Isaiah 21:3-4 - Homiletics

The sadness of a nation's overthrow.

A nation is God's creation, no less than an individual. And it is a far more elaborate work. What forethought, what design, what manifold wisdom, must not have been required for the planning out of each people's national character, for the partitioning out to them of their special gifts and aptitudes, for the apportionment to each of its place in history, for the conduct of each through the many centuries of its existence! It is a sad thing to be witness of a nation's demise. Very deeply does Isaiah feel its sadness. His " loins are filled with pain;" the pangs that take hold of hint are "as the pangs of a woman that travaileth;" he is "so agonized that he cannot hear," " so terrified that he cannot look" (verse 3). "His heart flutters," like a frightened bird; terror overwhelms him; he cannot sleep for thinking of the dread calamity; "the night of his pleasure is turned into fear." The sadness of such a calamity is twofold. It consists

I. THE SADNESS OF THE FACT . We mourn an individual gone from us—how much more a nation! What a blank is created! What arts and industries are not destroyed or checked! What possibilities of future achievement are not cut off! Again, an individual is only removed; he still exists, only in another place. But a nation is annihilated. It has but one life. There is " no healing of its bruise" ( Nahum 3:19 ), no transference of it to another sphere. From existence it has passed into nonexistence, and nothing can recall it into being. It is like a sun extinguished in mid-heaven.

II. THE SADNESS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES . The end of a nation comes necessarily by violence, from within or from without—from without most commonly. A fierce host invades its borders, spreads itself over its fertile fields, tramples down its crops, exhausts its granaries, consumes its cattle, burns its towns and villages, carries everywhere ruin and desolation. Wanton injury is added to the injury which war cannot but inflict—fruit-trees are cut down ( Isaiah 16:8 ), works of art are destroyed, good land is purposely "marred with stones" ( 2 Kings 3:10 ). And if inanimate things suffer, much more do animate ones. Beasts of burden are impressed and worked to death; horses receive fearful wounds and scream with pain; cattle perish for want of care; beasts of prey increase as population lessens, and become a terror to the scanty remnant ( 2 Kings 17:25 ). Not only do armed men fall by thousands in fair fight, but (in barbarous times) the unwarlike mass of the population suffers almost equally. "Every one that is found is thrust through, and every one that is joined to them is slain by the sword" ( Isaiah 13:15 ). Even women and children are not spared. Virgins and matrons are shamefully used ( Isaiah 13:16 ); children are ruthlessly dashed to the ground ( Isaiah 13:16 ; Psalms 137:9 ); every human passion being allowed free course, the most dreadful excesses are perpetrated. No doubt in modern times civilization and Christianity tend to alleviate in some degree the horrors of war; but in a war of conquest, when the destruction of a nationality is aimed at, frightful scenes are almost sure to occur, sufficient to sadden all but the utterly unfeeling. It should be the earnest determination of every Christian to endeavor in every possible way to keep his own country free from the guilt of such wars.