Isaiah 5:2

DIVINE DISAPPOINTMENTS

Isaiah 5:2. He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

“I believe in God.” Which God? The God constructed for us by philosophers, who is impassive, throned in eternal calm, unmoved by the crimes or the virtues of men, all of which He has foreseen from eternal ages, and which cannot in any way affect Him at the time of their occurrence; a God who towers above men, majestic and unchangeable, like an Alpine peak, which is the same whether sunlight cheers or clouds darken the valleys beneath? No, but the God of the Bible, who loves and hates, who rejoices with us in our gladness and sorrows with us in our griefs, who foresees and overrules all, and yet can hope and be disappointed.
I. That God can be disappointed is distinctly the implication of our text. “He looked that it,” &c.

1. Isaiah’s parable recalls the privileges which God had conferred upon the Jews; and we know that He dealt with them as He did, in order that they might become a holy nation (Exodus 19:6; Deuteronomy 7:6; Deuteronomy 26:18). Was their persistent unholiness no disappointment to Him?

2. The same truth is implied in what we are told of God’s feelings in view of the wickedness of the antediluvians (Genesis 6:5). He had made man in His own image, in order that He might continue therein, and shine with the lustre of His own moral perfections; each man was to be a planet in the moral universe, reflecting the glory of the great central Sun; and when He saw man transformed into the image of Satan, and His purposes concerning him frustrated, He was filled with profound regret.

3. The same truth is implied in what we are told concerning Christ. “He came unto His own” (John 1:11). For what purpose? Certainly not that He might be rejected, but that He might be received by them. But He was rejected! See how forcibly this is brought out in His parable (Luke 20:9—especially Isaiah 5:13).

4. It is implied in Christ’s tears and lament over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41; Matthew 23:37).

5. It is implied in the apostolic declarations, that God is desirous that all men should repent and be saved (1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9). We must not minimise the force of θέλει—ὃς πάντας�. The strength of any one’s desire is to be measured by what he will do or sacrifice to accomplish it; and God gave His only begotten Son in order that all men might have everlasting life. But all men are not saved. That the Scriptures teach that God can be—and often is—disappointed, is clear.

II. “But it is impossible that God can be disappointed, seeing that He is omniscient and foresees all things. Surprise, and consequently disappointment, is not possible to perfect knowledge.”

1. This objection appears to be very reasonable, but against it there is this fatal objection, that we cannot measure God by our reason [586] We cannot tell how He will act or feel under certain circumstances: all we know is, that under all circumstances God will act and feel in a manner worthy of Himself. But what is, or is not, consistent with His attributes, we are not in a position to determine. Take, for instance, His omnipresence. If we were present when dastardly wrongs and great crimes are committed, and were clothed with power to prevent them, how certain it is that we should prevent them [589] But every day He stands by and sees such wickednesses perpetrated, and is silent, and gives no sign. Let us, then, not be in a hurry to decide that disappointment is not consistent with omniscience.

2. There is an experience very frequent among men, which may perhaps help us a little to understand what disappointment is in God. Evils may be long distinctly foreseen—as, for example, the death of a dear friend suffering from an incurable disease—but yet not realised until they actually occur. The blow is foreseen long before it falls, but it is felt when it falls. Every man knows that he must die, and yet how nearly a surprise is death to every man!
3. Whether we can understand it or not, it is our duty to accept this declaration, that in view of the ingratitude and sinfulness of men whom God has blessed and has sought to win to virtue and holiness, He is profoundly grieved and disappointed. Such declarations are not to be dismissed as “anthromorphological.” However much that is in them may be figurative, there is a reality behind the figures.

[586] God is to us, and to every creature incomprehensible. If thou couldst fathom or measure Him, and know His greatness by a comprehensive knowledge, He were not God. A creature can comprehend nothing but a creature. You may know God, but not comprehend Him; as your foot treadeth on the earth, but doth not cover all the earth. The sea is not a sea if you can hold it in a spoon. Thou canst not comprehend the sun which thou seest, and by which thou seest all things else, nor the sea, nor the earth, no, nor a worm, nor a blade of grass: thy understanding knoweth not all that God hath put into the least of these; thou art a stranger to thyself, both body and soul. And thinkest thou, that perfectly comprehendest nothing, to comprehend God? Stop then thy over-bold inquiries, and remember that thou art a shallow, finite worm, and God is infinite. First seek to comprehend the heaven and earth and whole creation, before thou think of comprehending Him to whom the whole world is nothing, or vanity.—Baxter, 1615–1691.

[589] During one part of the trip our party was augmented by a redif, or soldier of the reserves, who was going home on leave of absence. He wore the uniform of the Turkish soldier, but I observed that in the evening he threw over his shoulders a woman’s robe, made of a soft thin kind of felt, worn by the women in this country, and beautifully embroidered in colours around the neck and bosom. I had the curiosity to inquire into the history of this gown, and could scarcely restrain my indignation at the story I heard. This soldier said he had got the gown at Saitschar. After the discovery of the evacuation of the place by the Servians, he and a party of four or five more entered the town. In one of the houses they found a Servian family that had decided to remain in their house, and throw themselves on the mercy of the Turks. This family consisted of an old man, a married daughter with two children, and a girl of fourteen, whose relationship to the rest of the family they did not take the trouble to inquire into. The husband of the woman, if she had one, was absent. They began by fastening all the doors, so that nobody could escape: then they thoroughly pillaged the house, and took and divided everything of value among themselves. They were in the house a day and a night, for it was a rich one apparently, and it took some time to get everything properly divided and packed; and besides, they were disposed to be merry and make a night of it.
I will not enter into the details of what they did during this night, because there are people who do not apparently object in the least to the commission of these deeds, who object to anybody lifting a finger to prevent them, or even to the expression of any indignation on the subject, but who are dreadfully shocked at the recital of them; and I wish to spare the feelings of these sensitive persons. Suffice it to say that the next morning the question arose as to what should be done with the two women, the two children, and the old man. Some of the party were in favour of letting them go; but the rest were of opinion that it would be amusing to kill them, and a discussion ensued, which lasted more than an hour, in presence of the weeping, trembling victims, who were wildly begging for mercy, and among whom, it should be remembered, there was a mother begging for the lives of her two children. The narrator said that he, with another of the party, had leant to the side of mercy, but that the majority were against them, and that they finally ended the discussion and the prayers of the victims by falling upon them with their sabres. I asked him how he had come by the gown, and he replied that, seeing what the result was going to be, he had stripped it from the girl while the discussion was in progress, before she was killed, so that it might not be blood-stained. He had taken a fancy to it, because it would just be right for his daughter, who was about the same age; and his companions, perceiving this, made him pay rather high for it—fifty piastres. He was a heavy, dull-looking brute, and it seemed strange to think that he had a daughter, a pretty, tender, joyous little thing, perhaps, that would wear this gown with delight. He told the story in a quiet, phlegmatic manner, and spoke very freely, looking upon me as an Englishman, and therefore as a friend.—Letter in the “Daily News,” Nov. 15, 1876.

III. Whatever mystery may attach to this declaration, consider how precious it is—

1. A God who can be disappointed is precisely the God we need. How else could we be assured of His sympathy with us in the disappointments which so frequently come upon us, and which make up so considerable a part of the experiences of our life? Were God such a being as the philosophers have imagined, we might feel that He understood us, as an anatomist understands exactly how a frog on which he is operating will act when exposed to galvanic shocks, but we could not have had the inexpressible consolation of the assurance of His sympathy. It is only a mother who has been bereaved who can comfort a mother who is weeping over her dead child.
2. A God who is so much interested in us that our failures in virtue inspire Him with profound grief and disappointment, is again precisely the God we need. Of what value to us would be a God who looked upon us with as little emotion as a king may be supposed to do upon the ants who crawl across his path? It is because men do not think of God as He is revealed in our text, that they sin against Him; if they did but realise how He feels about them, it would be impossible for them to transgress as they do. I accept His declaration, that He is disappointed in view of human sin, and I try to measure His disappointment. I find help in this endeavour in this Old Testament parable: how profound would be the disappointment of a husbandman under such circumstances as are supposed! But I find yet more valuable help in the greatest of the New Testament parables. How bitter must have been the disappointment of the father of the Prodigal when he went away into a far country! Such disappointments break the hearts of tens of thousands of fathers and mothers, and brings down their grey hairs with sorrow to the grave; and precisely such disappointment it is, only vaster, deeper, sadder, that fills the heart of our Heavenly Father when His children go astray. It is thus that some of you have grieved Him; it is thus that some of you are grieving Him to-day by your contemptuous disregard of His offers of mercy and forgiveness. Oh, think what it is that you do, and surely your carelessness must give place to profound contrition, and you will resemble the Prodigal in your penitence, as you have done in your ingratitude and your guilt.