Isaiah chapter 58 this evening,
let's look at it together if you would. Isaiah 58 verse one,
cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet and
show my people their transgression in the house of Jacob their sins. This is where we'll get our title
for the message tonight. The title is Sins Shown. God says show my people their
sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight
to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook
not the ordinance of their God. They ask of me the ordinances
of justice. They take delight in approaching
to God. Wherefore have we fasted, say
they, and thou seest not? Wherefore have we afflicted our
soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast
you find pleasure and exact all your labors. Behold, you fast
for strife and debate and to smite with the fist of wickedness. You shall not fast as you do
this day to make your voice to be heard on high. Now in this
first verse, the prophet, the preacher, whoever by God's providence
and Ordination and calling, whoever speaks for God is called upon
here to proclaim aloud, to speak aloud like a trumpet, sharp and
clear and piercing. It doesn't mean just yell. A trumpeteer that plays a shrill
note is not doing his job, but it means to be clear and sharp
and penetrating. That's how the Word of God is.
It's quick and sharp and more powerful than any two-edged sword.
And he says, and spare not. That is, don't spare anybody's
feelings. Don't spare anybody's pride.
Don't bother with trying not to offend anybody. The gospel
preached rightly is offensive. It's called by the Apostle Paul
the offense of the cross. And for a reason. Our master
offended pretty much everybody. The one who sends us to go and
preach spared not when he proclaimed the gospel and God says show
my people their transgressions in the house of Jacob Their sins
my elect my people my sheep show them their sins And here's a
preview of what's coming in the rest of the chapter. It was not
the bad stuff they did That God here is referring to as their
sins As we read there in verses two through five, it was the
good stuff. It was what they considered their worship, their
righteousness, their good deeds that the Lord is decrying here. Look at verse two again. Yet
they seek me daily, or though they seek me daily, and delight
to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook
not the ordinance of their God, they ask of me the ordinances
of justice. They take delight in approaching
to God. They're religious. They have church, they use the
name of God. They use the name of Christ.
But look at what they do in verse three. Wherefore have we fasted,
say they, and thou seest not. They're doing it to be seen,
to be noticed. They're doing it to establish their own righteousness
before God. Look what we're doing. And God says, show them that
what they think are their wonderful works. Remember what our Lord
said. In Matthew 7, 22, many will say to me in that day, in
the day of the Lord, in the day when the Lord alone is exalted,
in the day of judgment, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied
in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, and in
thy name done many wonderful works? We've called on your name,
we've come in your name, we've preached in your name, just like
Isaiah is told to say here in our chapter tonight. And then
will I, the Lord Jesus, the one who is the righteousness of God,
will profess to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you
that work iniquity. This is what we're gonna see
in this chapter 58 of Isaiah, that it's not what men call sin
that our Lord calls sin. It's what men call righteousness.
It's not that bad things like stealing and murder aren't bad.
because the law tells us that, and the law cannot say though. The law teaches us that, but
the law is not the gospel. The law is not our message. We're
not sent to preach the law, the letter of the law. What you need
to know is that even if you've never physically murdered anyone,
you are yet a murderer before God. And in order for you to
know that, God's spokesman can't preach law, Everybody agrees
with that. Everybody's against murder. But
God sends his servants to preach Christ. And when you see him
declared, hear him set forth, when you see Christ and him crucified,
you realize what a wretch you are and that you're a debtor
to the whole law. You're a breaker of God's whole
law. If we preach law, then you'll
just be encouraged in your self-righteousness. If we say lying is evil, stop
lying, don't lie, everybody will say amen and go on lying. But
if we preach Christ and Him crucified and somebody hears us, they'll
say, God have mercy on me, the sinner. It's Christ that reveals
sin. God said, show my people their
sin. Show them their sin. There's
only one way that happens. In John 15, 22, the Lord Jesus
said, if I had not come and spoken unto them, and we're sent, as
it says here in our book, go tell them something. What are
we gonna tell them? We're sent to say what he said when he gave
what we call the Great Commission. He said, go and preach the words
that I've given you, declare unto them. What did he say? I have come and spoken unto them,
and if I had not, then they had not had sin. But now they have
no cloak for their sin because Christ came and preached himself,
preached the gospel. There's no hiding their sin.
They had the law then. When he said that, they had not
sinned. If I hadn't come, they wouldn't
have had any sin. They wouldn't have understood
and realized and owned their sin. But I have come and spoken unto
them and now there's no cloak for their sin. They had the law
and yet were still cloaking their sin. But when Christ came and
declared the truth of himself to them, then there's no cloak.
The law didn't accomplish that, they had the law. They had the
law and proclaimed themselves blameless as Paul did in Philippians
3.6. He said, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching
the righteousness which is in the law, I was blameless as a
Pharisee before I knew Christ. I considered myself blameless
and everybody around me considered me blameless before the law.
The law did not take away the cloak from my sin, but the Lord
Jesus Christ does. If you read Philippians chapter
three, where Paul said he was gonna cast off all of that, which
kept him from Christ in the latter part of that chapter, he said,
I'm gonna put behind me, I would not have my own righteousness,
but his. And when he talks about, what he counts but loss, that
he might win Christ. When he says, I count it but
dung, that I may win Christ. What's he talking about there?
He's not talking about his bad things that he's done. He's talking
about his righteousness, his good pedigree, his good doctrine,
his good deeds. It is his righteousness which
he renounces there. in Philippians chapter three,
and that is what must happen when God saves every sinner. We've got to be shown that our
righteousnesses are as filthy rags in the sight of God. So
we're commanded to show the elect their sin, to preach. We don't
know who the elect are, so we're gonna preach to everybody, and
show them their sin, and only the truth of Christ will do that.
Men will cloak their sin and call it righteousness unless
and until they are confronted with and by the Lord Jesus Christ. And the way that happens today
is by the preaching of the gospel. Now, what is it about the gospel
that reveals sin? Well, only light can reveal the
true nature of anything, and Christ is that light. A room
might look pretty good in low lighting, but shine a bright
beam and we see the dirt and the imperfections, we see the
filthiness, we see every speck of dust. A board might look pretty
straight to me if I'm building something, but the only way to
know for sure is to lay something that we know is straight up next
to it, a straight edge. A 90 degree angle may look true,
But if you wanna be sure, you're gonna have to use a square. Christ
is the square. He is the perfect stone in Proverbs
11, one by which all others are weighed and found wanting. But
more than that, it's Christ particularly in his redemptive character that
reveals sin. God, he either needs me to straighten
up straightened up so much that I'm perfect, and even that wouldn't
cut it because I've already sinned. If I could be perfect from this
moment on, I'd have to go to hell. But God's either got to,
he either needs me to straighten up or he needs a priceless ransom
for my sin. He don't need both. If he has
the blood of Christ, if the blood of Christ speaks for me, if I've
been washed in that blood, I don't need my own work. What would
they add? If Christ is my offering unto God for my sin, if he is
my spotless lamb, and his blood is of infinite value, and it
is, we're redeemed not with corruptible things, such as silver and gold,
but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb, without
blemish and without spot. What is me doing anything or
not doing anything add to that? Nothing, clearly nothing. That's
one reason the message of the cross is so offensive, because
all of the glory is His. Nothing that I do is worth anything
before God, before, during, or after conversion. There's another
way to look at it. If it took the soul of God, the
Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, His own soul was made a ransom
for my sin. If it took the soul of God to
ransom me, then how deep in debt was I? That's the only way to
find out. If it took the infinite sacrifice
of Him who is infinitely holy to redeem me, then how sinful
am I? How will we reveal sin? God says,
show them their sin. Well, there's a song that I've
quoted and sang that expresses this fairly thoroughly. Ye who
think of sin but lightly, nor suppose the evil great, here
may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate. Where? Mark the sacrifice appointed. See who bears the awful load.
Tis the Christ, the Lord's anointed, Son of man and Son of God. Until we see Him and what He
did on Calvary, we'll never know how bad we are. Show them their
sin, somebody gonna have to preach Christ and Him crucified. You
will never have your sin revealed to you any other way. God, when His gospel, the gospel
of His Son is preached, He opens the hearts of sinners to see
by God-given faith what your sin truly cost. The wages of
sin is death, and the wages of infinite sin, your sin, is the
death of the infinite one. The very act of crucifying God's
son is the ultimate evil. Who can question that? We murdered
God. You killed the prince of life, was the message in the
book of Acts. But by studying the act of what
we did, we can never understand the evil. We must know who we
killed in order to understand what sin is. Also, we've got
to understand who we killed in order to know what grace is.
We murdered the one who said this, no man murders me. Think about that. We murdered
the one who said, no man takes my life from me. Now that doesn't
mitigate our guilt in any way. It makes us no less guilty of
the murder of God's son, but we murdered the one who said,
I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up
again. And he laid down his life, he said, for his sheep, the ones
that the Lord instructs the prophet to preach to, my people. Tell them how lost they are.
Show them their evil because you see, nobody comes to the
physician till they're sick. Nobody needs an anchor till there's
a storm now. And God sends the storm and he
is the anchor. Christ is the anchor. Show them
their sin. He laid down his life for his
sheep. He died for our sins, he said,
according to the scriptures. He died for our salvation. When
he ate that last Passover with his disciples, he said, this
is my blood, which is shed for you, for you. Drink all of it. A final thought. This is God. What God is saying here, it's
a good thing. Show them their sin. It's not
pleasant when we realize what we are before God. We don't like
to think about it. We don't like to think about
the consequence of sin. But if God commands that your
sin be revealed to you, that's a good thing. There's a whole
lot of folks that are gonna live their lives and die in their
sins and never even know what a sinner is. All those to whom he reveals
sin, their sin, you know what they do? They run to the Savior. That's what they do. Look at
verse 14, the last verse in the chapter, and of course, we'll
study through this chapter some more. But look at verse 14. Then shalt thou delight thyself
in the Lord. When? When he shows you what
you are and he shows you what he did for you. Because of that,
when he reveals himself, we'll see what we are and we'll see
him and we'll run to him. And then you're gonna delight
in him. You're gonna really, truly delight in him then, not
just in outward form and religion. And I will cause you to ride
upon the high places of the earth. And I will feed you with the
heritage of Jacob, thy father. You're not gonna be saying, Lord,
look what I did. We're gonna be looking at what he does and
rejoicing in him alone. For the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken it. And he's done it by his prophets.
He's spoken it by saying to his preachers, tell them, tell them,
tell them. You know why this chapter ends
this way so happy and so wonderful? Because it began with this, show
my people their sins. And the only way you can show
a sinner their sins is by preaching Christ. That's what he said,
if I hadn't come and spoken, If the gospel had never been
preached to them by the power of God's Son, which he sent us,
he said, I have all power in heaven and earth, therefore,
go ye into all the world and preach the same thing I did.
And that's what's happening. And he said, now there's no cloak
for sin. Otherwise, there is. Otherwise, sin will pass for
righteousness. But when Christ is preached,
God has spoken. Sins are revealed in and by Christ
crucified, but so is grace. So is grace. And if he reveals
the one to you, he will reveal to you the other. Everybody else
will go on in their religious thinking, in their religion,
thinking that their sin is wonderful works until that day of reckoning
when he says to them, depart from me, you that work iniquity,
I never knew you. Lord, show me my sin now. Show
us our sin. Declare unto us our sin by showing
us the glory and beauty and holiness of our Savior. Show us Christ
and what he did for sinners and cause us to cry for mercy. Amen.