God Is Majesty

"God Is Majesty" – Isaiah 64:1-2 People love to be spoken to about the Lord; there is always an acceptance and always a desire. What costs is to remain to the end, because the trial comes and the circumstance comes; and if seasons that are too splendid come, our lives must be guarded then as well. We must always be alert, because we serve a God who has majesty. It is very easy for a human being to say "little God," and that is one of the greatest disrespects, for God is God. Isaiah asks that the heavens be rent and that God come down; and if God is majesty, we are His children and He is our King.

I. Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down... to make thy name known to thine adversaries (Isaiah 64:1-2).

A. The petition is that God show Himself wonderfully on behalf of His people.

1. When God carries out some extraordinary deliverance, He shines forth to show Himself strong. For God is strong, God knows no pity, God is yes or no.

2. What does God always want? To shine forth. For if God shines forth, He is making Himself known; not as though He were dimmed, nor as though He were not the owner of the universe.

3. The more you know, the more faith, because you have acquired more faith; and then you are a warrior, and no weapon can prosper to destroy you.

4. For what the enemy always wants is to destroy: if not one way, then through some foolish thing; and after the foolish thing, the brazenness. Always to destroy.

5. And if God is majesty, we are His children, He is our King, and He has set statutes and rules that are spectacular in our favor. On this earth we are merely passing through.

B. Isaiah wrote out of loss.

1. He wrote partly while still living in his nation, and then carried through the whole ordeal of a people in captivity: it was tears, sleeplessness, and want of food.

2. To write like that it would have had to come from a deep feeling: it was no ordinary moment, it was a hard moment, a bleeding one, of loss upon loss.

3. And even so he lets it be seen plainly that there is hope: new heavens and a new earth, in chapter 65.

4. Every word he wrote God preserved for him through the Holy Spirit, and He guarded that book so that you and I might know it.

5. We, on the other hand, are favored because grace reached us; and grace is everything that is given to us freely. Nothing makes it hard for us to come to church.

II. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty (1 Chronicles 29:11).

A. David worships God and renders Him the glory that is due.

1. Do you like being inside your problem twenty-four hours, repeating it and saying it again, until the anguish becomes everything to us?

2. What must be done is to worship God, to go in prayer, and to render tribute and glory to this God whom we serve, who is blessed from everlasting to everlasting.

3. When the day turns hard and the mind suggests a thousand things, the attacks of anxiety come, the attacks of despair, and of not knowing which way to run. Then one sets his feet

straight and says: here I stand.

4. His is the greatness: His vastness is immense and incomprehensible. You will not comprehend it; but you must say: I cannot go on living this way, I have to see God and what He is as a reality in my life.

5. His is the power, and that greatness is absolute, total, and whole: God is of one piece. And if God is of one piece, you and I ought to be of one piece.

6. Thine, O Lord, is the kingdom, and thou art exalted as head above all. Every king is a subject: all are underneath and all depend on Him. One day this earth is left behind; sooner or later, one day.

B. True praise of God with holy dread.

1. A moment comes when we grow used to seeing God: we slip, we fall, and nothing happened; we spoke, we did that other thing, and nothing happened.

2. When we go to worship Him, when we hear the Word, and when we are alone and no one sees us, we must always have that dread of who God is; for He sees us every second and He knows everything.

3. Do you think God does not read your heart? God has seen and known your cunning long before you made it plain.

4. And where does that fear lead us? To show Him that we are children. Not even against an earthly father would one rebel.

5. Let us acknowledge His infinite perfections. When one has wept over the circumstances and sees that God came through, one has to see how excellent God is with His children, how He guards us and how He reveals Himself to us.

6. There is nothing better than carrying prayer in the morning. The day is swift and you think you arrange your day; but we never hold anything in our fist: what you claim to hold, tomorrow is not under your control.

III. With God is terrible majesty (Job 37:22); the voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty (Psalm 29:3-4).

A. The dense cloud and the brightness that comes out of the north.

1. At first the sight of the dense cloud that hides the light and threatens a tremendous downpour makes an unfavorable impression; but looking to the north one senses that the wind will sweep the clouds away.

2. Many times that cloud keeps one from seeing what must be seen in order to fight and to prepare. But according to how you seek God, all will go well.

3. God does not keep His anger forever. If you feel God grew angry with you, He is ready to show His great mercy.

4. Elihu concludes by saying that God is surrounded by a majesty that inspires dread through the infinite transcendence of His perfections; and that in speaking of the Almighty we must acknowledge that our limited mind cannot comprehend His unlimited perfections.

5. It is not a matter of religion, nor of whether I like the church or do not like the songs: it is that God is majestic, and we need Him in order to breathe and to live.

B. The voice of the Lord breaks and splits.

1. Everyone who hears the thunder ought to recognize that it is the voice of the Lord in majesty. If His voice is so terrible, what will His arm be?

2. That voice is so strong that it breaks and splits the cedars of Lebanon, which are exceedingly tall.

3. When you read the Bible, it is the voice of God that breaks you. If you read the Bible and hear the preaching, you would have that voice like thunder within your whole being.

4. And what does it tear away? What must be removed and we never finish removing.

C. A mixture that is no use.

1. At some point life slows down, because you grew slow in this communion with the majesty of God and began to mix your life with God.

2. God is not given a mixture: God is given the hundred. That mixture is that seventy percent is you and the rest seems to be God; but a moment comes when God withdraws, and the hundred is you.

3. Not one grain of the world's sand will God permit within His holiness and His deity. Shake out the grains, for they are what keep you from hearing the message and are a torment within your being.

4. We cannot live skin-deep, nor go on being today as we were ten years ago in seeking the Lord; that is full spiritual crisis. But one goes to God, God hears us, God forgives us and raises us up.

IV. The Lord reigneth, he is clothed with majesty (Psalm 93:1); and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day (Isaiah 2:10-11).

A. He girded Himself with strength.

1. This is the song of the glorified church, already quoted in Revelation 19:1. God reigns gloriously, clothing Himself with majesty; and God reigns powerfully.

2. He clothes Himself not only with majesty as a prince in his court, but also with power as a general on the field of battle. That is the God we serve.

3. He girded Himself; no one else girded Him, since neither His strength nor His power to administer it derive from another. That is the magnificent essence of God.

4. And being so glorious, He condescends to care for this world and its affairs.

5. Honour and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary (Psalm 96:6). In His presence the seraphim cover their faces, unable to bear His brightness.

6. If merely seeing Him could kill a person, consider what it is to fail Him. To kick against the pricks is rebellion; it is to come and strike at God. We must fear God.

B. Loftiness shall be brought low; let us learn humbling.

1. The prophet warns us to seek a place of refuge from the terror of the Lord's wrath that draws near, and that the people humble themselves from their loftiness.

2. If there is anything we must learn, it is humbling; it is the finest dish we ought to desire. The trouble is that what we know well is loftiness, arrogance, and haughtiness.

3. In a grown-up conversation, five words do not pass without three of them boasting. From much talking comes boasting, and from boasting one sinks: all boasting is our sinking.

4. And the one listening to you is taking notes; when it is written on the mind and on the heart, there is the life, and that heart kept what the boaster showed of loftiness.

5. You are not in three families: you are in the body of Christ. If we do not learn what is Christ's, what is a church for, if it leads us only to demands, to complaints, and to a look of annoyance?

C. Your dwelling will be according to what you did here.

1. In heaven it is said that there are mansions. Then you are building yours, and it will be according to how you sought Him here, how you sanctified yourself here, and how you

listened to the message here.

2. Your deeds, and what you have believed of the God who called you: He will be the one to reward you. Therefore whatever must be lived in trials and in circumstances does not matter.

3. However long life may seem, even if you live a hundred years, eternity is the long one, for it is perpetual. What we have done here on the earth will be our reward.

4. In your life you do as you please: you fill it with good or you fill it with pain. Leave your bitterness here, your insecurities and your complexes, and enjoy the life Christ has given you.

5. You will never find anyone as wonderful as He is, as tender and as full of holiness, who looks on us even with the cruelty we can carry at times. He is the one who loves my soul, and He gave Himself on the cross for it. Amen.