Barriers Between You and God
Isaiah 59:1-3 BSB (Berean Standard Bible)
“1Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save,
nor His ear too dull to hear.
2But your iniquities have built barriers
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden His face from you,
so that He does not hear.
3For your hands are stained with blood,
and your fingers with iniquity;
your lips have spoken lies,
and your tongue mutters injustice.”
The picture the Lord is giving me of this today is that of a
human being, of human flesh, who is giving an impression that they are on level
ground, in uniformity with the Word of God, and walking a straight path, but it
is in appearance only. In reality they are living a double life, for in reality
they are cunning, deceitful, sneaky, and devious. They are those who are living
in sexual immorality and in adultery against their spouses, deliberately and
habitually, while they will put on a performance that the opposite is true.
Even though they profess faith in Jesus Christ, they are
living in a pit of sin, in a situation of the lowest quality spiritually
speaking. For they are living opposite of the will and purpose of God for our
lives, in willful, deliberate, and habitual sin against God and against their
spouses. Instead of taking the opportunity to repent and to turn from their sin,
they take the opportunity to indulge in what is of the flesh, and they continue
to plunge into sin, to descend to the lowest level in their thinking and in
their behaviors.
They Give Birth to Iniquity
Isaiah 59:4-6 BSB (Berean Standard Bible)
“4No one calls for justice;
no one pleads his case honestly.
They rely on empty pleas; they tell lies;
they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.
5They hatch the eggs of vipers
and weave a spider’s web.
Whoever eats their eggs will die;
crack one open, and a viper is hatched.
6Their cobwebs cannot be made into clothing,
and they cannot cover themselves with their works.
Their deeds are sinful deeds,
and acts of violence are in their hands.”
But this is not about just one person, is it? This has
reached epidemic proportions within the gatherings of the church (or what is
falsely called “the church”). But so many of them are following after the ways
of the flesh and not the ways of God. They are fixed in their ways and in their
beliefs and practices, regardless of what the Scriptures teach. For they have
attached themselves to the world and to big business and to partnering
themselves with the government and with the world in order to attract the world
to their gatherings. And so they compromise the Scriptures to win the world.
Therefore, many of them have gone the way of the world, and
they have diluted the message of the gospel in order to attract the world to
their gatherings. And many of their “pastors” are just cult leaders who are
following the marketing schemes of worldly businesses in order to draw in large
crowds of people from the world. So they spin their webs of deceit, and they
tell lies to the people, in the name of truth, and so no one calls for justice,
for justice is being outlawed, for it offends people who are living in
deliberate and habitual sin. So they can continue in their sinful deeds.
Their Feet Run to Evil
Isaiah 59:7-8 BSB (Berean Standard Bible)
“7Their feet run to evil;
they are swift to shed innocent blood.
Their thoughts are sinful thoughts;
ruin and destruction lie in their wake.
8The way of peace they have not known,
and there is no justice in their tracks.
They have turned them into crooked paths;
no one who treads on them will know peace.”
So, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, who by faith in
Jesus Christ has denied self, died to sin, and who is now obeying God and His
commands, as a matter of life practice, and so you are following the Lord
wherever He leads you in doing and in saying what He commands, then those whose
feet run to evil may be opposed to you. And they may come after you fiercely to
try to discredit you by speaking lies against you. And they may twist the
Scriptures to try to make you look like you are “the bad guy” while making themselves
appear as the victims, so people will feel sorry for them.
For if you are a genuine follower of Christ, the gospel
message that you speak will not bring them comfort, for it calls them to
repentance and to obedience to God and to His commands. But they prefer a
friendlier “gospel” which does not require that they deny self, die to sin, and
obey God, in practice, in order to be saved from sin and to have eternal life
with God. So, because they love their sin, they may attack you, hoping to sway
you to give up the fight out of fear of what they might do to you. But the only
one we are to fear is God, and to give Him only our submission and surrender.
[Matthew 5:10-12;
Matthew 10:16-25,34-39; Matthew 24:9-14; Luke 6:22-23; Luke 12:49-53; Luke
21:12-17; John 15:18-21; John 16:33; Acts 14:22; Romans 5:3-5; 2 Corinthians
1:3-11; Ephesians 6:10-20; Philippians 3:7-11; 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5; Hebrews
12:3-12; James 1:2-4; 1 Peter 1:6-7; 1 Peter 4:12-17; Revelation
6:9-11; Revelation 7:9-17; Revelation 11:1-3; Revelation
12:17; Revelation 13:1-18; Revelation 14:1-13]
Have Thine Own Way, Lord
Words by Adelaide A. Pollard, 1907
Music by George C. Stebbins, 1907
Have
Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Thou
art the potter, I am the clay.
Mold
me and make me after Thy will,
While
I am waiting, yielded and still.
Have
Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Search
me and try me, Master, today!
Whiter
than snow, Lord, wash me just now,
As
in Thy presence humbly I bow.
Have
Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Wounded
and weary, help me I pray!
Power,
all power, surely is Thine!
Touch
me and heal me, Savior divine!
Have
Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Hold
o'er my being absolute sway.
Fill
with Thy Spirit till all shall see
Christ
only, always, living in me!
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