We will be continuing the series on the state of the professing Church. There is much going on in the professing Church these days that has the appearance of much good. We see large numbers and exciting music according to some reports. We hear of large numbers of confessions of faith in certain quarters. These things are not inconsistent with the judgment of God. When the Lord of all glory hardens hearts and withholds understanding, people try to fill the void with activity and make things happen in their own power. Some even believe that those things are real. The deception is even greater for those that are deceived by much religious activity. We must learn to look beyond the externals and know that religious activity is not always synonymous with the blessings of God.
“For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isaiah 64:6).
This text is still in the context of judgment. This statement is still in the context of Isaiah 63:17 where the people were under the judgment of God and He caused them to stray from His ways and hardened their heart from fearing Him. It is also in the context of Isaiah 63:19 where the people had become like those over whom God had never ruled. This verse (Isaiah 64:6) is also in the context of 64:1 where the plea is for God to come down and make His name known. When God judges a nation, a people and even those who are called by His name, the judgment is not always about hard times in the financial realm or of “natural” disasters though He does use those at times. But instead, we should look at this in a different and more biblical light.
While most think of the judgment of God as coming in a terrifying storm or of things happening that they don’t like, there is a judgment that is far more awful than that. If the greatest good that God can give a person or a people is Himself, then the greatest judgment that He can send is the withholding of the greatest good. That would be true especially if withholding the greatest good leads people to a hardening and then to the awfulness of His expressed wrath for eternity. When God withholds Himself from a professing Church, they are given over to duties and activities instead of doing all with a heart for His glory. When God withholds Himself from a professing Church, those people don’t have the life of God in their souls and are instead doing things from their own strength which is nothing but religious pride. Indeed, this shows how it is that all of their righteous deeds are as a filthy garment.
These things should remind us of the passage in Matthew 7: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.22 “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ 23 “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.'” We must not forget that the judgment of God was upon the nation of Israel when Christ came. Indeed He was the promised Messiah, but He also preached and His preaching was attended with the judgment of God because eyes were closed and hearts were hardened when He preached.
We should also hear the words of God in Matthew13 with the thought of judgment in mind: “Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
14 “In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING, BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND; YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING, BUT WILL NOT PERCEIVE; 15 FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL, WITH THEIR EARS THEY SCARCELY HEAR, AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES, OTHERWISE THEY WOULD SEE WITH THEIR EYES, HEAR WITH THEIR EARS, AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN, AND I WOULD HEAL THEM.’
16 “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.”
When we read texts like this being and we see that the reason that people do not understand and do not perceive, we should be greatly humbled and broken before God. We can know that the professing Church is under the judgment of God precisely because it has so many scandals and because of its great sin in holy things and in being like the world. Some within the professing Church are worried that God will judge us because of the things that are going on within the Church, but those things are a sure sign that judgment has already arrived. We must become acutely aware of what the judgment of God is and what it is not. God sends trials and hard times on people because He loves them and is training and disciplining them. This can be seen in many passages, but especially in the following two passages: “those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent” (Revelation 3:19). In this text Christ specifically says that His love will lead to reproof and discipline. In other words, He is calling upon the church at Laodicea to beware of what He is going to do if it does not repent. The hard things were going to come upon them because He loved them. We simply must understand that when things are easy and that for quite a period of time that this is not a sign of the blessing of the Lord.
A second passage on that theme is Hebrews 12:4-10. Again we will see that God disciplines His children and trains them with trials. “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; 5 and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; 6 FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.” 7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.”
The recipients of this letter were going through many trials and hardships. They were getting discouraged and were looking toward Judaism. But the writer of Hebrews, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, encourages them in a very non-American way. He quotes to them a text of Scripture (Proverbs 3:11-12 is the quote given in Heb 12:5-6)) that is so different to our way of thinking and evidently theirs as well. He tells them that Proverbs 3:11-12 should encourage them! While we look upon hard things as the judgments of God, the author is telling them that their hard times should encourage them because that is the way that God treats His children and those He loves. When a church or an individual is going through hard times, it should not necessarily think that it is being judged by God but perhaps is loved by God. If a church or a person has no training from God which comes by the way of trials, then that person is not loved in a saving way by God and is not a child of God.
Look again at Hebrews 12:9-10 (given above). Many times I have heard people say how much they appreciated the strong discipline of their parent or parents when they were younger though they hated it at the time. They really respected the parent or parents once they were old enough to see what was really going on. While it is true that in human beings strong discipline may not always be in love, yet with God it is. When discipline is in love, though it may be hard, it is still for good to those who receive it. God disciplines His children out of true love and He does it so that they may have the greatest good that there is. That greatest good is to share in His holiness. God commands His people to be holy as He is holy (Leviticus 11:45; 19:2; I Peter 1:15-16). But the good news is that we don’t have to find our own holiness and it does not come by our works, but instead it comes as a result of sharing in His holiness. God brings us trials and hard things in order to make us share in His holiness and become like Himself which is the greatest good. Holiness is a blessing which means that being turned over to sin is a judgment.
From the Scriptures above it is evident that the professing Church in America is under judgment. Instead of trials designed by God so we can share in His holiness, our trials have come from our foolishness. We have become like those who are unclean and our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment because we do all in our own power and our own planning and wisdom. Our iniquities have taken us away like a withered leaf. In the pride of our own wisdom and strength we think that God is blessing because of large buildings and increased wealth. We think we are holy because we see changed lives and people living according to our standards of morality. But we don’t see people in our day with broken hearts for their sin while they increase in the holiness that God shares. We see methods for obtaining humility and holiness while ignoring God’s method of submitting to His trials that He brings on to train us in these things. Our very desire to work things out for ourselves and to obtain pills and easy methods of numbered steps has turned us from God and His methods. The professing Church is under the judgment of God and most appear to love it as they go around concocting more methods of success. That way of success just leads to a deeper blindness in the ways of God. It is part of being driven away by our sin of pride instead of seeking humility and so sharing in His holiness. God continues to resist and oppose the proud while giving grace to the humble (I Peter 5:5). Humility is only obtained by God granting a broken heart in the midst of trials. Resisting that and seeking religious ways is to be carried away by the sin of pride which is judgment and leads to more.
God Loves... Himself 
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