Isaiah 1:4-9 - Homiletics

The prophet's enforcement of God's charge.

God's words are so weighty, that they may well be few; the preacher's enforcement of them must needs be, comparatively speaking, lengthy. Isaiah, in addressing his erring countrymen, aimed at producing in them—

I. CONVICTION OF DIN . For this purpose, he begins with an array of seven charges (verse 4), varying, as it were, the counts of the indictment:

The first four are general, and seem to be little more than rhetorical variations of one and the same theme. We may learn from them that rhetorical variation is allowable, nay, proper, since different words catch hold of different persons, rouse them, touch them to the quick, are effectual to the producing of repentance. The last three charges are particular, and to some extent different, each exceeding the last in heinousness, and thus rising in the way of climax—desertion, insult, complete estrangement. Metaphor is then called in to work on the imagination, and through the imagination on the conscience: the nation is depicted as a diseased and stricken body, a mass of sores and corruption (verses 5, 6).

II. FEAR OF PUNISHMENT . Undoubtedly fear is a low motive in religion—some think it altogether an unworthy one. But while human nature remains such as it is, while the mass of men are incapable of being stirred by the higher motives, appeal must be made to the lower ones. The prophet, therefore, reminds his people of God's judgments in the past (verse 7), threatens them with further judgments in the future (verse 5), and ends the paragraph by suggesting that his people have barely escaped the most terrible of all judgments—a destruction like that of Sodom and Gomorrah.