Please turn in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 62. Isaiah 62. And I'll begin reading at verse 10. Go through, go through the gates. Prepare ye the way of the people. Cast up, cast up the highway. Gather out the stones. Lift up a standard for the people. Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed
unto the end of the world, say ye to the daughter of Zion, behold,
thy salvation cometh. Behold, his reward is with him
and his work before him. And they shall call them. the
holy people, the redeemed of the Lord. And thou shalt be called
sought out, a city not forsaken. There's a beautiful harmony in all of the scriptures. We read them and sometimes we
fail to remember that this is a sacred book. This is God's infallible word. This does not just contain the
words of God, it is the Word of God. And the one way especially that
you can know this is that in all that it says, whether in the Old Testament
or the New Testament, in all that it says, It always gives
the glory to God. Especially in salvation, it always
gives the glory to God. But so often preachers and people
alike, they They feel like that the work of God depends on them. I'm afraid that as we get older
and weaker, maybe we realize the more and
the more that this is not the case. He uses instruments, He uses
means. His people are even described
as workers together with Him. But we can rest assured that
the work of God in saving His people really depends on God
alone in every, every aspect. And if you note what he says
for us to do in verses 10 and 11, he tells us to go through, to
go through the gates and prepare the way of the people. The people. He says, cast up
and cast up the highway and gather out the stones, lift up a standard
for the people. I believe this is a reference
to what the Old Testament says about the ways that were leading
to the cities of refuge. Those main arteries that led
to each of the cities of refuge, they were to be built up and
maintained and all the stones and all the obstacles removed
from those ways so that the manslayer in his flee and in his running
to seek refuge in the city of refuge would have no hindrances. He'd have a highway. It would
be free of stones. And then it says, lift up a standard
for the people. Those refuge cities, the ways
were to be marked with signs pointing to them. This is a city
of refuge. All every main artery leading
to that city was to be marked clearly. This is the way. This
is the city of refuge is ahead. And so we lift up the gospel. We lifted up the standard, or
the banner, as Christ is called. We say, this is the way of salvation,
this is the way of life, this is the way of righteousness,
this is the way of peace. You run to Him and flee to Him. And then He says this, Behold, the
Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world When will the end of the world
take place, the end of the age take place? It'll be when there's
no more gospel preached. It'll be when there's no more
word of hope. It'll be when there's no more
good news stated because all of his sheep will be brought
in. He says, say ye to the daughter of Zion, behold, thy salvation
cometh. What's the salvation of Zion? The Lord Jesus Christ. What is
Zion? The people of God, the church,
the elect of God. And Christ is her Savior, and
He says, behold, His reward is with Him. And His work before Him. He's finished His work. His work
is before Him. And then note what it says in
verse 12. It says, And they shall call
them the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord. And thou shalt be called sought out. Sought out. a city not forsaken. You see, God gives us this to
be declared, to be announced, proclaimed, and He reminds us
by all these names of what we are by the grace of God. We're that holy people. We're
that redeemed of the Lord, and we'll be called Sought out. Sought out. And the reason for this is because
the Father, God the Father, He has initiated, He has chosen,
He has predestinated, He has conformed a people to His Son. the Lord Jesus Christ. He put
them in a covenant called the everlasting covenant. And He made them for no reason
known to them or anybody else. He made them the objects of His
love and His grace and His mercy. He made them a people unto Himself. They're said to be the Lord's
inheritance. And He's going to have them. Just as sure as I'm standing
here, He's going to have every one of them. And also because the Son, He
came into this world and He died for them. He laid down His life for His
people. He redeemed them by His precious
blood. He paid the ransom price. He laid down His life for the
sheep. And now, because of this, The Holy Spirit
will assure that they're all saved. He'll surely assure that
they all experience this salvation that glorifies God. They will all be brought to Christ
They will all come to the knowledge of the truth. They will all come
to have faith. They will all be found. Not one of them will be lost. But lost is what they became
in the Adam Falls. They, like him and all his descendants, fell in sin, became alienated from God. Like sheep, they went astray
and they lost. You ever been lost? I've been in the woods, way back in the woods, and I've been lost. It isn't a good feeling. They became lost, and he says
in Jeremiah, my people hath been lost sheep. Their shepherds have caused them
to go astray. They have turned them away on
the mountains. They have gone from mountain
to hill. They have forgotten their resting
place. The shepherd's supposed to lead
them. The shepherd is supposed to save them. But he says, their
shepherds have caused them to go from mountain to mountain,
mountain to hill, and leave a resting place. Those are false shepherds. So in time, they are as they
are born, and they are in this condition, scattered throughout
time, scattered throughout the world in every age, people of
every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue. But though they fell in Adam,
they did not fall out of grace. They did not fall out of Christ. You see, he says in Revelation,
these were redeemed from among men. Christ has a people that he redeemed
from among men. And they must be brought You see, they must be brought
because it's God's will. It's God's purpose. Well, we
read just in Psalm 135, whatsoever the Lord desired. That's what
he does. It's God's will. It's God's purpose. Men always are talking about
free will and man's will and choice and chance and everything
else. But they're going to be saved
because this is God's will. This is the will of Him that
sent me. I lose nothing. I lose nothing. They're going to be saved because
Christ has satisfied God's justice on their behalf. He's already paid everything.
He already has the receipt in His hand. They're going to be
saved because that justice that required in salvation that He
suffer in their place, that same justice requires that they go
free. They're everyone gonna go free. And they must because it's impossible
for the Holy Spirit to fail. Some people hate that term, irresistible
grace. But it's just true. That means
not that we cannot resist grace, it means that no object of grace
can resist God's grace successfully. His Spirit works in us both the
will and the do of His good pleasure. It's impossible for the Holy
Spirit to fail. Christ said, all that the Father
giveth me, they'll come to me. And this is what God says again
and again and again. This is what He's been saying
throughout all the Old Testament Scriptures and in the New Testament
Scriptures. And He says it right here, Thou
shalt be called sought out. Sought out. Because Christ said that he came
to seek and to save that which was lost. You know, everybody in a general
sense is lost in sin. But only the people of God are
affectionately and time and time again spoken of as the lost,
the lost sheep, the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Turn over with me to Ezekiel
chapter 34. Everybody who saved that is, has experienced salvation,
they were sought out by God. Ezekiel chapter 34 and verse
11. For thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I, even I, will both
search my sheep and seek them out." You can't hide from God. I don't
care where you go, you can't hide from God. You can't escape
His presence. You can't go anywhere, just like
Adam and Eve found out in the garden. They went and hid themselves
in the tree of the garden. But God found them. He sought
them. All He had to do for them to
go to hell was just leave them alone, but He sought them, and
He sought them to do them good. He sought them to cover their
nakedness, to show them the way of salvation. And so he says here, he'll search
for his sheep and seek them as a shepherd seeketh his flock
in the day that he is among the sheep that are scattered. So
will I seek out my sheep and will deliver them out of all
places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. That's a good picture of this
world. That's a good picture of this time in which we live. That's a good picture of how
things are as far as light and truth is concerned. It's a cloudy
and a dark day. And I will bring them out from
the people. It's not all people here. But
he says, I will bring them out from the people and gather them
from the countries and I will bring them to their own land
and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers and in
all the inhabited places of the country. I'll feed them in a good pasture. And upon the high mountains of
Israel shall their foe be. There shall they lie in a good
fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains
of Israel. I will feed my flock, and I will
cause them to lie down, saith the Lord. And I will bring again,
I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was
driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will
strengthen that which was sick, but I will destroy the fat and
the strong, I will feed them with judgment." You see, when God seeks a person
out, in this sense. He seeks them out to do them
good. There's not any doubt but what
we flee from the Lord, we hide from the Lord. We want nothing
to do with Him because we're so ignorant and blind, but He
keeps on seeking us and finds us to do us good. He said, I'll feed them. Only the Lord can feed us. Only the Lord God Almighty can
feed you of that which your soul longs for. Christ, in all His names, is
always the satisfaction of what man needs and longs for, but
seeks to feed in something else. He said, I'm the bread. I'm the water. I'm the peace. I'm the righteousness. When God finds us, He reveals
to us that Christ is all these things, not only the satisfaction
of God on our behalf, but the satisfaction of our souls. He says, I'll feed them in a
good pasture. He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures. on all those green pastures.
They're His precious promises. They're His Word. They're the
things that when the Lord enables us to enter into them, bring
us the most joy, the most comfort, the most satisfaction, the most
peace, the most hope. In verse 15, he says, and I'll
cause them to lie down. I'll cause them to lie down.
What in the world does that mean? It means, I don't know about
you, but when I lie down, I try to rest. Takes a lot of it for me these
days, it seems like. But when God gives us Christ,
when he makes Christ known to our souls, when he enables us
to believe on Christ for everything, only then does our soul rest. Come unto me, all ye labor, and
I'll give you rest. He doesn't seek them to Do them
evil? He doesn't seek them to punish
them. He is not in a search for them
that He might do them harm or that He might get them. That's
what preachers say. God's going to get you. I'm thankful He's already got
me. And He's already got all of His people in the truest sense,
has already possessed them and had them, owned them for His
own from time and eternity. And Christ has bought them and
redeemed them so that they're His. And the Holy Spirit will
come and make it known to them. They'll be sought out. He seeks
them out to do them good. Look over in Matthew's Gospel. Matthew 18 and verse 11. For the Son of Man is come to
seek and save that which was lost. How thinking. If a man have a
hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave
the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh
that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it,
verily I say unto you that he rejoices more over that sheep
than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Now look at
this next verse. Even so, it is not the will of
your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones
should perish. It's not the will of not even
one of God's little children that they should perish. Look over in Luke chapter 15.
Luke chapter 15. It says that the Lord Jesus spake
a parable. Now, verse 4 begins that parable
and says, What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose one
of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and
go after that which is lost, until he finds it? until he finds it. Now there are three parts of
this parable. Three parts. One has to do with
a coin. A coin. Now you see a coin on the ground,
nobody will even stop and pick it up. But evidently this coin
was worth something to this woman. It was a coin. That's the first
one. The second one has to do with a lost sheep. A lost sheep. And the third one
has to do with the son. And they all three have one thing
in common. They're all lost. They're all lost. One of them,
the coin, is a picture of an inanimate dead object to show
us something of our condition. We're like a coin. We can't find
ourselves. We don't have life until it gives
us spiritual life. We're just dead. Sometimes I
want to ask people, do you not understand what is meant about
dead? Dead in trespasses and sin. Without life. Dead. The other is given to us to show
us how we are a stray sheep. We're all a stray from God. Everybody says they're searching
for God. Oh, no. They're searching and
seeking for any God but God. And the third has given us to
show how rebellious we are. That son who's rebellious that
we have called the prodigal son. You know who the prodigal son?
Every one of God's elect. rebelling against God, rebelling
against God's goodness, wasting all, doing all that displeases
Him, and being so far out. If He doesn't seek us, we won't
find Him. So you have a coin, you have
a lost sheep, you have a lost son, But there's another characteristic
of them. They're all found. They're everyone
found. The woman, she searches after
that coin. It says she sweeps her house. She turns over everything until
she finds it. I got it. The shepherd, he leaves
the 99, he searches over the mountains, the hills, the valleys,
the darkness, every place for his sheep until he finds it. And that son, somebody said, well, he didn't
get found. Oh, I think he did. Because his father, was watching
for him every moment. He was expecting him to be found. He was expecting him to come. they shall be called sought out. Our Lord says in John 4, but
the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father
seeketh such. The Father seeketh such to worship
Him. They're going to be called sought
out. They've got a name, the holy people. They've been made
holy in Christ. They're going to be called the
redeemed. They're being redeemed by the blood of Christ. They're
going to be called Zion and Jacob and Israel and all these other
names, but they're going to be called sought out. And the thing of it is, is to
see how graciously, how gently, how successfully, how mercifully
God seeks his sheep, his people, his elect, no matter who they are, no matter
where they are, No matter what condition they've fallen to,
they'll be sought out, they'll be found, they'll be brought,
they'll be saved, they'll be delivered, they'll be rescued,
because He'll bring them. This timetable's not on our timetable. He's not in nearly as big a hurry
as we are, but He's sure. and he'll be successful. Their
cause sought out. I say no matter who they are, whether they're a Saul of Tarsus,
steeped in the worst idolatry, religious, self-righteous, just
about everything you can imagine to make us say it is impossible
to get through to him, impossible to save him, impossible for him
to see his need, impossible to bring him to the truth. One day on the road to Damascus, he was sought out. He was found. He was found out. The Lord just
unhorsed him, put him in the dust, and saved him. I say He'll do it no matter where
they are. They might be in a desert place. The desert place like the Ethiopian
eunuch traveled in, or the desert place like Afghanistan, or Iraq,
or wherever they were at, he sent Philip down there. Philip didn't know altogether
why he was there. But the Lord had him out in the
desert, and he's walking along in the desert place, I suppose,
and all of a sudden, he sees a little caravan coming, a man
in a caravan and a chariot riding, and he's reading something there. He goes by him, he says, hey, you
understand what you're reading? How can I except some man show
me? He joins up in there, goes into
the chariot, preaches the gospel to him. They stop the chariot,
he's baptized, Philip's on his way, the Ethiopian eunuch's on
his way. That wasn't in a church, that
wasn't in a cathedral, that was just wherever God ordained. Or
like Onesimus, he's in jail in the prison house. He's been sent
there because he's a runaway slave. You say, I don't believe
in slavery. I don't care. He was there. because he was a runaway slave
and what might appear to have been awful in man's sight was
an instrument of God's grace to him because in prison he heard
the gospel from Paul. Maybe the Philippian jailer. He was just down there doing
that work, doing that job, serving the government, and all rough
individual had to be for that job. But when the Lord rattled
His cage, there was more than an earthquake physically that
took place, there was an earthquake spiritually disrupted that man's
contentment and strength. He called out on the Lord. Lydia, she's in a place doing business. Cellar Purple, in the same city where Paul was, She's being sought out. He's
been going with the gospel all the time, and she's been going
with her need all the time, until such a time as God appoints when
she is sought out. What about Paul? He says, the
saints in Caesar's household, soldiers and maids, cooks and
whatever, we don't know. But they were in Caesar's house,
they were part of the government, they were part of this and that
and the other, but he calls them saints. Because when those men
were brought in there and tried and convicted and charged with
everything, they heard the gospel. Because they were sought out. I say no matter what they've
become. There's a fella in Mark 5, I
believe he's about as low as you can see. They call him the maniac of Gadara. And he is so wild, he is so ferocious. They tried to keep him in chains,
but they couldn't hold him in the chains. They are just like
so many people who have been restrained, tried to be restrained
by religion and morality, but they just won't. They break out. He has been cutting
himself. Sharp rocks, scaring everybody,
living in the graveyard full of demons. But the Lord Jesus Christ steps
out on the bow onto that shore and that man comes raging toward
him. He's going to do like he's done
everybody else, except the demons in him are
rebuked. And the man is saved. The man
is brought to be seated, and in his right mind, he sought out. And this whole book is full of
that. And more than that, this whole
world is full of that. Every single believer here this
morning, every single one of us has a
different course, a different way, but grace and God and the
Spirit of God sought us out and found us. Because God had something
to give us. a free, a full, and eternal salvation
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I don't know about you, but when I consider all, all
my running, all my fleeing, all my hiding, I have to acknowledge that it
was God who did the saving and it was God who did the seeking. And he sought me till he found
me. Peter says it like this, For ye were as sheep going astray, but now are returned unto the
shepherd and bishop of your souls." God's going to have His people. And as we sang that song, I sought
the Lord, but afterward I knew He was the one that sought me. He's always the one who does
the saving. In tenderness He sought me, weary
and sick with sin, and on His shoulders brought me. back to
his fold again, while angels in his presence sang, until the
courts of heaven rang. Oh, the love that sought me. Oh, the blood that bought me. Oh, the grace that brought me
to the fold. wondrous grace that brought me
to the fold. Our Father, we thank you for omnipotent grace, for grace that is not just general
benevolence, but a saving power. We acknowledge you as the seeker,
as the well, as the savior of our souls. We thank you for our
great shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, who said, I lay down my life
for the sheep. I give my life for the sheep, but who also said, them I must
bring. Thank you for bringing us. Thank
you for bringing all your sheep. Thanking you ahead for the sheep
that you'll bring. We give you all the glory. and
praise in Christ's name, amen.