I have spent three years on Facebook talking about God’s grace and His love for us. I have written page after page talking about our walk with Jesus, about how He doesn’t expect our perfection, just our loyalty and our faithfulness to Him.
I have spent many posts urging us to cast our cares upon Him, for He cares for us. I have talked about the wonderful blessing of prayer where we can get the undivided attention of the most powerful Being in the universe. He completely focuses His attention on us in that moment, for however long we wish to speak to Him.
And while I believe that this is just as true today as it was when I wrote those words, I wonder if focusing on our relationship with God often causes us to lose the holy perfection of God and the absolute impossibility it is for God to be in the presence of sin.
Isaiah was given a glimpse of God in the throne room as spiritual beings worshiped Him. When Isaiah realized he was in the presence of God, he was overcome with fear:
“And I said: “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, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5 ESV).
Why did he react this way? Because no matter how good he might have been or how devoted he was to God, Isaiah realized we are imperfect sinners who carry with us the stain and guilt of sin. How is it possible that we can bring our filthy sin into God’s presence?
We can’t.
How can we bring the mouth that has cursed and lied into God’s presence? How can we bring the hands that stole and beat into God’s presence? How can we bring the mind that hated and lusted into God’s presence?
Those among us without sin, cast the first stone. That’s what God said when he dwelt among us, isn’t it? The disciple whom he loved said this,
“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8 ESV).
The apostle born out of due season said this:
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23 ESV).
The problem is, we all have tainted ourselves with sin and when we have, there is nothing we can do to rid ourselves of this curse. Not a single thing. And God knew there was nothing we could do to remove the plague of sin. When we sin, the act is done. We are, and forevermore will be, sinners.
“but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” (Isaiah 59:2 ESV).
Our sins have kept us away from God. Yet God wished to be reunited with man. The only alternative to God intervening in our lost condition is eternal separation from Him. So God worked to provide man a way back to Him. He would send a Savior, so we would no longer bear the sins that separate us from God.
Somewhere, we got the notion that salvation is merely a reward for obeying our Creator. Yet, as Scripture teaches, there is no amount of obedience we could do to remove the stain of sin. Yes, salvation is a prize (Philippians 3:14). Yes, salvation is a reward (1 Corinthians 3:14). Yes, salvation is our due (2 Corinthians 5:10).
But these things are in the context of a God who has done what is undoable for us to do. He will not force salvation upon man. If we choose to remain in a sinful state, we can remain separated from Him. It is our choice.
Peter says regarding the return of Jesus which will bring an end to time and usher in the judgment of humanity,
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9 ESV).
Ezekiel writes,
“Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11 ESV).
God loves every man, no matter how good or evil that man is. In fact, while we were still His enemies, Jesus died for us because God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son. He created us in His image for the sole purpose of dwelling with us so we could rule over His creation with Him.
But sin meant that we could not dwell with God, who is sinless. Sin meant that we would suffer the curse sin brings rather than the paradise that fellowship with the Creator offers. And until that sin is removed, we can do little but say, “Woe are we, for we are people of unclean lips and dwell with people of unclean lips.”
“We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.” (Isaiah 64:6-7 ESV).
We are without hope. We are without remedy. We are without redemption.
This is our state when sin separates us from God. Left alone, there is nothing we can do to rectify our lost condition. There is no amount of good deeds to do, no amount of alms or prayers to give, or no amount of penance we can offer to make a dent in our lost condition. And God knew this.
There was only one question at issue. Did our Creator love us enough to step in and do for us what we could not do for ourselves? Would He be willing to sacrifice enough to bring salvation to a people who hated Him, reviled Him, rejected Him, and blasphemed Him?
“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 ESV).
God decided before the foundations of the world that He would offer the highest form of sacrifice for a people He knew would despise Him. He would do it while we were still His enemies.
Why? Because He knew it was impossible for us to live in His presence with our sins. So He paid that debt for us and took on the reproach that ours sins demanded. He became sin so that we might be free from sin.
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV).
This was it. The death of God Himself, paying the price of our sins was the only way we could be people of unclean lips who could still live in the presence of God.
Yet, many of His image bearers will still choose to be His enemies rather than take hold of the grace He offers. Many will choose death over life. Many will love the darkness and flee from the light.
When that day comes, and those who stand before Him in judgment will receive their reward, their prize, their sentence, can we charge God of being hateful when men are banished from His presence?
Hardly.
Those who are sent away from His presence are only condemned to the state they have already chosen to live in. Without taking hold of the grace Jesus offers, there is no remedy for our separation from God. On Judgment Day, Jesus simply honors the choice we make to live with our sins and without Him.
God is not hateful for sending people to the hell they choose. He is loving to offer a way to the Father through Him by His sacrifice when nothing else could have removed the sins that separated us from God.
God may wipe away our tears in Heaven, but His tears will flow at the grief our separation will cause Him. Right now, He is long-suffering. He is patient. He is pleading at the door, knocking for us to open to Him. But there will come a day when He will gather all who lay hold of the grace He offers and take them into the presence of the Father.
On that day, we will not have unclean lips. We will not dwell with people of unclean lips. We will live in His presence as His image bearers who will sit on His throne with Him to rule over all of creation at His side the way He created us to do.
“The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.” (Revelation 3:21 ESV).
For those who do not want to dwell with Him,
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41 ESV).
Sin is what curses us. If we will not allow Him to remove that curse with His blood, then we cannot live in the presence of God.
Jesus lays the offer at our feet. His grace does what we cannot do for ourselves, what we could never do for ourselves. His love caused Him to act on our behalf while we still hated Him.
“For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2 ESV).
“Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:17 ESV).
Jesus is King.
I am in Ezekiel in my daily Bible reading. God is really upset with the lying prophets who speak what God has not spoken, so He pronounces judgement on them.
“Because you have disheartened the righteous falsely, although I have not grieved him, and you have encouraged the wicked, that he should not turn from his evil way to save his life,
therefore you shall no more see false visions nor practice divination. I will deliver my people out of your hand. And you shall know that I am the LORD.” (Ezekiel 13:22-23 ESV).
When people of our age speak what is evil by sanctifying evil and commanding that everyone should accept evil as good, and then claim that this is the will of God, they are doing what the false prophets in Ezekiel did.
We must not presume to speak where God has not spoken and then defend our words by saying, “This is the will of God.” When we speak evil and attribute it to God, there will be a day of reckoning.
God will never approve of sexual impurity. Violence is not from the same God who said, “Love your enemies” and “Turn the other cheek.” Lying to achieve your political ends is from the devil. Pitting one group against another should not be how image bearers of God treat each other.
We have many false prophets who justify their sinful actions and lifestyles by proclaiming their evil in the name of the Lord. This will not continue with impunity.
There will be a day of reckoning for those who commit evil in the name of the Lord. Read the Word and hear the voice of God. Those who commit evil in the name of the Lord will face a day of reckoning, and if we follow them, we will be swept away in their condemnation.
God helped me hang my ceiling fan.
Let me explain. Last week, I replaced the old overhead light on my covered back porch with a new smart ceiling fan/light. Here is what I needed to make this happen.
Technology. This was a Plug-N-Play event. God has given us the ingenuity and physics that made this simplistic installation possible. Without the Laws of Nature that He ordained to order the universe, this product could have never existed.
Even though it was Plug-N-Play, it still required basic engineering. I had to connect wires and mount multiple items. For this, I had YouTube where God’s imagers had shared their dominion over these areas for me to learn from.
And my wife, Emily, was there every step of the way. She has an engineering mind that she inherited from her father, Wayne. As simple as this project may have been for most people, without Emily, I would have mightily struggled. God brought her and I together as husband and wife. Because of His hand in our marriage, I was able to install this ceiling fan/light.
From tools to intellect, God ultimately provided every seed I needed to install that ceiling fan. That’s why I can say God helped me hang my ceiling fan.
That’s why we can confidently say that everything we have, everything we do, everything we achieve, God has His hand in it, and all blessings flow from Him.
We serve a God who has names for more stars than we have words in our language. What an awesome God we serve.
“Not one is missing”
“Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing.” (Isaiah 40:26 ESV).