Ripping Open the Heavens
Isaiah 59:2; 64:6-7, 64:1; Mark 1:9-15
[Imperatives in this sermon:
- Live in relation to things such as money, sex, and power in ways showing that we believe in the reign of God.
- Receive Jesus’ challenging teachings as revealing the impurities in our hearts from which we must repent.
- Earnestly seek God’s reviving Spirit in our lives].
Churches Lost in a Consumer Culture
Times are tough for churches in America. Most mainline churches are shrinking. Apart from a few well-publicized mega-churches, most evangelical churches are doing little better than holding their own. Mainline, evangelical, charismatic, or emerging church—they have all found a hundred ways to wander off the path of blessing. Desperation produces a market for faddish “solutions” that seldom produce their promised results. Some of the fads seriously compromise the Bible’s moral and spiritual teachings. Other fads get people involved in things that distract them from the agenda of Jesus. Real conviction and real redemptive mission are scarce. To the outsider, faddish churches look like they have lost their spiritual bearings. They have!
Where Is God?
Isaiah began his ministry in the eighth century B.C., but his words address people over the next several centuries and on into the time of Christ. Isaiah addressed people who were wondering why they were experiencing the absence of God, why they were not hearing God speak specific guidance for them, why they were not seeing God take saving, delivering action in their lives. They were going through the religious motions, but they were not reaping many blessings.
Isaiah accuses these people, “… your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear” (59:2) .
He also confesses to God on behalf of these people: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment… There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you…” (64:6a, 7a).
Isaiah recounts the repeated cries of the people for God to return among them, to take action to restore them to blessing. The height of the petitions is this cry: “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down” (64:1a).
The Answer
This begins to get us where we need to be. Here is what we need to do:
1. Get past lamenting.
2. Really seek God’s presence, guidance and empowerment.
3. Be prepared to line our lives up with God.
In describing Jesus’ baptism, Mark has the petition from Isaiah in mind, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!”
Understanding the Scripture: When the Heavens Were Ripped Open
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opening (schizo) and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:9-11).
Opening is too mild to convey the idea of the word Mark chooses here. You are familiar with the Greek word schizo from its use in psychiatric terms such as schizophrenic. Outside that specialized use, the word schizo means to rend, to tear apart, to rip open. Mark uses the word twice, once near the beginning of his Gospel and once near the end, sort of like bookends to his gospel.
Near the beginning of his Gospel, Mark uses the word schizo at Jesus’ baptism to describe the ripping open of the heavens just before the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus and the voice of God identifies Jesus as his beloved Son. The ripping open of the heavens is a figurative way of saying that the barrier between heaven and earth is being removed and that God is coming among us through his Spirit-anointed Son. Through the Spirit-filled Jesus, God comes to dwell among us, taking action to demonstrate his reigning love and power, his holiness and righteousness, and, on the basis of that demonstration, calling us to faith and repentance. In effect, in ripping open the heavens at Jesus’ baptism, God is saying, “Ready or not, here I come!” Not everyone was ready.
Near the end of his Gospel, Mark uses the word schizo to describe the tearing of the temple curtain just after Jesus dies on the cross and just before the Roman centurion concludes that Jesus is the Son of God. “And the curtain of the temple was torn (schizo) in two, from top to bottom” (Mark 15:38). The Temple curtain was a symbolic separation of sinful people from the holy God. So Mark’s Gospel is framed by the ripping open of barriers between God and humanity, the barriers that keep God from coming to us, the barriers that keep us from coming to God. This removing of the barriers is what happens through Jesus Christ. It is a result much to be desired.
The fulfillment of Isaiah’s petition that God would rip open the heavens and come down is revealed at Jesus’ baptism, when God sends his Holy Spirit upon Jesus, signifying the beginning of his ministry. Jesus comes with the good news that God’s reigning power is available: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15).
Ripping Open Our Hearts
Jesus’ message regarding the reign of God is not in word alone, but also in deeds, deeds proving that God’s reigning power is present through him. He then teaches how we can live in ways showing that we believe in the reign of God. He teaches us how kingdom people handle things like money, sex, power, religious life, social life, even relationships with enemies. Jesus’ words on these subjects are challenging, and they reveal the impurities in our hearts.
Repenting
Jesus’ message of the reign of God compels not only our faith, but also our repentance. Repenting is a word to which we need to give attention. Too often we limit its meaning to feeling sorry for particular sins. Repenting means far more than confessing and regretting. Repenting means turning around, completely around, totally changing the ways we think, the ways we set goals in life.
Repenting means getting the source of our goals in life flowing purely from God, dying to all other sources, coming alive to God as the source of all that is truly good and ultimately desirable. Repenting means seeking first the reign of God and his righteousness, and letting all else find its place in relation to that priority.
Some people are willing to confess sin and to ask for forgiveness, but not yet willing to repent, not yet willing to turn with single-hearted devotion toward God. (This was the problem with Isaiah’s audience. This is why the fulfillment was delayed over 7 centuries). Unrepentant people try to use God and worldly strategies for achieving satisfaction in life. If we want God’s blessing, we have to decide that we are going to seek to do it God’s way or not at all. That is what repenting is all about.
Two Important Points
Let’s clarify two points: Point 1: We do not have to achieve perfection in purifying our hearts. Rather, we have to decide that we are going to seek that perfection. The decision to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness puts us into a process of gradual transformation, a process that continues the rest of our lives.
Point 2: The grace of God is not intended to cover spiritual and moral carelessness. Rather, it is designed to cover us during the process of our being gradually transformed into what we seek to become, obedient children of God in service to God’s holy and loving reign. Grace will cover our seeking of God and of God’s way; it will not cover carelessness about God.
God Paid the Cost for the One Way of Salvation
When God ripped open the heavens and revealed himself through Jesus, it was not in order to introduce a message that it does not matter what we do with our lives, that we are free to choose our own path, and that whatever path we choose will be okay. Not at all. God came in Jesus to call us to faith and repentance. God came in Jesus to pay the cost so that we could be transformed. God did not come so that we could ignore our need for repentance. God did not allow his perfect and beloved Son to suffer the excruciating death on the cross just so that we could claim to find our own way of salvation apart from Jesus.
There is one way of salvation, and that way goes through Jesus, Jesus crucified, Jesus risen, Jesus ascended and reigning, Jesus coming again to judge the world. And that way of salvation involves letting Jesus become the Supreme Commander of our lives.
For those of us who accept Jesus’ challenge, who let him be our Lord, he will also be our Savior. He will provide the covering of his righteousness while we continue to grow toward it. If we make a little mistake, he will cover it. If we make a big mistake, he will cover it. But he will cover our mistakes only so long as we are, by intentional act of our wills, heading toward the goal of doing his perfect will. If we are not heading toward his purposes, we have no claim to his promises.
The Basis by Which We Will Be Judged, and the Basis by Which We Will Be Saved
When God tears open the heavens to come to us in Jesus Christ, he comes to save us by grace. But, by offering grace to us, he inevitably calls us to decision. Either we will believe and repent or we will not. This is the foundation on which we will be judged for our eternal destiny: Did we believe the good news and turn to live by it?
“I did it my way,” will not be a satisfactory answer when we stand for final judgment before Jesus who gave himself for us so that we could have a better alternative than “my way.”
When we cry out to God, “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down!” his answer to that plea will require something of us. It will require that we let God be God, that we let God provide for our salvation, that we let God rule our lives, that we commit our lives to serving God’s redeeming mission.
When our desire for God to reign in our lives gets deep and true, when we start hungering and thirsting for righteousness, when we can no longer be satisfied by answers that are less than eternally valid, then big things can happen. It does not matter how much we have messed up to that point, God is ready to start over with us.
Today, as in the time of Isaiah and as in the time of Jesus, we people of God have wandered far from our spiritual and moral foundations. I point no fingers. I dare say that every Christian, left, right, and center, has been in some way led off the divine path by the tenor of our times. I dare say that God is not nearly so interested as we are in our left, right, and center. Our causes are going nowhere. God’s kingdom is the only thing that matters. God is interested in our trust and obedience.
When things go wrong in our spiritual lives and in our church lives, we can take two approaches to that: (1) We can try to get as quickly as possible back to doing things the way we always have done them. And there is some temporary balm in that. But you know the saying, sometimes credited to Albert Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.” Or (2) We can turn to the source of a better way. We can summon our courage and cry out to God, “Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and come down!”
The Need for Revival
What we need is a revival of the Spirit of God in our lives. For the most part, the great revivals that have swept the world in the past several centuries have not begun with the ordained ministers of the giant congregations of the time, but with ordinary people, often in out-of-the-way places: farmers, carpenters, coalminers, blacksmiths, plumbers, shoemakers, merchants, doctors, pharmacists, school teachers, housewives, college students, and the occasional obscure preacher, many of them in places I cannot pronounce. So far as I know, every major revival in human history has begun with a few hungry believers praying for God to take over in their lives.
There is no reason that a great revival could not begin right here and right now.
Revivals start when the Holy Spirit begins to prepare the ground in our souls for spring planting, when our hungering and thirsting for the righteousness of the reign of God becomes the driving force of our hearts, when we are ready to confess and repent before God, and to desire God above all else.
Revivals don’t start because we want a revival. They start because we want God with all we are and with all we have.
Do we not know that we need more wisdom, more truth, more love, and more power than we have? Do we not know that every one of us needs to go deeper in God’s Word, deeper in God’s Spirit? Do we not know that every one of us needs to draw our hope, our faith, and our love from God alone and not from some compromising mixture with the world’s values? Do we not know somewhere deep inside that we need a fresh start with God?
If that is what we know, then we have only one alternative to despair, and that alternative is to call for the divine gardener to begin preparing the ground of our souls for planting. Ah, when Jesus sows his seed in our souls, the harvest will be abundant.
Would you cry with me, “Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and come down”?
Get ready for the answer: “Ready or not, here I come!”
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