If you have your Bible, please turn to Isaiah, chapter 59. We’re now in the seventh message on the Holy Spirit in the Bible and the fifth in the prophet Isaiah. I am patiently working my way through the Spirit’s self-revelation in scripture. I trust wherever the Author of scripture, the Holy Spirit, inserts His name in a passage there is something important He wants us to see.
If you recall from my previous two sermons, Isaiah 40-66 is the second, literary section of Isaiah; and it is a thematic whole. Second Isaiah is the New Testament in prophecy. It is the longest and theologically most important prophetic writing in the Bible; for in it our Triune God and Christ’s redemption are clearly revealed.
Another reason I am slowly working through the revelation of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is that I am watching prayerfully for an unfolding revelation of the Spirit in this prison and in this region. I don’t know how or when the Lord of Glory will reveal Himself; but I fervently believe that we are in the season for a mighty move of God, perhaps centered in Monroe. I know the Holy Spirit must be the chief Author and Mover of this revival, under the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus declared to His disciples (Matthew 28:18-20) right before He ascended into heaven: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” History has validated this Great Commission, and we are rapidly approaching the end of the age. I believe God has ordained at least one last, great end times revival for the United States of America; and I believe it will start here. That’s my faith talking; but many other prophets in this country, and at least one noteworthy Korean, David Yonggi Cho, have foreseen a mighty move of God in the Pacific Northwest.
But why is another great American revival even necessary if the Lord’s return is imminent? One reason is that God loves His work, His Church, in this great country that has been the flagship for evangelical Christianity in the world for over a century. No other country has done as much to advance world evangelization as the USA, and no country in the world is as ethnically diverse as America. But the Church in America is in grave danger of losing the coming generation; and I’m convinced our Lord wants to cast His nets one more time for a great harvest of souls in this country before, perhaps, a great tribulation comes upon this land and this world in preparation for the Lord’s return.
I am not certain about this sequence of events; but there have been enough prophetic warnings and portents pointing in this direction that we should be concerned. Certainly, we shouldn’t expect all to be running smoothly in this country when Christ returns. He has already warned in Scripture, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.” That’s Haggai 2:6, and quoted in Hebrews 12:26 – it most certainly will come to pass!
When you leave prison, you will be stepping into a spiritual battlefield of the highest order. You will have to be vigilant and diligent in your walk with God if you expect to hold on to your faith. It’s a spiritual battlefield, and your unseen enemy, Satan, intends to defile and destroy you in it if you let him. It’s a battlefield of the highest order, because from the highest intellectual levels down to the basest, drug and alcohol-driven milieu there are traps out there that will suck the spiritual life out of you, unless you are fortified spiritually.
Now is the time and place to prepare yourself spiritually for what is to come. God wants to raise up an army of spiritual warriors who can fearlessly and lovingly reach out to the wounded and broken people of this society; and you are the some of those God intends to enlist. My job, in part, is to equip you to be a victorious spiritual warrior after you leave this prison, and not a casualty of the seductive allures of sin.
What are the danger signs that I and others see that are heightening my sense of urgency that this nation is in desperate need of revival? One of the foremost researchers and authorities on transformation revivals in the world today is George Otis Jr., Founder of the Sentinel Group. If you’ve never seen one of the Transformation documentaries, like the documentary “Appalachian Dawn”, I urge you to do so.
George Otis Jr. recently wrote a three-part series on “Revival and the Next Generation”, focusing on young people who are leaving the Church, particularly those he calls Generation Z, young people aged 13 to 21, born between 1995 and 2005. Here are some sobering statistics that have been gleaned from reputable researchers who have been tracking American religious affiliation and convictions for decades.
In April 2015, CNN drew attention to a study conducted by the respected Pew Research Center that projected 106 million people will leave Christianity in the coming decades worldwide. This decline will be offset slightly by conversions, but the net loss — coming mostly at the expense of churches in Europe and the U.S. — is forecast to be significant.
Pew also projects that Islam, the world’s fastest-growing faith, will add 1.15 billion adherents by 2050. At that time, according to the Pew study, Muslims will make up nearly one-third of the world’s total projected population. Already the most bullish religion in Europe (by far), Islam is also gaining in the U.S. and is set to surpass Judaism as the country’s largest non-Christian religion within two decades.
Another landmark Pew study involving 35,000 American adults shows the Christian percentage of the population is dropping precipitously. Almost every major branch of Christianity in the United States has lost ground — mainly because Millennials and Gen Z are leaving the fold. (Born between 1995-2015, the latter number roughly 75 million.)
Greg Smith, the lead researcher on the new study, has watched the religiously unaffiliated segment of American society grow for decades. Still, he admits, “the pace at which they’ve continued to grow is really astounding.”
A 2016 Gallup National Poll found nearly three quarters of Americans (72%) now believe religion is losing its influence on American life. And, sadly, this intuition is borne out by the numbers. In their 2009 report, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, authors Christian Smith and Patricia Snell conclude no more than 15% of the total emerging adult population embrace a strong religious faith.
The California-based Barna Group, after conducting tens of thousands of interviews with unchurched people, reported in 2014 that the number of churchless Americans has jumped by nearly one-third in just 20 years. Put in perspective, if unchurched Americans were their own nation, they would be the eighth largest on Earth!
One particular concern is the proportion of young adults identifying with Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal, and other mainline churches is about half the size it was a generation ago. This has led certain Evangelicals to decry liberalism as the root of the problem.
If only it were this simple. As a freshly-minted report from the Religion News Service points out, several prominent conservative denominations are themselves charting losses. Notable among these are the Southern Baptists who, according to their latest Annual Church Profile, have seen membership fall for the 11th consecutive year. During this period, SBC congregations have lost about 1.3 million members and have seen baptisms decline by 26.5%.
In the words of former LifeWay Research president Ed Stetzer (the guy responsible for publishing the denomination’s Annual Profile), “Southern Baptists are shrinking faster than United Methodists.”
These are sobering statistics. Later on in his report, Otis said, “According to [the Public Religions Research Institute] religious disconnection jumps from 12% among older Baby Boomers to more than 42% among those under thirty. And this latter rate is essentially four times what it was among this same age group in the 1980s.”
Why are younger people turning away in droves from the faith? Some say that religion is no longer relevant to their needs. Others cite the hierarchical nature of churches, or clergy sex abuse. Many say religion is run too much like a business. Only 7% of unaffiliated Americans “believe religion offers a reliable source of moral guidance, leaving a whopping 92% to find their answers in the arms of philosophy, “common sense,” and science. Almost 80% now believe ethics are situational.”
God has a different perspective on the human dilemma causing American disaffection from the Christian faith. Isaiah points the finger at human selfishness and iniquity, or habitual sin. Let’s read from Isaiah 59: “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not so short that it cannot save; nor is His ear so dull that it cannot hear. 2 But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.” Thus begins one of the most scathing indictments against human sin ever recorded. Isaiah is saying that the habitual tendency of people to push God aside and pursue their own pleasures causes God to withdraw experientially from them, and not respond to their prayers. Mind you, Isaiah was addressing the only people on earth in covenant with God, the Israelites.
But in this indictment, we also see the prophetic outline of the gospel of Jesus Christ that finds its culmination in the beginning of chapter 60. As we read through Isaiah 59 from vv.3 through 15, imagine all of humanity’s sin and iniquity being thrust upon the soul of Jesus as He hung in agony on the cross. At this point, I hear Jesus crying out the opening words of Psalm 22 from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”
Isaiah indicts the human race for its iniquity, starting in v.3: “For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken falsehood, your tongue mutters wickedness. 4 No one sues righteously and no one pleads honestly. They trust in confusion and speak lies; they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity. 5 They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; he who eats of their eggs dies, and from that which is crushed a snake breaks forth. 6 Their webs will not become clothing, nor will they cover themselves with their works; their works are works of iniquity, and an act of violence is in their hands. 7 Their feet run to evil, and they hasten to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, devastation and destruction are in their highways.”
When a nation turns away from God, sin seeps into the hearts and minds of people, hardening their heart, and luring them into evil. Murder and a culture of death prevail. Wicked men hatch deadly conspiracies like the eggs of adders or deadly vipers. Their mantle of integrity becomes as flimsy as spider’s webs. Isaiah says, “Nor will they cover themselves with their works; their works are works of iniquity, and an act of violence is in their hands.” Iniquity betrays the sinner, exposing their selfish motivations and intent. For “their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, devastation and destruction are in their highways.” In the end, iniquity is always destructive. It destroys confidence in moral truth, faith, sympathy for one’s fellow man, apathy about the degeneration of society and breeds corruption in government, society and in families.
Isaiah says, “They do not know the way of peace, and there is no justice in their tracks; they have made their paths crooked, whoever treads on them does not know peace.” Those lacking faith may have a measure of social and material well-being; but they do not know the way of peace that comes from being rightly related to God. So they subtly distort justice to suppress the truth about God and justify lifestyle choices – e.g. immorality and its consequences, abortion on demand, the abuse of minors, the exploitation of the poor or alien for monetary advantage and other injustices.
And Jesus cried out from the cross, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Jesus offered all of us God’s forgiveness from the cross; that is why we have no right to withhold forgiveness from those who victimize us.
For the past 65 years, since the banning of prayer and the Bible from our public schools by Supreme Court decree, the Judeo-Christian moral system that was the foundation of American system for centuries has been steadily undermined and dismissed as an anachronism. The effects of this are evident among our young. Otis cites studies on the rapidly changing attitude of Generation Z toward sexuality:
“Gender bending, or gender-fluidity as it is now called, has also become part of the “experimental game.” The overwhelming majority of Generation Z (81%) agree “gender doesn’t define a person as much as it used to,” and well over half of them say they know someone who goes by gender neutral pronouns such as “they,” “them,” or “ze.” Seven out of ten 13-to-20-year-olds support access to gender neutral bathrooms.”
Why should this be a concern for us? First, gender fluidity blurs the reality of genetically determined sex. Chromosomes don’t lie about our gender. More importantly, it strikes at the sovereignty of God over people made in His image, and His right to assign our gender. It also denies the significance of male and female gender as the most important human typology for the relationship between Christ and His people. Ultimately, it negates the image of God in man and sets up young people for eternal perdition by denying God and His salvation in their lives. Jesus put it this way, “This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world; and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil.”
The Church, however, must not despise people who are caught up in gender dysphoria, or those who consider themselves non-binary sexually – that is, neither male nor female. God knows all about them, and loves them still; even as He loved us while we were yet sinners, and sent Christ to die for us. Christ calls us to love the LGBTQ other without judging them. It is for God to judge; it is for Christ to save; it is for the Holy Spirit to convict, and it is for us to love.
But when a nation moves the moral boundary posts, and casts aside the moral law of God, injustice and the raw exploitation of others inevitably follow, just as it did in Sodom and Gomorrah. Isaiah 59 continues this theme, from v. 9:
Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not overtake us; we hope for light, but behold, darkness, for brightness, but we walk in gloom. 10 We grope along the wall like blind men, we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at midday as in the twilight, Among those who are vigorous we are like dead men. 11 All of us growl like bears, and moan sadly like doves; we hope for justice, but there is none, for salvation, but it is far from us.
The steady excision of any reference to God in our schools and public sphere have opened a wide door to a worldview of secularism that renders human life as the meaningless consequence of accidental life creation and evolution over a billion years. Regardless of the scientific absurdity that non-life could accidentally construct the exquisitely complex systems of even the simplest bacteria, the agency of God as Creator is ignored. Regardless of whether there’s any scientific validity to the notion that life can accidentally select optimal changes in a multitude of complex biochemical pathways to evolve itself ever upward, our prevailing worldview has dismissed God’s design in the creation – making Him an irrelevance. As Dostoevsky noted in The Brothers Karamazov, “Where there is no God, everything is permissible.” Morality becomes meaningless; might alone makes right, and the poor, the weak and the vulnerable get trampled underfoot.
Continuing with v.12: For our transgressions are multiplied before You, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities: 13 Transgressing and denying the Lord, and turning away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving in and uttering from the heart lying words. 14 Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the street, and uprightness cannot enter. 15 Yes, truth is lacking; and he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey.”
The frightening consequence of a nation that abandons moral absolutes and adopts relativism as the measure of socially acceptable right-and-wrong is that justice inevitably suffers. Those whose consciences are dulled but whose ambitions are great – successful psychopaths and malignant narcissists tend to rise to the top through their brazen ruthlessness and exploitation of others. Mao Tse-tung, the great tyrant of Communist China told his American apologist Edgar Snow his simple philosophy of life: “No laws, no limits.” Consequently, over 70 million Chinese dead in peacetime during his vicious 26-year reign. Justice was persistently turned back, and righteousness stood far away. Truth stumbled in the street at the hands of government propagandists who bent everything to glorify their tyrant. Truth became lacking and those who tried to practice goodness often fell prey to the ruthless.
Where there is no agreed source of metaphysical truth, something beyond morally empty, empirical science, there isn’t much reason for people to turn aside from evil. The selfish pursuit of pleasure becomes paramount. This is the danger facing Europe in the future if it abandons its Christian heritage. America will not be far behind. When a society is incapable of objectively discerning truth or injustice, it’s a society ripe for internal chaos, civil war or murderous tyranny.
As I said, Isaiah 59 vividly describes what Jesus felt within Himself when God made Him sin for us as He lay dying upon the cross. I cannot imagine what the weight of billions of people’s sin accumulated over thousands of years attacking His holy soul felt like. I often wonder if Jesus’ spirit was tortured in a timeless place for the equivalent of thousands of years, even though chronologically He only lived six hours upon the cross. We may never know how long His soul suffered; for time in the spiritual realm is non-existent. And Jesus spoke the longing of His soul for respite from the hell of sin: “I thirst.”
Isaiah then saw God’s response to this brutal state of affairs: Now the Lord saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. 16 And He saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no one to intercede; then His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him. 17 He put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head; and He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle. 18 According to their deeds, so He will repay, wrath to His adversaries, recompense to His enemies; to the coastlands He will make recompense. 19 So they will fear the name of the Lord from the west and His glory from the rising of the sun, for He will come like a rushing stream which the wind of the Lord drives.
When Jesus’ suffering was complete, and the time of His death had come he cried out, “It is finished” – like the concluding words of Psalm 22 about the crucifixion. Through his forgiveness and His atonement Jesus ironically brought salvation by His outstretched arms, nailed helplessly to a wooden crossbeam.
God Himself in the person of Christ intervened to restore justice, bringing salvation by His own arm. This is a prophetic reference to the coming of Jesus the Messiah, who came to save His people from their sins, and was upheld by His own righteousness amidst a corrupt generation. V.17 recalls the full armor of God described in Ephesians 6: “righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head,” but also “garments of vengeance… with zeal as a mantle.” Jesus came to take vengeance, not on human injustice, but rather on the source of all injustice: Satan and his host. “According to their deeds”, it says, “so He will repay wrath to His adversaries, recompense to His enemies.” The result is that people will “fear the name of the LORD… “for He will come like a rushing stream which the wind of the LORD drives.”
Notice the phrase, “the wind of the LORD drives” in v.19. The word here is ruach, the same word as spirit. In other words, the Spirit of God is the driving force in Messiah’s vengeance against God’s arch-enemy Satan. So it proved to be as Jesus became the first prophet of God to cast out demons. Jesus’ Spirit-anointed ministry so devastated the works of darkness in ancient Judea that the enemy stirred up the Jewish leaders to plot His death. Ironically, the enemy’s animus set up his utter defeat through Christ’s death on the cross, which authorized Jesus to completely defeat Satan and his principalities of their authority and power. They only continue to operate by His permission; and will cease altogether after His return.
The King James Version translates the latter phrase of Isaiah 59:19 in a different way: “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.” The sense of this translation is that while the nations will fear the Lord from east to west the enemy will still attempt to overwhelm God’s works like a flood. But God’s Spirit will lift up a battle standard, that of Messiah, Commander-in-Chief of heaven’s armies, and will crush Satan’s works.
Isaiah 59 concludes this way: “A Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob,” declares the Lord. 21 “As for Me, this is My covenant with them,” says the Lord: “My Spirit which is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring’s offspring,” says the Lord, “from now and forever.”
Here, at His moment of death, Jesus quotes Psalm 31:5, crying in triumph, “Father, into your hands I commit My spirit.” At His death, Jesus’ spirit departed his dead human body and resumed His full divinity, now fully God and fully human forever. He became our Redeemer forever and established His new covenant – not just for circumcised Israelites – but for people from every race, people, tongue and tribe whose hearts become circumcised by the Spirit of God and are regenerated with the nature of Christ. The promise of the Spirit’s outpouring, which occurred at Pentecost, is promised prophetically, as God declares to His beloved Son, now freed from the bonds of sin and death. “As for Me, this is My covenant with them,” says the Lord: “My Spirit which is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring’s offspring,” says the Lord, “from now and forever.”
At the end of Isaiah 59, Jesus our Savior has finished His atoning work, so that all the sin and iniquity described at the top of the chapter is completely atoned for. At this point, between chapter 59 and 60, Christ has descended into hades to declare his triumph over sin, death and the grave; and then He ascended into heaven, taking with Him although those who were in Abraham’s bosom to the New Earth or heaven that God’s angels prepared for them. Jesus then presented His blood in a heavenly temple before God to complete His guilt offering for the human race that was prophesied in Isaiah 53:10. Now all that remains to completely inaugurate the New Covenant on earth and to send forth His disciples with the good news of His salvation was His resurrection from the dead. Let us continue reading in chapter 60:
“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you. 3 Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”
This is a prophetic description of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and the effect of the LORD’s rising upon us making His glory manifest. As a result of the proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection, nations and many rulers have come to His light and “the brightness of [His] rising.”
This prophetic promise belongs to you in your journey out of the social darkness that is prison into the relative light of being a free man in a mostly free society. But paradoxically you will also enter a world that is much less safe spiritually than in here. The opportunities to sin will be all around you. You must carry and walk in the light of Christ that is in you. And when you do, He will lead you into the most amazing life of all – being an instrument of grace and mercy to other people who have failed in life just like. But this time you will be walking in the confidence that you are “more than a conqueror through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created things, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
That is the inner reality of the presence and power of Christ in you which I believe can turn you into a spiritual warrior. You can be a chosen vessel of God wherever you are, and a divinely-appointed instrument who will bring revival to someone else’s soul. And when you experience God at work in and through your life, you will know you are walking in the divine light of love from a soul living in revival – a soul that is bearing and expressing a measure of heaven on earth. You will be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Your feet will feel like hinds’ feet, and you’ll be walking on your high places. You will be living and experiencing the freedom of the glory of the children of God, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Let us pray.