Judgment must begin at the house of God if we are to be witnesses to the world – Andrew Murray

After God’s declaration in chapter 7 that he would judge his people, he takes the prophet in chapter 8 to see all the wicked abominations that were being done in the house of God in Jerusalem.

While the men who committed them said, The Lord seeth us not, God saw, and felt, and was angry. And so, in chapter 9 the prophet hears the command given, to go through the city and smite, and slay utterly without mercy old and young.

And then the word came in, and begin at my sanctuary.

The higher the privilege, the greater the sin. The nearer to God’s holiness and its judgment. The more God loves us as his people, the more jealous he is of our sins. From the very nature of things, from the very nature of God, and of our relation to him, it cannot be otherwise.

Judgment must begin at the house of God. God’s people must be subject to it, must yield themselves to it, if they are to be witnesses to the world of God’s saving power, if through them the Holy Spirit is to convict the world of sin.

(Excerpted from The Coming Revival, by Andrew Murray, pg. 43)

Andrew Murray