Let's pray.
Father, truly our soul does trust in you.
And we thank you, Lord, for the help
that you give to those that do put
their trust in you.
Lord, we pray that in this day in
which we live, when so many are trusting
in so many other things, turning to other
things for help and for guidance, Lord, keep
us true, keep us faithful, keep us, Lord,
ever in mind of who you are and
what you want to be to us, that
we might draw from you, Lord, daily that
strength that we need, that help that we
need.
Bless now, Lord, the study of your word
this morning.
Open our hearts.
Let us hear the word of God as
it speaks to us on the issues of
our lives today.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
You may be seated.
Looking forward to tonight as Skip Hysick will
come to lead us through the word of
God.
God has blessed Skip in a very unusual
way.
There in Albuquerque, God used him to start
from a home Bible study to one of
the largest churches in the United States.
He's been anointed by God in the teaching
of the word, and I know it's going
to be a great blessing to us as
he leads us through tonight beginning with Isaiah
17 and going through chapter 19.
Looking forward to having this gifted man come
and share his gift with us tonight as
he teaches us the word of God.
I would encourage you to be here tonight
and to enjoy with us this messenger from
God.
This morning we'd like to draw your attention
to the 17th chapter of Isaiah verse 10
and 11.
The Lord said, Because thou hast forgotten the
God of thy salvation, and have you not
been mindful of the rock of your strength?
Therefore shall you plant pleasant plants, and you'll
set your gardens with strange slips.
And in the day shalt thou make thy
plant to grow, and in the morning you
will make your seed to flourish.
But the harvest will be a ruin in
the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
Here in chapter 17, the Lord tells the
judgment that will come first of all upon
Damascus.
The first two verses are dealing with God's
judgment on Damascus.
The rest of the chapter deals with God's
judgment upon Ephraim, which is the northern tribe
of Israel.
Inasmuch as Ephraim was the largest and the
leading tribe, the whole of Israel was often
referred to as Ephraim.
These two had confederated together to stand against
the threat of the Syrian invasion.
And because they were trusting in their alliance,
God declared that they were going to be
destroyed, that they would both go into captivity,
that the majority of the people would be
taken as captive and repopulated in other areas.
Just a few people in remote villages would
remain in the land, but the strong cities
would be forsaken.
And then God tells them the reason why
this judgment was going to come upon them.
First of all, God said, you've been looking
to your altars, which are the works of
your hands.
They had built altars to other gods.
They had forsaken the altar of the Lord
there in Jerusalem.
And from the beginning of the history of
the northern kingdom of Israel, they had built
altars unto other gods.
In fact, we do read in 2 Kings
chapter 16, where Ahaz, the king of Israel,
had gone to Damascus to meet Tiglath-Pileser,
the king of Assyria.
And he saw there an altar that was
in Damascus.
And King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest
the blueprints of that altar, according to all
of the workmanship.
And Uriah the priest built an altar that
was similar to that in Damascus.
So when the king had come from Damascus,
the king saw the altar and the king
approached the altar and he offered the burnt
offering and the meal offering and poured out
the drink offering.
And he sprinkled the blood of the peace
offerings upon this false altar to a false
god.
They had created their own objects of worship.
Having forsaken the true and the living God
and the worship of God, they began to
worship things from their own imagination.
I'm always surprised at what strange and weird
things people will believe and people will worship
when they reject the worship of the true
God.
It seems like, well, the scripture says, Paul
said that um their foolish hearts were darkened
and professing themselves to be wise, they actually
became fools.
For they began to worship and serve the
creature more than the creator who is blessed
forevermore.
I'm amazed when I look at the people
that go over to worship Sai Baba there
in India.
Really some of the most, by the world
standards, intelligent people in the world.
Many college professors, many doctors, many lawyers.
They make the pilgrimage to India to hear
this man with this squeaky little voice tell
how that he went through a transition and
how that he is God.
And they worship this Sai Baba as God.
That always amazes me, the foolish things people
will believe, the foolish things they will worship
when they quit worshiping the true and the
living God.
We have the new age movement, very strong,
very powerful.
They are enacting a lot of legislation that
deals with our lives.
For they worship nature.
They have a greater interest in the welfare
of the snail darter minnow or of the
kangaroo rat than they do of children or
humans.
Watch closely and you'll see that those same
people that are prating and demonstrating for abortion
rights are the same ones who chain themselves
to trees to save them from being cut
down.
Did you know that it is against the
law to possess the feather of a raptor
bird?
The owl, the condor, the eagle, if you
have in your possession a feather from one
of these birds, you can be imprisoned and
fined.
If you are walking, say, through the forest
and you see a colorful feather on the
ground and you pick it up, if there
happens to be a forest ranger there, he
can arrest you for holding that eagle feather
or condor feather or hawk feather.
You're not to touch them.
Did you know that the county of San
Bernardino set aside 100,000 acres as a
habitat for a fly?
You can't go on that acreage because that
little fly might land on you and you
might swat it.
And so they are seeking to protect this
little daisy fly.
They're in a hundred thousand acres of the
San Bernardino forest.
Did you know that the county of San
Bernardino spent one million $200,000 to build
roost for eagles up in Big Bear?
Set up poles and even make artificial trees
because they felt that with all of the
building of houses that the eagles didn't have
proper places for roosting.
And so $1,200,000 was spent to
build these eagle roost.
The only problem, the eagles will have nothing
to do with the roost that have been
built.
They won't go close to them.
They still build their house and their nests
are actually on some of the houses that
they were trying to save, you know.
Well, also there in San Bernardino, $1 million
a year is spent for the bear habitat
to make a safe place for the bears
to live.
And yet they will issue a bear tag
to you so you can go out and
shoot a bear.
I sort of feel like what Isaiah says
in chapter 19, that the rulers of zone
are fools.
Their wise counselors give them senseless advice.
We're being taxed billions of dollars each year
to support the government to make up these
kinds of rules in order to strip you
more and more of your freedoms.
It'd be safer being a kangaroo rat than
a child.
Isaiah said they are worshiping the things that
their fingers have made.
Now, this speaks to me of art.
An artist who skillfully uses their fingers to
produce beautiful paintings or beautiful sculptures or beautiful
music and all the works of their fingers.
They began to worship them.
God has skilled many people in different areas.
It's a delight for me to hear or
to see a person who is truly gifted
as they perform and using their skills to
create beautiful things, paintings, music, literature.
I believe that people who have these gifts,
that they are actually gifts of God.
Now, my father was an artist, but somehow
I didn't get those genes.
I did, but I passed them on to
my son.
I can't draw a fish, but both my
father and son are great artists.
My father was, my son is, and the
skills, it's just an innate kind of an
ability.
They can draw something and you know what
they're drawing.
You can see it there.
And it's something that I admire.
I used to love to watch my dad
draw.
And it was just always one of the
things as a child growing up, I enjoyed
watching him exercise this ability and skill that
he had.
But these things are not to be worshiped.
They're to be enjoyed.
God gave us all things to enjoy, but
not to worship.
But people so often begin to worship the
artist or the art.
And that is a perversion to take and
use these gifts of God and use them
to advance causes against God.
I think of so much of the art
that is being supported by our National Endowment
for Arts that is blasphemous kind of art
as people are using their talents to blaspheme
God with their artwork.
I believe that every gift like this has
its highest expression when it is devoted to
the glory of God.
As Bach on every one of his compositions
inscribed to the glory of God, there the
talent, the gift is being used in its
highest expression.
But these people in verse eight were also
worshiping sex.
It speaks of their groves and their images.
The groves in the Hebrew is Ashereth.
Ashereth was the female goddess of sex.
The groves is a reference to the place
where they would worship Ashereth.
The images were pornographic idols that were carved
that were designed to arouse a person sexually.
And thus, the people were given over to
the worship of Ashereth, the female goddess of
sex.
They were living in a sex-crazed society.
It's important for us to realize that the
reason why they no longer existed, that the
devastation from God had come upon them because
they had given themselves over to the worship
of sex.
It's interesting that God gave them many wake
-up calls, but it only caused them to
think of God for a moment during the
crisis.
The moment the crisis would cease, they would
go right back to their practices of the
worship of the false gods, the images, and
these other things.
The general trend, however, was always downward.
It was always a little worse than the
last time.
I believe that God has been giving wake
-up calls to America.
I believe that 9-11 was a real
wake-up call from God to our nation,
which has been straying and turning from God.
In fact, when you read of Israel, you'll
see so many parallels between Israel and the
United States.
As we move on into the book of
Jeremiah, you'll see the parallels are just so
many that you'd almost think that Jeremiah was
talking to the United States as he talks
of the things that they were doing that
was bringing destruction upon them.
I remember after 9-11 watching our congressmen
standing there on the steps singing, God bless
America.
And I was touched and I was moved
by that.
But it was only a short time.
As soon as the crisis seemed to be
over, we were right back to business as
usual.
The creating of legislation that freed more and
more ungodly opportunities for people to follow their
flesh.
They created more laws that would restrict a
person's right to worship God after the dictates
of their own heart.
In Proverbs 29 verse 1, the Lord said,
He that being often reproved, if he hardens
his neck, he will suddenly be destroyed.
And that without remedy.
We've been often reproved, but it seems like
we are hardening our hearts against God and
the things of God.
And I think that it only is a
token of the coming judgment of God.
Suddenly destroyed, God said, and that without remedy.
I wonder just how long will God continue
to hold our nation up when we as
a nation have let him down.
Isaiah tells us another one of the reasons
why they went into captivity and were destroyed
is that they had forgotten the God of
their salvation.
Over and over, God had saved them from
their enemies.
The nation seemed to go through cycles.
They would call upon God.
They would worship God.
They would serve God and God would bless
them and God would prosper them.
But in their prosperity, they would forget God.
They would begin to in their prosperity, amass
many things for themselves.
And in the devotion to these material things,
they would forget God.
And so God would allow an enemy to
come against them and to take them captive
and to oppress them.
And during this time of oppression, they would
call upon God and they would return to
God and God would hear them and God
would answer their prayers and God would bless
them and God would prosper them.
And in their prosperity, they would turn from
God and go again into oppression.
And it was a repeated pattern.
It was a cycle over and over again
through the book of Judges until finally God
said to them in Judges 10 verse 11,
did I not deliver you from the Egyptians,
from the Amorites, from the children of Ammon,
from the Philistines, the Sidonians also, the Amalekites
and Maonites?
When they oppressed you, you cried unto me,
I delivered you out of their hand.
Yet you have forsaken me and you have
served other gods.
Therefore, I will deliver you no more.
Go and cry unto the gods which you
have chosen.
Let them deliver you in the time of
your tribulation.
Basically, God said, you've turned a deaf ear
to me.
I'm now going to turn a deaf ear
to you.
I will deliver you no more.
And what a tragic day when God says
to a people, that's it, I've had it.
Call upon the gods that you've been worshiping.
Let them help you.
Let's see what they can do.
I'm tired of this business of just turning
away from me, only coming in the hour
of need.
In Proverbs chapter 1 beginning with verse 24,
God said, because I've called and you have
refused, I've stretched out my hand and no
man regarded.
But you've said it not, all of my
counsel.
You would have nothing to do with my
reproof.
I also will laugh at your calamity.
I will mock when your fear comes, when
your fear comes as desolation and your destruction
comes as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish
come upon you.
Then shall you call upon me, I'll not
answer.
Then they will seek me early, but they'll
not find me.
For in as much as they hated knowledge
and did not choose the fear of the
Lord, they would have nothing to do with
my counsel.
They despised all of my reproof.
Therefore, they shall eat of the fruit of
their own way, and they will be filled
with their own devices.
There comes a time, as when in the
days of Noah, where God says, my spirit
will not always strive with flesh, with man.
When man turns his back upon God, God
is long suffering.
He's merciful.
He calls to us.
But there will come a time when God
will no longer call.
God will no longer deliver.
God will turn us over to the gods
that we have enshrined.
Isaiah said, one of the reasons why they
went into captivity and were destroyed is that
they had not been mindful of the rock
of their strength.
They had put God out of their minds.
That is the true and the living God.
They probably removed the 10 commandments from the
classrooms.
They could no longer teach the children songs
that were of God, the creator.
They could speak freely of the other gods.
They could teach the children how Allah is
worshipped.
They could give children information concerning Ashereth, the
sex goddess.
They could instruct the children in safe sex
and demonstrate for them the use of condoms.
In fact, they probably even passed out condoms
in school.
But they had put God out of their
minds.
And these other gods were being worshipped.
They lived as though the true God did
not exist or did not matter.
God here is called the God of their
strength.
So often, we attribute the strength of the
nation to other things than reality.
The strength of our nation lay in the
fact that of those who signed the declaration
of independence, all but two of them were
practicing Christians.
That our nation was founded on a faith
and a belief in God.
But we have revised history.
And we are teaching the children that the
strength of the nation is our democratic processes.
Or the strength of our nation is the
free enterprise system.
And they had not been mindful of the
rock of their strength.
God is called a rock in many places
in the scripture.
It's used in an allegorical sense for strength.
We say He's as solid as a rock.
It's used in an allegorical sense for a
place of shelter.
Oh, safe to the rock that is higher
than I, my soul and its conflicts and
sorrows would fly.
Solomon tells us about the Koni, a feeble
folk, but it makes its home in the
rocks.
And thus, the rock is used as a
symbol for defense.
In 2 Samuel 22 one, David spoke unto
the Lord the words of this song.
In the day that the Lord had delivered
him out of the hand of all of
his enemies and out of the hand of
Saul, David said, the Lord is my rock,
my fortress, and my deliverer.
God is my rock and him will I
trust.
He is my shield and my salvation, my
high tower and my refuge, my savior.
He has saved me from violence.
The rock is also used allegorically as a
symbol of stability.
We used to hear solid as the rock
of Gibraltar.
Many places in the scripture, God is used
as, rock is used as a symbol for
God.
As in Deuteronomy 32, 18, in this song
of Moses, you are unmindful of the rock
that created you.
You've forgotten God that formed you.
This 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy is extremely fascinating.
It is a song that God gave to
Moses and commanded Moses to teach it to
all of the children and they were to
teach it to their children and each generation
was to memorize this song.
So that in the day that you go
into captivity and you are singing this song,
the light will be turned on because you'll
realize that the reason why you are in
captivity is you have forsaken God.
You've been unmindful of the rock that created
you.
You've forgotten the God that formed you.
So the song goes on and it tells
about God's blessings and all upon the people
and they all memorize this song.
It became sort of a national anthem of
sorts for the children of Israel.
But as the song progresses, it tells about
how that they turned away from God.
They've forgotten God.
They've forsaken God.
They began to worship other gods and thus
the captivity and the sorrows and the miseries
and all that would come upon them as
a people for their forsaking of the true
and the living God.
Interesting how melodies and how songs will sort
of stick in our minds and we sort
of sing them without even thinking of the
words.
But this song was intended that when the
judgments of God did come and they would
sing it, all of a sudden the words
would make meaning to them and they would
understand the reason they were going through such
suffering, such hardship, such trials.
This morning we sang, Stand up, stand up
for Jesus.
Stand in his strength alone.
The arm of flesh will fail you.
You dare not trust your own.
Ephraim, the northern kingdom, had trusted in their
alliance with Syria to deliver them from the
Assyrians who were conquering the world at that
time.
Their alliance failed.
They were taken captive.
They ceased to be as a nation.
Too many times in the midst of the
battle as we are fighting against temptation, we
as Israel forget the God of our salvation.
We're not mindful of the rock of our
strength and we try in our own efforts
to defeat the enemy, only to find ourselves
going down to defeat and carried away captive
to the things that we've been practicing, no
longer free to worship and serve God.
Tragic day when people forget and are unmindful.
Of the rock of their strength.
Father, we pray that you'll help us this
day to realize that our strength is in
our rock and that rock is Jesus.
And Lord, how often have we fled to
the safety of the rock?
How often have we drawn from the strength
of the rock?
How often, Lord, have we found our security
in the rock?
Thank you, Lord, for all that you are.
Thank you, Lord, for all that you are
wanting to do for us.
May we always be mindful of you and
of your love.
And may we always, Lord, depend upon you
for our help and for our strength comes
from the Lord.
He is our rock.
He is our fortress.
He is our defense.
And we thank you, Father, that you never
fail those who trust in you.
Guide us now, Lord, and lead us to
the rock that is higher than we are.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Shall we stand?
I realize that it is very possible that
even this past week, you've received a wake
-up call from God.
You've sort of strayed, sort of been unmindful
of the rock of your strength.
And as a result, things are going sour.
Relationships are going bad.
And God's given you a wake-up call.
The wake-up call can come in many
different forms.
Your husband walking out.
Your wife asking you to get out.
Being sued.
Losing your job.
All of these things, I believe, are wake
-up calls from God.
When we start to get careless, when we
start to get complacent with the things of
God, the things of the Spirit, God sends
these wake-up calls.
What I do is important at that point.
Do I seek the Lord?
Do I return?
Do I remember God, the God of my
salvation?
Do I seek the strength of the rock?
All important.
The pastors are down here at the front.
They're here to pray with you.
If God has sort of given you a
wake-up call, maybe the death of a
friend, or a severe accident, or illness, or
these things are all wake-up calls.
God is saying, don't get complacent.
Don't forget me and your dependence upon me.
These men are here to pray with you,
to help you reconnect with God today, and
to find God's help, to find God's strength,
which he is desiring to display and to
show to you because God loves you.
And so I would encourage you, make your
connection with God today.
These men are here to help you to
do that.
As soon as we're dismissed, I would encourage
you, come on down and let them pray
with you.
Get things right with God, and you'll find
out that the other things will straighten out
in a hurry.
Seek first the kingdom of God, his righteousness.
All these other things will be taken care
of.
And so may the Lord be with you,
and may we ever be mindful of the
God of our salvation.
May we never forget the source of strength
for our lives is in the rock, Christ
Jesus.
Amen.