Sermon
# 198 Series: Isaiah
Title: THREE QUESTIONS ABOUT GOD
ANSWERED
Text: Isaiah 57:15
Subject: The Supremacy of God in His
Character and Works
Date:
Sunday Evening –December 4, 1994
Tape # Q-73
Introduction:
Our
text this evening is all about the Lord our God. It is an assertion of his greatness
and his glory as God. Here the Lord God speaks about
himself. “He that hath ears to hear,
let him hear!” “For thus saith the high
and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high
and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to
revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.”
(Isa. 57:15). The title of my message
is Three Questions About God Answered. I want you to notice that though the questions are
mine, the answers are God’s.
I. Here is my first question – Who Is God?
There
are many answers given to that question in Holy Scripture. But the answer found in this one text will
be enough to keep our brains occupied for an eternity. God declares himself to be “the high and lofty One that
inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy,” Who yet
condescends to dwell with and revive, regenerate and enliven poor sinners who
know themselves unfit and altogether unholy and thus unworthy of his favor.
NOTE: What is here spoken by God is
not to be limited to One Person in the Godhead, but is to be understood as a
description of all three of the Divine Persons – Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit.
In
the words of this text the Lord God clearly asserts five things about himself. Here are five Divine attributes, five
characteristics of God.
A. Supremacy!
The
Lord our God is “The high and lofty One!”
He is high above the earth and the nations of it. He is higher than all the kings and
empires of time. He is the King of kings.
He is the Lord of Lords. He is higher than the heavens, and
higher than the angels. He is exalted infinitely above the praises of his saints. We have not even begun to
imagine how great God is! Because he is
the high and lofty One,” he is able to save his people! He is able to destroy all our enemies and his! His knowledge is too wonderful for us. His perfections are too glorious for us to see
them. His thoughts are infinitely higher than our
thoughts and his ways than our ways.
The length and breadth and depth and height of his love is beyond us! God is too big, too great for us to comprehend him. His greatness and supremacy demand that we
bow before him with awe and reverence.
The
god of this religious world in which we live is a peanut god! His will, power, grace, love, and works are
all meaningless, because he can do nothing without the permission and
assistance of man.
In
one of his letters to Erasmus, Martin Luther said, “Your
thoughts of God are too human.” I take
Luther’s words for my own and lay this charge against the vast majority of
preachers and religious people in our day.
“Your thoughts of God are too human!”
To countless thousands in the churches across this country and around
the world, the God of the Bible is altogether unknown.
Men today imagine that God is mauled by
sentiment rather than principle. They talk about omnipotence, but declare that satan thwarts the
designs of the Almighty on every side. They acknowledge (some do) that God had a plan, but imagine that his
plans, like ours, are always subject to change. Openly, religious idiots talk about
restricted sovereignty and restricted power in God, lest any should think that
he might invade the sacred shrine of man’s freewill and reduce man to a
robot! The effectual
blood of
Christ and his atonement for sin, it is openly asserted have less to do with
salvation than the decision of man! The invincible Work of God the Holy Spirit is reduced these days to an
offer of grace which sinner may choose to accept or rejects they may
please! Nonsense! Blasphemy! God’s complaint
to apostate Israel is a word from God himself addressed to this last religious world. “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such
a one as thyself” (Ps. 50:21).
Another Pink was exactly right when he
wrote, “The god of this century no more resembles the Sovereign of Holy writ
than does the dim flickering candle the glory of the mid-day sun.” The heathen outside the church whittle out gods
from wood and carve them from stone. The heathen inside the church whittle a god from the dark forests of
their own depraved minds. Yes, I am saying what you think I am saying, the god of this age is no God
at all. It is nothing but the figment
of man’s imagination, the invention of sentimentality! A god whose will can be resisted, whose
purpose can be frustrated, whose work can be thwarted is no God at all. Such an imaginary god, far from being a fit object
for worship, merits nothing but contempt!
The
Lord our God, the God of this Book, the only true and living God, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, declares himself to be “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth
eternity!”
I
have deliberately emphasized God’s supremacy more than I shall the other
attributes mentioned in our text because this is the point of man’s
enmity and rebellion. Adam did not rebel against God’s holiness, goodness, infinity,
or eternality. He rebelled against
God’s sovereign supremacy. And so it is
with all the lost sons of Adam today.
Besides, if you take away God’s
supremacy, as religious leaders every where try to, his eternality, infinity,
holiness, and grace are all meaningless.
So be
sure you get this down – God is Supreme, the supreme Sovereign of the
universe! He is “The high and lofty
One!”
B. Eternality!
God
is eternal. He is the only One of whom
it can be said, He “inhabiteth eternity.”
He is from everlasting to everlasting, without beginning or end, the
first and the last, who only hath immortality in and of himself. (I Tim. 6:16).
God’s
Being is from eternity to eternity. As John Gill puts it, God “inhabits one undivided, uninterrupted
eternity, to which time is but a mere point or moment.”
God
is eternal!
C. Infinity!
He
who “inhabiteth eternity” is infinite.
God’s infinity is the incomprehensibility of his Being. The eternal Spirit is
infinite, omnipresent. He is not and can never be contained, limited, restricted, comprehended, or
controlled.
Whenever
you think about God, always remember that he is sovereignly supreme, eternal,
and infinite. Everything about God is eternal and infinite.
Externality,
Infinity, and Immutability go hand in hand.
You cannot have one without the other.
God is Supreme – Eternal – Infinite. The fourth attribute of God declared in our text is:
D. Holiness!
Our
God is “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is
Holy.” Psalm 111:6
1.
His
nature is holy.
2.
He
is originally holy.
3.
He
is essentially holy.
4.
He
is the only source of holiness.
5.
Holiness is seen in all his
works. If anything or anyone may be
said to be holy, the holiness that is possessed came from God.
Moses sang, “He is glorious in holiness”
(Ex. 15:11) as he sang both of God’s salvation and of his judgment. Who is God? He is “the high and lofty One” (Supreme) “that inhabiteth eternity” (Eternal, Infinite), “whose name is Holy” (Holiness). But I cannot go on without
telling you that this great God of supremacy, eternality, infinity, and
holiness is able.
E. Gracious!
He
condescends to take up his abode in fallen, sinful men and to bring fallen
sinful men to dwell with him forever. Let me never get over the wonder of grace!
Amazing grace! How sweet the
sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am
found,
‘Twas blind, but now I see!
II. Where Is God?
This great, supreme, eternal, infinite, holy, gracious Lord God declares, “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.”
A. God dwells in the high and
holy place.
· In the holy of holies!
B. God dwells also with “him that
is of a contrite and humble spirit.”
1. To be contrite is to be broken with a sense of guilt and sin. Contrition of heart is the beginning of
repentance.
2. A humble spirit is a spirit overwhelmed with a sense of undeserved grace and mercy in Christ.
The
contrite and the humble spirit is one that has been made righteous –
a fit
residence for the Almighty.
III. What Does The Lord God Do For
Those In Whom He Dwells?
When God by his Spirit comes to dwell in a sinner, it is “to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.”
A. Initially, He Comes To
Spiritually Dead Sinners To Regenerate His Chosen By The Power of His Sovereign
Grace.
Illus: Lazarus
B. It Is God Dwelling In Us That
Continually Sustains Us In Life And Faith and Revives Our Languishing Spirits.
While we live in this body of
flesh, our spirits of often decline.
How often we find ourselves in a lifeless state, uncomfortable, but
seemingly in capable of rousing ourselves.
When grace is weak, sin is prevalent, and unbelief assails, when the
Lord hides his face from us, our souls languish and faint. But our God will not cast off
forever. He will not forsake us. No!
He dwells within us to revive us.
NOTE: Revival is not a worked up frenzy of religious
excitement, but a blessed realization and assurance of grace by the manifest
presence of God in us and with us!
Revival is the work of God’s
Spirit, directing
our hearts to Christ, assuring us of …
· Everlasting Love!
Lamentations
3:24-26
Application: Psalm 85:1-7