Playing from the Penalty Box

Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 1:8; Isaiah 43:25; 1 John 3:18-22; James 4:13-16; Micah 4:2

The Lord our God is enthroned on High, and we live in His world unstunned by His glory. The angels in God’s presence don’t dare to look or be uncovered in His sight; yet they dare not look at anything but Him nor do anything that is not pleasing to Him. They dare not say anything beyond calling out who He is. They are not merely overcome with astonishment, but are mobilized by the fear of who He is. Men live, move and have their being without guilt or shame, uncovered with high-handed sin in His sight. There is no fear of God before our eyes. If we did fear Him, He would receive much higher praise, louder and longer praise by all we say and do.

“Einstein had so little use for organized religion, although he strikes me as a basically very religious man. He must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had every imagined, and they were just not talking about the real thing. My guess is that he simply felt that religions he’d run across did not have proper respect . . . for the author of the universe.” (Charles Misner, quoted in First Things 18, December 1991).

The other night a 12-year old in Los Angeles came to the realization that God must not only be real, but must be much bigger than Christians make Him out to be. She struggled with her own belief because she saw too much unbelief from those who said they believed.[i] Where is the awe?


A pastor recently described how he, after years of ministry, realized was not "experiencing" God, so he set off on a 6 month "journey" to do just that. Disappointment after disappointment was what he found instead. Then, through a communion service, he was challenged to "get IT" (whatever "it" was) and restructured his entire church that has since become an influential movement. The distinctives are "enhancing experience" that individuals can contact God through how they participate in corporate worship. What about daily obedience by walking in the Word through prayer and faith? Must God be engineered a "creative atmosphere" for Him to work? What kind of God is that that leaves men to chase warm fuzzies and go about their lives struggling for victory over seven deadly sins?

Isaiah could not help but see God, for Isaiah saw God’s omnipresence and omnipotence, “the whole earth is full of God’s glory” and what he saw devastated him. Men see Him and His glory and turn from what they know to be true about Him because they are satisfied with smallness. Man seeks to preserve himself in his own glory. There is no fear of God before men’s eyes.

Yet, for His good and to His advantage God blots out mine and your violations of His law. For His own ends, purpose and benefit God will not remember the sins of the one who turns from them. God extends to mankind the benefits of what He has accomplished for His good—reconciliation! Why would we choose to keep our acts of irreverence, desecration, and infringements? This does not work when we play our sports—we demand abiding by the rules or the game is unfair, the referee unjust! Yet men yell at God for enforcing the rules and are convinced they meant to play the game out-of-bounds, offsides, and from the penalty box. The reason man does this is because he loves himself too much.

“’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’” This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37–40)

When we love God, it should show immensely. His grandeur must burst through our seams and He must receive what is rightly His own. Consider: what we do should confirm what we say. If our walk was true to our talk today, as is reflected even in our worship, then we are on a slow hike with tiny steps, getting nowhere fast. We were meant to take great strides, fueled by the refreshing spring of grace and mercy found in the living water of the Lord Jesus Christ! Climb, climb up Sunshine Mountain, where the heavenly breezes blow! But we cannot until we turn from the valley of sin and doubting and have looked up to the sky!

This is the life “stunned by the gospel:” Because the Lord wills, we will by prayer and faith under the authority of His word reap the joy of victorious Christian living! The one that has been devastated by His holiness and has received what He has provided in blood-payment is under compulsion to greatly stride, proclaiming His glory with His majesty filling our view!

“But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.” (Micah 4:2)



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[i] An hour later, God broke through and she repented of her sins and placed her faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. She is now a child of the King!