JULY 21, 2024
Topic: GOD’S PRESENCE AND HOLINESS
Text: Isaiah 57:15
Memory Verse: Isa 57:15 – “For this is what the high and exalted One says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite”.
Do you ever feel spiritually lifeless? How about inwardly empty? Are you less than hot in your love relationship with God? Years ago, an entire nation was wrestling with these sort of questions. The answer led them to experience God’s promise of revival!
Let us talk about the Water Gate revival. Please bear with me; this is not the American Watergate scandal of then President Richard Nixon. The Water Gate I am speaking about happened around 450 BC when Nehemiah led a group of Jews from Babylon back to Jerusalem to re-build the walls of the city. One of the 12 gates on the east side of Jerusalem was near the Gihon Spring. People carried water into the city from the spring through the gate, so it became known as the “Water Gate!”
After the walls were completed, Nehemiah gathered all of the people together in front of the Water Gate, and then Ezra did something that had not been done in 70 years. He read the word of God to them.
When the people heard the word of God, they rent their hearts as the words convicted them. They wept, confessed and bowed their heads in worship of Yahweh, their covenant God. The word of God says, “Without holiness, no one can see the Lord”.
That was a picture of the holiness, the highness so to speak of God, and the humility and lowliness of man. So if we want to know God, if we want to walk with God, if we want to be with God, if we want to glorify God, then the way to know him, to walk with him, is by putting ourselves low, and being contrite in spirit before him, being humble before him. This is the path to the knowledge of God.
Remember, when we finally come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God!
PRAYER: Father your word says, “Without holiness no one can see the Lord”. My father and my God, I purge myself of every contempt that will not allow me to stand before your presence. Lord, let there be total deliverance for me in Jesus’ name, Amen.