Come Out! Come Out Wherever You Are

 

Isa 1:4 Alas, sinful nation, A people laden with iniquity, A brood of evildoers, Children who are corrupters! They have forsaken the LORD, They have provoked to anger The Holy One of Israel, They have turned away backward.

Isaiah continues his charge against the children of God. These children are of course the children of Abraham, who from the eight day of birth are in a covenanted relationship with God through the gracious act of circumcision. But they have “turned away backward” from God and His ways, choosing rather to live lives laden (piled on) with iniquity. Iniquity defined here not only as sin, but including its effects, including stirring up the “anger of the Holy One of Israel.”

 

They have become a brood (a seed) of evildoers, bringing forth the fruit of rebellion against God. They are children who are corrupters. Children who through the instrument of peer pressure bring forth corruption (moral rottenness….perversity) They are the bad apple that spoils the whole bunch. They are that crowd of hooligans whom you chose to hang out with as a teen. The adolescents that have no moral compass but the standards of their world.

 

They are the people spoken of in Ro 1:29-32, “being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers,  30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; 32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

Don’t be like them! Purpose in your heart to seek to live as a friend and follower of Jesus rather than a friend and follower of the world. Jas 4:4 says, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

Learn from Isaiah. Learn from James. Yield to the Holy Spirit and be set apart from the world. Hear one of the last pleas from heaven for the people of God as found in Re 18:4 And I heard another voice from heaven saying, "Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.