In Isaiah, chapter sixty-five, verses one through seven, God responds to Isaiah’s prayer by describing His continual appeal to the rebellious nation to return to HIm. Because of their wickedness, God would recompense them with judgment as in verses six to seven, “Behold, it is written before me: I will not keep silence, but will recompense, even recompense into their bosom. Your iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers together, saith the LORD, which have burned incense upon the mountains, and blasphemed me upon the hills: therefore will I measure their former work into their bosom.” Unfortunately, this rebellious nation experienced the Assyrian invasion, from chapters one through thirty-seven, and the Babylonian captivity, in chapters thirty-eight to sixty-six, respectively.
The Gentiles came to seek God and find him because they were first sought and found by him. Often He meets some thoughtless trifler or profligate opposer and says to him, Behold me, and a speedy change takes place. All the gospel day, Christ waited to be gracious. The chosen people were bidden, but would not come. It is not without cause, they are rejected by God. They would do what most pleased them. They grieved, they vexed the Holy Spirit. They forsook God’s temple and sacrificed in groves. They cared not for the distinction between clean and unclean meats, before it was taken away by the gospel. Perhaps this is put for all forbidden pleasures, and all that is thought to be gotten by sin, that abominable thing which the Lord hates. Christ denounced many woes against the pride and hypocrisy of the His chosen people. The proof against them is plain. And let us watch against pride and self-preference, remembering that every sin, and the most secret thoughts of man’s heart, are known and will be judged by God.