By Pastor Pedro Montoya
May the peace of the Lord be with you and your household. I give thanks to the eternal God, the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth for this time He permits us in His grace and mercy to establish the counsel of His Word.
Introduction: Do We Really Know God?
We have been commissioned by the Spirit of God to establish teaching about who the God is that each of us serves. Who is the God whose name we invoke? The Spirit of God testifies that not all of us know the Lord. Many have references, but not real knowledge of who the Lord is, of who the God is that we are serving.
The commission that the Spirit of God has given us is that each of us learn to know, to understand who the God is that we are serving.
The Divine Diagnosis: A People of Lips
In the book of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 29, verse 13, we find a word that we have read on more than one occasion:
“Therefore the Lord says: Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me, and their fear of Me is a commandment taught by men.”
This same word we find in the gospels, proclaimed again by the mouth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is not only written in the Old Testament but was confirmed by the Lord Jesus Himself.
The question that arises is: How is it possible that the people of God—a people who know, who invoke, who study the Holy Scriptures, a people taught from very young, from childhood—can reach this condition? How can a people knowledgeable of the Word fall into this situation?
If you read verse 13 again, you realize there is a condition of spiritual deterioration. This is not a people living in open sin or in the vanity of their mind like a Gentile people. This is a people who know, who understand, who are knowledgeable. But how do they come to draw near with their mouth and honor with their lips, yet have their heart far from God?
Two Paths to Alienation
There are two ways a people or a person can reach this condition:
First Path: Premeditated Alienation
The first is premeditated, meaning the person has determined to distance themselves from God, to live in appearance before others. To invoke, confess, proclaim, even testify, but having decided to live far from God.
Second Path: Instructed Ignorance
There is another way I want to focus on: a second way is because they don’t know, because they are ignorant, because they were not instructed, because they were not taught about it. “I didn’t know it had to be done that way. I didn’t understand, they never taught me, they never told me it had to be this way.”
The last part of the verse confirms this: “And their fear of Me is a commandment taught by men.”
What does this mean? That they were living a theoretical gospel, they were following theoretical but not experiential teachings. They were instructed, yes; they had much knowledge, yes; but there was no experience whatsoever, simply only theory.
When a person is walking in vague knowledge, in vain knowledge, in superficial knowledge, they can fall into this situation: a people who confess, who worship, who honor, but only with their lips, with their heart far away, walking far from God.
The Problem of Knowledge Without Experience
In Isaiah chapter 5, verse 13, we find a text many of us have heard on more than one occasion:
“Therefore my people go into exile for lack of knowledge; their honored men are dying of hunger, and their multitude is parched with thirst.”
Why were they taken captive? Why did they end up in a deplorable condition? Despite having walked in the ways of the Lord, they ended up in a deplorable condition because they lacked knowledge.
But what knowledge? If it clearly says in the last part of verse 13 of Isaiah 29 that “their fear of Me is a commandment taught by men.”
This is fundamental: each of us, men and women of God who are seeking to walk in the grace and mercy of the Lord, must understand that the life of faith does not consist of knowledge. The life of faith is not accumulating knowledge, even—hear this well—even if it is of God. It does not consist of having knowledge; it consists of living experience with the Spirit of God.
Intimate Communion with God
In Psalm 25, verse 14, the Lord, through the mouth of the psalmist David, expresses: “The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant.”
Intimate communion, revelation, the experience that man and woman can develop with the Lord only comes through intimacy with the Lord, not through knowledge.
In these last times we are living upon the face of the earth, knowledge is being emphasized above all else. This does not align with what the Holy Scriptures establish, because it is not knowledge, it is the experience that each of us can develop.
In Jeremiah chapter 17, verses 9 and 10, we find:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
It is not knowledge that will lead us to intimate communion with the Lord. It is not theoretical knowledge, not academic knowledge. It is intimate communion, it is the revelation of God established without hindrances, without obstacles, without excuses. It is doing what the Lord wants each of us to do.
Three Demands to Avoid Alienation
In this chapter 29 of Isaiah, we will study three demands that the Lord presents to us, precisely to guard us from falling into the condition of verse 13.
First Demand: Understanding the Times of God’s Visitation
Verse 6 says: “You will be visited by the Lord of hosts with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest and the flame of devouring fire.”
It is important that each of us understand the times of God’s visitation. This is where the difference begins between a spiritually prosperous life and a spiritually declining life.
Today, the vast majority of us have deficient concepts of what God’s visitation is. Many of us have believed that God’s visitation is measured by commotion. Many have believed that God’s visitation manifests through signs, miracles, supernatural things for our benefit that happen around us.
If the situation favors me, then we say it is God’s visitation. But what happens when the situation doesn’t favor us? Many see it as an attack from Satan.
Let us read verse 6 again: “You will be visited by the Lord of hosts—hear this well—with thunder, with earthquake, with great noise, with whirlwind, and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.” This is God’s visitation.
The Example of Mount Sinai
What happened when the people of Israel left Egypt and settled at the foot of Mount Horeb Sinai? God told Moses: “Tell the people to prepare themselves; after three days I will present Myself before them.”
Indeed, on the third day the Lord descended in a flame of fire, with thunderous sound, with thunder, with clouds around the summit of the mountain, and a loud noise that the Word says kept increasing.
What was the people’s reaction? The people’s reaction was to distance themselves. Why? Because they saw in that manifestation something that frightened them, something that drove them away. This too is visitation from God.
Redefining Divine Visitation
Visitation from God is not only times of economic prosperity. It is not only times when things turn out as we had thought and planned. God’s times of visitation are not only those in which I find pleasure, satisfaction, and rejoicing.
Do you remember when the Lord Jesus was transfigured in the presence of Peter, John, and James? Peter’s expression was: “Lord, let us stay here, let us make three tabernacles.” Many have as their only definition of visitation precisely these events.
In the book of the prophet Joel, chapter 1, verse 15, we read: “Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.” This too is visitation.
Visitation in the Midst of Adversity
Why can’t we develop intimate communion with the Lord? Why have we fallen into such a deteriorated spiritual condition as honoring God with our lips but having our heart far away? Because we have not known the times of God’s visitation.
Our concepts of visitation are that everything goes well for me, that I prosper in everything, that I am blessed in everything. We are practically saying that I am the center, that I stand out, that I fulfill myself, that I obtain everything I am asking for.
But when things don’t turn out as we want, when situations become so strong and deteriorating that we say “I can’t take it anymore,” that too is visitation from God.
The Case of Job
Let’s look at the case of Job. Forty-two chapters where Job loses his estate, loses his children, loses his employees, loses his properties, loses absolutely everything. The Word says Job was extremely well-known throughout the town. This means he also lost his friends. Of all his friends, only three remained at the end, and unfortunately much of what they said to Job deteriorated his condition even more.
That too is visitation from God. But that is the part that the vast majority of us don’t want. That is the part that many times when it comes to our lives we rebuke, because we believe it comes from Satan.
The Purpose of Adverse Visitation
The times of God’s visitation are precisely—hear well—to awaken us from a condition of slumber. Now you understand why God visits with thunder, with earthquakes, with noise, with whirlwind and tempest and flame of fire. Because He seeks to awaken us, because He seeks to remove that condition of idleness into which we have fallen, because He seeks to make us understand who the God is that we serve.
In chapter 5 of the book of Acts of the Apostles, a scenario is narrated in which the apostles Peter and John had been arrested by the Council, they had been intimidated and mistreated. When they return to their own to tell them everything that had happened to them, they arrived joyful.
The text says they prayed to the Lord and there was an earthquake precisely when they were praying. God’s visitation. But who and how many of us want, at a moment of God’s manifestation, to go through an earthquake? I can tell you: none.
Why? Because we have deficient concepts of what visitation from God is. We have believed that a visitation is only commotion, only praise, only songs, only music, only a supernatural manifestation. It is a deficient concept that they instilled in us or that we learned.
But God’s visitation is also things that don’t go very much in our favor. Do you know why? Because there is something we must understand regarding God’s manifestation: God does as He wills. It is not according to our appreciation or according to our delight. God does as He wills.
Jesus’s Confrontation
The gospel of John narrates the moment when Jesus confronted all His followers—thousands of them, not disciples but followers—with a strong and confrontational word: “You are following Me for the food I am giving you daily.”
A strong word. Who wants to receive it? No one. They did not know the day of visitation. Because we want a pat on the shoulder, because we want a motivating word, because we want an expression of approval.
God does as He wills, and He does it precisely because He knows what is in each of our hearts. Jeremiah 17:9-10 confirms it: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, who search the heart and test the mind.”
In the original version it says: “I, the Lord, who search and examine the heart and mind to give each one his way according to the fruit of his deeds.”
God does as He wills, precisely to straighten things out. It is not for man to order his steps, but for the Lord who weighs man’s paths.
First demand: understand and know the times of God’s visitation.
Second Demand: Recognizing That One Has Fallen Under God’s Judgment
Verse 10 says: “For the Lord has poured out on you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes; He has covered your prophets, and your principal seers.”
How is it possible that it is God who poured out a spirit of deep sleep? When it speaks of a spirit of sleep, it is speaking of spiritual sleep. The person fell into spiritual lethargy, fell into spiritual decline. They read and don’t understand, they pray and don’t know what to pray. The person’s condition has come from God.
The Word says it clearly: “He has closed your eyes and covered your prophets and your principal seers.” What does this mean? That it is as if the heavens had closed. I have no manifestation of God, no word from God, no answer from God. I am praying, but I don’t see results nor do I hear God.
It is a judgment from God. Yes, the person entered into judgment.
The Contemporary Rejection of Divine Judgments
This is knowledge that today in the contemporary gospel many reject. “No, impossible, that cannot be from God. Moreover, if we were reading this same verse, those same people would say: ‘No, that was for the Old Testament, that was for the people of Israel, but that is not for us.’”
Do you know why? Because unfortunately, within the definitions that many of us have today, we are selective. “Not this, because it comes from the Old Testament. Not this, because it is for the people of Israel. Not this, because God is love, because God is mercy.”
Many of us are walking under selective concepts, and this is causing great harm to God’s people, because they are not growing.
The Way Out of Divine Judgment
What happens if a man or woman enters God’s judgment? Recognize, admit: “Lord, I did not understand Your times of visitation.” Because precisely that is why God’s judgments come: because you did not understand God’s visitation.
When Jesus, in the last week of His earthly ministry, entered Jerusalem, the Word says in the gospel of Luke that Jesus addressed Jerusalem and said: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” And He said something more: “Because you did not know the day of your visitation, ruin and destruction will come upon you.”
When a man or woman does not know the times of visitation, they fall almost instantly into God’s judgment. God closes. It says it clearly: “For the Lord has poured out on you a spirit of deep sleep; He has closed your eyes, covered your prophets and your principal seers.”
The Key to Exit Judgment
What is God waiting for so that He will open again? That we recognize: “Lord, it was I, I and only I. It is not the church to which I belong, it is not their fault. It is that I, Lord, I did not understand, and I come before You.”
The psalmist David said it, because he went through these experiences: “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? He who has clean hands, the contrite and humble in spirit. Lord, You will not despise.”
We have then the key to exit that state: contrite and humble in spirit.
“Lord, I come before You. I did not understand the times of visitation. You spoke to me through that accident, but I did not understand. You were speaking to me through that illness I went through, where I almost died, but I did not understand, Lord. You spoke to me through the loss of that family member, but I did not understand. In fact, I resented You.
“Why? Because You were acting. I saw others prospering, I saw others growing. But look what is happening to me. And I resented You and distanced myself. I did not understand, Lord. How many times did You send that person to tell me I was walking on the wrong path, but I did not understand that was visitation too.”
God’s Disciplinary Love
It is important that the man and woman of God understand that God disciplines the one He loves. That God will not hold guiltless the one who has taken His name in vain. It is written in the Word.
We cannot live an accommodating gospel. We cannot live a selective gospel. “Only promises, only promises, tell me more promises, speak to me of promises.”
Adverse things are also visitation.
In the gospel according to Matthew, chapter 7, we find the words of Jesus: “I will compare the one who hears these words and does them to one who built a house on the rock.” And observe something very important: “The rain came, the winds blew, the currents beat against that house, but it did not fall.”
Adverse things are also visitation from God. This is important for each of us to understand.
Questions for Reflection
How many times has God visited you? To answer that question, let us not look only for the time when everything is going well for you at work, the time when you were prospering. It is necessary that each of us understand the gospel of the Kingdom of heaven.
They did not know they had fallen under judgment from God. Because many times, we almost always classify adverse things as an attack from Satan, as oppression from Satan, and many end up rebuking when in reality it is God who is speaking to us and instructing us as to why we are in the condition we are in.
Second demand: recognize that one has fallen under God’s judgment.
Third Demand: Stop Hiding Our Works
Verse 15 says: “Woe to those who deeply hide their counsel from the Lord, and whose works are in the dark and who say, ‘Who sees us?’ and ‘Who knows us?’”
They became accustomed to walking while hiding their works. They became accustomed to walking in silences, in pacts of silence.
How many people have failed before the presence of the Lord? How many people have sinned? How many of us have gone out of God’s will? I am speaking, of course, of men and women of God.
How many people have gone out of what God wanted? God told us, but we went another way. How many people have acted like the prophet Jonah?
“That man is me, I sinned. I sinned, Lord.” How many people? But what do we do? We hide it, we suppress it. “Let no one find out. Better if no one finds out. Me and God, me and God.”
The Warning to David
God told David something that is important for us to understand: “Because you did it in secret, your enemies will do it in broad daylight.”
When we become accustomed to hiding things:
- We are not giving God the opportunity to heal us
- We are not giving God the opportunity to liberate us
- We are not giving God the opportunity to work with our lives
- We are not giving God room
On the contrary, we are distancing ourselves from God.
Do you understand now why? “This people draw near with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me, and their fear of Me is a commandment taught by men.”
Because they became accustomed to walking hiding everything. They became accustomed to walking forgetting everything, because many have the idea that if I forget it, if I don’t remember it, it passed, it’s over, that’s dead.
What Is Hidden Has Life
Many of us walk that way, and I have to tell you: no. Because hidden things have life, they have life. Although they are hidden and although they are forgotten, it does not mean they disappeared. They are alive, and there will come a moment when that will come to us by surprise to shame us in public.
That is why it is important that we understand that we cannot walk hiding it. “No one found out. I already asked God for forgiveness”—which by the way, that is part of a religious doctrine, part of Catholicism that was established since the Middle Ages; it is not what the Word of the Lord establishes.
If we come to Christ Jesus, if we don’t hide things, if we come and present ourselves before Him and confess things, He is faithful and just to liberate us and forgive us.
Paul’s Exhortation
In the epistle of the apostle Paul to the Ephesians, the apostle, by the Spirit of God, clearly says that we should not be accomplices with darkness, referring precisely to this: not to hide, but to bring out.
In Ephesians chapter 5, verse 11 it says: “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.”
Observe verse 13: “But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light. For whatever makes manifest is light.”
Let us not become accustomed to walking covering things up. Because what we are provoking, what we are building, is that at the end of our life, at the end of our days, we will have become a man or woman who draws near with their mouth and honors with their lips, but with a heart completely distant from God.
Crucial Questions
Why, if I know I have to do things, don’t I do them? Why, if I have been instructed in what I have to do, do I end up doing what I don’t want to do? Why?
Questions that many times are on the lips of men and women of God. Why? Because you became accustomed to covering up everything, to walking in appearance, because what people say has mattered more to us than what God says.
That is not a life of faith, that is not life in the Spirit.
“Yes, but I did that before coming to Christ Jesus.” With this what we want to say is that doesn’t matter. We act as patients and we act as doctors at the same time. Is that what God said, or is that what we say?
Many of us walk by what people say. What people say matters to us, what others think matters to us, but what God thinks about us doesn’t matter to us.
There it is. We have unfortunately fallen into drawing near to God and praising Him and worshiping Him and singing songs and I can even quote Bible texts from memory. Yes, but in your heart you distanced yourself from God.
The True Purpose
The purpose is not what we know, what we understand. The purpose is that God may have pleasure in our lives.
May it not happen that one day we present ourselves as in Matthew chapter 7, verse 21: “Lord, Lord, but if in Your name we did many miracles, we spoke in new tongues. Lord, we cast out demons.” And the response is: “Depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness, for I never knew you.”
Why? Because we became accustomed to drawing near with our mouth and honoring with our mouth, but far in our heart from God.
That is not life, that is not a life of faith, that is a deceitful life. “The heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it? There are ways that seem right to a man, but their end is the way of death.”
Accepting God’s Judgments
The Lord is speaking to us, the Lord is correcting us. Because we did not know the time of God’s visitation, because we did not understand that we fell under God’s judgment.
There are many people who do not accept this about God’s judgments. “Impossible, God is love. The God of the Old Testament is practically different from the God of the New Testament. God has come to love us.” And we emphasize the second, third, fourth chance of God.
But we do not understand that many times the processes are God’s judgments, and we don’t exit God’s judgments because we hold on: “No, this cannot be from God. This does not come from God.”
I have to tell you that in First Peter, chapter 4, verse 17, the Spirit of God, through the mouth of the apostle Peter, established and said: “For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God.”
Judgments are establishments from God to re-establish the processes of revelation.
Third demand: stop walking hiding everything, pleasing men, seeking men’s approval, caring only about what others think, what others say, but not caring about what God says and what God thinks.
A New Beginning
We are beginning a new annual cycle, year 2026. Many people have started with great enthusiasm, as new years always begin, with many resolutions: “This year I’m going to do this, this year this other thing, this year has to be different, it’s going to be different.” And some propose it as if we governed all things.
It is not for man to order his path, but for God.
With many resolutions, and many of us have not even considered what God wants. What does God want? We want many things, but we have not thought about what God wants from our lives.
It turns out that years pass and we are not growing, but quite the contrary: we are increasingly distancing ourselves from God.
See how chapter 29 begins:
“Woe to Ariel, the city where David dwelt! Add year to year; let feasts come around. Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be heaviness and sorrow, and it shall be to Me as Ariel.”
What does God think? Have you asked yourself what God wants from this year? What does God demand from you this year? Have you asked yourself, or don’t we care?
Conclusion
The life of man, the life of woman does not consist of what we do, nor what we gain—to use a text from the biblical Word—nor what we accumulate. It consists of our names being written in the book of life. In that consists life, life in God.
Therefore, as we begin this new cycle of teaching, of training, let us be careful that verse 13 not apply to our lives. Let us be careful that I draw near with my mouth and honor God with my lips, but that my heart is far from God.
Let us be careful that this verse not be fulfilled in our lives, because it would be sad and regrettable wasted time, for which God in His time would confront us, and the defeat would be great.
Closing Prayer:
Eternal God, our Father who is in heaven, I invoke my Lord Your name, Your grace and Your mercy upon Your people, upon whom Your name is invoked, O God. So that this new time, new cycle, Lord, each of us may come: I want to be taught, I want to be instructed, I want to be corrected, I want to walk in grace, in mercy, I want to walk in the will of God. So be it.
Next week we will establish teaching about the judgments of God, because it is important that we understand this topic.
May the peace of the Lord be with you and your household. Amen.
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