Series:
Isaiah
Title: Set Thine House in Order
Text: Isaiah 38: 1
Date: December 28, 2014
Place:
SGBC, New Jersey
Isaiah 38: 1: In those days was Hezekiah sick
unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came unto him, and said unto
him, Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not
live.
Two
weeks ago, as I was flying back from Mexico, while in the Houston airport, I
called my dad. I was calling just to
talk like I have done so many times before. But this time, my dad told me that
his doctor had just told him that he had colon cancer.
The
news consumed me so much that I sat at the gate, watched my plane board and fly
away, and did not even realize it was my plane. But if I was that shaken by
news that did not even concern my own life, I thought how alarming it was for
my dad to hear the doctor’s report. We have brethren, family and friends, who
have received this news. My grandfather said
that when the doctors told him his cancer had come back, his hands began to tremble
uncontrollably. You simply do not know how surprising and how shocking this
kind of news is until you receive it.
Imagine
this report coming to you, “Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and
not live.” Sinner, this is true of you right now. Now is the time to heed this
word. Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.
YOU SHALL DIE AND NOT LIVE
None of
us know when we may get this news from a physician. It does not matter how old
or how young you may be. While in
college my best friend was 20 years old when the doctors told him he had
cancer. We had plans for that weekend.
Instead, when the weekend came my friend was in surgery having his lymph
nodes removed. For months, I sat by his bed and watched this young man, who was
strong as an ox, become weaker and weaker till he couldn’t even get out of bed.
This news comes to the young, as well as the aged.
My
house and your house is a dying house. Sin causes us to begin dying the moment
we are born. It is uncontrollable. We can eat right, exercise and use every
anti-aging product under the sun, still, the skin wrinkles, our hair begins to
fall out, our minds become more and more forgetful, our bones become weaker. Why?
It is all proof that sin is what we are. We live in a house of dust and to the
dust it shall return. Try to deny you are a sinner—your very body proves you a
liar.
GOD OWNS OUR HOUSE
My
house and your house—our life and our body—belongs to God. God spoke us into existence.
Our life and strength is given and held in store by God; our mind operates
our members because God keeps our mind operating properly. God provides us food and God makes food nourish our bodies; God
maintains our life and body.
The
only thing God has to do is turn his hand from maintaining our mortal houses and
we shall die. And God has set the hour when each one of us shall die, “sinner, you shall die and not live.” And
to ignore God’s warning and God’s gospel is to rebel against God, “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.” (Is 1: 2)
Have
you ever owned a dog that would not heed a single command you gave; instead, he
tried to bite you as you fed him; he tore up your property; he could not be
tamed? We get rid of such a crazy brute. The sinner who will not consider that
we owe all to God, the sinner who curses God’s name, the sinner who rejects God’s
gospel is worse than a crazed, wild, brute beast. God says, “The ox knoweth his
owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my
people doth not consider.” (Is 1: 3) “Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her
appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time
of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the LORD.” (Jer 8: 7)
We have heard God use his preacher to declare repeatedly,
“Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die and not
live.” But isn’t it amazing that when God uses a physican to give us that news,
we are so surprised and shocked? Sinner, thou shalt die and not live. We all
know our house is mortal. So why would we ignore and put it out of our minds?
It is a
dishonest man who would rent a house then leave it to the landlord in disrepair. An honest man will set the house in
order. You and I are only renting this
house. God owns it. How will we return our house to its rightful owner?
AFTER THIS LIFE IS ETERNITY
This
life is not the end. We all will spend eternity somewhere glorifying God: either
glorifying his grace for saving us or glorifying his justice for justly for
condemning us.
Some of
you are already making plans for where you will spend your spring and summer
break next year. Others have spent their lives preparing for how and where they
will spend our retirement years. “Whereas ye know not what shall be on
the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth
for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” (Ja 4: 14)
Ye, we
all know—thou shalt die and not live. But who is making plans for where they
will spend eternity? Sons and daughters, if you found out your father or mother
received news from physician that they had cancer and would soon die, would it
comfort you to know that they had spent their time wisely, to know the Lord
Jesus, to rest in him, so as to have a good hope? What about you? How have you
spent your time? Oh, that God would “teach us to number our days, that
we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” (Ps 90: 12)
SET THINE HOUSE IN ORDER
God says to you and me right now, “Set thine house in
order.” The only way to set our house in order is to come to Christ in our
hearts, believing on him. Christ is the great Physician. He put away the sin of
his people and established us in righteousness; he makes his child the
righteousness of God in him; he gives the new heart making his child willing in
the day of his power.
He
speaks in power into our new heart, saying, “diligently hearken to the voice of
the LORD thy God,..and do that which is right in his sight.” (Ex 15: 26) What is his will? What is right in his sight?
Some men asked the Lord Jesus that question, “Jesus answered and said unto
them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” (Jn
6: 29) “This is the will of him that
sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have
everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.” (Jn 6: 40)
Has
Christ made you willing? Has he commanded you, declaring that the will of God
is for his people to rest in Christ? He
says, “I am the LORD that healeth thee.” (Ex 15:26)
NOW IS THE TIME TO SET THINE HOUSE IN ORDER
Many
young people have thought, oh, I will seek the Lord in my older years. But they
never lived to see their older years. God says, “Remember now thy Creator in
the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh,
when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.” (Ecc 12: 1) “Now is
the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (Col 6: 2)
Our sins separated us from God that he would not hear. But
God’s eternal election of grace has opened the door for a very great multitude.
Christ has redeemed a number that no man can number. Are you one among that
number? This is the day of grace. Right now, the Lord is near. He is now
sending forth this gospel; he is now calling out those that he has loved from
everlasting. God says, “And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the
LORD: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall
return unto me with their whole heart.” (Jer 24: 7)
Has God given you a new heart, a whole heart that desires
him? Is he making this call effectual in your whole heart? He says, “ye shall seek me, and find me,
when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” (Jer 29: 13) He says, “Seek
ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:” (Is 55:
6) If we love him and seek him, it is because he first loved us and sought us. And
he says to all who seek him, “I love them that love me; and those that seek me
early shall find me.” (Pro 8: 17)
NO QUALIFICATION
BUT TO BE A SINNER
Never
imagine that Christ’s gospel is for you to wait for some qualification in you.
There is nothing in us to qualify us. The
Lord Jesus said, “They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they
that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
(Ma 2: 17)
Christ
says if you are sinner, with no hope, except Christ and his Righteousness then
you are qualified. Come to him alone; come with faith in your heart; come empty
handed, with no works of your own; and “Come now! seek me early and you shall
find me.”
YOU MUST DO THE SETTING
Read
the text carefully. “Set THINE HOUSE in order.” Do not be concerned with
setting other people’s house in order—set YOUR house in order. You are to do
it—it is your house to set in order. The
preacher or a vain priest cannot and is not to do it. Mom and dad cannot do it
and must not attempt to do so. Your friends cannot do it. You yourself must go
to Christ who alone can set all in order for you. If you need oil for your
lamp, you must go to him that has the oil; your fellow-virgins cannot give you
their oil.
Our
chief business for being in this earth is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ by
fleeing to him to set our house in order. Only Christ can put away our sins; only
Christ can purge our conscience from dead works to serve him; only Christ can
make us the righteousness of God; only Christ can present us spotless to holy
God.
A DAY TOO LATE OR A DAY TOO ANTICIPATE?
There
is coming a day when it will be too late. Christ is the Master of the house. He
says,
Luke
13: 25: When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the
door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord,
Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence
ye are: 26: Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy
presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. 27: But he shall say, I tell
you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of
iniquity. 28: There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and
you yourselves thrust out.
But for
those God makes to be wise in heart, to seek Christ while he may be found, he
says,
2
Corinthians 5: 1: We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were
dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens….5: Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is
God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. 6: Therefore we
are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we
are absent from the Lord: 7: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) 8: We are
confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to
be present with the Lord. 9: Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or
absent, we may be accepted of him. 10
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every
one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he
hath done, whether it be good or bad. 11
Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are
made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.
Friends, you do not want to labor to be accepted by your
own works when you appear before the judgment seat of Christ? Then how do we
labor to be accepted?
Philippians
3: 8: Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of
all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, 9: And be
found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that
which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by
faith: 10: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the
fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; 11: If by
any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. 12: Not as though I
had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that
I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. 13: Brethren,
I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do,
forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things
which are before, 14: I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling
of God in Christ Jesus.
Christ is the one we desire to be found in. Christ is
mark we press toward. Sinner, set thine house in order—flee to Christ now, rest
in Christ now—for concerning this earthly house, thou shalt die and not live. But
if we be found in Christ in that day, we shall live forevermore. This is the
best part, we shall live with the Lord Jesus himself, “And if children, then
heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him,
that we may be also glorified together!” (Rom 8: 17) May God give you grace to
heed this word!
Amen!