Manifest Presence of God (3)
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Over the last two weeks we have been discussing the manifest presence of God, but I would be doing you no service if I didn’t talk about the kryptonite to manifesting God’s presence, the cure, and the misconception.
To throw it out there Sin kills the presence of God. Any any way you boil it down, whatever it’s dressed up as Sin repels the Spirit so much so that in a moment of time Isaiah wrote this when talking about Israel’s sin
2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.
But that’s OT and We are under the NT principles now. This is true in regards to salvation and forgiveness of sin, but sin itself still creates this same barrier.
But Pastor we have grace…Again this is true in light of true repentance, but here’s the kicker-true repentance requires lasting change.
Purposeful and continual sin separates us from God.
Think about it in light of marriage. It’s hard, but most people can forgive a cheating spouse once. It’ll take time and counseling, but it can happen if both people are invested in the marriages recovery. BUT forgiveness cannot happen if the offense never stops.
Just as continual sin affects our Earthly relationships it also greatly affects our heavenly relationships.
Let’s look at Jesus on the cross
Understand Jesus was without sin, but he bore our sins…Our sin didn’t and couldn’t enter Jesus. There is this false teaching that believes that Jesus became sinful by taking on our sins, but this isn’t true. It can’t be for scripture to be true. The bible says---JESUS WAS WITHOUT SIN. Rather this idea of bearing our sin is almost like putting on a coat or a backpack filled with our sin. He took our sin on His journey. This lead to the famous quote of Psalms
34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Many people state and believe that at this point God turned his back on Jesus, but this too is false belief. The idea is meant to covey the seperation Jesus felt from God’s presence. The emptiesness and void we all experience when we have gone too far in our sin nature and can no longer even must a small amount of the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit.
It’s imperative to understand sin and its affects in order to truly live in the continual manifest presence of the Holy Spirit.
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,
This was the complete circle. Christ endured temporary seperation so that we could enjoy the permanent presence.
So here is the most misunderstood aspect of Salvation
Salvation/sinners prayer doesn’t stop sin
- If that were true than we wouldn’t see people 3 and 10 times being saved. And you could state well…Then they weren’t truly saved. And to which I would state. I cannot be the judge of that person’s heart.
The sinner’s prayer isn’t in the bible
The whole idea of the sinner’s prayer the way we know it is to model the asking forgiveness of sin ( part of repentance) The churches biggest failure is that we then don’t walk the newly saved person through the rest of repentance—the once and for all stopping of said sin.
Repentance isn’t repentance until the sin is fully stopped. Now there is bumps in the road to being fully sanctified- a big Christian word meaning the journey to being made perfect. The idea is that through time the exercise of sin becomes less until it becomes no more.
So the big question why does God separate himself from us. Then we will ask the Question How do we avoid such seperation?
1. To teach us the value of his presence
Everyone has heard the idiom- Absence makes the heart grow founder.
When my wife goes on women’s retreats I get a new appreciation for her. When she is around all the time I tend to get used to her being there.
I read an article this week that said the best compliment of all is to receive no compliment. My wife is really good cook. I mean a really good cook. She has a way with food. it’s a rarity, it does happen, but its rare that my wife messes up our food and in the beginning I used to compliment her cooking all the time. Well there came a point where I would only point out the times she messed up our food. Why? Because good food became a normal food which makes bad food taste so much worse. When you have truly good food you begin to truly notice the affects of really bad food.
If God gave us his presence all the time even if we sinned it would become so normal that we wouldn’t see the need to change.
18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
We get the manifest presence of God so that our work to become sinless is driven with purpose.
2. To Show our weakness
His absence shows when we stop trying. At the end of the book of Jude He writes this beautiful doxology with the idea that God alone can keep us from stumbling and keep us in the presence of God.
In order to feel that awe we must shed ourselves. We must remove the flesh desires and desire to become Christ like. When I can’t get into the manifest presence of God I then have to search for the reason why? And when I ask God is faithful to show me. Then I work on removing that reason.
3. To Remind us of Salvation
Ephesians 2:12 (ESV)
12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ,
We need to remember who we were so that we never become that person again.
So how do we avoid such seperation? The Fear of The Lord
This is something I believe more and more that the church isn’t preaching enough. We have failed God’s people by shinning away from this concept. The issue is the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s Christian preachers had become famous for hell fire and brimstone preaching. We overly beat fear into people’s lives that when new preachers were created we now overly beat God’s love and acceptance. We don’t preach sin anymore. We don’t preach seperation anymore. We preach love.
But I love this quote from John Bevere
Where the Lord is reverenced, His presence Manifests.
Part of what keeps me faithful to my wife is the idea that I could lose her. That is the consequence of unfaithfulness. I don’t want to imagine a time where I don’t have my wife. I cannot imagine a life where she isn’t involved. And many times I have counseled people and I state—your behavior gives your spouse a biblical reason to separate from you and I can’t tell you how many times that idea seems to be new to people. We get this idea that just because my spouse is Christian they are mandated to stay with me and that isn’t true. In most cases they may not be able to get remarried, but that doesn’t mean that have to stay in bad situation.
And there are times, few, but there are times where that healthy fear changes the marriage. Where the idea of living without their spouse becomes so real they change their behavior because the marriage is worth it.
But we also have to understand fear. Because I don’t live in fear that my wife will leave me. There is a difference between anxiety and a healthy fear. See when the bible says fear it isn’t speaking of a constant worry.
In fact the bible tells us not to worry. I understand hell is real. I don’t want to go to hell, but I do not have a debilitating fear of hell. It isn’t always haunting me.
So what is fear? How does it help us to live in God’s Manifest presence?
Let’s look at the Prayer Jesus used to teach us to pray. Jesus starts with this:
9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
What does Hallowed mean? Simply put it means to respect greatly.
To esteem, honor, respect, and adore him above anything else.
In other words
What is important to God becomes important to us. What is not important to God becomes unimportant to us.
I am not a gift giver—my wife is. It’s her love language. I am a money hoarder. I hate giving gifts because it means I have to spend money. I won’t go into my unhealthy behavior just know it came from a season of being without. I used to be a big spender. Then I didn’t have and now I don’t want to spend at all in fear that I won’t have. I didn’t say it’s healthy it’s just who I am currently. But because I love my wife there are times where I fight against my flesh nature to hoard money in order to buy my wife something special. Why? because I love her and it’s how she receives love.
I esteem her more than I do my own comfort. So I get uncomfortable to show my love to her. I show my love because I don’t want to lose her. That’s the fear of the Lord.
Removing my own barriers to get closer to God.
The fear of the Lord should shape our intentions, thoughts, words and actions. To fear the Lord is to
Abstain from anything that rejects the presence of the Lord
As we talked before to fear God is to obey.
I wish there was a better word than fear because in order to fully understand fear we have to unlearn horror movie like fear. We have to separate the difference between anxiety and fear. Worry and fear.
Fear in today’s world includes anxiety and worry, but biblical fear encompasses respect, honor, and esteem. We don’t respect God because he might hit us with lighting bolts we respect God because he deseverse nothing less and we desire his manifest presence.
Holy Fear only grows proportionally to our understanding of who God is.
In Isaiah 5 we get this whole woe to the sinner and I want you to see this transition. Isaiah is crying out because of Israeil’s sin, but then in Isaiah chapter 6 he gets this vision of God. Isaiah sees the Seraphim. He describes them. Then in
5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
The presence of God, the vision of God’s creation stops Isaiah from pointing out others sin and puts his entire life into perspective. Once Isaiah realized his own dirt he was cleansed and commissioned.
Upon drawing closer to God He had a greater understanding og who God was which led him to see who he was and what he truly lacked which led to true repentance and cleansing which lead to a commissioning.
Healthy fear draws us to become clean. Draws us to see who we truly are and who God truly means for us to be.