Look upon Us

July 13

“Thus says the Lord: Heaven is My throne and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build for Me? Where is the place of My rest? For all those things My hand has made, and all those things exist by My hand, says the Lord. Yet, on this one thing will I look—on him who is of a poor and contrite spirit, on him who trembles at My word,” Isaiah 66:1, 2.

In a spirit of humor a preacher once said, “God’s eyebrows never go up.” We can’t take Him by surprise, neither can we impress Him by our exploits or our achievements. We can’t ‘out-smart’ Him. There is literally nothing we can do that goes beyond what He knows of us, but this passage in Isaiah tells us something regarding man that does touch Him.

The Holy One who claims Heaven as His throne and earth as His footstool is touched by our humility. The term “poor in spirit” conveys an unassuming attitude that does not attribute ones successes or accolades to himself but to the graciousness of God who gives all gifts to men as He chooses.
The man who is of a contrite spirit further recognizes his own culpability before our Righteous God and lays his faults, his foibles, his failures before Him with thanksgiving and praise that a Savior has come to wash away all forsaken sin. As Psalm 51:2 says, "Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin."

Only the man who “trembles” at the truth which is eternal has the capacity to turn to Jesus as Savior and Lord. Only the man who understands the great gulf between himself and a Holy God can fathom the meaning of the words of Paul in I Corinthians 15:50, “I declare to you, brothers and sisters that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, nor can the perishable inherit the imperishable.”

Until the light of the Gospel of Truth that reveals Christ in His glory shines upon us, we remain blinded by the god of this age (see II Corinthians 4:4). As long as we desire our sin more than we desire the salvation that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection has supplied, we remain “dead in trespasses and sins,” Ephesians 2:1.

But once His Holy Spirit comes to us to “teach us all things,” according to John 14:26, and as Jesus said again in John 16:13, “He, the Spirit of truth, will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; He will speak only what He has been given, and He will tell you what is yet to come.”

Girded by God’s revealed truth, fallen man, arrogant man, deluded man may come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Fallen man, arrogant man, deluded man may become humble man who falls at the feet of the Savior in praise and thanksgiving for the washing away of his sin in the cleansing blood of the Lamb.

In the words of the old hymn by Elisha Hoffman:

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you walking daily by the Savior’s side?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Do you rest each moment in the Crucified?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Will your soul be ready for the mansions bright,
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin,
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb;
There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean,
O be washed in the blood of the Lamb!

O, Jesus! Help us to overcome our natural proclivity to pride and arrogance and blatant sin in order that we may be among those who are of a poor and contrite spirit, who tremble at Your word and receive Your grace. Let salvation be our portion, for Jesus has paid the incalculable price to give us Your “unspeakable gift,” II Corinthians 9:15. Look upon us with mercy and grace and forgiveness as we bow before You, O holy and righteous God!