Throne of Lies

"...there is no throne...." Isaiah 47:1

All of chapter 47 is God's declaration of destruction upon Babylon, and its destruction hits right at it core: "Thou...sayest in thine heart, 'I am, and none else beside me'...thou hast said in thine heart, 'I am, and none else beside me." (vs. 8, 10) They had set themselves up to be God; not gods, but God ("I am"). This is the Satanic attitude ("I will be like the Most High," Isaiah 14:14), and thus the height of evil. God cuts them right at their hearts: "Come down, and sit in the dust...there is no throne," their power and status is but a self-delusion, and God unravels all of it (vs. 8-15; c.f. Isaiah 14:15-17)
The height of all evil, nay, the very source of all evil is the desire to be God, to be the highest, the controller and ruler of either all things or just yourself. It is the disposition of Satan (Isaiah 14:13, 14), the very temptation whereby Adam fell (Genesis 3:5) and we fell with him (I Corinthians 15:22a). We have all inherited the Satanic disposition of "Me first." This is why it is only desolation that leads to glory: we must be brought to the dust before God can help us, made helpless before we will accept any help. The throne that we set up for ourselves must be revealed as a throne of lies before we realize our true condition: damned sinners with no hope outside of Christ. Many will reject Christ and forever abide in desolation. Others will take hold of Christ's outstretched hand and be returned to God.

"Destroy all my thrones,
Till I rest only in You.
Take me to the dust,
And lift me to Heaven..."
-Jon Vowell

Legacy of Righteousness

"Hearken unto me, ye stubborn-minded, that are far from righteousness: I bring my righteousness near; it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry, and I will place salvation in Zion for Israel my glory." Isaiah 46:12, 13

We do not go and get God's righteousness; it comes to us. Our Sin keeps us from obtaining it, kept all of us from obtaining it. It is only because Christ came to us that we can obtain God's righteousness, and it is only when God shines the light of His glorious gospel on us that we are even in a position to receive His righteousness. Until the sunlight of His gospel falls on us, we are frozen in our cave of shadows. When it hits us, we can either receive the light or reject it for our shadows. It is our choice, but we have to make a choice. When the gospel hits you, there is no neutral ground.
Righteousness is neither something you are born with or obtain; it is something you receive. This grates against man's rebellious pride. Man cannot carve out his own legacy of righteousness; he can not say, "Look what I did to obtain it." He can only point to the legacy of another and say, "Look what He did so that I may receive it."

"What You have You give to me,
For I am poor and You are Rich.
I have nothing, and You give me Everything.
I am nothing without You..."
-Jon Vowell

Your Choice (and Not Your Choice)

"...I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure....'" Isaiah 46:9b, 10

The will of God is set in stone, a foundational reality laid down before the foundations of the world. Contrary to what you may have heard, there is a plan, an over-arching scheme to all things, and nothing has or can prevent it: not a war in Heaven, not a Fall, not tribulations, not death or life, not angels or demons, not kings or kingdoms, nor the limitations of the physical world. It is an abiding reality that serves as a comfort to those who are with God (Romans 8:28), and a terror to those who are against Him (Isaiah 47:12-14).
"I have set before you life and death...therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." (Deuteronomy 30:19) The great mystery of this whole thing is that God's immutable will is never forced upon us. We have the choice to reject it and go astray. Our rejecting it does not inhibit it or hinder it; it will merely roll right over you, and you will be crushed underneath it, if you choose so. We have no choice in whether or not God's will is fulfilled; it shall be fulfilled. The only choice we have is whether we are with Him or against Him when it is fulfilled.

"Destined for either fire or fire.
May Your presence be the only burning
That I know..."
-Jon Vowell

Remember

"Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me...." Isaiah 46:9

This verse is citing the "Shema" (Deuteronomy 6:4), one of the most fundamental precepts of Judaism (and Christianity). It is astounding how often God's dealings with us often involves Him taking us back to the basics again and again. Like chronic Alzheimer's patients, we forget. We may learn other, higher things; but the moment that we lose the basics, those higher things lose their foundation, and thus all meaning and power, and thus they are easily forgotten as well. This is the problem of the Pharisee: Jesus had to constantly take them (and the Jews) back to the basics (Matthew 7:12; 22:37-40).
"We are forgetful creatures," says C.S. Lewis, "We need the storytellers." God is the great Storyteller, and He will bring you back to what you have forgotten again and again until it sticks. He calls His children to do the same; it is a part of being "salt and light". He calls us to say, "I will open my mouth in a parable...showing to the generations to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength, and His wonderful works that He hath done." (Psalm 78:2-4)
Strive to remember the old things. Pray that God will take everything He gives you and sear it upon the table of your heart for all time.

"On tables of stone,
On tables of paper,
On the tables of my heart,
Burn Your tale into me..."
-Jon Vowell

Idol-Worship As Self-Destruction

"Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which are upheld by me from birth, which are carried from the womb; and even to your old age I am He, and even to gray hairs will I carry you. I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and deliver you.... They bear [their idol] upon their shoulders, they carry him, and set him in his place, and he standeth...." Isaiah 46:3-7

This juxtaposition is interesting. In the first part, it is God who carries His children. In the last part, it is the idol-worshipers that carry their idol. Faith in God means resting in God; faith in anything else means resting in yourself. The burden rests upon you: you created this thing that you worship, and thus you give it meaning. Thus idol-worship is self-destructive because the thing that you created to give yourself meaning only leads you back to your meaningless self.
Faith in God means that the burden rests on God: He created you, and thus only He can give you meaning and purpose. The very moment that you rest on anything other than God, you crumble apart because it is weak and feeble you trying to rest upon weak and feeble you. There is no place of rest outside of God: we are built only for Him.

"May Your breast be my pillow
Always..."
-Jon Vowell

Whence Comes Strength III: The Point of Weakness

"Surely shall one say, 'In the Lord have I righteousness and strength...." Isaiah 45:24a

The point of strength is a great point of weakness for many. The easy and natural thing to do is to look to the self for strength, to family and friends, to successes and accomplishments, to compliments and praises, to victories and triumphs, i.e., all good things, but all natural things. For the Christian, there is only one source of strength: God.
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, even his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26) The severance is that severe, and it is most difficult, for to turn your eyes to everything and anyone but God is the default position of the human race; it is a glove that our hand fits easily into, and the only hope is to cut off our hand. To focus off of all things and onto God is where the battle always lies, for the enemy is ever embattled against the life of faith.
We may see our lack of focus on God as a mere flaw in character; we do not see it as deliberate and deadly unbelief. The area of your life where you lack focus on God is where you lack faith in God. The area where you still look to yourself or others and other things is where you are of little faith, and is thus your great point of weakness. All that we need is God; pray that He becomes your only reality.

"I turn to myself
And vomit death on all.
Be my only reality, oh God.
Make me a conduit of Your Life
And not my death..."
-Jon Vowell

Promises, Promises

"I have sworn by myself (the word has gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return), that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall take an oath." Isaiah 45:23
"For when God made promise..., because He could swear by no greater, He swore by Himself..." Hebrews 6:13

Whether to the nations, Israel, Abraham, or us, God's promises are guaranteed upon the highest that there is, i.e., Himself. They are fully banked upon His character and nature. Men will guarantee a promise upon the head of the highest thing that they know; God swore upon Himself. What greater guarantee can you have?
Perhaps this sheds new light on Jesus' rather odd command, "Swear not at all...let your word be 'Yea, yea' or 'Nay, nay.'" (Matthew 5:34-37) As children of God, we live under and are planted upon His promises. Our lives now belong under promises sworn by the highest. We who follow God need not swear by anything because we control nothing (vs. 34-36). Thus, our promises are guaranteed because we are following God, and His will shall be done. To swear by saying simply "I will" or "I won't" is another way we live the life of faith. We are saying (in effect), "All that I have is God's. Where He leads, I will follow."

"All that I am
Is in Your Hands..."
-Jon Vowell

The Right View of Man

"...they have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save...there is no other God beside me; a just God and a Savior. There is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else." Isaiah 45:20-22

Why are those who trust in anything but God fools? Because they do not (or will not) understand their true condition, and consequently their true need. There are many beautiful, noble, and logical sounding thoughts out there (some even claim to be the Gospel of Christ), but they are all heresies, idols, and false hopes that cannot save. They cannot save because they do not know humanity's true condition; they say that we are poor, or unhealthy, or uneducated, or oppressed, or in need of augmentation or social reforms, or that we need to go through the next stage of evolution, etc., etc. Any ideology or belief system that does not begin with the Fall, with the doctrine of Sin, with "as in Adam all die"(I Corinthians 15:22a) will lead mankind into the ditch every time.
Why is God the only savior? Because He alone can do anything about Sin, and Sin is our real problem as humans; it is the eternal monkey wrench in our plans, the "amartia," the tragic flaw that undoes us every time. We are not poor, sick, uneducated, oppressed, or evolving. We are sinners, and God alone can save us from that.

"Not sick, but sin sick.
Not poor, but lost.
Not stupid, but foolish without You.
Not unevolved, but in need of Forgiveness,
And Atonement..."
-Jon Vowell

A Small Defense of Sacramental Theology

"[Your enemies] shall fall down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto thee, saying, 'Surely God is in thee; and there is none else, there is no other God. Verily thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Savior.'" Isaiah 45:14b, 15

It is a lie (and unfortunate Protestant propaganda) that sacramental theology is a Catholic heresy. Catholicism was not wrong because it had a sacramental theology, but because it (among other things) got it wrong, i.e., completely misunderstood its nature and purpose. They turned sacraments into works whereby we obtain grace whereby we can be saved. Such teachings not only are completely unscriptural (the books of Romans and Galatians are two nice starting points), but they have also completely destroyed sacramental theology for all Protestants, with the exception (of course) of Lutherans. Sacraments are not the process by which you receive God; they are the result of the finished reception of Him.
We Protestants must redeem sacramental theology back into our tradition. We must drag it out from under the stinking heap of confused and heretical dogma dumped upon it and return it to its basic (and only) concept, a concept that Martin Luther himself put quite eloquently, "The finite can contain the infinite." That is not heresy; it is the very foundational philosophical assumption of Christianity, for it is the philosophical foundation laid down in the Incarnation: "The Word became flesh."

1. The Sacrament of Creation "That which may be known of God is manifest...The invisible things of Him...are clearly seen [in] the things that are made...." (Romans 1:19, 20) The world is full of His presence. This is what makes evolution so damnable: because men did not want to see God, they found a pseudo-scientific hoax to explain the glory of Creation as produced merely by natural causes, "and changes the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible [Nature]." (Romans 1:23)
2. The Sacrament of the Law "Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good." (Romans 7:12) The Law is not mere rules; it is the revelation of God's character, both His holiness and His love, for it is by the dreadful crushing of the Law that we find salvation, "for the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." (Galatians 3:24) In revealing the reality of Sin, we realize the need for a savior.
3. The Sacrament of the Word of God "All scripture is God-breathed...." (II Timothy 3:16) The word is alive and powerful, and strikes the very heart of men, because it is filled with the life of God. Scripture is one of God's special revelations of Himself to us, and how more direct can one get than writing an anthology of books where He says, "There is a God and I'm Him"?
4. The Sacrament of the Word "The Word was God...and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us...." (John 1:1, 14) This one goes without saying. The Incarnation is foundation of sacramental theology.
   
5. The Sacrament of the Church "Now ye are the body of Christ...." (I Corinthians 12:27a) Israel was to serve as the earthly presence of God; the temple was where heaven met earth. Now we carry that same blessing and burden. As the body of Christ, we are now God's physical presence of earth (Goodness! Would to God that the Church really understood that).
6. The Sacrament of the Christian "What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost...?" (I Corinthians 6:19) Your finite bodies contain the infinite God. Therefore, you are a sacrament. You are a sacrament both corporately (as a member of the Church) and individually. Your are a magnification of the presence of God in you (Goodness! Would to God that Christians really understood that!).

Perhaps more could be listed, but this is enough for now. Sacraments are vessels chosen by God to convey His presence to the world; not means to receive His grace, but the result of His grace having been received. Catholics must realize that; but what Protestants desperately need to realize is that there really are sacraments, that we really are sacraments, both individual and corporately. Protestants must be rewedded to the reality of sacraments and their consequences. Perhaps then we can strive to clean up the messes we have made in trying to live in denial of our true nature and job: "Surely God is in thee...."

"Spirit of the Living, Indwelling God
Magnify Thy Presence
In all the earth,
In all the earth..."
-Jon Vowell

True Knowing and Its Perversion

"Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, 'What makest thou?' Shall the work say, 'He hath no hands'? Woe unto him that saith unto his father, 'What begettest thou?' Or to their mother, 'What hast thou brought forth?'" Isaiah 45:9, 10

God designed us with the drive and capacity to know: to know each other, ourselves, creation, and (most importantly) Himself. Where knowing goes bad is when the motive for knowing degrades from true understanding and communion into a method of control and manipulation. Instead of knowing something/someone for the mere sake and pleasure of knowing, we know in order to bend to our will.
God is firmly against this perverted kind of knowing; we were never meant to control outside of Him, because we cannot control outside of Him, and even then we are only meant to control creation (for we have dominion) and ourselves (which is a fruit of the spirit), and even then we are not to control those things in order to bend them to our will but towards God's will. We were never meant to control and manipulate others, and we especially were never meant to control God, which we can never do anyway.
Unfortunately, we still try and control God, despite the futility of it. Sadly, this is the motive factor behind most attempts at "knowing" God, attempts to fully analyze Him in order to fit Him nicely into definable, controllable categories. God rejects all boxes, because He is self-defining and He does not need your definition to say what He is; He has already revealed Who He is in His Word, and even then, the depths of His self-definition have only been half-fancied this side of the grave. All that He is will be perpetually explored as our ever-growing knowledge of Him will be the joy of Heaven.

"If the very universe cannot contain You,
How then can the beaker bottle...?"
-Jon Vowell

A Small Theodicy

"I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things." Isaiah 45:7

These verses are of "cause and effect" the same way that Romans 7:7 is: "I would not have known sin but by the law," i.e., the knowledge of holiness gives meaning to the concept of sin. So too in this verse: without light, darkness loses all meaning (and vice versa). When God made light, that means that there was "not-light" as a consequence. Read Genesis 1:3, 4: God created light, and then divided the light and the darkness. Where did the darkness come from? It was the consequence of the light.
The same is true with evil. All good things (including peace) come from God. Thus (logically speaking) all evil cannot be found in Him, but in rejecting Him. Anything that is not God or not of God is evil: anything not bound up in Him or leading to Him is evil. Through this we can deduce that evil exists not because God made it (as some nonsensically claim that this verse says), but because His very existence means that there exists the possibility of rejecting Him, or choosing the "not-God". The possibility of evil is the logically consequent of the existence of God.
This still does not mean that the existence of evil is God's fault. His existence means that there is only the possibility of evil, the possibility of rejecting Him. "Possibility" is only a potential, and as an unlikely wise man once said, "Potential just means that you haven't done a d--n thing." Possibilities must be acted upon in order to become actualities, and according to the Bible, we are the ones who acted. Evil's possibility is based in God's very existence; evil's actuality is based upon our rebellious action, and our continuing rebellious actions.

Father of Light and of Peace,
May I abhor all that You are not,
And cling to You...
-Jon Vowell