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Isaiah 1-2
Skip Heitzig

Isaiah 1 (NKJV™)
1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! For the LORD has spoken: "I have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against Me;
3 The ox knows its owner And the donkey its master's crib; But Israel does not know, My people do not consider."
4 Alas, sinful nation, A people laden with iniquity, A brood of evildoers, Children who are corrupters! They have forsaken the LORD, They have provoked to anger The Holy One of Israel, They have turned away backward.
5 Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, And the whole heart faints.
6 From the sole of the foot even to the head, There is no soundness in it, But wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; They have not been closed or bound up, Or soothed with ointment.
7 Your country is desolate, Your cities are burned with fire; Strangers devour your land in your presence; And it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
8 So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, As a hut in a garden of cucumbers, As a besieged city.
9 Unless the LORD of hosts Had left to us a very small remnant, We would have become like Sodom, We would have been made like Gomorrah.
10 Hear the word of the LORD, You rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the law of our God, You people of Gomorrah:
11 "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?" Says the LORD. "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats.
12 "When you come to appear before Me, Who has required this from your hand, To trample My courts?
13 Bring no more futile sacrifices; Incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies--I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting.
14 Your New Moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; They are a trouble to Me, I am weary of bearing them.
15 When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.
16 "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil,
17 Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow.
18 "Come now, and let us reason together," Says the LORD, "Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land;
20 But if you refuse and rebel, You shall be devoured by the sword"; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
21 How the faithful city has become a harlot! It was full of justice; Righteousness lodged in it, But now murderers.
22 Your silver has become dross, Your wine mixed with water.
23 Your princes are rebellious, And companions of thieves; Everyone loves bribes, And follows after rewards. They do not defend the fatherless, Nor does the cause of the widow come before them.
24 Therefore the Lord says, The LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, "Ah, I will rid Myself of My adversaries, And take vengeance on My enemies.
25 I will turn My hand against you, And thoroughly purge away your dross, And take away all your alloy.
26 I will restore your judges as at the first, And your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city."
27 Zion shall be redeemed with justice, And her penitents with righteousness.
28 The destruction of transgressors and of sinners shall be together, And those who forsake the LORD shall be consumed.
29 For they shall be ashamed of the terebinth trees Which you have desired; And you shall be embarrassed because of the gardens Which you have chosen.
30 For you shall be as a terebinth whose leaf fades, And as a garden that has no water.
31 The strong shall be as tinder, And the work of it as a spark; Both will burn together, And no one shall quench them.
Isaiah 2 (NKJV™)
1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 Now it shall come to pass in the latter days That the mountain of the LORD'S house Shall be established on the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow to it.
3 Many people shall come and say, "Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths." For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
4 He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore.
5 O house of Jacob, come and let us walk In the light of the LORD.
6 For You have forsaken Your people, the house of Jacob, Because they are filled with eastern ways; They are soothsayers like the Philistines, And they are pleased with the children of foreigners.
7 Their land is also full of silver and gold, And there is no end to their treasures; Their land is also full of horses, And there is no end to their chariots.
8 Their land is also full of idols; They worship the work of their own hands, That which their own fingers have made.
9 People bow down, And each man humbles himself; Therefore do not forgive them.
10 Enter into the rock, and hide in the dust, From the terror of the LORD And the glory of His majesty.
11 The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, The haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, And the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.
12 For the day of the LORD of hosts Shall come upon everything proud and lofty, Upon everything lifted up--And it shall be brought low--
13 Upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, And upon all the oaks of Bashan;
14 Upon all the high mountains, And upon all the hills that are lifted up;
15 Upon every high tower, And upon every fortified wall;
16 Upon all the ships of Tarshish, And upon all the beautiful sloops.
17 The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, And the haughtiness of men shall be brought low; The LORD alone will be exalted in that day,
18 But the idols He shall utterly abolish.
19 They shall go into the holes of the rocks, And into the caves of the earth, From the terror of the LORD And the glory of His majesty, When He arises to shake the earth mightily.
20 In that day a man will cast away his idols of silver And his idols of gold, Which they made, each for himself to worship, To the moles and bats,
21 To go into the clefts of the rocks, And into the crags of the rugged rocks, From the terror of the LORD And the glory of His majesty, When He arises to shake the earth mightily.
22 Sever yourselves from such a man, Whose breath is in his nostrils; For of what account is he?

New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.

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23 Isaiah - 1990

Isaiah is perhaps the best known of the prophets, and he was frequently quoted by Jesus Christ. Pastor Skip Heitzig guides us through this study of Isaiah's warning to the people of God.

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Have a seat, por favor. Turn to Isaiah Chapter 1. Isaiah is a rather long book-- 66 chapters. Because of that, we're going to skip a lot of it. We're going to do highlights of it. We're not going to do every single verse and expound on every verse.
There are certain chapters that I think bear closer looking at than others. I know it's all important. That's why I encourage you to read it on your own. Meditate on it during the day on your own. In fact, you might want to make Isaiah part of your quiet time in the next couple months or so, depending how long we go through it.
But the first five chapters, I think, bear pretty close looking at. We'll try to get through five of them tonight. And, now, don't look at me that way.
[LAUGHTER]
Isaiah is the best-known of the prophetic books. As I mentioned even in our prayer, that Isaiah is quoted more often than any other prophet. Paul quoted him. Jesus quoted him. And he is used very frequently. And he is the most famous of all the prophets.
He is first in the Book of the Prophets. Isaiah is the first prophet that we read, not because he's in chronology the earliest or the most important, but because he has the biggest book. And so those with the bigger books are called major prophets. Those with the smaller books are called minor prophets.
Did I say something wrong? Oh. OK. Well, somebody was laughing, and I thought I did something wrong. I didn't get your joke. I'm sorry.
The Old Testament is divided up into three sections-- the Torah, which means the law, and then this section, called the Nevi'im which are the prophets, and then finally, the writings, the scrolls and the like, which are called the Ketuvim. Isaiah is our American pronunciation, and it's actually the wrong pronunciation.
His name should be pronounced, in its Hebrew, [HEBREW]. And if you wanted to give it a true Hebrew pronunciation, it would be [HEBREW], the Prophet Isaiah. That's how the Hebrews referred to it.
He writes before the exile. Now, it probably shouldn't be required that you know the details, all of the little details of Hebrew history. But one detail you should definitely know is something called the exile, the Babylonian captivity.
It was something that was foretold. It was something that actually happened. And before the exile can be expressed in a term, pre-exilic, and then during the exile, exilic, and after the exile in Babylon, post-exilic.
Isaiah was a pre-exilic writer. That is, he warned the nation of Judah, the southern kingdom, that unless they turned back to God, they would go into exile. Well, they did. And then during the exile, there were other prophets. Daniel and Ezekiel are exilic prophets.
After they came back from Babylon and entered the land again, the post-exilic prophets take over-- Malachi, Zechariah, and a couple others. Isaiah wrote at the same time and prophesied at the same time that Hosea the prophet did, and Micah. One of them prophesied in the north, and Isaiah, and Hosea prophesied in the south, or Micah in the south.
The kingdom, at this time, is split. Israel consisted of one nation with 12 tribes. However, after Solomon died and Jeroboam and Rehoboam, respectively, were sitting on the thrones, the kingdom was divided into two. There were 10 northern tribes and two southern tribes-- Benjamin and Judah-- and the south was referred to collectively as Judah. And so Isaiah is writing to the south, the southern kingdom, because there is trouble brewing up north.
At the point that he writes this, up north, the northern kingdom of Israel has already fallen to the Assyrians. In fact, in 722 BC, the Assyrian emperor, Sennacherib, came in and just wiped out all of the northern kingdom, took them exiles into Babylon or into Assyria. And it was threatening, now, the southern kingdom of Judah.
As it turned out, Judah withstood the Assyrian invasion, because Assyria wanted to conquer the entire Syro-Palestinian empire. But they failed. They didn't conquer Judah.
Well, Judah felt pretty special about that. They thought, see? We didn't go into captivity. And then Isaiah comes along and he says, you didn't go into captivity yet, but the Babylons are on the other side. The Babylonians are on the other side of the Assyrians, and they're going to come down and wipe you guys out unless you turn back to the Lord.
And so it's a series of warnings, and they lasted 58 years. That's the duration of his ministry. He had a 58-year duration of prophesying to the southern kingdom of Judah.
Tradition tells us that eventually, after all of his ministry was completed, that Manasseh, the wicked King Manasseh, the wicked Hebrew king, had him assassinated, and he was martyred. And Justin Martyr, in the second century, writes that Isaiah was the one that was sawn in half. And so in the Book of Hebrews, it says that some were sawn asunder, cut in half with a saw, referring here to Isaiah the Prophet.
During the spiritual decline-- and this is just a real decline in the nation-- Isaiah had a message that Judah and Israel should never put their trust in any foreign power, especially Egypt. And you're going to see references to don't trust in Egypt. It's because during this time, Judah thought, you know, we really need an alliance. We have enemies all around us. And so let's form an alliance with Egypt and a couple of the other nations so that if we get attacked they'll come to our aid.
And Isaiah says, don't do that. You should be trusting in God. God brought you into the land. God can sustain you in the land. He promised He'd do that. And so he's pointing his finger, actually, at Judah, for trying to trust in Egypt for protection. A lesson that emerges here is that every single time there is spiritual declension, God has His people. God sends His prophets or His apostles or His church into areas that are the darkest.
I know that a lot of times, we as Christians would love to have a Christian neighborhood. Wouldn't it be neat if everybody just bought a house in your block, and they were all born-again Christians? You wouldn't hear loud partying every night.
And if everyone at work were a Christian-- if you could just live in a little Christian community-- neighborhood, all Christian, job, all Christian. You had a little church down the street. Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful?
Well, it really wouldn't do the world much good. Salt doesn't do a whole lot of good inside the salt shaker. Light doesn't do good until it's out in the darkness dispelling the darkness. That's the purpose of light. And light shines in the darkest places.
It's said that during World War II, because of the blackouts in Germany and Europe, that one could see a soldier lighting a cigarette from an airplane. Guy flying over the fields could see a soldier lighting a cigarette 11 miles away because it was so black. And that little light, that tiny little light, could be seen 11 miles away, because light shines in the darkest places.
Now, we look at the world today. 2.7 billion people have never heard the name Jesus. That's dark. There's spiritual darkness all over. It's time for the lights to shine.
In fact, right now, God is raising up an army of people. In this country, there has been, in the last 10 years, a resurgence toward foreign missions. There has been, like, 200, 300 bonafide mission organizations that have just recently developed in the past several years, to reach some of these hidden people's. God's doing a great work.
Even in our country, there is spiritual declension. There was a poll taken, and they asked the average unchurched person why they don't go to church. 46% of the people in the poll said we don't go to church because churches don't help people find meaning in life. 51% said the churches are more interested in raising money, in buying buildings, and on and on and on, in social issues and political issues, and not spiritual issues.
Now, it's a sad day when the world comes and says to the church that they're not preaching the gospel. When the world starts rebuking the church for not being the church, you've got some real tough times. That's sort of like how it was in the time of Isaiah, only it was a little bit tougher in the days of Isaiah.
People made an outward display of turning away from God and getting involved in idol worship, while at the same time going to the temple to worship. They were still involved in the rituals. They were still being religiously Jewish, though they were outwardly practicing some of the pagan practices of the people around them.
Just for a side note, many people question the unity of this book. That is-- and perhaps if you've read extensively, you've heard this theory. There is the Deutero-Isaiah theory. That is, Isaiah was not written by Isaiah. It's funny. Everybody believed that all of these books in the Bible that have guys' names on them were written by those guys, for years, until the 18th century. Then, I guess, all of the wise people were born on Earth.
[LAUGHTER]
And in Germany, they developed what is called higher criticism. Liberalism and neo-orthodoxy sprang out of that. And people, instead of saying Isaiah wrote it, they said Isaiah didn't write it. John didn't write John's gospel. Moses didn't write Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. Someone else did. We don't know who, but it couldn't have been the guy who said he wrote it.
The theory is that there are two sections of Isaiah. The first section was written by this Isaiah, but that another guy, after the exile, wrote the second half of Isaiah. And then there's even a third theory that says there were three Isaiah's. And it goes on and on and on.
In fact, I got a call yesterday from a gal who's from this church who goes to a pretty well-known Christian school in Santa Barbara, California. And her professor's teaching her that-- very liberal professor-- teaching that Isaiah really didn't write Isaiah, and the account of Samuel's birth and 1 Samuel doesn't even refer to Samuel. The guy just got the name wrong. It refers to Saul.
However, both external and internal evidence would vie for the opposite-- that is, that Isaiah wrote this book. Internal evidence means evidence within the writings of Isaiah itself. External evidence means other biblical books and extra-biblical sources.
When the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the late '40s, down in Qumran by the Dead Sea in Israel, one of the most incredible things was that there was a scroll of Isaiah Chapter 1 through Chapter 66 found in perfect tact. Now, what was so amazing about the Dead Sea Scrolls is they were written about 300 years BC.
And we never had manuscripts that old before. We had old manuscripts, but something like up to 600 AD, which is a few hundred years BC. And the most amazing thing of the Dead Sea Scrolls isn't what they found. It's what they didn't find, and that's mistakes.
They read recent manuscripts and they compared it with the old manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Isaiah, and they found it to be incredibly accurate. It was all the same. There weren't any changes. And there were 66 books. And the Qumran community obviously believed that Isaiah wrote all of them.
Paul, Jesus, and many New Testament authors quote Isaiah, and all of the major sections of Isaiah. And they all ascribe them to Isaiah. Jesus assumed that the whole thing was one book, for it says, in Luke 4, that Jesus, when he went into the synagogue, was handed the scroll of Isaiah, and he read the second part of it, Chapter 61. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor."
Now, that's the section that people said isn't written by Isaiah. Jesus assumed it was. And Paul said it was when he quotes Isaiah, the last section of Isaiah, and says, "So did Isaiah the Prophet say." One and the same person.
The purpose of his writings was to remind Israel that they had a special relationship with God. It's a relationship called a covenant. Covenant means God makes a deal.
God says, here's a covenant, or a deal, a pact, and here are the terms of the covenant. And some of the covenants in the Old Testament are what are called unconditional covenants. There are other covenants called conditional covenants.
One of the unconditional covenants is the covenant God made to Abraham. Let's call it the Abrahamic Covenant. That's what most people refer to it as.
God says, your posterity, or your children, will be many, number one. Number two, you will populate a land, a new land, the land of Israel. Number three, a great nation will emerge out of your offspring. And number four, the whole world, eventually, will be blessed, because of you and your kids, meaning the Messiah is eventually going to come and the gospel will spread throughout the whole world.
That was an unconditional covenant. In other words, you're going to get this land whether you blow it or not. Whether you're obedient or not, I'm going to give you this land. It's totally conditional upon me and me only.
But then there was another covenant that God gave to the children of Israel under Moses. Let's call it the Mosaic Covenant. That's how it's referred to by most. It was given to the children of Israel as they left Egypt, passed through the wilderness, and entered the land of Canaan, which became known as Israel.
The Mosaic Covenant was conditional. In fact, God says, if you obey me, and you obey all of my laws, then I will bless you. Your crops will grow, rain will come out of heaven, and you'll stay in the land. If you disobey me, I'll kick you out of the land.
I'll bring you back, because of the Abrahamic Covenant. I'll bring you back eventually, and that eventually is when you repent. I will sell you into slavery until you turn and cry out to me. In fact, that's the purpose of the slavery. That's the purpose of handing you over to your enemies, is so that you'll turn back to me. When you do, I'll bring you back into the land.
Now, God said, in Deuteronomy, that they would be kicked out twice, and they would return twice. And the second time they returned was May 14, 1948, after 2000 years of exile. The only nation in the world that left its land, was assimilated into other cultures, and eventually came back to the original land after that length of time and spoke the original Hebrew language. It was a miracle of all miracles.
If you would, turn to Deuteronomy Chapter 28 for just a moment. And let's look at this promise that God made, just real briefly. In Deuteronomy 28, Verse 1, it says, "If you fully obey the Lord your God, and carefully follow all of His commands that I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on the Earth. All of these blessings will come upon you, and accompany you, if"-- see the condition? It's a conditional covenant. --"if you obey the Lord your God.
You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land, and the young of your livestock-- the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in, blessed when you go out." God says, "I'll defeat all of your enemies before you."
Now, look in Verse 15. "However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all of His commands and decrees that I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, the crops of your land, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out."
Look over in Verse-- look at Verse 63. "Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land that you are entering to possess. Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the Earth to the other. There, you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known."
The reason God said they would worship the false gods is because they wanted to do it. They turned to Baal. They turned to Asterith. They turned to Moloch. And God said, look, if you want to worship idols, I'll give you idols. I'll put you in the capital of idolatry, till you've got idols coming out your nose, till you're sick of idols, and you'll call upon me and return.
"Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There, the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. You will live in constant suspense filled with a dread, both night and day, never sure of your life.
In the morning, you will say, if it only were evening, and in the evening, if only it were morning, because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see. The Lord will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said that you should never make again. And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you."
Now, just briefly, look at Chapter 30. It says, "When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart, wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations, and when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all of your heart"-- see, it says, "when you do this"-- God says, if you obey me, you're all right. If you blow it, you'll go into captivity. Now, He knew that they'd blow it, and he prophesized that they'll blow it and return, because He says, "when you do this."
It says, "And when you and your children--" Verse 2-- "return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where He scattered you, even if you have been banished to the most distant land under Heaven. And from there, the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your fathers, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than all your fathers."
So this is kind of the background setting that Isaiah is writing under. They have broken the laws of God. They have broken the Covenant of Moses. Because of that, God will punish them. But because of the covenant God made with Abraham and David, God will bring them eventually back into the land to inhabit it.
Now, Israel is, today, in the land, since May 14, 1948, when it was called the state of Israel. They're in the land, not that securely. It's very much like this. There has never really been peace in the Mideast. And I know that there's a lot of talk about Israel, as long as I can remember. And I used to think that the Mideast conflict was a rather recent conflict, that kind of Ted Koppel invented it.
But I found out through reading the scripture, there's always been a Mideast conflict. And you know what? The scripture says there always will be, until the Prince of Peace comes, and the Kingdom Age is established, which we're going to read about briefly tonight, in Chapter 2. Jerusalem is called the City of Peace, but there will be no peace until the Prince of Peace is the king of that city. And so Isaiah looks ahead to the final restoration of the entire nation of Israel.
The first part of Isaiah is Chapters 1 through 39, and that's mostly about judgment. We're going to read some of it tonight, and then the next few weeks, skip a lot of it, because it's very repetitive. Remember, it's a 58-year stretch, so that the message, every few months, was brought into the ears of all these folks.
Chapters 40 through 66, the last 27 chapters, deal with comfort and restoration. So you could look at part 1 as the retribution of God, part 2 as the restoration by God. And Chapter 1 is actually a microcosm of the first 39 chapters, speaking of judgment, and then finally mercy that would come upon the whole land.
It's an interesting corollary. How many books are in the Bible? 66. How many in the Old Testament? 39, and 27 in the New. There are 66 books in the Bible. There are 66 chapters in Isaiah. There's 39 books in the Old Testament.
There's 39 chapters that comprise the first part of the book. Chapters 1 through 39 give us a history of Israel and the sin of Israel. So does the Old Testament. The next 27 chapters speak about mercy and restoration under the Messiah. So do the 27 books of the New Testament. It's a real fascinating corollary of actually the entire Bible.
And Chapters 1 through 6, it's like a courtroom scene. God is not only one of the parties in a lawsuit. He not only brings the indictment. He's also the judge. So it's kind of unfair, you might say.
But God, because He is God, can pull that off. And He brings an accusation against the children of Israel. And it opens up by saying, "The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw during the reigns of these four kings, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, the kings of Judah."
Now, it says that it's a vision. That is, the prophet, in his mind or with his eyes, saw something. Some of you are aware that the ancient prophets were sometimes called seers, because God spoke to them, not only audibly, but through visions, things that they saw. Daniel saw visions of what was going to come, and all of those visions came true.
He saw the vision of a succession of kingdoms, and finally the destruction of the world. And he even named them-- Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and then finally Rome. And they all happened, just like he saw in his vision.
Now, it brings up a very important issue that we need to hang our hats on. We need to make a decision, all of us, concerning this. And that's the whole issue of inspiration. Is the Bible inspired word of God? And if you say, yes, it is, then I ask you to define it, because there's all sorts of definitions as to what inspiration means.
A person will say, oh, I believe in the inspiration of scripture. Well, it says in 2 Peter that no prophecy came by the will of the prophet, but the holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And the word is the word of a ship that's out in the sea, and the winds come along and puff out the sails so that the boat is carried along to the destination determined by the wind. That's what the word means.
They were carried along by the Holy Spirit, which means that the prophets-- Isaiah, Jeremiah, the historical authors-- wrote with their own personalities and style. But in the end, the Holy Spirit carried them along to a destination. That is, God was able to convey his will through the personality and the pen of the author.
Now, there are those who believe in what is called mechanical inspiration. I reject this view. That is, they actually took dictation. They were like a secretary taking a message for the boss. Take this down, Isaiah. OK? It really, sometimes, was like that. They were given direct messages, and they word-for-word conveyed them.
But then you have the writings of Paul. You have the writings of Peter. And it wasn't that kind of a dictation. Some of the historical books, the Psalms, were written from the heart of David. But the outcome was the words that God wanted us to have.
Then there is what is called concept inspiration. That is, the words really weren't inspired, just the general concepts, the general idea. Of course, there's a difference in interpretation, as to what the general idea or meaning of the text really is.
Then there is the view called partial inspiration, which is another way of saying, I am God's personal editor. Parts of it are inspired, and I decide which ones are. Oh, I reject that as being inspired, and I include this as being inspired.
Yeah? Well who gave you the authority to edit God's book? Because you will disagree with that scholar who will disagree with that scholar who will disagree with that scholar. You're making interpretive judgments on God's book. We call that Dalmatian theology-- inspired only in spots.
If you consider yourself to be an evangelical Christian, or fundamental evangelical, or whatever camp you decide to side with, you no doubt believe in inspiration. But you believe, hopefully, in the verbal and plenary inspiration of scripture.
Let me define that. Verbal means you believe that not only the concepts, but the very words, were inspired by God. The words in the original autographs of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic were picked and chosen and inspired by God, although they reflect the personality of the author-- that God was able to carry the author along to the point, that even the very words were inspired.
Now, that's very obvious, because Paul hinges a whole doctrine on a word out of the Old Testament. The fact that God said, "Through your seed--" and Paul says, it's not seeds, plural. It's seed singular. And he belabors the point that the Holy Spirit has given us the very words that develop teaching and doctrine.
Then we believe in the plenary inspiration, which means all of it is inspired. Not just the words, but all of the words, from Genesis to the very period in the Book of Revelation, it is all inspired by God-- verbal and plenary inspiration. So the vision God communicated to Isaiah, an inspired message, during the reign of these four kings.
In Verse 2 through 9, you see a lawsuit developing. It says, "Hear, O Heavens, listen, O Earth, for the Lord has spoken. I reared children and brought them up." He's stating his case. "But they have rebelled against me. The ox knows his master, the donkey his owner's manger or feeding trough, but Israel does not know. My people do not understand."
Now, these are animals that are usually submissive. And it mentions here, a donkey. A donkey was considered, even by people in those days, to be the dumbest animal. And you can hear the indictment. Even the dumb animals are smarter than Israel. Even the dumb animals recognize that they are being protected and provided for by their master.
But Israel doesn't know that I've been the one that's taken care of them. They've turned away from me. They've turned away from the acknowledgment of my provision. And so he says, "Ahh, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption. They have forsaken the Lord. They have spurned the Holy One of Israel."
See that little phrase, "Holy One of Israel?" Isaiah uses it 25 times. You know why? He's contrasting the holiness of God with the sinfulness of his people. He's drawing a contrast several times.
"Why would you be beaten any more?" Verse 5. "Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there is no soundness-- only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil."
Now, Isaiah's first picture is that of a person that gets beaten up. Somebody comes along, beats the guy silly, and the guy's left on the road with open sores, unprotected. Now, I think what he is referring to is the fact that there's hostile nations encamped all around Israel. They've already made several attacks, and Israel, defeated it, 722 BC. And now they're attacking Judah.
And every time they get attacked, they get beaten up. And God says, now, why would you sit there and get beaten up by all of your enemies? The reason you're getting beaten up by all of your enemies is that you have left your provision and protection. Like the donkey who knows his owner's manger, who acknowledges provision and protection, you've turned away from me. Now, why would you sit there and get beaten up like that? It doesn't make sense.
"Your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire." Dotting the landscape, where the ruins in Israel of Sennacherib's invasion. The people of Israel were exiled, taken into Assyria. And they took people from Assyria and repopulated the northern kingdom of Israel with some of the leftover Jewish people, some of the landowners and the poor peasants.
And those poor Israeli peasants intermingled, and eventually got married to and had children with the Assyrians. And that developed a new race known as Samaritans. The Samaritans were a marrying together of some of the remaining Jewish peasants in Israel and some of the Assyrians that came in to repopulate.
"Your fields are being stripped by foreigners right before you, laid waste as when overgrown by strangers. The daughter of Zion has left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons, like a city under siege." A hut in a melon patch-- what a way to describe Jerusalem in Israel. A hut in a melon patch was something that you'd build quickly to guard the melons, to guard your crops. However, you were alone in it, and you could be attacked easily. It was very temporary.
He's saying you're just like that. You're unguarded, because you've left me, and you're about to get wiped out. "Unless the Lord Almighty has left some survivors, or a remnant, we would have been or become like Sodom, and would have been like Gomorrah." Now, as soon as he says, "We would be like them," God says, you are like them. Unless God would have left us a remnant, we would have been wiped out like them.
Now, God says, you know what? Spiritually, you are like them, and I am going to wipe you out. "Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom." Now, he's speaking to Jerusalem, who are committing sins like Sodom and Gomorrah. "Listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah.
'The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me?' says the Lord. 'I have more than enough burnt offerings, of rams, of the fat of fattened animals. I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings.'"
And you would say, wait a minute, God. You're the one that commanded sacrifices. You're the one that commanded offerings. You set up an elaborate system to sacrifice animals to atone for our sins. Why would you say stop bringing them? Notice the adjective-- stop bringing meaningless sacrifices.
Remember when God gave the covenant of circumcision. A few years later, he said, "Circumcise your hearts," not your foreskins, because circumcision of the foreskin was to be a symbol that you cut away fleshly desires and let God rule your life. And so He says, don't bring a sacrifice that's just a ritual. Don't go through all the festive activities when your heart's not in it. He's coming against their hypocrisy.
"'Your incense is detestable to me. New moons, Sabbaths, and convocations-- I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts--'" the Feast of Passover, the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Trumpets, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement-- he says, "'my soul hates.
They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood. Wash, and make yourselves clean.'"
The Lord has rejected their appeal to religion as a compensation for their sin. You see, they thought, well, you know, we are sinners, so I guess I have to go get religious. I'll go to church this Sunday. Or to put it in Jewish vernacular, I'll go to the temple on Saturday, and I'll worship. And I'll go through the rituals and I'll get cleansed.
You know, when I was a kid, I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and we had a nifty thing called confession. Now, I abused confession. It wasn't meant for what it turned out to be in my life. But in my life, I looked at confession as, sin as much as you want, get the slate cleared away maybe every other week, so that you can fill it up again.
So I would go in and confess to the priest. Here's my list. I have blown it, big time. OK, do this. Great. Now I'm clean. Now I can sin again. And just kind of get it erased every few weeks, you know?
Well, Israel was kind of acting that way to the Lord. They would go through the rituals, and God refuses to accept that as compensation for their sin. Why? Because Israel has substituted words for action. They're going through the paces. They're going through the motions.
But they've left the emotion of the heart. They're just going through the rituals. They're just substituting a bunch of words, God talk, for reality. It would be like a person saying, hallelujah, praise God, bless the Lord, when they're really not doing it in their hearts, or going to church every Sunday, when really they haven't devoted themselves to the Lord. That won't cut you anything with God.
Jesus said, "Many will come to me in that day and say, Lord, Lord," we did a whole list of things. Jesus said, "I never knew you." Ah, but Lord, I attended Calvary Chapel. I didn't see you. Well, I was at the second service. Maybe you went to the first service, Lord.
[LAUGHTER]
No, I was at both services. I was there before you got there. Oh, but I was there, in this row. Hm. Maybe I didn't see you because your heart wasn't there, and if a person's heart's not there, I don't even notice if they're there. See, the heart has to be into it, and God is getting at that whole concept here.
You know, there's one thing worse than hypocrisy, and that's spiritual hypocrisy. One thing Jesus really got down on was a spiritual hypocrite, trying to pretend you're holier than you really are, trying to put on an act when inside, your life hasn't been touched by the living God. That's the thing that's worse.
In the book of Romans, Paul says, "He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, whose circumcision is of the flesh. But a Jew is a Jew who is one inwardly, whose circumcision is that of the heart, and changed by God." We could substitute Christian in baptism for a Jew in circumcision. He is not a Christian who is one outwardly, who has gone through the rituals of baptism, and on and on and on. But a Christian is one who is one inwardly, and his heart's been changed and his life's been changed as well.
Notice Verse 15, before we go on. "'When you spread out your hands in prayer'"-- this speaks of a person who would, in the temple, raise up his hands to ask or give his life to God. He says, "'I will hide my eyes from you.'" Can you imagine? God saying, I refuse to answer your prayers.
You'd come saying, oh, God. And God says, I'm not even listening. I refuse, He said. Or, "'I will hide my eyes from you. Even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen.'" Why? Because your hands are full of blood. They had oppressed the poor.
They were glutting themselves for their own benefit financially, while people were starving to death. And they were oppressing the poor, oppressing the average person in the land. God says, "Your hands are full of blood." You bring your hands to me, but you've oppressed people with them. And because of that, I will not listen to you.
Remember, Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, spoke out against hypocrisy. In fact, part of His theme was down with hypocrisy, up with integrity, on with spirituality. And when you think about hypocrisy, the word itself takes you back to the Greek plays, when an actor was called, literally, [GREEK]. It meant someone who wears a mask on stage. And it was just an actor.
You would go and you'd see a guy put on a happy face or a sad face, and they'd get on the stage, and they would, behind the mask, not necessarily have that face. They would act a part. So it came to mean someone who wears a mask.
Now, there are a lot of masks that people wear. Some people wear the "I'm cool" mask, "I'm macho" mask, when inside they're little babies, crying out to be loved. There's the "I'm intellectual" mask, where you try to really come off intellectual to everybody, so that they kind of looked up to you for that.
Then there's the "I'm spiritual" mask, "I'm more spiritual than you are" mask. It's a mask a lot of us like to wear. And that's the mask here that God is ripping off from the face of Israel, as He brings this indictment here.
In the New Testament, remember, Jesus said, "When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. They love to stand on the corners and in the synagogues. I say to you, they have their reward." Now, let me tell you what he was referring to.
There were strategic times and places to have prayer. There were set times. Three times a day, the Jewish person would pray. Some of these fanatics who wanted the attention and adulation from men would actually, around noon, and drive time in the afternoon and in the morning, perch themselves out on the street corners.
And so you can imagine, if it were a modern scene, somebody standing out at the corner of Montgomery and Menaul right around noon-- lunch traffic. And as people go by, there's a guy out there with his eyes up to Heaven and his hands raised. They would even smear white makeup so it looks like they've been fasting and they're a little gaunt, so that you drive by and go, that guy's spiritual. Although their hands were raised in that capacity, God is not listening to their prayers.
"'Wash'"-- Verse 16-- "'make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. Come, now. Let us reason together.'"
The word reason literally means a legal argument that is presented in a court case that really closes the case. It's the final stab, the final argument. It's as if God is saying, listen. I am bringing an argument against you of your sin that you can't defend.
"'Though your sins are a scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they shall be as wool.'" Now, that's a deal you'd be foolish to pass up. Here's the argument. You've sinned, but I got a deal for you. Though you've blown it, I'll forgive you.
Now, what person in his right mind would say no? There are a few who actually say no, aren't there? There are a few who hear the gospel, week after week in church. You know, I met several people, one of them who has come to this church, who had come to this church for four years before they made a commitment to Jesus. They heard it and they heard it, and they kept saying no, no, no.
It's a miracle that God finally broke through to that hard of a heart. And it always makes me wonder, actually, why a person, being a non-Christian, being a pagan, would even want to come to church. I mean, if I was going to be a heathen, I'd be a good one. I mean, I'd go for broke. I would sin big time.
I was never one to do things half-hearted. I'd never hide behind, well, I'm kind of spiritual. I mean, if I'm going to be a pagan, I'm going to be a very professional one. And if I'm going to follow God, I'm going to do it all the way. I don't want to do it just kind of in between. It's either go for broke or nothing.
But the sad thing is, the hypocrisy. God, in the midst of that, says, "'Come, now. Let us reason together. I will wash away all of your sins, and make you white as snow.'" There's no stain. "'If you are willing and obedient'"-- there's the condition, now, from the Mosaic Covenant. "'If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land.'" In other words, your crops will be bountiful.
"'If you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword,' for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. See, now, the faithful city has become a harlot. She once was full of justice. Righteousness used to dwell in her, but now murderers. Your silver has become dross."
Dross is the residue. When you refine and you heat up and boil silver, it's the residue that falls to the bottom that is thrown away. It's good for nothing. You become worthless. You become so that I'm going to cast you away into another land of exile.
Now, in Verse 21, Isaiah is comparing what Israel used to be like under the reign of King David, and the first part of the reign of King Solomon, and what Jerusalem is like at the time of his writing. There's not faithfulness anymore. There is, instead, spiritual adultery. He calls Jerusalem a harlot. And any time a person flirts with the things of this world, the scripture calls that spiritual immorality or spiritual adultery.
And so God says, you have been an unfaithful wife. You've gone out on me. You've had an affair with me. You've had an affair with the ways of this world. You haven't stayed true to me. You haven't stayed holy. And because of that, you're a harlot. You're not faithful any longer.
"Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves. They all love bribes. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless. The widow's case does not come before them. Therefore the Lord, the Lord Almighty, the Mighty One of Israel declares, 'I will get relief from my foes and avenge myself on my enemies.'"
The widows and the fatherless were not getting a hearing in court, when He says, "You haven't defended the cause of the widow or the fatherless." You know why they weren't getting a hearing in court? Because they couldn't afford to pay bribes. The rulers were so corrupt that you have to slip them a $20 or a $50 underneath the table to get any justice.
And it really wasn't justice, then, was it? And because the poor people couldn't afford to bribe the corrupt rulers, they weren't getting a hearing in court. Their case was thrown out. And so there was that kind of corruption going throughout the land.
I was in Egypt a couple of years ago, on my way back from India. And we were stranded in Egypt a couple of days. Had a good time. I was there with Gino. And we were running around Cairo.
And there are countries in the Mideast, especially Egypt, that use a term, bakshish, which means, give me compensation. I'll do you a favor, but give me a handsome tip-- bakshish. And you'll be running around, and they'll say, bakshish bakshish.
Hey, could you tell me where the post office is? Bakshish, bakshish. Hey, where's the restroom? Bakshish. You can't get anything done without a little bakshish.
It's more than a tip. It's actually a bribe. And they were doing it so much. And we were stranded out in the middle of Cairo, and we had no way to get back. And we were asking somebody directions, and this guy said, bakshish. And Gino just sort of flipped out at that point.
A fuse blew, and he just started kind of going, bakshish! I can't believe it! And he was just kind of yelling at this guy. And I said, now, Gino, just calm down. We'll get out of this alive if you just maintain. But it gets frustrating when everybody tries to get your money for any kind of a favor.
We just got a letter from Lorraine in the Philippines, and she said that the bus that you sent Mario is in. The trouble is is that there's stacks of bureaucratic paperwork. And the way to get something done is you have to bribe people under the table.
And she said that's the way it was in the past. That's the way it is. That's the way it always will be. The leaders are so corrupt that all of a sudden, if you slip them a $20, they go, oh, I just remembered where that paperwork was. And so you need to pray, and we need to pray, that God will release that paperwork soon, and that even though rulers are corrupt, that the gospel will be preached as that bus gets released.
God says, "'I will turn my hand against you. I will thoroughly purge'"-- notice-- "'I will thoroughly purge away your dross.'" Did you get that? It's more than just, I'm going to slam you guys for being disobedient. That's how a lot of people think of God-- God of the Old Testament, God of wrath and judgment. I'm going to just going to head slam you.
He says, "'I will purge away your dross.'" In other words, I'm going to refine you. I'm not just saying I'm going to throw you away like dross because you've become worthless. Yes, I will cast you into exile. But that exile will cause you to be refined, cause you to turn back to me, and that process is the purging process, because I want to bring you back. You see, there's mercy mingled in this.
He says, "'I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove your impurities. I will restore your judges as in the days of old, your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward, you will be called the City of Righteousness, the Faithful City.'"
Now, this is the sin cycle-- the sin cycle that Israel constantly got involved in. Sort of like a washing and drying cycle-- you always go back to that point. Israel started out loving God. Israel started looking around at other nations.
As she looked at other nations, she noticed that they had different gods. And it was more fun to worship those gods, because it involved sexual immorality. And so Israel started getting involved, crying out for other gods.
While she was following other gods, the next part of the cycle is God said, OK. I understand that you guys really like to worship pagan idols, so I'm going to sell you into the very nation whose God you're worshipping. So they got what they wanted. They wanted idolatry. God gave it to them.
In the midst of idolatry, they cried out to God. And God, in His compassion, brought them back to a relationship of forgiveness and restoration with Him. And they were at the top of the cycle again. And that's the purpose for selling them into slavery-- so that they'll wake up, the dross will be purged away, and they'll live at that level.
Now, God wants them to stay at that level. And there's an important principle here. God seeks to bring you to the highest possible level that you will allow Him to bring you. God wants intimacy, fruit, a warm, close, dynamic relationship that you would have with the living God. That's what God wants. That's God's highest for you.
God seeks to bring you to the highest level. We often settle for second level, third level, fourth level, way on down, for second, third, fourth best. God seeks to bring you to the highest level. But also, God will do the best for you at that level. Even if it's at a low level, God will do the best He can for you at that level, to bring you back to the highest one.
But you are the one, and I am the one, that settles for whatever level of Christianity that we're living in now. You say, I'm not living a dynamic, spiritual Christian life. Well, it's not God's fault. For God says, "I've given you everything you need to grow and to live a godly life," 2 Peter Chapter 1, the first few verses. God then gives us the ways to reach that.
And He says, "If you apply these things, you'll never stumble or fall." So it's really up to us. We can grow to whatever level we want to grow. And if we want to bear forth fruit, you're going to bear forth fruit. If you want to stand for the Lord, you will stand.
Once you make a decision to do it, God braces the decision. It's called the step of faith. If you decide that you're going to keep falling and fall away from the Lord, you will.
But the choice that you make, God will solidify and strengthen and give you His strength, where your own personal strength falls. It's called the step of faith. And Israel is going through that backsliding stage, going second level, third level, fourth level, until they cry out to God and God brings them to that level once again.
Now, in Chapter 2, after his court indictment here, Isaiah introduces a concept that becomes a hallmark of his prophecy. He now looks forward, way out to the future, at a time when Jerusalem will occupy prime position in the world. He looks into the Kingdom Age, if you will. This is what Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
Now, listen how different this is from the last chapter. "In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as chief among the mountains. It will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it." All nations-- one day, all of us-- in fact, Zechariah tells us that you and I, in the redeemed Kingdom Age, will have a holy convocation in Jerusalem once a year.
So if you haven't been able to go on and Israel tour so far, God will give you His own personally guided tour one day. And Jerusalem will look a whole lot different than just a sheep market with walls around it now. It's going to look entirely redeemed, and you're going to have a holy convocation. The nations will stream to it.
"Many peoples will come and say, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.'" I love this part. "'He will teach us His ways, so that we may walk in His paths.' The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem."
One day, you won't have to listen to my Bible studies any longer. The Lord is going to teach you Himself. And you know what? I can't wait.
[LAUGHTER]
I can't wait till the Lord just instructs the nations from His own mouth, as the word of the Lord goes from Jerusalem. And the Lord Himself will instruct. I can't think of any better Bible teacher than God Himself, teaching us about what He wrote. And I'll probably be in the back thinking, I taught that wrong. Oh.
[LAUGHTER]
If only I would have had this Bible study before I did my ministry, it would have been a lot easier. "He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples." In the Kingdom Age, God will allow no disputes to occur between people.
Now, it's interesting, but the Book of Revelation alludes to the fact that there will be those who actually get into the Kingdom Age, who will, toward the end, have a chance to rebel, because after the Millennium, you see, toward the end of Revelation, a rebellion taking place as we rule with Christ with a rod of iron. And a rebellion takes place at the end of that. There's another conflict and a judgment, as if He is proving a point to the world.
See, the world has this philosophy that man is what he is because of his environment, and if only man had a perfect environment, man would be perfect. Well, God will give man a perfect environment, and man will not be perfect. God will quell the disputes. God will rule over them.
It says here, "He will settle disputes," meaning there will be disputes, then, among some of these people. And then it says, "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more. Come, O house of Jacob. Let us walk in the light of the Lord."
Abstaining from all kinds of warfare-- you know, that's going to be the ultimate peace initiative. You know, we're kind of now trying to limit arms-- the United States and Russia. There are not going to be any then. All those implements of destruction will be used to grow crops and for the betterment of mankind, instead of a sword against a sword and nation against nation. You see, peace will not come by any human achievement.
You know, I see a bumper sticker. And actually, well, it really is a stupid bumper sticker. There are certain bumper stickers that are kind of cool. There's some that are just lame. And it's not a Christian bumper sticker, so you don't have to worry, was it on my car?
[LAUGHTER]
It's actually espoused by the New Age movement. It says, visualize world peace-- kind of a takeoff of John Lennon's song, "Imagine." You know, imagine this and that.
Visualizing world peace will not bring it to pass. Having a moronic convergence or harmonic convergence isn't going to bring world peace. Just thinking about it and visualizing it won't cut it.
The ultimate and only peace will come, number one, when Jesus Christ is in control of your life. And you'll have a peace that passes understanding. And number two, the world will have peace when the Prince of Peace returns and blows all the governments away, and He sets up His kingdom.
Now, that's what Daniel prophesied. He saw a succession of kingdoms-- Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greek empire, and Rome-- and then finally a split up of nations. And finally, he saw a rock come out of Heaven that just kind of crushed all of these empires and all of these governments. And that rock grew and grew and grew into a huge mountain that covered the whole Earth. And Daniel said, the final righteousness of God will be over the entire Earth, as He breaks all the government structures down.
There is no perfect form of human government. We've tried it with monarchies. There have been autocrats that have tried to rule. We've tried it with democracy. Democracy is not the perfect form of government. Look at us. Man cannot govern himself without getting into problems and wars eventually.
No form of human government, over long periods of time, have ever lasted. All of them have come to destruction. Every major empire has come to destruction. It's only when God reigns and there is a theocracy that man is in the right form of government and the only spot.
Well, praise the Lord that's coming. And it's prophesied here in Chapter 2. So it says, "Come, O house of Jacob. Let us walk in the light of the Lord."
It's obvious that we're going to cover two chapters tonight, huh? See, I can't wait till I get the new chairs and we can sit like an extra half an hour. They're really soft.
But it says, "You have abandoned your people, the house of Jacob. They are full of superstitions from the East. They practice divination like the Philistines. They clasp hands with pagans.
Their land is full of silver and gold. There is no end to their treasures. The land is full of horses. There is no end to the chariots. The land is full of idols. They bow down to the work of their hands to what their fingers have made."
Now, didn't that sound kind of stupid? You build something and you made it. It came from you. And yet you worship it. You worship what you have made. It doesn't transcend you. You transcend it. Yet you worship to something that you transcend. It makes absolutely no logical sense.
And so they would make an image and then say, oh, we worship you. And Isaiah's saying, that's kind of flaky. Your fingers have made it, and yet you're worshipping it.
David actually alluded to this. He said, "Eyes they have but they cannot see. Hands they have but they cannot touch. Ears they have but they cannot hear." Yet people are bowing down to something that's deaf and dumb and blind that they made.
"So man will be brought low and mankind humbled." And Isaiah kind of adds his own little thing here. "Do not forgive them. Go into the rocks, hide in the ground from dread of the Lord and the splendor of His majesty. The eyes of the arrogant man will be humbled."
Remember, the Book of Revelation during the Tribulation Period, or the judgment, which I believe he's referring to not only Babylon here, but looking into the future-- that during the Tribulation, people will come into the mountains and to the rocks and say, fall on us and hide us from the wrath of the lamb who is coming, because they know that they can't escape the judgment of God.
"The pride of men shall be brought low. The Lord alone will be exalted in that day. The Lord Almighty has a day in store for all of the proud and lofty, all that is exalted." And it says, "They shall be humbled."
It speaks, here, about the last days and the day of the Lord. Question is, what does he mean? You read that phrase often in the scriptures-- "in the last days" this and that will happen.
The last days aren't just a few days. Actually, did you know that the last days started when Jesus came to the Earth the first time? It says in the Book of Hebrews, God, in different ways and in different times, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets. He has, in these last days, spoken to us by His own son.
Last days started 2,000 years ago. Of human history, the last 2,000 years has been the final pages. And I think the final paragraphs are being written just about now.
John, in his epistle of 1 John, says, "For we know, little children, that this is the last hour." That was written 2,000 years ago. Of course, all of the prophecies had to be fulfilled. The dominoes had to topple.
And we're living, I believe, in that stage, when the physical coming of the Lord, in the clouds for His church, I believe could happen at any moment. And that's what the church is waiting for. That's the next event on the prophetic calendar, because the dominoes are put in place, and the Lord can come back.
And so the last days began with the coming of Jesus Christ. But they especially refer to a time of apostasy. It says, "In the last days, many will fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines taught by demons."
It's a time-- that's the last part of the last days-- when massive amounts of people will fall away from the Lord, and fall away from the faith, into apostasy. That will then usher in something called the Day of the Lord. The Day of the Lord is a process of judgment, known as the Tribulation Period. It is God's time to judge the Earth for rejecting His solution to their sins.
The Tribulation will be divided into two sections of 3 and 1/2 years. The first part will be called the Tribulation, the second part the Great Tribulation. Jesus prophesied of that, spoke of it, in Matthew 24. He said, "It is a time of judgment unlike the world has ever seen or ever will see."
Think about that statement for a minute-- "has ever seen or ever will see." It is tops. It's numero uno of all the judgment.
Now, think back to World War II. Think of the slaughter. Think of six million Jews being killed innocently. Think of the Vietnamese War. Think of all of the wars and the atrocities that have been around.
And Jesus said, nothing can compare to what's going to come in the Tribulation Period. That's called the Day of the Lord. And the Jews spoke of it as a Day of Judgment, which would then usher in, after the Day of Judgment, the Kingdom Age, which we know is a thousand years long. It's the reign of Jesus Christ that this chapter has been touching on a little bit here. It's right before the Kingdom Age.
So it says, "The Lord Almighty has a day in store for the proud and the lofty, all that is exalted," and so on. So he finally gets down to Verse 22, and he sums up this thought by saying, "Stop trusting in man." Stop trusting in man. Stop trusting in man's philosophies.
Stop putting your trust in man's government, that we're going to come up with a solution to this mess. Stop trusting in the so-called scientific postulations put forth by men that confuse you. "Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?"
Now, as you can see, there is a process that goes on, of backsliding. And backsliding is a process. Israel was involved in it-- a going backwards, a process. You don't just wake up one day and say, golly, I think I'm backslid.
[LAUGHTER]
I never knew it before, but I am. No, it's a process of making little compromises along the way, little compromises along the way. The Hebrew word for backslide is [HEBREW], which means to sink down. You sink down from that level to a lower level, like in quicksand.
You are reading your Bible, and you think, I don't need to read it as much anymore. You know, I mean, they kind of told me that when I was a young Christian. And it was probably good then, but I really don't need to read it every day.
I don't need to pray as much as I do. I don't need to go to fellowship as much as I do. I don't need to witness as much as I used to witness. I mean, I was a new Christian. I was fanatical like we all are. But I've become old, stale, and professional now, so I don't need to do that.
What it means is that we go over all of the things that we knew are the fundamental building blocks of our faith, and we make compromises on each one. We give concessions, and we start sinking backwards. And what happens is, because we've lost that ultimate devotion to God, there's an empty well.
And we need to replace that devotion that was once there with devoting ourself to something else. And we find all sorts of things, don't we, to devote ourselves to? Our time, our energy, our passion. That's being backslid. When anything replaces your devotion for the Lord, that's spiritual adultery, really.
God said to the children of Israel, through Jeremiah, I believe, "'My people have committed two evils. One, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.'" Oh, God said, I wanted to refresh them. I was a fountain of incessant refreshment to them, and they've left it.
You think that's bad enough. God says, "'They've forsaken me, the fountain of living waters,'" but then, "'They have dug out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.'" They look to other things to refresh themselves, to drink from, and they've come up dry and empty.
Remember, Jesus, to the woman of Sumeria, said, "Drink of this water, and you will thirst again." You could write that over every experience in life. Oh, I want to search for the highest form of education. I know if I do that I'll be fulfilled.
You will be fulfilled, temporarily. You will be. I mean, there's something to reach a goal that's great. But if you're looking for ultimate fulfillment, drink of this water, and you'll thirst again.
Oh, if I could only get this kind of an income, I'll be fulfilled. Well, you will be, for awhile. But drink of that water, and eventually you'll thirst again. Out of every single well, you will thirst again. If you're digging out another cistern to fulfill yourself, you'll come up dry. "'My people have committed two evils.'"
If you have, like Israel, forsaken the fountain of living waters, tonight is the night to make a movement, a decision, back to Him. If you've followed anything else but that warm relationship that we spoke about that God wanted, that relationship of intimacy at the highest level, if you're anywhere but there, then you're drinking out of a dry, dirty, broken-up cistern.
God wants to bring you refreshment. You'd never find refreshment, apart from Jesus. If you have never made a commitment, a personal commitment, to follow Jesus, as your Lord and your Savior, you, like Israel, have gone through all of the rituals, all of the religion, yet it doesn't cut it before God, because God wants a heart that's changed.
And I'm going to ask you tonight to make a decision to follow Jesus. If you, like Israel, have backslid-- I'm not saying that you just kind of goof up a little bit, but your heart is estranged from the Lord tonight-- I'm going to ask you to make a decision to come back to Him, to make a rededication to Him.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, You are the fountain, the source of life. You created us. We belong to You. And sometimes we forget that. I pray, Father, that those who have never experienced being born again, never surrendered their lives to the Lordship of the person of Jesus Christ, I pray that tonight they would.
And Father, for those who have left, who have backslid, who have gone away, who are following the superstitions of the East as we read about, or are following the way of the pagans and not following after You, I pray that You would break their hearts, that they would come with broken hearts and give them back to You, and that you would heal them again, that You would breathe your refreshment into them. As our heads are bowed for a moment of prayer, who, then, would indicate, Skip, pray for me? I want to know Jesus tonight.

Additional Messages in this Series

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3/4/1990
completed
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Isaiah 3-6
Isaiah 3-6
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3/11/1990
completed
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Isaiah 7-12
Isaiah 7-12
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3/18/1990
completed
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Isaiah 13-24
Isaiah 13-24
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3/25/1990
completed
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Isaiah 25-28
Isaiah 25-28
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4/1/1990
completed
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Isaiah 29-30
Isaiah 29-30
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4/8/1990
completed
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Isaiah 31-36
Isaiah 31-36
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4/22/1990
completed
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Isaiah 37-38
Isaiah 37-38
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4/29/1990
completed
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Isaiah 39-43
Isaiah 39-43
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5/6/1990
completed
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Isaiah 44-52
Isaiah 44-52
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5/13/1990
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Isaiah 53
Isaiah 53
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6/3/1990
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Isaiah 54-57
Isaiah 54-57
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6/10/1990
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Isaiah 58-60
Isaiah 58-60
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6/17/1990
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Isaiah 61-66
Isaiah 61-66
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There are 13 additional messages in this series.
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