JOY "Rebels" September 22

September 22, 2010
Isaiah 1:1-31
“Rebels”
I Conviction 1-9
II Repentance 10-20
III Redemption 21-31

When I was 14 years old, I was walking across my grandparents’ living room and saw my Baptist preacher granddaddy standing in the doorway. He was a 6”4’ tall, spare man, with thinning white hair and a smile that could light up a room. But the look on his face that day was as serious as could be. I had no idea that at that moment he was going to teach me a spiritual lesson that I would never forget. Even now 38 years later, it is still just as fresh and real to me, as if it had happened an hour ago. I still remember back to that day and use it as a tool to check my spiritual attitude.
Hanging on the wall beside where he was standing was a framed scripture passage from Romans 3:23---“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” That scripture had been hanging on that wall for as long as I could remember and the funny thing was I never even noticed it any more. I didn’t that day either, as I stopped in my tracks and looked at my granddaddy quizzically, waiting for him to speak. He lifted his long bony finger and pointed to the scripture and said, “Have you considered this?” I don’t think I even answered him and then he went on to say, “Don’t you think you should?” I felt like a ton of bricks had hit me in the chest and that a sword had gone through my heart. With startling clarity, the Lord used my granddaddy and that scripture to pull me up short and force me to take a good long look at who and where I was, in my spiritual walk.
I knew that I had asked Jesus to come into my heart when I was 7 years old----but I also knew, that I had never told anybody about it and that I had never made a public profession that He was my Savior and that I had never been baptized. (The truth is, it isn’t unusual for  children to understand what children can understand and to ask Jesus to come into their hearts when they’re young and then later as they grow older and can understand a little deeper, to make a public profession of their faith, then.)
But the problem with me was, that the Lord had been prompting me to identify myself with him, for a long time, and I kept ignoring him because I was embarrassed that I hadn’t already done it and that I had let people think that I had. I knew that letting everybody think that I had squared everything with Him, was being disobedient, but I did it anyway, because of selfish pride.
I was pretending to be what everybody expected me to me------- and I might have been fooling some people, but obviously, I hadn’t fooled my granddaddy and for sure, I wasn’t fooling the Lord Jesus. I was saying all the right words and doing all the right things but I knew that Romans 10:9-10 says, “...that if we confess with our mouths Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved.” I  had come to a crossroads in my faith that day and I had a choice to make----------I knew that I believed in Jesus as God’s son, but my inability to confess it with my mouth made me question the truth of my salvation.
From that moment on, I was under conviction-----I couldn’t get it off my mind—I avoided my granddaddy and I didn’t walk through that room for several days, but I thought about it all the time.
Believe it or not, that weekend, there was a Billy Graham Youth Revival in our hometown. (but isn’t that the way the Lord always works, He sets the stage so beautifully to reveal Himself to His children and to nudge us to trust and obey and to grow In Him) I went to the crusade with a bunch of friends and before the night was through I was so moved in my heart-------- that when they gave the invitation------- I literally ran down the aisle so that I could confess and profess that Jesus was not just The Lord, but that He was my Lord----at that point, I would have shouted it from the rooftops if I had gotten a chance. 
The next day was Sunday and I made my profession of faith at church------ and then was baptized 2 weeks later.
You have to understand I was in church every time the doors opened------and if someone came to my grandparents home for prayer, everybody in the house had to gather together to pray with them-------I had been exposed to the work of the Lord Jesus on a daily basis, my whole life------I knew all the church words and I knew all the learned behavior, but the reality was, I was just going through the motions----doing what was expected of me; doing what I knew would be approved of, by the people whose approval I valued----------rather than having a right relationship with the Lord, that was based on His grace and my obedience. I was living a lie.
That is what the people of Judah were doing too. They were living their lives based on lies rather than on faith. They were outwardly professing their faith and going through the motions, but inwardly, in their hearts, they were as lost as could be. They were doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons.
Isaiah, in this first chapter, calls them into a courtroom setting, where God is the Judge and the heavens and the earth are the jury. Isaiah presents the case against them and then he tells them how they can receive a full pardon if they will repent and then-------- he goes on to explain the joy that is waiting for those who do repent and the horror of what will happen to those who won’t.
Isaiah presented God’s children with an opportunity to get their heart attitudes and their behavior on the same page. The Lord gave me the same opportunity when I was 14------ and if we are listening, He is giving us the same opportunity today, as we walk through this study and try to understand and apply the 3-fold process of conviction, repentance and redemption.
    •    Conviction: 1:1-9
Paul Tournier, the Swiss psychiatrist said, “a diffuse and vague guilt feeling kills the personality, whereas the conviction of sin gives life to it.” Isaiah began his book by delivering a message from God, which was designed to convict the people of their sin. (just like with me--even though the Lord used my granddaddy’s finger- pointing to draw my attention----it was God’s word that convicted me) The conviction of our sin is the first step back to God when we have strayed. We need a sense of sin; it is healthy for us to recognize sin when we see it in ourselves and in other people. We shouldn’t fear it or resent it. Sin can be destructive to us, but the realization of it is not; that realization is life-giving because it gives us the courage to let the Lord Jesus save us once, for all eternity, and to forgive us over and over again for the innumerable sins that we commit on a daily basis.
Part of our problem is that since mankind was created, we have been bombarded with the idea that we need to have more self-esteem. This has been especially true since Dr. Spock and his child-raising techniques came onto the scene back in the 40s and50s.  From a spiritual perspective though, that isn’t true----the truth is that we need to lose some of our self-esteem and become more self-aware--------------there is a difference-------when we are self-aware, we have a lot more humility because we realize that our identity should only be found in the Lord Jesus, not in who we are and what we can do, but in who He is and what He has done for us.
We may feel pretty good about ourselves but what if God isn’t pleased with us at all----what if He thinks we have done more wrong than we’ve done right. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could see ourselves and our attitudes and our behavior in the way that God sees us----I think it would humble us and would bring us to our knees in repentance? How do we react when we sense that God wants to talk to us about our sin? Usually we run away or we get mad or we try to hide it under the rug. But the truth is, God only points out our sin so that He can give us the solution for it. If we let Him, God will graciously and lovingly confront us with truths that are embarrassing enough to save us, or at least, convicting enough to get us back on track, with the right way to live in the right relationship with Him. (Lizzie and the 85 Spanish grade and the tutor-she was aggravated with me, but in the long run, it will save her anguish and heartache…)
What does it mean to be convicted of sin? Conviction of sin isn’t an oppressive spirit of uncertainty and fear and paralyzing guilt feelings. I am a former nurse--- a lot of you don’t know that, but because of it ------sometimes I like to use medical metaphors—so, here is one------the conviction of sin is like a scalpel making an incision into an infected soul and releasing the pressure and letting the infection pour out. (I love to release infection---when I was working, I was notorious for that being my favorite thing-the doctor that I worked for used to let me do the honors-isn’t that gross…) Conviction of sin, is the Holy Spirit kindly and lovingly, confronting us with the light that we don’t want to see and the truth that we’re scared to admit and the guilt that we prefer to ignore. Conviction of sin, is the “tough love” of God overruling our compulsive dishonesty, our willful blindness and our favorite excuses. Conviction of sin, is God gently and sweetly exposing the sins that we try to hide under a cloak of spirituality and good works. Conviction of sin, is our merciful God declaring war on the false peace that we settle for, way too often. Conviction of sin, is our escape from the humdrum of life into joy in Christ, no matter the circumstances. Conviction of sin, is what changes us from being just a church-goer, into a true worshiper of the Lord Jesus. Conviction of sin, is the very blessing of our lives, when the Lord pours His forgiveness over the wounds, that He has had to inflict.
In this chapter of Isaiah, God is telling us the truth about ourselves. He doesn’t want us to be fooled by the images that we have created of ourselves and that other people have helped us to create. God inspired Isaiah to disturb the people of his day.  God wants to use Isaiah’s same words to shake us up and out of our sin-blinded complacency, too.
John Calvin has said, “that self-awareness leads us by the hand so that we can find God.” This seems to me to be our most important need and it starts with the conviction of sin.
We can’t even begin to grasp the significance of the enormity of our offences against God--- because we tend to trivialize the choices that we make. We tell ourselves that there are so many big issues in the world for God to worry about that what we do and say doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things. But we are so wrong! Everything we do and say matters in God’s eyes and in the light of eternity. Think about it----we hang on to every little thing that our children say and do---I still do, even with my adult, married children. We’re sensitive to everything in their lives. We hurt when they hurt; we’re happy when they’re happy--------it kills us when we’re at odds with them.
Well, God cares about His children infinitely more than we care about ours. There is nothing that hurts God more, than for His children to be in rebellion against him.  It broke His heart in the days of Isaiah and it still breaks His heart. God wants to lavish His blessings on the world today. But He is hindered by His own children rebelling against Him. We like to blame Hollywood and the Washington politicians----but the truth is, the real reason for that hindrance is that there is very little remorse and repentance, even among believers.
Why should the world repent if there isn’t repentance in the church? We don’t mean to, but a lot of times we settle, for a watered-down relationship with God. Isaiah said that God’s children make animals look intelligent. Oxen and donkeys are known to be stupid and stubborn animals, but even they know how to find their masters-----they recognize the hand that feeds them. We, on the other hand wander around from master to master, hungry and empty and frustrated---going from book to book, speaker to speaker and vanity to vanity, wondering why God doesn’t seem real to us. The truth is, we want to control how much of God that we want to have in our lives. Way too often we treat Him like He’s a problem that we have to work around. We treat Him as a last resort rather than the source of everything that is. We break His heart and He still blesses us beyond measure.
Isaiah says that God’s people are missing the point of life. His tone isn’t one of anger------------it’s a sad one-------on the verge of tears. It is a heart-breaking thing to see God’s children being called to greatness and then seeing them settle for mediocrity or less. This happens because we have a tendency to put everything and anything as our priority--- except the Lord.  We value other things more than we value God and this leads us to discredit Him and dishonor Him and to distance ourselves from Him; sometimes we even turn our backs on Him.
Isaiah uses two images of us that help us to see how clueless we can be: the 1st image is of a beaten man who doesn’t feel his own wounds enough to get help for them—he gets clobbered again and again, but he just keeps going back for more--he never learns his lesson and he never comprehends why or even if, things could be better. The 2nd image that he gives us ---------is that we think that we are in great health, spiritually. This is our biggest obstacle and it is grounded in pride. We even think that we are successful----the problem is-----that we have so little expectation of what life in Christ can really be, that we settle for so much less than what God wants to give us. The scriptures describe believers at their best--------a chosen race, a royal priesthood, and children of the King---------and this is so that we can proclaim the glories of God to the whole world. Unfortunately, instead, we allow the world to see God’s people, on the defensive, exposed and helpless with our influence totally diminished; we have allowed unborn babies to be slaughtered, by the thousands, on the altar of convenience and personal choice; we have allowed the natural resources of this beautiful world that we’ve been given to live in and enjoy, to be squandered and polluted; we’ve allowed God to be virtually banished from our schools and colleges, except for small remnants of student-led organizations; we have allowed all kinds of heathen religions to co-exist with us and we tolerate them more than we point them to the truth; we have allowed homosexuality to become a “normal” lifestyle rather than a heartbreaking decision to live in an unnatural relationship; we have allowed the government, through welfare and  other agencies, to care for orphans and widows, instead of the church seeing it as our God-given responsibility; we have allowed divorce to become a household word and in the process, have redefined what God meant for a family to be—the list could go on and on.
The bottom line is-----we need our heavenly Father and we need Jesus, Our Savior and we need to recognize our sin and we need to be convicted and we need to repent and we need to be healed. We need to know and to trust that God’s grace is greater than all our sin!

    •    Repentance: 1:10-20
James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” So the question is, how do we draw near to God so that He will draw near to us? That question is being heavily debated in our churches today in a kind of “way to worship” war. Even within individual churches themselves, some people are fighting over whether the best way to draw closer to God is through a traditional service with traditional hymns in a hymn book and a traditional choir or through a contemporary service with a contemporary praise team and a worship leader, singing contemporary praise and worship choruses, framed by a screen on the wall. The traditional people accuse the contemporary people of being superficial and emotional and the contemporary people accuse the traditional ones of being out of touch and out of date. (I can tell you how I have had to change my thinking about this with the example in our own family-----my new rocker son and his band-following wife…)
Isaiah, very clearly points the way out of our petty human wars and into God’s all-surpassing peace------by helping us to think the way that God thinks. God’s criterion is not about traditional worship vs. contemporary worship -----it is about something that is much more serious----------it is about acceptable worship vs. unacceptable worship. He has even told us in Psalm 51:17 just exactly what acceptable worship is-----“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit and a contrite heart.” Acceptable worship is sweet when it is offered with a heart of repentance.
Isaiah 1:10-20 is about 2 things at once------worship and repentance. Worship is the overflow of repentance;----- without a repentant heart there can be no worship!--------- I want us to understand that repentance is not dwelling in morbid fascination at our bad behavior; and it is not self punishment. True repentance is a privilege, given to us by the Holy Spirit. It shows us how evil our sins are and how costly they are. Repentance is not afraid of healthy self-awareness, because that will create an urgency in us, to get right with God, no matter what it might cost us. Repentance is not just a tool that we can use to doctor our problems or our heartaches. Repentance is turning in a 180 degree circle, from a selfish, worldly lifestyle-to a lifestyle that strives to be pleasing to God. Repentance turns the motions and trappings of worship into an authentic relationship with God and makes it as natural as breathing. Isaiah stated the goodness of the Gospel with the badness of the Gospel so that we could see how important it is for us to see our need------so that we will place ourselves under God’s judgment and experience His grace and His mercy and His salvation.
Isaiah pulled those Judean people up short, when he accused them of not just being like Sodom and Gomorrah—but of being Sodom and Gomorrah-------cities that were so evil that God had to completely destroy them and everyone living in them, except for Lot and his daughters.  Isaiah was accusing the Judeans of faking it-------they were going through the rituals that God had required, but they weren’t genuine, they didn’t mean anything to them. What they were doing publically wasn’t affecting their conduct----there was no repentance, no obedience, there was just observance.
Rebellion is a bad thing but thank goodness, God in His omniscience, created a way for rebels to be saved. It is a precious sign of God’s grace that He allows our confidence to be shaken by situations and circumstances and the words and actions of other people so that we will start asking ourselves hard questions like: What have I become? Am I living proof of what it means to be saved? Do people know that I’m a Christian by my actions and my attitude? Am I a Christian influence, on my family and friends? When I’m alone, where do my deepest thoughts take me to?
We, as Christians today, think that we are a godly people, but we have very little power, because we have allowed the world to come in and to compromise with the truth of God’s word. Which God won’t tolerate forever, because His word is absolute! God would like to see us get that power back. He would like to see us stand up and boldly declare the truth of His Gospel.
We do sit in our pews and we work in our churches and in our communities--but it is time to ask ourselves---------are we doing those things with the right heart attitude?  Do we have humble and contrite hearts that give and work and serve out of the overflow of a soul that is so grateful for being forgiven, that it can’t help but to be about its Father’s business? Do we study and apply God’s word to all the situations in our lives? Do we walk and talk with the Holy Spirit and allow Him to guide our every action, thought and word? 
When our confidence is shaken----all of a sudden-----------we don’t have selective hearing any more----our ears are open to whatever the Lord wants to say to us. 
With razor-sharp honesty, God makes it clear how He judges our worship. The New Living Bible translation says that He says, “I am sick of your sacrifices.” God doesn’t want empty offerings or hollowed-out habits of worship; He doesn’t want people pretending that they have a right relationship with Him in public and then live their lives with unconfessed sin, in their hearts.  God is basically saying that unconfessd sin is so offensive to Him ,because unconfessed sin reveals that a person doesn’t really care whether He is in a right relationship with God or not. Unconfessed sin is a slap in God’s face. It is disrespectful and dishonoring. God asks the question—“which is more important, the form of worship that we participate in and the acts of service that we perform-------or the quality of our lifestyles and the purity of our motives?” God will reject even the purest form of worship that we know---and that is prayer, if it isn’t done with the right heart attitude. He accuses His children of having bloody hands from all the murder that they have committed.  Jesus, in Matt 5:21-24 says that murder can take many forms-----not just the taking of physical life-----but anger, and harsh words and mean looks and unresolved tension in relationships and character assassinations and backstabbing and slander and gossip and divisiveness and quarreling and dissention. These things sicken God on a good day, but they weary Him even more when they are done by people who are supposed to be godly.  It has been said, “That the curses of a godless man can sound more pleasant in God’s ears than the hallelujahs of a man pretending to be pious.”  (Because at least they are the truth)
God is as blunt as can be because He wants to save us from ourselves. He wants to lead us to repentance. It is amazing how simple and direct God’s message is about repentance. He is saying, “Clean up your lives; be obedient to Me; remove the evil of your deeds from my sight.” We need to realize that repentance doesn’t just remove evil deeds---------it goes much further------------after the evil deeds have been confessed and forgiven then we have to go back and clean up the residual damage that was done. We have to go back and make things right. True repentance will have the desire to make things right-------if it doesn’t it isn’t true repentance.
If we want our worship to please God then we have to seek justice and develop a compassion for the people that we’ve hurt and for the people that nobody cares about; for the people that won’t pay us back or won’t say thank you for our efforts. We have to look out for the widows and the orphans who have to subsist on government handouts, if we don’t help them. We need to right the wrongs that we have inflicted or that we have stood back and watch someone else inflict. Then, and only then will our worship be beautiful and pleasing to God.
One of the most precious passages in the whole bible is Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord; though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” God is willing to forgive any and all of our sin, no matter how awful we think that it is, or how hurtful it is to Him------He beckons his hand and invites us to come and talk to Him about it----and then He will take our filthy, sin-stained hands and wash them clean in the blood of Jesus. He will make us so clean that when He looks at us, it will be like we’ve never sinned. (It is important to know that God doesn’t expect us to be perfect----He just expects us to be open to talking to Him and hearing the reasonableness of what He has to say and then obeying it as best we can.) He knows that we can’t even try to be obedient, in our own strength, and that is why He has given us the Holy Spirit, because with Him, as it says in Phil. 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength.” After we repent, we can approach God with a new boldness----knowing that we can call Him Father, not Judge and that He will call us children, not sinners.
    •    Redemption 1:21-31
Redemption is one of the most beautiful words in any language and when the redemption is by God, it is the most glorious thing that can ever happen to us. If something is redeemed, that implies that it was once owned by someone and now has been bought back, by that same person. Redemption explains how God saves us ,by paying the price for us that He, Himself set. There is nothing that we can do to earn redemption and there is nothing we can do to deserve it. God gives it to us as a free gift, when we confess our sins and accept the truth into our hearts that Jesus died on the cross so that we wouldn’t have to and rose from the dead so that we could have eternal life.
Isaiah shows an example of this by lamenting over the corruption of the people of God and then praising God for His redemption of those same people. He explains how Jerusalem, which represents God’s people, will come full-circle over the course of History. She will go from a faithful city to a harlot and back to a faithful city again. Isaiah opens up the whole sweep of History here, as it relates to God’s people---- from the disasters of the OT Israelites through to the failures of the 21st century church---- all the way into the perfection of eternity.
The church is made up of believers-it is the Bride of Christ. He has claimed us as His and His alone. When we choose someone or something and place more value on them, than we do on Him, then we are committing spiritual adultery. When this happens we can hear a heart cry of sorrow, from heaven----it grieves God for us to turn away from Him. Sin promises to spice up our lives, but it really just dilutes everything and distracts us from the things that are really important. When we turn our eyes away from God, we lose our sense of who God is. Matt. 10:30 says, that “ the very hairs on our head are numbered by our loving Father in heaven.” If we don’t believe that, then we can’t believe in God’s sovereignty and we have no logical reason to care about God or anyone else. That is why the most important thing about us and our faith is to believe that God is who He says He is -----that He will never go away; that He will never become something different than who He has always been-the Lord of Heaven, the Lord of Hosts and the Mighty One of Israel. He cares deeply about His justice being defied or ignored. He will be long-suffering, but there will come a day that He will destroy His enemies. Nobody will ever defeat Him-------- and in the end----Redemption will carry the day.
In order to redeem His people, Isaiah says that God will have to take them into the fire. That is where they will be purified and will reveal the glory that they were created for. When God turns His hand against us, sometimes it seems like it’s a disaster----but more often, it turns out to be a great blessing to us. God has to use fire sometimes, like a potter does when he is firing a pot. That is the only way to get rid of the imperfections. God actually, is restoring us to the way He created for us to be, way back in the Garden. He is burning away all the ugliness and refining us like gold and silversmiths have to do. This is an act of restoration. God has to sometime use judgment and discipline to woo us back to Himself.
God didn’t redeem us by changing His standards or even by bending them for awhile--------He redeemed us by paying the price that His own justice and righteousness demanded. Redemption didn’t happen because God decided to be lenient to us; it happened because God’s price was fully satisfied by Jesus on the cross. We have been redeemed, at a cost to God, which we will never understand.
Knowing this and believing that God is who He says He is-----how could we not repent? We can’t add anything to the value of Jesus’ sacrifice---- but that sacrifice should claim all the love and honor that we have to give. If we try and live our lives by the earthly things that we desire and choose—we will end up with nothing. The metaphors in the last few verses---the strong…this work… and the oaks and the gardens symbolize human strength and potential-------and they can be burned up in an instant!-------but redemption will last forever.
We need to heed the warnings in this lesson-we need to take ourselves to court. We need to face the penetrating examination of Isaiah’s questions in our lives. Has “religion” replaced a right relationship with God and right living? Has a “just get by attitude” replaced justice and joy as the foundation of our lives? Has wanting to appear benevolent in the eyes of our neighbors taken the place of serving others, because Jesus, as our example, told us to? Do we need to plead guilty before God and ask Him for mercy and for Him to forgive our sins and wash us clean? so that we don’t have to face His judgment and the discipline of having to go through the fire again and again, so that He can  woo us back. The choice is ours!----and I tell you right now, I choose Conviction, Repentance and Redemption.