The Everlasting Kindness of God

“‘For a brief moment I abandoned you,
but with deep compassion I will bring you back.
In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment,
but with everlasting kindness
I will have compassion on you,’
says the LORD your Redeemer.” -Is. 54.7-8

While this passage has to do with Israel’s eschatological judgment and restoration, and while the sweeping visions and themes presented in the latter chapters of Isaiah are awesome to consider, there was one point from these two verses that struck me upon reading them recently.

It has to do with the Personality of God Himself, especially as it is expressed in His Divine kindness.

We humans are so driven by outward appearance, so masked and subject to falsehood, that the idea of God’s kindness often seems trivial and unworthy of consideration. We are not accustomed to the kindness of the One on the throne, for most of us have mainly experienced from others a surface-level kindness, a political kind of compassion, an external display of niceness that is meant to maintain peace in an external way. Even in the Church there is a famine of true Godly love, and we mostly know the “smile and a handshake once a week” type of kindness, rather than the type which invades and touches the lives of the saints in the realm of real life, and is a selfless display of God’s own heart.

We wouldn’t vote for a frowning politician, and so they smile for our cameras. Nowadays their teeth have been whitened and treated to make our experience all the better. A man can go a long ways in the Western world if he has a winsome smile. But the chances are, for most of those smiling men, they know little or nothing of the type of kindness which comes from heaven, and the naivete of the masses is revealed in the fact that they love to go along with the show. Soon enough the popularity ratings will go down, and the puff of kindness from both sides will be revealed for the hollow thing that it was. We live in a “chew-you-up and spit-you-out society,” and human kindness only lasts while the one giving it is being pleased or benefited. Not so with the kindness of God.

The compassion of God, according to His own description, is “deep,” and His kindness is “everlasting.” He describes the day of His wrath and judgment at the end of the age as a “surge of anger,” and the hiding of His face as momentary. But He declares that “with everlasting kindness” He will have “compassion” on Israel and the nations.

What is striking my heart in this, is that judgment and wrath are necessary components of the God of Justice, but His everlasting character is that of kindness. Judgment and wrath would never have broken out in the earth had it not been for the sin of mankind and the fallenness of the devil and his angels. He would still be holy and just, but His wrath is a “surge” of anger that is meant to bring about a greater end; namely, an entire people within His creation, who know Him as He is, who walk as He walked, and who love as He loves.

However spiritual we may think ourselves, one of the chief evidences that we are being conformed into His image is that a selfless, heavenly kindness is being formed in our hearts, and expressed toward those whom the Lord has put in our lives. If we are crotchety and short with our families, or co-workers, or our neighbors, then something of our experience in God is woefully amiss. We need to ask the Lord for His own patience, tenderness, and kindness, lest we end up living by a list of Christian ideals, rather than loving Him with all of our hearts, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. It is not playacting with smiles and gestures as the politician does, it is receiving into our hearts the kindness of God Himself, and dispensing it by His own Spirit to those whom He has put in our lives.

As one modern psalmist has so simply and aptly written to the Lord:

I’ve never known another as kind in this life as You;
All the others cross the road and pass me by, but not You.

(Tim Reimherr)

Oh, to be in Him, like Him, abiding with Him!

The Greatness & Condescending Goodness of Yahweh

“Who is like the Lord our God,
Who is enthroned on high,
Who humbles Himself to behold
The things that are in heaven and in the earth?” -Ps. 113.5-6

In his masterpiece on the Psalms, The Treasury of David, Charles Spurgeon wrote that the subject of Psalm 113 was “the greatness and condescending goodness of the God of Israel.”

There is no faith but that of the Old & New Testaments which brings to mankind the revelation of a God who is full of majesty and holiness, while simultaneously characterized by humility and kindness. We cannot fathom this glory with mere human logic, for we have never known a man who bore great power and authority, while exhibiting perfect humility and love toward those who were beneath him.

It is no wonder that the Psalmist was filled with wonder. Through the life of praise, and a meditation on the Law of God in the Tabernacle, he had come into a vision of Yahweh that induced the question, “Who is like the Lord our God… enthroned… Who humbles Himself to behold things… in the earth?”

We are easily duped by showmanship humility. A sports star says, ‘hello’ to us or signs an autograph, and we say, “He’s so down to earth and kind. It’s so good to see a man using his platform to set an example.” We put their posters on the wall and devote hours upon hours to watching them play, and we delight in personal details about them.

The psalmist was wrapped up with another glory altogether. No man has ever exhibited this kind of humility, save the Man Christ Jesus. The singer had come into a revelation of God’s exaltedness, declaring that the “Lord is high above all nations; His glory is above the heavens.” (v. 4) By His word the galaxies were formed, the great mountains were raised, the deepest valleys were laid, the oceans were filled and made to roar, and the streams were made to flow. As elevated as are the thrones of kings, as high as are the heavens, as powerful as are the greatest of angelic hosts, the glory of the Lord is “above” them all.

Our minds cannot grasp the height of His exaltedness, but when we are touched with His mercy, we receive a glimpse of the greatness of God, and we are overcome with trembling and awe.

The remarkable thing is, we would never have heard His name, nor seen His character, had He not been a God “Who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth.”

Who is like Him? There is no one. It is Jesus only, Jesus from eternity past, Jesus in this moment, and Jesus in the age to come. The Son of God has stooped lower than the profoundest of human minds could imagine. When He came, He did not merely walk by to sign an autograph and say ‘hello.’ He came into the earth, took on flesh, lived a common life amongst common men, spoke life-words, performed heavenly works, and just when men wanted to exalt Him in an earthly sense, He died the death of shame upon a Roman cross. In this He humbled Himself, not only to behold things in the earth, but to save mankind and creation altogether. That means you, and that means me! Hallelujah!

The psalmist is not begrudgingly walking through some Davidic liturgy when he says to “Praise the Lord.” He is calling his people to the only sensible response to such a glorious and condescending God! Praise Him, O servants! The Gospel is not an opinion formed by Christian men. It is the full-orbed revelation of Son of God Himself, who is enthroned transcendently above the heavens, but Who humbled Himself to the point of death to make dead men live in the glory of the Father. What “condescending goodness!” What remarkable mercy! Do you remember the darkness from which you’ve been saved?

“He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
To make them sit with princes, with the princes of His people.” (vv. 7-8)

Praise the Lord!

The Citadel of Offense

“An offended brother is more unyielding than a fortified city…” -Proverbs 18.19a

A citadel is a fortress, typically on high ground, that protects or dominates a city. The writer of this proverb notes that “an offended brother is more unyielding than a fortified city,” or a city with a citadel.

The whole purpose of a citadel is to guard and oversee the city, to protect it from any invading influences or enemies, and to keep life within the city civilized and orderly.

The lives of men are like civilized cities, self-centered and ordered in various ways to cater to our arrogance, lust, and pleasure-seeking paradigms. We are offended when someone calls our bluff or grinds against our own self-made civilizations, and anything that threatens to ruffle the feathers of our comfortable lives is at once dubbed a terrible enemy.

“…. for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God….” -2 Cor. 10.4-5a

The “weapons of our warfare” are meant to destroy fortresses, those lofty things that keep us from the intimate knowledge of God. So the chief purpose of prayer and Scripture reading is not to establish our devotional lives, to cultivate the art of preparing sermons, or any such thing. They are meant to destroy and obliterate the citadels or fortresses that keep us from the knowledge of God as He truly is; and of these fortresses, offense is one of main ramparts.

Men surround their self-centered lives with a fortress of offense. They are offended that God would have mercy on those whom they think are undeserving of mercy. They are offended that He would set forth His Son as the only way to Himself and the only door to eternal life. They are offended at His supernaturalness. They are offended that He would allow certain tragedies and cataclysms to touch the earth and the human race. They are offended at His love on one side, and offended at his judgments on the other.

Added to all of that, they are offended at any soul who would lovingly speak the truth of the Kingdom to them, and their citadel of offense keeps their civilized “city” safe, and keeps the reality of God off at a distance. This is what they presume.

But it is not so. Every citadel and fortress will be shattered and ground to dust when God visits the earth, and the only saving grace is to cast our broken lives- with all of their offense- onto the Rock who has the power to transform and cleanse us, making us an unoffended people who love His return, and are fit for the day of His power.

Are you offended? Your citadel will not hold when His glory rises. Better instead to lay down our depravity and offense, unbolt the gate, and ask Him to come in and reign forever. He will be the meek, loving, and holy King that your “city” is meant to behold, obey, and love.

Offense is the great bolted gate of our citadel, and it keeps us from being invaded by the mercy and truth of God.

The Sound of a Voice!

“Lord, I have heard of Your fame;
I stand in awe of Your deeds, O Lord.
Renew them in our day,
in our time make them known;
In wrath remember mercy.” -Hab. 3.2

At the start of the 18th century, England was in a more depraved moral and spiritual condition than she had been in since the Reformation, over 150 years before. An esteem for righteousness had largely waned, philosophy and theory had overtaken the simplicity and purity of faith, and the preachers were being scorned as ignorant and unworthy of society’s ear. Christian leaders were responding to the onslaught with intellectual pamphlets and arguments, and aside from “a few notable exceptions, the pulpits were cold, and discord and stagnancy were the chief features of the denominations.”

The Church “had failed at a time when they were most sorely needed.” The society, “robbed of a sense of the reality of God…. stood more in need of the Gospel of Jesus Christ than at any time since the Reformation. But they were denied the message of its transforming power and, as a result, found themselves in the bondage of sinful habit.”

If this picture wasn’t dark enough, history tells of the emergence of what came to be known as The Gin Craze. The importation of liquor had been prohibited, so Englishmen began to brew their own, “and so large was the demand that, within a generation, every sixth house in London had become a gin shop and the nation was in an uncontrollable orgy of gin drinking.” Toward the end of his life, a man known as Bishop Benson made this comment:

Gin has made the English people what they never were before- cruel and inhuman.

By and large, the nation was manifesting anger, immorality, abuse, and thievery like never before, and the spiritual and moral landscape looked to be without promise entirely.

A London magistrate named Henry Fielding stated:

Should the drinking of this poison be continued at its present height during the next twenty years, there will, by that time, be very few of the common people left to drink it.

Bishop Butler “declared that scepticism was so rampant that Christianity was treated as though ‘it was now discovered to be fictitious…. and nothing remained but to set it up as the subject of mirth and ridicule.’”

Archbishop Secker, writing in 1738, noted:

In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard to religion is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present age. This evil has already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and such profligate intemperance and fearlessness of committing crimes in the lower, as must, if this torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal.

How could the tide of darkness be turned? Surely it was too pervasive, too deep-seated, too overwhelmingly wicked. Surely England could not recover from this kind of profound moral and spiritual bankruptcy! Ah, but wait!

During the very months in which Bishop Secker wrote his foreboding words, England was startled by the sound of a voice.

Yes, a voice! Crying in the wilderness of England’s dry and deathly condition, there was suddenly a voice.

It was the voice of a preacher, George Whitefield, a clergyman but twenty-two years old, who was declaring the Gospel in the pulpits of London with such fervour and power, that no church would hold the multitudes that flocked to hear.

His voice continued to be heard, and then was joined by the voices of John and Charles Wesley and of many others, in a tremendous chorus of praise and preaching that rang throughout the land and was sustained in strength for more than a half a century.

The effect has been described in the words:

“… a religious revival burst forth… which changed in a few years the whole temper of English society. The Church was restored to life and activity. Religion carried to the hearts of the people a fresh spirit of moral zeal, while it purified our literature and our manners. A new philanthropy reformed our prisons, infused clemency and wisdom into our penal laws, abolished the slave trade, and gave the first impulse of popular education.”

It is the story of the eighteenth-century Revival, rich with its lessons for our own needy age…”

(All Quotations taken from George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the 18th Century Revival by Arnold Dallimore, Vol. 1; pp. 20-32, Banner of Truth)

For more than 50 years, the Western world was shaken by this great Awakening, and it came upon the shoulders of broken men and women, who had cried out to God for mercy upon their nation.

I am young, but I can’t remember a time when the darkness hung so thickly over America. I can’t remember a time when the Bible was so scoffed at, the return of the Lord so trivialized, the Church so distracted, and the overall tenor of our nation so immoral and God-less.

Europe is under a thick cloud as well, in the very lands that shook under the power of God in centuries past. While we pray and send laborers to the 10/40 window, let us not forget how lacking our own nation is. Let us not forget how desperately we need an awakening in our own land.

The darkness was overwhelming in the 18th century. But at the time when England’s experience was the darkest, it was suddenly “startled by the sound of a voice.”  Light broke into the heart of their nation, and an awakening resulted.

Whitefield’s great voice caused America’s hills to reverberate with God’s glory as well, and thousands upon thousands of souls passed from darkness to light in that great historic hour. I believe it was J.C. Ryle who described Whitefield in this way:

He followed Paul, his zeal aflame; his apostolic charity the same.

We have too many echoes coming from our pulpits, books, and radio shows. O, how the nations need to hear voices again! May the Lord break us free from entanglements that bind, and sweep us up in His great love and purity, possess us with the Spirit of prayer, and mark us as voices in the wilderness of these last days!

The Lord will do even greater in the final hour than He did in the historic awakenings of the past. Are we willing vessels, surrendered to Him for that eternal work? Blessed is the man who is found in Him in the day of His power.

Boldness for Entry Into the Holiest Place

“Therefore let us draw near with boldness to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” -Heb. 4.16

We cannot pass through the heavens on any basis other than the blood of the Lamb. The powers of the air are too crafty in deceiving us, our blindness and depravity are too deep-seated, and our flesh is too earthbound to ascend into the heavenlies at all. Hear W.C. Burns on this:

Now I fear we often think that we can come without this blood; or rather without any deep sense of our need of it. But what is the reason of that? Simply that some of us do not know God at all; and that we never yet have discovered either our enmity to God, or God’s contrariety to us.

Now, beloved friends, the very first effect which the knowledge of God has upon a man, is to make him feel that he is full of enmity to God, and that therefore he cannot and dare not come to God. He trembles at the very mention of his name: he never can hear it with joy until he has been sprinkled by the blood.

…. But when God by his Spirit draws us, then we come by his way, and have boldness to enter into the Holiest of all.

But then, remember, that makes us humble. No soul that ever entered there remained proud, either toward God or man: and this just belies the approaches to God that some people say they make. If they find it a natural and easy thing to come into the secret of his presence; if they find that their nature goes quite along with it, and they can enter there at all times, without difficulty; this proves nothing but their ignorance of God.

The effect of the least knowledge of God’s blessed perfections, is to drive a man to the blood of Christ, and to make him set a high value on that precious blood. Now it is that, this blood having been applied afresh to the conscience, he comes a poor, rebellious, God-dishonouring sinner, to present on the altar his body and soul a living sacrifice.

…. We come to the Holy God, as to one who is a Spirit, possessed of infinite perfections, the just, true, and gracious God. His presence is called the Holiest of all.

…. How do we come to Him? By the blood of the covenant; and with all boldness.

(Revival Sermons by William C. Burns; Banner of Truth, 1869; pp. 70-71)

Beloved saints, there is a vast difference between boldly entering the holiest place by His blood, and the modern curse of presumptuous religion, which convinces a man that he may enter on the basis of his Church attendance, his ministry endeavors, his charisma, or his history in religion. If we have not felt inwardly our inability to pass through the heavens, if we have not become aware of the depravity and limitation of our humanness, we are not boldly entering, but are carrying out some other kind of religious frenzy.

A man may only enter by the blood of the Lamb. We cannot enter because we have a particular form of prayer, or because of our spiritual reputation before men. We cannot enter on the coat tails of our fathers or friends. We cannot enter on the basis of being a part of a certain party, denomination, or movement. A man may only enter when his soul has been sprinkled by the precious blood of Christ, when his heart has gone out to God in faith, and when his heart has been touched with the newness of Divine life. This is only attainable through the blood itself. The life is in the blood, and if we are approaching the faith without a conscious need for it, it is not that we have matured or graduated into a greater spirituality; it’s that we have lost an awareness of sin, and of our absolute need for His mercy. It’s not that we’ve come onto the grounds of maturity and depth, it’s that we’ve abandoned the very foundations upon which true faith is experienced.

We have a High Priest who has “passed through the heavenlies,” ascended with Divine force above every principality and power, and who has been seated at the right hand of Majesty, and He reigns there for our entry into the Holiest place.

“No man comes to the Father but through Me,” is not just a statement for our initial salvation, but a heavenly law for all communion with God and for all revelation of Himself. We must come into the holiest of all through the Son, which is to say, by His own blood.

Have you entered today, dear saint?

The Gift of Thirst

“For I will pour out water on the thirsty land
And streams on the dry ground;
I will pour out My Spirit on your offspring
And My blessing on your descendants.” -Is. 44.3

Of this verse, the “good pastor” Robert Murray McCheyne once remarked:

There are no other words in the whole Bible that have been oftener in my heart and oftener on my tongue than these.

The passage applies directly to Israel, but the principle of the promise can be applied to all contexts where the Creator is active amongst men. Where the land thirsts for righteousness and mercy, and where men thirst for God in recognition of the dryness of their own hearts, the word stands true that He will “pour out water” from heaven, and His own interpretation of the image is that He will pour out His Spirit on our offspring, and his blessing on our descendants.

I would rather be found in the tension of spiritual thirst, without having yet seen the water to come, than to be drunk and satisfied with the wine of this age. I would rather be as a cracked desert ground, and aware of my dryness, than to be full of the delusion of self-satisfied living. To be able to thirst after God is a great gift from heaven. To yearn for Him in the barren wastelands is better than to be satisfied without Him in the man-made reservoirs of the city.

To be at ease and full without the outpouring of His Spirit is to live in a delusion. I may whittle away a lifetime without really thirsting, taking sips from fashion, swigs from sport, gulps from Hollywood, and guzzles from religion, and my life will end in deception. My children will have been robbed of a glory and knowledge of God that could have been theirs, had I been a man of thirst.

But I may live a life of thirst, and in my weakness, yearn for Him in the quiet places of the desert, and the promise will one day be answered. I know not when. I know not the hour of visitation. But the certitude cannot be shaken, for He Himself has declared it. He will “pour out water upon the thirsty land,” and my children will see something of His glory that they would have missed if I had settled for something less than God Himself.

If only the world knew of the glory of thirsting for Him! If only the Church weren’t so distracted and filled from the “buffet” that the world offers us and the busy mentality that modern “ministry” puts before us.

Though I have heard of His great love, and experienced it on many glorious occasions, it still staggers me that He longs to pour out His own Spirit upon us, and our children. It matters not that I’m a dry and cracked soul. In fact, that is the ground upon which He copiously pours out His holy rain. Oh, to live a life of anticipatory thirst. To ache for God Himself, until He comes and makes all things new. This is blessedness indeed.

Oh then wish more for God, burn more with desire,
Covet more the dear sight of his marvellous Face;
Pray louder, pray longer, for the sweet gift of fire
To come down on thy heart with its whirlwinds of grace.

Yes pine for thy God, fainting soul! ever pine;
Oh languish mid all that life brings thee of mirth;
Famished, thirsty, and restless, -let such life be thine,-
For what sight is to heaven, desire is to earth.

(Frederick Faber, as quoted in The Christian Book of Mystical Verse, compiled by A.W. Tozer; Christian Publications, 1963; pp. 56-57)

He will pour out water, dear soul. Thirst then! Thirst after Him…

The Recovery of Eschatological Reality

My reading of a wonderful work on biblical prophecy was stopped in its tracks when I came to this line today:

“Christian prophecy and apocalyptic and eschatological thinking continued on well into the second and even third and fourth centuries.” (Jesus the Seer: The Progress of Prophecy, by Ben Witherington III; Hendrickson Publishers, 1999; p. 379)

I wonder if this simple historical line from a scholar strikes you in the same way as it struck me. Christian prophecy (meaning the actual activity of God’s Spirit in the prophetic speech of the Church), and apocalyptic/eschatological thinking (meaning the revelation, understanding and awareness that the early Church possessed regarding God’s great plan for Israel and the nations in this age and in the age to come) had all faded almost entirely from the Church’s experience by the end of the fourth century.

There were glimmers here and there over the course of the next 1,100 years, but by and large, the reality of the Spirit of prophecy, and the eschatological consciousness of apostolic Gospel could scarcely be found in the entire earth. We are feeling the negative effects of this great loss to this day.

Reformations have come and gone, revivals and awakenings have permeated the earth and faded, and all of these great historical events have left us with remarkable recoveries of God’s intention and purpose for the Church. A thousand volumes have been written on the great movings of God, and a thousand more could be written yet. I was born-again in the midst of an genuine move of God, and have always loved and valued historical revival and awakening.

Yet and still, I long for a Church-wide recovery of the Spirit of prophecy, and the apocalyptic/eschatological thinking that was part and parcel with the prophets and apostles of old. This has been a yearning of my own for almost a decade, and a precious remnant of souls in the earth today have yearned for this recovery for much longer than I have.

This is not a recovery of mere eschatological themes and debates, but a true restoration of the spirit and view of the Scriptures. Too long have large numbers swallowed hollow end-time views, replacement theologies, or downright scoffed at the idea of all things eschatological.

Believers, thinking themselves mature, have said things like, “I’m a pan-tribber. It’ll all pan out in the end!” Or, “You’re too tied up with Israel and the end-times. It’s all about Jesus, man.” Or, “Brother, that is all excessive. It’s all about the great commission.”

I tremble for those who say it will all pan out in the end, and who in that same breath, have tragically neglected the Scriptures pertaining to the prophetic view of the faith! How shall it “pan-out” for those who have been casual toward the truth that God Himself has inspired and given for our preparation?

I tremble for the one who is unconcerned for the issue of Israel and the issue of the end of the age, and who thinks that by setting these great things aside He is more Jesus-centered. If Israel and the words of her prophets are not central to our understanding of the faith that Jesus Himself gave, how can we say it’s all about Him while neglecting such a large portion of His own heart? Is it really all about Him for you, or are you just willingly blind toward who He really is, and what His great intention and purposes are?

I tremble for those who have no concern for Israel and the Kingdom to come, and who say that it’s all about the great commission. What has our great commission become if it hasn’t got the view of the prophets and apostles who gave it to us? John the Baptist, all the apostles, and Jesus Himself were immersed in the prophetic Scriptures, and their Gospel carried something that our hollow outreaches often lack, and much of it has to do with the fact that we have been unwilling to come into the knowledge of God that the prophets have set forth.

I’m not speaking of everyone becoming scholars and talking about lofty eschatological themes. That would affect little for the positive, and could even effect things negatively.

This is a call to be immersed in the Scriptures again, to get acquainted with the God of the prophets and apostles, who are themselves the foundation of the Church. If we haven’t come into the revelation that they have sought to hand down to us, what have we got? We may have experienced justification, but are we prepared for the hour at hand?

Do we have a hope that lives and burns even in the midst of trial? Do we have an intimacy with God as the Judge of the earth? When the great shakings come, have we a remarkable union with the God who shakes all things, or have we got a faith like a stack of cards because we have only swallowed what men have handed us on Sundays, and have been unwilling to press into the Lord ourselves?

The Spirit of prophecy and the apocalyptic/eschatological view that was lost by the end of the fourth century has only been partially recovered in our day. We need to pour over the Scriptures like never before, prayerfully, diligently, interacting with one another in fellowship and interacting with our Father and waiting upon Him for the help and understanding that He promised to give us by His Spirit.

I may be called peripheral for these thoughts, but I’m weary of hearing the scoffing spirit in the Church. Great men of God who I have profound esteem for have even spoken in a scoffing way toward this much needed reality, and it discourages the saints from opening up the prophets with any expectation that they will have something to speak to us today. Jesus is going to return as King and Judge, and the truth is, most of the Church is totally lacking an awareness of this as a reality. A remnant expect His return, and many of them are simply hoping for an escape from the world. An escape that was never promised in the Scriptures in the way their expecting.

There are flaky end-times issues that need to be confronted, but that doesn’t mean we have license to spiritualize or set aside the passages of Scripture which pertain to these realities! There is a hope and sobriety that can only be given to the saints once they have come into an understanding of what the prophets and apostles have set forth in this regard. Woe unto us if we discourage the saints from pressing into the knowledge of God in this area.

The salvation of Israel is dependent upon the emergence of a Church which has come into His fullness, and would we assume that this fullness will be attained to without a recovery of the reality of which I speak? Men are sure to reply, “But these themes are too lofty. They are side issues. Let’s major on the majors and minor on the minors.” However lofty we have made them, and however multi-colored and twisted up these themes may seem, they are in the Scriptures that God Himself has given us. We have written them off because many of our fathers have written them off. This is not merely a subject we need to study to get our systematic house in order. The prophetic and eschatological spirit actually permeates our Bible, and our ignorance or resistance of these realities actually causes us to see the faith itself through a lens that the apostles were not looking through. We have little understanding of what the Kingdom of God actually represents, for our definitions have come from wells that are less pure than the words of God as shown forth in the Scriptures. We have radically underestimated the importance of all this, and yet it is in our Bibles!

Oh, friends, it is time to wake up, quit our game-playing with life, our neglect of the Scriptures, our satisfaction with so little of the anointing of God upon our lives, and to seek His face earnestly. He will only show Himself to the souls who are weak enough to come to Him. To those who are willing to set aside their smug spiritual egos, and to admit that we have too little of a knowledge of Him and His purposes. From that place, He will shower us with grace, lead us through His word, and give us a recovery of the very awareness and lifestyle that belonged to the apostles of old.

We will sacrifice freely in the day of His power, all Israel will be saved, and our King will glorified in the earth once and for all.

My Soul Longs for you

“As the deer longs for the water brook, so my soul longs for You.” -Ps. 42.1

The soul of the psalmist longs for God just as the deer pants for brooks of water. He longs for God, for in no other has he tasted from the wellsprings of a love so authentic and true. He pants for God, for in no other person has he discovered the purifying power of mercy, and the cleansing agent of grace. He longs for God, for in the depths of worship he has found that there is no one who is holy like Yahweh. He longs for God, for his own heart has none of these graces without Him.

David, the sweet-singer of Israel, has heard the great song of God Himself (Zeph. 3.16-17). The King of Judah has caught a glimpse of the truest and most just King, and he longs to have more than a glimpse. Only a gaze upon the beauty of this great heavenly King will satisfy his heart (Ps. 27).

He cannot settle for a casual knowledge of God. He wants to press past the veil. He wants the heavens to be parted (Ps. 144). He wants to see the glory of God cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. He wants the same character and nature that marks the heavenly temple to possess the earthly tabernacle in like manner. Yet his desire is profounder than to have a heavenly pattern repeated on the earth. He longs for God Himself.

“My soul thirst for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?” (v. 2)

Fathom the audacity of David! He longs to meet face to face with the One who caused the mountain to smoke, burn, and shake. David wants to be touched by the One whose fire broke out in the old camp of Israel and issued forth judgment. David trusts that One, and he longs to transcend all suspicions and fears, to break past all man-made limitations, and to “meet with God.”

For the psalmist it was not a fancy thought, but a yearning for which reason he wept upon his pillow. He longed to know God as He is.

I desire the same longing to grip my own heart, my own family, and the church at large. That we would put aside all lesser preoccupations, even ministerially speaking, and burn inwardly after a greater meeting with God! That we would seek His face… wait for Him alone… gaze upon His majesty… long for Him… love Him…

A greater union awaits the soul who would turn from the noise of this age, quiet his soul, and find some place to thirstily seek His face. O, friend! Don’t you long for Him? Don’t you long to love Him more deeply? Still your heart before Him today. Receive His great heart toward you, and from that place, enter into a greater love for God Himself.

Cleanse Our Eyes! A Call to Consecration in the Area of Entertainment

“I have made a covenant with my eyes;
How then could I gaze at a virgin?
…. for that would be a fire that consumes….
and it would burn to the root all my increase.” -Job 31.1, 12

I understand that many would brand my faith antique and my convictions archaic for approaching this subject, but that is a minuscule risk for me to take. God is too glorious, His Gospel too precious, and the fate of our sons and daughters too much at stake for me to worry about the consequences that these themes bring. I am convinced that we have woefully underestimated the damage that is done to the world and to the Church, particularly with regard to the issue of so-called entertainment.

The Church is largely bored with the Scriptures, unwilling to sacrifice for eternal things, unacquainted with the Spirit of prayer, and is harboring such distorted views of God that it is often difficult to tell if the One she is proclaiming is the same Lord that the apostles and prophets set forth. There may be a litany of reasons for this decrease of majesty, but I believe that one of the greatest of these is that Hollywood has a stranglehold on the hearts and imaginations of God’s children.

The pornography epidemic could be driven home here, and to sound the trumpet against that demonic system will require the emergence of a true prophetic voice indeed. Almost 40% of American pastors admit to a current struggle with internet porn, and the numbers are even greater amongst “non-clergy.” This is beyond tragic, and we are in need of a massive overhaul of repentance and mercy. Now more than ever are we in need of awakening, and if you are in this category there is deliverance and freedom from this deathtrap. The Gospel of Jesus sets us free “from all sin,” and He will give you grace to slam the door once and for all on this terribly besetting sin, when you repent and turn to Him with a whole heart, clinging to the Son of God.

Yet as horrific as the pornography phenomenon is, that is not the primary burden of my heart in this writing.

I am convinced that the Church of America, as a majority, has been removed from, or has never known, the kind of trepidation and tenderness of heart that Job was expressing when he declared, “I have made a covenant with my eyes….”

It was part and parcel with the faith of all the saints of old, that what they allowed to pass through the eye-gate, and what they permitted willingly to go into their ears, would taint their souls at best, and find residence in their lives at the worst. I am suspicious of modern “prophetic” men who commonly site movies and shows that contain illicit sex, profane lingo and themes, glorified violence, immoral innuendo, and other defiling examples as points in their messages. The only reason these points hit home with so many church members is that they themselves are given over to the same powers and influences.

Our hearts are too taken up with this world, saints, and there has never been a generation wherein the spirit of this age strikes the soul with such color, such special effects, and such mesmerizing influence as the one we find ourselves in. Yet we are called to an ultimate holiness nonetheless, and it may be said that one of the distinguishing factors between those who will bear the testimony of Jesus at the end of the age and those who will take the mark of beast during tribulational times will be this radical consecration of the eyes to God Himself.

In Eph. 5, Paul declares that there should not even be a “hint of immorality” in the lives of God’s people. Dear believer, I ask you pointedly, what constitutes a hint? How many of Hollywood’s characters, themes and plots can we drink in without receiving a “hint” of darkness?

There is something sleazy about many of our lives, charismatic or not, and while it might not be overt, I believe there is a residue of immorality resting upon those who have freely given themselves to morally compromised entertainment. There is something flimsy about our religion, and the bright burning of holiness that marked John the Baptist, the prophets of old, and Jesus Himself is conspicuously absent in the sanctuary, where His name is declared “holy” in verbal exercise, but the sense of His holiness has become foreign.

“…. it would burn to the root of all my increase.”

While we have boasted in “liberty,” and spoken poetically of our spiritual interpretations of Hollywood flicks (interpretations that Hollywood would largely reject and ridicule), we have too often condoned the spiritual pollution of our hearts.

Would the porn epidemic be so far-reaching and deeply-rooted if the Church hadn’t dropped the ball in areas of more subtle compromise? We have become arrogant in our boasting. And we wonder why our kids are prayerless and numb to eternal reality, buying into agnosticism and atheism when they graduate high-school and make it to their respective Universities. We wonder why thousands of “evangelical” teens are converting to Islam or diving headlong into the “party” life when they get out from under the wing of a youth group, and into the reality of college life. This may not be the only issue, but it is much more prevalent than we know. It’s a battle of ideologies, and hell has no greater method than to slowly dull our hearts to the God of righteousness through cute and subtle, entertaining displays of hellish ideas. As a friend of mine so rightly wrote:

We have so saturated our minds and imaginations with man-created images that we are bound to those images and therefore subject to the agenda of the men creating them.

It has burned to the root of our “increase” in Christ. We have lost the hunger and thirst for righteousness that Jesus encouraged, for we have given our hearts, minds, and pocketbooks to the broken cisterns of carnal entertainment.

It’s staggering to me that when the subject is raised to most believers, the tag of legalism is immediately raised. While there are legalistic souls who lack an understanding of mercy, and who often place heavy yokes upon others, the vehemence and rage of those who dish out accusations that men like myself are “legalistic” is far more widespread, at least in my own experience. I’ve never heard more warnings against “the religious spirit” of “legalism” than I have in the last few years.

In the area of entertainment they say, “Paul said we had liberty in Christ.” Yet these modern warnings are usually employed in a context that is far different from the situation with the Judaizers in the churches of Galatia. The apostles, quite contrary to the liberal ideas of today, addressed issues of righteousness with remarkable frequency and intensity in the New Testament, and I believe they would weep over the Church in our day, that we would be delivered from the murky waters that have tainted and dulled our spirits in the realm of entertainment. Our liberty is not license, but freedom from the death grip of this dying age. It is a liberty to come into the wonderful reality of communion with the Living God, and to taste of the “powers of the age to come.”

This is not about judging our movies based on their ratings. A thousand “PG” movies could be just as detrimental as one “R” movie. Addictions to CNN and social networking must be challenged if they burn up our time and keep us from the place of prayer and worship, diminish our passion for the Scriptures, and blur our awareness of the lostness of humanity. This is about a total consecration of our eyes and hearts unto Him, that we might gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, tremble before His majesty, remain in the loving counsel of His voice, and set Him forth in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.

Our eyes have been too opened to the lying glimmers of this age. The time is here for an ultimate consecration of the eyes to the Lord, that we would see the increase of Christ Himself in our lives. We haven’t got room even for a “hint,” friends.

Let us return to Him with weeping and mourning, that so many of us have preferred the fading lights of this age to the glorious light of God Himself. We need not buy into the lie any longer. He longs to pour out mercy upon us, to purify us down to the marrow of our bones, to make us a tender-hearted people, enjoying deep communion with Him, and walking in meekness and holiness unto the day of His return.

Oh God, cleanse and purify our hearts with the fire of Your holiness and love. Catch us up in the Spirit of prayer and the glory of worship, quicken our souls to love the Scriptures, awaken us from fantasy and bring us into eternal reality. For Jesus’ sake.

The Dry Bones of Israel & the Primacy of Worship

“Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.’
Therefore, prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel.’
‘Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people.’
‘I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it,’ declares the Lord.” -Ez. 37.11-14

This well known visionary experience of Ezekiel gives us a glimpse into the kind of death that is necessary for resurrection life to ensue- namely, death in totality to everything that issues forth from the arrogance and presumption of man. Here we have a picture of “the whole house of Israel,” and they have been reduced to this self-description, “Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.”

There are at least 5 common ways that scholars interpret this passage, and I haven’t the time to touch on them all here. I will say that I am convinced that the vision has a partial application to the Babylonian exile and return, but I remain even more firmly convinced that the vision overall must pertain to a future death that the people of Israel will pass through. That is to say, when the remnant of Israel, which represents the “whole house,” has come entirely to the end of her striving, realizes the dryness of the bones which she previously thought had contained life, and becomes aware that political and humanistic hopes have perished, the light of the Gospel will break in so profoundly that they will be raised up, “an exceedingly great army.” (v. 10)

Hear this from OT scholar, Walther Zimmerli:

…. Ezek. 37:1-14, with the two different images of the revival of unburied dead bones and of the opening of graves and the leading out of those buried there to new life, expresses the event of the restoration and the regathering of the politically defeated all-Israel.

Before the resurrection of the dry bones of Israel occurs in a way that shall never be reduced or reversed, she must come to the place where all of the crutches she has leaned on for want of the true knowledge of God have been removed from her forever.

Hear Zimmerli once more:

…. vv. 12 and 13 hit exactly what is meant, that God’s people should be wholly the people of God- that is the aim of this new gift of life. Where the return of God in a new freedom and in a new linking of what was previously separated becomes a reality, there God will have achieved His aim.

…. Only when, as a result of this event, the great awareness dawns and men no longer appear with their own achievements, no matter how magnificently righteous these might be, but when they realize that God reveals himself in the miracle of his free promise of life- only there does God’s action achieve its goal. There all ecclesiastical prerogatives collapse, and there remains only the praise given to the God who in the majestic freedom of his faithfulness (“for the sake of my holy name”), has revealed himself to his community.

(Ezekiel 2: Hermeneia- A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible, Walther Zimmerli; Fortress Press, Philadelphia: 1983, p. 264, 266 [emphasis mine])

As Zimmerli notes so wonderfully, when Israel comes to the end of herself, when she is “politically defeated” and when “all ecclesiastical prerogatives have collapsed, and there remains only the praise given to the God who in the majestic freedom of his faithfulness,” reveals “Himself to His community,” then will He have fulfilled His great work in history.

Turning to the Church now, the question needs to be raised, “To what degree have we allowed the Lord to bring us to a place of political defeat, and have our ecclesiastical prerogatives collapsed?”

Have we a hope in the government of men, or are we leaning on some kind of ministerial program? Have we clung to creature comforts and political opinions as our safeguard, or have we an utter abandonment to “God who in the majestic freedom of His faithfulness,” reveals Himself to us?

Are we chasing after the American dream? Have we got aspirations after ministry and recognition that are devoid of a jealousy for the glory of God?

Before we can move Israel to jealousy, and be an intercessory witness toward her, we ourselves have got to be wrenched loose from the same kinds of influences and paradigms that will invite the reduction of Israel to a valley of dry bones in the last days. We need an apostolic faith, and if Ez. 37 represents anything, it represents the dynamic of God’s government, which is to say: resurrection life only issues forth from the death that truth requires. Ezekiel 37 describes Israel’s eschatological regrafting into the apostolic Gospel. It will be a glorious day.

But before then, the question remains, how deeply have we come into the necessary death ourselves? We need our ecclesiastical prerogatives to collapse, and to be totally caught up in praise of the One who has given Himself so lavishly for our deliverance. Let the hollow pursuits perish. Let our desire for recognition and prominence be shed from us forever. Let us be caught up in the primacy of worship and the glory of sonship. The Lamb of God is worthy, for He was slain, raised up, and He ascended to the right hand of the Father. He will return with passion in His heart and vengeance in His eyes, and I want to break free from all that hinders a full rejoicing in that great Day.

What about you?