We're going to look at Isaiah
chapter one, and the title of the message is Christ, the key
to doing well. And that title is taken from
verse 17, where the prophet Isaiah is speaking to the people of
Jerusalem and Judah. He says, learn to do well. and we're gonna be talking about
that. But look at verse one, it says, the vision of Isaiah
the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem
in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, and Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings
of Judah. Now in the Old Testament, a vision
that a prophet gets, a vision is the word of God. That's just
another way of saying the word of God. And Isaiah had been commissioned
by the Lord to be a prophet, to be one who pronounces and
announces the word of God to the people. And this is such
a glorious book, as they all are. You hate to say, well, one
book greater than the other, but they're just some books of
the Bible that seem to bring the gospel out clearer. And Isaiah is one of them. A
lot of scholars call this the gospel of Isaiah. And just like
you have the gospel of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, this
is the gospel of Isaiah. And he prophesied in Jerusalem
and Judah through the reign of four kings. And so what follows
here, his prophecy begins with an indictment of the people of
Israel, the people of Judah and Jerusalem, religious people. And he brings accusations against
them. And later on, he brings them
against himself. You know, in Isaiah chapter six,
when he saw the Lord high and lifted up, and his train filled
the temple, and he said, woe is me, for I'm undone, I'm cut
off. I'm a man of unclean lips, and
I dwell amidst a people of unclean lips. So what we're going to
see here is a picture of the reality, not only of the sins
of the people of Jerusalem and Judah, but our sins. And I always
equate this or compare this with Romans chapter three and verse
10 and on through where it says, there's none righteous, no, not
one, there's none that doeth good. Well, listen to what he
says. He says in verses two and three,
hear, O heavens and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and brought
up children and they have rebelled against me. That was the state. They were in rebellion. God is
the one who chose Israel. God is the one who delivered
them out of the bondage of Egypt and formed them as a nation.
He took care of them through the wilderness. He gave them
the land of Canaan. He provided for them, but they
rebelled against him. And he says in verse three, the
ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel
doth not know, my people doth not consider. The people of God. Now this is, when they're called
the children of God or the people of God, this is that old covenant
relationship that Israel had with God. It was a temporal,
a temporary ceremonial relationship. You know, the old covenant, the
mosaic law, did not provide for eternal salvation. It was a bilateral
covenant, God and the people, the nation of Israel, and they
broke that covenant, and that's a picture of us by nature too. If our salvation, was based upon
a bilateral covenant, the agreement of two, you see, it would fail
because we're sinners. And that's why we're so thankful
that our salvation is a unilateral covenant. In other words, it's
not God saying I will if you will, it's God saying I will
and you shall. And that's the difference. But
he says even the dumb animals, know their master. They know
who feeds them and know who takes care of them and they recognize
that in their way. But he said Israel doesn't know.
They rejected the God who took care of them all this time. He's
their creator and their master. And all of these statements apply
to us too, spiritually speaking, in our natural state. All have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. God created us. God gave us the good things that
we have. He gave us life. And yet, by
nature, before God brings us to a saving knowledge in the
new birth, by nature, what do we do? We rebel against him.
Sinful men and women. And so he says in verse four,
ah, sinful nation, a people laden, burdened down, loaded up with
iniquity. A seed of evildoers. This is
the way of all generations. Children that are corrupters,
they've taken the things of God that God gave to them for worship
and service, and they corrupted them, turned them into a self-righteous
system of work salvation. And he says they've forsaken
the Lord, the Lord God of Israel. The God who justifies the ungodly. The God of all grace. The God
who will accept nothing less than sinless perfection. And that can only be found in
one person. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you recall that all of the sacrifices, the blood sacrifices
under the Old Covenant, that these people were engaging in. These blood sacrifices, they
were pictures of Christ. And they were always told that
the blood of bulls and goats could never put away sin. But
Christ, they were pictures of the Messiah to come, God manifest
in the flesh. And he says, they've forsaken
the Lord. They've provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger. Now we know God is not, sometimes
we speak of God in human terms because we're so limited as to
how we can describe these things. But God's anger is God's wrath,
we would say. God is not an emotional God.
He never changes. He's not one who's angry one
day and then pleasant the next. But this is something that simply
shows how they have provoked God and how sinful they are. And he said, they provoked the
Holy One of Israel into anger and they've gone away backward. in their religious efforts, instead
of getting better, instead of progressing, they've gotten worse.
They've gone away backward. And so look at verse five, he
says, why should you be stricken anymore? You will revolt more
and more, the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. Isn't
that a good description of all of us by nature? From the top
of our head, look at it, verse six, from the sole of the foot,
even into the head, there's no soundness in it, but wounds and
bruises and putrefying sores, they've not been closed, neither
bound up, neither mollified with ointment. What he's saying here
is this, we've got a disease that runs through and through
us, that there's no part of us that is free from this disease.
Now you know sin is not a germ. It's not a microscopic animal
running around in our bodies or anything like that. So this
language is a metaphor. It's like leprosy. A lot of times
sin is symbolized by the disease of leprosy. It's a disease that
gets in the blood and spreads throughout the body. And what
he's using this metaphor to show how sinful we are and how we
don't have any cure for this. That's what he says, it's neither
mollified, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
And one thing that's clear from these scriptures is this, religion
and trying to be good will not cure this disease. In fact, it
makes us worse. And so there's no remedy for
this disease in the power or the wills of men. And look at
verse seven. He says, your country is desolate.
Your cities are burned with fire. Your land, strangers devour it
in your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers. Now,
you know, at this point in time, they were being threatened by
the Assyrian empire. And the northern tribes, you
remember how the kingdom was split, the northern tribes were
carried away. They were conquered and carried
away by the Assyrians. It says in verse eight, and the
daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in
a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. So think about the kingdom
of Israel under David and Solomon. How great and how vast. But now
it's like a little cottage in a vineyard. That's how scaled
down it is because of their sin. So they had no true peace, no
true happiness, all of it, you know, because of sin. And look at verse nine. Now Isaiah,
throughout the Old Testament, the truth of a remnant is always
prevalent. that throughout the history of
Israel, 1,500 years under the old covenant, the vast majority
of the people were lost in their sins. And Isaiah is the one who
makes the statement later on, he says, though the number of
the children of Israel is as the sand of the sea, only a remnant
are saved. And that's like our day. I'm
going to be talking about that in the next few messages in these
next few weeks, about how the vast majority of people who call
themselves Christian are lost. They don't know anything about
the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel. And the Bible
says to be ignorant of God's righteousness, which is Christ
in the glory of his person and the power of his finished work,
to be ignorant of that righteousness is to be lost. Paul wrote in
Romans 10, 4, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believeth. And people know nothing about
who the true Christ is and what he accomplished. Well, look at
verse 9, except the Lord of hosts. Anytime you see God identified
as the Lord of hosts, that's literally the Lord of a great
army that cannot be defeated. So it's identifying God as being
invincible. Whatever God purposes to do,
he will do it, he does not fail in any way. So except the Lord
of Hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have
been a Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah. Well,
what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah? All of them were destroyed. All of them were under the wrath
of God. And Isaiah says, now here, and
you know what Sodom and Gomorrah, you know they were very immoral
people. Very decadent in their behavior. That's homosexuality,
that was the way of the day in Sodom and Gomorrah. And God destroyed
them all. He brought Lot and his family,
and of course Lot's wife, she looked back, she left him body
but not in heart, and she turned into a pillar of salt. But all
of the Sodomites and all those who lived in Gomorrah were destroyed.
And here's Israel. These are religious people. These
are people who are bringing sacrifices. who were coming to worship. And
Isaiah, because God revealed this to him, said, except the
Lord had left us a very small remnant of people who knew the
grace of God, who knew and trusted the promised Messiah and His
righteousness alone for their justification. Except the Lord
had left us a very small group, we'd be just like Sodom and Gomorrah.
We'd be under the wrath of God. everyone would perish. And so that's the indictment.
So beginning at verse 10, listen to what he says here. Hear the
word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, give ear unto the law
of God, of our God, you people of Gomorrah. He actually calls
them Sodom and Gomorrah. He's talking to the priest here,
the leaders of Jerusalem, And here's a key, verse 11. To what
purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? Now they
were bringing sacrifices. They were shedding the blood
of animals. But what was the purpose? Now according to God's
word, what was the purpose to be? It was to be to worship God,
realizing that we are sinners who are in need of the grace
of God through the blood of the promised Messiah. That's what
these animal sacrifices were to represent. But they did it
for another purpose. They put their trust in the blood
of animals and in their works. And that was a wrong purpose.
Listen to what he says. To what purpose is the multitude
of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord? I'm full of the burnt
offerings of ram. That's God saying like I'm fed
up with it. He says, I delight in the fat of fed beast. I delight
not in the blood of bolecs or of lambs or of he goats. Now
think about it. It was God who commanded them
to bring the sacrifices. It was God who commanded them
to bring the blood, go back to Cain and Abel. It had to be a
blood offering because justice has to be satisfied. The only
way that sins can be forgiven is on the basis of justice satisfied. That's what the blood represented.
We're going to be taking the Lord's Supper, and that wine
is the blood of Christ. That's His death. upon which
he satisfied the justice of God, so that God can show mercy to
his people, sinful people, but on the ground of justice satisfied.
And these were pictures of Christ. So they were bringing the offerings,
but in their minds and in their hearts, it was not for the right
reason. They thought that their actual
works in doing these things is what recommended them unto God,
not what the blood sacrifices represented. And so he says,
I delight not in these things. Verse 12, when you come to appear
before me, who hath required this at your hand to tread my
courts? Well, somebody might say, well, God, you required
it. Not for that purpose. Not in a self-righteous, legal
way. But coming to God as a sinner,
saying, God be merciful to me, the sinner. My only hope is in
the promise of your grace, which would be fulfilled in the coming
Messiah, the God-man. Verse 13, bring no more vain
oblations. That's vain offerings, empty. Incense is an abomination unto
me. the new moons and sabbaths, your
feast days and festival days and sabbath days, the calling
of assemblies to gather to worship. He said, I cannot away with,
I cannot get rid of them fast enough. It is iniquity. What he's saying there is this.
And he says, even the solemn meeting, it's iniquity. And you
know what iniquity is? It doesn't measure up. to the
perfection of righteousness that can only be found in Christ. Nothing we do measures up to
that. That's why we put our trust,
not in ourselves and our works, we put our trust in Christ, the
Lord our righteousness. And he says in verse 14, your
new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are
a trouble unto me, I'm weary to bear them. And when you spread
forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you." You see
people today worshiping, holding their hands up. That's what Israel
was doing. And God said, I'm fed up with
this. I hate it. It's an abomination. Why? Because
in their minds and in their hearts, it's legalism. It's self-righteous. They're not looking to Christ
alone for salvation and forgiveness and righteousness. They're looking
to themselves. And so he says, when you spread
forth your hands, verse 15, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea,
when you make many prayers, I will not hear. He says, your hands
are full of blood. And in that, it means that their
hands are full of wrongdoing, not well-doing. And so he says
in verse 16, now look, he says, wash you, make you clean, put
away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes, cease
to do evil, learn to do well. Now, wash you and make you clean. Think about that. Well, what
were they supposed to do? Well, notwithstanding all their
sacrifices and their ceremonies, They were unclean, as all of
us are by nature. We're sinners. Sinners lost in
our sins are sinners saved by grace. But God had established
from the very beginning, back in Genesis chapter three, the
only way that we could be cleansed from our sins. And it was through
one whom he prophesied called the seed of woman, which is Christ,
the Messiah. and based upon the blood of sacrifice
which God pictured in Genesis 321 when he slew an animal and
made coats of skin. Now that's how we're washed from
our sins. What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
My worship won't do it. My prayers won't do it. The blood
of animals can't do it. Only the blood of Christ can
cleanse us from all sin, and it does for His people. And so
when He says, wash you, make you clean, that's just another
way of saying, look to Christ. Look unto Christ, look unto Him
as the author and finisher of our faith, look unto the Lamb
of God, look to the Lamb of God, we sing that hymn. Don't look
to yourselves, that won't wash you, that won't make you clean.
Don't look to your works and your efforts, that won't wash
you, that won't make you clean. And then he says, learn to do
well. Well, he says, seek judgment, that's justice. Relieve the oppressed,
judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Now these were people
who were left destitute if, you know, a widow and orphans and
all that. And so what he's saying, follow the Lord, love your neighbor,
all of that, but you've got to seek judgment, you've got to
seek justice, you've got to seek righteousness. And that's why
verse 18 follows. He says, come now, let us reason
together, saith the Lord, Though your sins be as scarlet, they
shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool. Come let us read. Now this is
reasoning based upon God's truth. This is the call and command
of the gospel. When the Bible tells us, commands
us to wash ourselves and make ourselves clean, it's not talking
about our works as trying to work our way in salvation or
trying to cleanse ourselves by baptism or anything we do. When it says learn to do well,
what's it talking about? Though your sins be as scarlet,
they'll be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson,
they'll be as well. How does that happen? Well, it
happens by the grace of God through Christ. And that's what it is
to do well. To do well is to come before
God seeking blessing, salvation, seeking to worship Him and be
accepted of Him on the ground of the blood of Christ. You know,
over there in Genesis chapter four, I believe it's, yeah, it's verse
seven. When Cain brought his offering,
his works, to be accepted with God, and God rejected him, and
Cain became angry. And there in verse six of Genesis
four, the Lord said unto Cain, why art thou wroth, or why art
thou angry, and why is your countenance fallen, if thou doest well? Shalt thou not be accepted? Now the Lord, which I believe
was a pre-incarnate visitation of Christ, he told Cain, if you
do well, you'll be accepted. Well, was he telling Cain there
that if you try to be a good person, I'll accept you? No. He'd already established what
doing well was. Cain, bring the blood offering,
like Abel. That's what it is to do well.
Christ is the key to doing well. Come before God through the blood
and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And whatever
you do as far as doing well in your conduct and your character,
realizing that none of that equals the perfection of righteousness
that can only be found in Christ, and none of it can save you or
make you accepted before God, do it as motivated by the assurance
of salvation and all of its benefits and blessings by the blood of
Christ. That's what it's all about. He says in verse 19, if you be
willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. Well,
the Bible teaches us that by nature, none of us are willing
and obedient. But the Bible also teaches us
that when God saves us and brings us to a saving knowledge of Christ,
he makes us willing. So if any of us are willing,
how do we become willing? By the power and the goodness
and the grace of God. That's how. It wasn't our free
will, it wasn't our natural will, And he says in verse 20, but
if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. The mouth of the Lord. Now we'll end our lesson there.
But the book of Isaiah goes on through and you see so many restatements of these very truths. And a lot of it's found in pictures
and types. A lot of it's just stated out
doctrinally in the book of Isaiah. But Christ is the key to doing
well. He's the one. He is the ultimate
well-doer. God said, this is my beloved
son in whom I'm well pleased, hear ye him. So any sinner trying
to be a good person, trying to be sincerely religious, who comes
before God seeking salvation based upon their works or their
wills, they're not doing well. But those who come before God
as sinners seeking mercy, pleading the blood and righteousness of
Christ, that's what it is to do well, okay.