RESTRAIN

RESTRAIN

I Samuel 3:13, "For I have told him that I will judge his house for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made thmselves vile, and he restrained them not."

Job 15:4, "Yea, thou castest off feaer, and restrainest prayer before God."

Isaiah 63:15, "Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of Thy holiness and of Thy glory:  where is Thy zeal and Thy strength, the sounding of Thy bowels and of Thy mercies toward me?  are they restrained?"

I Sameul 14:6, "And Jonathan said to the young man that bare his armour, Come, and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised:  it may be that the Lord will work for us:  for there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few."

RESTRAIN is used 12 times throughout the Bible.  It is varied in its application and meaning.  Listed above are the 4 verses that I wish to give to you for our coming before the Lord. 

In David McINtrye's, 'The Hidden Life of Prayer', he shares the account of J A Bengel, a Lutheran scholar and priest.  'A person rushed into Bengel's room, and exalimed: "Alas, sir, everything will be destroyed from the hailstorm; we shall lose all!" Bengel went composedly to the window, opened it, lifted up his hands to heaven and said, "Father, restrain it!"; and the tempest actually abated from that moment.'

Andrew Murray writes: "Gaze upon His holy human nature as what He prepared for you to be partaker of with Himself, and you will see that there is something even higher and better than being kept from sin - that is but the restraining from evil."

Do we understand that nobody can restrain God.  God is God and in all His ways, He speaks and comands.  But what happens when God restrains Himself?  Why would God restrain Himself?  What purpose could cause Him to restrain Himself? 

We see the truth of this as we relate and examine each of the verses from Scripture and from the quoted authors.  We are commanded to not sin.  If we sin, we sin because we choose to sin against Him and His ways.  When sin enters in, we are commanded to restrain ourselves and those under our care and keeping from sin.  If we fail to do so, then God restrains Himself from our presence.  His desire and ability is to restrain any and all evil from our life.  His very holiness demands it. 

God has never, will never and cannot acknowledge sin.  It is completely opposite of His nature of being holy.  To allow sin is to automatically, quench the Holy Spirit from our midst.  Too many Christians today, that practice sin and refuse to repent from it, run the risk of God's wrath for two things.  One, they resist and quench and limit the Holy Spirit, thus, making them more suspectible to SAtan's devices and will.  Two, God's holiness demands a rightoues judgment upon those that continue to run counter to His holiness.  Every act sin provokes His holy nature to wrath.  But out of His restraining mercy and grace, He gives a longsuffering period of time for men to acknowledge, confess and repent of their sin. 

We see throughout Scripture, that eventually though, that time is used up.  And when the sin remains, the wrath of God is enacted to remove the evil and restore His holiness.  This is the entire story of the bible. 
1.  Sin entered this perfect world, Adam and Eve being tempted and choosing to disobey in the Garden of Eden.  This earth, since that time, has been filled with sin and evil.  Thus, corrupting every component of God's creation.  God has allowed generations to remain in the hope and means of restraining sin and restoring this broken relationship between God and man.  He offered the law, then He sent His only begotten Son to purchase the atonement for all that would 'receive Him'.  God destroyed the earth once in Genesis 6 for the evil of men.  They did not restrain themselves and He kept Noah and his sons but flooded all the others of His creation of fallen, sinful, vile man.  God will do so again at the end of the age, but this time by fire.  Fire purges everything, either to refine, or consume.  II Peter 3, tells us that all that is in this contamniated universe shall be consumed in fire and destroyed.  And God will usher in a new heaven and a new earth, that shall be holy and void of sin. 
2.  Sin infected His chosen people, Israel and we see throughout all the Old Testament their varaince in not restraining sin in their midst and finally reaping what they had sown for centuries.