We will be continuing the series on the state of the professing Church. It is not easy to do but it has never been easy. We see so much going on that looks good, but what is the core of these things? We see much religion that is nothing but man-centered activity. This can take the form of theology, higher education, projects for the poor and even missions. The past two weeks we have focused on Isaiah 63:17 and the judgment of God in causing people to stray from His ways and hardening hearts from fearing Him. To repeat, much religious activity can take place in the name of God and be nothing but enmity against Him. Conservatives may think that liberals and the user-friendly folks are under judgment. However, those things are signs that the judgment of God is upon the professing Church as a whole. Conservatism can be nothing more than moralism and to be like the Pharisees. What we must understand is that the judgment of God is not just upon groups within the professing Church, but upon the professing Church as a whole. We must begin to see the problem and cry out to God for repentance.
Isaiah 64:1-4: Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at Your presence –as fire kindles the brushwood, as fire causes water to boil– to make Your name known to Your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Your presence! When You did awesome things which we did not expect, You came down, the mountains quaked at Your presence. For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him.
In verse 1 we see the cry of the heart. It is not for a return of morality or the return of conservative religion, it is the cry for God Himself. This is the heart that we must learn to strive for which will only come by grace. We cannot work up a heart like this with a program or by self-effort. The heart that truly desires these things can only be worked in us by grace and the object desired (for God to come down) will only happen by grace. Texts like this must not be seen as something to make us work harder, but as that which should show us our hard hearts and to weep harder. The desire to see the glory of God must not be for the selfish purposes to make our local church grow or for the sensory pleasure of being in His presence, but must be the true desire to see Him in His glory.
The cry of the heart in verse 1 is for God to come down. It must not be for God to put on a show in order to increase the tithes or activity of the local church, it must be a pure desire to see God Himself. It is a desire that the mountains themselves would quake at His presence which they will only do in the presence of the true God. It is a desire that is spoken of in verse 2 which is to make His own name known to His adversaries. Notice that the text is not a cry for the salvation of the nations, but that they would tremble in His presence. All too often we want to use God to carry out our own desires and programs rather than bow in humble resignation for Him to carry out His. We pray and carry out missions as if God’s glory depends on the salvation of the nations rather than to do missions with the desire that He would make His name known to His adversaries. We pray for the salvation of His enemies when in this text we see that the prayer is for the nations to tremble in His presence.
This is not heartless and not a denial that we are to proclaim the Gospel to all creatures, but an effort to show us the real focus in how we do that. We must not do evangelism and missions with our chief desire to see sinners saved. If we do that we will always be tempted to water down the message and try to get the people to agree to certain things. We must realize that our chief love must always be God Himself and our message must primarily be out of love for Him. It is only when our chief love is for God that we will ever truly love others as well. It is only when we love God (1st Greatest Commandment) that we can love our neighbor as ourselves (2nd Greatest Commandment). Until we desire for God to come down and for His name to be made known and the nations to tremble at His presence we will not truly desire what is good for other people.
The previous paragraph may puzzle some people, but let us go back to last week’s newsletter and review just a bit. The judgment of God is seen (Isaiah 63:17-19) when He hardens people’s hearts from fearing Him. The cry in this verse is for God to come down and bring the fear of Himself to people. Until people fear the Lord, they will not return unto Him but will keep on serving themselves and doing what they please as they rush on to destruction. While it is not politically correct in the professing Church today, there is no true Christianity where the fear of God is not present. The professing Church goes on and wants to make everybody comfortable when what is needed is for people to become uncomfortable and even terribly afraid. If people are comfortable in our churches, that means that God is not there. If our desire is for them to be comfortable, then we don’t have a true desire for God to be there. When the Lord comes down people are terrified to be in His presence. When the Lord comes down in His blazing light and glory, people are struck with a sense of the awfulness of their sin and the horror of judgment.
We must begin to be broken for our easy approach to “doing church” and getting people comfortable. The worst crime in the professing Church these days is to offend someone or to be something less than gracious or winsome. What has happened that we are so unlike the prophets and the apostles who were terribly afraid of offending God? What has happened to us that we have become the exact opposite of Paul who declared that if he or even an angel preached a different Gospel then that person was to go to hell forever under the wrath of God? We must begin to think of the Gospel as the declaration of the Holy One rather than as a message that by being nice we can talk people into believing. Certainly the judgment of God is upon us and we truly don’t desire God in truth when we think that being gracious and winsome is more important than reverence before God. Until we begin to be more concerned about offending the Almighty rather than those with breath in their nostrils how can we claim to desire the presence of the Holy One? As the prophet instructs us in Isaiah 2:22, “Stop regarding man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils; For why should he be esteemed?”
We read about revivals and the writings of the Puritans and admire them for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps we see the numbers that the churches gained from the revivals and admire the learning of the Puritans. But do we want the God that came down in those revivals? Do we desire to be shredded from all of our comforts, intellectualism, and easy-going religion? If not, then we don’t desire true revival. When our text from above tells us that “For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear,” that is also speaking to us. We have only heard what God can do. We don’t know that God for ourselves. If we only read on the surface of the revivals or the Puritans these things sound so good and easy. But these things come at a cost which is too much for the modern professing Church. If a true revival is to come in America it will require suffering and self-denial. True revival will not come to a people that desires for God to do things and to do them in a way that does not disrupt their easy and moral lives. But we must notice that this is part of the judgment that is upon us. We are satisfied with our lives and look to morality and politics as the way to protect these things. Do we truly desire God for the sake of God? Do we really want Him to come down if that means we will be homeless with poor clothes and living in caves? That is what happened to prophets and to the believers in the 1st century. That is what Hebrews 11 describes.
The judgment of God is upon the professing Church in America and we don’t recognize it because things are going so well. We are comfortable, make money, have health care and we have what we think is religious freedom. We go about our lives, go to church on Sunday, try to be moral and say our prayers that God will save some lost and protect our lands. But that can be nothing but selfishness and a desire to protect the status quo. Where is our desire for God to come down and for God to kill our self-centeredness and self-love? Where are the prayers coming from broken hearts that desire God and His glory above all? Do we really think that our easy-going and self-focused religion bears much resemblance other than name only to that of the prophets and the apostles? Are we not guilty of an Americanized way of doing Christianity? Have we not gutted the heart of Christianity and kept the shell?
We must learn to come to God with nothing in our hands with no programs for Him. We must learn to begin to seek the face of God with no desire but to see Him come down and exalt His own name. We must learn that we can do nothing apart from grace and so seek the Lord for grace to seek His face in reality. We can perform all sorts of outward actions that demonstrate nothing but the fact we think we can work these things up on our own. The issue has to do with the heart. If we think we can read a text of Scripture and then simply go out and perform the external actions, we have missed the point completely. We must do the external actions from hearts that love God and desire His presence above all things. Until we have a desperate desire for God out of love for Him and are willing to set aside all programs and activities to seek Him, we will remain under judgment. Until we are ready to have God shred us from all hope in anything but Himself, we will remain under judgment. If our hope is in a denomination or a program, we have no hope. Until God Himself becomes our only real desire and one that aches within us and breaks out in cries from broken hearts, the judgment of God will remain despite “easy” lives. It will be easy to read this and go on with no change like we do when we read Scripture. That is the judgment of God.
God Loves... Himself 
Leave a comment