Come Down Lord: We Need You!
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We Have Lost All Fear of God
The Prophet says, "not only have we hardened our hearts, but we have lost all fear of you. When we sin, for us it's fun. When we steal, for us that's how you know you are smart, because you conned people and they didn't even realize that you did. When you hurt somebody, for you, it's a sign that you are strong and you are supreme and everybody should revere you and recognize you. Are you aware that this is not morally right? Sure. But do you care? No!
The man that the prophet pictures here is not a man who has sinned because he does not know what is right or what is wrong. This is a man who knows God's will and word but is apathetic to it, he doesn't care! Who cares what God thinks about who I am or what I do? I don't need him. I have everything that I need down here. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want and nobody has any right to say "why are you doing that?"
The prophets paints a picture of men that are on a one-way road to destruction, and there is no turning back for them unless something supernatural intervenes. And the prophet Isaiah takes it much further and explains the basis of their hardness and the basis of their lack of fear for good. He brings it back to good you notice from verse 17, he says, Oh Lord, why do you make us wander and harden our hearts so that we do not revere you? So if you look at this carefully, Isaiah is actually saying, Lord, You are the reason our hearts are hard. Now is the Prophet saying that God is unfair; he is the one who has hardened their hearts so when they sin it is God's fault. Is that what the prophet is saying? No!
Looking at the context of the prayer, Isaiah will keep coming back and owning I responsibility on behalf of God's people. He will continue saying, "It's us who have failed you. It's us who have seen again, it's you. It's us who have wandered away from you. So if that is the case, if it is God's people who have sinned, then why does Isaiah charge the Lord for hardening their hearts? What Isaiah saying is that when God's people fail to repent, and to heed God's word, God removes his grace that enables them to live right and holy lives, and leaves them to do things in their way on their own. And of course, mankind left to himself will only respond according to his twisted nature. That divine grace that enables us to say no to every sinfulness, has been withdrawn living us to live in our own power and our own strength. And this is the result of what happens when God is Grace has been withdrawn; that God has judicially judge his people. He has said, "Okay, you want to live in your sin, you want to enjoy it? Fine! Go on your own. Let's see how far you can go. And of course, in the twistedness and sinfulness all they can do is to sin and sin and the sin and sin without any fear of what they are doing.
The prophet Isaiah recognizes that judgment has already come. He's not just waiting for the political one that will come through the defeat of God's people by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. He recognized that is spiritual judgment is already going on. And it explained the apathy, the indifference, the compromise and the hypocrisy in the midst of God's people today. Many of us might look at these words and say, well, as serious as they sound, those were the days of Isaiah for us we think we okay. After all, we live in the days of the gospel, we live in the times of Jesus, God surely would never judge us that way!
If you are thinking that way, then you have been sleeping for a long, long time. You need to wake up. And you don't need to go far. You just need to look at the church - at God's people today. And then you will understand what the profit is talking about. That ours today is a church that is very indifferent pertaining to the things of God. That the hunger and the longing for God's word and God's truth is no longer observable amongst God's people. Christianity has become like a tradition or culture, or something you have to do because everybody does it. Frankly, I'm afraid today, we have so many people who are Christians simply because that's the culture of the day. I was born in a Christian home, my parents took me to church. That's all I have known. It has not harmed me, so I guess I'm okay. For so many people today, being Christian means not to be a Muslim or not to be a traditionalist. So as long as you are not involved in African traditional religion, and you are not a Muslim, automatically, you're a Christian. Do you know God's word? No! Do you care about it? No. Once in a while, when there is trouble, you say a prayer or you perform some Roman Catholic rituals. And then it is well with your soul. Really? really?
We come to church and not because we hunger or long for God, but because that's the tradition. On Sunday, people go to church. That's what we do. And these days not only do we come to church as a tradition, but we even come to church because church has become a business. You want something from God, you go to church, right? And when you come to the church, the pulpit is basically hammering the same message: come to God, He will do the following for you. There is a list of promises of what God will do for you if you behave nicely, if you attend the church well, if you give, if you bring an envelope to the pastor; then God is obligated to do the following for you.
So you have churches open, you have hundreds of thousands of people flocking in every Sunday. But what have they come for? To do business with God.
"God, I bring my envelope, and I hope within the next seven days, you will do something about it. Your word says you will bless me seven times or more."
"God, I have come to church today. But the Scriptures whoever has left father and mother will get a hundredfold and eternal life in the life to come, and of course, they jump that phrase, which says "including persecutions." Only good things.
When we stand up to sing, we sing about the God who gives double, double, everything is double, double; and that's how we know that we really worshipped God today.
So you see people in the church excited, but really the worship is not about God. It's about to them and what they get. God is only relevant and loving and powerful if he is doing what we want him to do. We have come for us, not for him.
The Prophet is very outdated and irrelevant to be praying a prayer like "look down from heaven because we miss you." Today's church doesn't miss God. We miss the things that he gives us. In fact, the idea of God being among us scares us. Today when you talk about believers needing to fear God, the Christian quickly excuses the phrase, and it says, you see to God does not mean that you should be afraid in God's presence. It just means that you should do good things that don't make God angry.
Today's church is not really longing for fellowship with God. We are only saying God give us the goodies that we want, and you don't have to rush you can be there. You know, when we were singing this song, "It is Well with my Soul," I couldn't help but reflect on that last stanza, which says that the O Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight, and I was looking around looking at some of your faces and wondering, do you really mean that? I You sure you know what you asking for? Supposing the trumpet began sounding right now, and there was an earthquake and things began to happen, and all of a sudden you hear that the return of Christ has actually come. Are you sure you would say, "Oh praise the Lord, he's here! " Or you would be asking the ground to swallow you?
Many of us don't mean what we are saying really. We sing songs because that's what we are supposed to say. But we never meditate on the implications of what we're actually talking about. What does it really mean for God to be among his people? What does it really mean to experience the power and the presence of God? And if you think about it, is that the reason you are here today? Are you here because you are hungry for more of God? Are you here because you are desperately saying, "Lord, I would like to be conformed to the image of your son, please make me who Jesus is." is that the cry of your heart? Or are you here because that's what we do on a Sunday. Are you here because you have a list of problems that you hope God will magically turn around before you leave this worship service. Or did you come because your friends came? So you said, well, let's just go and escort one another.
What is it that really brings you in Church? Do you recognize that your sitting here, indirectly is a prayer like this of Isaiah? You are essentially saying, "God, I am here because I desperately need you. I can't imagine life without you." Because this is what the prophet Isaiah is saying. We are God's people, we used to live in his presence. His ark was in our midst. We used to worship him, not just on a Sunday, but every moment of our lives. But God's people stand at a time where the expressions of God's love have been withdrawn. God's people have not only sinned, but they have lost all fear of God. And the prophet Isaiah says, "come down Lord, we need you."
Isaiah's prayer will be answered about 600 years later. In the city of David, in Bethlehem, a Savior would be born, God Himself, Emmanuel, would come among his people. Their situation is so serious that they will require nothing more than God Himself coming among men. Not even the sacrifices of the Old Testament are enough. Not even the ark of the covenant in their midst as a symbol of God's presence is enough. If God's people are going to be delivered from their political and spiritual bondage, God Himself must come down. God Himself must set the means for their salvation because in and of themselves they cannot turn back.
If you want to know a church that has gone off the teachings of Scripture, begin to hear a church that is thinking that it can bring people to God! You know that their downfall has already begun.
When the prophet Isaiah describes the condition of the human heart, you can tell that there is nothing, there is no one, that can ever bring a human being on good terms with God apart from God Himself intervening. That we ourselves as individuals can never even make a decision to be reconciled to God. Not only are we unable, even if there were means, we don't even want to. That's how serious it is! When church begins to think that you can sing so well, you can pray better, you can preach well... not even the preaching itself can bring hardened sinners to Christ, by the way, unless Christ what's through the preaching of the Word. Otherwise, you will hear information, but you will not receive transformation. It is one thing to open the Word of God, it is another thing for God to open the hearts of men to receive the Word of God. So even when the message is preached, it's not a guarantee that sinners will want to receive it. If it was a question of lack of information, with the so much preaching that we have on African pulpits today, I would like to think that the whole of Africa would be ready for heaven, because so much has been preached. So much has been proclaimed. But do we have more believers as a result, not necessarily!
Church programs do not bring anyone to Christ. I have been to some churches where you hear people complaining, "if only we had machines, if only there was a worship team to lead us in the spirit may be going to come down among us." God does not come because sinners sang! God does not come because you prayed so hard and sweated or even cried. You could even roll on the ground-- the prophets of Baal did that!
Programs, strategies and entertainment and theatrics do not bring God's people into His presence. No. It's not the shouting in the church or the sleeping in the overnight that really changes people's lives. And every time we think about revival, we think of programs, we think of projects, we think of machines, we think of singers, these days we have added on the list some prophets who can keep updating us on where God has reached as he comes to meet our needs. And no matter how much of that we do, none of those things can break the sinner's heart!
Isaiah understands that if there is hope for God's people, it's not going to come from those people. It's going to come outside of them. It's going to come from God. In His power, in His sovereignty, God is going to break the hearts of men and is going to set them free.
Now I want you to recognize that even as Isaiah prays, the people on whose behalf he prays, by the way, you would say the already believers because these were God's covenant people, right? I might be speaking here and your thinking, "Wow, those non-believers are really hard-hearted! You mean they can't hear God?"
Before you talk about the non-believers who are absent here, we need to begin from inside here!
Isaiah is not praying for the Philistines and the Ammonites and the Assyrians and the Babylonians. No, no, no! Isaiah is saying, "Why do you make us (including me the Prophet)..." He is talking about God's people. Is it possible that you can be God's people living allegedly in God's presence, in the place where theology and worship and Bible reading are paramount, and yet still remain hard and cold and fearless of God? And unfortunately, the answer is yes! Uganda's problem is not a political one, It's a spiritual one. Uganda's corruption is not coming from the government, it is beginning from the church. Uganda's indifference to the things of God is beginning from the house of God. It is God's people who either have compromised what they know to be God's will; or who have become familiar with the things of God, that they no longer take them seriously as they ought to be.
The worst thing that can happen to God's people is to familiarize God, to come to that place where you forget that God is the Creator and you are not, that God is ever-living and you are not: and you begin to behave as though God was your elder brother whom you can play jokes with and make fun with and he becomes basically just like one of us! His word and his will become suggestions and opinions, they become things we may believe or may not. He becomes the kind who is ever ready to forgive you whenever you come so sinning becomes normal after all grace is sufficient! You say, "I can always do whatever I want because I know whenever I come, he's always there to forgive me."
And when such kind of apathy and fearlessness of God comes into the house of God, it is finished. And today's Church is that very kind of church — apathetic, indifferent, fearless church that has lost all honour and reverence for God and His Word, but lives in Christianity now as a tradition and culture, business as usual. And the prophet Isaiah says, "Oh, God, oh God, our hearts are so hard that even when we sin, we no longer feel any conviction. In other words, the Holy Spirit is no longer operating among us. We sin and instead of feeling sad or lonely or broken over our sin, we just continue moving as though nothing really happened. And the Prophet says, "Please, Lord, would you withdraw this judicial judgment, that our hearts may be softened, that we may hear from you.
Page 2 ⇦ Previous | Next ⇨ Page 4
We Have Lost All Fear of God
The Prophet says, "not only have we hardened our hearts, but we have lost all fear of you. When we sin, for us it's fun. When we steal, for us that's how you know you are smart, because you conned people and they didn't even realize that you did. When you hurt somebody, for you, it's a sign that you are strong and you are supreme and everybody should revere you and recognize you. Are you aware that this is not morally right? Sure. But do you care? No!
The man that the prophet pictures here is not a man who has sinned because he does not know what is right or what is wrong. This is a man who knows God's will and word but is apathetic to it, he doesn't care! Who cares what God thinks about who I am or what I do? I don't need him. I have everything that I need down here. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want and nobody has any right to say "why are you doing that?"
The prophets paints a picture of men that are on a one-way road to destruction, and there is no turning back for them unless something supernatural intervenes. And the prophet Isaiah takes it much further and explains the basis of their hardness and the basis of their lack of fear for good. He brings it back to good you notice from verse 17, he says, Oh Lord, why do you make us wander and harden our hearts so that we do not revere you? So if you look at this carefully, Isaiah is actually saying, Lord, You are the reason our hearts are hard. Now is the Prophet saying that God is unfair; he is the one who has hardened their hearts so when they sin it is God's fault. Is that what the prophet is saying? No!
Looking at the context of the prayer, Isaiah will keep coming back and owning I responsibility on behalf of God's people. He will continue saying, "It's us who have failed you. It's us who have seen again, it's you. It's us who have wandered away from you. So if that is the case, if it is God's people who have sinned, then why does Isaiah charge the Lord for hardening their hearts? What Isaiah saying is that when God's people fail to repent, and to heed God's word, God removes his grace that enables them to live right and holy lives, and leaves them to do things in their way on their own. And of course, mankind left to himself will only respond according to his twisted nature. That divine grace that enables us to say no to every sinfulness, has been withdrawn living us to live in our own power and our own strength. And this is the result of what happens when God is Grace has been withdrawn; that God has judicially judge his people. He has said, "Okay, you want to live in your sin, you want to enjoy it? Fine! Go on your own. Let's see how far you can go. And of course, in the twistedness and sinfulness all they can do is to sin and sin and the sin and sin without any fear of what they are doing.
The prophet Isaiah recognizes that judgment has already come. He's not just waiting for the political one that will come through the defeat of God's people by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. He recognized that is spiritual judgment is already going on. And it explained the apathy, the indifference, the compromise and the hypocrisy in the midst of God's people today. Many of us might look at these words and say, well, as serious as they sound, those were the days of Isaiah for us we think we okay. After all, we live in the days of the gospel, we live in the times of Jesus, God surely would never judge us that way!
If you are thinking that way, then you have been sleeping for a long, long time. You need to wake up. And you don't need to go far. You just need to look at the church - at God's people today. And then you will understand what the profit is talking about. That ours today is a church that is very indifferent pertaining to the things of God. That the hunger and the longing for God's word and God's truth is no longer observable amongst God's people. Christianity has become like a tradition or culture, or something you have to do because everybody does it. Frankly, I'm afraid today, we have so many people who are Christians simply because that's the culture of the day. I was born in a Christian home, my parents took me to church. That's all I have known. It has not harmed me, so I guess I'm okay. For so many people today, being Christian means not to be a Muslim or not to be a traditionalist. So as long as you are not involved in African traditional religion, and you are not a Muslim, automatically, you're a Christian. Do you know God's word? No! Do you care about it? No. Once in a while, when there is trouble, you say a prayer or you perform some Roman Catholic rituals. And then it is well with your soul. Really? really?
We come to church and not because we hunger or long for God, but because that's the tradition. On Sunday, people go to church. That's what we do. And these days not only do we come to church as a tradition, but we even come to church because church has become a business. You want something from God, you go to church, right? And when you come to the church, the pulpit is basically hammering the same message: come to God, He will do the following for you. There is a list of promises of what God will do for you if you behave nicely, if you attend the church well, if you give, if you bring an envelope to the pastor; then God is obligated to do the following for you.
So you have churches open, you have hundreds of thousands of people flocking in every Sunday. But what have they come for? To do business with God.
"God, I bring my envelope, and I hope within the next seven days, you will do something about it. Your word says you will bless me seven times or more."
"God, I have come to church today. But the Scriptures whoever has left father and mother will get a hundredfold and eternal life in the life to come, and of course, they jump that phrase, which says "including persecutions." Only good things.
When we stand up to sing, we sing about the God who gives double, double, everything is double, double; and that's how we know that we really worshipped God today.
So you see people in the church excited, but really the worship is not about God. It's about to them and what they get. God is only relevant and loving and powerful if he is doing what we want him to do. We have come for us, not for him.
The Prophet is very outdated and irrelevant to be praying a prayer like "look down from heaven because we miss you." Today's church doesn't miss God. We miss the things that he gives us. In fact, the idea of God being among us scares us. Today when you talk about believers needing to fear God, the Christian quickly excuses the phrase, and it says, you see to God does not mean that you should be afraid in God's presence. It just means that you should do good things that don't make God angry.
Today's church is not really longing for fellowship with God. We are only saying God give us the goodies that we want, and you don't have to rush you can be there. You know, when we were singing this song, "It is Well with my Soul," I couldn't help but reflect on that last stanza, which says that the O Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight, and I was looking around looking at some of your faces and wondering, do you really mean that? I You sure you know what you asking for? Supposing the trumpet began sounding right now, and there was an earthquake and things began to happen, and all of a sudden you hear that the return of Christ has actually come. Are you sure you would say, "Oh praise the Lord, he's here! " Or you would be asking the ground to swallow you?
Many of us don't mean what we are saying really. We sing songs because that's what we are supposed to say. But we never meditate on the implications of what we're actually talking about. What does it really mean for God to be among his people? What does it really mean to experience the power and the presence of God? And if you think about it, is that the reason you are here today? Are you here because you are hungry for more of God? Are you here because you are desperately saying, "Lord, I would like to be conformed to the image of your son, please make me who Jesus is." is that the cry of your heart? Or are you here because that's what we do on a Sunday. Are you here because you have a list of problems that you hope God will magically turn around before you leave this worship service. Or did you come because your friends came? So you said, well, let's just go and escort one another.
What is it that really brings you in Church? Do you recognize that your sitting here, indirectly is a prayer like this of Isaiah? You are essentially saying, "God, I am here because I desperately need you. I can't imagine life without you." Because this is what the prophet Isaiah is saying. We are God's people, we used to live in his presence. His ark was in our midst. We used to worship him, not just on a Sunday, but every moment of our lives. But God's people stand at a time where the expressions of God's love have been withdrawn. God's people have not only sinned, but they have lost all fear of God. And the prophet Isaiah says, "come down Lord, we need you."
Isaiah's prayer will be answered about 600 years later. In the city of David, in Bethlehem, a Savior would be born, God Himself, Emmanuel, would come among his people. Their situation is so serious that they will require nothing more than God Himself coming among men. Not even the sacrifices of the Old Testament are enough. Not even the ark of the covenant in their midst as a symbol of God's presence is enough. If God's people are going to be delivered from their political and spiritual bondage, God Himself must come down. God Himself must set the means for their salvation because in and of themselves they cannot turn back.
If you want to know a church that has gone off the teachings of Scripture, begin to hear a church that is thinking that it can bring people to God! You know that their downfall has already begun.
When the prophet Isaiah describes the condition of the human heart, you can tell that there is nothing, there is no one, that can ever bring a human being on good terms with God apart from God Himself intervening. That we ourselves as individuals can never even make a decision to be reconciled to God. Not only are we unable, even if there were means, we don't even want to. That's how serious it is! When church begins to think that you can sing so well, you can pray better, you can preach well... not even the preaching itself can bring hardened sinners to Christ, by the way, unless Christ what's through the preaching of the Word. Otherwise, you will hear information, but you will not receive transformation. It is one thing to open the Word of God, it is another thing for God to open the hearts of men to receive the Word of God. So even when the message is preached, it's not a guarantee that sinners will want to receive it. If it was a question of lack of information, with the so much preaching that we have on African pulpits today, I would like to think that the whole of Africa would be ready for heaven, because so much has been preached. So much has been proclaimed. But do we have more believers as a result, not necessarily!
Church programs do not bring anyone to Christ. I have been to some churches where you hear people complaining, "if only we had machines, if only there was a worship team to lead us in the spirit may be going to come down among us." God does not come because sinners sang! God does not come because you prayed so hard and sweated or even cried. You could even roll on the ground-- the prophets of Baal did that!
Programs, strategies and entertainment and theatrics do not bring God's people into His presence. No. It's not the shouting in the church or the sleeping in the overnight that really changes people's lives. And every time we think about revival, we think of programs, we think of projects, we think of machines, we think of singers, these days we have added on the list some prophets who can keep updating us on where God has reached as he comes to meet our needs. And no matter how much of that we do, none of those things can break the sinner's heart!
Isaiah understands that if there is hope for God's people, it's not going to come from those people. It's going to come outside of them. It's going to come from God. In His power, in His sovereignty, God is going to break the hearts of men and is going to set them free.
Now I want you to recognize that even as Isaiah prays, the people on whose behalf he prays, by the way, you would say the already believers because these were God's covenant people, right? I might be speaking here and your thinking, "Wow, those non-believers are really hard-hearted! You mean they can't hear God?"
Before you talk about the non-believers who are absent here, we need to begin from inside here!
Isaiah is not praying for the Philistines and the Ammonites and the Assyrians and the Babylonians. No, no, no! Isaiah is saying, "Why do you make us (including me the Prophet)..." He is talking about God's people. Is it possible that you can be God's people living allegedly in God's presence, in the place where theology and worship and Bible reading are paramount, and yet still remain hard and cold and fearless of God? And unfortunately, the answer is yes! Uganda's problem is not a political one, It's a spiritual one. Uganda's corruption is not coming from the government, it is beginning from the church. Uganda's indifference to the things of God is beginning from the house of God. It is God's people who either have compromised what they know to be God's will; or who have become familiar with the things of God, that they no longer take them seriously as they ought to be.
The worst thing that can happen to God's people is to familiarize God, to come to that place where you forget that God is the Creator and you are not, that God is ever-living and you are not: and you begin to behave as though God was your elder brother whom you can play jokes with and make fun with and he becomes basically just like one of us! His word and his will become suggestions and opinions, they become things we may believe or may not. He becomes the kind who is ever ready to forgive you whenever you come so sinning becomes normal after all grace is sufficient! You say, "I can always do whatever I want because I know whenever I come, he's always there to forgive me."
And when such kind of apathy and fearlessness of God comes into the house of God, it is finished. And today's Church is that very kind of church — apathetic, indifferent, fearless church that has lost all honour and reverence for God and His Word, but lives in Christianity now as a tradition and culture, business as usual. And the prophet Isaiah says, "Oh, God, oh God, our hearts are so hard that even when we sin, we no longer feel any conviction. In other words, the Holy Spirit is no longer operating among us. We sin and instead of feeling sad or lonely or broken over our sin, we just continue moving as though nothing really happened. And the Prophet says, "Please, Lord, would you withdraw this judicial judgment, that our hearts may be softened, that we may hear from you.
Page 2 ⇦ Previous | Next ⇨ Page 4
