While He May Be Found

April 9

“Gather yourselves together, yes, gather together, O undesirable nation, before the decree is issued, or the day passes like chaff, before the LORD's fierce anger comes upon you, before the day of the LORD's anger comes upon you! Seek the LORD, all you meek of the earth, you who have upheld His justice. Seek righteousness, seek humility. it may be that you will be hidden in the day of the LORD's anger,” Zephaniah 2:1-3.

It isn’t something we want to face; it isn’t something we want to believe, but we, this nation, the entire Earth, are ripe for judgment. We deserve the fierce anger of the Holy One who is “of purer eyes than to look upon sin,” Habakkuk 1:13. Indeed, if He is looking upon us, we are filling His eyes with the sin He disdains.

Everywhere we turn there is a relentless pursuit of evil among us. We break our vows, we pursue false gods, we extol evil and eschew good. We have turned righteousness on its head in the name of tolerance and we have set the law of God at naught in the name of doing what is right in our own eyes.

There are some who believe judgment has already come upon us. Mudslides swallow communities of people, many of whom will never be found. Earthquakes occur at divers places throughout the earth as well as beneath the seas. Terrorism is a feverish explosion of man’s inhumanity to man. Wars settle nothing. Havoc is rampant within the spirit of man who sees circumstances spinning beyond his control.

Yet at this point of unprecedented chaos and devastation, the Word of the Lord comes to us with hope. He tells those who are meek and who seek justice to continue to pursue righteousness, to continue to evidence humility before Him in order that we may find a refuge from His wrath.

He does not tell us that His wrath will not come. His holiness demands that a penalty be paid that justice be required, but what He does tell us is that there is a place of refuge when that fearsome time arrives. Isaiah 32:2 says, “And a Man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”

We know that Man is Jesus. We know that if we will take refuge in Him, He will forgive our sin. In Isaiah 1:18, the prophet assures, “Though your sins be scarlet, they shall be washed white as snow.” We can be hidden from the anger of our Holy God if we will but take refuge in the arms of Jesus, the righteous One who bore our sins and gave us His salvation.

Let us seek Him while He may be found, for He is not far from any one of us (see Isaiah 55:6, 7, Acts 17:27.)