Isaiah 1:21-23 - Homiletics

The grievousness of the sin of oppression in God's sight.

The Israelites of Isaiah's time were guilty of many heinous sins, as we see by later chapters. They were idolaters ( Isaiah 2:8 ), haughty ( Isaiah 2:11 , Isaiah 2:17 ), wanton ( Isaiah 3:16 ), covetous ( Isaiah 5:8 ), drunken ( Isaiah 5:11 ), perverse ( Isaiah 5:20 ), vain ( Isaiah 5:21 ). But of all their sins, none seems to have so much offended God as their oppression of the poor and weak. The prophet refers to it over and over again ( Isaiah 1:15 , Isaiah 1:21 , Isaiah 1:23 ; Isaiah 3:5 , Isaiah 3:12 , Isaiah 3:14 , Isaiah 3:15 ; Isaiah 5:7 , Isaiah 5:23 , etc.), He denounces it in the strongest terms ( Isaiah 1:15 , Isaiah 1:23 ). He represents it as an especial offence to Jehovah ( Isaiah 3:15 ; Isaiah 5:7 ). The reasons would seem to be—

I. BECAUSE OPPRESSION IS A BREACH OF TRUST . To oppress another we must have authority over him, and all authority is committed to man by God, as a trust . "Thou couldest have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above" ( John 19:11 ). God entrusts us with power over others for their benefit and for our own moral training. He puts us in his place, to act for him, to be his instruments: "By me kings reign, and princes decree justice" ( Proverbs 8:15 ). Abuse of our position is breach of trust; it is to use the power God has committed to us for a purpose the very opposite to that which he intended. It is flagrant rebellion against him.

II. BECAUSE IT IS CRUEL AND INHUMAN .

"'Tis excellent to have a giant's strength,

But tyrannous to use it like a giant."

Weakness naturally makes an appeal to our emotions of pity and compassion. To injure the defenseless, to hurt, crush, ruin the poor and the weak, instead of being their champion, is to be wanting altogether in manhood. It is to be at once unjust and cowardly. Oppressors have always been the objects of general hatred and condemnation. Rameses II ; Nebuchadnezzar, Tarquin, Nero, Bajazet, have left an evil memory behind them, which will continue while the world endures. Oppressors are of various kinds. Some are emperors or kings, some princes, some judges, and other public personages. But there is far more oppression in private life titan in public. Slave-owners, and still more, slave-drivers, are apt to be fearful oppressors, making the lives of hundreds a burden to them. Even employers of free labor are often oppressors, when they take advantage of competition to beat down wages below the rate at which life can be sustained in decent comfort. Masters often act oppressively towards their servants, heads of schools towards their pupils, even parents towards their children. Of all the evils "done under the sun, "there is none more widespread than oppression ( Ecclesiastes 4:1 ), and none more hateful.

III. BECAUSE IT OUTRAGES GOD 'S ATTRIBUTE OF JUSTICE . To be just is of the very essence of God's nature. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" ( Genesis 18:25 ). Exact justice is what he deals out even to the feeblest, the weakest, the most contemptible of his creatures. And he "has made man upright" ( Ecclesiastes 7:29 ). He has implanted in man a sense of justice, the reflex of his own attribute, and made him to be self-condemned if he transgresses it. God's law of conduct, "Do unto others as thou wouldst have them do to thee, "is a law of strict, equal justice, and if carried out would put an end to all oppression and wrong. Thus, when men oppress their fellow-men, they disobey both God's inward and his outward law; nay, more, they outrage him by showing contempt for one of his highest attributes.