When the Glory of God Passes By — Carter Conlon

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Jesus Reads Isaiah in the Synagogue

Luke chapter 4, please.

The Glory of God Passing By

When the glory of God passes by. When the glory of God passes by. Luke chapter 4. Father, I stand before heaven this day. God, I have no other desire but to obey you and to honor your name and to see your kingdom come.

I'm asking you, Jesus, to animate me. I'm asking the Holy Spirit to give me the quickening and the empowerment that I need. Lord, that I would not be in any physical way mixed in with this message. But you would animate me, Holy Spirit.

I have to have your heart to deliver this. Jesus, it's got to be your emotion. I ask you for a supernatural empowerment to speak this. Father, I thank you, Lord, that out of the treasury you bring blessings and warnings.

Help us to have an open heart to hear the full counsel of God. I ask this in Jesus' name. Luke chapter 4, beginning at verse 16. This is when Jesus came into the temple. Now, you have to understand, this morning, he's coming into a religious system that is supposedly built around the worship of God.

Now, he is the God of this entire religious system. Now, this is, if you don't see it in this light, then you don't understand the fullness of what's really transpiring here. These are the people of God.

They are, as they see it, walking in obedience to the laws of Moses and the commands that they've been given. They have a zealousness for religion in the name of Jehovah God. Now, the Jehovah God of their religion is coming into their midst in physical form, and he stands to read the word of God, which, of course, is a testimony of himself.

Now, you would think, as I would this day, that there would be a shout of glory in this place. You would think that there would be a recognition in the hearts of the people. This is the one that we have longed for.

We've waited for him. He has come into our midst. You'd think there'd be an explosion of glory in the hearts of the people. Now, when I speak about glory, it has two definitions. In the Old Testament, it was the word kavod, which represented, for example, the glory of the Lord filled the temple, Solomon's temple.

And it's the weightiness of God. It's this undeniable expression of his presence. Even a stranger coming in couldn't deny the glory of God was there, this weightiness, as it is, of the presence of God.

And in the New Testament, it's the word doksa, which means that inner working of this weightiness of God, which produces, through the church of Jesus Christ, something which brings God himself to reputation.

Now, those are a lot of words. But really what it means is the glory is the life that only God can give to those that are his, whereby we become an expression of this supernatural life that has no beginning and has no end.

Where men who are living in darkness look as John the disciple. Of course, he didn't live in darkness, but he bore testimony in John chapter 1 and verse 14. He said, we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Now, John said, we saw in him an expression of life and of God that could only be born of God. Nobody had ever seen a man like this. Nobody had ever heard a man like this speak. You knew that you were in the presence of the divine to be in the presence of Jesus Christ.

Now, the same Christ walks into the temple in the midst of the religiousness of the day, the religion of its day, that has been built around his name. He stands up to read about himself. In chapter 4 and verse 17, it says, There was delivered to him, in Luke 4 .17, the book of the prophet Isaiah.

When he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, the recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty and to bring to freedom those that have been bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord, which means that the gates of heaven are now open, and whosoever will can come to him.

For all of these things that I've spoken to you about, that the gospel is coming and has a focus to those who are poor and impoverished, who are disenfranchised, who are living on the margins as it is of established society, who have no helper, I've come to them, and that's why the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

I've come to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to those that are captivated by the issues of their own heart as well as the issues of sin and darkness, to give spiritual sight to the blind, and to tell all who have been wounded that they can be released and set free.

And he closed the book in verse 20, and again he gave it to the minister and sat down, and the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. Now this is an extremely definitive moment.

These people have just heard from God like they've never heard from God in their entire religious existence. God has spoken. They've not heard about God, it's not been somebody reading about God, they've actually heard the voice of God.

Exactly the way their ancestors did on the mountain, and they trembled to hear the voice of God, now they have just heard God's voice in their own pulpit. And he began to say to them, this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

And they all bear him witness and wondered at his gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, is this not this Joseph's son? And he said to them, you will surely say to me this proverb, physician heal yourself, whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.

And he said, verily I say unto you that no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and when great famine was throughout all the land.

But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. Now he's saying there were many of those that were supposed to be God's people in this particular time of famine and drought.

But God went to a heart that was searching for him that was outside of the established religious order as it is of his day. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elias the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.

And all day in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath. Now folks, really, they should have brought these people to their knees. They should have been crying out at this point, oh God have mercy on us.

Lord don't pass us by. We recognize something of God that can only be of God in you. We're sensing something in our hearts. But instead they were filled with wrath. And they rose up and they thrust him out of the city and led him to the brow of the hill whereon their city was built that they might cast him down headlong.

Imagine the very God they're supposed to be worshiping and they want to take him and throw him off a hill. In verse 30 says,. But he passing through the midst of them went his way. Thanks be to God that the living God cannot be taken with human hands.

He cannot be fashioned, he cannot be formed into other than what he is. He cannot be captivated. He is forever and ever eternally self-existent God. Now the testimony of history, and even for those who once intimately knew him, is to develop a system of religious belief and practice with which the Lord himself can no longer be associated.

Walking in Agreement With God

Amos was a prophet of the Lord and, of course, in his day, the people had begun and moved into a great distance from the heart of God and the true worship of God. And the Lord said through Amos, now he's warning the people, he said there's a calamity coming as he did through the Old Testament prophets.

And he said to the people in chapter 3 and verse 3, Can two walk together except they be agreed? You say you worship me and you want to walk with me, but how can I walk with you if we're not in agreement?

And folks, we need to understand something this morning. We don't meet in a 50 -50 relationship with God. We don't bring our ideas of how we think he should think and be and what he should do. And then he meets us with his idea and then somehow we negotiate and arrive at a religiousness that is palatable to God and to man.

Well, that's what people have tried to do throughout the generations. But the Lord says, OK, try it if you want, but I won't walk with you. I won't. And when I truly speak to you, you're going to want to throw me off of a hill.

We've had people in this church halfway through the preaching would have done that if they had the chance to do that. John 1 .11 says he came unto his own and his own received him not. What a tragedy to be the people of God and have the voice of the Lord actually come and have but have decayed into such a religious thinking and practice that we can no longer hear his voice.

We no longer embrace his work. We no longer want to do the things that he said the Holy Spirit came upon him and subsequently upon his church to perform. Now, in Luke chapter four, verses 16 to 21, Jesus defined the work of God in its purest and simplest form.

This is the work of God. He came to redeem those that are lost. He came to go to those who have no helper and to bring them out of spiritual impoverishment and to bring them into the blessing of God. He sent me to heal.

He began to define the work of God. This is the very heart of God. This is the heart of the law. This is what everything that the people were serving and studying was leading to. But they were offended at this.

Imagine being in church today and being offended at the way that God chooses to present himself. But that's exactly the way that has been through history and I fear that in much of our generation it is repeating itself again.

Offended at the simplicity of Jesus Christ. They said, is this not Joseph's son? We have an image of God, but this man doesn't fit our image of God. He's a man who's come not to rule and reign and to be influential and powerful.

He seems to be lowly. He's got no incredible parentage in the physical sense that we can see. And here he is telling us that in effect that he is the Messiah. And they were offended at him. And many, many people are offended.

We're living in a church age that is offended by the blood of Jesus Christ. Offended by the cross of Jesus Christ. Offended by the concept that people do die and go to hell who choose not to live for God and the Son of God.

Offended at the cross and the claim that the cross of Jesus Christ rightly has on your life and on my life. Offended by this. And offended people, of course, they can't come out and say they're offended at God, so they have to develop a religion and they have to pursue this religion with an incredible zeal.

Folks, being zealous for church does not mean you truly even know God as your Lord and Savior. Who was leading these people? This is the question. Why could they not recognize the voice of God? Well, Jesus defined their leaders.

Jesus Condemns Exploitative Religious Leaders

Let me just share it with you briefly. Matthew 23, 14. He told the leaders of the people, You are those you devour the little that the poor has, and you offer them false hope, and you give them a sense that they are cared for through your long and pretended prayers.

Oh, doesn't that sound like a great lump of television evangelism today? Supposedly speaking in the name of Jesus, devouring the little that the widows have and the little that the poor have, giving them false hope, and then praying these long and supposedly sincere prayers for them.

In Matthew 23, 16, he talks about these leaders and he said, Your focus is gold. He said, You bring people in and you make them swear. You say, Oh, if you swear by the temple, that's nothing. Or the altar, that's nothing.

But if you swear by the gold that's on the altar, Oh, this is something. He said, Your whole focus is on gold and not the true glory of the temple. In Matthew 23, 5, He said, They were motivated by the desire to be glorified of men.

You're always making your garments longer. You're always putting on these extensions of piety as it is. You want people to see you go through the streets and walk down the corridors of the temple and you want them to look at you and stand back in awe as if some kind of a glory is upon you, when all it is is a man-made glory.

It's something that they longed for, they lusted for. They had no taste for the type of a Christ who would stand in the pulpit of that synagogue and read the words that we read this morning. In Matthew 23, 6 and 7, Jesus said, These are men who love positions of prominence.

They love high visibility among the people. They love titles and position and honor, which they confer upon themselves and they will do everything to get others to confer upon them. They love the chief of seats.

They love to be respected and honored. And they love it when people call them teacher. Teachers, they walk down the street. Jesus looked to these leaders. Now you've got to hear this today. I'm under a mandate of God to speak this message, folks.

I've struggled this week to put these words on paper and to deliver it. But one of the things that the pastors of this church pledged before God and before the people is that we would bring to you the full counsel of God.

We would speak to you the things that God is speaking. If I'm speaking in the Holy Ghost, there will be a witness in your heart that it is actually the Holy Spirit that has initiated this word. In Matthew 23, 33, speaking to these leaders.

Now this is Jesus. He's speaking to the leaders in the temple. And He says, You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? Now this is God. And God is speaking to the men who are leading His people.

The men who have led them to a place where they can no longer hear His voice. They do not embrace His work. They want absolutely nothing of the character of God. They have a glory that is strictly man-made.

It has to be propagated by the flesh. It has to be held up by the flesh. It has to be exalted in the flesh. God is not with it. When He walks into the midst of it, they want to take Him and cast Him from the brow of a hill.

And He says to the leaders, How will you escape the damnation of hell? If Jesus Christ was here in physical form today, He would be speaking this over and over and over again throughout much of what professes to be the New Testament church of Jesus Christ.

You've led the people to love gold. You've led the people to love flesh. You've led the people far, far away from the heart of God. You've led them into self-indulgence. You've taken away from them the very essence of the heart of God in ministry.

How will you escape the damnation of hell? This is the voice of God. Now in Deuteronomy chapter 7, I'll read it to you in verse 26. This was a word that the Lord gave to His people. Now He said, Neither will you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be a cursed thing like it, but thou shalt utterly detest it, thou shalt utterly abhor it, for it is a cursed thing.

Now hear me on this. Jesus said to these leaders, He cursed them. He basically said, There's no escape for you. You are going to hell. And every proselyte that you travel land and sea to make like yourself is going to hell with you.

You're not going into the kingdom of God. He says, And you don't suffer those that stumble across your path to enter the kingdom of God as well. It is indisputable that they were under a curse. The curse of God.

It can't get any clearer than that. Now Jesus says to His own people, Do not bring an abomination into your house. Do not turn on television that is an abomination. Even if it uses God's name. Do not bring it into your house.

Because you will become just like it. If these men are leading you to an altar of gold, if they are leading you into self-indulgence, you may think you can play with it. But folks, you can't play with the rattlesnake for very long.

Eventually you're going to be bitten. And the poison is going to get into your system. Get it out of your house. I feel a divine burden of God burning in my soul. For this church and for the Christian church in New York City, get this abomination out of your house.

Do not sit in front of these types of ministries. Do not give them access to your wives and your sons and daughters and your minds and your home. Get them out of your house. For it is a cursed thing. Now this type of ministry will lead you eventually to reject the voice of God.

Verily I say to you in chapter 4 verse 24 of Luke, that no prophet is accepted in his own country. It will lead you to reject God's voice. You'll sit here this morning, and you'll be able to endure what I have to say for 10 or 12 minutes, and you're out of here.

You cannot hear anymore the voice of God. I came here to feel good. I came here to find out that I'm going to get a bigger slice of the pie in the future. I didn't come here to hear this kind of a thing.

It's like the people in the temple that day. We didn't come here to hear about giving to the poor. We didn't come here to hear about healing the broken hearted, and being used of God to set the captives free, and that this was to be the essence as it is of our lives.

We didn't come here for this. We came here to get something. We came here because we have our eyes on these men that are leading us, and we want to be like they are. They appear to be successful. They appear to be prosperous.

They appear to be happy and powerful. They drive incredibly expensive cars. They live in the finest of places. But Jesus said they will not escape the damnation of hell. They do not have the heart of God at the center of what they're doing.

Warnings From Elijah and Ezekiel

These types of ministry will lead God's people to scoff at His warnings. He warned the people. He said there was a famine, and there were a lot of widows in what was supposed to be the borders of the people of God.

But the provision of God bypassed all of them, and went outside of these borders. He said there were many unclean, many lepers in Israel in the time of Elijah, the prophet Elisha, but none of them were cleansed, except an outsider who came in and pursued because he heard a word that could bring healing into his life.

And when Jesus began to speak these words, they became angry. And ministry that does not lead to the heart of Christ will cause your heart to become angry when it is truly God that is speaking. All they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and they rose up and thrust Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of a hill, that they might cast Him down headlong.

But He, passing through the midst of them, went His way. And the most tragic of all is to be unaware when the glory of God is passing you by. Oh folks, there's a lot of things that we could fear in life, but this to me is the greatest fear of all.

To be unaware that this weightiness, this very life that God promises me in Christ through the Holy Spirit, because I've been looking in directions that are not producing His heart and life within me, begin to pass me by.

I've seen Christian people, practicing Christian people all my life in ministry, that have gotten to the end or close to the end of their journey, and where they should have been accumulating more and more of this incredible glory, this weightiness of God, and changing from image to image.

By the Spirit of the Lord, they get to the end of the journey, and they're like an empty shell. There's nothing in them. And they sit in church, and they appear to be perplexed. How is it possible that I have been in Christ, as they think, all these years?

And I've sat under what they think was the gospel, and I've done what they thought was the will of the Lord, and come to the end of the years, and they're just absolutely empty, a sense that somehow they've missed something of God.

Oh, I pray that's not somebody's heart in this sanctuary today. In Ezekiel's day, there were signs of imminent judgment abounding, yet many, many of God's own people were blind to it. I'll show you why, if you'll go to Ezekiel chapter 11, please, in the Old Testament.

Just as in our day. Oh, beloved, I would just love to stand in this pulpit, because I love the excitement in the house of God. I love to jump and dance and clap my hands. But I'm telling you, there's something on the horizon.

I would be a false shepherd if I didn't warn you, if I didn't bring you the full counsel of God. Now, I don't know what it is. But you must know, if you have the Spirit of God, you have an inner stirring, that in a moment of time, everything that we once knew could change.

In the temple that day, they were not aware that not too long down the road, the Roman Empire was going to come in and just absolutely decimate everything that they had trusted in. In Ezekiel's day, there had already been a history of judgment in a portion of the divided land of Israel.

But the people were so hardened in religious deception. They had sat so long under the influence of false teachers that they simply were unwilling to even think that there might be something coming their way where they're going to need a firm foundation.

They're going to need to be able to walk in truth. They're not going to be able to get through it. In Ezekiel 11, verses 2 and 3, he tells us they were under the influence of those that taught endless prosperity and scorned judgment.

Then he said unto me, Son of man, these are the men that devise mischief and give wicked counsel in this city, which say it is not near. Let us build houses. The city is the cauldron, and we be the flesh.

Here they are teaching the people. These are people who are on the brink of a very difficult season. And these men are standing and saying, No, no, the season is not near. There's endless prosperity ahead of us.

Let's just arise and let's get gain unto ourselves. Their focus in verse 6 was ensuring disaster and bringing no deliverance to the city. He says you've multiplied your slain in this city, and you have filled the streets thereof with the slain.

Remember that the work of Christ is to open prison doors and to preach the gospel to the poor. The work of Christ is for you and I to get to know His heart and to let His life be lived in us. That puts in us a shout of His glory.

An awareness comes into the life of a true believer by all those around who live in darkness that there is something supernatural happening here. You could not have this confidence in the midst of this disaster or this situation we're living in unless you had somebody living inside of you carrying you.

There's an awareness that comes. The focus was ensuring disaster and bringing no deliverance. And in verse 12, He says, You shall know that I am the Lord. You've not walked in My statutes. You've not executed My judgments.

But you've done after the manner of the heathen that are around about you. In other words, the pursuit is no different of the people of God at this time than the whole of society that was perishing around them.

Oh, God forbid. God forbid in this church and in this late hour that we should be found pursuing the same things as a perishing society around us. If ever there's a time that we should be seeking God, it's now.

If ever there was a time that we should be saying, Holy Spirit, speak to me, it's now. If ever there was a time that we should be saying, God, use my life as a key to prison doors. Use me as an eyesalve for the blind.

Use me, oh God. Give me words. Give me tenderness. Give me this compassion of Christ that can bring healing to those that have been wounded in heart in our society. If ever there was a time, it's now to be seeking God.

If ever there was a time throughout any course of history, because, beloved, we are a generation that may see the return of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In Ezekiel 13, I'm just going to summarize it very quickly for you.

False Prophets and the Battle to Come

The Lord speaks to the foolish prophets. In verse 3, He says, Thus saith the Lord God, Woe to you foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing. He said, You've gone up into the gaps.

Verse 5, You've not gone into the gaps. You've neither made the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. You've not prepared the people for the battle that's coming.

That's what He says to them. You've been like foxes in the desert. You travel around these dry places looking simply to satisfy the needs of your own belly. You've seen vanity. Verse 6, In lying divination, you say the Lord says and the Lord has not sent them.

And you've made others to hope that they would confirm the word. Verse 9, He says, My hand will be on these prophets that see vanity, the divine lies. They shall not be in the assembly of My people. Neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel.

Neither shall they enter into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord God. God says, I'm going to set My hand against these prophets. They're going to grope at noonday like blind men.

You're going to live to see it. Because they have seduced My people, saying peace when there was no peace. They've built a wall. One built it and others daubed it with untempered mortar. They build upon each other's errors.

One preaches a lie. The next one picks it up and adds a dimension to it. The next one picks it up and adds a dimension to it. None of them hear from God. They build this place that is supposed to be a safe dwelling for the people of God.

You've seduced My people. In verse 11, He said, I'm going to send a stormy wind that is going to rend your wall. And when the wall is fallen, Verse 12, Shall it not be said unto you, Where is the daubing wherewith you have daubed it?

Where is the gospel? There's a day coming in America when God's people and people in general are going to stand up against these liars that have stood in pulpits throughout this country and say, where is the wall you promised us would protect us from the storm?

Where is this protection? Where is this place of dwelling that you talked so lovingly about? Verse 14, He says, The foundation thereof, halfway through the verse, shall be discovered. It shall fall, and you will be consumed in the midst of it, and you will know that I am the Lord.

Verse 22, Because with lies you've made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I've not made sad. You strengthen the hands of the wicked, that he should not turn from his wicked way by promising him life.

Therefore, you shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations. For I will deliver my people out of your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord. I will deliver my people out of your hand. Folks, a deliverance is coming.

God has risen up and finally has said again in our generation, enough. Enough liars leading the flock of Jesus Christ. Enough self-consumed people leading the flock of Jesus Christ. I am going to deliver my people out of your hand.

When the Glory Withdraws

Now you ask me, how is it going to happen? Well, in Ezekiel's day, the glory of the Lord just simply lifted and withdrew. It was a gradual and a reluctant departing, but he left his own temple and he left his own city, and very few were even aware of it.

You see him in Ezekiel at the threshold, and then lifted up on the third, it's called the cherubim, throne chariot, moving to the east gate and finally to the Mount of Olives. In the day of Jesus Christ, we also see him after this season, we talked about in Luke chapter 4 and verse 18, leaving the temple.

O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, he said, you who kill the prophets that are sent to you, how often I would have gathered you under my wing as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not come. He said, your house is left to you desolate, and you'll not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, until you want to hear my voice, until it's my life that you want within you.

We see him just as the Holy Spirit did in the day of Ezekiel, going to an upper room where he prepared a banquet with his disciples in that last moment of his life. We see him leaving and going to the Mount of Olives, and then lastly at Calvary, where the people who had once been his own cried, give us a thief and a murderer, crucify this Christ.

He said, when he stood up in Luke 4 .18, there's a proverb you're going to say to me. You're going to say, physician, heal yourself. And at the cross, that's exactly what they said. He saved others himself he cannot save.

Let him come down now from the cross if he be the son of God. Physician, in other words, heal yourself. Now, in the book of Ezekiel, chapter nine, go with there with me, please. I hope you've not found this too hard.

Ezekiel chapter nine, verse two, he said, and behold, six men came from the way of the higher gate, which lies towards the north and every man a slaughter weapon in his hand. And one man among them was clothed with linen and had a writer's inkorn by his side.

And they went in and stood beside the brazen altar. And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub whereupon he was to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed with the linen, which had the writer's inkorn by his side.

And the Lord said to him, go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark on the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.

God Meets Those Who Sigh and Cry

I do believe with all my heart, this are the people to whom God is going to reveal himself in this last hour of time, who just simply are grieved at what is being done to the name of Jesus, are grieved at the way society is living without God, are grieved that so little deliverance is coming to people that Christ desperately loves.

They're simply grieved. They're not spiritual giants. They're people who get on the bus after they've finished at the office for a day's work. They sit down, they look around, they see youth coming on, they're angry.

They think of the way that the interactions have been among the people. They hear the filthy, vile talk that's going on in the marketplace today. They look up at an advertisement or they see a paper sitting on a seat talking about another state ratifying, changing the definition of the family and calling evil good and calling good evil.