My present focus is
still on, “without faith it is impossible to please God”.[1] It
has me very aware that this is far more about maturing in the reality of faith
than making me smarter about what faith means.
The thing Father is
addressing with my faith is that he wants me to know him like this:
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.[2]
This is Yahweh speaking to
his sinful people who prefer Satan’s gods to Yahweh’s presence. No one can
escape the reality that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.[3] However, there is something that God wants sinners
to understand about him when we are the ones James speaks about,
“You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”[4]
God wants us to know
that he alone is “the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity,
whose name is Holy”, which means that all our adulterous relationships with
Satan’s gods is both stupid and sinful as sinful can be.
However, what the One
True God wants us to know about ourselves in our sinful adultery and rebellion
is this: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and ALSO with him who is of a
contrite and lowly spirit…”
The key thing here is
that Yahweh, the high and exalted God, is talking to SINNERS. The only kind of
people in Israel were SINNERS. The only kind of people in the world today is
SINNERS.
What is Yahweh’s
message to sinners?
First, it is NOT that
Yahweh dwells with sinners as much as he dwells in eternity. In fact, Isaiah’s
prophecies are full of this message, that Yahweh cannot dwell with sinners,
will not dwell with sinners, and will bring divine judgment on his people who
are sinners loving sinning. It is the same message today; God cannot condone or
dwell with people who love their sin.
Second, there is a
condition that any sinner can enter in which Yahweh will dwell with us. That
condition is called the “contrite and lowly spirit”. A contrite person
is one who feels grief and sorrow over their sin. A lowly spirit is one who
knows their low or inferior status because of their sin. Jesus introduced his
Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven”,[5]
because God blesses the contrite and lowly spirit with a return to the divine
presence.
The people Yahweh was
addressing through Isaiah were people who felt comfortable in their sinful idolatry.
They were puffed up with pride about what they were doing. Yahweh was not going
to dwell with such people, and he would not let them continue dwelling in the
land he had given to Abraham.
On the other hand,
among that proud, idolatrous nation of sinners would be some who would hear
Isaiah’s prophecy and come to feel grief about what they were doing. At the
very least, this is what Isaiah himself had gone through when he entered the
throne room of heaven and saw “the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and
lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.”[6] As
he heard the seraphim calling out to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh
of hosts; the whole earth is
full of his glory!”,[7] and the way the “foundations of the
thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with
smoke”,[8] he
cried out, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I
dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King,
Yahweh of hosts!”[9] He
immediately discovered that the high and holy one was with him to both forgive
his sin and commission him for ministry, all in one fell swoop.[10]
How are we to
understand what it will be like for Yahweh to dwell with a contrite and
lowly-spirited person? That he comes, “to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
To revive means to restore
life where it has been lost. Sinners indulging in every kind of sin, delighting
in every kind of idolatry, are, “dead in trespasses and sins, following the
course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, living in the passions of their
flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and are by nature
children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”[11]
Left to ourselves, we
would continue in such spiritual deadness in this earthly life and receive the
just condemnation of our sin in the next.
However, when the person
of contrite and lowly spirit confesses their sins to Yahweh through faith in Jesus
Christ, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.”[12]
One of the most well-known
examples of a sinful man returning to God with a contrite and lowly spirit is
the account of King David after his sin of adultery.[13] When Nathan the prophet confronted him with his
sin, he went on to write a song of repentance that we now know as Psalm 51. In
that song he makes this declaration, “The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”[14]
David was not downplaying
his sin in the least. He simply knew that God was, “good and forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.”[15] And so his faith led him like a lamb back to his
shepherd in the full confidence that his shepherd wanted to see him as much as
if he had never sinned at all.
One more thing about this
dual-dwelling of God in both the high and holy place and with those who come to
him with a contrite and lowly spirit. Jesus fulfilled this reality in the most
real and personal of ways. While Yahweh the Father was dwelling in the high and
holy place of eternity, Yahweh the Son came to dwell among us, becoming the “friend
of sinners” to the broken and contrite of heart.[16]
In fact, Jesus’ name,
Immanuel, is, “God with us,” to fulfill what he told us through Isaiah.[17]
I believe the faith God is
working into my heart is that he wants me to feel the joy of a heavenly Father
who wants to be with his sinful child and only needs me to let myself feel the
poverty-of-spirit that mourns my sin, meekly admit I cannot fix my sin problem,
and so hunger and thirst for the righteousness that is by faith.[18]
It is the hunger and
thirst of the contrite sinner for the righteousness he does not have that will
be satisfied with the righteousness of faith in Jesus Christ. It is this faith
that comes to God fresh out of our sin that pleases our Father because we trust
him to be so good and forgiving that we know he will receive us just as the parable
of the prodigal son reveals.[19]
Growing up as a good kid
who was never good enough taught me that faith meant trying my best for God. A
successful relationship with God was dependent on my good behavior, while any
focus on my sins and transgressions left me feeling an utter failure.
God has been ministering
to me tirelessly to show me that he delights in a faith that wants to be with him,
period. It wants to be with him in what he is doing. It wants to be with him in
wonderful expressions of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in the church. But it also
wants to be with him when we feel like naughty little children who just
admitted to ourselves that we have once again failed to be like Jesus in the
way we thought or acted.
God has been telling his
people for millennia that Jesus is God with us because God wants to dwell with his
people who are of contrite and lowly spirit. Jesus coming into the world as God
in the flesh proves that point clearly enough that we can draw near to God in
the full confidence that we will find him drawing near to us.[20]
You know, just like the
prodigal son.
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
[1] Hebrews 11:6
[2] Isaiah 57:15
[3] Romans 3:23
[4] James 4:4
[5] Matthew 5:3
[6] Isaiah 6:1 (context is
Isaiah 6:1-13)
[7] Isaiah 6:3 (replacing “the
LORD” with the divine name as per the original Hebrew)
[8] Isaiah 6:4
[9] Isaiah 6:5 (replacing “the
LORD” with the more accurate rendering of God’s name, Yahweh)
[10] Isaiah 6:6-7 shows
Isaiah’s cleansing and forgiveness, and Isaiah 6:8-13 his calling to ministry.
[11] Paraphrase of
Ephesians 2:1-3 to fit the application.
[12] I John 1:9
[13] II Samuel 11:1-12:25
[14] Psalm 51:17
[15] Psalm 86:5
[16] Matthew 11:19; Luke
7:34; Psalm 51:17
[17] Isaiah 7:14; Matthew
1:23
[18] Based on the
Beatitudes of Matthew 5:1-12
[19] Luke 15:1-32 contains
three parables Jesus told to help them appreciate whey Jesus “receives sinners
and eats with them” (vss 1-2). The parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin,
and the lost son, all show the way “there will be more joy in heaven over
one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no
repentance” (vs 7). The reason for the joy is that the Triune God is so
delighted when we come home.
[20] James 4:7-8 in context
of James 4:1-10
No comments:
Post a Comment