Chapter 26—“Behold Your God!”
In Isaiah’s day the spiritual understanding of mankind was dark
through misapprehension of God. Long had Satan sought to lead men
to look upon their Creator as the author of sin and suffering and death.
Those whom he had thus deceived, imagined that God was hard and
exacting. They regarded Him as watching to denounce and condemn,
unwilling to receive the sinner so long as there was a legal excuse
for not helping him. The law of love by which heaven is ruled had
been misrepresented by the archdeceiver as a restriction upon men’s
happiness, a burdensome yoke from which they should be glad to
escape. He declared that its precepts could not be obeyed and that the
penalties of transgression were bestowed arbitrarily.
In losing sight of the true character of Jehovah, the Israelites were
without excuse. Often had God revealed Himself to them as one “full
of compassion, and gracious, long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy
and truth.”
Psalm 86:15
. “When Israel was a child,” He testified, “then
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I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt.”
Hosea 11:1
.
Tenderly had the Lord dealt with Israel in their deliverance from
Egyptian bondage and in their journey to the Promised Land. “In all
their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved
them: in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare
them, and carried them all the days of old.
Isaiah 63:9
.
“My presence shall go with thee,” was the promise given during
the journey through the wilderness.
Exodus 33:14
. This assurance
was accompanied by a marvelous revelation of Jehovah’s character,
which enabled Moses to proclaim to all Israel the goodness of God,
and to instruct them fully concerning the attributes of their invisible
King. “The Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord,
The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in
goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity
and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.”
Exodus 34:6, 7
.
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