![]() ![]() ![]() Mark how wonderfully, in the simple language of my text, deep truths about this sin of ours are conveyed. And so my text comes with its indictment-You who by nature were formed in His image, you to whom it is open to sympathise with His designs, to harmonise your wills with His will, and to bring all the dark and crooked ways in which you walk into full parallelism with His way-you have departed into darkness of unlikeness, and in thought and in ways are the opposites of God. The blessedness, the peace, the true manhood of a man, are that his ways and thoughts should be like God’s. The true state for each of us is that we should, as the great astronomer said he had done in regard to his own science, ‘think God’s thoughts after Him,’ and have our minds filled with His truth and our wills all harmonised with His purposes, and that we should thus make our ways to run parallel with the ways of God. If God and man were utterly unlike, then there would be no evil in our unlikeness and no need for our repentance. If there were no analogy, there could be no contrast. ‘Whose image and superscription hath it?’ Render unto God the things that are declared to be God’s, because they bear His likeness and are stamped with His signature.īut that very necessary and natural likeness between God and man makes more solemnly sinful the voluntary unlikeness which we have brought upon ourselves. For the image in which God made man at the beginning is not an image that it is in the power of men to cast away, and in the worst of his corruptions and the widest of his departures he still bears upon him the signs of likeness ‘to Him that created him.’ The coin is rusty, battered, defaced but still legible are the head and the writing. Therefore-’ your ways a likeness to the Father. First, ‘ My thoughts are not your thoughts’-you have not taken My truth into your minds, nor My purposes into your wills you do riot think God’s thoughts. Observe the change of pronouns in the two clauses. Our ‘ways’-our manner of life-are not parallel with His, as they should be.īut that opposition is expressed with a remarkable variation. God’s ‘ways’ are His acts, the manner and course of His working considered as a path on which He moves, and on which, in some sense, we can also journey. ![]() The things that God thinks and purposes are not the things that man thinks and purposes, and therefore, because the thoughts are different, the outcomes of them in deeds are divergent. ‘ My thoughts are not your thoughts,’ saith the Lord. Notice the remarkable order and alternation of pronouns in the first verse. We have here an unlikeness declared, and upon that is rested an appeal. Let me deal, then, with these separately. First, the antagonism, and the indictment and exhortation that are based upon that second, the analogy but superiority, and the exhortation and hope that are built upon that. The former of them is the reason why ‘the wicked’ and ‘unrighteous man’ ought to and must ‘turn’ from ‘his ways’ and ‘thoughts,’ the latter of them is the reason why, ‘turning,’ he may be sure that the Lord ‘will abundantly pardon.’Īnd so we have here two things to consider in reference to the relation between the divine purposes and acts and man’s purposes and acts. The former of them speaks of unlikeness and opposition, the latter of elevation and superiority the former of them is the basis of an indictment and an exhortation, the latter is the basis of an encouragement and a promise. If we look at these two verses a little more closely we shall perceive that they by no means cover the same ground nor suggest the same idea as to the relationship between God’s ‘ways’ and ‘thoughts’ and ours. And what has preceded is this: ‘Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, for He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.’ That is why the prophet dilates upon the difference between the ‘thoughts’ and the ‘ways’ of God and of men. The ‘for’ at the beginning of each clause points us back to the previous statement, and both of the verses of our text are in different ways its foundation. These words are grand poetry and noble theology, but they are meant practically and in fiery earnestness. Scripture gives us no revelations concerning God merely in order that we may know about Him. ![]()
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