Matt Chandler - Eyes to See

If you have your Bibles, let’s grab them. Isaiah Chapter 58 is where we will camp out today. If you don’t have a Bible with you, there should be a black hardback one somewhere near you, under your seat or around you. If you’ll grab that, it’s always important that you see that what I’m saying isn’t my own, but rather what the Word of God is saying. One of us has authority, and one of us doesn’t. So, it’s always imperative that we lean into where the authority lies, which is namely in God’s revealed Word to us in the Scriptures.

We’re beginning a new series today that’ll last 6 weeks. We’ve entitled the series, «Grace Made Visible.» That phrase isn’t unique to us or to me; it is actually taken from an article written by Jonathan Edwards, who was a pastor and theologian during the First Great Awakening in the early to mid-1700s. During that time, the Holy Spirit poured Himself out in profound ways, and hundreds of thousands, if not ultimately millions, of men and women became believers and followers of Jesus Christ. In fact, the Great Awakening shaped us as a country, and the effects of those three decades still linger to this very day. It was a profound moment.

What happened in that revival was that there began to be some perversions of what God was doing, and Jonathan Edwards wrote an article about the evidences of genuine religious affection. In this article, he described how you can recognize a man or woman who has legitimately experienced grace. I mentioned two weeks ago that you can tell the difference between someone who has an intellectual grasp of grace and someone who has actually experienced grace in their core.

Now, I would never argue that Christianity is merely experiential; it is intellectual and has historical roots; it encompasses all of those aspects. However, for someone to understand grace and not be able to extend it reveals that they don’t truly understand grace. If you understand grace, you will extend it. If you’ve experienced, at the core of your being, what it is like to be found wanting, needy, and broken, yet to find, in your helplessness, the mercy of God lavishly poured out on you, you will be hard-pressed to judge others or quickly categorize and marginalize them. Because while you were at your worst, you understand that Christ died for you.

What we’re going to do is unveil the whole concept, and then we’ll backtrack to elaborate on it. Edwards states that grace made visible is most clearly seen in the generosity of the people of God. This series is built around the idea of generosity. I don’t want you to get nervous; we’re not passing a plate. We’re not trying to build a new building, and I don’t need a new home. We’re doing great. So, when we talk about generosity, we’re not referring to offerings; we’re discussing the freedom that comes from a human heart set free by the grace of God, able to hold life’s stuff and things with open hands. This allows them to ultimately live a joy-filled life where they feel they don’t need to manipulate, control, or keep a grip on everything. It is a life of rest, peace, and confidence in the Sovereign King of Glory. That’s what this series will explore: six weeks of it.

To set us up, I thought we would look at Isaiah 58, where the prophet Isaiah will show us how grace is not made visible, as well as the signs present when we have experienced the grace of God. My hope this morning, as we read the Word of God, is that some of our areas will be exposed, and that by the end, in the last few verses of this text, we might learn how to find rest for our souls that leads to generosity. You don’t ultimately become generous people through mere activity; you become generous as you experience, savor, and marvel at the King of Glory.

With that said, let’s pick it up in Isaiah 58, starting in verse 1: «Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.» If this is what the pastor is hearing in study, then you really need to brace yourself for the sermon itself, correct? I mean, while Isaiah is pondering what God wants him to say to the people, God says, «Get the trumpet.» What are we going to do with the trumpet? We are going to declare the people’s sins and iniquities. You just know that’s probably a weekend you want to spend at the lake, right? You probably don’t want to be there on that day. You might be thinking, «I want to be at the happy day; where’s John 3:16? When are we covering that one?» But that’s not the call God gave Isaiah. In fact, as much as…