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Yet he went right on sinning.
(J. C. Philpot, "The
Fruit of the Lips" 1843)
"For the iniquity of his covetousness was I angry
and smote him. I hid My face in anger. Yet he
went right on sinning." Isaiah 57:17
What a creature man is! What an obstinate,
perverse, rebellious wretch; that wrath and
judgments will not mend him!
The Lord tells us here why He smote His people.
It was for the iniquity of their covetousness; the
word "covetousness" pointing out what the human
heart is chiefly engaged upon. For we must not limit
the expression merely to avarice after money, but
consider it as embracing the going out of the heart
of man after the things of time and sense, the
insatiable desire of the carnal mind after earthly
and sensual gratification.
This covetousness God speaks of as iniquity lies in
this--that man loves everything earthly and sensual
better than God; that he seeks pleasure from every
object but the Lord; that he willfully and greedily runs
into every base lust; making carnal things his delight
and happiness.
Now the Lord, provoked by the iniquity of his
covetousness, smote him . . .
with stroke upon stroke,
with disappointment upon disappointment,
with affliction upon affliction,
with trouble upon trouble.
But it was all thrown away. It did not raise up in
him a spiritual work; it did not bring him to the
Lord's feet; it did not change his will; it did not
renew him in the spirit of his mind. It left him
as it found him--earthly, sensual, and dead. Or
rather, it left him worse than it found him, for his
heart became more hardened, and his conscience
more stupefied than before!
So obstinate, rebellious, wayward, perverse a
wretch is man, that no step which the Lord could
take in a way of judgment or anger, (independent
of the Spirit's operations, for that is the point I
am endeavoring to enforce), could ever have the
least effect upon him.
Now do not you parents often see this very thing
in your children naturally? You sometimes cannot
make anything of them; there is such a frowardness
and perversity of disposition in them, that all your
chastisements and every means you employ to make
them better, only seem to make them worse. You
cannot, with all the pains you take with them, make
them one whit better.
Now what froward children often are to their
parents, such are we toward God . . .
His stripes,
His frowns,
His hiding Himself,
His sharp afflictions,
do not produce in us any spiritual good. But we
go right on sinning: muttering perverseness, full of
rebellion, peevishness, and discontent. And though
we may feel the rod of God upon us, yet there is . . .
no breaking down of heart,
no submission of soul,
no contrition of spirit before Him.
"For the iniquity of his covetousness was I angry
and smote him. I hid My face in anger. Yet he
went right on sinning." Isaiah 57:17
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