Yeah. All right. Turn with me this
morning, if you would, over to Isaiah chapter 44. mind. Stay focused as well. Reading
through this chapter this morning. And I'd really like to just kind
of maybe make some comments about verses 24 down through 28. The whole chapter really is a
very good chapter of the work of again, we go back to this As
we've talked about many times before, there's a physical aspect
to this, but we most certainly want to look at the spiritual
application of this. Now, the physical aspect of this
is talking about Israel being brought back from Babylonian
captivity. It is a precursor or a prophecy I believe, if I'm not mistaken,
it was somewhere around 150, 60 to 200 years before the actual
captivity came back. We'll see here in verse 28, the
word, or the man Cyrus is brought up. Cyrus was a, was a ruler
back then. And he, was one of the ones that
the Lord used to redeem Israel back to their land and rebuild
the temple, begin the rebuilding of the temple. And so this whole
chapter is basically God restoring Israel or restoring His people
who had been lost into idolatry, lost into captivity. And again,
we know that This was a physical thing that actually happened,
as did Israel many times, go away from God, went away from
God and everything. And the Lord eventually judged
the nation Israel. They could not keep the covenant,
which we've mentioned this several times over the last few weeks.
The covenant that he made with physical Israel was a conditional
covenant. It wasn't a, uh, now the Lord did say that he would
perpetually be with them, but that was on the condition that
they would keep the covenant, right? So the word perpetual
being used in connection with this covenant with the physical
Israel, uh, doesn't mean eternal covenant. It wasn't a, uh, unconditional
covenant. It was a conditional covenant.
Um, and, uh, the, uh, coming in in Deuteronomy, where he even
talks about bringing Israel back, that they'll go away, but I'm
gonna bring them back. Well, as we see him talking about
that at the last part of that portion of Deuteronomy, he says,
I'll bring them back, but if they continue not in my command,
if they continue not following after me, then I will destroy
them off this land destroy them from all these things. And that's
what exactly what the Lord did. Yes, he brought them back on
numerous occasions. But see, the fact is, is that
covenant was never put in place to make anybody perfect. It was
never meant for a physical thing. It was always to show forth the
spiritual thing that we cannot keep the law of God. Israel could
never keep the commands that God had given them. They could
never keep the covenant. It was always to show that they
were always, the hymn comes to my mind, prone
to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. We see
over and over and over and over again, Israel continues to go
chasing after their fleshly desires, after other gods and things like
that. And is that not the testimony of all of us? His spiritual children
even. The dog returns to its vomit.
We always like to go back to our fleshly things. And so we
see that while there was a physical aspect to this, there is a truly
spiritual meaning in this. As we get into the New Testament,
we begin to see that the types of foreshadows we see in this
chapter reveal Christ as our shepherd, Christ as our redeemer. And we as Israel, or as His people,
we are being brought back and we are being redeemed, but the
redemption that's under the New Covenant, that is an unconditional
thing, that is an eternal thing, and it cannot ever be broken.
We keep the law of Christ in the New Covenant. There is no
breaking of that in the New Covenant. Hopefully, maybe we can see some
of these things that the Spirit will be good to teach us this
morning. But I want to start reading at
verse 24, and as I said, the previous verses also speak to
some of the same things that we see here. And there are some
really good things to read in there, and I encourage you to
read that. Isaiah is a wonderful, wonderful book. but I mainly
wanna focus here from 24 to 28. And it says, thus saith the Lord,
thy Redeemer, and that right there oughta make
us cause and pause, or cause us to pause, because our Redeemer
is about to say something to us. This isn't just someone willy-nilly
out there gonna make some declaration of something. This isn't just
some theologian that's going to give us his two cents. This
is our Redeemer. Thus said the Lord, thy Redeemer. Our ears should perk up. Our
minds, as the Spirit would give it to us, to be attentive and
our hearts to be receptive of what is about to be said. Our
Lord is about to tell us something. whether it's here today, whenever
we come and preach the word of God, or whether it's at home,
whenever we're studying the word of God or praying and looking
to the Lord or listening to somebody else preaching on tape or whatever,
whenever the Lord begins to speak and say something to us, I pray
that he gives us a heart to listen, an ear to hear, and a mind to
receive it. He says, thus saith the Lord
thy Redeemer, And He that formed thee from the womb. So He's not
just our Redeemer, but brethren, He's our Creator. He made us. In fact, we'll see here in just
a minute, He's made everything. But specifically, He has made
us. Our God has fashioned us, made us, intimately knows us. He has done all these things,
but yet He is also our Redeemer. Now, we can't say that about
everybody. Now, he is the creator of everybody. He has formed everybody
in the womb. Not one person that's ever been
born of Adam ever was born by accident. Now, we talk about
accidents between a husband and a wife. We weren't expecting
that child or planning to have a child, but all of a sudden,
here it comes. There are no accidents. Everything is by the will of
God. Everything is by the purpose
and plan of God. Every child that is fashioned
in the womb is fashioned by God. It isn't fashioned because the
mom and dad knew what to do. You know, the Bible says that
he fashions these people in the womb. You know, me and my wife,
we tried to have kids for eight years. All the mechanisms were
in place. Everything was working as it
should work. But we couldn't create life,
we couldn't make that happen. It was only when God was pleased
to knit one of them children in the womb that life actually
began. And how sad, we were talking
just a while ago about the abortion stuff, how sad it is that so
many people are so rabid about wanting to end those lives. And
how our country has become so obsessed with making sure that
everybody feels good has their right to be able to end that
life if they want to, if it's just going to be a problem to
them. I didn't want that, therefore
I'm going to end that life. Well, just know that every life
that is in the womb, God has created it. He has formed it. It says, Thus saith the Lord,
thy Redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the
Lord that maketh all things, that stretches forth the heavens
alone, and spreadeth abroad the earth by myself. Nobody else
hated him in that. There wasn't no big bang that
it just came out of nowhere. You know, it wasn't evolution
that created all things. It wasn't some little atom that
all of a sudden clinged on to another atom and all of a sudden
all these things started building together. There wasn't no some
explosion of light that just by chance started spreading out
and creating whatever was created. Matter of fact, probably 90 to
99% of all cosmology that we hear about today is not biblical,
is not anything close to what scripture has taught. But we
see here that the Lord has stretched forth the heavens alone and that
spreadeth abroad the earth. He is reminding us here, I am
the Lord, I am thy Redeemer. I'm the one who knit you in the
womb. You have life because of me and everything that that life
that you have that I knitted together that you're going to
experience in this world, whether it be on earth or whether it
be in heaven, I have created it as well. So we see here God
is reminding us who is God. Who is in control? He is reminding
us of His sovereignty. He is reminding us of His majesty. He is reminding us of His creatorship. He is God. Now if He be God,
and I truly believe that He is, He said He was, and if He has
done all these things, that everything that has life and everything
that is that exists has been created and formed and made by
Him, And that would tell me that he is over all things. That would
tell me that he is sovereign. That means nothing is outside
of his control because he made it and he controls it. See, man
can make things that they can't control. They make bombs. Man can make a bomb, but he can't
control a bomb. Whenever that thing goes off,
it goes off and whatever's in its vicinity is going to blow
up. You can't control. some things, but God, He is the
only one who not only has made everything, but has the power
and the right to control everything. He says, that frustrateth the tokens of
the liars, and maketh diviners mad, that turneth wise men backward,
and maketh their knowledge foolish. Not only is he the creator, not
only is he the fabricator of life, not only is he our redeemer,
but he is wisdom. He has all knowledge. And he
can do whatever he wants. And here we see, he frustrated
the tokens of the liars. What does that mean? The tokens
that's being there is the monuments or the displays of the liars. All those that are out here that
are liars, he puts to naught everything that they do. I remember
back when Moses and Aaron went before Pharaoh and everything
that, every miracle that was performed before Pharaoh, his
guys came out and tried to do something, but every time they
did something, God's side, eat it up. Like the staff, whenever
he threw the staff down, they threw their staff down and it
became a snake. Moses' staff went over and ate their staff
up. You know, it puts them on display
as who they truly are as liars. And God does that before the
faces of men, before the people of men, the wisdom of man, he
brings those things to naught. His wisdom is higher than their,
his foolishness, the Bible says, is higher than their wisdom.
Matter of fact, I think it's, is it 1 Corinthians chapter one?
I don't want to lie here, or misspeak. Is it 1 Corinthians
chapter one? We was there not too long ago.
Yeah. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 1 in
verse 18. It says, For the preaching of
the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which
are saved is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy
the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding
of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the disputer of this
world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Men like to raise up and make
themselves look smart. They like to boast of their intelligence,
of their technology. Oh, listen, we've made a god
out of technology today. And men and scientists, especially
scientists, we have put scientists up on such a pedal as gods. You
would think Neil deGrasse Tyson is some sort of deity the way
most people look at him and the way he talks to most people.
You would think that he's some sort of a deity, you know. But
the Bible says that God in his infinite wisdom, his infinite
knowledge, and even his foolishness, and of course there is no foolishness
in God, it's a comparison. That even the lowest level of
God's, if there was foolishness, would be above man's wisdom.
That's what it's basically saying. It breaks the knot all these
minutes. It makes the diviners mad. They try to deviate. They try to fool us. They try to have sway over us. What comes to my mind is all
these preachers on TV. It's like there's some sort of
a soothsayer over all the people. Joe Holstein and all those people
that's in his church and everybody that watches him on TV and everything. He gets up there with all of
his nice sayings and pretty sayings. you know, nice smile and all
that kind of stuff, but he's literally casting divination,
however you want to say it, over all these people. He's casting
falsity and preaching unto them lies and another God and another
Jesus. Now, it's not just him. I would
say that 90% of evangelicalism is doing the same thing. Some
of them are more closer to the truth than others, but it's still
not the full truth. And they are casting these falsities
and lies upon the people. And the reason is, is because
they're of their father, the devil, who is the father of all
lies. And it says here that he, turneth
the wise men backward and maketh their knowledge foolish. and performeth the counsel of
his messengers, that, saith to Jerusalem, thou shalt be inhabited. And to the cities of Judah ye
shall be built up, and I will raise up the decayed places."
There, brethren, aren't you thankful that the Lord has built up the
decayed places of our life. The Bible says that we are born
into this world, conceived in sin. We are under sin, we are
under Satan, we are under condemnation. If we are under the law, we're
under condemnation. Now, thankfully, the Lord has
not appointed us to condemnation. The Lord has not appointed us
to wrath. He has not seen that wickedness
in us because our surety has stood for us all these times.
But surely in Adam, our flesh is under condemnation because
of the breaking of God's law that we do. But with all those
things that we have been under, sin and Satan and self and flesh
and sin and all these things, the Bible says that he has raised
up the decayed places, that he has caused the inhabitants of
his city to be inhabited. You think back in the physical,
how the mighty Jerusalem and how it was Emptied out. They
were gone into captivity, laid bare, laid empty. And what a
pity that was of such a beautiful place and such a place where
God's presence had been. But yet, there's nothing there. It's empty and dead. The Bible
says that we, His people, even though being in Christ Jesus
from the foundation of the world as we are in Adam, the Bible
says we are dead in trespasses and sins. We are empty and void
of anything spiritual. We are empty of anything holy. We are void of any kind of righteousness. We have nothing there. We are
laid waste before God. But yet the Bible says that His
city, His city, His spiritual city, the New Jerusalem, the
people of God, that that city will be inhabited. See, that's
a promise of God that His people will continue, that his people
will make up that wonderful city. That is a surety that what God's
purpose is from the foundation of the world to save a people
unto himself and to sanctify a people unto himself, and though
they fall in Adam, though they are ruined in sin and deceit
and all kinds of vileness, that even though they are like that,
He shall redeem them out of that, and He will build unto Himself
a holy city. Man, we have, I mean, if anything
to be thankful of this Thanksgiving season, is to be thankful that
the Lord brought us up out of the miry plague. That the Lord
has taken us and has set our feet upon the rock of Christ
Jesus, that He has delivered us from sin, He has delivered
us from death, He has delivered us from our captor, which was
Satan, He has delivered us from all those things. And it says
here that He will, it says, thou shalt be inhabited in the cities
of Judah, ye shall be built, and I will raise up the decayed
places thereof, that sayeth to the deep, be dry, and will dry
up thy rivers. I think back to whenever the
children of Israel was brought out, God redeemed and delivered
Israel out of Egypt and they come up to the Red Sea and it
looked like We're not going nowhere. We should have just stayed where
we was now. They're gonna come for so it's gonna kill us right
here But yet God opened up that sea on dry land. They walked
across he dried up the rivers He dried up the sea he dried
up the waters so they could walk across on dry land and And I
think that God, as our Redeemer, who is the Creator, who has made
all things and has put to naught all the wisdom of the wise, who
thinks that everything is done by our own self-efforts, our
own self-righteousness. See, they can't understand. That's
the thing about this wisdom part, is they think in wisdom, well,
obviously there's something we have to do, right? That's the
whole thing about free will. People have to have free will
because there's something that we have to do. There has to be
a response. There has to be a receiving. There has to be a believing.
There has to be a repenting. There has to be something that
we do for God to do what He does. Everything that Jesus did, yeah,
that was great, but unless we do this, it can't be enacted
upon us. We can't receive it. We can't
get the good out of it unless we perform some sort of a thing.
And the wisdom of the wise says that it's by our own self-righteous
works that we accomplish this. But God said, no, it's not. It's
the works of somebody else. It's the substitutionary work
of somebody else. This person is completely guilty.
This person is completely vile. This person cannot do anything
in and of himself, cannot do anything. But this man over here,
he came and he did it all. He died. He resurrected. And
everything that he did, this person gets the credit for it. This person gets the credit for
everything that this man purchased for them. It goes on their account. And the wives say, well, that
don't make any sense. You mean to just tell me this
man is going to live all the law for them? They don't have
to live the law? Absolutely. That's what it says. You mean
to tell me that this guy right here is going to take on the
wrath of God and most people as bad as they are, some of them
are worse than others, vile, evil people. You mean to tell
me that they are going to go free? That's exactly what I'm
saying. Their minds can't comprehend
that. But God in his infinite wisdom, in the mystery of God
sent forth Christ as our substitute. And in that substitution, He
took on everything that should have been ours. He has purchased
everything that is going to be blessed to us. And we don't have
to do anything for that. And the wise man says that don't
make sense. But to God, he has made the wisdom
of the wise nothing. He has provided a way whenever
it looked like there is no way God provided that way, just as
they went up to the sea. They didn't think there was any
way God provided the way. He was able to part those seas.
He was able to give us dry ground to walk on. He was able to deliver
us not only out of Egypt, but he delivered us out of Egypt
and through the temptuous trials and circumstances of this life
and brought us over into the promised land of rest. Me and
my Uncle Todd was talking. He called me last night and we
were talking about a few things. One of the things we got to talking
about is rest. how a lot of people, this whole,
this whole understanding of whenever you begin, the more and more
you begin to see what Christ has done for us and our identity
being in Him and how much rest that brings, knowing that it's
all about God. God, it's all God. I mean, God
does everything for us. We can't do anything for ourselves.
God does everything for us. And whenever you begin to see
those things and you enter into that true biblical rest, brother,
that right there, that rest, and what I told my uncle, I said,
yeah, people get pretty wound up about that whenever, whenever
you truly are someone who rests in Christ, not only for what
he has done legally on your behalf, but also what he's doing for
you experientially day by day. Whenever you're rested knowing
that, hey, Everything is ordered by God. Everything is controlled
by God, purposed by God, predestinated by God. Everything that I'm doing
throughout the day, moment by moment, minute by minute, second
by second, every attitude, every decision, every action, every
reaction, everything that I do is controlled and purposed and
ordered by God. And how much I am learning and
growing in the grace and knowledge of God and how much I'm not is
also controlled by Him. that all good works that God
has ordained from the foundation of the world has been ordained
by Him, and I'm not going to make any more than that, and
I'm not going to do less than that, that everything has been
ordered by God, and my life on this earth, and my purpose that
God has made, that I am here for that purpose, that everything
is going to be accomplished exactly as He has ordained it, predestinated
it, and nothing is going to deviate from it. Whenever I start trusting
as much in the experiential sovereignty of God as I do in the legal sovereignty
of God, people will look at you and say, well, you're just complacent. You just, whatever will be, will
be. You're, you know, just going to rest on your laurels and do
nothing. And I told my Uncle Tom last night, I said, whenever
you see somebody who's resting, what are they doing? They're
not doing anything. They're resting. A person that
is at rest means that they cease from their labor. They cease
from doing anything. They are resting. I sit in this
chair. I fall asleep. There might be
a lot of stuff going on around me, but I'm doing nothing. I'm
just resting. And see, that's where the rub
hits the people that are the wise of this world. They can't
understand that. It's not that we're not doing
something, it's just that we're trusting God to do it for us
and in us. If there's anything that God
wants done, He's going to do it. I don't have to worry myself
about that. Be anxious for nothing, but in
everything, with prayer and supplication, let your request be done in the
Lord. I was telling the Lord the other day, I was working
on a piece of extra equipment down in Clarksville, and I had
already been down there a couple of times, went down there and
tested. They were having some issues,
a certain error was coming up on their x-ray machine. Trouble
shot it all the way down, it came to two components, an x-ray
tube and an x-ray high voltage tank, but there was no way to
determine which one was the culprit. So I took the x-ray tube off
and I put on one that we knew was a working tube. but yet it was giving some weird
readings, and so I couldn't trust that that tube was actually good
in and of itself, my test tube. So it came down to, well, we
need to order a tube. It's the cheaper of the two.
Let's order a tube. If that's not the problem, then
we'll take the tube back and then we'll order the high voltage
tank. So I'd already been down there, done that troubleshooting,
ordered the tube, came back, put the tube on, and that wasn't
the problem. So then we're down again. for
so few days. The high voltage tank was the
problem. When we called the manufacturer, the tank was backward and said
maybe a couple of weeks before they could get it produced and
out. And so the doctor was furious that it was going to take that
long. And so he told us that we needed to figure something
out, otherwise he's going to have to call somebody else and
see if they can do something for him. We called around all
the distributors in the United States, this tank comes out of
Canada, but anyway, we called around all the distributors in
the country that might have some of these new tanks and nobody
had them. They said, we're just like you,
we're waiting in line to get stuff. And so we called the manufacturer
back and he said, you know, hey, I'm gonna try to work something
out and maybe see if production can take one out of a unit that
we've already put together and get it out to you and everything. So we told the doctor, looks
like they're going to try to do this. This was on Friday.
They're going to ship it out on Monday. Well, Monday rolls
around and they contacted us and said something fell through.
We were not able to do that. So I wasn't going to be able
to go down there. The doctor was furious again.
He's going to have to wait. So it all came down to us trying
to find this tank. And we finally, the manufacturer
said, we know one place in Colorado that they might have one of those
tanks that match your system. and we're gonna contact them
for you, see if they'll be willing to send you their tank, and then
whenever we get your tank built, we'll send it to them. So all
that worked out, and so we figured out, man, that's gonna be good,
we're gonna be able to do that. And so I got down there on Friday,
and I was praying to the Lord whenever I was getting in there,
Lord, please let this work, because they've already been down all
this time, it's been a whole week, And the doctor is furious
and if this doesn't come through and something else is still wrong,
he's going to drop us and get us somewhere else. You know,
please let this work. So yeah, I was praying a little
selfishly that the Lord would pull through on this for me.
That was my will, you know. And once I got it all put on
there, then I go through this calibration process and there's
different steps in this calibration process. Well, every time it
passed one of these steps, I thought, thank the Lord. I thank you Lord.
Can you get me through there? Can you get me through the next
one? And I did that at every step on this thing. Whenever
it was all done, I thanked the Lord that it all passed and I
was all working. And as I left, I was pulling
off and driving. And I said, thank you, Lord,
for letting all that work and everything. And I got to thinking
and I said, would you be thanking the Lord for this if it hadn't
worked? And I told the Lord, I just And
I'm talking out loud in my band. I said, Lord, it isn't that I
doubted your ability to bring this thing to work in order here,
nor do I think that my will supersedes your will. I was praying that
that would be your will. But my thing that was getting
me was I know my flesh, and how would
my flesh have handled if it wasn't your will with that word? That
was more what I was afraid of, is what my flesh would say and
what my flesh would do. And I was reminded, even that
is of God. See, the Lord controls all these
things, and whenever we come into rest, whenever we come to
the place where we see that God has not only brought us out,
he has delivered us, brought us through all the things, the
wandering, and again, I need to choose my words better. It's
not wandering in the wilderness. He was led in the wilderness.
They were led through the wilderness. The Lord is leading. The Lord
has purposed all these things for us. And so the God who is
at the first of our passages here has reassured us of who
He is. He's our Redeemer. We're redeemed. There's nothing going to change
that. We can't change being redeemed, no matter how bad we are, no
matter how disobedient we might be. This isn't a license to go
do whatever you want. I'm just saying, it doesn't matter
how much we fail God, if we have been redeemed, you can't unredeem
us. Nobody can unredeem us. We are
redeemed. And God is saying, if I'm in
control of all things, then nothing is going to change that control.
Nothing is going to change what I have purposed, what I have
planned. And if I'm going to bring you out, if I'm going to,
and I've made the declaration, the city is going to be inhabited. That the decayed places are going
to be brought out. Praise the Lord that he has caused
us to be born again, not of this earthly seed, but of the heavenly
seed. That he has given us a spiritual life. Notice what he says at
the last verse. And hopefully this all ties together
and makes sense, but he says, that said of Cyrus, he is my
shepherd. Now again, remember Cyrus was
a, was a pagan king. He wasn't, he wasn't an Israelite
king. He was a pagan king, but the
Lord chose him out. And again, the Lord makes this
declaration by Isaiah and Isaiah wrote this almost 200 years before
Cyrus ever did this. Matter of fact, I was reading
in some of the comments about this verse. I can't remember who it was that
I was reading, but anyway, they said that in Josephus' book,
Antiquity of the Jews, I think it was, that Cyrus read Isaiah
and seen his name there and how that was amazing to him to see
that God singled him out as a person 200 years before he was even
on the scene and did everything. This right here tells us that
God isn't just a fortune teller, isn't a fortune teller, that
God has decreed all things. He decreed the very person who
would bring these people out of Babylon back into Jerusalem,
that he would rebuild their sittings and rebuild their tabernacle.
And so Cyrus was the one that God had chosen for this. Now,
in this we see, and I actually had a few people that kind of
give me a little guff about this a long time ago, whenever I preached
about Cyrus one time. This, in my understanding, or
at least the way I see it, even though this is a Babylonian king,
this here is a type of Christ. Cyrus is a type of Christ. That
saith of Sireth, he is my shepherd. The Lord only has one shepherd.
We talk about pastors being shepherds, but really they're not shepherds
in the sense that Christ is. Christ is the good shepherd.
He is the only shepherd. People don't listen to my voice,
but they do listen to his voice. Someone may agree with what I'm
saying, but that's because they heard the voice of the shepherd
say before me. It says, he is my shepherd and
shall perform all my pleasure. Everything that God had predetermined,
Cyrus did exactly the way God predetermined. And let me say
this to all those who don't believe that hold to conditional time
salvation. Did Cyrus have a free will to
choose to do what he did? God predestinated exactly what
Cyrus would do and how he did it. 200 years before that, well,
before the foundation of the world, God had determined it,
but he declared it 200 years before Cyrus did it, and Cyrus
did exactly as God had determined that it would be. Even in this,
look at this, it says, thou shalt be built unto the temple, thy
foundation shall be laid. And notice that it said foundation,
but not the whole entire thing. If you look back at the account
of Cyrus, while Cyrus was in power, only the foundation of
the temple was laid. It wasn't until later, under
I think it was Darius, that the rest of the temple was made.
So God had determined exactly what would be done. But let's
think about this as it pertains to Christ, brethren. He is our shepherd. He is the
good shepherd of His sheep. He feeds them. The Bible says
that He leads us beside the still waters. He restores our soul,
that He leads us down to green pastures. As a matter of fact,
in the preceding verses up here, He says in verse three, for I
will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the
dry ground. I will pour my spirit upon thy
seed and my blessing upon thy offspring, and they shall spring
up as among the grass, as well as by the waters courses. He
has everything that we have need of. He is our shepherd. He knows
what we need when we need it and He provides that for us.
And He says, and He shall perform all my pleasure. I think back
to the scriptures that say, talk about the Lord that He will do
all of His pleasure. Nothing can stay in His hand.
Nothing can stop Him. Nothing can thwart Him. He mentioned
it here in the preceding verses even that, you know, He is controlling
all things. He is God of creation. And so
this Cyrus, or this shepherd, is going
to be the one who performs, what does it say, all my pleasure.
Who is it, the one that performed all the pleasure? It was his
servant, his shepherd. It wasn't the people, it wasn't
the sheep that performed all his pleasure, but it was the
shepherd who performed all the pleasure. He says, even saying
to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built, and to the temple thy foundation
shall be laid." Brethren, didn't Jesus say that I will build my
church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it?
If Jesus says, thou shalt, if the Scriptures say, I will, I
think that we can count that He is going to make sure that
it's going to be done. His church was built. His church
was began. The Bible says that The foundation
was laid by the apostles and Christ Jesus being the chief
cornerstone. And we are being built up into this holy tabernacle,
this holy city. We are lively stones in that.
And so we see that God has pronounced that his people, his spiritual
people, will be built into that beautiful city, that it will
be put together. And the foundation has already
been laid in the Great Shepherd. The foundation has been laid
by the great shepherd. I mean, when you just think about
it, whenever Jesus came and walked the shores of Galilee and he
started gathering that first church and he began to teach
them all things concerning himself, right? What was he doing? I had this conversation with
a gentleman who's been watching our messages and he's really
kind of talking a lot about the law and Israel having still some
physical Promises to be kept and all like this and we've been
discussing stuff back and forth and I've been talking about this
is that We see Christ here He has performed all things for
God and his people are going to receive all these things in
this This teaching that Jesus did whenever he came the Bible
says on several occasions that he began to expand of course
we know the only Bible that they had was the Old Testament right
at that time and Jesus began to preach and teach from the
Old Testament everything and showing everybody that all things
concern Him. He began to show them the spiritual
fulfillment of all the types and foreshadows in the Old Testament.
On the road to Emmaus, the Bible says that He opened up to those
men, their minds and understandings. Why? We know the scripture says
that Christ was veiled or there was a mystery to Christ in the
Old Testament. While they believed on the Messiah
that was to come, they believed that their salvation was in the
seed that Abraham was promised. They didn't know the full details
like we know them now. But yet they did trust in that
Messiah. Their faith was in Him to be
their Redeemer. Their faith was in Him to be
their salvation. And so they knew who their salvation
was. They knew who their Redeemer
was. Job said, I know who my Redeemer is. I know that my Redeemer
liveth. They understood these things
in a veiled form whenever the New Testament starts. Whenever
the fullness of these things began to be shown, especially
after the death and burial of Christ and resurrection of Christ,
we see that Christ began to open up their minds to understand
Oh, all these things and type of shadow is talking about me.
It's talking about his people, his true spiritual people. And
so he began to teach them that. And I believe in those three
and a half years, he was teaching them all these things. Many times
he would say, you have heard it said, but I say unto you,
you have heard it said. Now, a lot of that had to do
with the Pharisees who were twisting scriptures or making up their
own things. But he said, you have heard it
said in the Old Testament, this, this and this. But I say to you,
he give them the spiritual understanding of it. We know that the Council
of Jerusalem, there were some things that were being brought
up about the prophet Joel. And to some people that was talking
about some future rebuilt temple and all like that. But Peter
and all of them stood up and said, James stood up and said,
he's talking about the Gentiles being included. So there's a
spiritual application that's being brought up. Jesus taught
that, and he prepared that first church, the apostles. He prepared
those, and they began to be the foundation of the new covenant
church, the testament, or shoot, not the testament, the pillar
and the ground of truth. And that has been perpetuated
throughout every generation. That truth, that gospel, That
spiritual understanding of these types and foreshadows of who
Christ was in the Old Testament and the people of God that was
signified in the Old Testament and through a physical nation
was representative of those of the spiritual people of God.
And so whenever we see here, thou shalt be built up and to
the temple thy foundation shalt be laid, we can't look any further
than knowing and understanding that Christ Jesus himself has
built his church and he's building that up, term, I shall build
my church is an ongoing thing. It's heaping up on top of it.
He is continually building that thing. He is building this edifice
that is a spiritual edifice and not a physical edifice. He's
building something that is a spiritual thing, not a physical thing.
He's laying the foundation and he's building upon that foundation.
That foundation was laid. Matter of fact, the Bible says
that the faith that was once delivered to the saints See,
He's not continuing to give new revelation of new things as time
goes on. Now, we are revealed things that
we have not yet learned or known, but the faith that Christ Jesus
had given to the saints, that first church, that foundation
was laid. And it was perpetuated by those
churches. And wherever those churches went
and other churches sprung up from their from their preaching
and teaching. And as the Lord saved and added
to the church, that faith was passed down. And I believe that's
why we have it today. We never did go into Catholicism. We never did come out in some
reformation. We never did need reform that
the church of Jesus Christ, the New Testament churches have always
existed. And that truth has always been
passed down from generation to generation because he promised
that it would. And so we have a clear picture here, brethren,
of our sovereign God, who is our Redeemer, who has promised
that He will make sure that His church is built. We wonder a
lot of times, you know, am I doing enough? Am I getting out and
evangelizing? Am I trying to get people in?
Do I advertise or do we, you know, call on people enough,
you know, to get them to try to come to church and all this
kind of stuff? But the Bible says that He, the Good Shepherd,
is going to build the church. that he has laid the foundation
and that he is building this thing up to a holy temple and
we don't have to worry about that. We can rest in the fact
that he is the great builder. He is the great carpenter. It's
kind of ironic that Jesus was his earthly dad was a carpenter
because Jesus is the one who is building the church. Whether
or not Jesus did carpentry work, I don't know for sure. It might
be to say something in the Bible about him doing it. I don't recall,
even though Joseph was a carpenter, I don't necessarily know if Jesus
did that or not. He probably helped out some,
but I don't know. But anyway, he was around it,
and he'd seen it, knew about it. He might have been, I don't
know. But he is truly the builder of
the church, and we can rest in him for that. That's all I had
to say about some of that stuff. Y'all have anything you'd like
to add to it or correct or rebuke or anything? Anybody got anything
you'd like to add? Father, Lord, we come now and
we just thank you for Christ and we thank you for this day
today that you've given us. Father, we just ask that you
be with us as we leave this place today that you might keep us
and you might direct our steps We thank you for the church,
and we ask, Lord, that you might continue to minister to our hearts
and that you might keep us in the faith. And, Father, we thank
you for Christ Jesus and the salvation that we have in and
through them. I want to lift up this morning
Daniel and my son, Zach, this morning, Lord, that you might
be with them as they're sick. And, Lord, I ask that you might
minister healing to them, if that be your will. Lord, we also
pray that you might Be with us now in this time of fellowship
after the services Lord and that you might be glorified.