Dr. James White: Behold Our God | Isaiah: 40-44

Apologia Studios

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:13

If you will open your Bibles, please, to the book of Isaiah, chapter 40, prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 40.

00:32

I truly believe the only way that we will be benefited today by this study is if we focus our attention and our hearts in seeking

00:47

God and seeking from Him the glorious grace of His Spirit's work amongst us in revealing

01:00

His majesty to us. We live in a world that seeks to draw our sight always downward to the earth, the things of this world.

01:20

There are so many things that would distract us, so many things weighing upon our hearts. We think of what's happening in our land, we think of the evil, we think of what could be happening in the very near future.

01:34

And these things frequently come with us into this place and our minds follow after these things and we don't focus upon what

01:46

God is saying in His Word, we don't focus upon thinking about who

01:51

He is. And my whole desire today is to simply look at some passages of Scripture that remind us if we are, we call ourselves a

02:04

Reformed church and there are certain people who have very narrow definitions of what that means.

02:13

But for me, a person cannot be Reformed if they have not had, well, what

02:23

Pastor Jeff talked about just recently from Job, I mentioned to the other elders that back before the internet, we had something called

02:37

Phytonet, this bulletin board system that ran off 1 ,200 baud modems.

02:45

Now, some of you are completely lost right now, but some of you are going, ah, yes, you are old.

02:55

And I had a mail reader, it was, you could communicate with people, it would take a couple days, but you could communicate with people all across the world before the internet.

03:06

And I had a mail reader and you could put a tagline at the bottom of your messages.

03:14

And one of the taglines I had was, may God grant you an interview with the reference to Job 40.

03:23

Why? Well, if you remember the sermon, God asks

03:29

Job a series of questions, they're a couple chapters long, but they're rhetorical questions all meant to remind

03:37

Job of the fact that Job is a creature. He lives for a little while and then dies.

03:45

He didn't create anything. There was time before him, there will be time after him.

03:52

And every breath of his mouth, every beat of his heart comes from God. And I am convinced that the primary thing that makes someone

04:02

Reformed is that they've come to understand that God is God and I am not.

04:11

That God is utterly different than I am. And I embrace that.

04:16

Instead of rebelling against that, instead of hating that, if his word says he elects a certain people unto salvation, not based upon anything they do,

04:26

I accept that. I don't enter into an argument with him. I think that's the primary thing that makes someone

04:34

Reformed. And in fact, embracing Reformed theology without having had that experience, that soul -shaking, ego -crushing experience of knowing that God is

04:48

God, and that I am a short -lived creature, and that there is so much that I don't know.

05:02

If you don't have that experience, and yet you embrace the doctrines,

05:07

I think it's almost dangerous, because you don't have the right foundation. And so today, as we look at God in his majesty, it can only be by his

05:23

Spirit's help that our minds can be cleared of the things of the world, that we can lay aside all the troubles and difficulties and challenges of the coming week, and just for a moment, see the majesty and the glory of the

05:46

God we worship as he reveals himself to us, graciously, in Scripture.

05:54

And so let's begin by praying to that end. Father, as we open your word,

06:04

I pray that you will get rid of the speaker, that you will protect us from distraction, and that once again,

06:17

Lord, you would grant us that interview, that experience of knowing you as you are, as you've revealed yourself to be, as you've revealed yourself to every generation of believers before us.

06:35

The beauty of the worship in heaven that continues this very day.

06:42

Lord, may we experience just a part of that, as your

06:48

Spirit makes your word to come alive in our hearts. May we know you as you have revealed yourself to your honor and glory.

07:00

We pray in Christ's name, amen. I should begin with a word of warning if you go into one of those very dangerous places called a

07:18

Christian bookstore, as few as they are today, and you buy a commentary on the book of Isaiah.

07:30

And let's say you were going to be looking at portions of Isaiah 40 and 44, which as our congregation well knows,

07:41

Isaiah 40 through 48 is called the trial of the false gods.

07:49

It's a section where the idols of the peoples, the idols that Israel is being attracted to, they're brought into the law court, and God puts them on trial, and he demands that they answer certain questions, and he calls

08:09

Israel as his witnesses. You are my witnesses. You know, Isaiah 43 .10, we've all memorized it for witnessing the

08:15

Mormons. You are my witnesses, declares Yahweh. My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and understand, and believe that I am

08:22

He. Before me there is no God formed, and there will be none after me. This is part of the trial of the false gods.

08:30

But almost any commentary that you will purchase, if you want to do more digging into these texts, and I know that many of you are like that, almost anything published today will accept as a given, because it is the majority opinion, not because it has been properly debated, but because it's just the majority opinion, that's sort of how it works in academia, that what we are looking at is actually de jure

08:59

Isaiah, that the prophecy of Isaiah ends in chapter 39, and chapters 40 and following are written by someone at a later period of time, and the primary reason for that is it contains specific prophecy, including names of future leaders, and just so many in academia today just simply can't believe that God can know the future, and could reveal anything about the future, or that this is so much

09:31

God's word that He would do something like that. And so they would say that chapters 40 and following weren't written by Isaiah.

09:39

There's a major problem with that. If you have, for example, a computer program like Logos, Accordance, PC Study Bible, whatever,

09:49

Olive Tree on your phone or iPad or something like that, all of them will have resources you can purchase, and one that's extremely useful is a resource that would give you the places where the

10:03

New Testament cites Old Testament texts, and look up Isaiah 40 and following, and you'll discover that the

10:13

New Testament writers all believe that Isaiah wrote Isaiah 40 and following, and even mentions him by name as the author of these things.

10:25

It's amazing when I consider Christian academia and how often scholars think themselves wiser than the writers of Scripture itself.

10:39

We have clear evidence that not only apostles but Jesus believed that these were the words of Isaiah written 700 years before Christ's birth, and we know, for example, at the beginning of chapter 40, look at verses 1 and 2, if you know anything about Handel's Messiah, you can sing verses 1 and 2, but verse 3, a voice is calling, prepare the way of Yahweh in the wilderness, make smooth in the desert a highway for our

11:11

God. Heard that one before? Central to the presentation of the ministry of John the

11:18

Baptist, presented to us in the Gospels. Verse 7, the grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of Yahweh blows upon it, surely the people are grass, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our

11:32

God stands forever. Familiar words to all of us, again picked up in the

11:37

New Testament as well. But I want you to hear specifically when God begins to speak of His uniqueness.

11:45

The beauty of the trial of the false gods is that in demonstrating the nature of idols,

11:55

God reveals to us specific and unique aspects of His own character and being with a clarity that we don't see in many other places.

12:09

And so beginning in verse 18, to whom then will you liken

12:16

God? Or what likeness will you compare with Him? As for the graven images, a craftsman casts it, a goldsmith plates it with gold, and a silversmith fashions chains of silver.

12:33

He who is too impoverished to make such a contribution chooses a tree that does not rot.

12:39

He seeks out for himself a wise craftsman to prepare a graven image that will not be shaken.

12:47

I'm afraid that in our modern context, where we are not accustomed to seeing specific temples to pagan gods, now we do have some around here.

13:03

There are some Hindu temples in the valley, some Buddhist places. You can go and see idols if you want to find them, but in comparison to the ancient world, in comparison to the

13:16

New Testament world, Corinth, for example, everyone would have known what the idols looked like.

13:23

But we sort of feel like we've gotten past that. The reality is when you listen to these words and you think of someone spending money to have an idol made, we live in a deeply idolatrous age ourselves.

13:45

And while we don't have hideous gods of gold and silver as much as they did back then, you go to Central America and you will see all sorts of stuff like that.

13:57

Unfortunately, it's wrapped up in Catholicism down there. But we live in an idolatrous age.

14:07

Men gave of their substance to have idols made then. Now we give of our substance to create idols out of our homes, our cars.

14:20

I saw a hilarious YouTube video where someone who's called a

14:28

YouTube influencer, man, that was not one of the careers that they mentioned when

14:34

I was in college, when they have career fairs. Because there was no such thing as YouTube.

14:40

But now there's a career called YouTube influencer. All right. I don't know if you can get a degree in that.

14:47

I bet you can. I'll bet there's some place that offers degrees in YouTube. But did you see the guy with the $400 ,000

14:56

Ferrari? And he decided he wanted to make a video that would be really cool looking.

15:03

And so you've got these other cars and they go ripping off into this freshly harvested cornfield.

15:13

The problem is there's still a lot of stuff left on the ground and it's as dry as tinder.

15:21

And what they don't realize is a Ferrari doesn't have much in the way of clearance. Some of you have seen my big old honking truck out there that I pull the fifth wheel with.

15:31

Those wheels are big, but there's a lot of space around them too. So stuff could go flying out, but not in the

15:37

Ferrari. And they're whipping through the field. And then all of a sudden you hear one of the cameramen screaming, fire!

15:48

Because all that stuff has been building up in the wheel wells of that Ferrari. And those tires are going fast and there's something called friction.

15:57

That's how you start fires. And these brilliant people had gone out there with a $400 ,000 car and not a single fire extinguisher amongst a lot of them.

16:08

They're literally trying to put it out with Red Bull. They remembered their Red Bull.

16:15

The thing and another one of their vans, they parked close to it, went up in flames.

16:21

Half a million dollars burned to a crisp. We make idols out of our toys, idols out of our bodies, our clothing.

16:37

We spend much more than they did back then to make idols, especially because as secularists, the people around us don't believe there's anything after this life anyways.

16:52

And so they give the depth of their worship to themselves in idolatry.

17:00

And God asks a question. Even if you give of your gold and your silver, even if you don't have, if you're too impoverished, you choose a tree that does not rot, prepare a graven image that will not be shaken.

17:14

Then he asks the question of you beginning in verse 21, do you not know?

17:21

Have you not heard? Has it been not declared to you from the beginning?

17:26

Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who inhabits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.

17:36

It is he who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to inhabit.

17:43

It is he who reduces rulers to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth utterly formless.

17:53

Let me stop for just a moment. Do you hear what he's saying? The true

17:59

God who has revealed himself, who inhabits above the circle of the earth, its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.

18:08

He stretches out the heavens like a curtain, like we move a curtain back and forth in the shower or at the window.

18:15

He does that with the heavens. He is involved in this world.

18:22

He reduces rulers to nothing and who makes the judges of the earth utterly formless.

18:29

Now I'm not, I don't have time, it's not my purpose today, but we are seeing in our land right now what happens when judges become utterly formless, when judges are corrupted.

18:48

We have had the blessing in our land of Lady Liberty with a piece of cloth over her face so that she is just with all.

18:59

We don't have that any longer. We clearly have a two -tiered justice system already in our land.

19:06

And we have judges that don't care what the Constitution says. They don't care what the law says. They are wise.

19:13

And it's fascinating to me, the term formless, it's probably about the only time

19:20

I'm going to dig into the original language here, so stick with me. In Genesis, it says the earth was without form and was empty.

19:33

Without form and void, right? Right at the beginning of Genesis 1. Well, one of the actually useful things that I learned in seminary, the phrase there in Hebrew is tohu wabohu, tohu wabohu, formless and empty.

19:53

And there were deities in the pagan world that represented formlessness and emptiness.

20:02

And there is actually an apologetic element in Genesis 1.

20:11

The idea of formlessness, void, emptiness, is opposed to the

20:19

God of Scripture. Because he does not leave things there. He imposes order and rule and meaning and purpose.

20:31

It's paganism that has emptiness and formlessness. And the term here used of the judges of the earth is tohu, from tohu wabohu, from Genesis chapter 1.

20:45

And that's not meant as a compliment. It is saying that even the judges of the earth, the people with authority,

20:56

God judges them. And if they don't judge according to his law, he makes them empty and vacuous.

21:04

And we're seeing that happening right before our eyes. There is a judge in Texas this week that suspended the law that stopped the mutilation of children.

21:18

And one thing we can say to a judge like that is, God will make you empty and void.

21:26

And you don't want that. You are dependent upon God for your purpose and your meaning.

21:33

And if you dare engage in that kind of activity, you need to understand judgment will come upon you.

21:42

And it will be severe. Tohu wabohu. We'll see how many of you next week remember that.

21:49

Maybe I'll have a little quiz during the catechism time. It is he who reduces rulers to nothing who makes the judges of the earth utterly formless.

22:00

Scarcely have they been planted. Scarcely have they been sown. Scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth.

22:06

But he merely blows on them and they wither. Oh, we understand that here, don't we?

22:14

When we first moved here, when we first bought our house, we never expected to be able to afford a house.

22:20

But the Lord opened the way for us to buy the house we live in yet to this day. And the previous owners had a lawn, you know, with the green things in it.

22:34

And I grew up in Minnesota and Pennsylvania. And you had to mow the lawn, but you didn't have to actually water the lawn.

22:46

This stuff came down from the sky and did that naturally. But we live in Arizona.

22:56

And for a few years, we tried the lawn thing. But in reality, it was just wasting water to torture a few poor little leaves to have a little bit of green before they then gave up and died.

23:12

Because we live in a desert. And when the wind blows, and that heat comes in the summer, we had a fair amount of rain.

23:22

We had a bunch of weeds that sprouted up. And we had a company come in and take them out.

23:29

And then the summer hit. And anything that tried to grow after that, the wind blows on it.

23:37

And the 115 degrees for six days in a row, and it just dies.

23:43

That's the way things are. And these rulers and judges, scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth.

23:56

He merely blows on them, and they wither. And the storm carries them away like stubble.

24:05

I saw a tweet from Dr. Harari of the

24:11

World Economic Forum yesterday. He's a Jewish, atheist, homosexual. He's the science mind behind the

24:21

World Economic Forum. And he was basically saying, from a biological perspective, there's nothing that's unnatural.

24:30

Nothing that's unnatural. If you can do it, then it's in the realm of nature. It can be done. It's not unnatural.

24:36

He has no foundation whatsoever for any kind of moral or ethical system.

24:45

That's what gives rise, ironically, to the Holocaust, to Mao, to Stalin.

24:52

Hey, they did it. Must be natural. Because he has no way of defining what nature is supposed to be.

25:00

Because he has no God. Secularism has no God. So, God says to people like that, to whom then will you liken me?

25:11

That I would be his equal, says the Holy One. And always remember, holiness is purity.

25:20

Holiness is utter cleanness. All of that is true. But at the root of that term, holy, kadosh, means otherness.

25:35

So, you see? To whom will you liken me? To liken God to anything less than God is to deny his otherliness, his holiness.

25:47

That I would be his equal, says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars.

25:57

The one who leads forth their host by number, he calls them all by name.

26:04

Because the greatness of his vigor and the strength of his power, not one of them is missing.

26:14

We look up at the heavens, and now we know the vastness that is out there.

26:22

The James Webb telescope has been feeding us a tremendous amount of information, and of course the secular scientists are running crazy with it.

26:32

But the images that it has captured are truly amazing. And we live in only about the second or third generation that has understood anything about the vastness of our universe.

26:51

Only a hundred years ago, people were still having arguments about what those little puffy things in the sky were when you looked through a telescope.

26:58

Now we know they're entire galaxies as big as our own.

27:07

Our own galaxy has at least 150 billion stars in it. And now we think they're at least 150 billion galaxies.

27:19

Our minds can't even begin to wrap around numbers that big, things that huge.

27:28

It's too great for us. And yet God says,

27:34

I call them all by name. They all have a purpose.

27:40

And we little creatures that live for 80 years sit up on our haunches in our wisdom and pat our degrees from our graduate schools and say, well, clearly, we know more than the

27:58

God who created all things. We don't need a God. It's just all random out there, not realizing that they've just opened an endless abyss underneath their feet of meaninglessness.

28:15

It's all just going toward heat death someday, and then there's nothing. That's all there is, no meaning, no future, just cosmic accidents, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

28:35

Who would be the equal of the Holy One who created these stars?

28:42

Our star is sort of in the middle range, size -wise, it's very nice and stable, which is good for us.

28:50

If it wasn't, things wouldn't be good for us at all. It's sort of around the 40th percentile or so.

28:57

There are huge, massive stars out there. If you ever look up at the night sky, you get out of the city, for crying out loud, and the massive light pollution here, look up and find the constellation

29:13

Orion, you know the three stars that make his belt? And look up toward the head and you will find the star

29:20

Betelgeuse. Didn't come from a movie, Betelgeuse, and you'll know you've found it, you know why?

29:30

Because it's orange. It's literally orange. If you can get out of the city to where your eyes can really see the night sky, you'll see it.

29:43

I think God enjoyed making Betelgeuse, because Betelgeuse isn't even perfectly round, it's sort of, we're not sure how it even exists, to be perfectly honest with you, it's sort of got bumps and lumps.

29:57

And you may recall that about two years ago, it started fading, and people thought it was going to go supernova.

30:07

It didn't, it's sort of gotten back to where it was, it just sort of does its thing, it's very weird.

30:13

But if you think of our solar system, and you've got the sun, you've got Mercury and Venus, and the

30:19

Earth, and then Mars, and you've got the asteroid belt, and you've got Jupiter and Saturn. If Betelgeuse was our sun, the outer portion of Betelgeuse would extend to Jupiter.

30:39

That's how massive it is. Now why did

30:45

God make something like that? I have no earthly idea, or stellar idea, if you want to put it that way.

30:55

But I have a sneaking hunch. I can't prove it, but I have a sneaking hunch that one of the things we're going to be doing in eternity to come, is

31:05

God's going to be showing us the glories of all that he has done in this massive, massive universe.

31:12

And maybe someday we'll get to understand Betelgeuse, maybe get to see Betelgeuse. I don't know.

31:18

He made it for a reason. Says right here, see who has created these stars.

31:25

You see, all these idols came out of creation.

31:31

They were made out of pre -existing matter. And God says, to whom you liken me, if it exists,

31:38

I made it. If it's up there in the heavens, I created it, and I sustain it.

31:46

And the order in which it moves, which we don't understand almost anything about yet.

31:53

I mean, how many of you, let me see, okay.

32:01

How many of you are less than 20 years of age? Put your hand up. Welcome to Apologia.

32:10

When you were born, we had not yet discovered that the center of our galaxy is a supermassive black hole.

32:24

We didn't know. Einstein had theorized. Man, that guy was smart. Einstein had theorized that black holes might exist, but he hoped that they didn't.

32:33

Because it seemed too random to him for God's creation. But he did. And we didn't know until about 20 years ago that the center of our galaxy is a supermassive black hole.

32:51

We couldn't see it because of all the dust and everything in the way. And now we have infrared telescopes and things like that, that we've launched out into space that can see through things like this.

33:02

And so we were able to watch and we were able to see these large, massive stars, far bigger than our sun, here in this part of the galaxy.

33:13

And we'd be able to track them. And we saw this one star that's far bigger than our star, than our sun.

33:24

And it would be going along and all of a sudden, whoosh, it would be thrown around at over 1 ,000 miles per hour.

33:33

Can you imagine, our sun is massive and huge. 98 % of all the mass in our solar system is in the sun.

33:41

All the planets, everything else, tiny little percentage, the sun is huge. So we're about at least 100 times bigger than our sun.

33:50

And throwing this thing around is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

33:58

Do we know how that impacts everything else in our galaxy?

34:04

Nope, we got a lot of theories. We don't know. God does.

34:10

He's been running all this stuff for a long time. And yet we sit here, and just because we start learning a little infinitesimal amount about his creation, we think we are so wise that we can now say, we don't need a

34:25

God anymore. Those ancient people, they needed a

34:31

God to explain thunder. Now we understand where thunder comes from.

34:37

So we don't need God anymore. We are such idiots when

34:43

God, by his grace, does not reign in our arrogance. We are amazingly arrogant as creatures.

34:53

This is what God says, to who you liken me? Then make,

35:03

Isaiah then made application to Israel. Why do you say,

35:09

O Jacob, and assert, O Israel, my way is hidden from Yahweh, and the justice due me passes by my

35:14

God? Do you not know, have you not heard, the everlasting God, Yahweh, the creator of the ends of the earth, does not become wearied or tired?

35:21

His understanding is unsearchable. He knows your evil. Just because he hasn't brought judgment yet, does not mean that he will not.

35:34

You see, when you don't have the right understanding of the grandeur and power of God, it's really easy to limit him down, even as religious people.

35:43

That's what Israel did. They safely locked him away in the temple, and thought that what they did elsewhere,

35:51

Yahweh doesn't see. And Yahweh says, are you kidding me?

35:57

The everlasting God, Yahweh, the creator of the ends of the earth, you, you think that the justice due you passes by him, that he doesn't know?

36:14

You see, sometimes we separate our theology of God from reality here in our life.

36:24

If we don't know who God is, if we don't listen to what the prophets have said, then we're not going to understand why it is that God says the things he does through the prophets, why he addresses issues like justice, and defines those issues.

36:44

How foolish is idolatry? I want you to turn over with me to another portion of the trial of the false gods in Isaiah 44,

36:55

I think this is one of the deepest sections of utter sarcasm.

37:07

Holy sarcasm in all of scripture. We know that Yahweh says, beginning in verse six, thus says

37:21

Yahweh, the king of Israel, and his redeemer, Yahweh of hosts. I am the first, and I am the last, and there is no

37:31

God beside me. Who is like me? Let him call out and declare it.

37:39

And let him tell it to me in order, from the time that I established the ancient people, and let them declare to them the things that are to come, and the events that are going to take place.

37:50

Do not be in dread, and do not be afraid. Have not long since caused it to be heard to you and declared it?

37:56

And you are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me, or is there any other rock? I know of none. So he's speaking to his people,

38:04

Israel. And once again, he reveals aspects of his character, his eternality.

38:11

The fact there is no God besides him, and that he has been sovereign over time.

38:19

He has established the ancient people. He was the one involved in the sovereignty in the past.

38:25

He will be involved in sovereignty in the future. And he says, I know of no other

38:30

God. And it's in that context, then, that we then find these words, beginning in verse nine.

38:41

Those who form a graven image are all of them futile. Their desirable things are of no profit.

38:49

Even their own witnesses fail to see or know, so they will be put to shame.

38:56

Who has formed a God or cast a graven image to no profit? Behold, all his companions will be put to shame.

39:05

The craftsmen themselves are mere men. Let them all assemble themselves.

39:11

Let them stand up. Let them be in dread. Let them together be put to shame. The man crafts iron into a cutting tool and does his work over the coals, forming it with hammers and working it with his powerful arm.

39:27

He also gets hungry and has no power. He drinks no water and becomes weary. Another crafts wood.

39:34

He extends a measuring line. He outlines it with a stylus. He makes it with planes and outlines it with a compass and makes it like the form of a man.

39:42

Like the glory of man, so it may sit in a house. In order to cut cedars for himself, he takes a cypress or an oak and raises it for himself among the trees of the forest.

39:53

He plants a fir and the rain makes it grow. Then it becomes something for a man to burn, so he takes one of them and warms himself.

40:02

He also kindles a fire to bake bread. He also works to produce a God and worships it.

40:09

He makes it a graven image and falls down before it. Half of it, he burns in the fire.

40:15

Over this half, he eats meat as he roasts the roast and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says,

40:23

I am warm, I have seen the fire. But the rest of it, he makes into a

40:30

God, his graven image. He falls down before it and worships.

40:38

He also prays to it and says, deliver me for you are my

40:43

God. They do not know, nor do they understand.

40:50

For he has smeared over their eyes that they cannot see and their hearts that they will have no insight.

40:59

No one causes this to return to his heart, nor is there knowledge or understanding to say, hm,

41:06

I have burned half of it in the fire, and also have baked bread over its coals,

41:12

I roast meat and eat it. Then I make the rest of it into something that's an abomination.

41:19

I fall down before a block of wood. He feeds on ashes.

41:26

A deceived heart has turned him aside, and he cannot deliver his soul.

41:31

And he cannot say, is there not a lie in my right hand? What an amazing passage of scripture.

41:43

What an insight. And again, it's so easy for us in our modern day to go, yeah, boy, those people back then, they were pretty dull, weren't they?

41:59

I would never worship an idol, really.

42:10

Think about what's happening in our day. Think about what happened just a couple years ago and people are wanting to see it happen again.

42:19

Once people fear, it's amazing how easy it is to manipulate them, isn't it?

42:27

Once you get them panicked, the world's going to end because of your SUV. We literally have people who are voting to enslave themselves now to save Mother Earth.

42:44

And before, it was the virus is going to get you. You're going to kill

42:49

Grandma. And once that fear sets in, rationality leaves.

42:57

And people are easily controlled, and you get a mob. And mobs do amazingly stupid things.

43:07

In the ancient world, there was death all around. Infant mortality so much higher than we have it today.

43:16

Plague and disease. It would be very easy to keep people in a constant state of panic.

43:28

And so you'd create the idols. And you see, if you'll just bring an offering to the idol, the idol will guarantee that your flocks won't die.

43:40

Because if your flocks die, you're probably toast. And your crops will grow. And there'll be enough rain.

43:48

But they used fear and then said, bring us your gold, bring us your silver.

43:55

We'll make you an idol that will then give you what you want.

44:02

The foolishness of man has not changed. We are still experiencing the same types of things today.

44:17

And today, I think the greatest idol that exists in Western culture today is the despicable, anti -God, anti -human, anti -human flourishing philosophy of secularism.

44:39

Everything that secularism stands for is a denial of everything the Bible teaches.

44:46

Everything it stands for denies that Jesus Christ was who he claimed to be. It is not some neutral thing.

44:55

Well, we can all, let's just all be secularists and you can be free to do what you want. But no, secularism is an all -encompassing philosophy.

45:04

It is a worldview that fundamentally teaches every one of us that we are worthless accidents without transcendent meaning.

45:15

That every law is simply that which any society creates and can enforce.

45:22

There's no objective standards. There's no way of defining justice. It's an idol.

45:30

It's a destructive idol. And Western society has decided we are going to worship it and serve it.

45:42

God says they do not know. They do not understand. For he has smeared over their eyes that they cannot see and their hearts so that they will have no insight.

45:55

Remember, this is Isaiah 44. When was Isaiah made a prophet?

46:01

Isaiah chapter six. And what did God say to Isaiah in chapter six?

46:06

I will blind them. I will blind their eyes.

46:13

I will harden their hearts so that they will not understand. That judgment is taking place.

46:25

No one causes this to return to his heart. So here you have people. And even though they see it, they see half of the wood over here and it's burning and they're cooking their meat over it.

46:41

And they take the other half of the same log and they carve an image and they worship it.

46:52

And it doesn't enter into their heart. They have no knowledge or understanding to say,

46:59

I have burned half of it in the fire and also have baked bread over its coals. I roast meat and eat it, then

47:05

I make the rest of it into an abomination. I fall down before a block of wood. Such is the depth of man's sin.

47:17

But my friends, today we do not bow down before an idol, not in this room.

47:27

We want to know the true God. We want to hear his word. We want to be obedient to him.

47:35

Why? Why? Why are we different than them?

47:45

Better question is, why are you different than your friends in this society?

47:53

At work, in your neighborhood, they're perfectly satisfied today to be involved in idolatry.

48:07

They have no concern about the true God. They do not want to worship him, but you do.

48:16

Why? One of the greatest blindnesses is for us to think it's because we are somehow wiser than them.

48:29

Even here, notice it says that he, God, has smeared over their eyes so that they cannot see.

48:40

There's judgment there. They've received judgment from God. You've received mercy and grace.

48:46

That's the only reason you're not bowing down before a block of wood. Because that block of wood might be your house.

48:55

That block of wood might be your car. Your plastic surgery.

49:02

Your bank account. Your gold. Your silver. Your career.

49:09

So many things. And the only reason you're not bowing down is because of grace.

49:21

God has revealed himself most clearly and fully in and through Jesus Christ.

49:28

And he directs us to these words. And we love these words. And we are so thankful that God has preserved these things for us.

49:38

But your heart should always be touched. There should always be an element.

49:45

When we open the word and we see these things, there should be an element of, Lord, why me?

49:56

Sometimes it's helpful when we can see the ideology all around us in the

50:03

West. But you go to other nations and you see the idols.

50:09

And you see the emptiness of going into those temples and praying to those hideous statues as if they represented something that was real.

50:29

And you have to ask yourself, why me? And as soon as you do that, all you can do is not bow down before a block of wood, but to bow down before the living

50:44

God and give thanks to his name. For you did not deserve his grace.

50:54

You did not deserve his goodness. He could have smeared over your eyes.

51:01

Think of the sin. Think of the rebellion that God rescued you from.

51:08

Some of you, you've been raised in Christian homes. And God has been merciful to you, early in your life, to bring you to him.

51:21

Let me say something to all you young people that have been blessed in this way, as I was.

51:30

Avoid the sin of the Pharisees. Don't look at others as if you are better than them.

51:39

You just simply have been graced by God. And your life should be constantly marked by thanksgiving for what he has kept you from.

51:53

Listen to those of us who are older. Listen to those who give their testimonies of the ruin that sin brought to their lives that you've been kept from.

52:08

Don't let the enemy of your soul convince you that you need to get out into the world, sow your wild oats.

52:19

If you have godly parents who have regularly testified to you of the truth, what should mark you every day is you should get up and be thankful to God for how he has shown his love for you.

52:35

Because you are blessed. You are blessed. Talk to those who did not have that privilege, and they will tell you all that I could have avoided that pain and the broken relationships and the scars in my life that you will never know.

52:58

You've been blessed. But don't let that blessing ever become a ground of you looking down your nose at others.

53:09

Because it's just that. It's a blessing of grace. You didn't deserve it.

53:15

You didn't earn it. Therefore, simply be filled with thanksgiving and rejoice.

53:29

God has revealed himself to his people. We not only have this tremendous section in Isaiah, we have

53:38

Jeremiah, we have Ezekiel, and we haven't even gotten into the depth of revelation in the new covenant scriptures.

53:49

And yet how often are we guilty of preferring the entertainments of the world to spending time contemplating the glory and majesty of our

54:06

God. There is not a day that goes by that if we do not want to, we can invest time to read

54:17

Isaiah 6 and to enter into the worship. To then see

54:25

Revelation 4 and 5, the continuation of that worship, even today to contemplate the fact that right now as the nations rage,

54:36

God is being worshipped in perfection, in heaven, and always will be.

54:44

And he says he's going to accomplish his purpose in this world. The steadfastness, the contentment, the abiding joy in the midst of difficulty that that can bring to the believing soul is astonishing.

55:04

And yet how often do we complain to God about our circumstances rather than focusing upon who he is and the revelation he's given.

55:20

Because what it does is it makes us realize this is but a short period of time.

55:27

And then eternity is coming and we are going to have uninterrupted perfect fellowship with the one who loves us with a perfect love that we cannot begin to even consider.

55:51

Brothers, sisters, let's examine our hearts. How much do we want to be enveloped in awe and wonder at the eternal

56:07

God, the creator of the ends of the earth, and yet we allow our minds to be taken by the things of the world, the baubles and bangles and beads of stuff that will pass away.

56:28

May we in the coming days, may God by his spirit in these coming days, draw us to his word, the contemplation of who he is.

56:42

Because when you are focused upon that, this world cannot stop you from being the kind of Christian that God would call you to be.

56:55

Let's pray it again. Our glorious God, our minds are finite and small, and yet you have revealed yourself to us in your word.

57:16

You give us the opportunity to contemplate your greatness. And oh, the peace that comes from knowing who you are.

57:30

All of our enemies are seen for what they are. Chaff that we've blown away by the wind.

57:44

Lord, we pray that by your spirit, you would clear away all the debris, all the dust, all the things that we allow to get in the way, the little idols that we've been working on in the back of our minds.

58:00

Take them away. Let our worship be pure and full.

58:07

May our repentance be real. And may it include all aspects of our lives, because we want to be worshippers of this awesome

58:19

God in spirit and in truth. We know that only by your spirit can these divine truths be applied to our lives.

58:33

And so, Father, by your grace, bless this, your people here.

58:42

Thank you for revealing yourself. Thank you for your mercy and grace toward us.

58:50

And if there be any amongst us this day that do not know you, may this be the day you reveal yourself.

58:58

Take out that heart of stone, give a heart of flesh. Show yourself strong in drawing your people to yourself.