The evidence of intimacy with God

Sermon Series: LIFESTYLE COMPASSION: Extending your heart of Jesus to the least of these.
Isaiah 58:1-11

November 4, 2007

Manuscript

Big Idea: Full surrender to God is truly evidenced by a lifestyle of extending God’s love and compassion to others resulting in his great blessing.

Intro – How many of you appreciate it when you get ignored by someone? How many of you are warmed all over when someone doesn’t return an email or a phone call? How about repeated emails or phone calls? Have you ever had those times where it feels like God is ignoring you...Times when you have felt disconnected from God...Times when we feel like your prayers are lost, as emails sometimes are, in cyberspace??? It is usually in those times when we wonder, how we can draw closer to God. How can we experience greater intimacy with God? How can we repair the fundamental disconnect we are experiencing.

[Transition] - This morning I want to show you a passage of Scripture in Isaiah that speaks directly to this dilemma. The people are feeling a fundamental disconnect from God. From their perspective, they are doing all the required things to be spiritual...they believe they are doing what God really desires and yet they feel disconnected from Him. And now they are basically accusing God of ignoring them.

So, the prophet Isaiah speaking on behalf of God clues them on what the problem is. He lets them know why they are experiencing this lack of intimacy and responsiveness with God. And then he clues them in on how they can fix the problem and once again find God and experience intimacy with him. Now, the solution is incredibly fascinating and has direct application to our theme in this series, LIFESTYLE COMPASSION: EXTENING YOUR JESUS TRANSFORMED HEART EVEN TO THE LEAST OF THESE. Let’s look at the initial verses of Isaiah 58 and get a sense for the problem. Isaiah 58:1-3a.

Here’s the first big lesson I want you to see from this story...

Pretending to be fully surrendered to God chokes out God’s blessing (1-3a).

People were saying to God, “We’re doing all this spiritual stuff and you aren’t responding to us.” Look at us....“We’re having our quiet time, we’re reading our Bibles, we’re attending a sermon based home fellowship, we’re serving in a ministry, we’ve even accepted the fasting challenge and have denied ourselves tasty and succulent food in an effort to display earnestness in front of you but it feels like our prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. It feels like you are ignoring us.” “We’re humbling ourselves but you don’t even seem to notice.”

[Transition] – Now, beginning in the second half of verse 3, the Prophet begins to explain why their intimacy with God has been interrupted and why they feel a fundamental disconnect with God. Look at verses 3b-5.

God says, “Here’s the problem....YOU ARE POSING!”

You are living double lives...while you are fasting and calling on God to show you his favor, to show you his power, to bless you in all you do...at the same time you are fasting and asking for all of that:

You do as you please while you pretend to be fully surrendered.

While you ask for God’s mercy, you exploit your employees.
While you ask for God’s favor and kindness, you are bickering and fighting with one another.

God’s says, “You can’t fake it like this. Remember, I see all of you!!!” “...Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.” -I Samuel 16:7

God is saying, in fasting and in all the other church related things you are participating in....you’re posing like you are fully surrendered to me, like you have fully repented and are genuinely seeking to be transformed by me, but I know it’s an act. It’s a one day spiritual masquerade, it’s a one day trip down hypocrite way. While you are posing like you are fully surrendered TO ME...you dishonor me with your lifestyle of self-centeredness TOWARD OTHERS.

One of the major lessons of this text is that we have to guard against is playing at Christianity. We have to guard against settling into a lifestyle that might look sincere to certain people at certain times or a lifestyle that is “good enough” for those around us, while we forget that God doesn’t give a rip about how we might look on the outside or the actions we compliantly perform on the outside. God sees the heart!

God cares about where your heart is, what your motives are, what the secret intentions of your heart are...he sees all that. And that kind of posing...that kind of spiritual pretending is incredibly offensive to God. Few things disrupt your intimacy with God like faking full surrender to him. Few things choke out God’s blessing in your life like honoring God with your lips while your heart is far from him.

[Quote] – It’s like the early children’s program host Capt. Penny used to say, “You can fool some of the people all of the time...and you can fool all of the people some of the time...but you can’t fool Mom. Just change that to...but, you can’t fool God!

[Transition] - Now, starting in verse 6 God begins to explain something really important to us. God begins to explain what the signs of true spirituality are. God begins to explain how he can tell if a person’s heart is truly his...and if a person’s heart has been fully surrendered and genuinely captured by God’s Spirit.

One of the things we know about God from the Bible is that, “The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him (2 Chronicles 16:9)....so what does he look for? Notice what he looks for....Look at verses 6-7,9b-10a.

Now, in this text, the people have appealed to fasting as the evidence of their genuine surrender and heart-felt devotion to God. And since fasting is essentially the discipline that was practiced to demonstrate self-denial and full surrender to God, and since that is what God’s people were pretending to do...God turns it around on them and says, “The fasting I prefer...or the practice to demonstrate self-denial and full surrender is a lifestyle that seeks to:

Break the chains of injustice wherever you find them.

Get rid of exploitation in the workplace
Set the oppressed free
Cancel debts
Share your food with the hungry
Provide the homeless poor with shelter
Put clothes on the shivering ill-clad ones
Be available to your own families
Spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
Satisfy the needs of the oppressed
Get rid of unfair practices
Quit blaming victims
Quit gossiping about other people's sins.
Be generous with the hungry
Start giving yourselves to the down-and-out

Here’s what God want his followers to know...

Full surrender to God is revealed through a lifestyle of compassion (6-7, 9b-10a).

In the context of our discussion these recent weeks...notice again the things that reveal a heart genuinely and authentically surrendered to God. Some of the most key indicators that reveal that you are fully surrendered to God...is how you treat the weak, the poor, the vulnerable, the needy, the hungry, the oppressed...the homeless...how you treat “the least of these.”

James says it this way, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” - James 1:27

Remember what Jesus said in week one of our series in Matthew 25. In that story, the sheep...the ones blessed by The Father...the ones who receive the inheritance of heaven are those whose hearts have been transformed by faith in Jesus Christ and the key indicator of that transformation is how they treated the “least of these.”

Now, I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: Remember...being right with God is never an outside-in dynamic. Don’t read the Matthew 25 text or the Isaiah 58 text and think, “Oh, to be right with God means that I just need to do acts of service for down and out of the world.” No, both of these stories teach us that giving yourself to the down and out is a result of being right with God...not the way to be right with God. Don’t get the cart before the horse. A heart fully and genuinely surrendered to God is revealed through a lifestyle that extends even to the least of these.

Here’s the subtle mistake we can all make: It’s the mistake of thinking that our spirituality is simply a matter of relationship with God while discounting our relationship with other people. Remember the two greatest commandments....Love the Lord your God...AND Love your neighbor as yourself. The Bible is clear...our salvation to heaven is about our relationship with God...but our lives as his servants are about our relationships with others. God cares about that so much that he says, “Whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you have done it unto me!”

[Transition] – Now, notice what happens when you don’t simply pretend to be fully surrendered, but when you are fully surrendered and God’s love and compassion for the weak and the vulnerable is extended out through you as a lifestyle. Look at verse 8-9a, 11-12, 14.

Full surrender to God leads to full blessing from God (8-9a, 11-12, 14).

I found ten blessings listed in this text:

Light will replace darkness in your life.

You’ll receive the healing you need.
Your righteousness will go before you.
Glory of the Lord will go behind you.
Your prayers will be answered.
God will guide you in your life.
God will satisfy your needs and strengthen you.
Your life will flourish and be productive and your efforts blessed.
You will find joy in the Lord.
God will give you honor in your life.

Remember the Proverb we looked at a few weeks ago, “Mercy to the needy is a loan to God, and God pays back those lo