“The Kingdom of God - God’s Challenge vs Men’s: Part 1”

Before we begin tonight, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the brethren who so faithfully ministered during these past number of weeks.

I am sure I speak for everyone, when I say, we were all richly blessed and we all say ‘thank-you’ to each and every one of you.   

Thank-you, brethren, for your good work unto our Lord!

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Our text tonight is taken from Isaiah 41:20: ‘That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.’ 

For some time, we have been looking together at the life of Jesus, and, of late, specifically at His teachings about living in His kingdom.

Lord willing, we will continue along this same course, with the intent of viewing His work as it relates to His Church, if the Lord so leads us.

Since the teaching of His kingdom is based on the assumption that those living in it are not removed from life, Jesus was careful to always clarify God’s mind concerning living in His kingdom.

And He faithfully followed through with that in His responses to the challenges thrust at Him from one source or another.

One of the best examples of desiring to clarify God’s mind in one of the encounters He faced is found in Jn 9.

Jesus had healed a blind man who was undergoing a grueling by the temple authorities over this incident.

All the healed man could say about it was that this Man, Jesus, must be from God or else He would have never been able to do such a miracle.  

Because his examiners refused to believe what the fact was - a blind man since birth could now see because of what
Jesus had done for him - they excommunicated him from the temple assembly.

Jesus heard about that news and, when He found the man,
He blessed him with the blessing of faith in Himself, the Son of God. (vs 35,37)

The man was able to see the ‘hand of God’ in what Jesus had done for him. He acknowledged it by saying, ‘Lord, I believe’ and immediately began to worship Jesus.

Quite the opposite was true of the non-believing. Within earshot of some of the Pharisees, Jesus used this incident as an object lesson of the reason for His coming to men.

He said, in v 39: ‘For judgment I am come into the world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.’ 

The Pharisees were quick to challenge Jesus with: ‘Are we blind also?’ And that was not a question of inquiry to ascertain their own spiritual temperature!

Oh, no! They thought they already knew all there was to know about God so they were indignant at the very idea of Jesus telling them they were devoid of real spiritual sight.

In ignorance and unbelief, they had passed judgment on this healed man and put him to open shame as a heathen, a ‘publican’. 

It was a violent, unjust act that made this poor Jew the object of ridicule and scorn in the community. 
  
So Jesus answered the non-believing by saying, ‘If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, ‘We see’, therefore your sin remaineth.’

That is, ‘your guilt remains because you claim to know what you are doing and that what you are believing is as far and as high as belief in God can go.’
 
That was not good news to them - nor was it news they could readily accept!

Jesus let them know that the answer to their own question of ‘Are we blind also?’ can be received two ways: either they can look at it from God’s viewpoint or from man’s.

To approach it from God’s vantage point left them with the challenge of believing on Jesus and why He had come. 

If they approached it from an earthly view, then they kept themselves ensnared in their own thoughts about God. 

Do you see what Jesus did?

He turned their challenge of Him and the reason for His coming to earth as the Son of God around to He challenging them.

The heart of the matter was their own blindness of unbelief and skepticism of God’s self-revelation in Jesus to men. 

They - the religious community - were the ones who stood at His feet of judgment - not He at their feet!

Jesus was following the same rule seen in Isaiah’s report where he recorded God’s challenge, not only to God’s own people, but to all idolatrous nations.

Now - let us turn to Isa 41 - Isaiah, chapter 41.

Isaiah, in 40:18, posed a question to his own countrymen who were in error about God and were in danger of being seduced toward idolatry.

He challenged them, saying: ‘To whom will ye liken God? or with what likeness would you compare Him?’

Now, here, in chapter 41, God, in His voice of absolute authority, came forward and challenged all the nations.

There, at His feet, at the throne of His Sovereignty, He commanded all of them to approach His throne as one voice and defend the basis for their worship.

These nations were so deeply imbedded in their idolatrous worship, they had no way of extricating themselves from their mode of worship nor could they see how wrong they were!

But - God’s merciful look at that condition issued forth in a challenge, first to their idols to induce them to reveal what they really had to offer to the people that would prove themselves worthy of worship. 

And then, to the idolaters - to consider what they were really doing.

‘Produce your cause...bring forth your strong reasons...’, He said. (v 21) 

That is, ‘Let the idols show what they can do to relieve men, to dispel the darkness men are in.

If they are as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent as  God is, then, they have the right to be worshipped, too! 

If not, then they have no right to be worshipped.’ (v 23)

Now look at the first part of verse 24. The conclusion of the matter was: ‘Behold! ye [that is, God is speaking to idols] ye are nothing, and your work is worthless...’. 

And, for the idolaters, - yes - they have their very right to disbelieve God and continue on in their idolatrous ways, if they so choose!

But - the predicament is now their own predicament and they lie in the dust of the earth without Him and without the deliverance God has planned for men! 

They ‘set their own judgment’: they are without excuse - they have judged themselves!

You will see that in 44:20: ‘He (the idolater) feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul...’.

And the conclusion of that matter is: ‘...an abomination is the one choosing you.’ (41:24b) He is too depraved to know his own heart’s need!

The one choosing anything other than the truth God revealed of Himself as his object of worship is an ‘abomination’. 

That was a strong word to describe the person who insisted on ignoring the truth of God’s being - is it not?

But this is what God said of those who are so strong in their own beliefs about God.  

As the Almighty Judge, he pronounced the sentence of death on all false beliefs and pronounced the release of the eternal life in exchange.

And why did He do this?

Now - look at His reason in Isa 41:20, our text for tonight.

It is so that men may ‘see and know and consider and understand together, that it is God Who did it.’ (Isa 41:20)

Yes - so that men may see that God is - that He is the true and living One, the Holy One of Israel, Who is the Author, the Creator, of His own means of deliverance from the world of darkness about Himself.

Yes - men will actually be able to see the work of God’s power that causes them to seriously know, consider, understand, and grasp the fact that God has worked!

Their faith, thus, will work aright! Their faith, thus, is properly and well-placed!

Blindness, ignorance, perceptions, and presuppositions about Him are removed once and for all! 

Whether it is the religious communities just simulating belief or the nations steeped in gods of their own making, all must understand this supernatural regeneration that God was sending for what it actually is - a manifestation of Himself through Jesus Christ to all mankind for all time!

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Now - with that as a brief background, let us start looking at why this challenge of God and of Jesus is important for the Church to realize and to know today. 
    
Let me start by saying this: the fact of God having sent His Son to activate judgment designed to direct toward real, spiritual insight is the single, foremost issue in religious circles today.

There is no other issue that supersedes this one! Stop to think about that sometime.   

There are many, many unrestrained conceptions, thoughts, presuppositions about God being freely proclaimed today. 

How one encounters the divine is truly questioned and challenged and, it seems, each one tries to ‘prove’ he is right!

Like the ‘people of old’, there are those God defined, in Isaiah 29:13, as people who ‘...draw near Me with their mouth, and their lips do honor Me, but have removed their heart far from Me, and their fear toward Me is taught by the precept of men...’.

And, as you well know, the Church has the tendency to [using a vernacular term] - to ‘stress out’ over this defect of men’s hearts. 

Sometimes the Church becomes so anxious to prove itself right - to defend God and the fact of His salvation and deliverance wrought through Jesus Christ - that it fails to remember that it is God Who is the ‘Challenger’.

He is not the ‘Challenged’, even though some try to put Him into that place, as those in Jesus’ day did!

First, let us not forget this one basic fact: it is only the divine - it is His action only - that transfers a human soul from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of His dear Son! It is God’s doing alone!  

We cannot do that. No human being can coerce, nor flatter, nor wheedle, nor sweet talk any living soul into the kingdom that Christ has opened to men. 

Nor can any man apply for a ‘visa’ issued by human authorities to enter God’s kingdom, nor can he sneak into it, nor fake his way into it.

And, beyond that, man no longer has an excuse. He sits in the judgment of his own doing and can blame no one for where he stands before God’s judgment.

And, no matter how adamant a man may say he has ‘faith’, ‘...the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, ‘The Lord knoweth them that are His!’ (2 Tim 2:19) 

‘The Lord knows His own, He knows those who are really His!’

Second, that is the fact that gives God the divine right to challenge man’s human ‘faith’ about God. 

And challenge it He will! He will do that over and over and over again - and again - and again! 

For the one who has not been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into God’s marvelous light, that one’s distress deepens and darkens even more.

And it is they who are made to justify themselves in the light of God’s ‘NO’!

But - it is those in His Church who are given the spiritual light that sees it as God’s challenge to cleanse out, strengthen, and establish faith into a oneness with Christ until He is ‘all in all’ to all who have been transferred into God’s kingdom.

It is, therefore, of little wonder that the Church is called to ‘preach the Kingdom of God’, to ‘...cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.’

And, thirdly, with this charge, the Church finds no need to argue with the world’s religions, their gods, their experiences and understanding of God as He is defined in today’s world.

The Church knows that ‘All men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father which hath sent Him.’ (Jn 5:23)

It does that because it knows Who Jesus is, knows Who God is through Jesus, and knows that God is revealed in Him, and, therefore, continues to teach and preach Christ and Him crucified!

It understands there is no inferiority between God the Father and God the Son. 

It was in God’s mind that His Son would be the ‘Great Divide’, as well as the ‘Great Mediator’ between the divine mind and men’s darkness of ignorance, pride, or unbelief.

So, the Church sees no need to challenge the divinity of Jesus Christ for He has given it access to God, to ‘see and know and consider and understand Him together, since his hand hath accomplished...and created’ this.’

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I will close here for tonight. Lord willing, we will continue onward next time.

In the meantime, would you prayerfully consider these things as you commune and fellowship with our Lord and with one another this week?

May the Lord bless you as you do!

Amen. 

Let us pray!