Isaiah 43:2

Become guileless, and be like the guileless sheep whose wool is sheared off without their saying a word. Do not go from one place to another saying, "I will find God here or there." God has said, I fill the earth, "I fill the heavens," …

We are wayfarers in this life; many walk, but it is needful that we walk aright, for then is the Lord Jesus with us, as we read, When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned. But if a man take fire in his bosom, the fire of lust, the fire of immoderate desire he walketh not through, but burns this clothing of his soul.

He sets out the promise: when you shall pass through the waters, the Egyptians; the rivers, the Chaldeans; the fire, the Greeks; the flames, the Romans: for they were not entirely consumed: we have passed through fire and water (Ps 66:12). The Lord liberates his …

And through the prophet the Lord promises saying, "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and the rivers shall not overflow thee." For the rivers overflow those whom the active business of this world confounds with perturbation of mind. But he who is sustained in mind by the grace of the Holy Spirit passes through the waters, and yet is not overflowed by the rivers, because in the midst of crowds of peoples he so proceeds along his way as not to sink the head of his mind beneath the active business of the world.

"If thou go through fire, thou shalt not be burned, and the rivers shall not flow over thee." Faith has many times worked such things before the eyes of all creation. If knowledge were given the opportunity to attempt such things, it would in no …

He would still, when there was occasion, make all the interests of the children of men give way to the interests of his own children: " I will give men for thee, great men, mighty men, and men of war, and people (men by wholesale) for thy life. Nations shall be sacrificed to thy welfare." All shall be cut off rather than God's Israel shall, so precious are they in his sight.

When thou passest through the waters - This is a general promise, and means that whenever and wherever they should pass through water or fire, he would protect them. It had been true in their past history as a people; and the assurance is here given in order that they might be comforted in view of the calamities which they were then suffering in Babylon.

Jer 12:5). waters . . . fire--a proverbial phrase for the extremest perils (Ps 66:12; also Ps 138:7). Literally fulfilled at the Red Sea (Ex 14:21, 22), and in the case of the three youths cast into the fiery furnace for conscience' sake (Da 3:25, 27).

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — unbalanced-parens

Beloved Friends, there are many lights in which we can see sin. And our perception of sin very much depends upon the light in which we look at it. Sin is very terrible by the blaze of Sinai, when the mountain of Law and terrors is altogether on a smoke. It is a dreadful thing to look at sin when God speaks in thunder and all the earth trembles before Him. It is an awful thing to see sin by the light of your dying day.

BEFORE we explain the metaphor of the text, it may be well for us to remark that we are not sufficiently grateful, I fear, for the preservation which God affords to us from fire. To be startled at the dead of night with the alarming cry, and to find one’s self and children and goods in danger of being immediately consumed, must be no small trial.

BEFORE we explain the metaphor of the text, it may be well for us to remark that we are not sufficiently grateful, I fear, for the preservation which God affords to us from fire. To be startled at the dead of night with the alarming cry, and to find one’s self and children and goods in danger of being immediately consumed, must be no small trial. I have felt myself extreme gratitude to God that while both on the right hand and on the left the flames have raged, he has been pleased to spare to us this temple of our solemnities, this place where we delight to worship. And is it not meet that we should each and all render to him our hearty thanks for sparing our habitations preserving the roof under which we rest, enabling us to go out and to come in in perfect safety? Or, probably, I may be addressing some this morning who have had escaped from the very midst of the fires. Let such not only bless God for preservation in the past, but let them celebrate his goodness in plucking them as brands out of the burning. Let them be extremely grateful to God that while others this day are dying as a black heap of ashes who but yesterday were living men, we are still in the land of the dying unburned and unsinged. It was at least the trap of many of you, during the past week, and again last night, to witness a conflagration of awful grandeur, in which tongues of flame, mountains of fire, and pillars of smoke, made a spectacle to be gazed at with interest while it produced terrors and apprehensions that could awe the wildest mob into silence. With you and me it is a common mercy to be preserved day by day, and night by night from the devouring element.

EVEN down to the present day, the Jewish nation has not been destroyed. It has been made to pass through fire and through water. The story of the persecution of the Jews, both in earlier and later times, would fill many volumes with the most harrowing details. Had they not been a people whom God specially ordained to remain as His witnesses until the Messiah comes again, they would have utterly perished from among the sons of men! They have been a people scattered and peeled, rent and torn, hunted and harried—yet they still exist.

WHEN two Christians met together who were sitting under a very lean and starving ministry, one of them comforted his fellow concerning the miserable discourse by saying, "Never mind, my Friend, there is not much in the sermon, but the text is a feast by itself." So, this morning, if my words should seem to be very poor and powerless, what fullness there is in these three texts! Here you have a dainty meal of three courses.

EVEN down to the present day, the Jewish nation has not been destroyed. It has been made to pass through fire and through water. The story of the persecution of the Jews, both in earlier and later times, would fill many volumes with the most harrowing details. Had they not been a people whom God specially ordained to remain as His witnesses until the Messiah comes again, they would have utterly perished from among the sons of men! They have been a people scattered and peeled, rent and torn, hunted and harried—yet they still exist. For many a century they were equally abhorred by the heathen and the so-called Christians, yet they have lived on and they will continue to live on until a new heart and a right spirit shall be given to them and the Lord shall, in His great mercy, take away the blindness which in part has happened to Israel, so that they shall look on Him whom they have pierced and shall mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son. Then shall come the glory of the Gentiles, when more than the former glory of Israel shall be restored to her. But, Brothers and Sisters, every promise in the Scriptures, of a spiritual nature, which is made to the literal people of Israel and to the seed after the flesh, is, according to the Inspired teaching of the Apostle Paul, yet more fully made to the seed of Abraham after the spirit—for all Believers are his spiritual seed. Was he not the father of all the faithful, not of the circumcision only, but of them, also, who are uncircumcised, if they trust in the living God? To us, then, as well as to the literal Israel, is this promise made. And to the Church of God, as a whole, will it be fulfilled, even as it has been fulfilled to her thus far. Her martyrologists have told us how often she has gone through fire and through water, but the floods have not drowned her, neither have the flames consumed her.

WHEN two Christians met together who were sitting under a very lean and starving ministry, one of them comforted his fellow concerning the miserable discourse by saying, "Never mind, my Friend, there is not much in the sermon, but the text is a feast by itself." So, this morning, if my words should seem to be very poor and powerless, what fullness there is in these three texts! Here you have a dainty meal of three courses. You ought to be well nourished this morning, for I have set before you, in these passages of Scripture, quite as much as the largest capacity will be able to mark, learn and inwardly digest. Here is good pasture for the flock, wherein they may not only feed, but lie down! Did you say, "Too much text?" Possibly you might, on other occasions, reproach me with having too little of God's Word and too much of my own, but there can be no fault the other way—the more of the Word of the Lord the better! What is man's word compared with God's Word? It is as chaff to the wheat, at worst, and as mere gold-leaf to solid bullion at best! Indeed, my word is of no value at all, except as it is made up of the essence of the Divine Word. Far better than our best exposition is the Word itself—this is the pure light of the sun—ours is but a poor candle! Of the Scripture itself we cannot have too much. If you derive no other profit from this assembling of yourselves together but to have your earnest attention directed to this precious part of Holy Writ, if the Spirit of God is with you, your meditations will make this a profitable hour! Notice concerning these three texts that they are very much alike in this respect—they are each addressed to God's people under the names of Jacob and Israel.

Beloved Friends, there are many lights in which we can see sin. And our perception of sin very much depends upon the light in which we look at it. Sin is very terrible by the blaze of Sinai, when the mountain of Law and terrors is altogether on a smoke. It is a dreadful thing to look at sin when God speaks in thunder and all the earth trembles before Him. It is an awful thing to see sin by the light of your dying day. More terrible, still, will it be to see it by the light of the Judgment Day. When Abraham rose up early in the morning and looked towards Sodom, it was a lurid light that met his gaze as he saw the guilty cities blazing and smoking up towards Heaven like a vast furnace. To see sin in that light is a solemn thing. But of all the lights that ever fall upon sin, that which makes it, "like itself appear," is that which falls upon it when it is set in the light of God's Countenance. To see sin by the light of God's Love, to read its awful character by the light of the Cross—beholding Christ bleeding and dying—is the way to see sin. Nothing makes us feel sin to be so vile and guilty a thing as when we realize that it was perpetrated against the God of Infinite Love. I am going to speak at this time mainly concerning God's own people. They are to be the direct object of my talk, and I want to set their sins in the light of God's Love to them. I mean, Beloved, your sins and my own. Let us set our sin in the light of God's eternal Love and if the sight should break us down, so much the better. If it should send us away humbled and ashamed, so much the better. And if it should make us praise eternal love beyond anything we have ever done before, so much the better. My one objective will be to set before you the contrast between God's action towards His people and His people's usual action towards Him.