“Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins,” Isaiah 58:1.
TO SHEW GOD’S PEOPLE THEIR TRANSGRESSIONS IS A VITAL PART OF THE FAITHFUL MINISTER’S DUTIES!
1. Here is the supreme directive to preachers. It overrules all attempts to suppress the exposure of sin amongst God’s People, be those attempts made by councils, parliaments, presbyteries, synods or any other body that thinks that they can overrule the only King and Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul said to Timothy: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables,” 2 Timothy 4:1-4.
There are few, if indeed any, Free Presbyterian ministers have been ordained without these words being read to them!
God is on the side of any who, like Elijah of old, “have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts,” and that because, “the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant,” 1 Kings 19:10.
This command was given to Isaiah, and divinely recorded for it is a directive for ALL servants of God who find themselves in the circumstances in which Isaiah found himself.
The day in which Isaiah ministered is described for us from the very beginning of his book.
“The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah,” Isaiah 1:1-9.
Any who cannot see the parallel to the situation here in Ulster and much further abroad, is suffering from a stupidity that exceeds the mentality of the donkey and bovine stupidity, to quote the Lord as he rebukes those He was angry with back some 2800 years ago!! (more…)
This is our second study in response to a request from one of our readers to set down the Bible’s teaching on HOLINESS.