How many of us are the churches out
of the land, out of the place of
blessing, out of the spiritual Zion for the
failure to hallow his name.
That God would be severe in his punishment
to Moses for that failure and be lenient
with us would be a contradiction.
More of us are out of the land
than we know and it shows.
Bible reading is obligatory, it's no pleasure.
Witness is very rare.
Prayer is an ordeal, a requirement in which
there's no delight.
Fellowship is shallow.
We're out of the land, we're out of
the blessedness that would be ours by entry
and kept for the same reason for which
he denied Moses.
And I want to raise the question, if
God in honoring Moses whom he called his
friend and with whom he spoke face to
face requires of Moses this severe dealing, what
does that teach us?
And if God had allowed Moses to get
by on this on the basis of a
long relationship in which you have been faithful
and have borne much for my name.
Because you know how ministers justify their sin?
Look how much I've done for God.
Therefore I'm entitled to this special recompense.
He knows that I need it.
If God had said because you have been
so faithful I'll overlook this and permit you
the same entry as the nation itself.
What kind of statement would that be of
God in leniency?
His name would have been unhallowed.
His own conduct of looking the other way
and of not being appropriately severe in judgment
would have contradicted himself as a holy God.
And do you think that keeping Moses out
of land did not cost God something as
father?
That he himself did not experience the hurt
and didn't empathize with the anguish that Moses
had to bear of dying without entry into
the land?
That that was as much an affliction for
the father who required it as Moses himself
who suffered it?
That in all of our afflictions he's afflicted?
In all of our judgments he experiences the
moral anguish of it and yet does not
withhold himself?
You want to know what righteousness is?
This is righteousness.
You want to know what holiness is?
This is holiness.
God is not exempt from the moral anguish
and the pain of his own judgments and
his own requirements.
He's not acting from some lofty height in
which he's impervious and unaffected by what he
requires of men.
It hurt him to keep Moses out of
the land, but he had to do it.
His name required a judgment appropriate to the
sin, to the transgression.
So for God to be light in this
and to look it over as we do
with our own children and with ourselves, we
are remarkably lenient.
That's why Colbert says, if it were not
for the crucified Christ and we have to
assess our own morality and our own iniquity,
we will always be a judge favorable to
ourselves.
We will always pronounce a sentence lighter than
what is deserved, but God doesn't let us
get away with that.
As if we can determine subjectively either our
own condition or its judgment.
The cross is God's statement that saves us
from self-justifying likeness about our own condition.
That's the statement as God sees it, not
your subjective feeling about yourself.
Your subjective feeling about yourself is itself sin.
It keeps you from the acknowledgment of the
exceeding sinfulness of sin.
So where does Paul say that he's the
chief of sinners?
As we came up in the morning's prayer
time, is Paul talking about his past?
Surely he was a murderer and a persecutor,
but he doesn't say I was the chief
of sinners.
He says I am the chief of sinners
and yet the chief apostle at the same
time?
How can that be?
And if you can't answer that, you yourself
then don't know as you ought to know.
Why aren't you saying I'm chief?
Ironically, as you grow in maturity in the
knowledge of God and are becoming more conscious
of your walk, at the same time there's
an increasing consciousness of this inherent disposition to
transgress.
If not indeed in word and thought or
omission, if not commission, I'm the chief of
sinners.
I know exactly what I'm capable of as
I've never seen it before.
What, David can fornicate and perform adultery and
murder and I'm exonerated?
You're only exonerated because life has not required
it of you.
But given the occasion and the temptation, you
would just as equally fall as David himself,
unless you think that you're made of better
stuff.
And your very thought that you are made
of better stuff is the height of presumptuous
sin.
That you have not repented with David because
you're waiting for the actual act to confirm
the truth, that your sins are not before
you always as it was for him, means
that you yourself are in a state of
deception with regard to your own condition because
you're blinded by your own iniquity, your own
transgression.
It has dulled your own awareness of your
own moral condition.
Just let me finish those statements that I
thought were so remarkable, that the cross was
more for God than it was for men.
It was given at the time foreseen and
chosen by God for his marvelous display of
his own holy character.
To look upon that picture of the crucified
Christ is a statement of God's holy character.
For if he was less than that, he
would have required less.
But that he required that, and his only
beloved son to suffer the severest and vilest
of capital punishments is the statement of his
holiness.
We have to read it rightly.
And if we don't read it rightly, we
have an inadequate knowledge of God, of holiness
and of sin that will show up in
our own walk.
It's got to show up, it's got to
surface, it's got to be revealed individually and
corporately in the character of the church in
our own walk.
If we have not a right understanding of
holiness as it is revealed in the keeping
of the character of God by the willing
sacrifice of his own son and his own
son's willingness to bear that sacrifice.
Father and son transacted in heaven before Jesus
came down in his pre-incarnate life and
he voluntarily agreed to serve this sentence and
then would come down in the form of
man in order to do it.
This is a son's regard for the father's
name that could not have been placated or
met by anything less than his own sacrifice.
And if he's the patterned son, that's what
is required to hallow his father's name.
What's required from us in such a generation
of time as this?
Where have we been callow and shallow and
indulgent in our own walk and experience mindless
about these things?
How is it that God was so severe
with Moses just for striking a rock rather
than speaking to it and allowed Moses to
take the tablets of the law inscribed by
his finger on the holy mount and smash
them at the base of the mountain when
he saw the nation given over to idolatry
and there's not a single word of reproof
from God over that act?
Can you dare break and smash the tablets
of the law inscribed by God with impunity
because you're moved to a moral indignation seeing
that the nation while they were no longer
waiting for you had given themselves to a
golden calf?
There's not a single hint of reproof or
correction from God for that act.
How do you figure that?
We need to interpret God not only by
what he says and by what he does
but by his silences when we think he
should be saying something.
You don't cast your pearls before swine and
you don't bring the holy lord down to
a people who have given themselves to idolatry
of the vilest kind.
He was right to smash those tablets of
the law.
God does not reproof him because to offer
that law to the people would have been
a contradiction and a parody and a sacrilege
for what is holy.
He was required to make another ascent, another
40 days to come down again and it
was justified and then he grinds up the
golden calf and makes them drink it and
you don't hear a whimper in the scripture
from any of the sons and children of
Israel in that requirement to drink their own
idol.
God silences approval and we need to drink
it.
We need to have the truth of our
condition internalized, taken in, drink it.
Now that I think about it, what did
God say to Moses?
Grind up the golden calf and make them
drink it.
Is he commanded so to do or is
he in such union with God that his
indignation is the father's indignation at that idolatry
and that recompense of grinding it and drinking
it was perfectly in keeping with God's heart
and thought.
It did not require a commandment, it just
required a union of a holy man with
a holy God to do it and the
same holy man himself transgresses at a later
time.
Just as the author of the book of
Proverbs who warns us about relationships with ungodly
women and foreign wives himself later embarks on
a whole career of a coterie of foreign
women and contradicts his own holy calling having
given us instruction out of his own wisdom
of Solomon.
Who then is safe?
If Solomon falls, David falls, Moses falls, who
then is safe?
And how dare we walk in any kind
of presumptuous upstart way as if we have
it all together.
Why aren't we walking as men who know
that there but for the grace of God
we would every one of us be fallen.
How dare we critique and criticize and look
askance upon a fallen minister as if we
ourselves are morally superior to that very transgression
forgetting that we ourselves have been guilty not
too long ago of the very same thing.
And given the opportunity we'd be equally as
guilty again.
There but for the grace of God.
We ought to be a broken people, we
ought to be sinners being saved by grace
which the German theologian, life together, Bonhoeffer says
what is the church, what is the fellowship
of saints?
A community of sinners being saved by grace
who are not ashamed to hear the confession
of any member or expressing their own because
they acknowledge that they're sinners being saved by
grace.
Isn't that a remarkable paradox?
We're saved and yet we're being saved.
So to have it all together, overcomers is
so contrary to the temper appropriate for true
church that needs to be regained in proportion
as we understand this.
What shall we say of Peter after his
betrayal of Christ?
How many times before the crow croaked?
And with host and with cursings, I mean
a vile rejection and then the brokenness and
the weeping, then the baptism of the Holy
Spirit.
But how long after that does he have
to be corrected by Paul because of his
hypocrisy of doing one thing with the Jewish
believers and another thing with the Gentiles.
There was duplicity that Paul said not for
an hour will I allow this to pass
for the truth of the gospel sake.
That he had openly and publicly to rebuke
Peter who's the rock and the first of
the apostles because he himself is really slipping
away and bringing others into the hypocrisy of
his own deceit even that one who's called
the comforter Barnabas is already reflecting Peter's transgression
until Paul brings the ruthless correction the jealousy
for God's honor and name.
So what does it say in Hebrews while
it's yet today to catch sin in its
first inception while it is yet today to
bring correction and reproof because by next Sunday
it may be already too late the thing
is already working, the leaven is in the
lump and before you know it you have
the most outrageous sin by people who once
were the most estimable in their holiness.
So what is true fellowship?
People so related in truth that they can
discern almost immediately where there's a bit of
erosion and turning away and bring a word
of correction.
Speak the truth in love is not speaking
abstract biblical truths it's speaking the truth about
a brother or sister that you're privileged to
see not to exalt yourself but in brokenness
to bring that correction and that attention to
the one who cannot see it because he's
blind to his own blind spot.
This is true fellowship not only for the
saints not only for the sheep but for
the shepherds and the failing of shepherds which
is so notorious in our generation is the
statement that they themselves have not submitted and
been accessible for the correction that would come
out of their own body.
That the church, the fellowship is as much
God's provision as I've said so many times
for the shepherd as well as for the
sheep.
So the failure of the shepherd is an
indictment against the body itself for its failure
either to identify the incipient stages of sin
early enough to bring correction or to be
totally oblivious to it and their human admiration
for the ministry and therefore the consequence is
an indictment upon themselves and their failure to
speak the truth in love even to the
shepherd and that the environment was not conducive
because he's in a little ivory tower man
of faith and power thing where you don't
dare see or address him in his own
defect.
So how often have I said why didn't
you catch it in his voice?
Why didn't you notice that he's moving from
a certain kind of naturalness toward a professional
tone in his preaching and every week it's
getting worse and he's losing that sense of
immediacy and reality which you so appreciated and
knew at the first.
Why is he moving that way?
Why is he losing his sense of reality
and becoming every week more professional?
He's on the way out.
He's in danger.
Why didn't you tell him?
You're embarrassed or you didn't discern it?
Or who are you to bring correction when
you yourself need to be corrected?
We're in something together saints that brings an
obligation but our ability to discern is relative
to the correctness of our own walk.
If we ourselves are dull to our own
indulgences our own moral lapses how shall we
discern the condition of the need of another?
And if we have not the courage to
speak it after seeing it what does that
mean?
We regard man more than the holiness of
God?
We're more deferring to man than hallowing the
name of the Lord?
That's not an invitation for an open field
day just to open up and blast or
what do they call it?
Roasting the preacher every Sunday but it is
an invitation to be the church.
Speaking the truth in love Paul says growing
up into the fullness and stature of the
perfect man even Jesus Christ.
It's an active involvement that requires humility and
love truth, a whole sense of holiness and
the issue of what's at stake here is
the name of God and his witness in
the world.
Because sin is so rife the temptation is
so manifest that it's almost an hour by
hour watchfulness walk thou before me where do
you not walk?
As I said to somebody the other day
you walk into your bedroom to the dining
hall to the classroom there's no place where
your walk will not take you and God
says walk thou before me why does he
choose that one word?
Because it is so all encompassing there's no
activity except from walking that's why Jesus' feet
need to be pierced through so a walk
is a remarkable requirement and we're not sufficiently
attentive we're not jealous and our walk is
casual, slipshod and paving the way for yet
more serious failing if we will not keep
our hearts, keep our walk more than just
daily but hourly flee from temptation or any
appearance of evil it's amazing the liberties that
we take where others, like when they counsel
a woman will keep their office door open
or call somebody else in they'll not counsel
a woman alone even though they are circumspect
just the very appearance of the prospect has
a possibility that one cannot indulge we're not
that careful okay, the last statement maybe I'll
come back to this again the sacrifice on
the cross demonstrates for the first time what
God is and shows that in times past
and present he is the same of purer
eyes than behold evil God could not be
just without the sacrifice of Christ for Christ
did not die that God might seem to
be just but that in fact he might
be just in the very act of justifying
the believer and in the last paragraph of
another dictionary of the Bible about sin while
a person may certainly be conscious of immoral
acts and false motives the reality of man's
sinful state can never be perceived merely by
self-knowledge to think that it can be
is itself presumptuous sin the totality and inclusiveness
of Adam's sin and the consequent depravity of
all is an issue that is only truly
made known in the cross are you writing
that down?
you need to should I go back over
this?
while a person may certainly be conscious of
immoral acts and false motives the reality and
this reality dear saints is the nexus of
all reality if you miss reality here on
the issue of sin and judgment righteousness and
holiness where then shall you know reality?
this is the root of the whole subject
of reality this is why the world is
schizophrenic and freaking out because it has lost
reality this is the nub of reality so
the reality of man's sinful state can never
be perceived merely by self-knowledge because self
will always disguise it self will always give
it a better interpretation more honoring and flattering
to itself it will not see it as
evil the totality and inclusiveness of Adam's sin
this issue of depravity this Adamic taint to
which we are all subject and the consequent
depravity of all is an issue that is
only truly made known in the cross to
void the cross is to lose any prospect
of the true estimation of our condition in
that he takes our place it is decided
what our place is the cross of Christ
itself and the condemnation of human sin that
it represents reveals the objectivity and total depravity
of our sinful state how righteous Paul Paul
says that the gospel is the revealing of
the righteousness of God because it could not
have been revealed by anything less the cross
is the ultimate revelation of the righteousness of
God and the truth of our condition that
would never have been revealed except by it
and God knows that and therefore he did
not stop short of providing it or else
we would have been locked into a subjective
place of self-esteem by which we would
never have seen the truth of our condition
nor have remedied it the cross reveals the
truth and how far God had to go
in meeting that condition so those who avoid
the cross as Judaism has done and even
as Christians have done by diminishing its reality
and allowing its athletes to wear diamond studded
crosses who are making 50 million a year
or whatever they make in immoral sums of
money just to play sport and the rap
artists wear the cross Madonna wears the cross
because we have provided an environment conducive that
allows that kind of what's the word travesty
that's God's judgment on the church that the
cross has become a popular symbol by people
who are involved in the vilest forms of
sin and have become our culture heroes and
whom we are rewarding with millions any single
Madonna tour reaps 70 to 80 million dollars
of clear profit why does she enjoy the
adulation of the millions willing to pay to
see this slinky thing who is learning Kabbalah
and doesn't know God and wears a little
red thing around her wrist as if that
annuls sin in the worst forms of idolatry
and wearing the cross heavy on that bosom
is God's judgment upon the church that has
not maintained the appropriate understanding of what that
cross represents has come back to haunt us
in its misuse the cross reveals the holiness
of God and the depravity of man as
no other single act of God is calculated
to bring it to reveal it have we
esteemed it rightly have we, I'm including myself
to preach about it and to fall short
of its appropriation and the deep sobering of
it is to compound the sin we would
be better off to shut our mouths but
now that we're speaking along these lines we
have the greater obligation to honor that cross
and you have the greater obligation to pray
for the men who are so speaking because
the enemy will go out of his way
to bring them down explicitly as being the
foremost threat to their darkness and if they
can bring down the man who is the
expositor of the cross by some transgression and
failing of his own what a triumph the
kingdom of darkness that you have allowed by
your failure to uphold these men in your
prayer and in your intercessions because you're too
dull to realize that they are the object
of the enemy's severest attacks and will bring
temptations at the moments when they are weakest
and most reduced by their own exhaustion in
God's labors and then when they fall you
cluck your tongue and even secretly enjoy their
fall because by that means you have been
exalted we're all indited we're all in something
together we have not recognized the war that
we are in for truth and for righteousness
against sin and transgression our own failure to
pray is a sinful neglect we have not
understood seriously what's at stake so this is
a great conclusion the totality and inclusiveness of
Adam's sin and the consequent depravity of all
is an issue that is only truly made
known in the cross in that he takes
our place it is decided what our place
is the cross of Christ itself and the
condemnation of human sin that it represents reveals
the objectivity and total depravity of our sinful
state Jews are in a most despicable condition
because they have rejected this revelation of the
cross and only the cross would have revealed
not only the truth of their condition the
holiness of God and even the triune nature
of God for there's the son crying out
to the father why have you forsaken me
who is giving his life by the eternal
spirit as a sacrifice unto God for sin
the triune God is revealed at the cross
most powerfully as in no other place as
is the revelation of depravity and of the
holiness of God all encompassed in one epical
event that we have allowed to fall into
disuse and make of it a parody Jesus
Christ superstar the cross dangling around the necks
of the most vile sinners shows how the
church has not upheld the center of its
own faith that Paul begins in the book
of Romans I'm not ashamed of the gospel
I determine not to know anything but Christ
and him crucified you see how singular a
passion is this issue of the cross for
Paul the apostle and how much less it
is for us and this ground needs to
be regained this article on sin devotes considerable
attention to the first sin of Adam and
Eve because in it are all the constituent
elements of all sin anything that's given at
the first is always revelatory of something that
is ultimate so we need really to ponder
that let me read a part of this
that she Eve had acceded to her his
assault upon God's veracity maybe women are more
prone to this I don't know but Paul
gives this reason Paul cites Eve's culpability as
the reason why women are not to be
given the place of authority in the church
that by their nature they are susceptible to
temptation of this particular kind to doubt God's
veracity she gave to the tempter the place
that belonged to God only she accepted the
most blasphemous assault upon the integrity of God
she coveted for herself divine prerogatives in her
willingness to parley with the tempter in her
failure to meet with horror against his suggestions
and in her acquiescence there is disclosed the
process that preceded the act of eating the
forbidden fruit here we have the origin of
sin and we are pointed to its true
character sin does not originate in overt action
it proceeds from the heart and mind the
property of heart registered itself in the transgression
of the commandment Adam and Eve became first
estranged from God and then they committed the
actual transgression they were drawn away of their
own lust and enticed how this could happen
in their case is the mystery of the
origin of sin we need to contemplate this
what's the disposition of heart that allows itself
to be enticed and is not horrified by
the suggestion that the tempter is making how
is it that we can have erotic dreams
in early morning hours and not awaken from
the horror of it but even allow ourselves
to lull back into that half sleep half
awake state that we might have more reveries
of that sensual kind I'm ashamed that I'm
not horrified and don't awaken in the horror
but allow myself to fall back into that
slumber because of the erotic things that it
arouses something is wanting in my own moral
acquiescence that should be horrified she was not
horrified and where was Adam when he's allowing
his wife to carry on this conversation why
didn't he shut her up in the same
way that I do why didn't he act
as he should in his authority because his
wife is already going beyond where she should
she is transgressing and allowing himself to be
silent he's condoning and making himself one with
that transgression that's why it's the judgment of
Adam and Eve here's the anatomy of sin
you guys and any sin that we perform
has the same auspices and the same permissive
condition by which they fell we need to
be instructed by it he's despised and rejected
of men and men of sorrows and acquainted
with grief and we hid as it were
our faces from him he was despised we
esteemed him not surely he hath borne our
griefs and carried our sorrows yet we did
esteem him stricken smitten with God and afflicted
but he was wounded for our transgressions and
he was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement
of our peace what should have been rightly
required of us was upon him and with
his stripes we are healed all we like
sheep without exception everyone have gone astray we
have turned everyone to his own way and
the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity
of us all he was oppressed he was
afflicted yet he opened not his mouth he's
brought as a lamb to the slaughter as
a sheep before his shearers is dumb so
he opens not his mouth he was taken
from prison and from judgment who shall declare
his generation for he was cut off and
out of the land of the living for
the transgression of my people was he stricken
and he made his grave with the wicked
with the rich in his death because he
had done no violence neither was any deceit
in his mouth yet it pleased the Lord
to bruise him he hath put him to
grief and when you shall make his soul
an offering for your sin he shall see
his seed and he shall belong his days
and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper
in his hand he shall see of the
travail of his soul and shall be satisfied
by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify
many for he shall bear their iniquities Lord
great son of God who bore this my
God of what should rightly have come upon
us what shall we say to you you
were marred more than any man there was
nothing left of any beauty that we should
desire you stricken smitten of gods your face
splattered my God with blood and with spit
naked and open to such abuse my God
that should never have come upon a holy
son of the abandonment of your father you
bore the stripes Lord you were the ultimate
sin offering and we have all transgressed we
are everyone guilty in going our own way
unwilling even to acknowledge the truth of our
condition thank you Lord for what shall we
say my God for this condition so pervasive
for all mankind without exception shared in that
sin God forbid we should add to your
suffering now God forbid that we should crucify
the son of God afresh God forbid that
we should add my God in any way
to what you have already borne by our
own light regard to the truth of our
condition so may may we be humbled may
we see may we understand the evil my
God that your father's holy name required to
be requited at your expense and that you
were willing you didn't let that come past
you drank from it to its drinks and
we ask you forgiveness Lord for our own
failure and that of the church to uphold
this reality which is at the heart of
all reality and we're mocked by Madonna's cross
and all of these athletes with their diamond
studded things as if it's a piece of
jewelry a little cheapy that anyone could string
around his neck or put up in the
architecture of the church but that's about as
close as we come to it or know
of it forgive us Lord forgive us Lord
help us afresh with real revelation my God
that you were wounded for our transgressions and
bruised for our iniquities put something Lord deep
in our inner man this truth this reality
Lord that will temper our every conversation our
whole demeanor my God has got to be
affected by this apical once and for all
event thank you Lord oh precious God without
this foundation what are we Lord glib, facile
anxious, cheap church services programs for the benefit
of men their pleasure, their self esteem there's
no basis for our esteem at all Lord
this was required of you because of our
of the truth of our condition truly that
there's no good thing my God so we
bless you precious faithful obedient son unto death
and that this death was pleasing to the
father who laid it upon you or you
would not have been resurrected that he raised
you out of a sealed tomb a sealed
cave guarded by the bravest of the brave
of these gentile centurions lest your body would
have been stolen and the end would have
been worse than the beginning despite all that
you were raised from that death in the
statement of the father's approval of the efficacy
of that sacrifice thank you Lord thank you
Holy Father, thank you for raising Jesus up
as the approval of his sacrifice that we
might be justified by his death thank you
Lord thank you my God Lord precious God,
great father, holy for this piece of history
this act give us a hatred of iniquity
when we see what it required, that we
would not even dare to allow the appearance
of it seeing what it required that we
would love righteousness seeing what it required that
we would take your admonition to be holy
as you are holy, singing what it required
come Lord and restore your fear, we heed
your words by whose stripes we have been
healed bring this revelation to your people Israel,
we have suffered my God so long all
these millennia for the want of this understanding,
we're still suffering we've rejected your provision and
therefore what is the covering for our sin
going to the synagogue on Yom Kippur and
fasting for one day and doing mitzvot and
good deeds is that a suitable equivalent for
the blood of your son we are open
to the enemy, we're a target to suffer
havoc and ruin and devastation because we have
not the covering we have not known, we've
rejected my God your great provision and the
church has been guilty in not persuading us
of its truth though you have said this
gospel is the power of God and the
salvation of the Jew first, we've not gone
we've allowed them to languish in their susceptibility
to the attack of the evil one because
they are uncovered and their little bini, their
yarmulke does not do it, our transgressions are
upon our heads my God only your blood
would have saved us and it is an
offense to our Jewish sensibility and it has
not been commended to us by those who
know about it so mercy Lord mercy Lord
awaken the church to its mandate and its
ability to perform it by the grace of
your spirit and to demonstrate the power of
this foolish message to everyone who believes, will
believe to the Jew first and also to
the Greek, their blood and sense Lord is
upon our hands our indifference and our neglect
leaves them susceptible to every attack of evil,
we have not made your cross known we
have not told them that this is the
Yom Kippur that is God's great atonement that
you gave us 40 years to consider it
and when we still did not consider it
you destroyed your temple you destroyed your altar
you scattered your priesthood there was no possible
continuation of biblical sacrifice after that we were
left with our sins and have been left
with our sins since and are in that
condition to this day and their blood is
on our hands so my God so my
God help us in your mercy help these
people in their ignorance who oppose themselves in
their own ignorance and think that the dictums
provided by their rabbis has equal weight with
your word and with what Isaiah says in
chapter 53 which is never read in a
single synagogue service its meaning is too woe
unto them who oppose the truth and unrighteousness
and hinder its promulgation for those who would
be saved by it leading the world in
abortion in incest in vilest forms of obscene
self indulgence, making the films, the plays, the
music, the rap my God my God what
a hole we are digging for ourselves who
are called to be a nation of priests
and a light unto the world and promulgate
the world's filth and lead us in it
in our ingenuity, surely we deserve my God
such judgment and those judgments will come and
are now even presently coming, save out of
it we pray a remnant upon whom your
eye is set, and by then my God,
restore and redeem your nation that they might
be a holy people and a nation of
priests, we have all sinned and fallen short
of the glory of God, and them to
whom much was given have the greater responsibility
those who have boasted upon the Holy Spirit,
His power and His revelation are most to
be judged for their failure, rightly have the
Jews dismissed the church as the arrogant kingdom
all they've seen is hot shot televangelists living
sumptuous lifestyles in baronial mansions with private jets
advantageing themselves in this religious world my God
they've not seen your humility they've not seen
your brokenness they've not seen the Lamb communicated
by His people, and we're guilty in paying
the bill and even aspiring to come into
such prosperity and prominence ourselves in ministry holy
God that you have withheld judgment upon the
church is a marvel, it's a marvel Lord,
we so deserve the stroke we're doubly guilty
considering our privilege thank you for the mercy
my God has withheld your stroke in your
hand thank you for your patience, even pleading
with us when you see us turn up
our nose when the phrase the wrath of
God is expressed the recoil in your students
who are among the cream of the crop
is visible like they don't even want to
consider that alien statement wrath of God so
Lord if your best are in that condition,
what shall we say for the rest so
mercy Lord continuing mercy continuing blessing Lord help
us with a little help as we plot
and probe and try to find our way
back to truth and reality at the cross
God forbid Lord that this is mere head
trip and that we're not stricken moved, affected,
broken help us in your great grace of
mercy Lord through our own hardness of heart
the subtlety of our pride may we see
it in our boastings inwardly if not verbally
that our voices betray us that the truth
of our condition is revealed in the way
we conduct ourselves, our posture even when we
quote scripture, we're most guilty so when we
attempt to be spiritual that the truth of
our condition is most painfully revealed so we're
asking Lord mercy, mercy, mercy and when we
will receive it we will be able to
extend it that they might receive it because
we need your mercy Lord we have trafficked
in holy things and have reduced them to
the common place