"With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." Isaiah 26:9
Isaiah 26
In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks.
Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength:
For he bringeth down them that dwell on high; the lofty city, he layeth it low; he layeth it low, even to the ground; he bringeth it even to the dust.
The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the poor, and the steps of the needy.
The way of the just is uprightness: thou, most upright, dost weigh the path of the just.
Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O Lord, have we waited for thee; the desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee.
With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.
Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord.
Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see: but they shall see, and be ashamed for their envy at the people; yea, the fire of thine enemies shall devour them.
Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought all our works in us.
O Lord our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion over us: but by thee only will we make mention of thy name.
They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise: therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.
Thou hast increased the nation, O Lord, thou hast increased the nation: thou art glorified: thou hadst removed it far unto all the ends of the earth.
Lord, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them.
Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O Lord.
We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.
Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.
Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.
For, behold, the Lord cometh 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.
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"The day is coming when "judgment shall return unto righteousness", when "a king shall reign in righteousness."
"With righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth, and He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall he slay the wicked." [Isaiah 11:4]
"Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever" (Isaiah 9:7).
He has destined, too, the creation of
"new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." [2 Peter 3:13]
A reclaimed, restored, reconciled universe is not only to witness the supremacy of righteousness, but is also to be filled with, and be for ever characterised by it. The present world, needless to say, must experience vast changes before either can come about. And only by a direct active intervention on God's part can such change be effected. Those who look to the gradual development of existing agencies for righteousness being brought in and established, the gradual spread of the gospel, the permeating of society and the whole social order by civilising and righteous influences, are wholly wrong. Not by human effort; but by divine intervention shall, or can, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
Mere philosophy of course, the philosophy which today underlies all world-politics and statecraft, looks not for, nor reckons on, any such divine interposition. The whole thought is alien to its reasoning. Man is no fallen creature here, nor his world a moral wreck in this view. At most he is but immature, and steadily, slowly, as the years pass, is evolving his own destiny. No thought is more foreign to democratic ideas and ideals alike than that man is a sinful creature in a morally-ruined creation. The whole system of human government and politics, as it is conceived generally today, is based on man's competency to look after himself in that field. Representative government, democracy, assumes both his power and ability to govern himself, as also to so adjust his environment as to conduce to progress. Utterly oblivious to any thought or consciousness of the presence and dominance of this defiling element, sin, in the world they seek to deal with, it escapes the observation of philosophers and politicians that the progress they make is largely superficial, and only material. They make the great initial mistake of leaving out the fall of man, and reasoning on the present as a normal moral state. Even where they do bring God in, it is not in any thought of Himself having plans ultimately to deal directly with the situation; but simply in the idea of His general over-ruling providence. God is in His heaven, all's well with the world.' What we do have, on the contrary, is, by reason of the presence of sin's lingering disease throughout the body politic, a very mixed and disordered state, where justice and righteousness are only, in a very general way, by the present over-ruling providence of God secured and maintained in the face of the hostile elements predominating. That which the scriptures reveal also is that, in addition to this, God Himself shall, in His own wise and suitable time, actively, directly, immediately, take the case in hand, deal with the malady of sin, and give this weary, war-worn, sin-scarred earth its glorious rest and reign of righteousness and peace."
Excerpt from, Principles of God's Intervention
From: The Bible Treasury: New Series Volume 10
Photo by David Billings on Unsplash