Thanks, Jeri,
I've been listening to Psalm 119 as I write.
A few revival thoughts followed by some humble thoughts of our sinfulness and the humility we should have. A humility that comes only from God. We need God to come down.
Psalm 85:1-6
LORD, thou hast been favorable unto thy land: Thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob. Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, Thou hast covered all their sin. Selah. Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: Thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger. Turn us, O God of our salvation, And cause thine anger toward us to cease. Wilt thou be angry with us forever? Wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations? Wilt thou not revive us again: That thy people may rejoice in thee?
Isaiah 64:1-4
Oh, that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence, as when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence! When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at thy presence. For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.
Isaiah 64:5-8
Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways: behold, thou art wroth; for we have sinned: in those is continuance, and we shall be saved. But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; [menstruous cloth] and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.
Is this your life? Or, rather—This is your life.
Day by day, as you and I move into the future, we are not writing our lives on a blank page. The page of our heart is already crowded with stains and things crossed out and misspellings and incomplete erasures. We’re complicated. Isaiah uses four similes—you see the word “like” four times—to help us recover a more realistic self-awareness.
First, we’re like an unclean leper. I could warn everyone I meet, “Hi, I’m Ray Ortlund, and I’m contagious with the leprosy of sin. You’d better keep your distance. I might mess up your life.”
Secondly, even at our best moments, when we do what’s right, we’re not as good as we look. All our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. It’s not just our sins that stink; our righteousness stinks.
Thirdly, our vitality fades away like a brittle, autumn leaf. We’re easily depleted. We just don’t last.
Fourthly, our iniquities, like the wind, take control of us and move us in directions we never meant to go. And we’re not very good at taking hold of the only One who can save us. You and I do not need to be delivered from our enemies; primarily, we need to be delivered from ourselves. So we look to the very One we have offended as all our hope.
Ortlund, R. C., Jr., & Hughes, R. K. (2005). Isaiah: God saves sinners (p. 435). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
