tidal river; its waters never return.

III. WE HAVE HIDDEN FORCES OF EVIL IN US. Power to sin! Forces which temptation may set fire to, as a spark to the tow! We see this illustrated in nature. The officer who played with his beautiful glossy pair of cub-tigers did not understand his danger till they tasted blood as they licked a little cut in his hand; and then came the surly growl, and with the officer a sword for them or death for himself. We see this in the history of the disciples. How ignorant they were of their own hearts! What latent scepticism in Thomas! what cowardice beneath Peter's enthusiasm! what pride in those who wanted chief places in Christ's kingdom! Ah! yes; but they recovered from their folly. But think of Judas; think of Demas; think of Hymenaeus and Philetus. We see this in the warnings of our Saviour. "Watch and pray." Yes; Mark you, Christ does not say, "Watch and pray in youth," or "in manhood. He says it to us all. He knows the potency of evil, and that there are temptable places in our nature even unto the end. For instance, When every other passion is old, covetousness is young," says the proverb. We must be on our guard till the last hour. Then will come release and victory.

IV. WE HAVE HIDDEN FORCES OF IMMORTALITY WITHIN US. Christ revealed these. He "brought life and immortality to light by the gospel." All men do not equally feel these; but there is a "power of the world to come," which more or less affects everybody. When outward life pleases, and we have vivacities of friendship, extensive and elaborate functions of duty to fulfil; when we are absorbed in the outward life; - we do not always feel the great beatings of the pulses of immortality within us. But in silent meditative hours there comes over us all the consciousness alike of sin and immortality. "How abject, how august, is man!" The great conservative power of religion is the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Let that be ignored or denied, and materialism will make very rapid strides.

1. The sense of immortality alters our estimate of the world. Makes us feel the "tent-like character of our homes. We have here no continuing city, but we seek one to come." We knew that there remaineth a rest, and that affliction is but for a moment.

2. The sense of immortality alters our estimate of friendship. We long, even in that, to lay hold of the everlasting, to link our love with the immortal years - to feel that it is of such a character as to survive in glory. Hidden the force may be, but it is real, and the strongest of all the bulwarks against atheism and materialism. When Christ speaks we feel that he spake with authority. Men trembled before a vision of themselves so searching and severe. Not only the "hidden things "of darkness, however, did he reveal; the bright diamond of the mind flashed forth its beauty in the light of his all-revealing words. "Honour all men," says St. Peter. A beautiful commandment, for the gospel has shown the hidden glory behind the veil of the meanest life. "For I have shown thee hidden things" may therefore suggest to us the reverence which we ought to entertain for the soul. Sin is not a subject for mere scorn; it is a subject for deepest sorrow. "When Jesus came near the city, he beheld it, and wept over it." Something more magnificent than the marble temple filled his vision; he wept over souls where the altar was overthrown and the love of God cast out. Let preachers, teachers, authors, workers in the field of the Lord, realize once more the Divine grandeur of their work. The sublimest creation of this universe is hidden in the heart of man: "God made man in his own image." - W.M.S.

See all this.
The words "See all this," have been rendered by one of the latest commentators, "See it as a whole." This rendering reproduces the prophetic argument. Isaiah had recalled a period of history which, taken as a whole, was a fulfilled word of Jehovah. That completed epoch of history from the predictions of old to the events in which it had issued was to the prophet proof of God's control of human affairs. Any completed historic cycle, taken as a whole, becomes to us significant of God. The evidence of the Divine providence discovers itself when we view things largely, when we see life as a whole. 1. Look at your life in the large relations of it, see it as a whole. This is not the view of life which it is altogether easy for us to take. For we touch life at single points; we receive life moment by moment; and our first views of things are apt to be partial. We ought, in our moral maturity, to fit our daily doings into some large conception of our whole reason for being here in this world. We do not know how to live well, certainly we have not learned to live richly if we have not gained something of the happy art of massing things in nobler groupings; if we cannot hold the little things and daily details of life under some broad, generous conception of our life; very much as from some height we see the several parts of a landscape, not singly, but together, as one wide sunny expanse. 2. That particular thing, for example, for which it may be necessary for you to strive to-morrow in your business, or which it seems desirable to secure for your enjoyment, needs to be sought for, not as though it were the one thing only to be attained, but as a possible part of some greater good in which your life is to find its satisfaction. A man to be successful in any calling must have something of that power of concentration to which Sir Fowell Buxton once attributed his success — "the power of being a whole man to one thing at a time." Nevertheless, that would be an unworthy success which should leave us entirely confined to any single thing. 3. If we desire to possess our friendships well, we must learn this art of seeing things not in their little, often vexatious details, but largely and as wholes. You must take your friend largely for what he is in his entire character, if you would keep your friend. The microscope has its uses; but it was never made for the eye of friendship. 4. Another instance for the application of this text might be found in our habits of regarding our homes. We are to possess the home, not as a good for itself alone, but in its whole social setting, in its relation to the neighbourhood, to the Church of humanity, to the kingdom of heaven, of which it is part and portion. 5. I wish now to go up with this principle to some higher lines of experience, and to observe how this entire earthly life of ours is itself life but in part, and how, if we would live truly, we must learn to see all our life, from the cradle to the grave, as itself but a part of some still larger, better whole for us. If this earthly span of our days be all, what is a human life at its best but as the rainbow which we have seen, one end of it resting upon the depths of the waters, and the other end lost in the cloud, itself as fleeting as the mist upon which for its moment of promise it becomes visible? But here lies the difficulty and the doubt. We have no experience of what lies beyond. Our hand can lay no measuring-rod upon futurity. We have only this present. It is also true, and it is the more important part of the truth, that we have this present only as an incomplete thing, we have this life only as a segment; its present brief span is the are of some curve of larger sweep than we can measure. What its future may be like, we do not know; but we know this present as in itself incomplete and requiring some future completion. "If you ask me, said Savonarola, as he was ready to be borne to the stake, what shall be in general the issue of this struggle, I reply, Victory. If you ask me what shall be the issue in the particular sense, I reply, Death." It was the answer of a seer. Seen in the particular, the issue of life may be death. Seen in the general, seen as a whole, true life is not death, but victory. The Christian faith brings to a man its Gospel of the One sinless Man, who knew whence He came, and whither He went, and whose life was always to Him not an affair of the moment only, but a truth of eternity. Jesus' earthly life was indeed a broken one. In one aspect of it no human life has been left so incomplete as was that life which we can follow for a few brief years of it through these gospels. The verse in the book of Acts, "All the things which Jesus began both to do and to teach," suggests the incompleteness, the utter brokenness of Jesus' earthly life. What work did He live to see completed? what doctrine to finish? His hands did not complete His work of mercy; they were pierced before they had wrought all their possible work of healing. His lips did not finish His teachings; He had many things to say, and He died leaving much unsaid. Into our Lord's Gethsemane may there not have entered the pathos of an unfinished life? Yet He said, "I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." He could not have said that had He not looked always upon His life here as part and daily portion of one Divine whole, His sacrifice as something complete in God's eternal purpose; had He not known that His life here, and there, and always, is one life, continuous throughout, on earth and in heaven, one will of the Father — each part of it, whether of humiliation or transfiguration, of suffering or resurrection, partaking of the glory of the perfect whole.

(N. Smyth, D.D.)

People
Babylonians, Isaiah, Jacob
Places
Babylon, Chaldea
Topics
Ago, Beginning, Behold, Created, Didn't, Ears, Effected, Fear, Hast, Heardest, Heardst, Lest, Past, Produced, Shouldest, Shouldst, Yea, Yes
Outline
1. God, to convince the people of their foreknown obstinance, revealed his prophecies
9. He saves them for his own sake
12. He exhorts them to obedience, because of his power and providence
16. He laments their backwardness
20. He powerfully delivers his people out of Babylon

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Isaiah 48:5

     4303   metals
     4552   wood
     5516   sculpture
     8799   polytheism

Library
A River of Peace and Waves of Righteousness
'Oh that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.'-- ISAIAH xlviii. 18. I. The Wonderful Thought of God here. This is an exclamation of disappointment; of thwarted love. The good which He purposed has been missed by man's fault, and He regards the faulty Israel with sorrow and pity as a would-be benefactor balked of a kind intention might do. O Jerusalem! 'how often would I have gathered thee.' 'If thou hadst known
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

God's People in the Furnace
And the first observation I shall make will be this: all persons in the furnace of affliction are not chosen. The text says, "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction," and it implies that there may be, and there doubtless are, some in the furnace who are not chosen. How many persons there are who suppose that because they are tried, afflicted, and tempted, therefore they are the children of God, whereas they are no such thing. It is a great truth that every child of God is afflicted; but
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 1: 1855

Mercy's Master Motive
We shall now use the text as an illustration of divine love in other cases, for from one deed of grace we may learn all. As God dealt with his people Israel after the flesh, in the same manner he dealeth with his people Israel after the spirit; and his mercies towards his saints are to be seen as in a mirror in his wondrous lovingkindness towards the seed of Abraham. I shall take the text to illustrate--first, the conversion of the sinner; and secondly, the reclaiming of the backslider; and I pray,
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 18: 1872

"Thou Shall Keep Him in Perfect Peace, Whose Mind is Stayed on Thee, Because He Trusteth in Thee. "
Isaiah xxvi. 3.--"Thou shall keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee." Christ hath left us his peace, as the great and comprehensive legacy, "My peace I leave you," John xiv. 27. And this was not peace in the world that he enjoyed; you know what his life was, a continual warfare; but a peace above the world, that passeth understanding. "In the world you shall have trouble, but in me you shall have peace," saith Christ,--a peace that shall make trouble
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

Peace in the Soul
Peace I leave with you: my peace I give unto you.--ST. JOHN 14:27. Peace is one of the great words of the Holy Scriptures. It is woven through the Old Testament and the New like a golden thread. It inheres and abides in the character of God,-- "The central peace subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation." It is the deepest and most universal desire of man, whose prayer in all ages has been, "Grant us Thy Peace, O Lord." It is the reward of the righteous, the blessing of the good, the crown
Henry Van Dyke—What Peace Means

After the Scripture.
"In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God created He him."--Gen. v. 1. In the preceding pages we have shown that the translation, "in Our image," actually means, "after Our image." To make anything in an image is no language; it is unthinkable, logically untrue. We now proceed to show how it should be translated, and give our reason for it. We begin with citing some passages from the Old Testament in which occurs the preposition "B" which, in Gen. i. 27, stands before image, where
Abraham Kuyper—The Work of the Holy Spirit

Man's Chief End
Q-I: WHAT IS THE CHIEF END OF MAN? A: Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever. Here are two ends of life specified. 1: The glorifying of God. 2: The enjoying of God. I. The glorifying of God, I Pet 4:4: That God in all things may be glorified.' The glory of God is a silver thread which must run through all our actions. I Cor 10:01. Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' Everything works to some end in things natural and artificial;
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Christ's Prophetic Office
'The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet,' &c. Deut 18:85. Having spoken of the person of Christ, we are next to speak of the offices of Christ. These are Prophetic, Priestly, and Regal. 'The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet.' Enunciatur hic locus de Christo. It is spoken of Christ.' There are several names given to Christ as a Prophet. He is called the Counsellor' in Isa 9:9. In uno Christo Angelus foederis completur [The Messenger of the Covenant appears in Christ alone].
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Gifts Received for the Rebellious
Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell among them. W hen Joseph exchanged a prison for the chief honour and government of Egypt, the advantage of his exaltation was felt by those who little deserved it (Genesis 45:4, 5) . His brethren hated him, and had conspired to kill him. And though he was preserved from death, they were permitted to sell him for a bond-servant. He owed his servitude,
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2

"Thou Shall Keep Him in Perfect Peace, Whose Mind is Stayed on Thee, Because He Trusteth in Thee. "
Isaiah xxvi. 3.--"Thou shall keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee." All men love to have privileges above others. Every one is upon the design and search after some well-being, since Adam lost that which was true happiness. We all agree upon the general notion of it, but presently men divide in the following of particulars. Here all men are united in seeking after some good; something to satisfy their souls, and satiate their desires. Nay, but they
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

Extent of Atonement.
VI. For whose benefit the atonement was intended. 1. God does all things for himself; that is, he consults his own glory and happiness, as the supreme and most influential reason for all his conduct. This is wise and right in him, because his own glory and happiness are infinitely the greatest good in and to the universe. He made the atonement to satisfy himself. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
Charles Grandison Finney—Systematic Theology

Blasphemous Accusations of the Jews.
(Galilee.) ^A Matt. XII. 22-37; ^B Mark III. 19-30; ^C Luke XI. 14-23. ^b 19 And he cometh into a house. [Whose house is not stated.] 20 And the multitude cometh together again [as on a previous occasion--Mark ii. 1], so that they could not so much as eat bread. [They could not sit down to a regular meal. A wonderful picture of the intense importunity of people and the corresponding eagerness of Jesus, who was as willing to do as they were to have done.] 21 And when his friends heard it, they went
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Isaiah
CHAPTERS I-XXXIX Isaiah is the most regal of the prophets. His words and thoughts are those of a man whose eyes had seen the King, vi. 5. The times in which he lived were big with political problems, which he met as a statesman who saw the large meaning of events, and as a prophet who read a divine purpose in history. Unlike his younger contemporary Micah, he was, in all probability, an aristocrat; and during his long ministry (740-701 B.C., possibly, but not probably later) he bore testimony, as
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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