Isaiah 38:17-19 Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but you have in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption… I. HEALTHFUL BITTERNESS. You have it in the first sentence, which runs in Hebrew very nearly as follows: "Behold, to peace (or to health) my bitter bitterness." This means — 1. That Hezekiah underwent a great, sad, and unexpected change. Let us never boast ourselves of to-morrow, for we know not what a day may bring forth. 2. Hezekiah's condition was one of emphatic sorrow, for he says, "Behold, to peace, Marah, Marah — bitter, bitter." Marah was a notable spot in the journeys of the children of Israel, and Hezekiah had come spiritually to a double Marah. Have you ever passed that way and drank of double bitterness — the wormwood and the gall? Some of us know what it means, for we have had at the same time a body racked with pain, and a soul full of heaviness. Perhaps the double Marah has come in another form: it is a time of severe trouble, and just then the friend in whom you trusted has forsaken you. Or, peradventure, you are in temporal difficulties, and at the same time in great spiritual straits. The flying fish is pursued by a fierce enemy in the sea, and when it flies into the air birds of prey are eager afar it; in like manner, both in temporal and spiritual things we are assailed. "Deep calleth unto deep." 3. The meaning of our verse is not at all exhausted by this explanation; we find in it a better meaning by far. "Behold, to peace bitter bitterness" — that is to say. the king's double bitterness wrought his peace and health. Take the word in the sense of health first. Many a time when a man has been exceedingly ill the medicine which has met his case has been intensely disagreeable to the taste; but it has operated as a strengthening tonic, it has purged away the cause of the malady, and the man has recovered. Hezekiah bore witness that God had sanctified his bodily sickness and his mental sorrow to his spiritual health. While he lay with his face to the wall, he read a great deal upon that wall which he had seen nowhere else. The king's bitterness of soul led him to repent of his wrongdoing, as he saw wherein he had sinned. 4. This bitter bitterness made Hezekiah see the need of his God more than ever he had seen it before. II. LOVING DELIVERANCE. The original runs thus: "And Thou hast loved my soul from the pit of destruction." Taken in its first sense, the king ascribes to the love of God his deliverance from death and the grave, and praises God for his restoration to the land of the living. But the words of inspired men frequently have a deeper significance than appears upon the surface, and indeed they often conceal an inner sense which perhaps they themselves did not perceive, and hence the king's words are as dark sayings upon a harp full of meaning within meaning. At any rate, taking the language out of the mouth of Hezekiah, we will use it for expressing our own emotions, and give to it a wider sense if such be not the original range of its meaning. Let us notice three things. 1. The deed of grace: "Thou hast brought my soul from the pit of corruption."(1) From the pit of hell. (2) Of sinfulness, as horrible a pit as hell itself; indeed, under some aspects it is the same thing, for sinfulness is hell, and to live under the power of sin is to be condemned. (3) From the awful consciousness of wrath under which we once groaned. 2. The power which performed it. Love. Divine love is a catholicon, a universal medicine. No spiritual disease can resist its healing power. 3. The modus operandi of this love. "Thou hast embraced my soul out of the pit of corruption." Yonder is the child in the pit, and the father, wishing to save it, goes down into the pit and embraces his beloved one, and so brings him up to life and safety again. After this manner dig Jesus save us. He embraced us by taking our nature, and so becoming one with us. All our lives He communes with us, and embraces us with arms of mighty love, and so uplifts us from the pit of corruption. III. ABSOLUTE PARDON. "For Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back." This King Hezekiah mentions as the cause of his restored peace and health. Sin was the foreign element in his spiritual constitution, and as long as it was there it caused fret and worry and spiritual disease. Notice — 1. The burden. Sins. 2. The owner of this burden. "My sins." 3. The comprehensiveness of the burden. "All my sins." The Lord comes to deal with them. He casts them behind His back. Where can that be? It means annihilation, non-existence. ( C. H. Spurgeon.) Parallel Verses KJV: Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. |
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