Let's pray.
Father, we ask that you would help us
today to take an honest evaluation of our
lives to determine, Lord, how rich we are
toward you, toward the things of the Spirit,
toward things that are eternal.
Father, keep us from the snare of putting
our confidence in our earthly goods, and may
we be more concerned, Lord, with our heavenly
treasures.
We ask this, Father, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
You may be seated.
We are continuing our journey through Isaiah.
Tonight, Pastor Skip will lead us through Isaiah
chapters 20 through 22.
I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed his
study last Sunday night.
I believe that you will too.
Sunday afternoons, I go in and I study
for the evening.
I read the passages.
I read the various commentaries.
Kay said, Honey, why do you do that?
You've got someone else teaching on Sunday night
now.
I said, Well, he might get sick or
he might not show up, and so I
want to be ready in case he doesn't
come.
So, really though, I enjoyed having studied the
various commentaries and all.
I enjoyed very much the commentary that Skip
gave us last Sunday night, and I think
you'll enjoy it too.
I would recommend that you come out and
you try going through the Bible with us
on Sunday evenings as we make this all
-important journey into the Word of God and
through the Word of God.
This morning, I'd like to draw your attention
to the 22nd chapter of Isaiah, beginning with
verse 10.
Well, let's go back to 9.
You have seen also the breaches of the
city of David, that they are many.
And you've gathered together the waters of the
lower pool.
And you have numbered the houses of Jerusalem,
and the houses have you broken down to
fortify the wall.
You have made also a ditch between the
two walls for the water of the old
pool.
But you have not looked unto the maker
thereof, and neither had respect unto him that
fashioned it long ago.
And in that day did the Lord God
of hosts call to weeping, to mourning, and
to baldness, and to the girding with sackcloth.
And behold, there was joy and gladness, the
slaying of oxen, the killing of sheep, the
eating flesh, the drinking wine, and the declaration,
Let us eat, drink, for tomorrow we shall
die.
Isaiah had been predicting the invasion by the
terrorist nation of Assyria.
The Assyrians were extremely cruel people.
They were terrorists.
Oftentimes they would behead the men of the
city that they had conquered, and they would
pile these heads in a big pile at
the gate of the city just to terrorize
the people.
They often would cut out the tongues of
the captives, or they would mutilate their body
by cutting off an ear, or cutting off
a nose, or by gouging out their eyes.
Their whole purpose was to strike terror in
the hearts of the people so that the
people would submit unto them.
They were true terrorists of their day.
Isaiah is saying, they're coming, and they're going
to invade the land, and you better prepare
for this invasion.
And Isaiah's thought was, seek God and really
call upon the Lord for help.
It's interesting, if you go to Jerusalem today,
Isaiah here speaks of how they tore down
some of the houses to fortify the wall.
He spoke about the double wall.
And if you go to Jerusalem today, there
in the Jewish quarter, you can see a
very interesting excavation where the archaeologists have actually
dug down to this wall that Isaiah is
speaking about.
Even you can see the double wall there.
But even more interesting is that you can
see the ground level, the floors of the
houses that they tore down to fortify the
wall.
Even as Isaiah declares here in chapter 22,
you can go to Jerusalem today and see
the actual visible kind of proving the truth
of the Word of God.
The very thing that Isaiah talked about, you
can look upon with your own eyes today.
They not only fortified the walls in preparation
for this invasion by the Assyrians, but also
it was at this time that Hezekiah the
king had ordered the 1,700-foot tunnel
to be dug through the solid rock from
the spring of Gihon to bring the water
within the city walls there at the pool
of Siloam.
And thus, he was preparing for the invasion,
fortifying the walls, making sure that they would
have a fresh water supply within the walls
of Jerusalem when they were under the siege
of the Syrian army.
But God had a complaint against the people.
Though they had done all that they could
physically to prepare them for this invasion, there
was one thing that they didn't do, and
that is that they weren't seeking the Lord
who made the spring of Gihon in the
first place.
They were so typical of so many people
today who take all kinds of precautions to
protect their homes, to protect their families.
You purchase insurance, you have alarm systems for
your house, for your car, and you are
trusting in all of your devices as preparations
to sustain you in a time of emergency,
and yet you really don't look to the
or seek the Lord to keep you.
David said, unless the Lord keeps the city,
the watchman wakes in vain.
Again, David wrote, some people trust in horses
and some in chariots, but we will trust
in the name of Jehovah our God.
In a few chapters, when we get to
the 31st chapter of Isaiah, we'll find Isaiah
saying, woe to those that go down to
Egypt for help and trust in horses and
in the number of chariots they possess.
Actually, that's exactly what they did.
They went down to Egypt and they made
an alliance with Egypt to stand with them
against the Assyrians, but the Assyrians conquered Egypt
and then came back to invade Jerusalem.
But Isaiah is warning in advance that you'd
better not trust in the number of chariots
of the Egyptians or seek the help of
the Egyptians or to trust in the cavalry
units because they are strong.
But he said, they do not look to
the Holy One of Israel, neither do they
seek Jehovah for their defense.
Serious mistake.
They were trusting in their own defenses.
They were trusting in the fortified walls and
in the fresh water supplies, but they weren't
really looking to the Lord for help.
If you sort of modernize the language, would
you say that this perhaps could also apply
to America today?
Who trust in armored divisions and missile systems
and really do not look to the Lord
for their defense?
We read that they really didn't respect God
who was the creator.
How true that is today in our land,
the disrespect that we have for God, the
endeavor to say, remove the thought of God
out of our national life.
Men today are trying to explain our existence
with senseless fables.
They promote the teaching of evolution, but they
seek to prohibit the teaching of creation within
our public schools.
They scorn that as a fairy tale and
as unscientific.
However, today, many of the leading scientists in
the world are declaring that very soon the
Darwinian theory of evolution will be recognized as
one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated upon
the public.
That as we recognize the complexities of the
DNA molecule, we realize that there are no
simple cells, but they are all extremely complex,
too complex to just happen by accident.
But in each cell, there is, of course,
that evidence of design.
Paul, in writing to the Romans, said that
the wrath of God is going to be
revealed from heaven against all of the ungodliness
and the unrighteousness of men who hold the
truth of God in unrighteousness.
For when they knew God, they did not
glorify him as God, and neither were they
thankful.
But they became vain in their imaginations, and
their foolish hearts were darkened.
And professing themselves to be wise, they actually
became fools, because they worshiped and served the
creature more than the creator.
I would like to suggest that that describes
so accurately the evolutionary theory.
Because they didn't want to retain God, they
create some theory that eliminates the need for
the existence of God.
But as Isaiah, or Jeremiah said, they've hewn
out cisterns, but they're broken cisterns.
They can't hold water.
And of course, when you look at the
theory, it just can't hold water.
Isaiah tells us that it was a day
when the and a time of extreme
grieving.
That was the shaving of their head.
The word baldness symbolized the grief, the extreme
grief at the death of your father or
of a loved one that's very close to
you.
They do that to the present day in
Israel.
If a close relative dies to show their
grief, they will shave their heads.
If they have a beard, they'll shave their
beards.
And they'll allow the hair to grow for
30 days without getting it cut or without
doing anything, just hair growing for 30 days
as a sign of the grief that they're
experiencing over the loss of a loved one.
And thus, God was calling for this kind
of grieving in the hearts of the people.
Then he was calling for sackcloth.
Now sackcloth was often worn during a time
of repentance.
When you're repenting, the people would often wear
sackcloth.
In Matthew's gospel, Jesus spoke about, as he
was talking about the cities of Chorazin and
Bethsaida, and he was pronouncing the judgments of
God that were going to come upon them.
Woe unto thee, Chorazin!
Woe unto thee, Bethsaida!
For if the miracles that were done in
you had been done in Tyre and Sidon,
they would have repented long ago in sackcloth
and ashes.
So the sackcloth is a sign of repentance.
This is what God was seeking.
They are threatened.
Their very existence is being threatened.
Their families are being threatened.
The terrorist nation of Assyria is on its
way.
And you would think that the people would
turn to God, that there would be fasting,
there would be prayer, there would be weeping
and mourning, grief and repentance.
Because the land was facing such dire circumstances,
the real threats of terrorism, they would be
facing an awesomely powerful nation that was conquering
the world.
Their only hope for survival would be in
the Lord and to put their trust in
Him.
But they had turned their backs on God.
They'd enshrined other gods which were not true
gods.
They had become a sex-craved, pleasure-mad
society that was about to be destroyed.
You'd think that their circumstances would drive them
to their knees.
This is what God was looking for.
Their grim situation should have caused them to
turn to God with weeping and repentance.
They should have been on their knees fasting
and praying.
It could soon be over for them as
a nation.
God wanted them to turn to Him and
to put their trust in Him.
But they were trusting in the walls they
had just fortified.
They were trusting in the double wall that
Isaiah spoke about.
And you can see that double wall there
in Jerusalem today.
I do believe that God often does allow
difficulties and dire circumstances to come into our
lives that are designed to turn us to
Him.
When we have a tendency to stray away
from the Lord, God will allow oftentimes some
hardship, some shocking thing to sort of wake
us up and to draw us back to
Himself.
I like to refer to them as wake
-up calls.
You see, God loves you too much just
to allow you to destroy yourself.
He will bring all kinds of obstacles into
your path to stop you on the mad
dash to destruction.
The whole purpose is to bring you to
your knees in repentance before God.
But if you refuse to repent, as the
Lord said to the church of Thyatira, I
gave her space to repent of her fornication,
but she repented not.
Therefore, I will cast her and all of
those that commit fornication with her into the
great tribulation, except they repent.
And I believe that we are close to
that great tribulation.
I believe that the time has come where
we will very soon see the judgment of
God upon this world as He describes in
Revelation 6 through 18.
I believe that the world will see it.
I don't think that we'll see it as
Christians, but I'm afraid that many of you
might.
You see, God said, I gave them space
to repent, but they repented not.
And therefore, I will cast them into the
great tribulation.
And I think that that's very close at
hand.
God said of those who refused to retain
God in their minds, that He gave them
over to the filth of the lust of
their own hearts.
He gave them over to vile affections as
the women turned to lesbianism and the men
to homosexuality.
These were the lowest rungs on the ladder
of morality.
They had gone to the bottom of depravity,
which led to the wrath of God that
Paul spoke about being poured out against the
depraved society.
For Paul concludes that not only did they
do things that deserved death, but they took
pleasure in those that do them.
And every time in the news broadcast when
I see some gay parade and these men
going down the street in their little tutus
and the people on the sidewalk applauding them
and all, I think, oh my, not only
are they doing things that God condemns and
are worthy of death, but there are those
who take pleasure and applaud those that do
them.
And I think here we are threatened with
terrorism and not really turning to God, but
not regarding God.
And here we are turning our backs on
God and the things of God.
And surely, surely the judgment of God will
come.
God was looking for sorrow, for mourning, for
repenting, but what did He find?
Verse 13, Isaiah said, Behold, there was joy
and gladness, the slaying of oxen, the killing
of sheep, the eating of flesh and drinking.
And they declared, Let us eat and drink
for tomorrow we shall die.
This certainly is the philosophy of the world,
the world in which we live today.
Let's eat.
Let's drink.
Let's be merry.
Tomorrow we die.
But let me ask you a question.
I want you to think about it seriously.
If you knew that you were going to
die tomorrow, that you had just 24 hours
left to live, just how would you seek
to spend that 24 hours?
Would you call your friends and say, Come
on over.
Let's have a big party.
We'll have a barbecue.
We'll have a lot of beer and booze.
And, you know, we'll just have a great
time partying and just go on a big
drunk for your last 24 hours.
Basically, that's what the people were saying.
Let's just eat and drink.
Tomorrow is going to be disaster, but let's
make the best of it in the meantime.
How tragic.
If I knew that I had just 24
hours left, I would want to spend that
24 hours drawing as close to the Lord
as I possibly could and witnessing to as
many people as I've been wanting to witness
to concerning Jesus Christ.
We're facing serious national problems.
There are millions of people today all over
the world that hate you as an American,
and they have dedicated their lives to destroying
you and destroying your way of life.
And they are willing to give their lives
to help destroy America.
The suicide bombers.
And of course, right now we are being
warned that they're planning some major attack within
the United States this summer.
And the great fear is the dirty bomb
that could be exploded, that could take thousands
of lives here in America.
They say that there are 1 billion Muslims
in the world, but the Muslims say, well,
there's only 10% of them that are
radical.
Well, that's comforting.
Only 100 million people that are out to
kill you rest comfortably.
We're in dire circumstances.
We're in desperate circumstances.
It's a time for fasting, a time for
prayer, a time of repenting before God, crying
out to God for his protection and for
his mercy.
We're in much the condition that Jerusalem was
in here in the 22nd chapter of Isaiah.
And unfortunately, there are those as were in
Isaiah's day that were just saying, well, let's
eat, drink and be merry.
We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
And as you look around in the world
in which we live today, that's the general
attitude of our society.
The people are not really seeking God, but
they're seeking their own pleasures.
They're seeking their own prosperity.
And the vast majority are not really regarding
God.
I don't think that God takes role on
Sunday morning.
I think he probably takes role Sunday night
or during the week.
You remember Gideon called the people to the
battle, and there were a great number that
responded, but God said, that's too many.
Can't use them all.
It isn't the number of people, it's the
commitment that really counts.
And God is looking for people that are
committed.
He's looking for people who would be on
their knees, fasting, praying, seeking God, grieving over
the sin of our community.
If a graph was made that would depict
how you spent this last week, the 168
hours that God gave you this past week,
how would that graph look?
Probably the tallest thing on the graph would
be sleep.
Because if you get eight hours a night
for sleep, that means that one quarter, a
little over than a quarter of the week
was spent asleep.
Another large portion of the graph, almost as
tall as the sleep would be work.
If you worked on a 40 hour week
basis, that would take up practically half of
your week sleeping and working.
Another portion of the graph would be taken
up with eating.
And then probably a fairly good portion taken
up with the worldly media, magazines, newspapers, TV.
Then also you have to consider the hours
that you spent driving to and from work.
And if you live in the Inland Empire,
that could be pretty high on the graph.
But if it had there the number of
hours spent in prayer, would you be able
to see that portion of the graph?
How about the time spent in the word
of God?
How about quality time with the family?
You fathers, the time that you spent with
your children this week in quality time, assuring
them of your love and asking them if
everything is okay.
Can dad do anything for you?
And, and just spending that kind of statistics
have come out that show how little time
fathers spend with their children, which is a
real tragedy.
It's interesting how easily we can get our
priorities all confused.
So much of our time just spent in
trying to exist in this world.
And so little time spent in things that
have eternal value to them.
So much time laying up earthly treasures, so
little time in laying up heavenly treasures.
God said through Isaiah concerning Jerusalem, this
iniquity will not be cleansed until you die.
The chapter goes on to tell of one
of the leaders in Jerusalem, one of the
government leaders.
He was spending his money building an ornate
tomb, carving it out of solid rock.
And again, if you go to Jerusalem today,
you can see so many of these ornate
tombs that were carved out of solid rock.
And he was building this great ornate tomb.
It was known throughout all of Jerusalem, this
project of building this tomb, spending his funds
and so forth to build this ornate tomb.
And the Lord said, you will never be
buried in it.
You will be taken as a captive to
the enemy's land and you'll never be buried
in this tomb.
What a picture of so much of what
we do spend our time and our energies
involved in, of things that are going to
pass, things that we will not really totally
possess or enjoy.
If you can enjoy being buried in a
tomb.
But all of our future plans could be
radically changed by the coming events.
And therefore, you dare not exclude God out
of your planning.
As we read in Luke chapter 12, as
Jesus gave the parable of this man, rich
man.
He had amassed many goods, so much so
that he said, I don't have room.
For all of my goods, what will I
do?
I know what I'll do.
I'll tear down my barns and build bigger.
So I'll have room for all of my
fruits.
But God said to him, you fool.
You think that you've got it made, that
you can just build bigger barns and you
can just kick back, eat, drink and be
merry.
But he said, tonight, your life will be
over.
And who will spend then all of the
funds that you've amassed?
Kay and I are getting ready to scale
down in life.
We're planning to invite all of our kids
to come over and go through the house.
And just say to them, take whatever stuff
you want.
It's amazing how much stuff can be accumulated
through the years.
And when you've spent 56 years together, there's
just an awful lot of stuff.
So we're going to tell the kids, take
what you want.
And we'll call the goodwill and let them
take the rest.
Of the stuff.
Because we realize that we're getting to that
place where we need to lighten the load.
And to pare down and to just sort
of simplify our life.
Make it light so that there's nothing holding
us down when the Lord calls.
No weight that would keep us earthbound, but
that we'll be free to soar within.
The Apostle James wrote, Go to now ye
that say today or tomorrow, we will go
into a certain city, we will stay there
for a year and we will buy and
sell and make a lot of money.
You don't know if you will even be
here tomorrow, he said.
For life is a vapor.
It just appears for a moment and then
it vanishes.
You ought to say, if the Lord wills,
we shall live and then we will do
this or that.
And trying to figure out life.
Never leave God out of the equation.
If the Lord wills that we should live
till tomorrow.
And if the Lord wills, we will do
this or that.
But leave your life in his hands.
Let him direct you.
Don't trust in your own defenses or in
your own abilities.
But trust in the Lord.
And when the difficulties rise, God's calling you
to your knees.
God's calling you to repentance.
God is calling upon you to seek his
face.
And if you do, you'll be safe.
If you don't, you can easily be destroyed
as your defenses fail.
Let's pray.
Father, help us to realize the solemnity of
the situation in which we are existing today.
As we look at the world in which
we live and as we are being warned
by our government of possible major terrorist attacks
here in the United States during the summer.
Lord, as we realize that there are so
many people that do want to destroy our
way of life and to destroy us, we
ask, Father, that we'll not be in a
careless kind of a lifestyle.
Even as you warned us that we should
take care, lest at any times our lives
be overcharged with eating or drinking or just
trying to get by.
So that when that day comes, we will
be totally unaware.
But Lord, help us to be alert.
And help us, Lord, to be ready.
That when you call for us, we'll be
ready, Lord, to be with you by your
side, to be in your eternal kingdom forever
and ever.
Lord, this day, may you find us as
you would like to find us.
May you find us on our knees before
you, seeking your face, repenting from our careless
living and devoting ourselves, Lord, totally to you.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
Shall we stand?
The pastors are down here at the front
to minister to you today.
We're living in perilous times.
One of the greatest problems that I can
see is that though the times are desperate,
the church isn't desperate before God in prayer.
Time that we get desperate before God.
Could be that God has spoken to some
of your hearts today and you realize that
you haven't been trusting in the Lord as
you should.
You haven't been seeking his counsel or his
help.
And maybe God has thrown a few little
wake-up calls in your direction, but you've
sort of brushed them off.
And you're just struggling and continuing to struggle
to do it yourself.
But it's time to just surrender to the
Lord.
And may God find you as he would
want to find you, on your knees before
him, seeking his help, seeking his strength.
These men are here to help you to
find God's help and God's strength for your
life.
And so we would encourage you as we
are dismissed, make your way forward.
Seek God with all of your heart.
As the Lord said, in the day that
you seek him with your whole heart, in
that day he will be found by you.
May the Lord watch over and keep you
in his love and in his grace through
Jesus Christ our Lord.
His face.