Will you turn please to the chapter
from which I read earlier in our gathering this evening, the
fifth chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah. The text that will be the focus
of our attention tonight is verse 20, in which the prophet, being
the mouthpiece of God, pronounces this terrible woe upon the people
of Israel, particularly the men of Jerusalem and of Judah. Woe
unto them that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness
for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and
sweet for bitter. I've entitled our study in this
text tonight, God's Promised Judgment Upon the Perverters
of Morals. Woe unto them that call evil
good, and good evil." The prophet Isaiah was given a very unpleasant
task in the unfolding of the history of redemption. According
to chapter 6, which is the record of his commission, God made it
plain to him at the very beginning of his ministry that he would
not be a success. God told him in that very commission,
verse 9 of chapter 6, go tell this people, hear ye indeed but
understand not, see ye indeed but perceive not, make the heart
of this people fat, make their ears heavy, shut their eyes,
lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and
understand with their heart and turn again and be healed. Then
said I, Lord, how long? And the answer of God is, until
cities be waste without inhabitant, and houses without man, and the
land become utterly waste. Wonderfully encouraging prospects
for a young preacher, aren't they? To be told, when you are
commissioned, that your primary function is to be an instrument
of judicial hardening upon men, until that hardening gives way
to the manifest judgments of Almighty God. The reason why
God gave this strange commission to the prophet Isaiah is because
the condition of the people of Israel, particularly Judah, and
even more particularly Jerusalem, the center of worship had become
so apostate, had turned away so miserably from what God intended
they should be, that the promised judgments given at the very inception
of God's formal entrance into covenant with that nation at
Mount Sinai are now about to be fulfilled. This nation that
had such light and privilege is now ripening for judgment.
Outwardly, religious worship is going on fine. You read the
first chapter of Isaiah, the 58th chapter of Isaiah, and it's
a picture of flourishing religion. But God says the religion had
lost all its soul and therefore all its power over the lives
of its people. And that's always true. The form
of religion can never have its power over people. It is only
when there is the soul of vital godliness that there will be
practical, ethical outworking of one's religious experience
and religious conduct. And so in the midst of all the
feasting and the fasting and the keeping of holy days and
Sabbaths, as we have the description in chapters 1 and 58, God calls
the nation a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah because of the wickedness
that abounds in that nation. And in a very real sense, this
parable with which the fifth chapter begins is a synopsis
of the whole history of Israel, from God's gracious dealings
with that nation to its terrible apostasy in which it brings forth
nothing but wild grapes. The whole history of the nation
is found in capsule form in this parable of the vineyard that
receives such wonderful treatment from God, but which brought forth
such disappointing fruit. And after that parable, as I
intimated in the reading, beginning with verse 8 of the fifth chapter,
there is this pronouncement of woe for specific sins that have
provoked God to anger. And the focus of our study tonight
is verse 20, which comes to us couched in the paragraph beginning
with verse 18 and concluding with verse 23. And as we move
now from the general overview of Isaiah's ministry in a broad
sense to the precise state of the nation of Israel ripening
for judgment, notice now the more immediate context of the
text that will be the basis of our study tonight. Preceding
verse 20 is the statement in verse 18 that these people were
drawing iniquity with cords of falsehood and sin, as it were,
with a cart-rope. Here are people bound to their
sins with lies. They are drawing iniquity with
cords of falsehood. It's the picture of animals dragging
carts behind them. And the picture is that of the
yoke or the rope that binds the animal to his cart in this passage
is called falsehood. If only they would give up their
falsehoods, they would no longer drag sin behind them. But they
are so tied to their sins by lies that they have become like
animals in the service of their sin. Verse 19 underscores this
brazen impiety that dares God to bring judgment upon them.
They say, let him, that is, let God make speed, let him hasten
his work, that we may see it. Let the counsel of the Holy One
of Israel. Is that what you call him, Isaiah, Holy One of Israel?
Well, let his counsel draw near and come, that we may know it.
They were theological empiricists. You see, the empiricist is the
man who says, I believe nothing but what is demonstrated before
me. I'm from Missouri, show me. They say, you, Isaiah, and these
other prophets, you say the Holy One is going to judge us? Well,
we'll believe it when we see it. Notice how brazen it is.
God is saying, I'm going to cut you off with judgment. They say,
we'll believe it when we see it. And this became characteristic
of the nation at its heightened stage of impiety. There is reference
to this in Jeremiah 17.15, Amos 5.18, and it's a characteristic
whenever men become bold in sin, for we read in 2 Peter 3.1, that
men shall say, where is the promise of His coming? We'll believe
it when we see it. We are theological empiricists.
When we see it, then we'll believe it. Not until then. So you have the picture of them
tied to their sins by their lies, this breaking forth into brazen
impiety that defies and dares God to bring His judgment, Then
verse 20 is followed by a statement concerning proud human wisdom
that is the basis of all of their operations. Woe unto them that
are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight. They
say we need no wisdom but that which rises out of our own minds
and our own hearts. and then further is followed
by the statement of this braggadocio concerning their ability to consume
intoxicating spirits. Woe unto them that are mighty
to do what? To fight battles in the name
of the Lord? No, mighty to drink strong drink. They bend their
elbows at the bar and count their beers and say, I've downed fifteen
and can still count my fingers. How about you? Sound familiar? And then the paragraph concludes
with this statement concerning the perversion of justice in
what we would call the courts of law. They let the wicked go
free for a bribe, and then they condemn the righteous. Now in
the midst of that, we have this statement of verse 20, which
in a sense I believe is the mother of all the other sins. This is
the embryonic sin. This is to change the figure,
the womb out of which come forth all the other sins. This statement
of verse 20, Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil,
that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put
bitter for sweet and sweet. And I believe this text has something
to say to us that has peculiar relevance to the age in which
you and I are living, to the precise condition of our own
country, and therefore we need desperately to understand what
it's saying and something of its application to the present
hour. As we think our way through the text, first of all I will
direct your attention to what I'm calling the basic presupposition
of the text. Then secondly, the tragic perversion
described in the text. And thirdly, the sober pronouncement
given in the text. First of all, the basic presupposition
of this text. A presupposition is something
you assume. You operate on the basis that it is so. Now when
God says to the prophet, Woe unto them that call evil good,
and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness,
bitter for sweet, sweet for bitter, God is assuming something. There
is a fundamental assumption, a fundamental presupposition
in this text, and that supposition is this, that there is an irrevocable,
unchangeable standard of good and evil. The only reason God
can pronounce a woe upon the people of Jerusalem and Judah
for calling evil good and good evil is that there is something,
a commodity, that is called good, that has always been good and
ever shall be good, and there is another commodity called evil
that always has been evil and ever shall be evil. If good and
evil are simply whatever you make them, then God cannot indict
the people for calling one the other. If it may indeed pass
from one to the other, who knows, maybe the people are right. If
darkness can in the passing of time become light, if light in
the passing of time can become darkness, if cultural circumstances,
if the rise and fall of nations, if all of these changing factors
in human history can alter what is good, what is light, what
is sweet, so that the good actually does become evil, the light does
become darkness, the sweet becomes bitter, this text has no meaning.
You see, the basic presupposition of this text is that there is
an unchangeable, irrevocable standard of good and of evil. And what is that standard? It
is mentioned in this very context in verse 24. Therefore, as the
tongue of fire devoureth the stubble, and as the dry grass
sinketh down into the flame, so their root shall be as rottenness,
and their blossom shall go up as dust, because they have rejected
the law of Jehovah of hosts, and have despised the word of
the Holy One of Israel." What is that unchangeable, irrevocable
standard of good and evil? It is the law of Jehovah of hosts. It is the word of the Holy One
of Israel. And the truth that is underscored
in this text and is found from Genesis to Revelation is that
God's law is the foundation of the whole moral universe. God's law is the expression of
His character. And God has embodied in his law
the obligations that are incumbent upon the creature to his God. This is why in that summary statement
of his law, the ten words of Moses, the first four or possibly
the first five, deal directly with man's obligation to his
God. Thou shalt have no other gods
before me. You shall worship me according
to my directives. You shall keep my name holy.
You shall keep my day holy. And if we count the fifth commandment
part of that, you shall acknowledge all authority which I constitute
upon the earth." Then the last five, of course, have reference
to man's obligations to his fellow man under the eye of his God. And that law of Jehovah uphost
is unchangeable, it is irrevocable, it is inflexible, it is the infallible
standard of what is good and of what is evil. It defines the
obligations the creature has to God. It defines the obligations
the creature has to his fellow man. It declares that man is
accountable to God in terms of that law. Like it or not, you
cannot escape it. Born as a creature, an image-bearer
of God, you're accountable to God in terms of that law. The
God who says, keep that law in the perfection of its demands
and you will live. Disobey that law and you must
die, for the wages of sin is death. It is that law which declares
not only man's accountability to God, but it will be the basis
of his judgment at the last day. It is the basis of the whole
biblical doctrine of atonement. It is the basis of the whole
biblical doctrine of future retribution, the doctrine of hell. In other
words, God's law is the foundation of the whole moral universe. And without it, there is no moral
universe. And the basic presupposition
of this text is that there is a standard, unchangeable, irrevocable,
inflexible, a standard of good and evil, and that standard is
the law of God. Now, having considered the basic
presupposition, now notice, the tragic perversion, or literally,
a better word would be inversion, described in the text. What have
they done with this inflexible standard of right and wrong,
of light and darkness, of bitter and sweet? Notice verse 20. Woe
unto them that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness
for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and
sweet for bitter. that which violates the clear
commandment of God, God calls evil. Now what have they done?
The text does not say that they have simply neutralized it. That
would be bad enough. You see, for a man to be an agnostic
and say, well, I just don't know if there's anything good or evil,
that's bad enough. But when men go so far as to
take the thing God has called evil and say it is not evil,
and go beyond even making a neutral pronouncement and say, I'm not
sure whether it's good or evil, but they take the very thing
upon which God has pronounced the name and judgment, evil,
and they call it good. When vice becomes virtue, what
a frightening state of inversion of moral standards. It's not
mere perversion, it is inversion. They take that which God has
constituted and call darkness. Darkness is always a picture
when it's used with reference to moral issues. It's a picture
of a turning aside from the realm of God's holiness. God is light,
that is. God is spotless moral purity,
and in Him is no darkness, no sin, no stain of moral evil.
They take that which is the stain, that which is moral evil, and
they not only neutralize it, but they say it is actually moral
virtue. It is light. God calls departure
from His law bitterness. They say, no, it is not bitterness,
it is actual sweetness. This text describes a tragic
inversion of God's inflexible moral standard. And I would like
to suggest, and this is the heart of the burden of the message
tonight, that this is the tragedy with which you and I are living,
in our day. As a nation, in the realms of
politics, ethics and morals, whether we're talking about them
in the home, in the school, in the classroom, in the professor's
chair at the college, into the very highest courts of government
a la Watergate, international politics, we are
living, to behold, Verse 20 of Isaiah 5, before our own eyes. A situation in which what God
calls evil is being preached as good. and as virtuous. Now let me demonstrate it. Let's
take that inflexible standard of right and wrong, darkness
and light, bitter and sweet, the holy law of God, and let's
just pick out several of the commandments. This is not an
exhaustive study, only suggested so that it will, I trust, produce
some independent meditation on your part. The first commandment
is, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. This commandment
says it is good that man the creature should recognize in
the one true and living God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Creator and Sustainer of the universe, that the creature should
recognize in that God the source of his life, the source of all
that is good and glorious, and give to that God the unrivaled
allegiance of his heart. Thou shalt have no other gods
Before me, I am the one true and living God, the God who has
revealed himself in creation and in the revelation of the
scriptures, the God who has absolute claim over all of my creatures,
the fountain of life and good. Worship me alone, and this is
good, and this is right. We are told in our day, from
educational circles, and sad to say, as in the day in which
Isaiah lived, from religious circles as well, or within religious
circles, no, no, this is not right. This is too narrow. It
is now called an evil thing to insist that there is but one
true and living God, and that that God is the Creator of heaven
and earth. It's not intellectually sophisticated
to talk about a God who brought the world into being out of nothing
by the word of His power. That's an evil thing. That's
constricting upon the sciences. That's constricting of true intellectual
investigation. and to talk religiously of there
being but one God, the true and the living God, the God revealed
in Jesus Christ, and to say that if we do not know that God, whatever
we claim to know in worship is but an idol, that's too narrow,
that's an evil thing. And so the pressure comes from
every quarter, telling us that the good described in the first
commandment is in reality an evil. Take the second commandment,
in which God says, in essence, when he says, don't make any
images, don't bow down or worship to me, saying, I will dictate
the terms of how I am to be worshipped. I know the human heart. I know
what I deserve from the human heart and what I require. Therefore,
worship me only as I have revealed in my word. And so when people
begin to take seriously that principle, what is called in
theological language the regulative principle. And we will worship
God only in the light of what he has positively commanded,
what is positively warranted by the teaching of the Word of
God. I know this is called narrowness. This is called exclusiveness.
This is called being an antiquarian. This is called being a traditionalist. We've got to be with it. We've
got to be sensitive to the current religious fads and the current
fads in the visible church. And we've got to be sensitive
and all of the rest. And it's called an evil thing
when there is a group of people who are determined to worship
God only as He's revealed in His Word He desires to be worshipped. You take the fourth commandment.
God says it is good for the creature. that one day in seven be set
apart for holy exercises, in which man's secular work is laid
aside apart from works of mercy and necessity. And we read in
the New Testament that the Sabbath was made for man and not man
for the Sabbath. And God says it is good, good
for man, good for God's glory, that one day in seven should
be held in a peculiarly sacred way. We're being told, that's
an evil thing, these old blue laws, let's get rid of them.
It's a constricting thing, it's a binding thing. Sad to say,
as in Isaiah's day, this cry is going out from Jerusalem and
from Judah. It's going out from the very
visible church of God, calling good evil and evil good. What about the fifth commandment?
God says it is good that all those who are placed in a position
of duly constituted authority be respected for the position
they occupy. Honor thy father and thy mother. I have placed them over you.
I have instituted the family and the structures of authority,
and it is good that you should obey those regulations. It is right. It is sweet. It is light. But in our day,
this good is being called evil. This sweetness is being called
bitter. This light is being described
as darkness. Many of you kids, who in your
neighborhood make it evident to your fellow, to the kids in
your neighborhood, your buddies, your girlfriends, that you take
seriously the wishes, the feelings, the sensitivities, the standards,
the regulations of your mom and dad, you're looked upon as some
kind of a kook. We move on to the second table
of the law. Thou shalt do no murder. The
sanctity of life. God has secured the sanctity
of life in many ways in his word, but his law says thou shalt do
no murder. Thou shalt not take human life except in those instances
where my word says human life ought to be taken. And is it
not interesting that in this day of woolly-headed so-called
liberal thinking, the same people who have pushed and pushed and
lobbied and promoted for the abolition of the death penalty,
have produced the mass murder of abortion laws, both of which
cheapen life. The abolition of the death penalty
cheapens life, it does not sanctify life. And I'll prove that from
the scriptures. God says in Genesis chapter 9,
a key text in this whole discussion, in Genesis chapter 9, God says,
Verse 6, Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood
be shed, for in the image of God made he man. You see what
God is saying? A man who murders another man
shall forfeit his life. Why? For he is made in the image
of God. You go out and kill a beast,
you don't need to give your life for a beast. Why? He's not made
in the image of God. He does not bear God's moral
image. The beast has no dignity compared
with that of man. But man's dignity is so lofty.
that lest people cheapen the dignity of human life, God says,
bring home the seriousness of touching human life. And if any
man takes upon himself to destroy another man's life, it will be
with the price of giving his own life. Then and only then
will the dignity of human life be maintained. In the abolition of the death
penalty for murder and related crimes, what's happened? Someone
gets an itch to have a few bucks to go out and get a quick fix?
A few packs of heroin? Sticks his pistol in his pocket? Holds up somebody, shoots him
dead? No fear, why? Human life is cheap. I can take
his life and all I'll get is a lifetime at the expense of
the taxpayers in semi-confinement. It's cheapened, the value of
human life. Precisely the same thing has
happened with reference to abortion. If there were not a text in scripture
upon which to establish the fact that at conception what is conceived
as a human being, and there are texts, I'm convinced, but if
there were not, it is inscribed upon the conscience of man in
terms of the law of God that abortion is murder. This is why
the godless psychiatrists are admitting now that they can't
handle the many women who are coming with tortured emotional
lives, but because they can't rid themselves of the guilt that
has followed from the abortion. It's not my purpose to go into
the whole subject. Perhaps that warrants a message in itself,
because the issue is such a burning one. But you see what's happened? We're being told it's a virtue.
Why bring an unwanted child into the world? Better to kill it
in the womb than kill it with a hostile environment. That sounds
very virtuous, doesn't it? They call evil good. And they call good evil. They put darkness for light and
light for darkness. We move to the seventh commandment.
Thou shalt not commit adultery. God is saying it is good to maintain
the sanctity of the sexual union by an arrangement in which one
man cohabits with one woman within the tender, self-giving relationship
of marriage. And any violation of that is
not good. It is evil. Thou shalt not commit
adultery. Whether the violation be in the
desire of the heart, according to Matthew 5, or the actual union
of the bed, thou shalt commit no adultery. We're being told
that that good sanctity of sex is an evil thing. Group sex is
better. Let four or five couples get
together for a weekend and bed around. That's good. That loosens
up the hang-ups, takes away the tensions. Promiscuous sex for
young people, much better. They're not ready to take on
the responsibilities of marriage and a home and a family. And
so it's good that they get rid of their sexual tensions by betting
around a bit. And furthermore, we're being
told that homosexuality is not sin, perversion, and wickedness. Although God himself burned two
whole cities primarily because of this sin. This is not evil. If that's your
inclination, that's good. Society just has to catch up
with this good, and they're doing their best to make us all catch
up to where we don't even use the term in a derisive way anymore. We don't use it in a way that
would in any way infer that there's anything abnormal, that there's
anything bitter, anything dark, anything evil. And now the height
of this impiety is being expressed in the idea that, well, really
the best thing is to be bisexual. So when it's convenient to Consort
with those of the opposite sex, fine, but if circumstances are
such that someone of your own sex will do, get rid of your
hang-ups. It's terrible to be so hung up that all you can do
is find fulfillment with a man if you're a woman, and with a
woman if you're a man, you've got hang-ups! Get over your hang-ups! Get liberated! And this is good. I heard one man actually say
that the worst curse upon our society is our concept of the
sanctity. of a one-on-one relationship
between a man and woman and our whole concept of the home. If
we can get rid of that, he says, we'll get rid of all our hang-ups.
Good is called evil. Evil is called good. Then we
go on to the ninth commandment about not bearing false witness,
and what can we say? God says it is good to be honest.
Even in the light of the Scriptures, such as Psalm 15 and Psalm 24,
even when honesty brings me to personal hurt, the righteous
sweareth to his own hurt and keepeth it. We're being told
lies are necessary for international diplomacy. Lies are necessary
for domestic diplomacy. We're being told that lies are
absolutely essential to the functioning of human government. Good is
being called evil. and evil is being called good.
Do I need to give any further illustrations to demonstrate
that this text speaks with a relevance that is shockingly pointed? Here
is a description of the tragic moral perversion, not only in
the day of Isaiah, but in our own day. Now, what is the root
of all of this? Well, look at the passage. The
root of all of this is to be found in the phrase that we read
earlier in verse 24, because they have rejected the law of
the Lord of hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. Now the word despised most frequently
in the Old Testament does not mean what we usually mean when
we say it. We use despise as a word of positive
and deep and a heightened sense of antipathy. I despise spinach,
the kid might say. What you mean is, not that I
regard it lightly, I just can't stand the stuff. Get it away
from me. But more often than not, the word despised in scripture,
particularly in the Old Testament, means to regard with indifference.
And here's the picture. They've rejected the law of the
Lord of hosts and regarded with indifference the word of the
Holy One of Israel before any man, any group of men, any nation. can enter the condition described
in verse 20 in which good is called evil, evil is called good,
darkness, light, light, darkness, bitter, sweet, sweet, bitter,
there must be this two-fold experience described in verse 24. There
must be this rejection of the law of Jehovah and this regarding
with indifference the word of the living God, the Holy One
of Israel. And it doesn't take a historian
to see how this was done over the past 100 years in our own
life. You see, no one or very few people
thought when God was ruled out of his world as creator that
he would be ruled out of his world as moral governor. The
smart Alexand said, well, to be with it, we've got to believe
in the theories propounded and expounded and supported by Darwin. Most of the people, for many
good religious men, were infatuated with Darwin. They had no intention
of ruling God out of his moral universe. They just wanted to
push him a little bit further away from the physical universe.
When men begin to despise, to treat lightly the word of the
Lord in any area, it's only a matter of time before verse 20 will
be upon us. For when confidence is undermined
with reference to the word of God touching the origin of things,
it isn't long before confidence is undermined with reference
to the meaning of things and the regulations for the things
that God is doing. And if God is not recognized
as creator, he'll not be acknowledged as lawgiver and judge. That's
why when the Apostle Paul is speaking to pagans who do not
know God as lawgiver and judge and creator, he starts with creation
in Acts 17, and he ends up with judgment. Because until it grips
me that this is God's world, made by Him, for His ends, I'm
His creature, accountable to Him, subject to Him, now there
is a situation in which moral order is possible. But if this
world just happened, and I just happened, who can tell me why
I'm here and what the rules are, why I'm here, and what will happen
when I leave? Oh, you can guess, and you can
surmise, but you can't tell me with any authority. But you tell
me that I'm here because Almighty God made me. And the God who
made me is the God who will judge me. And now there's a basis for
moral perspectives and for moral judgments. So there the root
of this is seen in this rejection of the law of the Lord and of
his word. And what came in its place? Verse
20, verse 21. Woe unto them that are wise in
their own eyes and prudent in their own sight. Darkened human
wisdom becomes the substitute for divine pronouncement. And what a tragedy when that
happens. having rejected the law of God, having despised the
word of the Holy One of Israel, when they ask such questions,
what is right? What is wrong? They have nothing
but what is described in verse 20, their own wisdom. They are
prudent in their own eyes. And what does God say? After
that, in the wisdom of this world, the world by wisdom knew not
God. Man's wisdom is folly when unenlightened
by the word of truth. And so the psychiatrist, and
the political scientist, and the sociologist, and the experts,
and the educational leaders, they try to tell us what's good,
what's right. And isn't it amazing? Yesterday's
virtue is today's vice, and it may be tomorrow's virtue again.
Why? Human wisdom has no fixed pole
star of reference. So in the place of God's eternal,
unchangeable word, forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.
There is the changing, vacillating opinion of man. What results
come from this? Well, the same results that came
in Isaiah's day. Blatant, brazen impiety. Verse 19. Let him make speed! Let him hasten his work! Let's
see it! We're from Missouri, show us! Isn't that our age? There was a time when if a man
felt that way, he whispered it silently. Now he speaks it blatantly,
publicly. Why? Because the conscience has
become dulled and seared, and the heart has become hardened
as it was in Isaiah's day. And there is this indifference
to the wrath of God. And then when there is indifference
to the doctrine of divine wrath, based upon the inflexibility
of the standard of good and evil, darkness and light, there is
always indifference to God's salvation. Get hold of this principle. The moment God's law ceases to
be the most powerful factor in influencing the moral sensitivity
of any individual or nation, there will be indifference to
divine wrath. And when indifference to divine
wrath comes, it always brings in its train indifference to
God's salvation. Because the salvation of the
scriptures is God's answer to the problem of divine wrath against
the sinner. Proof, the book of Romans. When
Paul would expound the gospel, where does he start in Romans
1.18? The wrath of God is revealed from heaven. And all the way
through chapter 1, all the way through chapter 2, all the way
through chapter 3 to verse 20, what is he doing? He's bringing
the whole world into a conscious awareness of its exposure and
liability to divine wrath that he might open up the glorious
salvation that is God's answer to that dilemma of divine wrath
against human sin and sinners. And so in Isaiah's day, there
is indifference to the wrath of God, there is an actual, irreverent,
impious flirting with that wrath. And it's not surprising that
there is indifference to God's salvation, a despising of the
Holy One of Israel, the Savior of His people. Do I need to spend much time
in application to say that that's our day? We live in a day that
has little if any fear of divine wrath. I've lived long enough
to see the change in my own generation. I can remember the time when
even though it was said in a joking manner, if a man was talking
about a lecherous life, a life lived in blatant disobedience
to the law of God, He'd say something about, well, I may go to hell
at the end, but I'm having fun on the way. The consciousness
that that kind of life brought divine wrath was there, but it's
well nigh gone now. We came out of the slime, we're
going back to the slime, and there's probably nothing more
than a little slimy existence in between the slime out of which
I came and the slime to which I'm going. Some of you kids in college,
you try to understand your peers, you take these things seriously,
you begin to understand why they operate the way they operate.
You try to find out what makes your neighbors tick, you begin
to think in these terms and you begin to understand what makes
them tick. Why is there such an indifference to God's salvation?
Because there is no troubling about divine wrath. Why no troubling
about divine wrath? Because the inflexible standard
that says this is evil has been perverted and inverted. And evil
is called good, and good is called evil. And then, of course, that
manifests itself in a total breakdown of morality, public and private.
And that's always the pattern. For, you see, nothing but vital
religion in the heart can maintain true morality in the life. Jesus
said you've got to make the tree good, and then it's fruit-cut.
Or the tree corrupt and the fruit corrupt. You see, there is no
true morality without vital piety. And there's no vital piety without
these biblical concepts of inflexible law putting me under judgment
and glorious gospel bringing me out of judgment into the realm
of grace and acceptance. And that's what becomes the motivation
for true morality. I'm a bond slave of Jesus Christ. I must honor him in the deepest
recesses of my thought life to the most uttermost extremities
of my convicts. so that in all of my ways Jesus
Christ shall be honored and shall be praised. And oh, when you
read some aspects or some segments of history, when there was an
abundant outpouring of special grace applying the law of God
with power to constrain loving evangelical obedience in many,
and when there was a mighty operation of common grace, using the law
of God to restrain evil in great segments of society, you cry
out, O God, do it again. Lord, pour out of your Holy Spirit. the spirit of converting grace,
the spirit of regenerating power that will write your law upon
the hearts of men so that they will see that good is good and
evil is evil and light is light, darkness is darkness, sweet is
sweet, bitter is bitter, but not only see it, wonders have
a heart that loves the good and wants to do the good out of love
to the Savior who has freely redeemed them by His grace. When
you have that, Coupled then with the leavening influence of the
word of God preached and powerfully applied, then in common grace,
that sense of dread that comes to people when they know that
if I do what is evil, no amount of calling it good will change
it and the wages of sin is death. Though common grace never saved
a man, thank God it created an atmosphere that was a lot less
hellish now. and a lot more amenable to the
salvation of many others. It's a lot more difficult from
the human perspective to preach the gospel in the situation where
the restraining, sensitizing influence of the law of God is
gone. And our poor generation needs to go back to pre-kindergarten
and to be told, God made the world. God made you! God has given a law. That law
binds you. Break that law and you will die. That's where our generation needs
to go with all of the vaunted advancements of the 20th century
and its computers and its rockets and all the rest. It needs to
go back to preschool to learn these elementary issues. New
kids in high school? That's why your teachers don't
know which end is up. And if you're honest, you'll
acknowledge that when they start talking about human behavior,
they don't know which end is up. Why? Because they have so
long called evil good that they've brought themselves to believe
that evil is good and good is evil. Here is the description
of the tragic perversion or inversion of moral standards. Having considered
the fundamental presupposition, the tragic perversion, now in
the third place, Notice the sober pronouncement in the text. The text begins with the word
woe. What does the word woe mean?
It's a pronouncement of great grief, of sorrow, of pain and
of misery. When someone says, woe is me,
what are they saying? They're saying I'm afflicted
with grief, with sorrow, with pain, with misery. And when God
pronounces woe, what he's saying is, you will have cause to cry,
woe is me. Now, what is the basis of this
pronouncement? The fact that saying good is
evil and evil is good does not make it so. Look at verse 16
in the chapter. after mentioning the judgment
upon the people that would lead them into captivity, but the
Lord of hosts is exalted in justice and God the Holy One is sanctified
in righteousness. What's he saying? He's saying
when God brings His judgment, it will be manifest that God
did not change good into evil, light into darkness. He said
to you, O nation of Israel, if you follow that which is evil,
you'll go into captivity. By the tricks of your own perverted
desires and by listening to your false prophets, you've convinced
yourself that it's not so, that evil is good and good is evil,
but When the grave opens itself up and multitudes of your own
people go to a premature grave, and when the lowly and the high
alike are humbled in judgment and captivity, then the Lord
of hosts will be exalted in justice. You'll see that all of your barking
about good being evil and evil being good has not changed the
inflexible standard of Almighty God. That's what God is saying. The basis of this sober pronouncement
is that God's character is unchangeable. God's law is unchangeable. God's
knowledge is perfect. And God's patience will reach
its end. Look at verse 24. the end of
these descriptions of the sins of the people. Therefore, in
the light of this, as the tongue of fire devoureth the stubble
and as the dry grass sinketh down in the flame, so their roots
shall be as rottenness and their blossoms shall go up as dust,
because they have rejected the law of host. Then he goes on
to describe to the end of the chapter the certain judgment
that will come when God's patience reaches its end. I tell you,
this is a sobering concept. You wonder why God, as it were,
folds his hands in patient silence when we hear men blatantly in
the language of verse 19 saying, if there is this God you talk
about, why doesn't he vindicate himself? And they get louder
and bolder every time they say, good is evil and evil is good.
And there are no thunderbolts, there's no breaking of the sky,
there's no coming down of fiery judgment, no balls of brimstone
as in the days of Solomon and Gomorrah. It's as though the
sound of their own voice seems to bounce off a silent heaven
and makes them more bold to say it again, evil is good, good
is evil. And God doesn't say anything.
So they say it louder, evil is good, good is evil. God says, I'll bear patiently,
but the hour is coming when he surely, as the tongue of fire
devours stubble, and as dry grass is consumed before a flame, my
wrath will go forth and consume all who've believed a lie. There's
this graphic picture of this mentality in the 50th Psalm And this is the beginning of
the end of our study tonight. What is the message of all of
this to us? Oh, listen to me. Impenitent, unconverted sinner
sitting in this building. God's pronouncements have not
changed. The wages of sin is death. Evil brings death. And yet you're like the person
described in Psalm 50. Beginning with verse 16, but
unto the wicked God says, What have you to do to declare my
statutes? And you've taken my covenant
in your mouth, seeing you hate instruction. You cast my words
behind you. When you saw a thief, you consented
with him. You've been a partaker with adulterers.
You give your mouth to evil. Your tongue frames deceit. You
sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother's
son. These things you've done. And I kept silence. You got bold. You sinned here. You sinned there.
You sinned in the other place. And one sin gave birth to another.
And there was no intervention of divine judgment until, God
says, you fooled yourself into thinking that I was altogether
such a one as yourself. You let bygones be bygones. You
think I'm going to let bygones be bygones. Time heals. And you think that time has caused
the aggravation to my holiness to be healed. You think that
the breaches of my law and the provocation of my wrath now slumbers
with the passing of time. Ah, but God says, listen, listen,
listen. But I will reprove thee and set
them in order before thine eyes. And now this language is some
of the strongest language in all of the Bible. Now consider
this. Ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces and there
be none to deliver. What strong language. God says,
I'll take hold upon you like a mighty beast of prey that has
been slumbering. And you've been in the vicinity
of that beast and you've gotten so at ease and so carnally confident
because the beast seemed to slumber when you prodded it and pricked
it and teased it. And God says, suddenly the beast
shall leap upon you and tear you to pieces. That's the picture
of this verse. My friend, I don't want God to
be an angry beast to me. When omnipotence, when omnipotence
is joined to holy vengeance, no wonder men will cry for rocks
and hills to fall upon them. My friend, This text ought to
fill you with holy dread if you're determined to go on in your sin.
You can call your good evil and your evil good. You can call
light darkness and darkness light, but Almighty God has not changed.
And it ought to fill you with dread tonight that that God will
yet make you a monument that evil is evil. When he says to
you, Depart from me, ye that work iniquity. But, oh, listen.
And this is what makes the gospel goodness. If you're prepared
this night to own your sin and say, Oh God, what you call good
is good and I have not done the good and what you call evil is
evil. I have not loved you. My heart's been a sink of idolatry. I've loved everything but you.
I've not honored your name nor your day. I've defiled your holy
law, trampled underfoot your precepts. I stand exposed and
guilty. Thank God. Thank God, good is
always good and evil is always evil in God's sight. That's what
makes the cross an inflexible standard of hope. Because upon
that cross, God was dealing with his son on the basis of the inflexible
standard of his law. His law said, this do and thou
shalt live, this fail to do and thou shalt die. The curse of
the law was upon all of the people of Christ. And the scripture
says he endured that curse for us. It was the inflexibility
of the law that demanded Calvary. If ever God could call evil good
for a moment, would that moment not be when His own Son was bearing
evil? If He could have called it good
for a moment, there would have been no shrouding of the heavens
in darkness. There would have been no agonizing
cry, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? The whole mystery
of Calvary is explainable only in terms of the principle of
our text. Evil is always evil and will
forever be evil. That's why the only way to put
it away was by the bloodletting of God's own dear Son. And my
dear sinner friend, that's hope for you. Because if you'll run
into Christ and plead to be covered in the perfection of His sacrifice
and His righteousness, God, being a cobb whose law is inflexible,
cannot inflict the same punishment for the same crime twice. He
bruised his son. In Christ you will never be bruised. But then this text has a very
practical word for us who are the people of God. Let me give
you just three little suggestions by way of application, and then
we're done. Christian, beware, lest you find
yourself subtly conforming to the spirit of this age. Romans
12, 2 says, Be not conformed to this world. You live in a
day in which Isaiah 5, 20 is being fulfilled on every hand.
Evil is being called good, and good is being called evil, and
darkness is called light and light darkness. And there's enough
wickedness left in you that you will want to believe what the
world is saying. You young people, there's something
in your flesh that would like to believe that the current moral
standards are indeed good and light and sweet. Be not conformed
to this age. God says, flee fornication. Whoso looketh to lust hath committed
adultery. God says fornicators and homosexuals
shall not enter the kingdom of God. You deal ruthlessly and
brutally with the inordinate passions of your flesh. Bring
them to the cross and ask God by His Spirit to put them to
death through the virtue of your union with Jesus Christ. You men, women in your places
of business, Good is still good and evil is still evil. It's
evil to lie. Business lies are lies. And if you can't maintain that
job and be honest, then lose your job for Christ's sake. And
stealing is still stealing, whether it's a bag of paper clips or
a box of rubber bands, or whether it's a piece of metal, from the
stockroom, whether it's ten minutes on your time card, stealing is
still stealing. Be not conformed to this world.
The mark of a generation that abandons the law of God and the
word of the Holy One of Israel is that they make good evil and
evil good. Be not conformed to this age. Let your life be a
monument of the inflexibility of God's standard of righteousness.
Secondly, beware lest you be ashamed of the moral absolutes
of God's word. Jesus said in Mark 8.38, whosoever
shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and
sinful generation of him shall the son of man be ashamed when
he comes in his father's glory. It's dangerous living in an age
characterized by Isaiah 5.20. Why, everybody's calling evil
good. And for me, to stand with Jesus
Christ concerning the inflexibility, the irrevocable nature of the
holy law of God, is to expose myself to ridicule, to social
pressure. I'm conscious of that. I can
almost see the look of incredulity on the faces of people at times.
I'm talking with them about this or that, and they say, well,
he sounds like the half well-bred, half intelligent human being
anyway. Maybe they don't give me quite that much in the fraction. Maybe sometimes a little more.
But then you can almost see the look of incredulity to find out
here someone that actually believes the ten words of Moses are binding
upon men now in the middle of the 1970s. You must be willing
to bear the shame of being a moral absolutist. It's a shame when
you have to bear it even in the church. When you believe the
Word of Christ is found not only in the Gospels, but in the Old
Testament regulations that are yet applicable, for it says the
Spirit of Christ was in them, testifying. And when we believe
the instructions in the Epistles are the Word of Christ, as Paul
says in 1 Corinthians 14.37, if any man is spiritual, let
him acknowledge the things that I say unto you are the commandments
of the Lord. If you take seriously, right
now, in the Presbyterian Church, United Presbyterian Church, the
big issue at the next General Assembly is the whole matter
of whether or not Jesus Christ will be obeyed with reference
to the place of women in ecclesiastical office. And there are people
determined to make a part of the ministerial commitments of
every candidate for the ministry a binding of his conscience to
recognize women as elders. And there are men who have said,
if that goes through, I've had it. You see the issue? Are we ashamed
of his word which says, I suffer not a woman to teach in a Christian
reformed church? This is one of the big issues
being debated in the Banner the past couple of months. Two or
three articles by a man trying to justify equality of ecclesiastical
authority between men and women. A travesty on exegesis. A butchering
of the word of God. Pure sophistry. And yet those
who dare to say they believe that it is good for the woman,
it's in protection of the God, by the God who made her, who
knows her strengths and her weaknesses, that God has forbidden ecclesiastical
office to a woman. To say that, you see, is to expose
yourself. to all the ridicule, you're nothing
but an ecclesiastical chauvinist, you're nothing but a traditionalist,
you can't separate between biblical norms and cultural changes and
all the rest, I'm fully aware. But I come back to the words
of our Lord, whosoever shall be ashamed of me and my words,
in this sinful and adulterous generation of him shall the son
of man be ashamed when he comes with his father. And so my exhortation
to you as God's people is, beware lest you conform to this mentality,
beware lest you be ashamed of these absolutes. And my final
exhortation is, will you not cry mightily to God for an outpouring
of the Spirit that will bring back to the consciousness of
the Church and to the world the inflexible standards of the holy
law of God? Under the guise of liberating
men, our poor generation has been brought into the most miserable
and vicious form of bondage. And we see the words of 2 Peter
fulfilled, promising themselves liberty while they themselves
are the slaves of corruption. Do you see many smiling people
in our day who just seem to be enjoying life? This is the thing
that breaks my heart. And I speak not as an insensitive
old fogey. I speak to you young people.
This is what breaks my heart. When I drive down Bloomfield
Avenue and see a bunch of shaggy, dirty, sloppy, smileless creatures
milling around wondering what it's all about. Their whole external
appearance is a witness to the fact that they cannot make heads
or tails or they can make neither head nor tails out of what it's
all about. Joyless, smile-less, no enthusiasm
for anything. Why? They've been told that evil
is good and they've found that you cannot in any real sense
break God's law, you break yourself over that law. That's what's happened in society
at large. What's the root of the labor problem? It's uncrucified
covetousness on the part of labor and of management. Selfishness. That's it. That's the heart of
it. When you go through every single
segment of our national life, you see it's the fruit of calling
evil good and good evil. And there is absolutely no hope
but the outpouring of the Spirit of God that will first of all
grant a multitude being swept into the kingdom, having the
law written upon the heart, and having not only the eye to see
what is good, but the desire to do what is good. And then
there'll be the wonderful overflow and restraining influence as
our pulpits are filled again, not with mealy-mouthed professional
ecclesiastics who can pronounce the rituals and who can mouth
the phrases, but who thunder the law of Almighty God, and
then proclaim with joy and power the everlasting gospel of our
Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Oh, that we may be found pleading
with God for such an outpouring of His grace. Well, this text
has been brewing around for a while and was stuck in what I call
my boneyard for months. And when this opportunity came,
I pulled it out of the boneyard, feeling perhaps God would help
to put some flesh on the bones. And I hope in some degree your
soul has been fed by the flesh that is found in that truth of
Isaiah 520. Woe unto them that call evil
good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light
for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Let us pray.