Former Ignorance - Future Knowledge (Part 2)

Pastor Bill Farrow

Isaiah 28:12-13

¹²To whom He said, “This is the rest with which You may cause the weary to rest,” And, “This is the refreshing”; Yet they would not hear.  ¹³But the word of the Lord was to them, “Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, Line upon line, line upon line, Here a little, there a little,” That they might go and fall backward, and be broken And snared and caught.

Isaiah 28:12

To whom he said - To whom God had said; that is, to the Jews. He had taught them the way of rest through the prophets, but they had refused to learn.

This is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest - That is, this is the true way of happiness, to wit, by keeping the commands of God which had been so often repeated as to become to them objects of satiety and disgust.

And, this is the refreshing, yet they would not hear - This is the way in which the mind may be comforted.

Isaiah 28:13

But the word of the LORD was to them - Or, rather, but the word of YAHWEH “shall be” unto them. This refers to the mode in which God said He would instruct them in a foreign land. They had complained Isa. 28:9-10 that his instructions had been like a short lesson constantly repeated, as we instruct children. God here says that it should be as they said it was - they would be carried away to a distant land, and long abide among strangers; they would have ample time there to acquire instruction, and all that they would receive would be lesson after lesson of the same kind - line upon line, one judgment following another, until the lesson of their disobedience had been fully inculcated, and they had been brought to true repentance.

Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, Line upon line, line upon line, here a little, and there a little - So they had said (Isa. 28:10) the lessons of God were to them by the prophets. So God says his lessons “shall be” to them by judgment. It shall not come in one sudden and overpowering burst of indignation, but it shall be, as it were, dealt out to them in small portions that it may not be soon exhausted.

That they might go and fall backward, and be broken And snared and caught - That they may go into captivity, and stumble, and be broken by the judgments of God. God will so deal out the lessons of his judgment and wrath, that as a people they shall be broken up, and made prisoners, and be borne to a distant land.

He would bring utter ruin upon them. By their profane contempt of God and his word they are but hastening on their own ruin, and ripening themselves for it; it is that they may go and fall backward, may grow worse and worse, may depart further and further from God, and proceed from one sin to another, till they be quite broken, and snared, and taken, and ruined.  They have here a little and there a little of the word of God; they think it too much, and say to the seers, See not; but it proves too little to convert them, and will prove enough to condemn them. If it be not a savor of life unto life, it will be a savor of death unto death.