We’re beginning a new series today. We’ve entitled the series Grace Made Visible. That little phrase “grace made visible” is actually pulled from an article that was written by Jonathan Edwards, who was a pastor, a theologian, during the First Great Awakening in the early to mid-1700s in colonial life. During that time, the Holy Spirit poured himself out in profound ways, and hundreds and thousands if not ultimately hundreds of thousands of men and women became believers and followers of Jesus Christ. In fact, the Great Awakening marked us and shaped us as a country, and the effects of those three decades still linger to this very day. It was a profound moment. What happened though was that during the revival there started to be some perversions of what God was doing. Jonathan Edwards had written an article about the evidence of genuine religious affection.
What he wrote about in this article I read is, “Here is how you can see a man or woman who has legitimately experienced grace.” I said two weeks ago when we gathered that you can tell the difference between someone who has an intellectual ability to define grace versus someone who has actually experienced grace in their guts. I would never argue that Christianity is merely experiential. All right? It’s intellectual. Edwards says that grace made visible is most clearly seen in the generosity of the people of God. This series is built around the idea of generosity. Don’t get nervous. We’re not passing an offering plate. I’m not talking about offerings. I’m talking about the freedom that comes from the human heart that has been set free by the grace of God, that is able to hold life, stuff, and things with open hands so that they might ultimately live a joy-filled life where they feel like they don’t have to manipulate, control, and keep a handle on everything. It is a life of rest and peace and confidence in the sovereign King of Glory. That’s what this series is going to be about. Lets get started today, were going to be looking at Isaiah 58. And were going to look at this passage in context of Jonathan Edwards.
1Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their rebellion and to the descendants of Jacob their sins. 2 For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them. 3 Why have we fasted, they say, and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed? Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. 4 Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. 5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing ones head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? 6 Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? 8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. 9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, 10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. 12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. 13 If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lords holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, 14 then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 58:1-14 NIV)
I want to focus on this chapter in Isaiah in three parts. The first part being the exercise of religion as a worthless culture, devoid of any meaning. Secondly, worship God expects and demands from His people. Thirdly, the manifestation of grace from the practice of true worship. Lets look at verses 1-5 again now. Heres how we can interpret verse 1: go get loud about how inadequate people are in their religion. The reason you need to get loud about how inadequate people are is because people perform religion day in and day out. In the performance of religion, people seem eager, but are just faking it. You cannot spot a genuine love for Jesus Christ and a glad submission to God our Father through religious activity alone. So heres the real deal: frenetic, hypocritical religious activity means nothing to God.
God does not want us to play church. He does not want us to feign religiousness for the sake of being religious. Frenzied, hypocritical religious activity does not equate a soul that has experienced the grace of God. It’s why so many people we have baptized over the years get in the water and say, “Grew up in church, grew up in a home that talked about the Bible, been around church my whole life. It’s only recently that I’ve surrendered my life to Jesus Christ.” It is because although they were actively involved in Christian stuff, they were not actively involved in a relationship with Jesus. If church becomes a routine, a rote that is intellectual and subtracted from a legitimate relationship with Jesus Christ, if the language we’re using around our relationship with Christ is not relational language, then what can end up happening is we can end up just trying to earn his approval just by checking boxes rather than by actually knowing, walking, and resting in him.
A few weeks ago, at our Friday night service, the Korean one, I preached on the story of the prodigal son from Luke 15. But instead of focusing on the prodigal son, I focused on the older brother. I recommend you listen to the sermon online, its in Korean, but itll give you more of a context to hear this next part. There will be no rest for those who seek to earn what God has freely given. It’s the equivalent of a man working 12-hour days, neglecting his family, and neglecting all the areas of beauty in life in order to pay a mortgage he doesn’t owe. This is exactly what the older brother was doing says the father. The father tells the older brother, everything I had was yours but you didnt want me when we come to church in a routine without a relationship with our savior, we are missing out on the experience of being a child of God. What that means for us is that we need to stop playing church and start being the church. Religious activity does not bring about legitimate love and relationship with the King of Glory. This brings us to our second point: worship God expects and demands from His people. Lets go to verses 6-9.
When the people of God are moved to action for the overwhelmed, the oppressed, and the enslaved; thats when the power of God unfolds in life. Grace is bestowed upon Gods people and the people around Gods people when Gods people are moved by the power of God. Why arent we moved by the power of God? God says to Isaiah, this is my 21st century paraphrase: do something more than youre comfortable doing and do it with the thought that the discomfort will allow you to change the status quo for somebody who couldn’t otherwise. Another way to put what I just said into practice, take just one minute to stop thinking about or talking about yourself, then see what other people are experiencing and talking about and then care about it. People are living as victims of injustice, people are hungry, people who so destitute that they have no hope in their eyes, yet when we look at them, we dont even feign to care.
What is wrong with us? God doesnt care about the number of Bible verses you have memorized. Nor does He care about your Sunday attendance. He doesnt even care about how much offering you put in the plate. What God cares about is that you and me, that we see people the same way Jesus saw people, and love them in ways that only we can. If you understand grace, you extend it. If you have experienced in the guts of your being what it’s like to be found wanting, to be found needy, to be found broken, and find in your helplessness the mercy of God lavished upon you, the delight of God extended to you, then you will be hard-pressed to judge others cruelly, to be very quick to categorize and marginalize others, because you understand that while you were at your worst, Christ died for you. Loose the chains of injustice, set the oppressed free, share your food, provide shelter and food, dont abandon people.
They are so practical, but we are so quick not to do any of that. When you do these things, God tells Isaiah that our light will break forth like the dawn. Have you wondered why some people do some incredible and amazing things in the name of Jesus and for our faith while were here barely moving beyond the same friends and same jobs weve always had. Havent you wondered what the difference between you and some of the greatest humanitarians in our history? The difference, according to Isaiah is that they acted in their faith and didnt stop asking God for changing the world, nor did they stop doing their best for the people around them. I think this is the greatest promise in this short clip in verse 9a. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. When you call on God, He will answer, Here am I.
When we start stretching our faith and doing things that are grace filled in a visible way, then God will not hesitate to answer us. If you dont believe me, test it. Test it and see what happens when you stretch your imagination and belief for other people, to change things, and I want you to do so in prayer and conversation with Jesus, see what happensthats right, the incredible will undoubtedly occur, and you will hear the voice of God. Do we have five more minutes? I know we do; can we look at the next 6 verses because this is where we going to see some things from God. Lets go to 9b. God picks up this statement with the word, if. You know as well as I do that the word if always begins a conditional clause. Thats why this is loaded up right here. If you do away with oppression around you by not pointing fingers or malicious language, AND you take care of peoples needs, then your gloom, that gloominess you have in your life, thatll be like the noonday sun. Everything that we do and the way we do it will be bright and visible. But this is not like the show off visibility where people see what you do because you make a big production out of it. This is the visibility that you have in your as a result of doing the right things. Even your sadness will be something you can lean on to see things that you normally wouldnt have been able to see.
I love how incredible the promises of God are when we do what we can for other people because we are filled with the Holy Spirit of God in our hearts. We will never fail. We will never be in need. We will be satisfied with where were going and how were getting there because God is taking us on His journey and were enjoying the ride with it. There will be nothing that you or I will be incapable of doing because God will do extraordinary things in our lives. Are all your friends Christians, and I mean people who have real relationships with Christ? Like they are locked and loaded Christians that just unceasingly follow Christ? More importantly, are we doing everything in our power to position their lives to receive Jesus?
Last week in my sermon, Pray until you Pray I said God knows that people around us desperately want Jesus in their lives but nobody is praying for them. Nobody is praying the prayer that needs to be prayed so that Jesus would save them. This is what it means that God will guide you and make us the light in the darkness. This is salt of the earth and city on a hill from Jesus. Moreover, heres a second if statement in verse 13. If we keep our feet from breaking the Sabbath then God will cause us to be triumphant everywhere else. This is interesting because God says, feet like it is your feet that chooses to go somewhere as opposed to your mind and your heart. This is a very subtle or perhaps a not so subtle way of God telling us that we shouldnt make work for ourselves just to get somewhere or to get something, but rather you need to rest in honoring God with the work that we do. Check it out, this is a reiteration of what God tells Moses when he comes up to the mountain top in Midian. God says mind your feet because youre on holy ground, that is to say that Moses needed to carefully tread because all of where hes stepping is anointed by God. Some of us, we cant help ourselves from being a pain in our own butts, we tread right.
We make misteps and do things that dont consider Gods perspective in the matter. We dont trust in God to do whats best, so we come to church thinking that Gods best which is Him is not satisfying, so we go other places to find something better than God. Isnt this the problem with the Jews? They have these 636 laws about how to be with God, when all they simply had to do is want to be with Him and God will do so and be with them. Christians are no different. Most of us, at best, want God, but only for His stuff. We dont want to sacrifice and work on having a relationship with him. I know its hard, especially since God doesnt speak audibly into our ears, although if He did, I doubt many of us would listen or still yet believe. But nonetheless, we need to find a joy that only comes from having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This series is about how our lives could be better off if we simply allowed God to be manifest in our lives because we really believe in what he says and simply walk toward God because we want to experience His power. Lets pray.
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