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.

 

  1. The Triune Being!
  2. The Covenant of Grace!
  3. His Love!
  4. His Salvation!

 

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