“Come, my people, enter you into your chambers, and shut your doors about you: hide yourself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be over. For, behold, the LORD comes out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain (vs20-21).”
“If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God” (I Pet 4:11). I must speak as an oracle of God. I must OPEN my mouth with God’s word. It is written, “he that has my word, let him speak my word faithfully”, so that we’re to preach the word of God alone, not human interpretation and deceit, but EXACTLY what God says (Jer 23:28). Paul says, “we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ” (2 Cor 2:17). We move and speak as OBTAINING the mercies we preach, the grace we proclaim, in the love the TRUTH needs. We are SENT by God to do you good, and you must believe what we preach.
The glory of preaching is obedience DEMANDED; it is not merely to hear wonderful things but that we must OBEY them also. Without obedience, the word profits us not. It is written, “be you doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22). “Do and teach”, even as our Lord Jesus, living by His word (Acts 1:1). The man that LIVES and preaches God’s word is sent by God. He is bold and open. He tells the truth for your good. And, he knows the joy of the Lord is in obedience, that as we do His will, we live the BEST we can live. Christ said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”, so we live the high life following Him, and everything else is vain (John 10:10). With this, I introduce my subject: HIDE YOURSELF (Is 26:18-21)
“We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not worked any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen. Your dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, you that dwell in dust: for your dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead (vs18-19).”
We have been helpless sinners, doing the flesh, and living for self to no avail. We haven’t achieved what we desired by our selfish ends, but you’ve lovingly chastised and emptied us, bringing affliction on us, so that we CRY out and pray to you (Is 26:16-17). You have been bringing us low to bring us up again. It is written, “Your dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise”, so that resurrection glory, the end of all things in Jesus Christ, is the HOPE for today, that God gives life to the dead and raises up happiness where misery dwelt. He explains this as His mercy to the poor, “For you have made of a city an heap; of a defensed city a ruin: a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built… for you have been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress”, so that God HUMBLES so that He might fill (Is 25:2, 4). He DESTROYS the proud, so that He may save graciously the afflicted.
Where are you? What is your standing with God? Have you and I lived in vain? Have we walked in a way that profits not, using Christ for selfish ends and offering empty prayer? Scripture says, “You ask, and receive not, because you ask sickly, that you may consume it upon your lusts”, you ask the wrong way for wrong things (James 4:3). You ask to “glorify God”, but you mean “to use God’s glory for myself”, and He has brought you down.
Repent of your sins and pray to God. You are stabbed in the heart for your SINFULNESS. Serve the Son of God now.
He says, “Come, my people, enter you into your chambers, and shut your doors about you”, live the life that He says live. Depend upon the word, promises, and Lordship of Jesus Christ. Obey what He says in the power that He gives and EXPERIENCE the RESURRECTION that He preaches. God GRANTS revival to men who’ve squandered our time on earth, giving us Jesus Christ now.
The Lord is coming. He says, “For, behold, the Lord comes out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity” (Is 26:21). Judgment Day is coming and God shall avenge. Hide down here in the word and obedience of Christ. Hide down here EXPERIENCING your joy with pain, until the Lord DELIVERS us from sin completely, punishing the WICKED and rewarding the righteous. There is great reward and peace; serve God FOR it.
