Isaiah 8:14

SANCTUARY IN GOD

Isaiah 8:14. And He shall be for a sanctuary.

Not a few mourn, in the midst of a busy, bustling age, a loss of sacredness in life. Not the false “sacred”—that which is merely ascetic separation from life and duty; nor that which is merely solemn “sacred”—the dull heavy monotony of gloominess.We naturally say that if this is God’s world, if civil and civic duties, social responsibilities, are God-ordained, it is likely, at least, that here we may be able to secure a heavenly citizenship amid earthly cares and customs. This is exactly what God reveals in the text. Sanctuary, He says, is not in mere place; not in separation from manly duty: I open up my very nature to you. How often this idea recurs in the Scriptures! God is our refuge and rest, our hiding-place, our dwelling-place.

I. THE SACREDNESS THAT A REVERENT HEARTDESIRES. Something within us asserts its dignity when society is frivolous and gay, and when the routine of life brings us into association with lives where the light even of conscience burns low, when the reverent wonder that filled even Pagan hearts has given place to scientific explanations of every spiritual function. When we are brought into contact with all this, then it is that we find how the high tides of the world cover the little green knolls of devotion, and sweep away alike the altar of prayer and the harp of praise. In all earnest natures there comes, at times, resentment at all this. We believe the divinity within us. We believe the high call of seer and prophet to nobler ends; we believe, above all, that Lord of life and light who tells us that the life is more than meat, and who fed His own life by the mountain prayer and the garden solitude. We should seek to secure the sacredness we feel we need, not in morbid methods, but in ways that are human, and ways that are Divine because they are human. Christ lived and worked amongst men. We, too, may secure sacredness for our lives; we may carry in our mien and breathe in our converse the springs of hope and faith and love which flow still from Zion’s sacred hill.

II. THE SACREDNESS THAT MAKES SANCTUARY IN GOD HIMSELF. “He shall be for a sanctuary.” He whom wicked men dread and flee from; for, as of old, darkness cannot dwell with light, nor irreverence with reverence, nor mammon-worship with devotion to God. We may carry very bad hearts into very beautiful places. Place is easily made unsacred, but into fellowship with God there can enter nothing that is false, or worldly, or vile. “Sanctuary in a person?” Yes; for even here, in this dim sphere of earthly friendship, our best sanctuaries, apart from Christ, have been men and women,—those who bear His likeness, and who do His will. “Sanctuaries?” Yes; for with them we are ashamed of unworthy motive, of impure thought, of unsacred aim. Take Christ with you, and every place is sacred. This is our living sanctuary; we abide in Him who says, “I am He that liveth, and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore.” And if by His own Divine nature He is a sanctuary, He is also by experience too. How much the human sanctuary of friendship is beautified when there is oneness of feeling about the battle and burden of life! Is it nothing, then, that when we speak of sanctuary in Christ we should mean “sympathy,” all that belongs to a brother born for adversity—to Him who, as a “Man of Sorrows,” was “acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 63:9)? We know indeed but little of the realities of religion unless we have found such a living sanctuary in Christ Jesus the Lord (H. E. I. 968–975).

III. THE SACREDNESS OF ALL THE FUTURE DAYS. “He shall be.” Names vary in interpreting what God is to suit need and experience. We translate the want, and then God’s name is translated to meet it. I am hungry—He is Bread; thirsty—He is water, &c. The word “sanctuary” meets special wants. Life is not always a seeking for a refuge, but it is so especially at certain times and in strange and desolate experiences. We are alone in a strange city. The child must leave home to teach, to toil, to live; the weakness will come which presages decline and death; the soul does feel that some lights are lost to faith and that others are growing dim. He shall be for a sanctuary. Let the hours come: He will come too. Who can make retreat into his own heart and find perfect sanctuary there? Christ alone could do that. We cannot. Nature cannot afford us the sanctuary we need; she has healthy anodynes of atmosphere that afford us deep and quiet retreats, but sanctuary, in the highest sense, she has not. Christ, and He alone, will be now and for ever a sanctuary (H. E. I. 2378–2387).

IV. THE SACREDNESS OF PERSONAL LIFE IN GOD. We can have no safety or rest in Churches as such. They are helpful; they are houses of fellowship and centres of usefulness. But we cannot say, as Mediævalism said, “Enter the Church and be saved.” The soul’s relation to God is personal and individual. Whether the relation of faith is real, vital, each soul can attest for itself; and that living relationship is all that can ever make life sacred to any man. When the life is hid with Christ in God, all is well, for all is sacred; and nothing that He has created us to do or to enjoy is common or unclean. So may God help us to keep a sacred life which finds sanctuary in the Saviour, until we find it where there is no temple, but where there is sanctuary in God (Revelation 21:22-23).—W. M. Statham: Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii. pp. 131–133.