In Isaiah, chapter thirty-two, verses nine to fourteen, many of God’s chosen people were complacent about sin, even though it was destroying their families and their nation. Instead, Isaiah told them they should beat their breasts, as in verse twelve, tremble, put on sackcloth, and be distressed, as in verse eleven, as they cry out to God until He pours out the Spirit from heaven, as in verse fifteen.
Today, whenever sin, Satan, and the world gain inroads into the church, we too should mourn and cry out for God to restore His favour, and the revelation of His glory in the manifest presence and transforming power of the Holy Spirit.
When there was so much provocation given to the holy God, bad times might be expected. Unfortunately! How many careless ones there are, who support self-indulgence by shameful stubbornness! We deserve to be deprived of the supports of life when we make them the food of lust. Let such tremble and be troubled. Blessed times shall be brought in by the pouring out of the Spirit from on high; then, and not till then, there will be good times.
The situation was addressed to the women of God’s chosen nation, who troubled themselves little about the political signs of the times, but lived a life of self-indulgence, as in chapter three, verses sixteen to twenty-three. The failure of food through the devastations of the enemy, being what was most likely to affect them as mothers of families, accustomed to every luxury.
Rise up; bestir and prepare yourselves to hear, and shake off sloth and carelessness, that are at ease; that indulge in idleness and luxury. Careless, who are insensible of sin and danger. Daughters: whom he here reproveth and threateneth for their sins, as he did the men before for seeking to Egypt for help, and divers other sins, whereof the men were most guilty.