Our reading is taken from Isaiah chapter 58. It's a strange chapter in which a people that seem very intent on seeking the Lord are rejected by God. Beginning in verse 1, the prophet writes, cry aloud and spare not. Lift up your voice like a trumpet. Tell my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of me the ordinances of justice. They take delight in approaching God. Why have we fasted, they say, and you have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls and you take no notice? In fact, in the day of your fast, you find pleasure and exploit all your laborers. Indeed, you fast for strife and debate to strike with the fist of wickedness. You will not fast as you do this day to make your voice heard on high. Is it a fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast and an acceptable day to the Lord? Is this not the fast that I have chosen to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free and that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out when you see the naked that you cover him and not hide yourself from your own flesh? Then your light shall break forth like the morning. Your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer. You shall cry, and he will say, here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, if you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness and your darkness shall be as the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul in drought and strengthen your bones. You shall be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. Those from among you shall build the old waste places, you shall raise up the foundations of many generations, you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor him not doing your own ways nor finding your own pleasure nor speaking your own words then you shall delight yourself in the Lord and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father the mouth of the Lord has spoken well let's pray our gracious and almighty God we draw near to you Lord we are a needy people with no backup plan we are of people who have heard great things of you. In this book we read of your majesty, of your immensity, of your immeasurable greatness and God we read of your goodness. That you are both pure and righteous as well as gracious and merciful. That you are faithful and honest and true. That you are unalterably glorious. And though you dwell in an unapproachable light and cannot be figured out by our tiny minds or the minds of any saint in heaven or angel, and yet you stoop down, God, to let us know you, to be able to call you our Father, our King, that Christ has been given to us as our elder brother, our Redeemer and Defender. Lord, we rest ourselves upon you and not upon our own goodness. We take no hope in our good intentions. Lord, it is according to your word that we have to come to you. And we come as we're commanded. Nothing in our hands we bring. Simply to thy cross we cling. God, we hope in the finished work of your son. We hope in the ongoing rule of King Jesus above all the worlds alone. We hope in the dynamic and powerful transforming work of your spirit. Great God we pray that you would get honor to yourself through our very common and small lives. That in all the mundane tasks that are yet to be done this week, whether at college or home or work or play, God will you help us to follow your son, to live always in the now and in the here as his disciples. Lord we read this passage where you shock us by saying to a group of people who fast and pray and call for special assemblies to seek your face and you tell them that they don't seek your face like that if they want you to hear them. Lord we don't want to waste our time. We don't want to waste our opportunities. We want to seek your face in a way that brings about a sweet meeting between Christ and our souls. Lord, we don't want your back. We want your face. God, we pray that you would do in us, teach us things that we need to know in order to never be a people who, like the people of Isaiah 58, say that they love you, say that they want to know what you think about things, say that they are really interested in drawing near to you, but it's all words and with their hearts, they're as far from you as can be. God, we don't want our nearness to you to be a matter of attending a religious gathering in a building. God, we want it to be a drawing near of our soul to our maker, to our king. God, we ask that you would show us how to seek your face in a way that is effective and life-giving and that the things that are said to Israel here could be things that we know by our own experience and not just words on a page. That there would be those glorious heights of privilege and depths of experience. That we might know the length and breadth of the love that is in you alone through Jesus Christ. And that filling us with these things, you would be glorified from generation to generation through Jesus Christ and his church. Father, we ask these things in the name of your son. Amen. We continue the theme of seeking the Lord. We've been talking about the fact that while seeking the Lord is just a normal part of the Christian life, turning away from the emptiness of ourselves and the world and turning our face toward Him. and drawing near to Him and walking near to Him that really, for the Christian, we never stop seeking. There's the paradox there. We possess Him. He's ours. And we're His, if we're believers. But the possession, it's not a static thing. It's not like having a box of something. It's a relationship, and so there's an ever ever increasing, ongoing desire to know Him better, to walk nearer with our God. The unbeliever who attends church does not desire to seek the Lord. Seeking forgiveness for sins, a clear conscience, one of the, you know, the get out of hell free ticket is certainly what they want. Perhaps a church family where there's a great deal of support or Maybe even a place where they can do a lot and work and find affirmation because they're significant. Those things the unbeliever will seek. But the believer wants God. And Christianity, religion, affirmation, friendship, without God is not enough for the Christian. So there's a hunger. But when we talk about seeking the Lord, And the way we've been looking at it in the last few months, we've really been dealing with the theme of extraordinary seasons of need or opportunity where we give extraordinary effort to draw near to our God. We've spent a long time talking about foundational issues like the fact that the new covenant work of Jesus of Nazareth has purchased for us more when it comes to this whole reality of nearness to God, intimacy with our God. There's more provided in the new covenant than ever was provided in the old. There is no outer court, there is no inner court, there is no holy and then holy of holies divided up and restricted. But there is God and we are allowed to draw near by faith to him and to abide in his love. There is the indwelling of God in us. The covenant privileges Christ accomplishing all of his work, Psalm 68 says. And after that accomplishment, he ascends on high, he leads captivity captives, he receives gifts from the Father on behalf of men, even for those who once were rebels, that the Lord God might dwell among them. Paul uses those Old Testament promises over and over in reference to the New Testament church, like in 2 Corinthians, the end of chapter six and the beginning of chapter seven. Because you have these promises of God being among us, walking among us, being our Father, dwelling in us, Because you have those, then purify yourselves of the sins of the body and of the spirit. The other foundational issue that we hammered away at recently was the fact that God in 2 Chronicles 7.14 begins that wonderful statement, a general road map for seeking the Lord. Begins that statement by saying, if my people who are called by my name, God's possession, his people. Ownership, God's reputation, called by His name. If they will take seriously the call to return. Now I want us to come to the more, what we might call the practical side of seeking the Lord, but I don't mean that the other things are impractical, but these are things that we begin to have to put into practice in very concrete ways. And 2 Chronicles 7.14 is a real help in that. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now there are some things about this that are peculiar to Israel, but as a general rule, it's perhaps the best known and one of the most helpful verses on how do the people of God turn back and what's involved. When we look at the first practical aspect of turning back and drawing near to the Lord, we find that it still deals with heart work. And so you might think, well, we still haven't gotten to the practical stuff, but the heart work is the practical stuff. Christianity is always rooted in the changes of the heart first before it ever reaches the changes in the way that we live. It isn't that heart change is all there is to Christianity. So you say, well, I have new feelings, new thoughts, new motives, but the outside of my life is the same, and there's nothing different concretely about the way I live than before I came to Christ. That would not be Christianity. Heart work is not all there is, but it's the beginning of all. And if we skip over the issues that deal with the way you think about God and about yourself and about life and what you desire, then you'll never ever be a person who seeks the Lord and finds him. So where does the passage start us? My people called by my name, what does he want us to do? In response to that God, we are to humble ourselves. Now when we talk about self humbling we do I suppose recognize this is always where God begins. He does not waste his time. dealing with our fruit sins and leaving our root sins unaltered. God does at times begin with fruit sins in the Bible. He tells people, listen, look what you're doing. But it's for the purpose of driving them back to see I'm not the person I thought I was. I thought I was a great person. I thought I was a person that loved God. And then God begins by showing them the outside of their life. And then they realize they're not what they thought they were on the inside. But God begins with roots and seeking the Lord includes responding to God in the way that he determines that we should respond. Seeking the Lord involves adapting our lives to how God does things and what God desires. Not just doing religion harder and faster and greater. A great deal of our drifting from the Lord is entangled with doing a lot of religion that God has never commanded us to do or doing things that are good things that are commanded in the Bible but in the wrong way. And so if we say, I really want to draw near to the Lord, it may be that He's not interested at all in you doing more and harder and faster in religion. But rather you have to go all the way back to the beginning and start with Him. Where do you start? That's where I'm gonna have to start. And God starts with humbling. And that's where he will have to start. We say this so often, I suppose it bears repeating. The way in is the way up. Or the way in is the way forward in Christianity. How does Christianity begin in the soul? Remember what Jesus said in Luke chapter four, he was quoting the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah. And he told the people why he came and in verse 18 he says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the good news or the gospel to the poor. Not physically poor, spiritually poor. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted. Jesus Christ is determined to bring good news to those who feel that spiritually they are bankrupt and they can't afford to buy anything that he has to offer, though they need it. And spiritually, they are brokenhearted over what they see to be true of themselves. And to that person, Christ brings the good news. God always begins with humbling. In John chapter 16, where we're headed on Sunday mornings eventually, Christ describes the work of the Holy Spirit, and he says that when he has come, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Why? Why begin there? Why not do some extraordinary miracles that anybody that's watching these physical miracles, they could say, oh Jesus Christ really was who he said he was. Why does he begin by ripping up the interior of a life? When a person comes to church and God begins to deal with them for the very first time, it does not start with good news, it starts with bad news. And he begins to convict us and he shows us our sin and he shows us the righteousness of God and the impending judgment. And things get worse before they get better. They get darker before the dawn. Because God always begins with the humble and with humbling. We just sang about that in Charles Wesley's hymn. First impoverish me. What's he saying? First make me feel that I don't have the spiritual money to buy my way into your kingdom. And then make me rich. So we come to God, we realize we're poor. We come to God because we realize we're sick. We come to God because we realize that spiritually we are weak. We come to God because we feel our guilt. Not because we're doing well and we're good people. And then in each of the situations, once God has shown us our need and we have been humbled, then he gives us what we need in Christ. Now why does God start with self-humbling? Why does 2 Chronicles start with humble yourself? It is such a painful thing that again, you might feel that it's kind of a payment. So you've been drifting, you're not where you once were, you ought to go back. And so surely the thing to do is God's going to ask you to do something really hard because that's gonna be part of payment. But it's not at all a payment. Christ has paid for our sin. It is a preparation. If we want God to draw near to us again, if we want the life to be again experiencing this fullness that the New Testament talks about, this intimacy, this transparency between God and myself abiding in Him and Him abiding in me with nothing between, then there has to be a preparation. We must clear the rubble out of the road, Isaiah says. We must plow the heart, Jeremiah says. We must be emptied so that we're hungry and thirsty, and that's who will be filled. Christ says in Matthew 5, we must be humble. God delights to come to one kind of person's house. Do you remember Isaiah 57, 15? Thus says the high and holy one whose name is holy, who inhabits eternity. I dwell on a high and holy place and with him who is contrite and lowly. Isaiah 66, my hand made all these things, verses 1 and 2. Where is a house that you could build for me? Where is a house that I could live in? But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite and who trembles at my word. There is this attractive quality. And we could say it in a very limited human way, all right, if we could speak of God this way. An irresistible quality that God's grace puts in us and that we are responsible to respond to, that is, God delights to draw near to the humble. The precious things of God will never be added to a life that's stuffed full of the junk of self and self-righteousness and the world. Mr. Roberts used an illustration years ago. I'll adjust it, all right? So in case you've heard it before, then you won't go to sleep on me. All right, I'm gonna use Philip and Sandy tonight, all right? You ready? Let's say that Sandy is cooking soup for a church fellowship, and she's got big pots going, and she has the pots that she wants to transport it in, so she takes it from the pots on the stove, and she puts it in the containers that she's gonna take it to church in, but as she realizes that she's made so much, she doesn't have enough room, and then she's searching around for any extra containers, and in the refrigerator, Phillip finds a big Tupperware, And he says to her, this is perfect. It'll just fit. It's a gallon. You've got three quarters of a gallon soup, and this is a gallon jug, and it's only got a quarter gallon of some old stuff. You know how refrigerator, I don't think it happens in yours, but it happens in ours, where the refrigerator has like jellies and things that are almost empty, and they've been there for decades. So what if Philip said to Sandy, being the frugal guy he is, let's not throw out this old stuff, let's throw the new stuff on top of the old stuff, it'll fit and it'll go a little further. And Sandy says, no, I just made this soup, you'll ruin it. We come to God three quarters the way full. but we still feel a little emptiness. And we say to God, oh God, we want to have revival. God, we want to have your nearness. God, we want to have the fullness that the Bible talks about that's the birthright of every believer. And God looks at our lives and we're so full of empty stuff, so full of junk. He will never pour his precious things into a life that's already half full of self. Now I don't mean that we come to God and say, I have perfectly fixed everything about me and now I'm ready. But if there is not a real determination to begin where God begins, that is an emptying, a stripping, a humbling, then you can forget ever being a successful seeker. So we have to stop and ask ourselves a very simple question tonight before we go any further. You cannot, here's a statement, you cannot draw near to God by walking on your old path just walking faster. You stop and ask where does God begin? God begins by humbling. If God expects us to humble ourselves before we seek him, before we find him, before he deals with us graciously. Are you wasting your time every time you have a quiet time, every time you come to church? Is it really just a waste of time because you haven't done the preparatory work of humbling yourself? Now perhaps you think that we can skip humbling and we can still find God just as near as ever. Listen to these two passages. The first is Matthew 5. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn over their poverty of spirit, for they'll be comforted. Blessed are the meek, that is, you're humble toward other people, for they'll inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they'll be filled. being honest with God about my poverty, being honest with myself and mourning over what I see in me, and being honest with those around me, and quit, I've stopped my strutting, and I am humble toward them. God strips all of that away, and then we say, but what's left? I don't have anything left. You know you don't, and now you're hungry and thirsty. And you want what Christ has, and he fills us. Second passage is Jeremiah chapter four, verse one and verse three. The prophet writes this. If you will return, O Israel, says the Lord, then return to me. And then he tells them how. Thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, break up your fallow ground, do not sow among thorns. Now those are two commands, not one. Break up your fallow ground. Fallow ground, we've talked about this before. If a field had once been plowed and planted and productive, but now it's been allowed to just lay out there and nobody's done anything to it for a while. It's fallow ground, once plowed, once there was a crop on it, now it's just covered in weeds and through the seasons the earth's become hard again. And so God says to them, go plow up that field that is covered in weeds and it's hard. Do not take good seed and cast it onto this weedy, hard piece of land because nothing will come of it. So I ask you again, when you open the Bible and you take all that good seed and you throw it on your heart, do you have fallow ground, unplowed, unhumbled hearts so that it never, ever benefits you? And when we come and listen to sermons, unprepared and it's been a long time since we've felt like we were the spiritually poor people. Do you find that God never fills you? And so it's really a waste of time. God has never in the history of humanity joined the man or woman who wants to add a little more of God onto a life stuffed full of self, or wants to throw all these wonderful scriptural realities on a heart that's choked with weeds, and hard, and not humble. So we start in seeking the Lord with the act of self, self humbling. Now perhaps you still think we can skip that. And it's such a hard thing for us that it would be pleasant to think we could skip it, but we can't. So maybe it'd be clearer if we just kind of thought about some impossibilities, all right? I want you to think of the impossibilities for a proud heart. Pride meaning that you have inflated views of yourself. You have these large and big views of you. You have such inflated views of your rights. You have inflated views of your worth. You have inflated views of your spiritual abilities. So even if you look at your life and say, oh, you're right, I'm not where I should be, but you just give me a moment, God, I'll fix it. Well, you can't. You won't. You have inflated views of your abilities. Inflated views of your desires and plans and station and position. inflated views of ourselves against God, against others. There is nothing in the Bible described by God as more offensive to God than the simple sin of having such inflated views of ourselves. It is the first sin of Satan, I will be like the most high. It is the first sin of Adam, I, if I eat this fruit, I will be like the most high, I'll be like a God. and it's the root of every one of our sins. Unbelief and selfishness are also roots, but I believe as we look at the scripture, we can make an argument that pride is even the root of those, that there is no sin beneath pride. Why not believe a God that says to us so many things that you can test in the Bible that are obviously true? Why not believe him when he says things that you don't like? because you're proud and you think you know better. Why not obey a God whose every command is for our good because we're proud and we think we're the king? Why choose self-indulgence as a path for happiness when God says that living for him is the path of happiness because we're so big in our own eyes? There are impossibilities for people who maintain a proud heart. And when we think about these possibilities, it becomes clear why God says to the whole nation in 2 Chronicles 7, 14, if you want to draw near to me, humble yourselves first. No man can seek God. No woman can seek God. No child can seek God who maintains a proud, unhumbled heart. Now you can be religious, can't you? And you can read the Bible cover to cover many times throughout a year, and you can memorize the Bible, and you can work. slavishly in a church, and still maintain a proud, unhumbled heart, but you will never seek God. Because you, if you have a proud heart, are using religion You're using it, you're hoping to use God for you. You're the center of religion. And everything else about Christianity exists for you. So how can you go seeking the only person who really is above you, who really does have all the rights and all the claims and all the abilities? Why would you go closer to Him if your religion really is just a mask for self-promotion? We do want God to be useful, and so we don't mind Him coming close and serving us, but the idea of seeking God's face, of just lavishing our life on knowing and loving Him, instead of seeking His hand, is foreign to us when we're proud. We cannot pray when we're proud. You can say your prayers, You can say beautiful prayers. You can say long prayers. You can say prayers all day long. But you cannot really talk to God if you maintain an unhumbled heart. Do you remember Edward Payson's illustration of the rich man? A rich man can join an acting troupe and he can play the part of a beggar and he tries to beg But a rich man will never really beg like a man who's starving will beg, no matter how hard he tries. You can say prayers to God, but until you're poor, how will you ever pray? You're just like the rich man who's playing a part. You will not ever be able to repent. Now we will leave certain ugly sins behind, sins that embarrass us, sins that trouble us, sins that humiliate us. We just don't like the fact that we're ruled by them. But you'll never really deal with the root of sin as long as you maintain an inflated view of yourself because to you, the problem with your sin is it's ruining your life. The problem is not that it is offending God. So you'll never really deal with it. You'll just deal with some sins on the surface. If you will not humble yourself, your seeking will be half-hearted. Like this, I have so much. I have so much going for me. I have a lot of qualities. And it would be nice to have God plus all of this. But if I don't have God's nearness plus all of this, well, I can live without that. How many times do you come to church, Sunday after Sunday, read your Bible, Sunday after Sunday, I find it in myself, and I think, it'd be great to have God nearer, but really, I'm doing fine, and I've got all I need. Half-hearted seekers do not find the Lord. Do you remember what God said to Israel? When you seek me with all your heart, you'll find me. But the proud person could never seek God with all their heart because their life is so full of themselves, they can't ever imagine needing to. The proud person seeking will be short-lived. We try a little, we go to a few revival services, we listen to a few Paul Washer tapes, he yells at us, we feel bad about ourselves, we try to do better, but it's just too costly. God expects too much, so we stop. After all, I have enough. When we seek the Lord with a proud heart, we only seek half of God. What do you want from God? Well, I want his hand, I want his forgiveness, I want his promises of kindness and a future and safety and security, but I don't want him. I'm glad to have parts of Jesus because other parts, not so attractive. Israel in Isaiah 58 is a perfect picture of a group of proud people who tried to seek God, tried to pray, they fasted, they tried to repent, and God rejected it all and said to them, if you do your seeking like this to be heard in your prayers by me, you're wasting your time. You'll never, ever have a prayer meeting that I'll listen to as long as this is the way you approach it. Have you ever thought that we could be in that camp? Why not? Israel had a self-centered. Everything in religion orbited them. And it showed itself in specific ways. I mean, the way they dealt with the Sabbath, the way they dealt with people who were under their control or influence, the cruelty, the greed, the self-centeredness in their religion. It doesn't have to be that set. It could be another set. The point is this. It's all about you. So you pretend like a people. Like you're a people that want my nearness. You pretend like you're a people that seek me. You pretend like a people that want to know what I think about things. You can just imagine their prayers. Lord, teach us your will. God, show us what we're supposed to do. God, and as if they wanted to know. But God says it was all fake. A wonderful contrast to that is the apostle Paul, before he was the apostle. Saul is headed to kill Christians. God meets him on the road to Damascus and humbles him. And Paul humbles himself in response to seeing the Lord Jesus Christ. And what does he say? The Bible says this, very short sentence. Lord, what do you want me to do? Anything. You see the picture? Paul is in the dust. No bargaining like Jacob. God, if you will, then I will. So humble. Lord Jesus, the true Lord that I have fought against, what do you want? Anything. You can have it. Philippians chapter three, Paul never stops walking humbly. He continues to pursue Christ. He has heaven guaranteed. He's an apostle. He's had great experiences. And then in that wonderful chapter of Philippians 3, everything, everything is still being counted loss so that I can have him, to know him. When we think about humility, if my people called by name will humble themselves. We have to carefully distinguish between two things in the Bible and in life, all right? There is what we might call humiliation, and then there is self-humbling. And if you confuse the two, you may be disappointed. Humiliation comes to everyone. I don't know any person ever who can live their life on planet earth anytime, reach adulthood without humiliation. What I mean is this. We cultivate these really inflated views of ourselves. We think that other people think as highly of us as we do, and if they don't we're angry. And then along comes something in life that knocks your idol and proves that you aren't what you thought you were, that you don't have it. I'm not talking about spiritual things necessarily, just anything. A man who's strong and intelligent and a hard worker with great work ethic, he's building a little empire for himself and for his children and then a disease comes along and strikes him down and he is not what he thought he was. I mean, you see it so many times. We think we're going along well. Certain things in life come, hard times, and it just rips all the fantasy, all the mask off, and everyone sees that we are just about as weak and small as can be. So we are humiliated by life's circumstances. And God often uses that to begin a great work. But there are no promises in the Bible to those who are humiliated by hard times. And we see over and over that people who go through hard times, who will not humble themselves and walk with God in response to those hard times, they simply become harder and prouder. But then there is the self-humbling. In response to what God is doing, we choose to be honest with God, honest with ourselves, honest with other people. We humble ourselves. Yes, God gives us grace to do it, but we have to humble ourselves. So life gives us a mighty blow. God shows us things about us we don't like. We have a choice to harden ourselves, Or to say to God, it's so hard to admit it, but it's true. I am nothing like what I thought. I have held such inflated views of myself. I thought I was a little God. I thought I was a little king. I thought I was capable and intelligent and noble. And I thought that my rights were important. And now I see that it is all a lie. And I humble myself before you. 2 Chronicles 6 and 7 gives us that picture. Chapter 6, Solomon says over and over, if your people, all right, and then he gives all kinds of different sins, if they drift, if they get into idolatry, if they're in trouble, all right, if your people sin and hard times come from you and they turn away from their sin and seek your face at this temple, will you hear their prayers? Will you be kind to them? So there's the affliction, there's the humiliating circumstances, the Philistines again, the Amorites, the whoeverites, they've conquered us again, we're back on our face in the dirt again, what will we do? And God says in chapter 7, if when these bad things happen, if my people called by my name will humble themselves in response to these hard times. Have you been humiliated by life? Have circumstances proven that you are not what you have cherished in your imagination? You're not the great person you thought you were. There is no promise of mercy to you unless you are a person who can say, yes, that's happened, but by the grace of God, I have humbled myself. I have willfully accepted the truth. How do you go about humbling yourself? Not willpower, so you wake up tomorrow morning and say, I am gonna be the humble person that I'm supposed to be. It just doesn't work that way. The Lord has given us certain tools, and we'll be talking about this perhaps in coming weeks. You never know. But I'd like to. You can take the passages in scripture where God shows you what he is like. and stay there and soak in them until you feel the immense difference between you and Him. That's one of the tools God has given you, like Job 38, 39, 40, and 41. It's a wonderful thing. It is such a happy thing for a Christian to see the gap between the creator and the creature again and to feel I'm nothing. How freeing to be just nothing and him to be so everything. Another tool you have, look at the statements in the Bible where God explains to you his expectations. You may say, God my relationship is not based on my present performance. And the foundation of your relationship with God cannot be based on your performance. God, I can't wait until my motives are perfect. You know that my motives have never been perfect, and so my motives are imperfect. That's true, and God does not wait for us to have perfect motives. But listen, that does not relieve us of perfect obedience. He claims perfect obedience from us. So if you just take a walk through the scripture where he explains, just go through the New Testament epistles. What are Christians to do as a parent, as a spouse, as a young person, as a Christian witness, toward your enemies, toward each other? When you begin to look at the list, it's a great way to humble yourself, to get an honest look. I'm not quite the Christian I thought I was. And the third thing, And it must come last is to look at the inexplicable flood of mercy that covers every one of those sins, wave upon wave upon wave, the fullness, grace upon grace through Jesus Christ. With never once a limitation, a stingy moment in God, no matter how undeserving you are, Nothing is so humbling as the love of God when we realize the truth about how little we deserve it. I think that the love of God is the wrecking ball of the Bible. It just destroys even the desire to pretend that you're better than you are. Well, we'll look at these in the days to come. We do not want to be a people who talk a lot about self-humbling. There's just no benefit in it. If all we have is the talk, humble ourselves. Oh yes, we understand. But we don't do it, then we'll be like the people in Isaiah 58, who are left with all those great words. Lord, we sought you, but you never paid attention. God help us not to be that.