Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Well, we're going to switch up our schedule a little bit. I'm going to do our devotion first and our prayer time second, as we have done before in previous years.

And this is an opportunity to reflect on...

You can come on past if you need to, it's fine. No, we don't mind at all. ...to

reflect while we had our prayer time first and our devotional second.

We started doing that last year because of the format that we had for TAG on Wednesday nights and how we had a 30 -minute time period for the children and had some adjustments to make.

But we're anticipating this coming year for TAG to go the full hour. So, Laura's answered prayers for Lori's health and for volunteers and planning and organization.

So, with that in mind, we're kind of going to go back to the way we used to do things.

Not always the best thing to do. That's not always the right thing to do, but we're going to go back to our regular format on Wednesday night.

So, devotional first, prayer time second. We might as well start tonight. Further announcement, the last

Wednesday in August, we're not having a meal or a prayer time, devotional, anything.

We won't be here. We're going to take that Wednesday night off, just like we did last year in the transition between August and September and lots of things getting started, okay?

With all that in mind, I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Isaiah chapter 1, Isaiah chapter 1.

And we're going to verses 16 through 20.

Read the word, amen.

Isaiah chapter 1, beginning in verse 16. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes.

Cease to do evil, learn to do good. Seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.

Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as shall eat the good of the land.

But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword, for the mouth of the

Lord has spoken. This very beginning portion of Isaiah and the critical question regarding the state of Israel, the nature in which these

Jews are being rebellious against God. What hope is there for rebellious children?

They've been described as rebellious children, the kind of children that don't even know or even consider or even think about their father anymore.

Whereas the ox and the donkey know their master, know their owner. These children don't even remember their father.

They are so wayward. And God has described their condition in verses 2 through 15 as very dire.

And so now he begins to call them to a particular kind of repentance. So God is calling them to religious rituals.

He is weary of their assemblies.

He is tired of their prayers. He doesn't want any of that because they do so in a formal way and a functional way without thought of actually repenting from their sins, actually turning back to him with their hearts.

So God is calling them to be where he is in their hearts, to turn back to him in true worship, to be where God is with those made in God's image.

And this is what the grace of repentance does for us, restoring us in the mediator of our new covenant,

Jesus Christ. What's the problem that we have? The problem that we have could be stated very simply from Genesis 3 and verse 8.

After Adam and Eve sinned, what do we read? They heard the sound of the

Lord God walking, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the

Lord in the trees of the garden. In the Bible, death is not non -existence.

Death is separation. And so in this separation from God, the entirety of the problem that those who were made in God's image are separate from him, actually the hope that we have in Jesus Christ, 1

Peter 3, verse 18, tells us that he died upon the tree to bring us unto God.

He died upon the cross to bring us unto God. Where were we? Away from God, far away from God.

But it is Jesus Christ to God. In hunting for an

English word that would explain the grace of reconciliation, at -one -ment.

We pronounce it atonement. At -one -ment, atonement, reconciliation. This is what we need to be brought back to God through the forgiveness of our sins.

And this is what Isaiah chapter 1, verse 18 is talking about. When God says, together, says the

Lord. We talked about that word, logarithms.

This is not the syllogisms, not that kind of logic, not that kind of reason. Instructed in such a way as to involve not just the one who rebukes, but the one being rebuked in such a way that the one being rebuked is.

Now, that confession, the

Greek is homily, I agree with you about what

I'm doing. To understanding, I agree with you, I'm taking your side.

And God says, come, let us reason together, says, their confession of their sins, not just them showing up to do sacrifices, or assembling together, or through their prayer structures.

There's the confession of sin, then there's the cleansing, mission of their transgressions, and then there's the forgiveness.

Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as crimson, they shall be as wool.

Now, sins that we find in chapter 1, verses 2 through 15, the final words, the kind of summing up, the cherry on top, the apex of all their sins are full of blood.

Why will God not accept their sacrifices? Why is he weary of their assemblies? Why won't he hear their appeals?

Their hands are full of blood. It's not that they forgot to wash their hands after they butchered an animal for sacrifice, it's that their hands are full of sin.

Their hands are full of iniquity. That's the problem. So, when we come to verse 18, and we read about scarlet, we read about red and crimson, though your sins are like scarlet, though your sins are like red, like crimson, we remember the culminating description of their sins, your hands are full of blood at the end of verse 15.

Now, the contrast not only connects to verse 15, but also to verse 11. Remember, God's saying,

I don't want any more sacrifices at my altar. I'm weary of all these sacrifices at my altar.

I've had enough of these things. So, remember, the altar was the place where, time and again, animals would be brought to sacrifice.

The quintessential sacrificial animal is the lamb, a lamb without blemish and without spot, a lamb whose wool was white as snow.

And the lamb would be brought to the altar. There, they would sit in quarters upon its haunches.

It would become unnervingly still. It would take a very sharp, flat blade, cut its throat back to the spinal cord, and let it bleed all over its wool until it was dead.

And they would catch the blood, and they would put the blood on the horns of the altar, and they would put it on the priest, and they would sprinkle it on the mercy seat, and they used that blood, and they would sacrifice that animal, showing that it had to be shed, that death was the penalty for sacrifice for there to be a reconciliation and atonement with God.

You can read all about those sacrifices in Leviticus chapters 3 and 4. A lot of details there. So when we read these colors,

God is doing something intentional. He's bringing to mind the sacrificial system, but in the heart of what he was trying to tell them, though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as the sun, and they shall be as white as the moon.

He purposefully helped them think about the sacrificial system. He inspired atonement and forgiveness in the sacrifices and ceremonies per se.

The doing of the rituals did not in and of themselves cleanse the sinner.

Hebrews tells us that. God has called these rebellious children, notice, away from the temple.

Do you remember how God was embodying all this abundant thing that he found at the fig tree just outside the temple?

Bunch of leaves, no fruit. One fig tree, and it withers and it dies.

What does he do? He curses the temple and says, not one stone will be left upon you, not one destroyed.

And what Isaiah is noting here, that we're there, is a theme that runs throughout the prophets, brings to devastating application and into fullness to teach them about their need to be forgiven, cleansing of their sins.

Is it just a matter of saying the right words in the right way and using the right dictionary to call sin what it is?

And then if we have that formula correct, then we achieve forgiveness.

Is this a salvation or a forgiveness that is won and gleaned?

I think we should note, first of all, that this language that we have here in verse 8, remember

Psalm 51 was the famous psalm by Nathan the prophet and his murdering of Uriah the

Hittite, and as David is working through his sin before a whore, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

He's looking to God to cleanse him, looking to God to forgive him, cleansing

Isaiah himself is using what David the shepherd used,

David the king. The appeal unto God with the metaphors of the sacrificial system about washing me white as snow shows that David knows that forgiveness and cleansing are from God, not from animals, not from the assemblies, not from the appeals that are made.

But the offering up of the sacrifices give opportunity for the

Jews, for the Israelites, those offering up of sacrifices give them the opportunity to say the same thing that God was saying about their own sins.

Those were opportunities for confession. To watch an animal die, if you've ever done it, if you've ever been the cause of killing an animal and going through that whole process, you don't feel right.

You feel something. That's an opportunity to say, why am I doing this? I used to raise meat rabbits.

I knew why I was killing my rabbits, for meat, to feed my family. Wasn't the most pleasant thing to do. Or just hold your nose and go through it.

If you take a deer, you know why you're doing it. It's not the most pleasant experience.

Why am I doing this? I have to have a good reason for it. When they're offering up sacrifices, and many times the whole burnt offerings, they're not feeding anybody with that.

The whole thing is going up in flames. Why am I doing this? Because of sin. Because of transgression against God.

So, there was an opportunity in the sacrifices to say, I do need forgiveness.

There was opportunity to deserve death. There are opportunities in the sacrifices to say unto

God, you are holy. You are merciful. So, that brings us to the point,

Hebrews chapter 9, where the,

I think this is Paul's sermon recorded for us by Luke. It's Luke's, I think it's his style.

And I think this was Paul's stump sermon that he used going around all the synagogues on his missionary journeys.

In Hebrews 9, in verse 13, having established that Jesus Christ is the high priest, the greater high priest, with the greater tabernacle, with the greater blood, and the true most holy place on high, having established all of that, the superiority of Christ.

Then he says in verse 13, for if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh.

If that was the case, if this is part of the holiness laws and the cleanliness laws of the

Old Testament, and we know how superior Christ is, therefore, verse 14, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living

God. What is the need? To be cleansed, to be forgiven all the way in, to the utter depths of the inner man.

And this forgiveness by the blood of Jesus Christ is only all the more affirmed in Revelation chapter 1 and verse 5.

Jesus Christ is described as the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler over the kings of the earth.

Think about that. He's the faithful witness, he's the firstborn from the dead, and he's the ruler of the kings of the earth. This is our

Jesus Christ. And now, to him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.

You hear that? This is what our king, the king of the kings of the earth, loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.

The faithful witness who always says the truth. He is the one who reveals God to us.

He loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. He's the firstborn from the dead.

He's the first one, the firstfruits of the resurrection, the hope that we have that we will be raised from the dead. He loved us and he washed us from our sins in his own blood.

So we need to carefully, carefully connect the confession of our sins, cleansing of our sins in Christ.

He's the one who is the light by which we can be at peace with God.

We don't have a better message, really, than 1

John 1, verse 5 through 1 John 2, verse 2.

It's more concise than Romans. So we'll just declare to you that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

So 1 John 8, deception.

How do we know that? From the following verses. Verse 6, if we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin.

So how do we walk in the light? Through the confession of our sins, verses 8 through 10.

How do we walk in darkness? The denial of our sins. If we walk in the light through the confession of our sins, we're in fellowship with God.

By the blood of Jesus Christ, his son. If we deny our sins, we are not in fellowship with God.

We walk in darkness. Verse 8 says if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, if we say the same thing about our sins that God does, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Not only does he pack away the offense and the guilt and the stench of our sins into a container to be moved as far as the east is from the west and be utterly forgotten so that he never deals with us according to our sins ever again.

Not only that, but also cleansing. Also, for those who think that they can never be clean again, those who think they can never be right again, those who think that they're always going to walk around with a wound and never be right again and always have a problem, he says cleansing from all unrighteousness.

Verse 10, if we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. Notice it says that God is faithful and just.

If he's faithful, it means that he is being faithful to something that has been promised and accomplished, which of course is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

How can he be faithful to forgive us is because the price for our sins, our transgressions has already been paid.

He's being faithful to the work of Jesus Christ. And because this is in full satisfaction of God's holiness, he is just to forgive us of our sins.

A judge who says, I'm going to treat you completely opposite of what you deserve and I'm not going to treat you according to your many, many crimes is not a just judge.

But because of the way that God has revealed his holiness and revealed his righteousness and revealed his grace and mercy through the sacrificial system, all of those centuries with Israel and before, everybody should know there's a substitute sacrifice, there's a substitute sacrifice, there's a substitute sacrifice until he shows up and John the

Baptist says there is the lamb of God, not David's lamb, not Abraham's lamb.

This is God's lamb that takes away the sins of the world. Speaking of which, verses 1 and 2, my little children, these things

I write to you that you may not sin and if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the father,

Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.

So he is the satisfying sacrificial payment for our sins, what the word propitiation means.

So that God is absolutely satisfied with the offering up of his own son

Jesus Christ in our place and for our sake, so that God is not holding out to smite us about our sins and our transgressions because Jesus didn't suffer enough, he wasn't worthy enough.

There's nothing left. The wrath tank is empty. It's been fully expended upon Christ.

Christ drank the cup of God's wrath down to the dregs. There's nothing left for us who are in Christ. And not for ours only,

John writes, but also for the whole world, all without distinction. All without distinction.

There's not a type of person that we could point to who has ever lived or ever will live who lives today, there's not a type of person that we can point to and say, most definitely outside the grace of God.

No, it's all without distinction. Everybody gets the gospel, everybody. And to the glory of God, he saves men, women, and children from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, washing them so that though their sins be as crimson and red, that they would be white as snow by the time they die.

And that's why Isaiah chapter 1, verse 8, is so great amongst

Christians for so long. It's why we might highlight it or underline it in our

Bibles because all of that is packed into that one verse reminding us of our salvation in Christ.

Next time, we will begin looking at verses 19 and 20 and look at the blessing and the cursing and the assurance

God gives concerning his covenant with Israel. Alright, well let's turn our attention now to prayer requests.