Our shelter from the stormy blast
and our eternal home. Under the shadow of thy throne,
still may we dwell secure. Sufficient is thine arm alone,
and our defense is sure. ? Before the hills in order stood
? ? Or earth received her frame ? ? From everlasting thou art
God ? ? To endless years the Savior reigns ? Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
bears all its sons away. They fly forgotten as a dream
dies at the opening day. O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come. Be thou our guide while life
shall last and our eternal home. Please be seated. If you'd like to turn with me
there to Psalm 45, we'll read the rest of that psalm, or several
verses from it, for our call to worship tonight. While you
do that, I want to just welcome our brother Brian. He's watching
now from his hospital room. And I was telling Noah, or Logan
just before the services, if you need a blessing. Go visit Brian. Very, very sick. He's bleeding
somewhere. They don't know where it is.
He has an infection that they're trying to treat. Haven't heard
a single word of complaint from him. Not a word. What he keeps
telling me is, the Lord's been so good to me. We love you, brother. Verse 2. Thou art fairer than
the children of men. Grace is poured into thy lips.
Therefore God hath blessed thee forever. Speaking of Christ,
gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O Most Mighty. with thy glory
and thy majesty." This is our prayer that the Lord would gird
the sword of his word upon his side and that he would do a work
of grace, dividing us under the soul and the spirit and exposing
the intents of our hearts. He'll do it with his word, with
his word. That's the means that he uses.
I talked to somebody last night and they were talking about their
assurance of salvation based upon their feelings. Well, I
just feel it. I just feel it. I talk to them
about the scriptures. Well, I don't know about that,
but I just know. I'm feeling it. Our hope is founded in the
Word of God. And in thy majesty ride prosperously,
because of truth and meekness and righteousness, and thy right
hand shall teach thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp
in the heart of the king's enemies, whereby the people fall unto
thee. We who were at enmity with God, pierce our hearts with the
arrows of thy grace and cause us Cause us, Lord, to have our
swords beat into plowshares. Thy throne, O God, is forever
and ever. The scepter of thy kingdom is
a right scepter. Thou lovest righteousness and
hateth wickedness. Therefore, God, thy God, hath
anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. That's
what Christ means. That's what Messiah means, the
Anointed One. The Lord Jesus Christ came into
this world with the full power of the Spirit of God to accomplish
the purpose for which His Father sent Him. And He succeeded in
doing just that, saving every one of His people. All thy garments smell with myrrh
and aloe and casea out of the ivory palaces whereby they have
made thee glad. King's daughters were among thy
honorable women. Upon thy right hand did stand
the queen in gold of Ophir. Hearken, O daughter, and consider,
and incline thine ear. Forget also thine own people
and thy father's house." Oh, that the Lord would give us the
grace to forget everything right now in this hour of worship.
and to put on our blinders, put those things of the world out
of the way, give our attention to Christ. So shall the king
greatly desire thy beauty, for he is thy Lord, and worship thou
him. We are made comely, the scripture
says, with his comeliness. and he desires the fellowship
of his bride. Let's pray together. Our merciful
Heavenly Father, we're reminded of what our Lord
said when he said, the Father seeketh them who worship him
in spirit and truth. And we're caused to Ask the father
to pour out your spirit upon us, enable us to enter into spiritual
worship, inditing from our hearts a good thing, looking to the
Lord Jesus Christ, who is the author and the finisher of our
faith. We thank you for our brother
Brian, for Pam and Charlie, Lord, we thank you for the grace that
you've given them, and we pray that you would continue to supply
them with their every need. Thank you for the way in which
you net the hearts of your Children together through the trials and
troubles that you send. We pray, Lord, that you would
grow us in your grace and knit our hearts cause us, Lord, to
love you and to love one another. But we ask it in Christ's name.
Amen. 485. 485. 485. Let's all stand together. We praise thee, O God, for the
Son of thy love, for Jesus who died and is now gone above. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Hallelujah, amen. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Revive us again. We praise thee, O God, for thy
Spirit of light, who has shown us our Savior and scattered our
night. Hallelujah, thine the glory! Hallelujah, amen! Hallelujah, thine the glory! Revive us again! All glory and praise to the Lamb
that was slain, who has borne all our sins and has cleansed
every stain. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Hallelujah, amen. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Revive us again. Revive us again. Fill each heart with thy love. May each soul be rekindled with
fire from above. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Hallelujah, amen. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Revive us again. Please be seated. Isaiah chapter 3. I read a comment today on the book
of Isaiah from a scholar. who said that virtually no one
believes anymore that Isaiah wrote all of Isaiah, for there
are far too many details relating to events that took place during
the Babylonian captivity for Isaiah to have written them 200
years before. Well, I stand before you as a
virtually nobody, a virtual nobody, because I'm one of those that
does believe. The Lord gave this prophet understanding as to what
events were going to take place in the history of Israel as God
corrected them and brought them back to himself. Isaiah is prophesying,
ministering the gospel during a time of great prosperity in
Israel. It was a lot of wealth, a lot
of comfort, a lot of ease in Zion. And the Lord's using the
prophet to warn the people of Israel that their hope is no
longer in the Lord, their hope is in their material wealth and
that he's going to take that away from them. Now, that's as
far as I want to go, as far as understanding the historical
setting of this scripture, because it's of no value to our souls
to know these historical events. It's of no comfort to a sinner
to think about those things. And so I want us to see the spiritual
application. God's Word is exceedingly broad. It is sharper than any two-edged
sword. It is powerful and able to divide
asunder the soul from the spirit and expose the intents of our
hearts. And that's my hope, that the
Lord would minister grace to our hearts as sinners and give
us hope in Christ. We're going to be looking at
Isaiah chapter 3, not in the context of the historical events,
but in the context of repentance. Repentance. I read a definition from someone
this week who said repentance is to turn from sin and not to
return to it. And as I read that, I thought,
well, if that's repentance, I've never repented. I've never repented. A person that would define repentance
like that has never understood what being a sinner is. They've
come to see what all men see in terms of bad behavior as being
wrong, and perhaps they've stopped doing some things that they used
to do, and they think because of that that they have repented. But once the Lord makes you to
be a sinner, you understand that your sin goes much, much deeper
than your behavior. You commit acts of sin because
you are a sinner. And that this matter of sin is
a hard problem and that's something I've never stopped doing. I've
never stopped doing. I can't present before God what
I want. A holy thought. A perfect motive. A word that is pure and sinless
and righteous before God. I can't do it. It's not possible. Everything that comes from me,
because it comes from me, is infected with sin. And so if sin is to turn, I mean
if repentance is to turn from sin and not to return to it,
I'm never repenting. What is repentance? Well, like
faith, it's a work of grace. And what God requires, God must
provide. And so just like believing is
the result of faith, turning, having a changed mind, that's
what repentance is, is a work of God's grace in the heart.
We repent when we're brought to understand the nature of forgiveness. What it is that God requires
for the remission of our sins. How does God remit our sins? There was a time when we thought
that we could present something to God that would influence Him
and that would earn favor with Him. Now we understand. Now we
believe. Our minds have been completely
changed. that the only way that my sins
gonna be put away is not by anything that I do but it's by what Christ
did on Calvary's cross two thousand years ago. It's my only hope. I was talking to someone recently
and they were expressing their fear of dying and I asked him,
I said, what do you think the requirement that God has for
entering into heaven is. Because this person is dying. And they said, well, to keep
the commandments. And I said, well, how are you
doing on that? And they said, well, I'm doing my best. Doing
the best I can do. And I was able to share with
them how how the Lord gave me a changed mind on that subject.
That I came to understand that I've never kept one of God's
commandments one time. And that everything that I do
is sin before God. And their conclusion back to
me was, well, you just think you're better than everybody
else. That's what they said. You just think you're better
than everybody else. I said, wait a minute now. You're the one that just
said that you keep God's commandments and I just told you that I've
never kept one of God's commandments one time. How do you make the
conclusion that I'm better than everybody else? And they couldn't
understand it. It just, it was just like talking
to that wall. It was completely, God has to
do a work of grace. to cause us to repent, to cause
us to see that it's not the keeping of commandments that forgives
us of our sins. It's not that we're doing our
best and that somehow that pleases the Lord. The work of repentance is a changed
mind. It's a changed mind about who
God is, We used to think that we could win God's favor by something
that we do. We could make some contribution
to our salvation, whether it be by works, or whether it be
by will, or whether it be by wisdom. We could produce something
that would tip the scales in our favor. And now we understand
that God's holy. God's chosen a people according
to his own will and purpose before the world ever began. He's sovereign
in salvation. He started it. He continues it.
He's going to finish it. The author and the finisher of
our faith. That's repentance. That I'm nothing
but sin, that's repentance. To think that repentance is not
returning to sin means that you've never been given repentance.
You've never been given repentance if you think that you've stopped
sinning. This person that wrote this definition made reference to John chapter
5, where the Lord said to the man who was lame, you remember
the man that was crippled for I think 38 years, and the Lord
said, go and sin no more lest a worse thing come upon thee.
And he said, now that's repentance. Go and sin no more, lest a worse
thing come upon thee. And what was the Lord talking
about in John chapter 5? If God's given you the grace
to repent, if he's given you the grace to have faith, you
know what happens when you do sin. Outwardly, when you disobey
the Lord. You grieve the Spirit of God.
and you lose fellowship with Christ and your heart is broken
and cold and dead and that condition spiritually is much worse for
you than any physical malady that might afflict the body. Our brother Brian is having his
body afflicted right now terribly, but his soul is soaring. He's worshiping the Lord. He's
resting in Christ. Isaiah chapter three, four, behold,
take notice. Give your undivided attention
to this. Ask God to give you the eyes
to see it. You won't see it otherwise. You'll
be just like the person who you've talked to. You've talked to unbelievers
and you've tried to encourage them and speak to them as clearly
and plainly and well that just doesn't make sense. I don't understand
that. Who maketh thee to differ? Lord, if you don't open my eyes,
I'll be just like that. I won't see it, I won't understand
it. And so the Lord always calls us to beg for grace by commanding
us to do something that we can't do. Isn't that wonderful? He says, behold, Look, but Lord,
I'm blind. I can't look. Give me eyes to
see. The Lord. Now you notice that the
Lord is mentioned twice in this first verse. And if you have
a King James version of the Bible, you'll see that the first reference
is a capital L with small l-o-r-o-r-d, and the second reference is capital
letters all the way across. The first word is Adonai. And it's a reference to the mediatorial
work of the Lord Jesus Christ as our sin bearer, as our righteousness
before God. It's a reference to what he has
done in saving his people as the Christ, the one was anointed
with the oil of gladness above his fellows and put away all
the sins of his people once and for all, presenting himself before
God on our behalf as our substitute. satisfying all the demands of
God's holy justice and be in our righteousness before God.
Adonai. Can you see it? Can you see the
Lord Jesus Christ, seated at the right hand of God, alive,
making intercession for you? It's the only hope we have. We come before the throne of
grace with boldness, knowing that we have an advocate with
the Father. Jesus Christ the righteous one and it's the only
way we're gonna approach him The only way we're gonna come
to God is if Christ is there interceding on our behalf And then you see I hope L-o-r-d
again and That's Jehovah That's his covenant name that's the
name that The Lord Jesus Christ gave Moses at the burning bush.
When he said, who do I say should send me? And that's a reference
to who he is. The immutable, never-changing,
self-sufficient God of glory. The creator and sustainer of
all things. And so in this first verse, we
have a reference to who the Lord Jesus Christ is, as Yahweh, as
Jehovah, and we have a reference to what He has done as Adonai. So it's His person and His work.
Can you see Him? The only hope for repentance
is to see Him. If we're looking to ourselves,
we're not seeing Him. So he says, behold the Lord. That's what he's done. The Lord
of hosts. You see, what he's done as Adonai,
he didn't do for everybody. But who he is as Jehovah, he
is for all men. He reigns sovereign over the
living and the dead. And so he says, behold the Lord,
the Lord of hosts. Over all the armies of heaven
and over all the inhabitants of the world, he reigns sovereign. He is Lord. Can you rejoice in
that? If you can, it's because God's
given you a grace of repentance. You wouldn't rejoice in that
otherwise. You'd be just like that crowd that said, we'll not
have this man reign over us. Crucify him. Be done with him. I'll present myself. He doth take away from Jerusalem
and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread
and the whole stay of water. Now there is repentance. There was a time when we drank
the polluted, stagnant water of broken cisterns and ate the
moldy bread of our own works, our own will, our own intelligence,
our own efforts. There was a time, this word staff
and stay mean the same thing. It's something that you lean
on. What did you lean on for the hope of your salvation? You
leaned on being a good person? You leaned on your knowledge?
You leaned on some decision you had made? What do men lean on
for the hope of their salvation? We still do it. We're Pharisees
at heart. We're still trying to find something,
don't we? When we're exalted, The Lord
humbles us, and when we're humbled, He lifts us up. What does that
mean? That means that we get proud and think that, well, I've
now done something good. The Lord causes us to realize
that in me, that is, in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. I'm a
sinner. Lord, forgive me for ever having
a proud thought of something that I did. that would recommend
me in any way before God. And He humbles us. And then we
fall under conviction of sin by the work of the Holy Spirit
and we're broken over our sin. And what does He do? He causes
us to look in faith to Christ and He takes the humbles and
lifts them up and exalts them and shows them their position
before God in the person of their substitute. And so he lifts up
the humble and he brings down the proud. And he does that for
the same person. And we go through those experiences,
don't we? That's the roller coaster of
our faith, isn't it? From pride to humility, from
works to grace. Behold the Lord, the Lord of
hosts. He doth take away from Jerusalem all the things that
they trusted in. They ate the bread and drank
the water of good works, free will, progressive sanctification. Drank a lot of that polluted
water. Poisonous water. Well, I think I'm getting a little
better. We'll measure ourselves by ourselves
or we'll compare ourselves to one another or we'll use the
law to measure ourselves by and we'll get assurance of our salvation
by seeing if we're getting a little better. And the Lord gave us...
He broke the staff. He broke the stay. All the things
that we leaned on for the hope of our salvation, for our righteousness
before God, He broke them. And in breaking them, he broke
us and left us with no place else to go. He stripped from
us all our righteousness. That's repentance and caused
us to look to Christ alone for all our salvation. It's his work. Behold, can you see it? Can you
see him? He's the one that does it. in
what he's done and in who he is as Adonai and as Jehovah. Lord, break the stay of bread.
Do that. He promises to do it. He will
take away from Jerusalem and from Judah all the things that
they look to. Lord, keep doing that for me.
When I look away from Christ and try to find my happiness
and my salvation somewhere else, Lord, break my heart. Break that
stay of bread. Break that polluted water. When you eat that bread, it's kind
of like getting food poisoning in your soul. You ever had food
poisoning before? We passed a restaurant, Trisha
and I were out today, and we passed a restaurant that I had
gotten food poisoning. She said, well, let's eat lunch
here. I said, no way. I'm never eating there again in my life.
I got food poisoning there one time, and I thought I was going
to die. That's the way my soul feels.
When I eat moldy bread, when I drink polluted water, It dries
up my soul. That's what the Lord said, sin
not lest something worse come upon you. There's a worse thing
that can happen to the believer's heart than anything physically
that can happen to his body. Believers don't want to sin.
God's given us a hatred for that, for our sin. And yet we know
that the real problem is the sin of our hearts. When the children of Israel first went to Egypt, God put
them in a land called Goshen. And you look on your map in the
back of your Bible, you'll see it's the delta area of the Nile
River, lush, green pastures. I mean, they had it made. Joseph
was providing them with everything they needed. He was the prime
minister of Egypt. And what did God do over the
years? He put them in bondage, made
them slaves. And then He took them out of
Egypt, that lush land of Goshen, and took them out into the desert. Why? Where there was no water. There was no water. They thought
they were going to die. Why? So that they could see that all
their provisions came from Him. He broke their stay of water. He broke their stay of bread
in order to show them that the water's got to come from the
rock and the bread's got to come from heaven. And if you're feeding
your soul on anything else, and it It's not from God. Lord, break the stay of water,
break the stay of bread, and don't allow my soul to be satisfied
with anything other than the water of life that came from
the rock, that rock that was smitten by Moses, that rock that
satisfied the demands of your law and suffered the punishment
of your law for my sins. Give me that bread, that daily
bread. Lord, I'm tempted to live off
of yesterday's manna. I'm tempted to hoard up manna
for myself. And it's so difficult for me.
It's so difficult for me to walk by faith and to trust you every
day and every minute of every day for daily bread. Lord, my
flesh is weak. I wanna I want to have security." And
the Lord says, I'm your security. I'm going to take you out of
that place. I'm going to put you in a desert. I'm going to
make you completely dependent upon me. And he does that. He
does that for his children spiritually. Remember in 2 Kings chapter 2
when Elisha, the men came to Elisha and said, this land is
good and the city is prosperous, but the water is not. The water
is polluted. And we can't live here. And Elisha
the prophet went and took a cruce of salt and put it into the water
and made it fresh. He took salt water, put salt
in it and made it fresh. What a picture of Christ. Who
is the salt of the earth. Who bore our sins in His body
and by becoming sin, He gave us perfect righteousness before
God. Oh Lord, let me drink from that
well. And let me eat from that bread. Look at verse 2. He's talking
about repentance now. This is the work of God's grace,
the mighty man. Is there a time when you were
a mighty man, you were strong, you were self-sufficient? You
still revert back to that a lot now, don't you? Lord, break that
stay of bread. Don't make me a mighty man. Make me a weak man. Make me a
humble man. Make me a dependent man. upon
thee." And Lord, be gentle in doing it. Don't break my legs. Don't take away everything. Do
it spiritually in my heart without making me suffer too much. And
here's the thing about our Heavenly Father. He knows it. Hebrews
chapter 12, we discipline our children as fathers and sometimes
we do too much and sometimes we don't. He knows exactly what
each one of His children needs. and he applies his work of grace
perfectly for each one of them. Can you trust him for that? If
you can, then you can come before his throne of grace and say,
Lord, whatever you see I need, give it to me. You know what's
best, and I trust you to do that which is good for me. Another
experience Trish and I had today, she was in the passenger side
of the car, we were pulling out onto 1792 during launch. I mean, traffic was coming and
I couldn't see. There was a thing in the car
window was blocking my view of the traffic coming. And she was
looking out the window and she said, okay, stay in the left
lane, you got it. Man, I tell you, it was hard for me to pull
out. Are you sure? Yep, do it right now. I pulled
out without looking and she said, you trusted me. And I thought,
yeah, I did. We've been married a long time,
but I trusted you mostly because you were on the blood side of
the car. When the Lord tells us to move,
he's on the blood side of the car. He's putting his life on
the line. Our life is His life. He says
it's okay, it's okay. Go, trust me, believe me. I'm not gonna let anything happen
to myself. I'm not gonna let anything happen to my children. The mighty man, the man of war. Oh, we spoke such blasphemous
things against God. We spoke, we warred against God. We were at enmity against God. And our tongue still wags. James says it's a fire. And it
kindles horrible things. I mean, Lord, control my tongue. Put a guard over my mouth. I
can speak so many. Where are fightings and wars
among you? That's what James asked. Are
they not from the lust that's within you? Lord, give me repentance. Change my mind. Cause me, Lord,
to trust you and not to trust myself. And the more you grow
in grace, in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, the more,
the less confident you become in yourself. The mighty man, the man of war,
the judge. Oh, we stood in judgment of ourselves
and exercised that judgment to be good for us, didn't we? Or
we stood in judgment of other men. comparing ourselves to other
people. And there's something in us that
still does that. The old flesh, Lord give me repentance. Don't make me to be a judge. And the prophet, I think I got
it all figured out. I know what's gonna happen. I
know the future. I'm planning, I'm preparing,
I'm getting all my ducks in a row. The Lord sometimes has to pull
the rug out from under us to show us a difference, doesn't
he? No, you don't. I hold your future. The only
thing you know about your future is not what it holds, but who
holds it. The prudent. The one who's always wise in
his own eyes. Always thinking that he's able
to make the best choices. The Lord lets you fall flat on
your face with a lot of choices you make. It causes you to realize,
oh Lord, I'm not the prudent one. You're the prudent one. Lord, you're the mighty man.
You're the man of war. You're the man that fought against
sin and against Satan. You're the one who stood up to
the law and satisfied all its demands. You're the prudent one. You're my wisdom. You're my righteousness
and the ancient. Oh, we so proud and thinking,
well, we know what's been. And so we, therefore we've got
it all figured out. He's the ancient of days. We're
not, this is repentance. This is the spirit of repentance.
Yeah, historically, God's saying to Israel, listen, you can enjoy
your prosperity right now. You've got lots of mighty men.
You've got prudent men. You've got all these things going
for you, but there's going to come a day when you're going
to end up in Babylon and you're going to lose it all. Lord, do
that for me right now. Do that for me in my heart. The
captain of 50. Oh, I've got employees. I've
got people to look up to me. I've got people I can boss around. Lord, make me a servant. Make
me the one to receive orders from you. You're going to have
to give me a spirit of repentance for that to happen. You're going
to have to change my mind, because my flesh is bent the other way. The honorable man. Now, if you
read in the margin of my Bible, it says, the man eminent in countenance. That means a good-looking guy.
the good-looking girl, the person who gets through life based on
their beauty. I like beauty as much as anybody.
Boy, I tell you, we depend upon that for our getting by in this
world, not depending upon Christ. That beauty is going to fade,
isn't it? That handsome is going to fade. Trust me, if you get
older, it's just you're going to lose it. how beautiful he is. Lord, we just read in Psalm 46,
the king's bride is beautiful to him. She's dressed in the
gold of Ophir and she's radiant to him. Read Song of Solomons
and the things that the Lord says about his bride. Where do
we get that beauty? We're comely in His comeliness. He has imputed to us His righteousness
and makes us beautiful in His sight. The counselor. He's talking about
the breaking of the stay. This is repentance. You think
you've got it all figured out in terms of how to counsel people
and what kind of decisions they can make and what kind of decisions
you should make. You're a good counselor. And
then your counsel turns out to be wrong. You really don't know yourself
very well, do you? And you don't know other people very well.
Not near as well as you thought you did. I need a counselor. I need therapy. But not from
a man. What can a human therapist do
for me? He doesn't know anything more
about me than I do. But there is one who knows everything there
is to know about me. And I can go to him, and he's
the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the wonderful Counselor. Lord, give me repentance. Cause
me to turn from the things that I've leaned on from man, this
man, and cause me to lean upon that man for everything. That's
repentance. The cunning artificer. That's the artisan. That's the
guy who's able to fashion things really well with his hands and
build things and make things. I can do that. I can do that. I need the one who's able to
create something out of nothing with his hands. The one who's
got a strong right hand to hold me up. The eloquent orator. How impressed
we are with one who is able to speak publicly well. And that
man puts any trust at all in whatever ability he has to do
that. He's leaning on a read as the scripture describes it.
And it's either gonna pierce his hand or God's gonna break
that stay or break that stay. Don't give me any hope in my
ability to speak to anybody. Lord, Grant us the grace of repentance. Change our minds. Change our
minds about who you are. Change our minds about who we
are. Change our minds about how it
is you save sinners. Not of him that willeth, nor
of him that runneth. It's not of the artisan, it's
not of the orator, it's not of the mighty man, it's of Christ. Let's pray. Our merciful Heavenly
Father, we ask, Lord, that you would
forgive us for Christ's sake. for all the
times and all the ways in which we've looked away from him and
put our trust in man. We ask that you would grant us
the spirit of repentance for Christ's sake, for his glory,
and for our good. We pray again for our brother
Brian, We ask for your hand of strength and grace to be upon
him. We pray, Lord, that together you would increase all our faith
to trust you. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Brother Tom. Number 226. Let's stand together. I am not skilled to understand
what God hath willed, what God hath planned. I only know at
His right hand is one who is my Savior. That His Word indeed, Christ
hath foretold. For in my heart I find a need
Of one to be my Savior That he should leave his place on high
And come for sinful man to die You counted strange, so once
did I Before I knew my Savior And oh, that He fulfilled, may
see, the travail of His soul in me, and with His work contented
me, as I with my dear Savior. Yea, living, dying, let me bring
My strength, my solace from this spring That he who lives to be
my King Once died to be my Savior Thank you.