Isaiah 17:1-6

The Burden of Damascus

Isa 17:1-6

"Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city" ( Isa 17:1 ).

Damascus never dreamed this desolation. Men seldom do dream the wisest things. They have debased dreaming into nightmare. Damascus was the fair metropolis of Syria; she said, I shall always be clothed in purple and fine linen; the course of Damascus is a course of ascent and ever-increasing illumination. When cities do not pray they go down. The city as a whole may not pray, but there are praying souls in it, and because of those praying souls the pride of the city is not stained by the Almighty. Still the ten save the city; still one wise man saves the city; still the little child is the lightning-conductor of the house: so God's lightning is harmless because the little child is there. The cradle saves the city. Think of possible degradation. Damascus shall be taken away from the roll of cities; when the angels call the roll of the earth, they will never more say "Damascus." The alphabetic order will be inverted, the alphabetic status will be obliterated; the proudest, fairest, queenliest city shall become a handful of ashes. Take care what you are about. London great London is nothing before him who sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and whose throne is upon the circle of heaven.

But we need not apply the doctrine to cities; we must not escape by such generalities. It is possible for a man to moralise about the fate of a city, and forget that the principle of the text is aimed at all life. Life poorly handled means loss of life; faculty fallen into desuetude means faculty fallen into death. You are now a great man: to-morrow you shall be taken away from the list of the living; now men come to you as to a counsellor; they propound their difficulties, they submit their plans and policies, and they invoke the aid of your solid and well-tested judgment. If you are proud of this you may before another sunset be a babbling idiot. God can do without you; you are not indispensable to the universe. Be humble, meek of heart, lowly of spirit; say that if you have a lamp that shines afar, and men call it genius it was kindled by the divine hand for beneficent ends. We have nothing that we have not received. If we are bailiffs of large estates, the estates are not ours; we must keep correct books, we must write up the story of every day, we must abide the coming of the auditor; it is expected of stewards that a man be found faithful. We have nothing to boast of; our greatness is but a vapour, a poor blurred cloud, unless we hold it as God's trustees, and are prepared to give an account at last of how we have used and expended every talent he gave us. Think nothing of earth's greatness. Damascus was taken away from being a city. God can disfranchise London, and Paris, and New York, and Constantinople. They are of no consequence to him, except as instruments carrying out his will, representing his kingdom, and doing his service in the world. What is true of cities is true of men. The moment you begin to hold your talents for yourself you begin to lose them. Understand this is not the fall of some little village; it was the fall of the Syrian capital that had lifted itself against Judah, that had joined rebellious Israel to stop the purposes of God. How bitter is the declaration! Damascus shall be disfranchised. Damascus shall have no vote. Damascus shall be turned into a cipher. Fair Damascus shall be a ruinous heap; men who knew her long ago shall come and seek her, and there shall be a mocking spirit in the air that shall say, She is there! Thrust your hand into these white ashes and find her if you can! She offended God, and God has decreed the punishment of obliteration upon her. We have all seen great men reduced to this littleness; we have seen great and pompous causes come to nothing: what is the reason of this? Because they have entered into false alliances, or have cultivated a spirit of rebellion, or have forgotten to pray. The disease is moral or spiritual; it is the heart that has gone down, and when the heart of a city or a man goes down in moral quality, in devout aspiration, then the sunshine is sucked out of the life, and the rest is night!

Read on; the threnody deepens in mournfulness: "The cities of Aroer are forsaken" ( Isa 17:2 ). That would seem to be one of God's negative punishments. There is no violence inflicted upon the cities of Aroer; God simply turns away from them. God is God. Can the city thrive? It is thus that many a man is left. He is not cleft in twain, he is not smitten by some thunderbolt, and shattered into ten thousand atoms; he is simply left alone by his Maker. Saul was left alone; Saul said, Bring me up Samuel, I am forsaken of God. When a man is divinely forsaken he dips his pen to write in the old style of energy and luminousness, and behold there is no ink, or the pen is lost, or the hand, poor old hand, has lost its cunning. What has happened? God has gone from the man; the man proved himself to be a liar, a thief, a hypocrite, a foul person, and the Lord, after much remonstrance and expostulation, has left him, and gone away away. Let us take care what we are about. We do not hold even our character except under certain conditions which we may easily violate. You have built up your reputation these many years; it can be shattered in a moment. You cannot make a character in an hour; you may require fifty years to build one: but a single wrong act, and it is gone, and men would hesitate to tell where it once stood. You will ask them where, and they will become deaf; you will inquire for particulars, and they will look vacant: they are ashamed of the shattered memory. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall!

Yet God will make some use of the ground on which the cities of Aroer stood: "They shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid." Think of London a sheepfold! Think of what are termed the royal thoroughfares turned into sheepwalks! The Lord can better use his ground than allow the city to stand upon it any more; so he will call in the unoffending sheep, and let them pasture where princes ought to have been born, and kings ought to have walked in moral sovereignty. The earth is the Lord's. He will reclaim the places we have befouled. We shall give up to the lower creation the cities which we might have glorified.

Read on! "The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim" ( Isa 17:3 ). He shall be an exposed personality. He shall not have a hiding-place; he who could once surround himself by what he thought to be invincible walls shall find himself quite exposed to all the assaults of the enemy; not a covering left, not a roof to his head, not a fire at which to warm his coldness. Ephraim would make alliance with Syria, and they would both go against Judah. Ephraim never made a great reputation; he was a cake unturned, a caked baked only on one side; and it is said of him, that Ephraim being armed and carrying bows turned back in the day of battle. When he was wanted he was not found; when he could have been of use he was taken sick. This is not ancient history. This is the living story of the present day. When some men are wanted they cannot be found; they afterwards come, and say that they ought to have been sought for. We have not time now to seek for men; this is not a time to go after men, begging and beseeching them to do the Lord's work: men should come and ask for appointments, and submit themselves to service, and should gratefully and eagerly demand that they be put under the Lord's discipline. If any of you are making yourselves nuisances in your respective churches, sitting back and waiting to be called upon, holding yourselves in great esteem, as if you must be gone after, and deputationised, and be asked to confer upon the Christ the honour of your weakness, take heed! These are not times to play such devils' games: these are the times when men should spring to their feet and say, Make all the use of us you can; and as for thee, thou crucified Saviour, the morning is thine and the night; use us all the day long. Surely the time will come when we shall see virgin enthusiasm once more; when we shall be startled by eager passion to do the Lord's work in the world. If not, our fortress will be taken from us, whatever our fortress is; the child will be taken; the money will be spent by a stranger's hand; health will give way; and the word which was once a security will become a jest. The Lord reigneth.

"And in that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin" ( Isa 17:4 ). The literal rendering is, The glory of Jacob shall come to emaciation all strength gone. You have seen the consumptive youth: is there any sadder spectacle on the face of this sad earth than that of a man who yesterday young and strong is now thin-fingered, gaunt, ghastly, coughing in his weakness; his eyes too bright; the blood all shrunk away? He can hardly walk; he hopes, he fears, he consults every one, for despair is not particular as to consultation: watch him! That is what the glory of Jacob shall be like. The glory of Jacob shall be turned into emaciation: his face shall be blanched, his knees shall smite together, all his pride shall be withered up, and he who once lifted himself on high shall be smitten low, and none shall be able to tell his burial-place. The Lord reigneth.

And the judgment of God shall come down upon him "And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the corn, and reapeth the ears with his arm; and it shall be as he that gathereth ears in the valley of Rephaim" ( Isa 17:5 ). That valley was fruitful; it was called in the old time "The Valley of Giants." The Philistines kept their eyes constantly upon it, and when the chosen people held the valley, and when it was filled with corn, then the Philistines fell upon it and took it away. So shall it be with men who try contests with God, who invite the Lord to battle. You shall sow the corn, another hand shall reap it; you shall go to all the labour and the expense, but not one ear of grain shall you gather into your garner. This is the Lord's government; this providence: providence is judgment, judgment is providence: God is love: God is a consuming fire.

"Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the Lord God of Israel" ( Isa 17:6 ). And it is against Israel that he is denouncing these judgments. He cannot get away from his own mercy. "Yet" that is a gospel word; that is the nature of an anthem. There is the token of hope, the signal of possible deliverance and return and enfranchisement. Something shall be left. Just one or two little ears multiply them by God's intention, and they shall become a harvest: "two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough" take them down, multiply them by the purpose of the divine love, and they shall become as a field of fruitfulness. Is it not so with us? We have something left yet: the little child is left; the business is not wholly ruined; we have good health or good spirits; we have a friend or two here and there, kindly voices are not wholly dead: what is the meaning of these remnants of things? These remnants mean that God wants us home again; wants to see us in tears of penitence; wants to meet us at the cross of Christ; wants to reclaim us from the power and the captivity of the devil; wants to make us in very deed his own children; wants to recover us from our wandering, and set us like a fallen star in the brotherhood of the suns, to go out no more for ever. Return, O wanderer, to thy home!

Prayer

Almighty God, as thou hast given to us full hands, so do thou grant unto us by thy Holy Spirit grateful hearts. Goodness and mercy have followed us all the days of our life, now like spring, and now like harvest, and now like restful wintertime. Thou hast given unto us all things richly to enjoy: how can we enjoy the things made if we do not enjoy first the Maker thereof? We would look unto our Maker, and unto the Holy One of Israel, and we would connect all we have of earthly health and blessing with the Name Eternal, and with the Cross that signifies the love of God. We would not any more be thankless or heedless creatures; we would that our hearts might be touched with the pathos of the Saviour's life and death; we would see him in all gifts, in all opportunities for service, in all spheres of suffering. God forbid that we should be as the beasts of the earth, eating what thou hast sent, and forgetting the Sender. Thou dost give us our daily bread; for us thou dost find pools and fountains in the desert: behold, all things are for our sakes, for we are made in the image and likeness of God. How can we praise thee; what shall we render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward us? We bless thee for fields laden with good things, for gardens and orchards that have brought forth abundantly. These are thy sanctuary, Lord; thou hast a great dwelling-place; thou hast not excluded thyself from the humblest corner of thy creation; the meanest flower bears thy signature; the tiniest, weakest life is a spark of thine own eternity. Make us solemn in the presence of all things, seeing that yet we do not know all their meaning or realise all their comfort We bless thee for spring and summer, for harvest and winter; these are parts of thy pledge and covenant to man: thou hast ever been faithful, we have often broken the vow. The Lord have mercy upon us when we humbly and contritely pour out our confessions at the Cross. Save us from saying, I have played the fool exceedingly! for then should we be haughty and vain in our humiliation: help us rather to say, God be merciful to me a sinner! then our hearts shall be emptied of self and of vanity and of foolish pride, and lying before the Cross, broken and shattered, we shall be. healed and built up again. Help us to see thee in our personal lives, in the special providences which make up our individual history; help us to see thee at home, the loved house, the little sanctuary, the miniature heaven; help us to see thee in all the roughness and discipline of life, lest we think this is altogether the devil's world forsaken of God: thou canst not forsake any world that has carried the Cross. The Lord hear us, and increase us in wisdom and in under-Standing, in grace and in charity, in spirituality and hopefulness. The Lord hear us for our loved ones, for the sick and the weary, for the children of night, for the bearers of cruel pain; for all who are on the sea, for our loved ones far away and on the rolling billows, still one with us and thinking of us, as we are one with them and thinking of them: annihilate all space and time this holy Sabbath hour, and make us feel that all friends are near because Jesus is close at hand. Amen.