You felt secure in your wickedness. You said, no one sees me. Your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray. And you said, in your heart, I am. And there is no one besides me, but evil shall come upon you, which you will not know how to charm away. Disaster shall fall upon you for which you will not be able to atone and ruin shall come upon you suddenly, of which you know nothing.
– Isaiah 47:10–11
What a sober warning from God to us in his Word in these two verses today to you and me. “You felt secure in your wickedness and you said, no one sees me.” I just want to ask you to examine your heart right now, and I just want to ask, is there any sin that you are trying to hide? Any secret sin in your life?
Isaiah 47:10–11 warns us that secret sin always affects us.
God is saying you can feel secure in that hiddenness and sin that no one else sees, but your wisdom and your knowledge, which is kind of playing on wisdom and knowledge because it’s not wisdom and knowledge, is leading you astray. You’re thinking no one else knows and this won’t affect others. Well, hear God’s saying in his Word right now. Secret sin is always affecting you.
It’s affecting your relationship with God. It is not hidden from God. You cannot, I cannot… We cannot hide anything from the omniscient God. And we’re not fooling anyone. God knows, God sees our sin always affects us. We may think it’s covered, but it’s affecting our relationship with others in ways we don’t even realize, in ways we don’t know. And verse 11 makes clear evil shall come upon you. You will experience disaster and ruin which you can’t even imagine right now.
The effects of secret sin will come crashing down. Hear God’s saying in his word graciously, lovingly to you and me. Don’t let sin thrive in secret. Be quick to confess sin to God and to others. I remember John Piper once said, To be caught in secret sin is a horrible thing. There is only one thing worse, not to be caught. So, God, we pray that you would deliver us from secret sin, which we realize is no secret to you.
Isaiah 47:10–11 exhorts us to repent of our secret sins.
God, we pray for each other. Lord, I know with the number of people who are listening to this right now, that there are likely many people who are hiding sin in their lives right now listening to this. God, I pray for fresh conviction from your Spirit and for a humble response to your Word that today, not tomorrow, but that today, right now, that they would do what you are calling them to do, to confess their sin completely to you, to repent of it and to confess that sin to someone else that they might have a help in turning from it.
Lord, knowing that there may be consequences of that sin now, but knowing those are nowhere near to the consequences of continuing to let that sin remain in secret. God, please help us to heed your Word in Isaiah 47:10–11. Even as we praise you, Jesus, our Savior who saves us from all our sins, even the worst sins that we can imagine.
God, we pray, help us to see your love for us in these verses… Calling us to be honest with you and honest with others… And to experience forgiveness and life that comes through confession and repentance. God, we don’t want to experience the evil and the ruin and the disaster that verse 11 talks about. So keep us in every way from feeling secure in our wickedness… And thinking our sin in secret does not have consequences. Oh God, we praise you as the Savior from our sins.
Prayer for the Pashayi People
We pray that you would help us to spread your salvation from sin to people around us today. And God, to people who’ve never heard of your salvation from sin and evil and wickedness. We know that eternal ruin is coming for all who don’t trust in Jesus. We pray then, God, that the good news of Jesus would spread to the Pashayi people of Afghanistan, 600,000 of them, no known followers of Jesus among this tribal group.
God, please cause the gospel to spread all throughout Afghanistan and specifically to the Pashayi people, so that they might be saved from eternal disaster and ruin because of sin. That they might experience your grace and your love and your mercy in Jesus. Help us to live in this grace and mercy free from sin. And God, help us to spread this grace and mercy so that others might be free from sin and death and all of its consequences. We pray all this according to your word in Isaiah 47:10–11, in Jesus’ name, amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
