Seeking God
CCCAG, 1-22-23
Scripture: Isaiah 55:6-9
Introduction
I might be dating myself a little here with this opening illustration, but when I was in the army, we had these things called Lister Bags. A lister bag was a 36 gallon green hanging bag from which you could fill your canteens. Being the army, there was a whole procedure behind using them- I’ve never seen that procedure, but I think one of the steps was to add more bleach or chlorine to it then would be found in a swimming pool. It would actually burn the back of your throat on the way down and give you a serious case of gut rot instead of quenching your thirst on a hot day. No amount of Crystal light packets could help…it was just such a bad example of something that was supposed to bring refreshment, but instead gave you horrible water.
Lister bags are an example of something that looks good and refreshing, but in the end, proves to be anything but that.
Last week we talked about Isaiah 55:1-3, and how God wants to be the one who quenches every thirst we have in life.
Unfortunately that is not what we see today. Today, many have forsaken him, and tried to drink from other sources. Instead of seeking God, the source of living water, we go to the world for our nourishment.
In essence, the devil sets up lister bags everywhere for us to drink from. He makes them easily accessible, quick to use, and has created a society where no one will judge you if you use one.
For some- it might be alcohol or other drugs- things meant to numb pain, elevate mood, or simply help you forget the crushing anxiety this life has placed upon you.
For others, your lister bag might be sex, or sexual sin, inappropriate relationships, and hidden internet identities. Your biggest fear in life is thinking someone might hack your phone and learn your secrets.
For others, it might be your work
For others, it might be other people’s opinions
For others, it might be smartphone apps not related to intimacy.
The point is, the devil has a lister bag for you.
This morning, I’m not doing a long introduction here- I want to dive right into the scripture, and that is found in
Isa 55:6-9
6 Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord.
9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
NIV
Prayer
Premise-
Before we get any further into the message this morning, I want to address something.
First, This is going to be a tough message….so strap in.
Second- I received some feedback within the last year regarding sermons- there are some that think that I am sitting in my office, writing sermons with certain people in mind.
In other words, there are some that have accused me of using this time of the service to attack people because somehow I know their individual sin, and spend this time to harp on it.
I want to quickly address this, because it matters for today’s message-
1. If I did know of an individual’s sin, I would never use this time to address it. I would speak to you directly as the Spirit leads me. Often times, I feel restrained from speaking to a person about it, but simply make it a matter of prayer and let Jesus work that out.
2. The sermons I bring, more often than not I’m preaching to myself as well as you. As the words are leaving my mouth at times I feel my inner man saying, “John, you are doing the same thing!”
John Calvin once said, “If a preacher isn’t first preaching to himself the sermon he is bringing, it’s better for him to trip on the way up to the pulpit and break his neck than to utter one word of that sermon.”
I try to keep those words in mind when I prepare and deliver sermons. In fact, sometimes while I’m up here, my eyes will be skimming ahead to see where I am going, and then see something that I know will offend someone who is here, so I’ll skip over that and try to figure out how to make the rest of the message work without it.
Finally, Remember- I am but a poor vessel that God’s grace uses to bring His truths to your attention. If those truths sting sometimes- that is a good thing. It means the Holy Spirit is prodding you about it. It also indicates that your heart is still tender enough to feel that prod and you need to let His scalpel cut out that thing he wants to lovingly remove so it doesn’t harm you.
I would remind you of Hebrews 4:12- “The Word of God is living and active- sharper than any two edged sword. It penetrates to dividing the soul and the spirit, the joint and the marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts.”
If the sting is felt, ask God to reveal why? Pause
Now back to our regularly scheduled sermon. All of that matters because of what we will be discussing next.
In modern Christianity, there is very unique dichotomy we are seeing.
I’m going to illustrate it this way-
Imagine for a moment, you get into an argument with your very best friend at work. Let’s just say he or she was making fun of you, in a way that they knew would hurt you, but did it anyway just to get other people to laugh.
Later on you tell them, “Hey, I’m a little sensitive about that subject. Would you mind not teasing me about it?”
Your friend profusely apologizes and tries to make up for it by buying your favorite coffee drink for you.
Monday morning comes around, and you walk into the break room, and your friend immediately starts to make fun of you even worse, making everyone laugh hard at your expense.
What would you think of their initial apology?
Didn’t mean anything right?
Today we are seeing that in regard to how we live our life before God.
I’m afraid many of us living here in 2023 have bought into the lie of-
I. Forgiveness without repentance
6 Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
I want you to see something in these verses. There is a conditional phrase here. In other words, “If you do this, God does that” and both sides of the equation have to be met.
What is that condition?
It has a few layers-
1. Seek the Lord while HE may be found.
Earlier I mentioned that if you find something offensive in the word of God, or something said in a sermon, you should rejoice and not grow bitter or angry- it means that your heart is still sensitive enough to feel pain.
Let me illustrate what I’m talking about-
When I was growing up, we had these things in the playground at schools called monkey bars. They are almost extinct now, but I remember they were my favorite part of recess- climbing and swinging around the metal structures until the bell called us back to class. One thing I noticed though- after summer vacation, my hands would be very raw the first few days of school- they had gotten soft over the summer from not having monkey bars around, that is until I developed callus’ in the right spots, and then it didn’t hurt anymore.
Callus’ are your bodies way of protecting your skin from tearing and becoming injured. In fact, I remember a teacher showing us this- poking a needle through a callus that she had to show that it’s just extra layers of dead skin.
That protective layer that has built up has no life in it at all.
Now watch this- The same thing happens to our hearts, minds, and emotions when we have drank from the lister bag of satan’s deceptions for too long, it creates a callus around our hearts and spirits to the point of not even feeling shame or guilt over doing the things God has said no to.
That is a very dangerous place to be spiritually, because the thing is- the more you do that thing, the bigger the callus gets- the more tough the protection until nothing can penetrate it.
That’s why when God says to seek him while HE may be found is so important- if you let that sin callus grow for too long, it can permanently keep you from even wanting to seek God. God always wants to be found by us, but it’s a matter of if we are willing to seek Him.
It’s not only true in our personal spiritual lives, but in our church and nation and culture as well.
Let me show you this-
I’m going to read a section of scripture we often use at prayer meetings, and see if you can spot the conditional phrase in it-
2 Chr 7:14-
“If My people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, THEN I will hear from heaven, and come and heal their land”
Since a nation is made up of individuals, these conditions apply to us personally,
What is the condition required for God to hear us and heal our land?
If (circle) my people, who are called by My Name will
Humble themselves
Pray
Seek His Face
And
Turn from their wicked ways.
In my humble opinion, and I am preaching this at myself as well,
We, as God’s people in 2023, have all drank from satan’s lister bag in some fashion.
We probably all have areas of our lives that have been poisoned by it. It might be through outright sin- hidden or otherwise, or trusting politicians to save us instead of God, pride, or any other idol we have unconsciously placed in our lives.
We have forgotten that repentance is key and the condition to forgiveness and healing, and that is why we aren’t seeing it in our church’s, or in our land.
Back to Isaiah 55- conditional promise
7 Let the wicked forsake (repent) his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
God has been hammering me on this truth lately- We need to learn the spiritual discipline of repentance once again.
The idea of repentance is to turn, or to return to the correct path. To admit you took a detour or a shortcut that God told you not to take, to admit His way was right, yours was wrong, and to return to HIM.
What repentance is not is jumping off the bad trail for Sunday morning, and then back onto it at noon when we dismiss…and I’m afraid too many in the American church do just that.
If we continue to live that way-
We will never see God’s wonders
We will never see healings like the bible describes
We will never see Him move again in revival
And if we allow it to continue in our personal spiritual lives, we may backslide to the point of not even recognizing Jesus anymore-losing our salvation. One thing about sin- it’s a metastic cancer- it doesn’t stay in one spot- it spreads so if you are in a family, your sin will influence them to do the same.
God is not mocked, whatever you sow, you will reap.
I know this is hard to listen to, but we need Jesus to explore our hearts, minds, and spirits and teach us how to repent again.
Now, I have sat where you are sitting, listening to sermons like this one and thinking, I’m not sure I agree with all of that…
Well, that’s where the second part of our primary scripture from Isaiah comes in-
II. His way, or the Highway
8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord.
9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Most of us think we are pretty smart. What I have found being a perpetual student is the more initials behind a person’s name indicating their educational achievements or prowess, the more arrogant and dismissive they become of any idea that is not there’s.
When we talk about our thoughts concerning God and His ways, and how we might disagree with Him about His laws, or his morals, or his character, we fail on two fronts-
1. No matter how smart, how educated or how well read you think you might be, you have nothing on God. You are like a young child who just learned to count to 5 on his fingers arguing calculus to a Harvard math professor. That might be hard to stomach, but it’s the truth.
God has three divine attributes- things that make him God that we do not have
These things are the three omni’s if you will
Omni means all
God is Omni-present- meaning He exists everywhere at the same time. By the way, part of God being Omnipresent means he exists throughout the entire timeline at the same time. Do you know how God had prophets write prophecy 2000 years ago that is coming true today? Because he is already there. So thinking you can win an argument with him is pretty dumb because HE knows your argument before you even start to think to form the thought.
God is omni-potent- meaning He is all powerful at all times
God is Omni-science (omniscience)- science is simply a word meaning knowledge. He has all knowledge, so there is no argument you can form, no critique you can level, and no logical case you can make that can defeat HIM
2. Because of the three omni’s- God’s moral character is perfect. Many unbelieving people have a huge problem with God as portrayed in the Old Testament- wiping out whole cities, nations, and even the entire planet save for 7 people and two of each kind of land animal.
Having the three omni’s we talked about, God knows the outcome of every decision He will make and every possible decision He could make. He knows everything that is knowable, and therefore His moral laws were created with that in mind.
That is why the bible contains moral law- He loves us, and in love He gave us guideposts when he said “thou shall”, or roadblocks when He said “thou shalt not” to make sure we stayed on the right path.
Can we accept this truth- God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts?
Can we say- Yeah, He is God, I am not, and therefore I should trust HIM because He knows all and wants what is best for me.
Acknowledging that fact should make repentance that much easier for us.
Repentance is to be a turning away from sin…not just adverting your eyes while you stay on the path that leads to it so you can look at it later, but a jumping off of that path and onto the one God has for you.
Finally, I leave you with this solid biblical fact about life-
Without repentance, there is no forgiveness. Repeat
We might have a temporary relief from guilt for a time, but if you do not honestly repentance and turn from wicked ways, that callus gets thicker and thicker, until we can no longer see God at all.
That is grieving to the Holy Spirit, and the scripture is clear
Heb 10:26-27
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
Remember the condition-
“If my people” If
Prayer- that God destroy the hidden sin in our lives, and that He takes away the callus’s that have formed around our hearts, souls, minds and Spirits.
When he was on this earth Jesus, and the apostles who came after him repeatedly said- “He who stands firm to the end will be saved”
We are going to sing a song to close today that reflects that heart. It’s called “The Stand”
Closing in Worship- The Stand.
