God and man: refusal, retribution, restoration.
I. THE DIVINE COMMAND. God demands the glory which is his due (Isaiah 42:8). His claim is based on:
1. What he is in himself. "I am the Lord (Jehovah); that is my Name." As the Eternal One, who only hath immortality, the Underived and Everlasting One, who in the very fullest, deepest, and highest sense is God over all, he rightly demands our reverence, our homage, our worship.
2. What he has done for our race. He has "created the heavens," etc. (Isaiah 42:5). He is the Divine Author of our own human spirits, the Divine Originator of all material things, the Divine Giver of all surrounding comforts. As the Father of our souls and as the Source of all our good of every kind, God righteously demands our thought, our gratitude, our love, our service.
II. OUR GUILTY REFUSAL. Of whatever crimes, or vices, or follies we are guiltless, there is one sin which we must all acknowledge—we have not rendered unto our God "the glory due unto his Name." "The God in whose hand our breath is, and whose are all our ways, we have not glorified" as we might have done and should have done. In this matter all, even the best, have "come short" (Romans 3:23). The great multitudes of mankind have been sadly and guiltily negligent, and we have had to pay—
III. THE PENALTY OF OUR GUILT. This penalty is very severe; it is manifold; it comprises:
1. Forfeiture of the Divine favour.
2. Fear of final condemnation and banishment from the Father's presence.
3. The various ills and evils, including sickness, and sorrow, and death, which befall us here.
4. Spiritual deterioriation. This is, perhaps, the saddest and most serious part of our penalty. He that sins against God "wrongs his own soul;" he dyes that which inflicts on himself most grievous wounds; his own soul suffers harm, the extent and the pitifulness of which no mind can measure, no words express. The text (Isaiah 42:7) points to two of these spiritual evils.
IV. DIVINE RESTORATION. "I have called thee … to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners," etc. (Isaiah 42:6, Isaiah 42:7). Jesus Christ came "to preach deliverance to the captives" (Luke 4:18). This he does by