This morning, as you’ve heard, our church ministry calendar for 2024 and 2025 gets underway and we’re rolling out our new teaching theme for the year. And if you’ll indulge me just for a moment before the sermon gets underway, I want to take the opportunity to explain our theme a little bit to you. As you’ll see from the bulletin, our theme for this year is “Devoted: Learning to Live for God’s Glory” and we’re going to take the year to hear again God’s call to the renewed devotion of our whole lives to the praise and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Really we’re taking the year to think about and seek to grow in the practice of basic Christian holiness. That’s why the key verse for our theme comes from Leviticus 19:2, “You shall be holy, as I the Lord your God am holy.”
Now, many of you will know the word translated in the Scriptures as “holy” is typically understood, and etymologically it means something like, “set apart” or “separate.” A holy thing is separate from common use. A holy person is separate, especially from sin, separate from evil. So when we say God is holy, we usually mean that God is separate from sin, separate from evil. And of course that’s quite right, but really to understand the concept we need to say a bit more about this word “holy.” To do that, I want to point you to an important book that we are going to be using and encouraging everyone to read as part of our teaching emphasis this year. It is this book here, Devoted to God: Blueprints for Sanctification by Sinclair Ferguson. And we’ll have copies in the bookstore and copies available for our discipleship groups to study. In the book, Ferguson makes an important point about the definition of the word “holy,” especially when we use it to describe God. “Any description of what God is like,” writes Ferguson, “must pass a simple test. For anything to be true of God as He is in Himself, it must be true quite apart from His work of creation, quite apart from our existence or even the existence of angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim. It must be true of God simply as He has always existed, as the eternal Trinity. But in that case, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit had no attribute that involved separation. This is not to say that God the Trinity cannot be described as holy, but it is to say that holiness cannot be defined as separation.”
Alright, so do you see the point Ferguson is making? Holiness, when we use it of God, cannot only mean that God is separate from sin or else God couldn’t have been holy before sin came into the world. It can’t even mean that God is simply separate from creatures, because that would mean God wasn’t holy before there were any creatures, before Genesis 1:1, and that’s absurd. Whatever holiness means, at its deepest core it has to be true of God when all there was, was God. “So what then is God’s holiness?” Ferguson asks. What do we mean when we say holy Father and holy Son and Holy Spirit and holy Trinity?” Listen to his answer. “We mean the perfectly pure devotion” – there’s our keyword – “the perfectly pure devotion of each of these three persons to the other two. We mean the attribute in the Trinity that corresponds to the ancient words that describe marriage – ‘forsaking all other and cleaving only to thee.’ Absolute, permanent, exclusive, pure, irreversible and fully expressed devotion.” That’s the heart and the core of holiness – devotion.
And so we’re not wrong when we say that holiness, sanctification, means to be separate from sin. It does mean that, but if we are “to be holy as God is holy,” Leviticus 19:2, then that holiness has to be about more than merely avoiding moral evil. It has to be a positive thing, not just a negative thing. Holiness has to be about more than simply avoiding the wrong thing. Understanding holiness in God as God’s devotion to one’s self actually really helps us with this because it reminds us that to be called to holiness is really to be called to the positive renewal of loving, joyous devotion; the devotion of our whole selves to God’s praise and glory. Holiness understood this way includes behavior, certainly, but it starts in relationship, in fellowship with God and expresses a relationship of the deepest and most profound love. We sometimes use the word “devotion” of an old married couple, don’t we? “Sixty years they’ve been married and they’re just as devoted to one another today as ever.” Well God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are devoted to one another in the eternal bonds of the most profound and perfect love.
And whatever else we say about holiness and sanctification and the consecration of our lives to God, it must also have this beautiful element of loving devotion at its heart if it’s to be the real thing. Holiness, understood like this, as devotion, can’t ever be legal or formal or cold. It’s not the product of a guilt trip, propelled by the scolding, finger-wagging pastor who wants you to do better and try harder. That’s not our focus this year. No, holiness is passionate and tender and fierce in its ardor for the honor of God who loved us and gave His Son for us whom we cannot but love in return. That’s what holiness is. It is love to God, set ablaze by the Gospel. Holiness is love to God, set ablaze by the Gospel.
Maybe you feel the fires of Christian zeal have begun to burn low in your heart lately. You’ve been doing the right thing, doing your churchly duty, checking all the boxes. And you’re doing it because you are committed; it’s important to you. But the truth is, you’re really not feeling it much right now. Like a candle flame without much wax left, your Christian life has dwindled from a bright, heartfelt devotion to the guttering flicker of mere outward duty. Well this year is about fanning back into flame the bright fire of devotion to Christ burning in our heart that has been freshly captured and gripped by the Good News of the love of God for sinners in Jesus Christ. That’s our agenda, and I very much want you to pray with me for our church, for one another, that God would bless this call to devotion to His glory and our lasting good.
Now in light of that, beginning today and for three Sundays we are going to introduce the theme to you. Today we’re thinking about God’s devotion to Himself. Then next week, David Felker will preach on Christ’s devotion to us. And then the following week, Rupert Hunt-Taylor will preach on our devotion to God. And then September 8, God willing, we’ll begin our next major expository series looking at the Gospel rich teaching of the book of Leviticus. Leviticus, we’re going to see, is all about devotion – God’s devotion to His people, God’s devotion to Himself, His devotion to His people, by the blood of the sacrificial Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ, and our devotion to God in turn as we learn to live for His praise.
So that means this morning we start with God’s devotion to Himself. And so let me invite you to take your Bibles in hand and to turn with me to the prophecy of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 48. We’re going to read verses 9 through 11, just a few verses, although we’ll think a little about the rest of the chapter. I want you to consider two headings here. First and very briefly, we’ll think about the problem these verses address, that is, our devotion to ourselves. And then more fully, the solution these verses provide – God’s devotion to Himself. So the problem – our devotion to ourselves. The solution – God’s devotion to Himself. Before we get to that, let’s pause again and pray and then we’ll read God’s Word together. Let us all pray.
O Lord, Your name is bound up with the success of the Gospel and the ministry of Your Word in the hearts of Your people. And so for the sake of Your name, grant the blessing of Your Spirit that as we read the Scriptures and hear them expounded You might do Your mighty work of calling us and enabling us to live lives of devotion to Your honor and glory because of Your devotion to Yourself. For we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Isaiah 48 at verse 9. This is the Word of God:
“For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.”
Amen. Let’s think first of all about the problem – our devotion to ourselves. We breathe air. We depend on the air to fill our lungs and oxygenate our blood and keep us alive. Without air we’d suffocate and die. It couldn’t be more basic or more important, but air is almost never a daily preoccupation for us. Breathing isn’t a thing most of us have to think about really at all. We just do it. We depend on it completely, but we scarcely ever think about it. We assume it; we take it for granted. And for many of us, God is like the air. Right? We depend on Him for everything we are and have, we have no life without Him, but like the air, very often He is an assumption, a given. We take Him for granted. We treat God like the air.
But of course that’s not at all what He’s really like. You can take the air for granted and get on with things, but God isn’t like the air. God is actually more like a spouse. Take your spouse for granted, reduce her or reduce him to a mere assumption, a given, someone who goes without saying, someone who you depend on for sure, but rarely think about – treat your spouse that way and your marriage will run into serious trouble toot suite. God is more like a spouse than He is like the air. He doesn’t like to be taken for granted.
But the people to whom Isaiah wrote this forty-eighth chapter were doing exactly that. Just like us, they were taking God for granted. Notice how Isaiah describes them in verse 1. They were happy to engage in God-talk. Do you see that? But they had no real concern to be right with God themselves. They swear by the name of the Lord and confess the God of Israel, but not in truth or right. Instead, Isaiah says, or God through Isaiah says, they are obstinate. Their necks are like an iron sinew, verse 4. They are impervious, in other words, to the goodness and love of God. They’re obstinate and unyielding, unmoving. The truth just bounces off. They think they know best. And so God reveals His Word to them in order, He says, to prevent them claiming my idol did them. My carved image and my metal image commanded them, verse 5. Do you see their hypocrisy now? They can wax all pious when needs must. They recited the catechism when they were young. They know the lingo. They can turn it on with the staunchest presbyterian in town when they need to. But they’re just as likely to turn right around and join their pagan neighbors in their idolatry and superstitions. “My idol did it,” they say.
But it’s not just the old, familiar Sunday school truths that God has revealed to them. The Lord goes on to remind them that He is revealing new things to them, verse 6, so that they might not now turn around and say, “Behold, I knew them.” It’s as though Isaiah were peeling one mask after another from their faces only to find yet another mask underneath. He pulls off the mask of pretended devotion to the Lord only to find the mask of pagan idolatry grinning back at him underneath. And it’s not until he peels back that layer that finally we get to the bottom of their real problem. Here’s the root of their sin and rebellion. “Behold, I knew them,” they were saying. “I knew it. I didn’t really need any divine revelation. I don’t really need pagan divination. It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.” That’s what they were saying.
Here’s the human condition laid bare for all to see. Here’s the truth not just about ancient Israel, of course, but actually about my heart and yours too. Here it is. We are all so devoted to ourselves. Full of self absorption and self reliance and self confidence with a terrible idolatry of self. We think we know that we are sufficient for every task, adequate for all life’s trials. But do notice in the text how God cuts through our delusion with a sobering blast of reality. Verse 8, “You have never heard. You have never known. From of old, your ear has not been opened. For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously and that from before birth you were called a rebel.” There’s the divine diagnosis of our condition by nature. The divine indictment leveled against us. We can be as churchy and religious as we please. We can turn to superstition and alternative spirituality for answers and claim, “My idol did it,” or we can be honest and say plainly that really deep down we think ourselves are enough and that we need no one and nothing more. “I knew it. I saw it. I found it out.” But whatever the case might be, the truth is that from our birth we have been rebels against God, rebels against God. From the very beginning we have been suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever.
That’s the uncomfortable truth about ourselves that this passage shows us very clearly and it raises, therefore, this one great urgent question. If this is who we really are, why should this God tolerate us a second longer? Why should He show us one more ounce of mercy? Why should He forgive or rescue or love any of us? We think we can hide our selfishness under a mask of idolatry or hide our idolatry under a mask of superficial Christianity. But God has never once been taken in by the masks that we wear. He sees your real face. He knows your real name. He hears all the words of your inner monologue. He’s not taken in by our pretended piety, not even for a moment, so why not leave us to the consequences of our sin? Why not abandon us to the coming judgment that we deserve? That’s the big question. What hope is there for sinners like me and you when we stand completely exposed with nowhere to hide before the gaze of a holy God?
We are told in our passage – do you see it in verse 9 – God defers His anger that He might not cut His people off. Now why does He do that, despite all their sin? Is there some compelling feature in Israel’s life or character that forces God to reconsider and to change His mind about them? “I was going to destroy them until I saw this thing lurking in some unnoticed, previously unseen corner of their life, and now that I’ve seen that, I’m going to be merciful to them. They’re so wonderful after all!” Is that what’s happened? Well clearly not. God has been relentlessly, in the verses leading up to this, relentlessly exposing their sin. They deal treacherously with Him. They are rebels from the get-go. They’ve got nothing to bring to the trial. No evidence to support their claim for clemency in the divine tribunal.
And we’re no different, let’s be clear. Suppose you were to leave here and suddenly find yourself snatched by some accident from this life and made to stand all at once before the living God. To what are you going to point as the reason that God should show mercy to you? After all, what merit has there been really in your half-hearted religion? And what about all your secret sin, hidden under outer respectability? Your long-indulged grudges, your petty jealousies, your lustful glances, your prideful boasts. Maybe you were raised as a Christian, and you can sit through a service tolerably well. You can conjure a daydream interesting enough to hold your imagination while the preacher drones on. And yet you’ve missed the countless times that God has stood before you, pleading with you in the preaching of the Gospel to repent and to turn from your sin to Jesus Christ for mercy. You just yawned and went back to your daydreams. Seriously, what can you bring to the tribunal in your own defense? I’m just like Israel, so are you. By nature, our necks are an iron sinew. They won’t bend. Our foreheads are brass. Nothing penetrates of the truth of God.
And notice in the passage God was not content simply to leave Israel to their own devices, was He? Nor does He leave us in our stiffnecked sin. Look how God has worked to awaken them and has worked to awaken us. Verse 10, “Behold, I have refined you but not as silver. I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.” Has God been shouting to you in the bullhorn of suffering and hardship, working to get your attention, to awaken you from spiritual slumber? That’s what He was doing in Israel, but Israel, He says, was not like silver. You see, when you refine silver, you keep it in the furnace until all the dross is consumed and all you have is completely pure silver. But God says, “I put you through the furnace of affliction and the dross was not consumed. There’s still so much of sin and rebellion in your heart.” God has been working, sometimes through some very hard things in our lives to bring us to the end of ourselves, and still we resist Him and refuse Him and run back like a dog returning to its vomit, back to our rebellion and sin.
And so let me ask you again, what reason can you offer, what mitigating evidence from your life can you supply that might compel God to show you mercy and defer His anger and restrain it? The terrible truth that we all must face is that there is no evidence. None. We have no argument, no defense, nothing. And so there’s the problem. Can you see it? Our devotion to ourselves. We are in big trouble. We are in big trouble.
But then secondly notice the solution. The only hope for any of us, Isaiah says, is God’s devotion to Himself. The only hope for any of us is God’s devotion not to us but to Himself. Look again at verse 9 with me. Hear God’s reason for actually showing mercy to unworthy sinners. “For My name’s sake, I defer My anger. For the sake of My praise, I restrain it from you that I may not cut you off.” The reason we are not cut off, the reason we may actually be saved isn’t because God saw something compelling, something beautiful in us that He just couldn’t live without. No, it’s because God is radically committed to His own glory, His own praise, the display of the worth of His own name. It is God’s devotion to God that is the basis and foundation of all our hope if we are to have hope at all. God loves to show that He is merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He delights to show His patience, that even though we provoke Him again and again and rebel against Him, we are still living and enjoying the many blessings of His common grace. He delights to show His power so that even though our hearts are as hard as stone and dead as old bones, in His own time He can make us alive together with Christ, “for it is by grace you have been saved.” God does whatever He does, especially in our salvation for His own glory, for His own name’s sake.
That’s the universal testimony of the Scriptures. God doesn’t save sinners in the same way a ten-year-old picks out a new puppy at the animal rescue shelter. You know how that goes. God doesn’t look around and tell some cute stray of a human being, tug sufficiently hard on His heart strings and He just has to take us home with Him. Neither our whining needs nor our marvelous accomplishments impress Him at all. No, He saves us despite us, not because of us. He saves us for His own name’s sake. Listen, for example, to Ezekiel 36:22 and following. “Thus says the Lord God, ‘It is not for your sake, O Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of My holy name which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations and which you have profaned among them and the nations will know that I am the Lord,’ declares the Lord God. ‘When through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes, I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your land. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules.’” It’s the great promise of the fullness of the new covenant blessing that is ours through faith in Jesus Christ.
But you see its foundation? What is it that moves God to give a new heart to us and put His Spirit within us and enable us to walk in new obedience and to be clean from all the sin that had previously polluted us? What is His motive? “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations.” It is God’s devotion to God’s self, to His name, to His praise, to His glory that is the root motive in the heart of God for everything God does. That’s why back in our text in Isaiah, if you look at verse 11, the Lord repeats the point – “for My own sake.” “For My own sake I do it, for how should My name be profaned? I will not give My glory to another.” He’s not going to share His glory with anyone or anything else. There’s no room for you or room for me to save ourselves, no room for merit or worth in us in the ground of our salvation. If there was, well then we could claim some of the credit, couldn’t we? We could say, “I did it. This is mine and I get the glory.” But that’s an impossibility. We are helpless. We are dead in our trespasses and sins. We don’t work it out. We don’t clean up our act. We don’t make ourselves saveable. We don’t turn over a new leaf. We can’t! We are called rebels from before we were born, Isaiah says. But praise God that the zeal of God for the glory of God moves God to save wretched sinners like me and you. All our hope, our only hope, lies here.
If you are waiting for God to find something in you that will compel His love, you need to give it up right now for a fool’s errand. There is nothing in me and nothing in you that will make God love you or forgive you or accept you. Nothing. Here is the immovable foundation of Gospel hope – God loves us for His own sake and because He does, we are saved. If He loved us for our sake, then His love would have no solid foundation. He doesn’t love us because of something that has provoked His love found in us. We are altogether unlovely. He loves us for His own sake. Too often we put ourselves at the heart of the Gospel, don’t we? We start – this is how we do it – we start with the desire of God – “God is all about saving me” – and we move on from the desire of God to save me to the means He uses. “He loved me and gave His Son for me. Jesus died and bore my sin to secure my pardon and send His Spirit to draw me to Himself and then gave faith to me so that I might trust in Him. And now He is at work in me to keep and preserve me to bring me to heaven so that He can have me with Him at last forever.”
That is the Gospel, but it’s the Gospel seen in one of those fairground mirrors. You know the ones I’m talking about? They make your head three feet tall and your legs an inch long and they never seem to make you look thinner, do they? You’re always much wider. It is your reflection, right enough, but it’s not a true reflection. This is the Gospel, but it’s a distorted Gospel. It puts me at its very center. The true picture is this – God is devoted to God’s self, to the display of the infinite glory of His own character and worth. And so in order to show that He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, He purposes to save undeserving sinners. And in pursuit of His own glory in the salvation of undeserving sinners, He sends His Son who came with a constant eye in everything that He did to the glory of the name of His Father. John 17:4, “Father, I have glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work that You gave Me to do.” That’s His description of His whole life of obedience and suffering and sacrifice. It is all for the glory of God. And having obeyed His Father, for the glory of the Father, He went to the cross, vindicating the Father’s justice, paying in full the penalty the Father’s broken law demands on behalf of all His people, leaving nothing for anyone to do. “It is finished,” He cried, so that if anyone now would be saved they must come here to Him and to His cross.
And so standing now at the foot of the cross I am humbled. I am stripped of all appeal to anything that I am or could do. I am shown for real now with crystal clarity. I really can’t save me after all. He must save me or I can’t be saved. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Only God who gave His Son to bear sin’s penalty and triumphed in him over the grave, only He can set me free from the condemnation I deserve. And so I go to Him, depend on Him, confess my sin to Him, beg Him for mercy, and I say, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling. Naked come to Thee for dress; helpless cling to Thee for grace. Foul, I to the fountain fly; wash me, Savior, or I die!” All the focus is on Him, not on me. Here’s the design of God in the Gospel. Do you see it? It’s all that He might get the glory by Jesus Christ and we might receive the grace. God’s devotion to God’s self is your only hope.
Is yours a distorted, a subtly distorted Gospel, I wonder? Something seen in the fairground mirror – a true reflection but distorted with self far too big and God far too small. If you begin to grasp the devotion of God to God, you’ll start to see yourself in your true proportions at last. Humbled to the dust, you will come without any confidence in yourself, empty and abandoned to His mercy alone. And there at the foot of the cross, where God in Christ has done it all, you can look up and receive His grace. It’s the only way, you know, to begin to live a life devoted to God. So may God bring us all there and fix our eyes on Him. Let us pray.
O Lord our God, forgive us for the many ways in which we put our confidence in the flesh, in ourselves, in our own doings. Help us now to lay our deadly doing down. Help us to trust only in You. Thank You that You are so profoundly, radically God-centered that because You are moved by Yourself, Your own glory and for Your own name’s sake, all that You do is a sure and certain, immovable and guaranteed rock solid promise that anyone who trusts in Christ will receive the grace He died to secure. Help us then, every one of us to do that, whether for the first time or anew. Grant that we may come and rest on Jesus, for we ask it in His name. Amen.