Let us look to God in prayer, shall
we?
We thank Thee, dear Lord, that there is
a place, a place of calm and of
rest, near to the heart of God.
Lord, may each of us learn what it
is to abide, that we may bring forth
fruit, and that our lives may be lived
for Thy praise and glory.
Now speak to us through Thy Word today,
may it bring its comfort, its challenge, just
that word to suit our individual need.
Search us out, don't let us escape what
Thou hast for us.
Make us listen as if we're the only
person in this place, or listening by radio,
who matters to Thee.
Hide Thy servant behind the cross, and let
us see Jesus only.
The cry of the heart of everyone in
this place is, Sir, we would see Jesus.
Fulfill that prayer and answer it for Thy
name's sake.
Amen.
Our text for this morning's message, you will
find in the 48th chapter of the Prophecy
of Isaiah, the portion which was read to
us earlier by Pastor Durie, Isaiah chapter 48,
and I want to read to you the
18th verse.
Verse 18.
Oh, that Thou hast hearkened to my commandments.
Then had Thy peace been as a river,
and Thy righteousness as the waves of the
sea.
There's something about the very tone and content
of that verse that claims my immediate attention.
For here is a lament from the heart
of God.
There's a suggestion here that things might not
have been what they are, that they didn't
have been what they have been, if only
I had hearkened unto His command.
There's a suggestion too that this word is
not spoken to us by some ruthless dictator
seeking to wreak vengeance upon a disobedient people,
but spoken to us by a Father in
heaven who has a remedy to meet our
need, if only we're prepared to fulfill the
condition.
Of course, I'm fully aware that this word
is spoken primarily to a very insignificant nation,
the Jew, Judah, just an insignificant people, and
yet a people for whom God had a
very significant purpose, because you will recall that
through them was to be born one who
was to be our Savior.
But I am deeply convinced that with equal
meaning and with equal authority, these words are
spoken today to this country, to the church
in this country, to this church in which
we assemble, and to your life and to
mine.
Beloved, there has never been a time when
God's people have not been face to face
with a great principle of evil, concentrated perhaps
in the life of a city, its social
life, its moral life.
Whatever it may be, there's always been that
same principle, that same spirit, even though perhaps
it has taken many different forms through history.
Always there's been the conflict between the upsurge
of human pride and the vain glory of
man and the glory of God.
Always that conflict between the pride of intellect
and, on the other hand, integrity of character.
Always the conflict between the planning of some
great utopia without God, who alone can give
anything permanence.
And this principle is as strong in Chicago
today as when those massive walls of Babylon,
a far bigger place than Chicago incidentally, when
those massive walls enclosed their millions and dominated
the whole world.
And as I once again take this passage
of scripture and apply it to your life
and to mine and to this city, to
this nation, the whole question is, what's our
relationship to these things?
As we live in the midst of it
all and in the surrounding of it all
and inevitably mingle amongst it, what's our attitude?
What are we doing?
How are we living?
I believe we are warranted in applying to
present circumstances everything that we read here of
what plagued and captivated the people of God
and his exposure of their need and his
great call, his great summons to a deliverance.
I wouldn't presume to suppose that I am
here to speak to a nation, but I
do presume to speak to a soul.
And in speaking to a soul and to
many souls, incidentally, I speak to a nation
which is simply composed of millions of such.
And if each one of us, each one
of us were to act upon and respond
to this great lament from the heart of
God before it is too late, what a
dynamic part you and I could have in
the liberty and freedom and release and the
authority of his church.
Let me therefore share with you that which
God has spoken to my heart from this
portion of his word with the earnest prayer
that he will yet cause all of us
not just to listen, but to hearken and
to do.
So that what is spoken from this pulpit
has some relevance to what goes on in
our lives.
That what is spoken from this place in
the name of the Lord is not just
a torrent of words which merely tickles our
ears and interests our intellect, but rather the
authoritative message of God the Holy Ghost for
this church at this time in every department
of its life.
What value is a ministry unless it has
that authority?
God help us.
As I listen then to this lament, and
I have tried to be silent during the
days of this week, and that's one of
the most difficult things in life, as you've
probably discovered.
As I've tried to be silent to listen
to this lament from the heart of God
and expose my own life to its message,
I have seen some things here, I believe,
as the Lord has shown them to me,
that I want to share with you.
In the first place, I think I see
here what I have called, as I faced
God about it, the sadness of a missed
responsibility.
Oh, that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments.
It has often been said, a trite saying
but a true one, that man's chief aim
is to glorify God and not himself.
I glorify God only when I obey him.
Not simply when I patronize him, not simply
when I give some adherence to the church,
but when I obey him.
I am deeply impressed with the simplicity of
the road to revival.
Just 24 hours obedience in my life and
your life and you'd be right in it.
In such a flood tide of Holy Ghost
blessing that there would not be room to
contain it in this church.
Hence this complaint from the Lord.
Oh, that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments.
Of course, there was nothing new in that.
It had been planned from the very beginning
of God's dealings with this people that, uh,
obedience was the key which would unlock the
door that would let out all the blessing
that anybody could take.
And disobedience was a sure way to lose
it.
I would like just to read a passage
of scripture for authority for that statement.
You remember these tremendous words in Deuteronomy chapter
30, verse 15.
See, I have set before thee this day
life and good, death and evil, in that
I command thee this day to love the
Lord thy God, to walk in his ways
and to keep his commandments and his statutes
and his judgments, that thou mayest live and
multiply, and the Lord thy God shall bless
thee in the land whither thou goest to
possess it.
But if thine heart turn away so that
thou wilt not hear, but shall be drawn
away and worship other gods and serve them,
I denounce unto you this day that ye
shall surely perish and that ye shall not
prolong your days upon the land whither thou
passest over Jordan to go to possess it.
I call heaven and earth to record this
day against you that I have set before
you life and death, blessing and cursing.
Therefore choose life that both thou and thy
seed may live.
And in case there is some dispensationalist listening
to me this morning, and someone who perhaps
would say this is law and not grace,
lest I imagine that this is but for
the Jew and not for my own heart
and my own life today in January in
Chicago, let me remind you that the Lord
Jesus said, Not every one that saith unto
me, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of
heaven, but he that doeth the will of
my Father which is in him, he that
heareth my sayings and doeth them.
He it is that I shall liken to
a man who built his house upon a
rock, and when the storms came and the
floods descended and the winds blew upon that
house, it fell not because it was founded
upon a rock, and that rock was the
rock of Obedience.
God forgives freely by his grace, but he
expects a high performance from the life that
has been forgiven.
His free forgiveness and his free mercy are
offered to us on the terms of simple
faith and total commitment to the sovereignty of
Jesus, but immediately there is the demand for
totality of performance in the power that he
gives.
If ye love me, ye will keep my
commandments.
Yes, the one word which opens the door
to the outpouring of the blessing of our
Heavenly Father is submission, and the one word
which shuts it is pride.
That's why at the very heart of the
Christian revelation there is the cross of Jesus
Christ, and that is the place upon which
I would ask you to gaze in your
soul today upon him who humbled himself and
was obedient unto death, wherefore God hath highly
exalted him and given him a name that
is above every name, that at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow.
Something of the fruit of this obedience is
revealed to us in our text.
O, that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments!
Then, then would thy peace have been as
a river, and thy righteousness as the waves
of the sea.
Peace as a river.
Not a little stream that scarcely fills its
little bed.
Not just a little babbling, noisy brook at
the beginning of its flow, so to speak,
but a river, a river far down its
course like the mighty Amazon, deep and placid.
A river able to bear great tonnage upon
its surface, carrying in it the refuse of
cities and towns and villages without contamination.
A river not swept by storms, nor drained
by drought, a great, deep, mighty, placid, flowing
river, never anxious as to whether or not
it can continue to flow, giving nourishment to
all manner of plants and trees and shrubs
that dig their roots into it.
A river.
O, that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments!
Then thy peace would have been as a
river, constant fullness, contact with the sinfulness, sinfulness,
and foulest, and most degraded, yes, contact without
contamination.
An easy, certain, steady, deep, placid flow, giving
nourishment not to a few, but nourishment to
hundreds of lives who seek to draw from
what you have, and from what I have,
of the reality of Jesus Christ, a river.
And thy righteousness as the waves of the
sea.
I think, and this, of course, is only
my personal preference, of all of God's creation,
there's nothing I love so much as the
ocean.
I don't mean the shore at low tide
when it's all dirty and slimy.
I don't mean that.
Ah, no.
But I mean right out in the midst
where there's no land in sight.
And where all around there are great, big,
forty-foot waves, and they're crashing onto that
ship, and I listen to the roar of
them, and the power of them, and I
smell the freshness of them, and the loveliness
of them, and I see them dancing here
and there, and I know that underneath them
all, there's miles and miles of ocean, and
the whole thing's so pure, and so grand,
and so powerful.
Oh, that thou hadst hearken to my commandments,
then would thy righteousness be as the waves
of the sea, as pure, as fresh, as
lovely, as fragrant, as powerful as a great
ocean billow.
Ah, but beloved, it hasn't been that way.
No.
Peace, righteousness, a haunting memory for some listening
to me this morning, and it's all because
there was a failure at a point of
obedience.
Would you please notice from our text that
it wasn't a question of failure in the
practice of religion.
To see it in its context, I go
back to the first verse, and I listen
to God launching upon this complaint against his
people, and saying this, Hear ye this, O
house of Jacob, which are called by the
name of Israel, and are come forth out
of the waters of Judah, which swear by
the name of the Lord, and make mention
of the God of Israel.
Yes, they do all that, but not in
truth, nor in righteousness.
There had been a very fair show of
worship, but it was all an outward thing,
and certainly not a matter of the heart,
because, as I read the fourth verse, God
says, I knew that thou art obstinate, and
thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy
brow brass.
Beloved, let's get this.
Oh, may the Spirit of God just drive
it into your mind, and heart, and into
the depths, so that there can be no
escaping it.
Basic to this sadness of a missed responsibility
was failure to submit to the will and
to the purpose of God.
Can I not trace lack of peace and
righteousness to a lack and a lack of
liberty and purity and power and freshness to
exactly the same thing?
At some point, and on some issue, and
it is not my business to inquire where
the Holy Spirit is doing that as I
talk with you this morning in his name,
at some point there has been obstinacy.
At some place there has been the unbending
will and the stubborn mind which wouldn't yield
and insisted on holding on to the reins
of life in that situation.
You remember?
And isn't it amazing what the flesh can
do in putting on a remarkable show of
piety alongside an unbroken will and an unrepentant
heart, isn't it?
Isn't it amazing how far we can go,
and all the time within a casing that's
like steel.
There is an argument with heaven, and ever
since that took place, do you recall?
Was it before your conversion or after it?
I wonder.
God spoke to you about your associations, perhaps,
and your friendships, and your habits, your practices,
and your thoughts.
Did he?
Ah, but there was a stubborn obstinacy at
that point, and ever since that happened, you
said goodbye to peace and to righteousness.
And you forget it in singing away, it
is well with my soul.
The sadness of a missed responsibility.
As I thought about this, my heart, my
heart felt sad.
But then I look again at this chapter,
and God speaks to me again.
And he speaks to me about what I
called the surety, the surety of a merciful
redemption.
Look at verse 9.
For my name's sake will I defer mine
anger, and for my praise will I refrain
for thee, that I cut thee not off.
Verse 11.
For mine own sake, even for mine own
sake, will I do it, for how should
my name be polluted, and I will not
give my glory to another.
I don't, I don't profess to understand this.
I merely make it a statement because I
believe it, and I do believe lots of
things that I don't understand.
Quite clearly, the language of this text is
that of one who does not force his
will arbitrarily upon his creatures, but rather of
one who conditions his treatment of us by
our response.
Oh, but how long and how hard is
the way of rejection.
Level my life up to the life I
have, the light I have, by his strength.
Keep his commandments by his power, and thy
peace shall be as a river.
But if I refuse, something happens, and something
happens that need never have happened.
Listen.
Verse 10.
I have refined thee, but not with silver.
I have chosen thee in the furnace of
affliction.
I want to talk with you a moment
how I wish that I was sitting down
in your home today, or in your hospital
where you are, or sitting with you, dear
ones, here in church, just two or three
of us, rather than having to speak to
a crowd.
I want to talk to you about the
furnace.
Let me be clear about this, that not
all suffering is caused by disobedience.
The furnace through which I pass in life
does not always indicate my unfaithfulness to God.
Everybody has got some trial or other.
Everybody.
There's a skeleton in every cupboard.
It's a different one, but there's one there.
There's a very big difference between the punishment
of the ungodly and the furnace through which
God puts his people.
Very big difference.
Maybe there's a corner around which you're going
in life, and I've never been there.
And maybe there's a tunnel through which I'm
passing, and you've never been either.
There's a common bond of sympathy that draws
us together, therefore, because this happens to all.
If you're not chastened, God says, you're not
sons but bastards.
But what I want to say is that
if we are unfaithful, then you may expect
a furnace the like of which an ungodly
man doesn't know one thing about.
If I speak to one young Christian girl
or man today who's let go of their
chastity, God is going to put you through
a hell on earth till you repent.
A furnace the like of which you've never
known a thing about.
A furnace that you'll make you think you're
going mad.
Start staring mad because you've let go the
most cherished thing in life, your own sanctity
and your own chastity.
There's a furnace of severity and trial and
heat and intensity through which a Christian goes
when he disobeys God, that an ungodly man
doesn't know a thing about.
Oh, how many of God's people today are
going through a furnace which need never have
been, if only they'd been willing and obedient.
I want to talk theory to you, beloved.
I just talk from my heart and from
my own experience.
I recall a time in my life, just
can't recall the actual length, but I recall
the time and the incident and the reason
for it so clearly when, for I think
it was almost a year, it seemed as
if there was a blackout in my soul.
I began to talk to other people about
the wonderful thing of going through darkness and
what God has for us in the darkness.
True.
Began to speak about the maturity of a
Christian whom God can trust to go through
the dark and therefore does not need to
be dependent upon feelings and upon emotion.
Perfectly true.
I made a scapegoat of some of the
greatest truths in to excuse my sheer downright
disobedience and sin.
Has that ever happened to you?
Oh, amidst all the cruelty and luxury and
wickedness of Babylon, those Jews spent 70 years
in slavery that need never have been.
But listen, they were God's chosen people.
And even though in captivity, his promises never
let them go, they couldn't forget that they
belonged to him and his covenant was made
with them and they just could not slip
out of his grasp.
And yet, yet, they kicked against his will.
But you know, the furnace did its work.
They were put into it because of their
idolatry.
And they came out of it never to
worship an idol again.
The most precious thing following Babylonian captivity was
their scripture, which they guarded and kept at
all costs.
Never again did they fall before idol worship.
The furnace did its work.
May I say it's our friendly to you?
Oh, Spirit of God, just drive this home
now.
Listen, the greatest tragedy is not pain, it's
not suffering, not the mystery of this, but
the sterility of it, the fruitlessness of it.
That in spite of the fact that God
puts me through the furnace, I harden my
neck and I resist.
And I fail to respond to the fire
of affliction.
No chastening for the present seemeth to be
joyous, but grievous.
Nevertheless, afterward, it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of
righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
Is anybody listening to my voice this morning
in a spiritual Babylon?
Oh, what could have happened if only, if
only you hadn't taken that step out of
the will of God.
How long have you been there?
Took God a year to deal with me.
How long has it taken to deal with
you?
What peaceful hours I once enjoyed, how sweet
their memory still, but they have left an
aching void the world can never fill.
Has disobedience involved you in the coil of
suffering and the difficulty and the tragedy of
it, from which there seems no escape, no
escape?
Has God been pummeling, may I use that
word reverently, pummeling Sunday by Sunday, day by
day at your heart?
But it's been like a case of steel.
Beloved, one day you're going to give in,
if you're a Christian.
Oh, yes.
Of course, you can harden your heart to
any affliction and any suffering, and just go
on doing it till it lends you in
a lost eternity.
And dear friend, it won't be God's fault.
But if you're a Christian, he's going to
have his way with you yet.
But it's costing an awful lot, an awful
lot to heaven, and an awful lot to
you, and an awful lot to somebody else.
But I want to tell you that that
furnace need not continue.
For my name's sake.
Oh, blessed truth, not for my merit, not
for anything in myself, because the fire and
the furnace of God's affliction have done their
work when they have brought me just to
be as dust and ashes they've burnt till
they've left me like that.
That's all.
Does it seem hard when I tell you
that that's exactly what God wants to do
with his people, just to make them like
that?
He will not give his glory to another,
says this chapter.
And when I come to recognize that it
cannot be for my merit, but for his
name's sake.
Let downright submission take the place of stubbornness.
Let utter obedience take the place of rebellion.
Let humility take the place of pride.
And therefore, I have one last word to
say.
I shall probably lose my radio audience in
saying it, but I must say it to
you.
For I find in this passage of scripture
something else that comes as a great clarion
call to my soul today.
A summons to a mighty recovery.
Verse 20.
Go ye forth of Babylon, flee from the
Chaldeans with a voice of singing.
Declare ye, tell this, utter it even to
the end of the earth.
Say ye, the Lord hath redeemed his servant
Jacob.
The clarion call from the throne of all
power and all authority, speaking to the depths
of my soul, here in church, here in
Chicago, right now, get out.
Get out from your bondage and out from
under this rebellion, get out.
It was a summons to an exodus.
It was a call to separation.
It finds its echo in the call of
the Lord to the church in the book
of Revelation.
Come forth out of her, my people, that
ye be not partaker of her sins and
that ye receive not of her plagues.
Now listen.
Oh, I don't know that I shall ever
again be able just to speak on this
subject as God has burdened my soul to
speak to you this morning.
And I love so much the people who
listen in the Lord and I tremble for
anyone who may resist his voice and his
word.
Listen.
This is not God saying to you, give
up all you know.
Movies and shows and a few surface habits
that, of course, if you're a Christian and
you go on with the Lord, you don't
want them.
That's all.
It isn't God saying that.
It is God with the sword of the
Word and the authority like of which there's
nothing in all the universe saying to you,
stop it and get out from your sin
of disobedience.
And stop fooling with the thing that's merely
on the surface, but oh, that the sword
might go down until there's soul surgery down
in the depths of your personality and forever
that friendship is broken.
I can say this when I'm off the
radio and I say it is the biggest
burden of my ministry here in this dear
church in Chicago that there are people who
belong to this place who are living in
sin.
Woman with woman, man with man.
And you know it.
Nothing on earth will stop you.
Of course not.
No preacher ever can.
Got yourself encased in steel.
And I have wept and prayed and agonized
and said, oh God, what's the matter with
me?
It's the matter with my ministry that has
no effect.
It doesn't touch it.
It leaves this kind of quagmire, this awful
muddy mess of filth going on inside one
of the greatest fundamental churches in America.
And it's there.
If anybody wants to challenge me about it,
I'll prove it.
Not I, but the Lord says to you
today, go ye forth.
And the Spirit of God with the authority
of the Word says, come out.
Let God burn out that spirit of worldly
love.
Come out from fellowship with darkness and evil.
And you know what this means, don't you?
And that's what makes us afraid.
It would be a dangerous thing ever to
press an argument to a conclusion by saying
that before you can help anybody else, you've
got to be through the same thing yourself.
And I'm not here to parade the unsaved
days of the man who's preaching you today.
But I tell you, when I heard this
alarm bell in my own soul, and I
knew that God called from me for a
holy life above everything else, and nothing mattered
but that, but an integrity and a transparency
that would be right, not by my merit,
but by His namesake.
I knew that His call must win and
He must triumph, but I tell you, it
was as if I was just being pulled
and pulled away, right away from the quagmire
and the sand.
And very often, very often, even against the
desire of my own sinful heart, pulled and
dragged out of it by a power that
was greater than I.
And I was so afraid because I said,
oh God, if you take me that way,
I'm going to starve.
I cannot live without this, and I cannot
live without that, and I cannot go on
without this.
How can I live without these things?
They've become part of my life, part of
my character.
It seems such a desert between Babylon and
Jerusalem.
But God has said to me again this
morning, and through these days, and through these
years, the language of verse 21, they thirsted
not when He led them through the desert.
He caused the waters to flow out of
the rock for them.
He claved the rock also, and the waters
gushed out.
He that dwelleth in the secret place of
the Most High shall abide under the shadow
of the Almighty.
Has the furnace done its work in your
life?
Oh beloved, God would speak to you now
and say to you, my child, the time
of your discipline is fulfilled.
The time of the furnace is over.
I want to take the heat off, the
pressure off.
I want you to be released.
I want you to go free.
But there comes a clarion call to you
that will send you out of this church,
and you'll go from this place, and you
won't look at that which has pulled you,
and you'll look straight in the face of
that person with whom you've been associated, and
you will say, I'm through!
That's what God demands.
Oh, that thou hast hearkened to my commandments,
then would thy peace have been as a
river, and thy righteousness as the waves of
the sea.
To him, my Jesus, I love thee, I
know thou art mine.
For thee, all the follies of sin, I
resign.
Oh God, for Jesus' sake, grant that thy
Spirit may have penetrated and shattered the resistance
of any heart to thy will, and send
us from this church today free in the
power of an indwelling Saviour.
God grant it, for thy name's sake.
Amen.