Isaiah 64
We want God, and we want Him now! But what do we want Him to do now? Have we considered the ways in which God has revealed that He will be present with us, and then adjusted our own expectations accordingly. In our time of need we want God to rip down the dividing wall between heaven and earth, and then we want Him to come down here and get certain things done immediately. He does not seem to answer these requests, no matter how passionate our pleas to Him may be.
God does have a way of working in this world under the normal course of His government of all things. His presence seems quieter than we might wish it to be. By His continual providence He works through countless secondary causes in order to achieve all His holy will, rarely being noticed at all – rarely drawing any attention to Himself. He is also present by His Spirit in a most mysterious way – at least it is mysterious to me. He works in the souls of all men by His Spirit as He restrains sin in massive quantities, thereby making this world a place in which we and others can live. But especially He is at work in the lives of those who have been born again from above, those who have truly called upon His name from the heart in covenant assembly.
By His Spirit he does so many wonderful things in the lives of believers – working silently and without violence, though we can grieve Him as did our first parents. Yet when we have been made (often through profound suffering) to yield to Him with a fuller heart, His Spirit yet works to move us in the direction of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. These great motions of providence and of the Holy Spirit are surely very powerful, but we do not often seek them as we should, and they escape the attention of millions of people every day. So many people are operating as functional deists – assuming that almost everything happens according to impersonal mechanical processes under the control of who-knows-what.
We might expect that kind of assessment from atheists, but I am afraid that we ourselves are normally guilty of such materialistic thinking. We assume that God is not specifically at work in our lives, and that He refuses to meet with us in our distress. If He were here, we assume, then He would open the heavens for us to experience Him with our senses in a much louder way, and He would give us what we are praying and crying for. “Defeat our enemies!” “Make the mountains tremble.” But everything still seems very quiet.
Of course, we ask Him to do these things because we know that He has done amazing things in the past – things that seemed louder than what we have heard of Him with our own ears. We believe that He will meet with a person who works righteousness, but what exactly will that meeting be? Is it just the simple meetings of our activities of worship? We think this kind of speech from the Scriptures is not enough. We imagine that we cannot be saved from our distress unless something more marvelous and spectacular takes place.
We wonder if we hear so little of Him because of our sin. We know that our consciences accuse us, and that even our most righteous actions are like filthy rags that we would want nothing to do with. We know that we deserve far worse than the troubles that we have received from the providence of the Lord, and that the weight of our iniquities is a heavy burden that we cannot bear, a rapid and dangerous stream that seems to be pulling us along to a place of judgment where we do not want to go.
Though God seems not to listen, we continue to yell out to Him, because there is no one else who we can apply to for aid today. Only God is our Father. Only God is the Potter who can yet make things right with the clay vessels of our broken lives. We look around us at the covenant community and we see a wilderness where we would like a flourishing garden. We see buildings burned with fire and heaps of ruins, where we want to see a restored city overflowing with every delight. Through it all it seems that our affliction is terrible, and most of all that our God and Father is terribly silent.
We must remember that the Spirit of the Lord, though normally silent to our fleshly senses, is powerful and speaks loudly to those who have ears to hear. God’s providence is also very remarkable to those who will consider the facts of redemption and the pathway of sanctification in each of our lives. Though we are sinners, we have not yet been utterly consumed. Why is that? We remind ourselves that the Spirit of God led the Son of God into the desert to face demonic temptation for our sakes. We remember the faithlessness that our Lord battled when He healed and taught. We especially are reminded of the one who, as a sheep before His shearers is silent opened not His mouth. This sinless Redeemer had to listen to the mocking on-lookers and a mob that shouted “Crucify him!”
If we will remember these gospel truths, and see again the empty tomb, if we will seek the subtle work of the Spirit of God who is present and very powerful, then we will know again that our God is with us. His providence is loud enough today. We should know that He is here. His speech comes to us even in written form that should be very loud and clear to us. The Messiah has won our salvation, and He is ever with us to save. Shall we not yield again to the One who yielded to the horrible cross for us? Through the application of His benefits to us by our great Comforter our consciences can be quieted today before our holy God as we worship Him through Christ our Lord.
“Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest, and in our hearts take up Thy rest, come with Thy grace and heavenly aid, and fill the hearts which Thou hast made, and fill the hearts which Thou hast made.”
posted by Pastor Magee @ 7:00 AM
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