Day 19—As A God of Judgment

Isaiah 26:8-9 - In the path of your judgments, O LORD, we wait for you…For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

The LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait upon him. (Isaiah 30:18)

God is a God of mercy and a God of judgment. Mercy and judgment are forever together in His dealings. In the Flood, in the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, in the overthrow of the Canaanites, we ever see mercy in the midst of judgment. In these, the inner circle of His own people, we see it, too. The judgment punishes the sin, while mercy saves the sinner. Or, rather, mercy saves the sinner, not in spite of, but by means of, the very judgment that came upon his sin. In waiting on God, we must beware of forgetting this—as we wait we must expect Him as a God of judgment.

"In the way of thy judgments, O LORD, have we waited for thee." That will prove true in our inner experience. If we are honest in our longing for holiness—in our prayers to be wholly the LORD's—His holy presence will stir up and discover hidden sin. It will bring us very low in the bitter conviction of the evil of our nature, its opposition to God's law, and its inability to fulfill that law. The words will come true: "Who may abide the day of His coming?... For He is like a refiner's fire". "Oh, that YOU ... come down... As when the melting fire burns". In great mercy, God executes, within the soul, His judgments upon sin, as He makes it feel its wickedness and guilt. Many try to flee from these judgments. The soul that longs for God, and for deliverance from sin, bows under them in humility and in hope. In silence of soul it says, "Rise up, LORD, and let Your enemies be scattered". "In the way of Your judgments... we have waited for You."


There is another application still, one of unspeakable solemnity. We are expecting God, in the way of His judgments, to visit His earth; we are waiting for Him. What a thought! We know of these coming judgments. We know that there are tens of thousands of professing Christians who live on in carelessness, and who, if no change comes, must perish under God's hand. Oh, will we not do our utmost to warn them, to plead with and for them, if God may have mercy on them! If we feel our lack of boldness, zeal, and cower, will we not begin to wait on God more definitely and persistently as a God of judgment? Will we not ask Him to so reveal Himself in the judgments that are coming on our very friends, that we may be inspired with a new fear of Him and them, and constrained to speak and pray as never yet before? Verily, waiting on God is not learned to be a spiritual self-indulgence. Its object is to let God and His holiness, Christ and the love that died on Calvary, the Spirit and fire that burns in heaven and came to earth, get possession of us to warn and arouse men with the message that we are waiting for God in the way of His judgments. Oh, Christian, prove that you really believe in the God of judgment!

"My soul, wait only upon God!"