September 28, 2016 @ 9:30 AM

I preached a sermon on Isaiah 57:15 this past Sunday that I entitled: THE HIGH AND LOFTY ONE WHO DWELLS IN THE HIGH AND HOLY PLACE. In the message, I speak of how high and holy God is and how high and holy a place Heaven is, which proves our only hope of coming to God and getting to Heaven is coming to the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone can present us to God in Heaven as one of His blameless and holy ones (1 Thessalonians 3:13).
 
If I were asked to characterize our day and time with one word, the word I would choose would be "irreverence." We have profaned the sacred making it all too familiar. As a result, there is no fear of God among us. Our lofty opinion is of ourselves, not of our God, into whose presence we sinners presume we can proudly strut without the Savior (Christ) and on our own terms.
 
According to the Prophet Isaiah, the only ones who will dwell forever with God, the High and Lofty One, in His high and holy place are those who are contrite and humble in spirit. The Hebrew word for “contrite” means “crushed” and “broken.” Therefore, the contrite are those whose spirits are crushed and whose hearts are broken over their sins against God. How much contrition over our sins against God do you see in our country today? How much contrition over our sins against God do you see in our churches today? The fact is the average churchgoer today is nonchalant about his or her sins rather than contrite about them. Despite the fact our sins cost God His Son and Christ His life, we're not grieved over them, we tend to gloss over them.
 
Whereas a contrite spirit requires a high opinion of God―a view of God's holiness that convinces us sinners of our odiousness―a humble spirit requires a honest opinion of ourselves. We must come to realize that we are not just lowly sinners who have sinned against a high and holy God, but we are also hopelessly and helplessly lost in our sins. There is absolutely nothing we can do to save ourselves from our sin or to make ourselves acceptable to God. Therefore, God came into the world as a man, the man Christ Jesus, to do everything for us that needed to be done for our salvation, since we can do none of it for ourselves.
 
Thanks to Christ, all we have to do now for our salvation is humble ourselves, come to Him on our knees, and reach out by faith and accept from Him a nail-scarred handout, the gift of God, which is eternal life. If, however, we are too proud to do so, insisting that we are acceptable to God in the filthy rags of our own righteousness and able to pave our own way into God's Heaven with our own personal merit, the salvation God has wrought for us in Christ will never be ours. Neither will we ever dwell with the High and Lofty One in His high and holy place.