“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways,” says Yahweh.
Parallel Translations
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“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways,” says Yahweh.
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For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
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For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the LORD.
Cross-references (9)
Passages linked to Isaiah 55:8 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Psalms 92:5 How great are your works, Yahweh! Your thoughts are very deep.
- Psalms 40:5 Many, Yahweh, my God, are the wonderful works which you have done, and your thoughts which are toward us. They can’t be declared back to you. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be counted.
- Hosea 14:9 Who is wise, that he may understand these things? Who is prudent, that he may know them? For the ways of Yahweh are right, and the righteous walk in them; But the rebellious stumble in them.
- Ezekiel 18:29 Yet the house of Israel says, ‘The way of the Lord is not fair.’ House of Israel, aren’t my ways fair? Aren’t your ways unfair?
- Psalms 25:10 All the paths of Yahweh are loving kindness and truth to such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.
- Daniel 4:37 Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven; for all his works are truth, and his ways justice; and those who walk in pride he is able to abase.
- Isaiah 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
- Proverbs 21:8 The way of the guilty is devious, but the conduct of the innocent is upright.
- Proverbs 25:3 As the heavens for height, and the earth for depth, so the hearts of kings are unsearchable.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (17 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Although you are not soon reconciled one to another…
Although you are not soon reconciled one to another and judge me by yourselves, yet I am most easy to be reconciled, yea, I offer my mercies to you.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Isa 55:8 For my thoughts [are] not your thoughts,…
Isa 55:8 For my thoughts [are] not your thoughts, neither [are] your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
Ver. 8. For my thoughts are not your thoughts,] q.d., You may think it impossible, likely, that such great and grievous sinners as you have been should ever be received to mercy. But what talk you of your thoughts? Mine are infinitely above them, neither may you measure my mercies by your own models. Bring broken and bleeding hearts to my mercy seat, and I shall soon think all the meritorious sufferings of my Son, all the promises in my book, all the comforts of my Spirit, all the pleasures of my kingdom, but enough for you.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain My disposition and carriage is vastly differing from yours.…
My disposition and carriage is vastly differing from yours. If any man provoke or injure you, especially if he do it greatly, and frequently, and maliciously, you are very slow and backward to forgive him; and if you do or seem to forgive, and promise to forget, and pass it by, yet you retain a secret grudge in your hearts, and upon the least occasion and slight offence you forget your promise, and you are soon weary with forgiving, and prone to revenge yourselves upon him: but it is not so with me; for I am slow to anger, and ready to forgive all true penitents, how many, and great, and numberless soever their sins be; and my promises of mercy and pardon shall be infallibly made good to them. And therefore you need not fear to come to me, or to find mercy and acceptance with me.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain For my thoughts are not your thoughts,.... In some…
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,.... In some things there may be a likeness between the thoughts of God and the thoughts of men, as to the nature of them: thoughts are natural and essential to them both; they are within them, are internal acts, and unknown to others, till made known; but then the thoughts of men are finite and limited, whereas the thoughts of the Lord are infinite and boundless; men's thoughts have a beginning, but the Lord's have none; though not so much the nature as the quality of them is here intended: the thoughts of men are evil, even the imagination of their thoughts, yea, every imagination is, and that always and only so; but the thoughts of God are holy, as appears from his purposes and covenant, and all his acts of grace, in redemption, calling, and preparing his people for glory: the thoughts of men, as to the object of them, are vain, and nothing worth; their thoughts and sentiments of things are very different from the Lord's, as about sin, concerning Christ, the truths of the Gospel, the people of God, religion, holiness, and a future state, and in reference to the business of salvation; they think they can save themselves; that their own works of righteousness are sufficient to justify them; their privileges and profession such, that they shall be saved; their wisdom, riches, and honour, a security to them from damnation: however, that their sincere obedience, with repentance for what is amiss, will entitle them to happiness: but the thoughts of God are the reverse of all this; particularly with respect to pardoning mercy their thoughts are different; carnal men think of mercy, but not of justice, and of having pardoning mercy in an absolute way, and not through Christ, and without conversion and repentance; and so this is a reason why men's thoughts are to be forsaken, because so very unlike to the Lord's. Or else these words are to be considered as an argument, proving that God does abundantly pardon all returning sinners; since he is not like men, backward to forgive, especially great and aggravated crimes, but is ready, free, and willing to forgive, even those of the most aggravated circumstances.
Neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord; the ways which God prescribes and directs men to walk in are different from theirs; his are holy, theirs unholy; his are plain, theirs crooked; his are ways of light, theirs ways of darkness; his are pleasant, theirs not so, at least in the issue; his lead to life, theirs to death; and therefore there is good reason why they should leave their evil ways, and walk in his. Moreover, the ways which he takes in the salvation of men are different from those which they, naturally pursue, and especially in the pardon of sin; he pardons freely, fully, without any reserve, or private grudge, forgetting as well as forgiving.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain For - If any man injure you, especially if…
For - If any man injure you, especially if he do it greatly and frequently, you are slow and backward to forgive him. But I am ready to forgive all penitents, how many, and great, and numberless soever their sins be.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Isa 55:8. For my thoughts are not your thoughts,…
Isa 55:8. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, &c. — My disposition and way differ vastly from yours. If any man injure you, especially if he do it greatly and frequently, you are slow and backward to forgive him. But I am ready to forgive all true penitents, how many, and great, and numberless soever their sins be; and my promises of mercy and pardon shall be infallibly made good to them: and therefore you need not fear to come to me, or question but you shall find mercy and acceptance with me.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain For my thoughts are not your thoughts - Interpreters…
For my thoughts are not your thoughts - Interpreters have differed in regard to the connection of this verse with the preceding. It is evident, I think, that it is properly connected with the subject of pardon; and the sense must be, that the plans and purposes of God in regard to forgiveness are as far above those of people as the heavens are higher than the earth, Isa 55:9. But in what respects his plan of pardon differs from those of people, the prophet does not intimate, and can be understood only by the views which are presented in other parts of the Bible. The connection here would seem to demand some such view as the following:
1. People find it difficult to pardon at all. They harbor malice; they seek revenge; they are slow to forgive an injury. Not so with God. He harbors no malice; he has no desire of revenge; he has no reluctance to forgive.
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2. It may refer to the number of offences. People, if they forgive once, are slow to forgive a second time, and still more reluctant to forgive a third time, and if the offence is often repeated they refuse to forgive altogether. Not so with God. No matter how often we have violated his law, yet be can multiply forgiveness in proportion to our faults.
3. The number of the offenders. People may pardon one or a few who injure them, but if the number is greatly increased, their compassions are closed, and they feel that the world is arrayed against them. Not so with God. No matter how numerous the offenders - though they embrace the inhabitants of the whole world - yet he can extend forgiveness to them all.
4. In regard to the aggravation of offences. People forgive a slight injury. However, if it is aggravated, they are slow to pardon. But not so with God. No matter bow aggravated the offence, he is ready to forgive. It may be added:
5. That his thoughts in regard to the mode of pardon are far above ours. The plan of forgiveness through a Redeemer - the scheme of pardon so fully illustrated in Isa 53:1-12, and on which the reasoning of the prophet here is based - is as far above any of the modes of pardon among people, as the heavens are above the earth. The scheme which contemplated the incarnation of the Son of God; which proffered forgiveness only through his substituted sufferings, and in virtue of his bitter death, was one which man could not have thought of, and which surpasses all the schemes and plans of people. In this respect, God’s ways are not, our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts.
But at the same time that this passage, refers primarily to the subject of pardon, and should be interpreted as having a main reference to that, it is also true of the ways of God in general. His ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not ours in regard to his plans in the creation and government of the world. He has plans for accomplishing his purposes which are different from ours, and he secures our own welfare by schemes that cross our own. He disappoints our hopes; foils our expectations; crosses our designs; removes our property, or our friends; and thwarts our purposes in life. He leads us in a path which we bad not intended: and secures our ultimate happiness in modes which are contrary to all our designs and desires. It follows from this:
1. That we should form our plans with submission to the higher purposes of God.
2. We should resign ourselves to him when he chooses to thwart our plans, and to take away our comforts.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain My ways. I am not vindictive, but require a…
My ways. I am not vindictive, but require a sincere conversion. (Calmet) --- We cannot serve both God and the world. We must therefore adhere to the former. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain For--referring to Isa 55:7. You need not doubt His…
For--referring to Isa 55:7. You need not doubt His willingness "abundantly to pardon" (compare Isa 55:12); for, though "the wicked" man's "ways," and "the unrighteous man's thoughts," are so aggravated as to seem unpardonable, God's "thoughts" and "ways" in pardoning are not regulated by the proportion of the former, as man's would be towards his fellow man who offended him; compare the "for" (Psa 25:11; Rom 5:19).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 8, 9. Jehovah’s thoughts transcend those of man as…
8, 9. Jehovah’s thoughts transcend those of man as much as the heaven is higher than the earth. The point of the contrast is not the moral quality of the Divine thoughts as opposed to those of the “wicked”; the thoughts and ways of Jehovah are His purposes of redemption, which are too vast and sublime to be measured by the narrow conceptions of despairing minds (Isa_40:27 f.). Comp. Jer_29:11 (“I know the thoughts that I entertain towards you, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope”), Mic_4:12. The verses, therefore, furnish a motive not merely for repentance but also for eager and expectant hope.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (8) My thoughts are not your thoughts . .…
(8) My thoughts are not your thoughts . . .—The assertion refers to both the promise and the warning. Men think that the gifts of God can be purchased with money (Act_8:20). They think that the market in which they are sold is always open, and that they can have them when and how they please (Mat_25:9-13).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Vers. 8-13. A FRESH ASSURANCE or DELIVERANCE FROM BABYLON.…
Vers. 8-13. A FRESH ASSURANCE or DELIVERANCE FROM BABYLON. Man can scarcely conceive of the deliverance which God designs; but God"s thoughts are not as man"s (vers. 8, 9). God"s word, once pronounced, is potent to effect its purpose (vers. 10, 11). Deliverance from Babylon, having been promised, will take place, and will be accompanied by all manner of spiritual blessings (vers. 12, 13).
Vers. 8, 9. My thoughts are not your thoughts. Though man is made in God"s image, (Gen_1:27) yet the nature of God in every way infinitely transcends that of man. Both the thoughts and the acts of God surpass man"s understanding. Men find it hard to pardon those who have offended them; God can pardon, and "pardon abundantly." Men cannot conceive of coming changes, when they pass certain limits. God knows assuredly what changes are approaching, since they are his doing.
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Vers. 8, 9. The human and the Divine.
Man was made in the image of God, and once bore his likeness; then his spirit was like that of the Spirit of God. Under the debasing influences of sin he has become utterly unlike his Maker, and, instead of being compared with him, he is placed in sad and painful contrast with his heavenly Father. "My thoughts are not your thoughts," etc.
I THE SPIRIT OF THE HUMAN.
1. The spirit of man is selfish. Not that he is incapable of generosity, but the prevailing and penetrating spirit which runs through his acts and his institutions is that of self-love, self-interest. What will it profit me? What shall I gain by it? How will it affect my interests? These are the questions which come up from the depths of the human heart, and are perpetually recurring.
2. The spirit of man. is vindictive. Men hate their enemies; they wish ill to those who have in any way done them an injury. Men are secretly if not openly glad when any harm happens to those who have successfully opposed them, or to those who have outstripped them in the race, or to those whose material interests clash with theirs, or to those who have rebuked and shamed them, or to those whom they have wronged and thus made their enemies. Their thoughts are vindictive and malignant, and their ways answer to their thoughts. By pronounced hostility, or by artful intrigue, or by a criminal silence and inaction, they further the end for which they look, the discomfiture of their fellows.
II THE SPIRIT OF THE DIVINE.
1. The Spirit of God is beneficent. God lives to bless to communicate life, love, beauty, joy, throughout his universe. That Son of man who "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister" perfectly represented the Spirit of the Father, who occupies his eternity and expends his omniscience in doing good to all his creation.
2. The Spirit of God is magnanimous. God delights not to give pain or to send sorrow to those who have offended him; that is his "strange work." He delights to pardon. He "abundantly pardons." He receives back and reinstates his penitent children with abounding joy. His mercy, his grace, is inexhaustible it is an overarching sky with no horizon-line; it is a sea without a bottom or a shore.
III THE DIVINE OFFER. So great, so surpassing, so all-sufficient, is the magnanimity of God that we may east ourselves on his mercy with the utmost confidence. "Iniquities may prevail against us," but the pardoning grace of God will prevail against them.
IV THE HUMAN ASPIRATION. Jesus Christ summons us to rise from the level of the human to the height of the Divine; to breathe his spirit of forgiveness, to live his life of love, to move on the noble and lofty plane of a sustained magnanimity, "that we may be the children of our Father who is in heaven;" that we may "be perfect as he is perfect. C.
Vers. 8, 9. God is like yet unlike man.
We are made in his image. We are called to be "perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect." The hope of the future is that we "shall be like him." And yet we must keep up the conviction that we are but faint copies of him, and be is altogether better than we, the Infinite that is ever high above us, at once our inspiration and our despair. Apply God"s unlikeness to us especially in the matter of redemption.
I GOD CAN FORGIVE. This man finds it hard to do.
II GOD CAN RESTORE. This man cannot do.
III GOD CAN BLESS, HOPING FOR NOTHING IN RETURN. Man never very certainly succeeds in doing anything save for pay. (see Act_8:20)
IV GOD CAN ABSOLUTELY KEEP HIS WORD OF PROMISE. Man is ever swift to promise, slow to perform. "The point of the comparison, in ver. 11, is that the predominance of fertility in the natural world, in spite of partial or apparent failures, is the pledge of a like triumph, in the long run, of the purposes of God for man"s good over resistance. It does not exclude the partial, or even total, failure of many; it asserts that the saved are more than the lost." The betterness of God is the ground of our admiration, trust, and love; it is the incitement of a perpetual imitation. Perfection, for those who know God, is to be like God. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain For My thoughts are not your thoughts
Isa_55:8-9
For My thoughts are not your thoughts
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Gods thoughts
The thought of God! Who can fathom it?
Astronomers tell us of stars in the sky at such infinite distances that their light, shooting through space at the inconceivable rate of 185,000 miles a second, would require 3,500 years to reach this earth. And vet Gods thought placed them thus far away in space, arranged the laws that govern them, not unlikely has set whirling around them planets like our own, peopled with sentiment and responsible beings like ourselves. To such distance reach the thoughts of God with the same clearness and wisdom as on this little globe. Shall not these thoughts, piercing the sublime avenues of infinite space, find a way whereby we may be saved? (Monday Club Sermons.)
The thoughts of God
We can form some conception of them through the works of His hand, whether in nature, providence, or redemption. The psalmist describes them as permanent in their endurance; as surpassing the reckoning of human arithmetic; and as being a fathomless deep. It is told of Kepler that, one night, after hours spent in observing the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed, I have been thinking over again the earliest thoughts of God. But there are earlier thoughts than those impresssd on nature. The love that led to the choice of man in Christ, and will culminate in the glory, is older far. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
God a thinker
I think, therefore I am, was the formula in which the great mind of Descartes found peace. We may reverently adapt it, and say, God thinks, therefore God is; and the proof that He thinks is the great universe around us bearing, everywhere the marks of a designing hand. The quality of any mind is determined by its product. The rare quality of the mind of Shakespeare found expression in Hamlet and Macbeth, that of Milton in Paradise Lost, and that of Tennyson in the Idylls of the King. Stephenson demonstrated the wonderful mechanical power of his brain in the production of the steam engine, and Edison has shown what he thinks by inventing the telephone and phonograph. You stand and gaze with reverential awe at St. Pauls, with its lofty dome, its magnificent portico, its beautiful windows. What is it? A church. Yes, a church in the heart of the busiest city in the world; a constant witness to the hurrying, bargain-making crowd, that man does not live by bread alone. It is a fine building--a veritable poem in stone--begrimed by the smutty fingers of oldFather Time, but strangely weird and solemn, as I have seen it bathed in the moonlight, with the mighty city sleeping around it, silent and still, or at least as still as London ever is. It is one of the peep-holes through which London gets a view of Heaven. But it is something more. It is the visualized thought of a great man; mute witness to the fact that mind is the great thing in the world. Sir Christopher Wren thought cathedrals, they were on his brain, he saw them before a single stone was laid, and then he selected one and put it on paper and said to the builder, Now go to work. Put this thought of mine in stone, and let it stand there in the midst of the city; so that all men may see the kind of thing my brain is capable of producing. So this world, so full of wondrous forms and lovely colours, is but the outward expression of the thought of God. (S. Herren.)
Man, like God, a thinker
1. The power of thought is one point in which man is made in the image of God. Other animated creatures which are put in subjection to the thinking, intelligent creature man, have no fellowship with God in thought; into His world of pure spirit they cannot enter. When men do not think, and especially when they do not think of the highest and most important matters, they degrade themselves from the true position and occupation of immortal minds.
2. In the text we have two persons thinking; and as the result--mans thoughts and Gods thoughts. Gods thinkings are declared by Himself to be exceedingly above mans, and yet if ever man is to dwell with God, he must think as God thinks. How can two walk together except they be agreed? What, then, can I do to rise to Him? Think as much as I please, thinking only sets me on my feet, and so far does me service, but it still leaves me on the earth, and God is yonder far above me, and my thoughts can no more attain unto Him than an infant can touch the stars with his finger. Still it is a comfort to me if I am sincerely thoughtful after God, that He is thinking about me, for if my thoughts cannot bear me up to Him, His thoughts can bring Him down to me, and when He has established a connection between the heaven which is above me and the earth which is beneath Himself, then I, laying hold on His thoughts, and believing what He has thought out for his, shall be drawn up to His elevation, and I shall come to think His thoughts, and so to be in communion with the Most High. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
God forgiving sin
At first, men have very low ideas of sin. But when the Holy Spirit begins to deal with them, sin grows to be an intolerable burden, a fearsome thing. While the thought of sin becomes clear, the thought of pardon is not, at first, so clear. Sin is great, and for that reason the sinner thinks it cannot be pardoned, as if he measured the Lord by his sin. In our text God in condescension helps the sinner to believe in pardon by elevating his idea of God. Because God is infinitely superior to man, He can abundantly pardon.
I. YOUR OWN THOUGHTS JUDGE PARDON TO BE IMPOSSIBLE.
1. To some it seems impossible that there can be forgiveness for them, because of some special, secret, gross, and grievous sin. Most persons, when they remember their past lives, seen certain spot blacker than the rest.
2. To others the difficulty of pardon seems to lie not so much in some special offence, as in the number of their sins, and the long continuance of them.
3. Others have been grievously oppressed with the idea that they could not be pardoned because of the wilfulness of what they have done. Certainly, this is a very grievous evil. Wilfulness is the very damnableness of sin.
4. Sir, says one, I sinned with a great falseness and treachery of heart; for I was baptized and joined a Church.
5. I hear one say, There is about my, sin this peculiar heinousness, that,, I have injured myself and others by my sin.
6. Perhaps one may even say, But, sir, my sin was of this kind, that I dishonoured God: I denied the Deity of Christ.
II. GODS THOUGHTS OF OTHER THINGS ARE FAR ABOVE YOURS. It is quite certain that the best thoughts--the most logical thoughts, the most original thoughts, the most correct thoughts you have ever had--are not worthy to be compared with Gods thoughts. Look in nature. The things you see in nature were, at first, thoughts in Gods mind, and He embodied them. Did you ever think such thoughts as God has thought in creation? Gods thoughts in providence--how wonderfully they are above ours I You read history, and everything seems to be a tangle. Yet, before you have read through the chapter, you see in it all a plan and a method. It has ever been so in your own mind as to the future. Read the prophecies, and see what is yet to be.
III. HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT PARDON ARE ABOVE YOURS.
1. Are you not slow to forgive? He delighteth in mercy.
2. You come to an end of your forgiveness before long. But God goes on to seventy times seventy times--on, and on, and on, and never comes to the end of pardoning mercy so long as a soul cries to Him for forgiveness.
3. Some things you find it hard to forgive. God does far more in the way of pardon than we ask or even think.
4. I am afraid I must say of some of you that you forgive, but you do not forget. God promises to forget our iniquities. I will cast all their sins behind My back. I will cast their iniquities into the depths of the sea. They shall not be remembered against them any more for ever.
5. We forgive, and yet feel some returns of anger. I have blotted out, says He, thy transgressions. Once blotted out, they arc done with for ever.
6. I do not slander you when I say that you are not very eager to pardon, and proposes to make peace with him.
7. Do you think that any of us would suffer much for the sake of being able to forgive another? Should there be a very serious difficulty in the way, so that you cannot rightly forgive without some atonement being made, would you make the atonement yourself?
IV. GODS THOUGHTS ARE ABOVE YOURS IN ALL THINGS WHICH CONCERN HIS GRACE. See the first verse as to the freeness of His grace. Your thought is that you can get nothing without paying for: Gods thoughts are, Come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. But you think that if God were to save you He would perform it in a second-rate style. Not He! He will have no niggard salvations. If He supplies His people, it shall be most richly and freely. Listen to this. Hearken diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. It is not amp of the water, or a ernst of the bread, or a drop of the milk; but when Christ invites poor sinners to come, He invites them to a high festival. You that are the guiltiest may come to Christ, and be among the happiest and the best of His saints. Nobody would ever imagine that a sinner could ever enter into covenant with God--that God should strike hands with guilty men, and, pledge Himself to grace. Listen to this: Incline your ear, and come unto Me, etc. (Isa_55:3). I remember a man, shut up in prison, under a long sentence, and he was so violent that he was put into a solitary cell. The chaplain had done all he could as to bringing him to repentance; but one day he read to him this verse, I will make an everlasting covenant with you. The man said, I never heard of such a thing. Can God make a covenant with such a wretch as I am? Sir, said he, it will break my heart; and it did break his heart and he became a new man in Christ Jesus under the power of that amazing thought, that God would enter into covenant with such a wretch as he was. In Isa_55:5 Christ is said to call a people so ignorant that they did not know Him. This is to be His glory, that He is to call them by His grace. It is not one of your thoughts, but one of the thoughts of God, that He will glorify Christ in the saving of great sinners. Ah, well! says one, I will go home, and cry to God for mercy. That is your thought. Listen to Gods thought. Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near. Ah! still you think, How can I be pardoned? Listen to this, Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, etc. Read the rest of the chapter, and say to yourself, over each verse, This was not my thought; this, was not my way. End all your doubts with the last verse, instead of the thorn, etc. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Greatness of God
Until we believe in the greatness of God, not only in action, but in thought, we shall misunderstand our Bibles, the world in which we live, and ourselves. We use such words as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, infinite, but how little we grasp their meaning! They are but the poor, etymological husks in which we try to thrust that which no words can express. There are some things that you cannot describe,, you can only feel. Language is too poor, too clumsy a medium to express Gods best, or biggest things, much less to describe Him. It is like the colours with which the artist tries to reproduce the glory of a sunset. It is not a reproduction; at best, it is but a far-off resemblance. You look up on a cloudless day and there is not one speck, not one bit of white cloud against the vast expanse of undimmed azure, and yet feel, but cannot describe the infinity of space. Let that feeling of infiniteness rest upon you, soak into your mind, for it is good for man, the creature of a day, the heir of eternity, to linger amongst great expanses, and to learn that his geography is but a petty science, and his astronomy, with its measurements of millions of miles, does but nibble at the edge of the great universe of God. Thus you will preserve a reverent spirit, keep alive the faculties of wonder and admiration, and it is to be hoped be saved from the positive assertion of little narrow dogmas which have been adopted by certain sections of the Church, and declared with as much assurance, and fought for with as much bitterness as though an angel from heaven had proclaimed them every morning since the creation. (S. Horton.)
Gods thoughts higher than mans
Theology ought to be the science of God and Divine things. Often it is systematized misrepresentations of Divine things. It is not the revelation of Gods greatness, but of mans littleness; it starts with theories, instead of facts. Our text is Gods appeal against human misrepresentation. There is always a danger of putting our own limitations of thoughts and speech upon the Almighty, and of making our thinking and doing the measure of His. Have we not all met with the man who sees nothing in the Church but bricks and timber, in its devotions only so many needful exercises to be got through as speedily as possible, and in the great redemption plain nothing but convenient fire escape from the miseries of hell, and in God only a High Commissioner of Police? It is Vastly important that, as far as it is possible, we should get right ideas of God, for our whole character and conduct will he coloured by our thoughts of Him. And though it must ever be that our thoughts are as much beneath His thoughts as the earth is beneath the heavens, yet if He reveal Himself to us, as He is always willing to do to the humble soul, we shall at least be saved from rhea mental caricatures of Him that have darkened many a life, and been the fruitful soil in which unbelief has found its foothold.
1. The setting of the text takes us at once to the central doctrine of the Christian faith. The verse before it proclaims the pardon of God for the sinner, who, repenting of his sins, returns to the Lord. How can a sinless God forgive a sinful man, and yet maintain the majesty of His own law? And there rises before our eyes at once the form of a cross, and on it One, who, struggling in the death agony, exclaims, It is finished. All the wonder and mystery of the ages gathers round that cross. If you can explain that you can explain all. Was it possible for sin to take upon itself a deeper shade of guilt than the sin of the people of Judah in Isaiahs time? Crimson-hued and scarlet-dyed, what could even God do with such sinners as these? Sweep them away with the strength of His right arm. Yea, and all heaven and all earth would approve the justice of the sentence. But He can do something else. He can forgive them. At first we revolt at the very idea. Forgiveness for them! And then once more we hear the voice which says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways. I will never forgive him is the language of the man who has been wronged. But God says, I will give My best and dearest if I may but win the wrong-doer to love that which is good. I will save him by showing him what love can do. Do you know it is the hardest thing in the world to persuade men to believe that God loves them with a love like that? There is a good deal of truth in the sarcasm of a scoffing French writer that man has made God in his own image.
2. Let us apply our text to the many problems that gather round our life, to those many difficulties behind which as yet we can see no meaning. Life for many is a prolonged agony. It is a burden, a pain, a puzzle to which we have not yet the key. Behind the pain, and the tears, and the smart, God is, and His plan for us is the best possible plan. He is but a poor shallow fool who says, I will accept nothing that I cannot understand. As a matter of fact he is always accepting what he does not understand. Does he understand sleep? Does he understand Why a seed grows? why a child thinks? why men die? And yet there are many men who reject the idea of a personal God because they cannot understand His works and ways. They declare life to be without purpose, and an aimless consciousness between two eternities. To all such our text is a rebuke. Faith is a bird of stronger wing than reason. Two texts are sufficient for me. Upon them I stake all for time and for eternity. God is very great. God is love. Socrates has put our belief once and for all into a convenient formula, What God is I know not; what He is not I know. God is not, cannot be cruel. God is not, cannot be pitiless. God is not, cannot be making useless experiments at our expense. Without that faith, how could we face the hopeless poverty, the misery of our slums? Oh! wearied heart, rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him. When faith falters, when the sun goes out in darkness, when the storm beats loud and fierce, when over a coffin-lid hope drops its head and weeps, wait for God. Give Him time to discover Himself. It is at the midnight hour that Christ walks on the tempest-lashed sea. Hush all your questionings and wait; simply wait. Is that easy? No; it is the hardest thing of all to do; but wait, only wait. What we cannot know--what it would not be wise for us to know now--we shall know hereafter. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Gods thoughts and ways
I. SPECIFY SOME INSTANCES IN WHICH THIS DECLARATION IS STRIKINGLY ILLUSTRATED.
1. In His production of the most stupendous results from insignificant causes. Nature abounds with illustrations. Providence is still more abundant. Consequences the most stupendous, involving the destinies of individuals, of families, of empires, have arisen out of causes which we deem insignificant. But the most abundant proofs are derived from the history of the Gospel. Our Lord has suggested this view of the subject in His own illustrations--The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, and so on. And this is an illustration of the rise and progress of Messiahs Gospel. Who, and what was the Founder of the Gospel--as to His human appearance?
2. In the accomplishment of the most glorious designs by the weakest and most insignificant instruments. Who were the first propagators of the
Gospel? In what school were they educated? With what armour did they go forth to the war?
3. In the sovereign exercises of His grace, in connection with its freedom and fulness.
II. ASSIGN SOME REASONS FOR THIS.
1. His knowledge is more extensive than our information.
2. His judgment is more accurate than our decisions.
3. His purposes and plans are uninfluenced by our prejudices and passions.
4. It is His determination to humble pride, and His fixed resolution that no creature should glory in His presence.
III. LEARN LESSONS OF HUMILITY, GRATITUDE, AND CONFIDENCE. (T. Raffles, D. D.)
Gods thoughts
The word thought is used here objectively. It expresses a result and not a process.
I. ILLUSTRATION. Here we need only contrast the human with the Divine style of thinking. Observe some particulars:--
1. Creation. The visible creation that surrounds us on every side and spreads away into immensity beyond us, is only an embodied thought of the infinite, uncreated Intelligence. Tell me if it be at all like one of mans thoughts. Equip man with omnipotence, and set him to create a universe--and would it resemble the universe as it is? By no means!
(1) Mans universe would be absolutely consolidated. Into one immense continent would all these world-islands be cast, and all tribes and types of life inhabit it as a common dwelling! His agonizing regret this day is that he cannot fling the line of a mighty telegraph from star to star, and thus, even in face of the immutable ordinances of heaven, gather these isolated islands of life into one vast virtual consolidation!
(2) A universe projected by man would be motionless and steadfast. We build our homes, not on the waters, that they may be locomotive, but on the shore, that they may be fixed. But Gods universe is in everlasting motion. Or, descending from the survey of a universe of worlds to consider the economy of a single world, even with greater force shall we feel the same truth. Such a world as this no wise man would have created. He would have filled up the ocean with plough-ground, and sloped the mountains gently for vineyards, and covered with rich verdure the sands of the wilderness. And the waters would have brought forth after their kind only beautiful things, and every creature moving in the forests would have been musical and fair; and the sky would have been without cloud on its rich blue, and the year without winter or storm in its long summer of loveliness.
2. Providence. And whether we regard the entire economy of providence as a stupendous whole, or each successive development in its separation, the same truth will be manifest. Man certainly would have ordered the whole thing differently. Instead of those mysterious periods of slowly ascending, he would have rounded earth into beauty at first as a home for immortals, and breathed Divine life into man made in Gods image. Place at the head of human affairs an omnipotent philanthropist, and how soon would every dark thing be swept from a groaning creation. How the captive would leap from his chain, and the conqueror lay off his mail, and the cries of violence cease, and the rod of the oppressor be broken! How these dark places of cruelty would be irradiated with heavenly light, and Christianity, borne as on angel-wings, circle the round world!
II. APPLICATION.
1. Our first remark is addressed to this very class who reject the Bible because to their finitude it seems either unwise or incomprehensible. The poor erring creature of an hour, who cannot build a hovel that will not leak, nor weave a perfect garment to cover him, he--wonderful man that he is--would lift his thoughts into brotherhood with Gods thoughts, and adjust the complicate sublimities of revelation by the square and the line of his insignificant faculties! Why, the sceptic should begin further back and earlier with his scepticism, as his arguments lie as strongly against creation and providence.
2. Within our own time a new philosophy hath invaded the Church of Christ, with its watchwords spiritual insight, and the moral reason, and intuitional capacity, setting itself to overthrow the indispensable condition of all true piety--the entire, unquestioning, adoring submission alike of life, and conscience, and intellect unto God. And while the Church receives not this philosophy formally--for this were openly to deny the faith--yet, under its insidious and malign influence, there has come to pass a setting up within Zion of our own intellectual and moral judgments as critic and arbiter of the great doctrines of revelation. Doctrines that are profound or mysterious, if not openly rejected, are at least modified to square with our philosophy. And the positive declarations of God are lowered to the comprehension of our natural reason. We are as yet learners in Gods school-room, not advisers in His council-chamber! We shall understand things better by and by, when eternity flings its full light on the page of our scholarship! But until then humility is the apt temper of a learner. And faith, not comprehension, the great law of the scholarship! Till then ours must be the submission of an infantile mind to an infinite Intelligence--the trust of a short-sighted child in an all-seeing Father.
3. But the thought under consideration applies as well to the phenomena of Christianity as to its facts. Take, for example, its gradual increase and development. The characteristic of the age is impatience of anything but a demonstrative and headlong progress. Tell me where, either in creation or providence, God thus hurries to conclusions? So far from discouragements in this slow progress of Christianity, we have therein only fuller proof of its Divine orion, nobler prophecy of its ultimate consummation.
4. There is a still more consoling application of this truth to things unseen and eternal--immortality. The grand characteristic and charm of the eternal world is its utter unlikeness to the temporal and earthly. (C. Wadsworth.)
Gods ways and mans ways
There is nothing, perhaps, in which Gods thoughts and ways are more seen to be higher than mans than in the matter of salvation; and it is in renouncing his own ways, and yielding to Gods, that the main difficulty of salvation on mans part lies. Because there is nothing more simple than the plan of salvation--substitution.
I. Gods thoughts are not as our thoughts IN THE MATTER OF PARDON. This is proclaimed freely, without any condition on mans part in the way of satisfaction to Gods holy and broken law. Salvation is represented in Scripture as something which God Himself has achieved. God has delivered man from going down into the pit; He has found a ransom; and therefore, in every point of view, this salvation is perfect and complete. It is, further, proclaimed to sinners as a gift which they cannot earn or deserve, but which they are entreated to accent as a gift on account of what Christ has done (Rom_15:23). Men are called on to believe it instantly, to receive it and enjoy it at once, as the gift of Gods love in Christ Jesus. Now, to this the world objects, because such a plan of salvation knocks down mans pride, and leaves him in the position of a rebellious sinner dependent wholly on Gods grace and mercy. To escape, therefore, from such an ignominious admission, some go on to argue that by this view Gods law is dishonoured, sin is treated as if of no consequence, and the pardoned sinner is left without any obligation to obey God. But is this true?
II. Gods thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways, IN. THE. WAY IN WHICH PEACE AND JOY FOLLOW ON BELIEVING THE GOSPEL. This is proclaimed in Scripture as instant (Rom_5:1). But the world objects to this, and calls it presumption; and if they hear of a notorious sinner being converted, and entering into peace, they immediately set him down as a hypocrite. The question is not whether they are hypocrites, but whether a man who believes the Gospel, and is full of joy and peace in consequence, is a hypocrite. Whatever the world says on the subject, Scripture does not so represent him. We must take care and not conclude that where there is no peace there is no faith. This would be as wrong as to conclude that where there is not perfect health there is no life.
III. There is still another point in which Gods thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways, namely, HIS LONGSUFFERING. In preaching, I have no limit to make in the Gospel. If you say, This surely is abusing the goodness of God, I reply, Gods thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways. (J. W. Reeve, M. A.)
Gods thoughts
The very act of thinking implies imperfection. But it is a way of picturing the Divine nature by a comparison with man. Man thinks, reasons, and so arrives at certain results. These he calls thoughts or conclusions. It is not so with God. He has no need to arrive at conclusions by any mental process. He knows everything. It is difficult to find any English word wherewith to express the idea intended. The word feelings might partly do so--method of action as the result of feelings--dealings. It is really the whole of the Divine nature. My nature is not as your nature, nor My ways of action as your ways of action. The grand idea is a consciousness of the vast difference which exists between ourselves and God, and to certain practical inferences to be devolved therefrom. These are--
I. THAT WE ARE NOT TO JUDGE OF GOD BY OUR OWN FEELINGS. How can we for one moment put ourselves in the place of the great and mighty King of kings
1. Consider our ignorance compared with His perfect knowledge--our weakness corn pared with His almighty power--our short life compared with His eternity of existence, All these things point out the folly of setting ourselves to judge of the Divine acts or the Divine method of providence, by the methods which we would pursue. And yet people say, or think if they do not say, in so many words, that they could carry on the world far more wisely than God.
2. Consider our sin in comparison with Gods holiness. Sin prevents all feeling, all right, all truth. It has changed all mens views with respect to propriety or justice. And yet there are men who would dispute the justice of the Almightys dealings with men.
II. THAT WE ARE NOT TO JUDGE OF OUR OWN POSITION BY OUR OWN THOUGHTS. The ways of every man are right in his own eyes. We think we are acting for the best when we are acting for the worst. We think we arc serving God when we are bribing the devil. We think we are setting an example of all virtue to our neighbours, when all the while we are nought but hypocrites. We are not to judge of our position of holiness by our own thoughts. What a criteria of judgment are human thoughts! They go astray from the beginning, they are altogether depraved. How can we estimate our own advancement by them? Woe be to those who do, for they will only court destruction. Our thoughts are not Gods thoughts. Some are nearer the kingdom of heaven than they suppose, while others are further off.
III. THAT WE ARE NOT TO JUDGE OF ANY OF THE MYSTERIES OF THE FUTURE BY OUR OWN THOUGHTS. The world has a way of either perverting revelation, or inventing new theories from its own imagination. (Homilist.)
Disparity of thoughts, Divine and human
I. GOD AND MAN DIFFER IN THEIR THOUGHTS REGARDING LIFE--the meaning of our present existence, as we live in this world day by day. Mans general conception is that he has been sent into this world endowed with certain powers of body and mind that he may get on, and rise commercially, socially, and in those things which are hemmed in by things seen and temporal. As men are thus employed God looks down upon them with the tender eye of a mother and the pitying heart of a father, and says to His erring children, Why do ye spend your time and destroy your immortal powers in such a vain pursuit? You have mistaken the meaning of your present life, and the reason I sent you into the world. My thoughts concerning it are not your thoughts, and My ways are not your ways. Your life was given that you might grow in wisdom, experience, and Divine likeness in character, and the earth is a school in which you are to be trained, educated for highest worship and noblest service.
II. GOD AND MAN DIFFER IN THEIR THOUGHTS REGARDING DIFFICULTIES AND SORROWS. The human and natural way of looking at these things is to view them as unmitigated evils, and that either God knows and cares nothing about those who endure them, or that they are manifestations of His ill-will and judicial anger. These are not the thoughts of God. As seen in the light of heaven they are either the result of the violation of the law of love, of selfishness and sin, or are educative agencies to make the soul strong, tender, and true.
III. GOD AND MAN DIFFER IN THEIR THOUGHTS REGARDING THE TREATMENT OF ENEMIES. Hatred has been met by hatred; scorn has been answered by scorn; and for evil rendered evil has been repaid in full measure, pressed down and running over. Far otherwise has it been with God. Regarding treatment of enemies, God says, My thoughts, are not your thoughts, and My ways are not your ways. Ye would render evil for evil, hate for hate, blow for blow. I love Mine enemies, I seek to bless the greatest sinner, I cause My sun to shine on the unjust, and unthankful, and am ready to take all prodigals into My forgiving embrace. This has been Gods action from the first man till now.
IV. GOD AND MAN DIFFER IN THEIR THOUGHTS REGARDING DEATH. Mens thoughts on the matter are full of sadness, and they beget a melancholy most difficult to bear. But God understands life and He understands death, and if we are filled with His thoughts and walk in His ways, the supposed enemy that seems to be a fiend and the destroyer of our existence shall appear in the glorious position of being the condition of a higher, purer, fuller life, that shall never cease to be, and like the echoes of the soul shall grow for ever and for ever. (W. Adamson, D. D.)
The mystery and the glory of redemption
The whole Bible is but an expansion of one utterance of the Eternal, I am Jehovah. Hence the revelation must be incomplete, for a God who could fully reveal Himself to His creatures would be no God; and it must also be astonishing and amazing, for a professed record of any part of Gods thoughts and ways that did not land in mystery and tend to wonder, would be self-condemned, and proved to be neither true nor Divine.
I. Gods ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts, in regard to THE NEED OF REDEMPTION. The lessons of Scripture, while leaving the entrance of evil in its awful mystery, assist our faith by showing that our misgivings in regard to God, which thence arise, are groundless, and also that, however strange, yet as a matter of fact, evil can be overruled for good.
II. Gods ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts, in regard to THE PURPOSE OF REDEMPTION. Man, as we learn from Scripture--the only source whence we can expect to know it--is not the only being who has fallen; but man is the only being who is redeemed. There arc those who profess not to believe in Scripture, but who arraign this supposed procedure as unfair and unequal; and there are those also who accept Scripture, and yet reject its apparently clear testimony as to the exclusion of fallen angels from mercy. Both classes of objectors go upon the same principle that God cannot justly punish with a final sentence of rejection those who have sinned against Him, no matter how aggravated their offences may be; but that in some way having given them being, He is bound to make that being ultimately good and happy. But this runs counter to the whole Bible doctrine of grace; for on this footing, redemption is a clear debt; and whether it be fallen angel or fallen man God is not entitled to withhold it. Men may stand in their views either upon justice or upon grace; but they are not entitled to stand upon both.
III. Gods ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts,, in regard to THE PLAN OF REDEMPTION. How utterly unlike to any means of mans devising are those which God has chosen for the recovery of His lost creatures to His favour and image! All the opposition to evangelical religion with which we are surrounded, and which incessantly repeats, Give us a Christianity that is rational! Give us a Christianity that we can believe! Give us a Christianity that meets, as everything else is doing, the advancement of the age!--what does it amount to but this, Give us a Christianity without God! Give us a Christianity without that element of grandeur, of mystery, of overwhelming superiority to mans thoughts and ways, which compels awe and humbles pride t We accept the demand, come from what quarter it may, as an, involuntary homage to the superhuman glory of the faith we stand by.
IV. Gods ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts, in regard to THE PROGRESS OF REDEMPTION. Redemption has a history; and this of all others the most difficult to scan, not only as it lies in the Bible, but in uninspired records. It has been said, Interpret the Bible as any other book; but though there is a certain truth in this, if we take it roundly it ultimately means, Interpret God as you interpret man. You cannot even interpret Church history as you interpret any other history. It is in a sense which belongs to no other history, the story of a battle not yet fought out, of a campaign not yet ended; and there are combatants at work beyond the range of human observation, and a supreme celestial leader, whose point of survey none can share. I shall illustrate this union of mystery and greatness in regard to three features in the progress of redemption.
1. The rate of its progress.
2. The instruments of its progress.
3. The hindrances to its progress.
Man would have thought that hindrances would have speedily been removed, or that if they were suffered to remain or to return, they would have proved un-mingled evils to the Church. But God, on the other hand, we can now so far see, by giving the victory slowly, trains the faith and courage of successive generations, and by permitting old enemies to return, or new ones to spring up, shows the un-exhausted and inexhaustible energy of His Gospel, to face and put down every hostile power.
V. It is only necessary to add a few words in regard to THE LIMITS OF REDEMPTION. Here also Gods ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts. And hence the real and painful difficulty, which has always been felt in regard to the Gospel, and perhaps never more openly expressed than in our own day. Why should not all men, as God wishes, be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth? Why should redemption, in the case of the human family, have any limits at all? Can we aspire to take in all Gods view of what a tremendous evil, like sin, and especially the rejection of the Son of God, may demand? (J. Cairns, D. D.)
Sovereign thoughts
I. THE THOUGHTS OF GOD ARE ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE; THE THOUGHTS OF MEN ARE TEMPORAL AND CHANGEABLE. Reflections on things older and less, changeable than ourselves arc the best guides to the unknown height-s of the Fathers wisdom. They lead us some distance, but only to show us the way. These mountains were long seated on their rocky seats ore the plan of the pyramids of Egypt was conceived in the heart of man. These rivers had flown majestically in their channels for thousands of years before man made his aqueducts to entice them from their course. The revolving sun poured its ceaseless floods of light on the universe myriads of ages before the scientist made the first telescope. Astronomy tells us that the worlds which occupy distant locations in space have swept silently through their trackless regions for periods of indefinite duration. Geology unfolds the rocky leaves of the earths crust, and deciphers hieroglyphics which roll us backward beyond animal and vegetable life to primeval rocks whose age no historian can compute. Thus we are furnished with materials to write a grand history of by-gone generations, stretching into the past beyond our comprehension. This history is the A B C of the eternal. The fact that the thoughts of God are eternal, fixes His immutable counsel and purpose. The redemption of fallen man is a thought without beginning, and is not subject to any variation. This is the rock on which we build our Christian faith. Through the varying scenes of life there runs the one purpose of God in Christ Jesus to save our souls and reconstruct human society.
II. THE THOUGHTS OF GOD ARE PRIMARY CAUSES, WHILE OURS ARE MERE IMPRESSIONS.
1. The heavens and the earth are manifestations, not only of power and wisdom, but of mind.
2. No less evident is it that the revelation of Himself as the Saviour of man through human consciousness is the product of His thoughts.
(1) Gods thoughts in the Gospel are greater than mans thoughts. So great are some of them that they are above human comprehension (Rom_11:33).
(2) Gods thoughts are better than mans thoughts. The whole of the chapter is a declaration of sovereign mercy. The offender is called to repentance, and offered a free pardon. Human wisdom would ask, How can this be? How shall moral government stand without punitive justice. Can God be just if He justify the repentant sinner? There is but one answer: As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. Mercy is inexplicable except in its operations.
III. GODS METHODS ARE INSCRUTABLE, LIKE UNTO HIS THOUGHTS; BUT MENS WAYS ARE CROOKED AND PERVERSE. The Scriptural meaning of the word way is the character with which actions are stamped. Actions reveal the thoughts and motives of the actor. They are a reflex of himself. The ways of God are His thoughts in operation. Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known. These words echo those of an older book, or, at least, they are the echo of the wisdom of the ancients--By His Spirit He hath garnished the heavens; His hand hath formed the crooked serpent. Lo, these are parts of His ways: but how little a portion is heard of Him? but the thunder of His power who can understand? Great and marvellous arc Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints. Fix your minds on the way of His goodness and mercy unto us. Think of the wonderful display of wisdom in the redemption of mankind. Jesus has appeared to remove our offences by the sacrifice of Himself. This great manifestation of eternal thought is the banquet at which the intelligences of heaven will sit, world without end.
IV. THE THOUGHTS AND WAYS OF GOD ARE BEFORE US FOR CORRECTION AND IMITATION.
V. THE THOUGHTS OF GOD ARE WITH US AS OUR INHERITANCE. He who has passed through the process of examining the casket to the possession of its contents, can say, How precious also are Thy thoughts, O God I how great is the sum of them. (T. Davies, M. A.)
The incomprehensibility of the mercy of God
Lo, these are parts of His ways, but how little a portion is heard of Him! This is one of the most sententious sayings of Job, and it expresseth, in a very emphatic manner, the works of God what this holy man said of the wonders of nature, we, with much more reason, say of the wonders of grace. Collect all that pagan philosophers have taught of the goodness of the Supreme Being. To the opinions of philosophers join the declarations of the prophets. Add the discoveries of the evangelists and apostles. To the whole join your own experience; your ideas to their ideas, your meditations to their meditations, and then believe that ye are only floating on the surface of the goodness of God, that His love hath dimensions, a breadth, and length, and depth, and height, which the human mind can never attain: and, upon the brink of this ocean, say, Lo, these are only parts of His ways, and how little a portion is heard of Him l Three things are necessary to explain the text.
I. THE MEANING MUST BE RESTRAINED. It is certain, that, in many respects, Gods ways are our ways, and His thoughts our thoughts. I mean, that there are many cases in which we may assure ourselves that God thinks so and so, and will observe such or such a conduct. To contrast the supreme grandeur of the Creator with the insignificance of the creature; to persuade mankind that the great Supreme is too lofty to concern Himself with us, that our conduct is entirely indifferent to Him; that it signifies nothing to Him whether we be just or unjust, humane or cruel, happy or miserable: to say in these senses, that Gods ways are not our ways, that His thoughts are not our thoughts, these are the arms that infidelity hath sometimes employed with success, and against the attacks of which we would guard you. For these reasons, the meaning of the text must be restrained, or it will totally subvert religion and morality. The exercise of my reasoning powers produceth in me some incontestable notions of God, and, from these notions immediately follow some sure consequences, which become the immovable basis of my faith in His Word, of my submission to His will, and of my confidence in His promises. These notions, and these consequences compose the body of natural religion. Let it be granted that God is, in many respects, quite incomprehensible, that we can obtain only a small degree of knowledge of this infinite Object, yet it will not follow that the notions which reason gives us of Him are less just, or, that the consequences, which immediately follow these notions, are less sure. If reason affords us some adequate notions of God, if some necessary consequences follow these notions, for a much stronger reason we may derive some adequate notions of God, and some sure consequences, from revelation.
II. THE OBJECT MUST BE DETERMINED. The prophets expressions would have been true, had they been applied to all the attributes of God; however, they are applied here only to one of them, that is, to His goodness. Wherein do the thoughts of God differ from ours Z In God there are treasures of mercy, the depth of which no finite mind ten fathom. In Him goodness is as inconceivable as all His other attributes. In God, a sinner, who seems to have carried his sin to its utmost extravagance, and to have exhausted all the treasures of Divine grace, shall still find, if he return unto the Lord, and cast himself at the foot of Him who abundantly pardoneth, a goodness, a compassion, a love that he could not have imagined to find.
III. THE PROOFS MUST BE PRODUCED.
(1) The means by which God conciliated His justice with HIS love.
(2) His patience with those who abuse this means.
(3) His intimate union with those who fall in with the design of His patience.
Let us address the text to the gloomy mind of a melancholy person, who, having failed in the courage necessary to resist temptations, fails again in that which is necessary to bear the thought of having fallen into them. What madness possesseth thy melancholy mind? The Holy Spirit assures thee that though thy sins be as scarlet He will make them white as snow; that though they be red like crimson He will make them as wool; and dost thou think that thy sins are too aggravated to be pardoned in this manner? The Holy Spirit gives thee a long list of the most execrable names in nature; a list of idolaters, murderers, extortioners, adulterers, persecutors, highway robbers, and blasphemers, who obtained mercy when they sought it: and art thou obstinately bent on excluding thyself from the number of those sinners to whom mercy is promised; and because thou dost not believe it attainable, dost thou obstinately refuse to ask for it? The Holy Spirit hath lifted up a Cross, and on that Cross a Redeemer, who is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him; and who Himself saith to all sinners, Come unto Me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And dost thou flee from this Cross, and rather choose to sink under the weight of thy sins than to disburden them on a Redeemer who is willing to bear them? But, passing all these, let us return to the text. My thoughts are not your thoughts, etc. This is sufficient to refute the whole system of a despairing mind. (J. Saurin.)
Gods ways and mans
These words are grand poetry and noble theology, but they are meant practically and in fiery earnestness. The for at the beginning of each clause points us back to the previous statement, and both of the verses of our text are in different ways its foundation. So we have here two things to consider in reference to the relation between the Divine purposes and acts and mans purposes and acts.
I. THE ANTAGONISM, AND THE INDICTMENT AND EXHORTATION THAT ARE BASED UPON THAT.
1. Notice the remarkable order and alternation of pronouns in the first verse. My thoughts are not your thoughts, saith the Lord. The things that God thinks and purposes are not the things that man thinks and purposes, and therefore, because the thoughts are different, the outcomes of them in deeds are divergent. Gods ways are His acts, the manner and course of His working considered as a path on which He moves, and on which, in some sense, we can also journey. Our ways--our manner of life--are not parallel with His, as they should be. But that opposition is expressed with a remarkable variation. Observe the change of pronouns in the two clauses. First, My thoughts are not your thoughts--you have not taken My truth into your minds, nor My purposes into your wills; you do not think Gods thoughts. Therefore--your ways (instead of my, as we should have expected, to keep the regularity of the parallelism) are not My ways--I repudiate and abjure your conduct and condemn it utterly. Now, of course, in this charge of mans unlikeness to God there is no contradiction of, nor reference to, mans natural constitution, in which there are, at one and the same time, the likeness of the child with the parent and the unlikeness between the creature and the Creator. If our thoughts were not like Gods thoughts we should know nothing about Him. If our thoughts were not like Gods thoughts we should have no standard for life or thinking. Righteousness and beauty and truth and goodness are the same things in heaven and earth, and alike in God and man. We are made after His image, poor creatures though we be. But that very necessary and natural likeness between God and man makes more solemnly sinful the voluntary unlikeness which we have brought upon ourselves. Mark how wonderfully, in the simple language of my text, deep truths about this sin of ours is conveyed. Notice its growth and order. You begin with a heart and mind that does not take in Gods thoughts, truths, purposes, desires, and the alienated will and the darkened understanding and the conscience which has closed itself against His imperative voice all issue afterwards in conduct which He cannot accept as in any way corresponding with His. First, the thought unreceptive of Gods thought, and then the ways contrary to Gods ways.
2. Notice the profound truth here in regard to the essential and deepest evil of all our evil. Your thoughts; your ways. Self-dependence and self-confidence are the master-devils of humanity. And the root of all sin lies in these two strong, simple words, Your thoughts not Mine; your ways not Mine.
3. Notice, too, how there are suggested the misery and retribution of this unlikeness. If you will not make My thoughts your thoughts, I shall not take your ways as My ways; I will leave you to them. You will be filled with the fruit of your own devices. The question rises in many a heart, How am I to forsake these paths on which my feet have so long walked? And if I do, what about all the years behind me, full of wild wonderings and thoughts, in all of which God was not? The second verse of our text meets that despairing question.
II. THE ANALOGY BUT SUPERIORITY, AND THE EXHORTATION AND HOPE THAT ARE BUILT UPON THAT. This clause begins with Gods ways, from which alone men can reach the knowledge of His thoughts. The first follows the order of Gods knowledge of man; the second, that of mans knowledge of God.
1. Gods way of dealing with sin is lifted up above all human example. There is such a thing as pardoning mercy amongst men. It is a faint analogy of, as it is an offshoot from the Divine pardon, but all the forgivingness of the most placable and long-suffering and gladly pardoning of men is but as earth to heaven compared with the greatness of His.
2. Again, Gods way of dealing with sin surpasses all our thought. All religion has been pressed with this problem, how to harmonize the perfect rectitude of the Divine nature and the solemn claims of law with forgiveness. We have Jesus Christ. The mystery of forgiveness is solved, in so far as it is capable of solution, in Him and in Him alone.
3. We are taught here that Gods way of dealing with sin is the very highest point of His self-revelation. If we want to see up into the highest heavens of Gods character, we must go down into the depths of the consciousness of our own sin, and learn first how unlike our ways and thoughts are to God, ere we can understand how high above us, and yet beneficently arching over us, are His ways and thoughts to us. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Gods thoughts and ways far above ours
I. THERE IS REBUKE ADMINISTERED. The Lord says, Forsake your way, for it is not My way; leave your thoughts, for they are not My thoughts. The rebuke is enveloped in love, and made into a sugar-coated pill; the sweet promise of abundant pardon conceals the reproof. Let us take the rebuke, and notice--
1. The fault of mans thoughts. My thoughts are not your thoughts.
(1) As between each other, Gods thoughts are not mans, though they ought to be. Gods thoughts are love, pity, tenderness; ours are forgetfulness, ingratitude, and hard-heartedness.
(2) Your thoughts as to your conduct are not Gods thoughts. He considers that the creatures He has made should obey Him, but you judge that it matters not what a man does towards his Maker so long as he is just towards his fellow-men.
(3) Gods thoughts, again, as to the life which a man needs in order to salvation are very different from mans thoughts. In this chapter He says, Hear, and your soul shall live. He reckons, then, that man is dead till he has heard the word of God in his soul. Man reckons that he is alive enough.
(4) Gods thoughts are not our thoughts, again, in reference to the truth. Man thinks himself so wise and good that he does not like Gods thoughts concerning himself, his fall, his,guilt, and his danger.
(5) In the matter of salvation Gods thoughts are not mans thoughts, for God thinketh that man has so sinned that he must be condemned except a substitute be found. Man thinks not so. God sets before him pardon freely presented through the precious blood: man thinks to buy it by his devotions, or to win it by his merits.
2. The text advances to say that mans ways are not like Gods. Our ways are the outward actions which spring out of our thoughts. Gods ways are ways of holiness and purity. God hath never done anything unjust to His creatures or unrighteous to Himself. But our ways are not so; they are full of error, marred with evil, polluted with impurity. By nature we love that which we ought to hate. Two cannot walk together in heaven except they be of one mind; so that our ways and Gods ways must be made to be alike in character. Now, it is not possible for us to conceive of Gods making His thoughts to be like our thoughts. What then? We must rise to Him.
3. I ask you to consider the difficulty of this. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways. How are we to be lifted up from earth to heaven? The word that answers the question is that matchless syllable, grace. God in Christ Jesus, by His almighty grace, must raise us up together with Christ.
II. WE HAVE REPENTANCE ENCOURAGED. Let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts. It is clear that there is a connecting link between the abundance of pardon and the lofty character of God, and that men are encouraged to forsake their ways and thoughts by the hope of pardon derived from the greatness of the Divine thoughts and ways.
1. Do not stand back because you cannot understand God. It is not needful that you should comprehend His ways and thoughts.
2. Neither start back because you cannot find a parallel to the grace which God declares that He will display towards you.
3. According to our text, whatever your ways towards God shall be in the future, He will exceed them. And as to your thoughts--can you think of how He will receive you?
III. EXPECTATION EXCITED. This time the link is forward instead of backward. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither.! You are to expect that the Lords word will be unfailing to you.
2. Next that you are returning to a God whose ways are so much above your ways, and His thoughts so much above your thoughts, that your heart shall be filled with joy--ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace. God will not merely break off your chains and say in cold accents, You are free; but He will release you amid the music of the spheres.
3. Next to this, all your surroundings shall minister to your gladness. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing etc. The mountain which you feared shall break forth into song, and the forest at which you trembled shall become an orchestra in which every tree shall clap its hands for joy.
4. And then, there shall happen to you wonderful transformations. Evil habits shall be withered and holy principles nourished.
5. This mercy is to endure for ever. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Mans thoughts and Gods thoughts
I. Compare your thoughts of THE POSSIBILITY OF PARDON with Gods thoughts about it. You naturally form your ideas of Gods ways from what you conceive would be yours if you were in His position.
1. I take you on that ground, and we will suppose that some wicked person has very grossly injured you and that the question of your forgiving him is now mooted. We will suppose you to be of a generous, frank, forgiving disposition, and in a calm and judicious state of mind. You are ready to act most leniently, but still the case in hand is no trifle and requires consideration. After well pondering the matter, you feel bound to say, I could forgive this person, but his offence is of a peculiarly grievous kind. With the most sincere, desire to pass over it, I feel that I must not, but must let the law take its course. There have been many occasions when persons aggrieved have thus spoken, and when no reasonable person could have blamed them. Such, O awakened sinner, is your case as before the Lord, and if He should think of you as one man would think of another, you must own Him to be just. You have offended God in the very tenderest point; you have denied His right to you, though you are His creature. Though you have been a pensioner upon His bounty, you have constantly insisted upon it that you were your own master, and had a right to do just as you pleased. You have thus invaded crown rights of the King of kings, and committed treason against His sovereignty: worst of all, you have committed sin against His only begotten and most dear son, the Lord Jesus. If it were your case, you could not forgive; but be astonished as you hear that your thoughts are not Gods thoughts, and His ways of forgiveness are as high above your ways as the heavens are above the earth.
2. It is supposable that when you are weighing the case of an offender you decide upon it thus: I could forgive him, bad as the sin is, if I thought he had fallen into it from inadvertence or carelessness, or if I supposed that he was moved by some great hope of gain for himself, but the offence was intentional, malicious, and wanton, and therefore I cannot remit it. Naturally you transfer these thoughts of yours to the Lord of heaven, and you say, He will never pardon me, for I have trespassed wilfully. I have sinned without excuse. Such language as this befits a penitents tongue; men cannot forgive their fellows when they perceive wanton malice in their crimes, but God can forgive you.
3. You will in some cases also be obliged to say, I could very readily have overlooked this fault, but it has been repeated. Such to the full, is your case, O troubled sinner, with regard to God. Though you hardly dare to think of forgiveness, God can not only think of it, but bestow it.
4. I can conceive a person greatly injured saying, I would overlook all these injuries which have been hurled against me, but I cannot see any reason why I should have been the particular object of this mans spite; it has been quite undeserved on my part, and unprovoked. That would be a very excellent reason in a court of justice for insisting on the punishment of an offender. Listen to the voice of the good God whom you have injured Isa_1:2-3). What is the sequel to this very just but sad complaint?Isa_1:18).
5. Yes, says an offended person, I might overlook the fault if I thought the man were wholly humbled now; but you seethe asks me to pardon, but he has not a sufficient sense of his guilt. Troubled sinner, this is very much your case. You are somewhat broken down, but you must confess that your heart is hard still, compared with what it ought to be. But, God says, I will take away the heart of stone, and I will give them a heart of flesh.
6. Still, exclaims the aggrieved party, I think the man ought to make me some compensation. This principle is very properly recognized in courts of justice. Now, poor sinner, you feel that you cannot bring any compensation. But our loving God does not ask you for any compensation; He says, Only return unto Me. Sin is freely forgiven for Jesus sake.
7. Naturally, many a just-minded person would say, If I were most gracious, yet I could not find it in my heart freely to forgive when I see the consequences always-before my eyes. Suppose that somebody had wantonly injured your child; suppose he had broken one of your childs limbs, for instance; I think I hear you say, I could forgive him, but look at my poor limping child. But sinner! God sees before Him daily tokens of what you have done! You can never unwrith the past, nor restore the lost one. All that accursed past of sin must live on. If you light the fire, it will burn on to the lowest hell. God may forgive your incendiarism, but the fire itself still continues. With all the consequences of your sin before Him, He forgives you freely if you rest on Jesus.
8. Furthermore, I can conceive a case in which the offended party can fairly say, I do feel from my heart fully prepared to forget this offence against me, but it was public, and therefore highly, obnoxious, and injurious. Trembling sinner, you also may well think, Surely God wall never forgive me, for against Him only have I sinned, and done this evil in His sight. I sinned in the face of the sun. I sinned unblushingly, and gloried in my shame. Rejoice, poor mourner, that this is no reason why the Lord should not forgive you, for as high as the heavens arc above the earth so high are His thoughts above your thoughts.
9. I can imagine it possible that an offended one might add, by way of clenching all his arguments against pardon, My forgiveness he has already despised. I have put myself to great expense in order to subdue his hatred, and yet he has stood out against me. How can reason and justice expect me to do any more? I might, perhaps, answer, No; neither of them can well expect more of you; but what we cannot expect of you, the guilty sinner may yet expect of God.
II. Contrast your thoughts about THE PLAN OF PARDON with Gods thoughts. If you have advanced far enough to believe that God can pardon, and have to this extent laid hold upon Gods thoughts, it is well; but still another of your own thoughts drags you down, for you have a wrong idea of the way of pardon.
1. I will suppose that there are persons who ignorantly say, If it be true that the Lord will pardon sin, let Him do it outright; let Him just take the pen and mark through all my transgressions, and have done with them. He has but to say, I forgive thee, and there is an end of it. But Gods thoughts are not your thoughts in this case. You have evidently become so impure in heart as to look upon sin as a trifle; but the Judge of all the earth is of another mind. The great Rules cannot suffer sin to go unpunished.
2. Others have a notion that God may, perhaps, forgive them by putting them through a course of affliction. It is still a superstitious notion lingering in England, that poor persons are the special objects of Divine favour, and that hard work and poverty, and especially a long lingering sickness, are a means of putting away sin; for persons so afflicted have had so much misery in this life that they do not deserve to suffer more. But your thoughts on this matter are not Gods thoughts. You may be as poor as Lazarus, but never lie in Abrahams bosom; yon may endure as many sufferings here as fell to the lot of Job, and yet may go from Jobs dunghill to hell. Cast out any idea that these sufferings or privations of yours can make atonement for sin
3. A more current idea still is, that God will pur away the past and give men a new start, and that if they go on well for the future, then in their dying hour God will speak pardon. But there is nothing of that kind in the Word of God.
4. There is a very current supposition, however, that God pardons sin in this way: that He says, Well, now, I forgive you the past. My law was a little too severe for you, but I will try, you again under a more lenient rule. Do as well as you can, and I will save you. But God does nothing of the kind! The forgiveness which is given to a sinner reaches to the sins which are yet to be committed as well as to the sins which he has already done. Christ stood for you, and therefore God is severely just while He is bountifully merciful to you. In the next place, when God forgives you He does it unconditionally.
III. THE PRESENT POSSESSION OF THIS PARDON.
1. There is an idea in the mind of many that the plan of just trusting in Christ, and being pardoned on the spot, is too simple to be safe. It is a well-known fact that the simplest remedies are the most potent and safe; and, certainly, the simplest rules in mechanics are just those upon which the greatest engineers construct their most wonderful erections. Do not despise the Gospel because it is simple.
2. I think I hear you say, It is too good to be true. But it is just like our God.
3. I think I hear your heart say, It seems to me to be a plan too swift to be sure. This is no human nostrum, this is a Divine prescription.
4. Believe and live! Have done with thyself, and begin with Christ. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord
The great contrast
Nature, Providence and Grace abound in eloquent illustrations of the text.
I. OBSERVE NATURE.
1. Gods works are characteristic. They manifest His character. Mans do not. We cannot tell infallibly what a fellow-creature is by remarking what he does. A garment is made for you. Are you able, as you look at it, to discover what the maker is? A carpenter constructs a box, table or chair; but nothing in its manufacture informs the spectator of the workmans holiness or sinfulness. It is even so with books. The productions of the pen sometimes oppose the deeds of the life. But Gods works show us Himself. The purity and power, the mercy and majesty of Jehovah, are all displayed in creation.
2. Gods works will bear the most minute examination. In yonder gallery of art is a painting. Stand from it at a certain distance and you are struck with its beauty. Look at it closely and it becomes a mere confusion of colours. But ascend a hill. Gaze at the landscape. Here it is a Divine picture. The fields are emerald with grass, golden and white with prolific wild-flowers. Beheld afar off, the scene is glorious. Come down the hill, however. Go into the meadow. Pluck one of the flowers, and gaze at it minutely; gather a blade of grass, and subject it to a most scrutinizing examination. It will bear it. It is as beautiful as ever. A piece of lace which looks delicate and fine to the naked eye becomes coarse and clumsy under a microscope. Not so the wing of a fly or a moth. Magnify the finest needle ever made, and it immediately looks rude and rough; but magnify the sting of a, bee a million of times, and its surface is still smooth and unvarying.
3. Gods works are inexhaustible in attractiveness. We never tire of nature. Human achievements are limited in the interest which they yield.
II. STUDY PROVIDENCE. How opposed to mens expectations have been many of Gods dealings. Placed in His position they would ]lave done the very opposite of what He was pleased to accomplish. E.g. Israel when brought out of Egypt; Joshua and Jericho; Gideon and the Midianites; Naaman and his leprosy. Man proposes, God disposes. We form our plans; He frequently leaves them where they are, and never allows them to crystallize into action. Brains are racked and hearts made anxious touching divers schemes and sundry intentions, when, lo! He who has the disposing of the lot quietly ignores them, and leads us into an altogether different path from that which we expected. I once visited the house of a friend. While waiting for admission my attention was arrested by a trivial but suggestive object. Beside the door an evergreen had been planted It was drooping and dying. Close to it, however, was a wild flower. Dropped by a passing bird, or cast there on the wings of the wind, some seed had taken root. It flourished and grew strong. Nor is it otherwise with human events. Schemes which we set, water, and watch, disappoint us and fail, while God gives to something very different vigour and life.
III. CONSIDER GRACE. In His spiritual dealings with us, Neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord.
1. God loves all. We do not. Large-hearted philanthropists, whose affection takes in the whole race, are exceptional.
2. God makes allowance for our difficulties. Physical infirmities commonly awaken pity. We take them into account when we judge. Would that we carried out the same rule a little further! Not seldom when we Judge of our fellows morally and spiritually, we lose sight of the difficulties which they have to encounter. If we remembered their peculiar trials and temptations, we should speak a little less harshly of them. God makes full and large allowance for our difficulties. He sees and appreciates the obstacles with which we grapple. He remembereth that we are dust.
3. God helps us through our difficulties. Adversity is a severe ordeal. Tried thereby, many friendships are found wanting. Fair weather and smooth sailing on lifes sea will win fellow-voyagers, but clouds and breakers few will share with us. How different is it with God; I will never leave thee nor forsake thee--not even in trial. Nay, He is nearer to us then than ever. He not only makes allowance for our difficulties, but helps us through them. Two children were once overheard talking about the Good Shepherd. What does He do? said one. He feeds the sheep, and drives away the wild beasts, was the reply. But, rejoined the first, He does more for the sheep; He carries them up hill.
4. God is very forgiving. Man is not: he is slow to pardon (verse 7). (T. R.Stevenson.)
Gods long-suffering surpasses mans
An evangelist was conducting special services in a Yorkshire village and urged his Gospel-hardened audience to immediate decision. As he pictured the longsuffering of God his face beamed with holy excitement. Then, falling on his knees, he cried, Lord, Lord, how stubborn they are! If I had been Thee, Id a had em all in hell long since.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Isa_55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, &c.
GOD’S WAY OF PARDONING ABOVE MEN’S
Isa_55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, &c.
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Suppose your sovereign taking a personal interest in you. But you have become a rebel. She has every justification in casting you off. Instead of this she makes an arrangement at great cost by which she is able to offer a free pardon. And this purely because of the benevolent interest she takes in you.
Think of the Divine greatness (2Ch_6:18) and holiness. Contrast these with our littleness and sinfulness. Yet He offers pardon. He will have mercy. It is because His thoughts and ways are higher than ours. You cannot measure the distance between heaven and earth. You only think of it as immeasurable vastness. This is true in relation to every thought and every action about subjects on which we think or act. Especially so as regards forgiveness. God’s magnanimity is asserted here. It is illustrated—
I. IN THE DISPOSITION TO FORGIVE.
How different from man! When injured he seeks revenge. Usually difficult to turn aside from this. God’s nature is to forgive (Exo_34:5-7). This is one phase of His love.
II. IN THE TERMS OF FORGIVENESS.
The statement of this part of the case involves the fact that He not merely stands in the attitude of readiness to forgive, but also that He overcame the formidable difficulties in the way of forgiveness. And this at great cost and sacrifice. We hear much at present of the demands of man’s moral nature. One demand of our moral nature is that the supreme ruler be just, as a primary condition of our confidence and respect. Here, then, was the problem that demanded solution. And God’s thoughts were equal to it. When in His love He desired to exercise mercy, He in His wisdom discovered a way by which mercy could be exercised while justice should be satisfied. By the sacrifice of His dear Son. A Divine victim for human sin. God vindicates His justice in the forgiveness of sin on the ground of the satisfaction He has made (Rom_3:25-26). Hence the terms, so far as we are concerned, are perfectly free (Isa_55:1). Salvation is not of works, but grace. You have simply to trust.
III. IN THE COMPLETENESS OF FORGIVENESS.
Remember the number and aggravation of your sins. Remember God’s hatred of sin. Yet He forgives fully. Casts them into the depths of the sea. Blots them out as a cloud. Will not remember them. Men remember offences against them, and make a difference. God forgets them.
IV. IN THE RANGE OF FORGIVENESS. The promises and invitations and overtures of the Gospel are made to all sinners everywhere. “Whosoever will let him come.” There is sufficient in God’s love, sufficient in Christ’s blood for all. If all mankind would come they would find the ample provision and the loving heart. Nor shall His mercy be provided in vain (Isa_55:10-11, &c.)
So magnanimous is God. So much higher than ours are His thoughts and ways. They are the thoughts that are unfolded in the proclamation of mercy to sinners in the Gospel. It is gracious; necessary; all-sufficient.—J. Rawlinson,
THE MYSTERY AND GLORY OF GOD’S WAYS IN REDEMPTION
The whole Bible is but the expansion of one sentence, one utterance of the Eternal, “I am the Lord.” Hence the revelation must be incomplete, for a god that could fully reveal himself to his creatures would be no god; and it must also be astonishing and amazing, for a professed record of any part of God’s thoughts and ways that did not land in mystery, and tend to wonder would be self-condemned, and proved to be neither true nor divine. It is not only here and there that God’s thoughts and ways are superhuman, but throughout; just as a circle is everywhere a circle, and nowhere a square or capable at any point of being reduced to the other figure. How man can at all lay hold of God, or frame any conception of Him with his finite and infinitely inferior mental faculties, this is the wonder and has sometimes been the stumbling-block of philosophy; and it is only removed out of the way by devoutly and thankfully accepting the fact that we do know Him (though darkly), and are so far made in His image that there may be and ought to be reverential contact and communion with Him. We must be constantly reminded that though brought near we are not brought up to Him, though companions we are not equals, and that while our line touches His, it cannot run parallel with it as it sweeps in its own awful circle from eternity to eternity. The lesson is one of humility but also of consolation; for the depths of God’s mind are depths of truth, of wisdom, and of love; and therefore we may be not only cast down, but lifted up as we study together in this lofty chapter the great words: “For my thoughts,” &c. In order to give unity to the subject I shall say nothing of the ways of God in creation and natural providence, but limit myself to redemption, showing how in various departments the ways of God are superhumanly mysterious and yet divinely glorious. God’s ways are not our ways, nor our thoughts His thoughts—
I. In regard to the occasion of redemption.—Take the entrance of sin into our world, and its continuance in it, which occasioned the need of redemption—can anything be less like what man would have anticipated and conceived. [1704]
[1704] Had man been able to make a creature like himself, he would either have made him without any inward liability to fall, or any possible risk from without, and if be could not or would not exclude both, he would have made no creation at all. This is the way in which an earthly philanthropist would act in such a supposed case, and therefore in his hands sin could never enter at all, and hence the extreme difficulty, we may say impossibility, of accounting for the origin of evil on any theory framed in the present state by the human mind. I have read over many such theories and considered them; but to my mind this one verse is far more true and far more philosophical than all of them put together: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” We are sure on the one hand that there is a God, we are equally sure also that there is evil in His universe. Hence there must be something yet to be cleared up, something that without alienating from God His moral attributes, making Him either the author of sin, or the accomplice in it, for any fancied exaltation of His character would, if known, vindicate His ways and show them to be not only mysterious but right, as far above ours as the heavens are above the earth. Absolute faith might here come in and wait the disclosure of the mystery, why evil entered and wrought its ravages, and why it remains and works them still. But there are in the Gospel some further glimpses, not in the way of full explanation, but of indirect reference to this awful subject, whereby simple and naked faith in God may be assisted. These do not warrant us to say that evil entered in order that God might glorify Himself in overcoming it, or that the fall was a necessary stepping-stone to redemption; for language like this aspires to rise to a giddy height where the finite mind cannot support itself and where it mistakes its own reasonings or fancies for the thoughts of God. But the lessons of Scripture, while leaving the entrance of evil in its awful mystery, assist our faith by showing first that nothing derogatory to God could be implied in its introduction, and then that God dealing with it as a fact has overruled it for His own glory. The shadow which the entrance of evil casts on God’s redemption rolls away. It was not for want of power in God that sin entered, for in Christ He defeats it. It was not for want of righteousness, for redemption is one continued death-blow to its dominion. It was not for want of wisdom, for the wisdom that cures is higher than the wisdom that was required to prevent. It was not for want of love, for the love that provided the second Adam to humanity could not have been wanting in the trial of the first. There is thus a reply on Calvary to the vexing thoughts that cluster around Eden, and while the mystery remains it loses its terror. And further, the undoubted outburst of the glory of God on the darkened theatre of sin, though we dare not say that the theatre was darkened for the purpose, assists our faith in God. It has been conclusively shown that evil can be overruled for good, that attributes of God are brought out that might otherwise have slumbered, and emotions called forth in His creatures which without danger and deliverance would have been impossible. Where sin abounded grace has much more abounded. God has become more glorious in His dealings with sin for its expulsion; saved sinners more blessed, angels more instructed and confirmed. The thoughts of God all through have been unlike the thoughts of man, and yet there are gleams from a higher heaven sufficient to relieve the darkness and point to the day when it shall be dispelled; and thus is vindicated the assertion that in this matter His ways are as much above our ways as the heavens are above the earth.—Cairns.
II. In regard to the purpose of redemption. Man is not the only being who has fallen, and yet man is the only being who is redeemed. When we inquire as to the reason of this arrangement we find none. It is one of the deep things which belong to God. It is an impressive display of sovereignty, where all that is left for us is to bow and to adore. We might have supposed that the higher race would have been selected, and that God would have glorified His mercy on the still more conspicuous theatre from which they had sought to cast themselves down. And altogether independently of the example of their rejection, we might have anticipated that man’s ruin would have been final and hopeless. Man does not forgive where he has been insulted as God was in man’s rebellion. Nations do not tolerate blows aimed at their independence and their very existence, and therefore man’s revolt might have been expected to draw down swift and remediless destruction, for it was a blow aimed at God’s throne and being. That God’s thoughts should in such a crisis have been thoughts of peace is the wonder of unfallen beings and of those who are redeemed. They cannot rise in thought to that awful council wherein, though every foreseen trespass demanded vengeance, mercy yet rejoiced against judgment, without exclaiming, “This is not the manner of man, O Lord God.” “O the depth of the riches,” &c.
III. In regard to the plan of redemption. How utterly unlike to any means of man’s devising are those which God has chosen for the recovery of His lost creation to His favour and image! That God’s Son should become incarnate, and die on the cross for the world’s redemption, and that God’s Spirit should descend into the guilty and polluted hearts of sinners, and work out there a blessed transformation, and that all this should be effected by the free and sovereign grace of God himself, and laid open to the very chief of sinners as the unconditional gift of God’s love, this, as universal experience attests, is something so far from having entered into the heart of man, that it needs incessant effort to keep it before him even when it has been revealed. [1707]
[1707] The world had four thousand years to learn the lesson. God had made the outline of it known to His Church from the beginning. He had raised up a special people to be the depository of the revelation; and He had taught them by priests and prophets, by types and signs without number, and yet when redemption came how few received it, how few understood it, so that when the Saviour was actually hanging on the cross and finishing the work given Him to do, it is questionable if so much as one, even of His disciples, comprehended the design or saw the glory of His sacrifice. Man sees so little of the evil of sin, that he cannot understand why an infinite satisfaction is needed. His own heart is so narrow that he cannot embrace the love of God in the gift of an infinite sacrifice. His own benevolence is so contracted that he distrusts the offer of an unlimited pardon, and his moral perceptions are so blunted that he is afronted rather than consoled by the promise of an Almighty Spirit to work out his deliverance from the bondage of evil. Hence when man is left to work his will upon the plan of redemption, he strikes out all its characteristic features, away goes the incarnation, and Christ is no more the co-equal Son of His Father, but the son of Joseph and Mary. Away goes the Atonement; and the cross is no longer the means of reconciling God and sinners, but the testimony to a God from the first reconciled. Away goes the offer of pardon through a Saviour’s blood; and back comes the voice of the law “Do and live,” and as there is now no call for a Divine Spirit to renew and sanctify, the last pillar of redemption falls amidst its other broken columns, and man’s own effort and struggle return as the source of his repentance and reformation. What is Socinianism, what is Mohammedanism, what is Judaism, sinking from the level of Isaiah to the Talmud, but so many testimonies that God’s ways in redemption are too high for man’s fallen reason, and that it is easier to bring down heaven to earth than to lift up earth to heaven? All the opposition to evangelical religion wherewith we are surrounded, and that incessantly repeats “Give us a Christianity that is rational, give us a Christianity that meets the advancement of the age,” what does it amount to but this: “Give us a Christianity without God; give us a Christianity without that element of grandeur, of mystery, of overwhelming superiority to man’s thoughts and ways which compels awe and humbles pride”? We accept the demand, come from what quarter it may, as an involuntary homage to the super-human glory of the faith we stand by, as a tribute to the Christianity which still moves in her own orbit, and, though surrounded by cloud and darkness, refuses to leave her native heaven. Nor do we lose anything, but gain everything, by retaining the Gospel as its original elevation. Pointing to Him who is the Son of the Highest, we can say to the wandering children of men, “Here is God Himself come to seek and to save you!” Appealing to the matchless virtue of His sacrifice we can turn, not to the whole who need no physician, but to the sick and sore-wounded, and testify, “He is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him.” Taking our stand upon the completeness of His work and the freeness of His salvation, we can ply the most distrustful and desponding with the overtures of His love; “Let the wicked forsake his way,” &c. And when the pardoned sinner feels his utter weakness, blindness, worthlessness, and helplessness, then can we, standing by the fountain of spiritual influence which Christ has opened, invite all to be washed and sanctified as well as justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.—Cairns.
The grandeur of these provisions comes home with a consoling and peace-giving as well as purifying power to the sin-burdened conscience and heart. They reveal the majesty and strength as well as the love of the Godhead, and are thus the support and stay of dying men. Never can we surrender this Godlike greatness of the Gospel, or suffer this high stronghold to be dismantled and destroyed. It were to surrender our own soul’s refuge, and that of all the guilty, and with a heaven above that stooped not to our rescue, and an earth at our foot that crumbled to our tread, to sink unpitied in the waste of sin and ruin.
IV. In regard to the progress of redemption. Redemption has a history, and this is, of all others, the most difficult to scan, not only as it lies in the Bible, but in uninspired records. It has been said, “Interpret the Bible as any other book;” but this ultimately means, “Interpret God as you interpret man,” and you cannot even interpret Church history as you do other history. It is, in a sense which belongs to no other history, the story of a battle not yet fought out, or of a campaign not yet ended; and there are combatants at work beyond the range of human observation, and a supreme celestial Leader whose point of survey none can share. It was to be expected, therefore, that the progress of redemption, as surveyed by human eyes, would present many anomalies and many difficulties, while at the same time, true to the analogy of the substance of redemption, there would be a lofty, all-pervading grandeur that spoke to the devout observer the presence and the hand of God. I will illustrate this union of mysteriousness and Divine greatness in regard to three features in the progress of redemption.
1. The rate of the progress of redemption. How much is there here, unlike the thoughts of man! But no one can deny that there is a Divine hand in the onward movements, and that it is all the more glorious for its incessant recovery from retardation and retrogression. When the whole is known it will be pre-eminently Godlike, and it will be seen that God’s law of progress, both as to time and space, was as far above man’s law as the heavens above the earth.
2. The instruments of the progress of redemption. How unlike all that man would have conceived or devised! This applies even to the Old Testament dispensation, but far more to Christianity. Its leaders were the poor; its soldiers were slaves and women; its heroes were martyrs. How unlike the agents in any other revolution, and yet God chose “the weak things to confound the mighty,” &c. By similar instrumentalities has Christianity perpetually renewed its strength. What new development of glorious possibilities, undreamt of before, has the Gospel everywhere achieved and made tributary to its progress! Nothing so unlike to human predictions, nothing so far above human thought as the march of this Gospel.
3. The hindrances to the progress of redemption. Man would have thought that hindrances would be speedily removed, or, if suffered to remain or to return, would constitute unmingled evils to the Church. But God, on the other hand, we can see, by giving the victory slowly, trains the faith and courage of successive generations; and by permitting old enemies to return or new ones to spring up, shows the unexhausted and inexhaustible power of His Gospel to face and put down every hostile power. The variety and vicissitude of attack when it is once surmounted, surrounds the Gospel with richer trophies and places on its head more crowns. As it has been so it shall be. The onsets of unbelief that now disturb us shall be the consolation of our successors, and its scarce-remembered names and war-cries shall swell their song of peace.
V. In regard to the limits of redemption. Why should redemption have limits at all? Why should not all be saved as God wishes, and come to a knowledge of the truth? Thus man fondly argues, and by arguing like this not a few are in our day plausibly deceived, in forgetfulness of the warnings of conscience and the solemn voice of God, to the effect that he that believeth not shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. On this awful subject we cannot in this darkling state profess to justify the ways of God to man, for this He will do Himself in the day of the revelation of His righteous judgment. But it may be seen, even here, that whatever God appoints for the impenitent, cannot be inconsistent with His moral attributes. If the cross clears God from every aspersion in regard to the entrance of evil, not less does it do so in regard to the continuance of evil in His universe. What He has done in Christ is a sufficient proof that the fault is not His, and that man is the author of his own undoing.
Of this let us be sure, that though His ways are above us, they are so only as the heavens to supply a pathway for the sun and a fountain for the dew, and that shall break in blessings on our head.—Professor John Cairns, D.D.
GOD’S WAYS ABOVE MEN’S
There is the strongest reason to believe that these memorable declarations refer to God’s pardoning mercy. His method of forgiveness is contrasted and exhibited as vastly superior to that of men. They find it difficult to pardon at all; they are slow to forgive an injury, &c. But God is not reluctant to forgive, &c. It may refer to the number and aggravation of offences, or to the number of offenders, &c. But while the passage refers primarily to pardon, and should be interpreted as having a main reference to it, it is also true of the ways of God in general.
I SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE GLORIOUS TRUTH ASSERTED.
Anything in the shape of proof might be justly deemed superfluous, if not profane, inasmuch as it is affirmed by Him who cannot lie. The purposes, plans, and actions of God are exceedingly unlike ours; they are beyond measure more noble and excellent than ours can be. Any illustrations must be vastly beneath the greatness of our theme—
1. In the fact that He produces the most important results from apparently insignificant causes.
2. As He accomplishes the most glorious designs by feeble instrumentality.
3. As He accomplishes the plan of salvation on a principle totally different from what we should have determined.
4. In the sovereignty with which He bestows mercy.
5. In the varied and mysterious dealings by which He trains up His people for glory.
II. THE PRINCIPLE ON WHICH THIS ARRANGEMENT IS FOUNDED AND JUSTIFIED.
1. The Divine knowledge is infinitely more extensive than ours.
2. The Divine purposes are inconceivably superior to ours.
3. It is His fixed, unalterable purpose to fulfil His plans in such a way as to hide pride from man.
III. PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS WHICH THIS VIEW OF THE DIVINE CONDUCT SUGGESTS.
1. It should awaken emotions of gratitude.
2. We should seek to have our will and our ways conformed to those of God. His will is the wisest, the kindest, and the best, and must be carried into effect: hence it is the highest wisdom of the creature to submit to His will and bow to His authority.
3. Learn to confide in His wisdom and love.
4. Anticipate the clearer light of heaven.—George Smith, D.D.
I. OBVIOUS REASONS FOR THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOD AND OURSELVES.
God’s ways and thoughts must be far above ours—
1. Because in situation and office He is exalted far above us. He is in heaven, we are upon earth. We occupy the footstool, He the throne. Consider the extent and duration of His kingdom. Must not the thoughts and ways of a powerful earthly monarch be far above those of one of his subjects who is employed in manufacturing pins, or cultivating a few acres of ground? Can such a subject be competent to judge of his sovereign’s designs, or even to comprehend them? How far, then, must the thoughts and ways of the eternal King of kings exceed ours; and how little able are we to judge of them, further than the revelation which He has been pleased to give enables us!
2. Because He is infinitely superior to us in knowledge and wisdom. He must, therefore, be able to devise a thousand plans and expedients, and to bring good out of evil in numberless ways, of which we could never have conceived, and of which we are by no means competent to judge, even after they are revealed to us.
3. Because He is perfectly benevolent and holy. We love sin, and care for nothing but our own private interest, while His concern is for the interests of the universe. Hence His thoughts, affections, maxims, and pursuits must be entirely different from ours. Do not even the thoughts and ways of good men differ from those of the wicked? How infinitely, then, must a perfectly holy God differ from us!
II. SOME INSTANCES IN WHICH THIS DIFFERENCE MOST STRIKINGLY APPEARS.
1. In permitting the introduction and continuance of natural and moral evil.
2. In devising a way of salvation for sinners. [1710]
3. In God’s choice of means and instruments for propagating the religion of Christ. Not angels, but men; and those at the outset the humblest (1Co_1:27; see p. 583).
4. In His choice of the best methods of dealing with His people, and carrying on the work of grace in their souls after it is begun.
[1710] We should have thought that, if God intended to save sinners, He would bring them to repentance and save them at once; or at least after suffering them to endure, for a season, the bitter consequences of their own folly and disobedience. We never should have thought of providing for them a redeemer; still leas should we have thought of proposing that God’s only Son, the Creator and Preserver of all things, should undertake this office; and, least of all, should we have expected that He would, for this purpose, think it necessary to become man. If we had been informed that this was necessary, and if it had been left to us to fix the time and manner of His appearing, we should have concluded that He ought to come soon after the fall; to be born of illustrious parents; to make his appearance on earth in all the splendour, pomp, and glory imaginable; to overcome all opposition by a display of irresistible power; to ride through the world in triumph, conquering and to conquer. Such were the expectations of the Jews; and such, most probably, would have been ours. But never should we have thought of His being born of a virgin in abject circumstances; born in a stable; cradled in a manger, living for many years as a humble artificer; wandering, despised and rejected of men, without a place to lay His head; and finally arraigned, condemned, and crucified as a vile criminal, that He might thus expiate our sins, and by His death give life to the world.—Payson.
III. SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS.
If God’s ways and thoughts differ thus widely from ours, then,
(1), it is no reasonable objection against the truth of any doctrine, or the propriety of any dispensation, that it is above our comprehension and appears mysterious to us. On the contrary, we should have reason to doubt the truth of the Scriptures, and to suspect that they are not the Word of God, if they did not contain many things which appear mysterious, and which we cannot fully comprehend. In this case, they would want one great proof of having proceeded from Him whose thoughts and ways must be infinitely above ours (H. E. I., 587; see p. 581).
2. It must be abominable pride, impiety, folly, and presumption in us to censure them even in thought. For an illiterate peasant to censure the conduct of his prince, with the reasons of which he is utterly unacquainted; for a child three years old to condemn the proceedings of his parent, would be nothing to this (Pro_13:13). [1713]
[1713] An ancient writer teller us of a man who, having a house for sale, carried a brick to market to exhibit as a specimen. You smile at his folly in supposing that any purchaser would or could judge of a whole house, which he never saw, by so small a part of it. But are we not guilty of much greater folly in attempting to form an opinion of God’s conduct from that little part of it which we are able to discover? In order to form a correct opinion of it, we ought to have a correct view of the whole; we ought to see the whole extent and duration of God’s kingdom; to be equal with Him in wisdom, knowledge, power, and goodness; in one word, we ought to be God ourselves, for none but God is capable of judging accurately the conduct of God. Hence, whenever we attempt to judge of it, we do, in effect, set up ourselves as gods, knowing good and evil.—Payson.
3. From this subject we infer the reasonableness of the implicit faith in God which Christians exercise, believing what they cannot fully comprehend. For this they are ridiculed. But if God’s ways and thoughts are thus high above ours, ought we not implicitly to believe that all He says and does is perfectly right? Is it not reasonable for children thus to believe their parents? for a sick man to trust in a skilful physician? for a passenger unacquainted with navigation to trust to the master of the vessel? If so, then it certainly is much more reasonable for us to trust implicitly to an infinitely wise, good, and infallible Being; and when any of His words or works appear wrong, to ascribe it to our own ignorance, blindness, or prejudice, rather than to suppose that there is anything wrong in Him. Is it not more likely that we should be wrong or mistaken, than that God should be?—Edward Payson, D.D.: Sermons, pp. 37–55.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Isaiah
THE CALL TO THE THIRSTY
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GOD’S WAYS AND MAN’S
Isa 55:8 - Isa 55:9.
Scripture gives us no revelations concerning God merely in order that we may know about Him. These words are grand poetry and noble theology, but they are meant practically and in fiery earnestness. The ‘for’ at the beginning of each clause points us back to the previous statement, and both of the verses of our text are in different ways its foundation. And what has preceded is this: ‘Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, for He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.’ That is why the prophet dilates upon the difference between the ‘thoughts’ and the ‘ways’ of God and of men.
If we look at these two verses a little more closely we shall perceive that they by no means cover the same ground nor suggest the same idea as to the relationship between God’s ‘ways’ and ‘thoughts’ and ours. The former of them speaks of unlikeness and opposition, the latter of elevation and superiority; the former of them is the basis of an indictment and an exhortation, the latter is the basis of an encouragement and a promise. The former of them is the reason why ‘the wicked’ and ‘unrighteous man’ ought to and must ‘turn’ from ‘his ways’ and ‘thoughts,’ the latter of them is the reason why, ‘turning,’ he may be sure that the Lord ‘will abundantly pardon.’
And so we have here two things to consider in reference to the relation between the divine purposes and acts and man’s purposes and acts. First, the antagonism, and the indictment and exhortation that are based upon that; second, the analogy but superiority, and the exhortation and hope that are built upon that. Let me deal, then, with these separately.
I. We have here an unlikeness declared, and upon that is rested an appeal.
Notice the remarkable order and alternation of pronouns in the first verse. ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts,’ saith the Lord. The things that God thinks and purposes are not the things that man thinks and purposes, and therefore, because the thoughts are different, the outcomes of them in deeds are divergent. God’s ‘ways’ are His acts, the manner and course of His working considered as a path on which He moves, and on which, in some sense, we can also journey. Our ‘ways’-our manner of life-are not parallel with His, as they should be.
But that opposition is expressed with a remarkable variation. Observe the change of pronouns in the two clauses. First, ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts’-you have not taken My truth into your minds, nor My purposes into your wills; you do riot think God’s thoughts. Therefore-’your ways {instead of ‘My,’ as we should have expected, to keep the regularity of the parallelism} are not My ways’-I repudiate and abjure your conduct and condemn it utterly.
Now, of course, in this charge of man’s unlikeness to God, there is no contradiction of, nor reference to, man’s natural constitution, in which there are, at one and the same time, the likeness of the child with the parent and the unlikeness between the creature and the Creator. If our thoughts were not in a measure like God’s thoughts, we should know nothing about Him. If our thoughts were not like God’s thoughts, we should have no standard for life or thinking. Righteousness and beauty and truth and goodness are the same things in heaven and earth, and alike in God and man. We are made after His image, poor creatures though we be; and though there must ever be a gulf of unlikeness, which we cannot bridge, between the thoughts of Him whose knowledge has no growth nor uncertainty, whose wisdom is infinite and all whose nature is boundless light, and our knowledge, and must ever be a gulf between the workings and ways of Him who works without effort, and knows neither weariness nor limitation, and our work, so often foiled, so always toilsome, yet in all the unlikeness there is {and no man can denude himself of it} a likeness to the Father. For the image in which God made man at the beginning is not an image that it is in the power of men to cast away, and in the worst of his corruptions and the widest of his departures he still bears upon him the signs of likeness ‘to Him that created him.’ The coin is rusty, battered, defaced; but still legible are the head and the writing. ‘Whose image and superscription hath it?’ Render unto God the things that are declared to be God’s, because they bear His likeness and are stamped with His signature.
But that very necessary and natural likeness between God and man makes more solemnly sinful the voluntary unlikeness which we have brought upon ourselves. If there were no analogy, there could be no contrast. If God and man were utterly unlike, then there would be no evil in our unlikeness and no need for our repentance.
The true state for each of us is that we should, as the great astronomer said he had done in regard to his own science, ‘think God’s thoughts after Him,’ and have our minds filled with His truth and our wills all harmonised with His purposes, and that we should thus make our ways to run parallel with the ways of God. The blessedness, the peace, the true manhood of a man, are that his ways and thoughts should be like God’s. And so my text comes with its indictment-You who by nature were formed in His image, you to whom it is open to sympathise with His designs, to harmonise your wills with His will, and to bring all the dark and crooked ways in which you walk into full parallelism with His way-you have departed into darkness of unlikeness, and in thought and in ways are the opposites of God.
Mark how wonderfully, in the simple language of my text, deep truths about this sin of ours are conveyed. Notice its growth and order. It begins with a heart and mind that do not take in God’s thoughts, truths, purposes, desires, and then the alienated will and the darkened understanding and the conscience which has closed itself against His imperative voice issue afterwards in conduct which He cannot accept as in any way corresponding with His. First comes the thought unreceptive of God’s thought, and then follow ways contrary to God’s ways.
Notice the profound truth here in regard to the essential and deepest evil of all our evil. ‘Your thoughts’; ‘your ways,’-self-dependence and self-confidence are the master-evils of humanity. And every sin is at bottom the result of saying-’I will not conform myself to God, but I am going to please myself, and take my own way.’ My own way is never God’s way; my own way is always the devil’s way. And the root of all sin lies in these two strong, simple words, ‘Your thoughts not Mine; your ways not Mine.’
Notice, too, how there are suggested the misery and retribution of this unlikeness. ‘If you will not make My thoughts your thoughts, I shall not take your ways as My ways. I will leave you to them.’ ‘You will be filled with the fruit of your own devices. I shall not incorporate your actions into My great scheme and purpose.’ Men
‘Would not know His ways,
And He has left them to their own.’
So here we have the solemn indictment brought by God’s own voice against us all. The criminality of our unlikeness to Him rests upon our original likeness.
The unlikeness roots itself in thought, and blossoms in the poisonous flower of God-displeasing acts. It brings down upon our heads the solemn retribution of separation from Him, and being filled with the fruit of our own devices. Such is the indictment brought against every soul of man upon the earth, and there is built upon it the call to repentance and change,’ let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.’ The question rises in many a heart, ‘How am I to forsake these paths on which my feet have so longed walked?’ And if I do, what about all the years behind me, full of wild wanderings and thoughts in all of which God was not?
II. The second verse of our text meets that despairing question. It proclaims the elevation of God’s ways and thoughts above ours, and thereon bases the assurance of pardon.
The relation is not only one of unlikeness and opposition, but it is also one of analogy and superiority. The former clause began with thoughts which are the parents of ways, and, as befits the all-seeing Judge, laid bare first the hidden discord of man’s heart and will, ere it pointed to the manifest antagonism of his doings. This clause begins with God’s ways, from which alone men can reach the knowledge of His thoughts. The first follows the order of God’s knowledge of man; the second, that of man’s knowledge of God.
It is a wonderful and beautiful turn which the prophet here gives to the thought of the transcendent elevation of God. The heavens are the very type of the unattainable; and to say that they are ‘higher than the earth’ seems, at first sight, to be but to say, ‘No man hath ascended into the heavens,’ and you sinful men must grovel here down upon your plain, whilst they are far above, out of your reach. But the heavens bend. They are an arch, and not a straight line. They touch the horizon; and there come from them the sweet influences of sunshine and of rain, of dew and of blessing, which bring fertility. So they are not only far and unattainable, but friendly and beneficent, and communicative of good. Like them, in true analogy but yet infinite superiority to the best and noblest in man, is the boundless mercy of our pardoning God:
‘The glorious sky, embracing all,
Is like its Maker’s love,
Wherewith encompassed, great and small
In peace and order move.’
‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways.’ The special ‘thought’ and ‘way’ which is meant here is God’s thought and way about sin. There are three points here on which I would touch for a moment. First, God’s way of dealing with sin is lifted up above all human example. There is such a thing as pardoning mercy amongst men. It is a faint analogy of, as it is an offshoot from, the divine pardon, but all the forgivingness of the most placable and long-suffering and gladly pardoning of men is but as earth to heaven compared with the greatness of His. Our forgiveness has its limitations. We sometimes cannot pardon as freely as we thought, because there blends with our indignation against evil a passionate personal sense of wrong done to us which we cannot get rid of, and that disturbs the freeness and the joyfulness of many a human pardon. But God’s pardon is undisturbed and hindered by any sense of personal resentment, though sin is an offense against Him, and in its freeness, its fulness, its frequency, and its sovereign power to melt away that which it forgives, it towers above the loftiest of earth’s beauties of forgiveness, as the starry heavens do above the flat plain.
God’s pardon is above all human example, even though, having once been received by us, it ought to become for us the pattern by which we shape and regulate our own lives. Nothing of which we have any experience in ourselves or in others is more than as a drop to the ocean compared with the absolute fulness and perfect freeness and unwearied frequency of His forgiveness. ‘He will abundantly pardon.’ He will multiply pardon. ‘With Him there is plenteous redemption.’ We think we have stretched the elasticity of long suffering and forgiveness further than we might have been reasonably expected to do if seven times we forgive the erring brother, but God’s measure of pardon is seventy times seven, two perfectnesses multiplied into themselves perfectly; for the measure of His forgiveness is boundless, and there is no searching of the depths of His pardoning mercy. You cannot weary Him out, you cannot exhaust it. It is full at the end as at the beginning; and after all its gifts still it remains true, ‘With Him is the multiplying of redemption.’
Again, God’s way of dealing with sin surpasses all our thought. All religion has been pressed with this problem, how to harmonise the perfect rectitude of the divine nature and the solemn claims of law with forgiveness. All religions have borne witness to the fact that men are dimly aware of the discord and dissonance between themselves and the divine thoughts and ways; and a thousand altars proclaim to us how they have felt that something must be done in order that forgiveness might be possible to an all-righteous and Sovereign Judge. The Jew knew that God was a pardoning God, but to him that fact stood as needing much explanation and much light to be thrown upon its relations with the solemn law under which he lived. We have Jesus Christ. The mystery of forgiveness is solved, in so far as it is capable of solution, in Him and in Him alone. His death somewhat explains how God is just and the Justifier of him that believeth. High above man’s thoughts this great central mystery of the Gospel rises, that with God there is forgiveness and with God there is perfect righteousness. The Cross as the basis of pardon is the central mystery of revelation; and it is not to be expected that our theories shall be able to sound the depths of that great act of the divine love. Perhaps our plummets do not go to the bottom of the bottomless after all; but is it needful that we should have gone to the rim of the heavens, and round about it on the outside, before we rejoice in the sunshine? Is it needful that we should have traversed the abysses of the heavens, and passed from star to star and told their numbers, before we can say that they are bright, or before we can walk in their light? We do not need to understand the ‘how’ in order to be sure of the fact that Christ’s death is our forgiveness. Do not be in such a hurry as some people are nowadays, to declare that the doctrine of the Cross is contrary to man’s conceptions. It surpasses them, and the very fact that it surpasses ought to stop us from pronouncing that it contradicts. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My thoughts higher than your thoughts.’
Lastly, we are taught here that God’s way of dealing with sin is the very highest point of His self-revelation. There are many glories of the divine nature set forth in all His ways, but the loftiest of them all is this, that He can neutralise and destroy the fact of man’s transgressing, wiping it out by pardon; and in the very act of pardon reconstituting in purity, and with a heart for all holiness, the sinful men whom He forgives. This is the shining apex of all that He has done, rising above creation and every other ‘way’ of His, as high as the loftiest heavens are above the earth.
Therefore, have a care of all forms of Christianity which do not put God’s pardoning mercy in the foreground. They are maimed, and in them mist and cloud have covered with a roof of doleful grey the low-lying earth, and separated it from the highest heavens. The true glory of the revelation of God gathers round that central Cross; and there, in that Man dying upon it in the dark-the sacrifice for a world’s sin-is the loftiest, most heavenly revelation of the all-revealing God. Strike out the Cross from Christianity, or weaken its aspect as a message of forgiveness and redemption, and you have quenched its brightest light, and dragged it down to be but a little higher, if any, than many another scheme of other moralists, philosophers, poets, and religious teachers. The distinctive glory of Christianity is this-it tells us how God sweeps away sin.
And so my last thought is that, if we desire to see up on the highest heavens of God’s character, we must go down into the depths of the consciousness of our own sin, and learn first, how unlike our ways and thoughts are to God, ere we can understand how high above us, and yet beneficently arching over us, are His ways and thoughts to us. We lie beneath the heavens like some foul bog full of black ooze, rotten earth and putrid water, where there is nothing green or fair. But the promise of the bending heavens, with their sweet influences, declares the possibility of reclaiming even that waste, and making it rejoice and blossom as the rose. Spread yourselves out, dear friends, in lowly submission and penitent acknowledgment beneath the all-vivifying mercy of that shining heaven of God’s pardon; and then the old promise will be fulfilled in you: ‘Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven; yea, the Lord shall give that which is good, and our land’-barren and poisoned as it has been- responding to the skyey influences, ‘shall yield her increase.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
General Information:
Yahweh continues speaking to the people of Jerusalem.
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this is Yahweh's declaration
Yahweh speaks of himself by name to express the certainty of what he is declaring. Translate as in Isaiah 30:1. AT: "this is what Yahweh has declared" or "this is what I, Yahweh, have declared" (See: First, Second, or Third Person)
for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts
Yahweh speaks of the things that he does and how he thinks as being far superior to or higher than what people do and think, just like the sky is much higher than the earth. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
declare
Yahweh
heaven
earth
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 55:8-9 My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts: God’s…
55:8-9 My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts: God’s plans are marvelous (Ps 92:5; cp. Ps 94:11). God’s creatures, including humans, can never fully understand the Creator’s thoughts, but his revelation through his messengers gives great insight and knowledge of some of the things he will do.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.