Isaiah chapter 1 this evening Isaiah 1. We've looked at verses 1 through
9 already. Let's begin in verse 10 tonight. Hear the word of
the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom. Give ear unto the law of our
God, ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude
of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord? I am full of the burnt
offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts, And I delight
not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs or of he goats. When
you come to appear before me, who hath required this at your
hand to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations,
incenses and abomination unto me. The new moons and Sabbaths,
the calling of assemblies I cannot away with. It is iniquity, even
the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed
feasts, my soul hateth. They are a trouble unto me, I
am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your
hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when you make
many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood,
wash you. Make you clean. Put away the
evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do well. Seek judgment. Relieve the oppressed. Judge
the fatherless. Plead for the widow. Same thing
he confronted the rich young ruler with. Stop sinning and
do good. You know the law. Thou shalt,
thou shalt not. You remember what the rich young
ruler said. I've done all these. The Lord said, you lack one thing.
You lack one thing. God hates religion. And we use
that word, there is pure religion. But the way we use that word
is usually has reference to empty, Christless, outward form, free
will religion. The people of Israel began to
trust in their doings of the outward forms of religion rather
than the one that all of these things pointed to. It just boiled
down to the simple thing that we see in every passage of scripture,
it's me or it's Christ. God is only satisfied with one
thing, one person, the Lord Jesus Christ and everything that he
does. All of these things, he said,
your religion, even that which God ordained now, when you come
before God and even do outwardly what he said, but there's no
inward worship. There's no acknowledgement of
Christ. God said, I hate it. It makes
me sick. And we see that among all the
other things that he said in the verses before that concerning
them. The ox knows his master's crib,
but Israel doth not know. I've been thinking about that.
What do you think that means? We acknowledge things like that.
I think sometimes we convince ourselves that we know what something
means when we really didn't quite get it. That's what happened
to me here. The ox knows his master's crib. What do you think
that means? If you had to get up here and
say what that means, what would you say? Even a dumb animal knows who
the master is. And he knows where home is. Home,
the place of provision, the place of safety, place of comfort,
place of rest. And he knows the third thing.
He knows who provided it. See, that's one of our big problems
now. I see that in myself. I see it in all of us now. And
I'm telling you, one of our big problems is because we think
that we sweat a little bit and we bleed a little bit and we
get up early and we go to a lot of trouble that we've actually
done something. We don't know the master's crib.
We don't know that God made a crib and put us in it. God made me
and he made the crib that I have. I have everything I have because
God gave it to me. Job got it. By God's grace, now
he knew. He said the Lord gave, and everybody's
in on that now. But when the Lord takes away
now, whose was it? Did he take away what was yours,
or did he just take away what he had given you to begin with?
The Lord gave and the Lord takes away. Blessed, blessed be the
name of the Lord. You know, when we sweat and bleed
and get up and do what we're supposed to do, and we're supposed
to, and that's right and good. You know how I feel about that. But you know what that is? That's
the curse. We sweat and bleed because of the curse. That's
not the blessing. The blessing, God just gives
you everything you need. Do we know that? Do we know the
master's script? And then, of course, he talked
about the sinfulness of people laden with iniquity. A seed of
evil is, oh, they must be a bunch of harlots and drunks and thieves
and murderers. No, they're a bunch of religious people is what they
are. They're a bunch of church-going Pharisees. That's what our text
we read tonight reveals. That's iniquity to God. Empty,
Christless, freewill, man-centered religion. But then in verse 18, To such
as this, he says, come. That's such a common word, and
we say that all the time. Come here, come here, we say
it to our children, to one another, come here. But boy, I tell you
what, when you find out who is saying it here, and who he's
saying it to, it's remarkable. He just said, get away from me. I cannot, away with, I can't
stand it. But come, come. This is the Lord speaking now.
We saw that in verse two. And who is he speaking to? Ah,
you sinful bunch of wretches. Come. This is the gospel now. When the holy God The holy, sovereign,
righteous, inflexibly just God can say to a vile, wretched maggot
like you, come. There's gospel somewhere. There's
some good news in that because God, strictly speaking, he can't
tell you to come. He can't have anything to do
with you. All he can do is put you in hell now. God strictly
as the just judge and you strictly in your sinful flesh. Oh, but
come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Why in the world
would he want to reason with you? With somebody that doesn't
even, you think about that. Don't even know your master's,
don't know as much as an ox and let's reason together. You think
about that for a minute. I want to reason with you that
doesn't know as much as an ox knows. That's gonna be some one-sided
reasoning, don't you think? You know what our part in that
is? Listen to God. Let's hear what God says. And
reason in your heart. Think about it. God's fixing
to wake you up. Sin reason about what your sins
what we've been talking about this whole time That you're laden
with iniquity That you're absolutely insane when it comes to spiritual
things That your religion is vile and wretched in my sight
even the best things that you do the things that you're proud
of your religion I went to church. I brought my Bible. I brought
a friend. I said my prayers that makes me sick God said And we
need to talk about that Let's reason about that, your sins. You know what your sins are?
Your righteousnesses. That's what Paul said that he
didn't want anything to do with. That's what he divorced himself
from when he saw Christ, wasn't it? He said, not having my own
righteousness. That's what I don't want anywhere
near, I don't want anything to do with that. When I stand before
God and I see Christ, who he is and why he came and what he
did, What I don't want to have anything to do with is my goodness.
What I consider my goodness. The only time you'll ever hear
God speak the way he does in these first 17 verses of this
chapter is when he's talking about man-made free will religion. Repulsive. He never spoke to
harlots like that. Did he? You make me sick, get away from
me. That's how we are now. People that are, you know, that
kind of person. Ooh, that makes me sick. You know who makes God sick?
The one sitting in the pew down there. That thinks he's somebody before
God because of his religious law keeping. Pharisees and the Sadducees and
the scribes, he said, woe unto you. But even after this word
of great rebuke, he says this glorious, gracious word to everybody
that'll hear it, come. What a beautiful, beautiful word,
come. How can God say that to me and
why would he? Why would he? Well, I know why
he would say that to a sinner. Jeremiah 31.3, the Lord hath
appeared of old unto me saying, yea, I have loved thee with an
everlasting love. God told Hosea, go and love a
woman. that's gonna make you just a
vile, wretched, disgusting, ungrateful, horrible woman. Go fall in love
with her. And he did. He fell head over
heels in love with Gomer. And he said, I'm doing this to
teach you something about my love for my people. Even though she was a wretch
now, I mean a wreck. She was a harlot and he married
her under himself and said, it's not going to be that way anymore.
Come, we're going to, I'm going to marry you. You're going to
love me. I'm going to love you. I'm going to be for you. You're
going to be for me. And, and, and the past is the past. And
she went right back after a little while and did all the horrible things
that she'd been doing before she met Hosea. And even when
she was in that wretched state, Hosea, would leave gifts on her
doorstep, because he knew she wasn't doing well. Nobody cared
anything about her, except just what they could get out of her.
Nobody was taking care of her. So he went and took care of her,
left things that she would need on her doorstep. And she'd say,
look what my lover's left for me today. Just... Hosea had no reason whatsoever
to love her, except right in here. You know how much reason
God has to love you? Right there. Absolutely none
in you. But the reason is in his own
heart. The heart of God. He loves you. He's loved you
with an everlasting love. And he's gonna have you wretched
and vile and laden with iniquity though you be. And you know what
he said? You know what Hosea said to Gomer?
She finally got used up and nobody wanted her anymore and they sold
her on the auction block as a slave. And you know who was there? Hosea. And he said, come, come. You're coming home with me. How
much is it going to take? How much is it going to take?
Come. You see this beautiful word?
Come. You horrible wretch, come. I've
loved you. With an everlasting love. And therefore, with loving kindness,
have I drawn you? Have I drawn you? You see, his
call is a drawing. It's not just an invitation. No man cometh unto me, the Lord
Jesus said, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.
That's what his love does. It draws you, it takes you from
where you are and brings you into his bosom. How can he say come? How can
he do it? He will do it because he loves
us, but can God have anything to do with me? 1 Peter 3, 18, Christ also hath
once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might
bring us to God. Because of Christ and his sacrificial
death, because of the precious blood that he shed for me, God
can say come. And not only can he say, come,
because of Christ's blood, but he can say, come, even your scarlet
sins are fixing to be white. Because that's how they're made
white, in the precious blood of the Lamb. Who are these arrayed
in white, John? You know. These are they which
have washed their robes and made them white, in the blood of the
Lamb. Oh, that he might bring us to
God, being put to death in the flesh. That's how he accomplished
it. But quickened by the Spirit. Coming to God, come to me, he
said. Come now. Come now. That's the title of this message.
Come now. Come now. Come right now. Did you know that now is the
only time to come? Well, I will come. At a more convenient time, there's
no such thing. Some might say, I've already
come. Come now. Don't look to the past. Come
right now. If you're not coming now, you
didn't come before. There's only one time to come.
Now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. Come now. It's urgent. What is it to come and how in
the world do we do that? Well, as we've already alluded
to here, for God to say come to you is not just an appeal
for you to do something and then God waiting on you to do it.
When this same Lord Jesus Christ, this is the son of God saying
come. This is the same one who in the book of John said come.
Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden, I'll give
you rest. He's saying here, come now and let's reason together. You need to be reasoned with.
Your thinking is beneath an ox now. You need some understanding. You need to be teachable. You
need to hear from God concerning your sin and how it can be washed
away. That's the issue. Nothing else
matters. That's the issue. How can my
sins be washed away? These are written that you might
believe on the Son of God, and that believing, you might have
life. Your sins might be wiped. But when this same, this is the
same one that said, let there be light, and he says, come.
He was not appealing to the light to come on when he said let there
be light. And he's not appealing to you to do something when he
says come. He's commanding it. He's making it happen. He's causing
it. Blessed is the man whom thou
choosest, David said, and causeth to approach unto thee. That's
what coming is. It's approaching unto him. And
he causes it when he says come. He doesn't invite it. He causes
it. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4,
6 that he spoke with that same creation power to my dark heart
and said, let there be light. And gave the light of the knowledge
of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ. He said to Lazarus, come,
didn't he? Was it up to Lazarus? If he said, Lazarus, you remember,
that's the first word he said to him, Lazarus, come. Come forth! If that's nothing but an invitation, we're talking about somebody
four days dead now. Is he just inviting Lazarus to
come forth? If the Son of God bids you come
now, if the King of Glory gives you a divine summons, you fixin'
to come. All that the Father giveth me
does what? Comes. This is a key word now in the
gospel. Come. All that the Father giveth
me shall come to me. He didn't say your sins can be white
as snow. He said they fixin' to be white
as snow. When God says come, that's what's gonna happen. Do
we see salvation as a certainty? Surely God didn't leave that
which is the very apex of his glory up to the whims of sinful
men. God's not that naive, my friends.
Salvation, this covenant is ordered in all things and sure. It is of grace, it is of faith
that it might be by grace that the promise might be sure to
all of the seed. And it is sure. But Chris, don't
some refuse the gospel call? Yeah, a lot of people refuse
when the preacher says come. But when God says come, they
don't. Right now we're not talking about the preacher saying come,
and he does. The Spirit and the bride say
come, and him that hears says come. But right now we're talking
about God saying come. And when he says it, how is it that the sinner comes
to God John 14, 6, Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth,
and the life. No man cometh unto the Father
but by me. You come to God by Christ. Now
there's a couple of ways to think about this. You can see Christ
as the road to the Father, but that's not what this is primarily
teaching here. He said, I'm going to prepare a place for you. I'm
going to God for you. The way you come to God is by
your representative coming to God. That's what he's teaching
here. The only way you come into the
Father is by Christ coming to the Father as your representative,
your sin offering, your surety, your mediator, your high priest,
your righteousness, your everything. When He comes to the Father,
you just came to the Father. And that's the only way you get
in there. My great high priest is described
in Hebrews 9.11, but Christ being come, and high priest of good
things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle,
not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building,
neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood,
he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption for us. That's me coming to the Father,
right there, in my representative, in Christ. And I'm seated in
heavenly places right now, in him. My experience of coming to him
involves faith and repentance, but understand that we come to
God in Christ and by Christ. To come anywhere, you have to
leave somewhere. But in a spiritual sense here,
not physical, when Adam sinned in the beginning, where are we
leaving from now? And again, when Christ went, when he became
what I am and paid for my sin and he went to the Father, that
was me getting to the Father. That was him bringing me to the
Father. Okay, where did he bring us from? Well, you remember when
Adam sinned in the garden, you remember what God said to him?
Adam, where are you? If you know the answer to that
question, then you know where you had to leave to get to God
in Christ. Fallen, proud, despising the word of God, despising
the grace of God that's provided everything for you, deciding
I will be as God, I will determine good and evil. Oh, the place
of absolute, total depravity. The place of no good, no not
one. The place of all we like sheep
have gone astray. We've turned everyone. And one
of the things I forgot to mention in review in Isaiah here is that
we've gone away backward. God has stretched out his hand
of love to our cheek and we've flinched from him in disgust. That's where we gotta go from. Our Lord put it this way. You
know where that basically is? I've got to leave me and go to
him. That's what our Lord said in
Matthew 16, 24. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, if any man
will come after me, let him deny himself. If you're coming with
me, you got to leave you. Is that what he said? And take up his cross. Got to
die. And then you can follow me. Got
to die to self. We're dead to God and alive unto
self by nature. That's got to change. This morning you're either trusting
yourself or Christ, worshiping yourself or Christ, serving yourself
or Christ. It's that simple now. It always
has been, always is. Luke 18, nine, he spake this
parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were
righteous. That's where you've got to go
from. That's why Paul said, not my righteousnesses. I could see
that a little bit clearer, I hope, every time that the Lord impresses
that upon me. Paul was repulsed by his own
right, not having my own righteousness. He knew that that was the death
sentence upon him, his righteousness. Him trusting in himself that
he was righteous. He said, I count all that but
dung that I might win Christ and be found in him, not having
mine own. To come to Christ is to leave
yourself in the sense of imagining that there is anything that you
can do that is pleasing to God and that will recommend you to
God. Who are you trusting? Who do you serve? Who's your comfort? What's your
confidence? To come to God is a covenant
privilege. This is straight from his word now. It's not just a
point in a message. This is straight from the word
of God. Genesis 6, 17. Behold, I, even I, do bring a
flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, wherein
is the breath of life from under heaven. Everything that is in
the earth is fixing to die, God said. This is a picture of the
judgment now. The spiritual judgment of God
upon sinful men. Everybody got to die. But with thee will I establish
my covenant, and thou shalt come. There's our word. Thou shalt
come into the ark. There's Christ. The ark. The ark is They were inside the
ark and the judgment of God fell upon the ark and didn't touch
them. That's Christ. Thou shalt come
into the ark. Why? Because I'm establishing
my covenant with you. A covenant that's older than
time and yet I'm going to establish it with you. You have an interest
in that eternal covenant of grace. You're coming. That's the gospel. I've made a covenant. God made
a covenant with his son and with his spirit, with himself, and
you have an interest in that covenant, and thou shalt come. All that the Father giveth me
in that covenant, Christ said, shall come to me. You're coming
in the ark now because God's established his covenant with
you. If he has, you're coming. A lot of preachers say in that
word, you know, come, come, come, come down an aisle, come to the
front. Some say I've come to the doctrines of grace. You're
in a bad place. If you come to a Jesus, even
if you say I've come to Jesus, is it the Jesus who's done all
he can do and left it up to you? He can't save you. If you come to the one who shed
his blood to save sinners that were in hell before he ever shed
it, then you've come to a bad place. Your sins ain't gonna be washed
white by that one. If you come down an aisle, you're
not gonna find anything there but self-righteousness, false
assurances of the flesh. If you come of your imagined
free will, then you're trusting yourself, not Christ. I've decided
to come. Is that trusting Christ or you?
And many will bid you come this way. Others, I know some that won't
say come at all, because they're afraid a goat will come. I'm not too worried about that.
I'll tell you this, the Spirit says come. The bride says come. Those that hear him say come,
you know what they say? Come. And they say let him that's thirsty
come. and take the water of life and take it freely. That's the
only way you're gonna get it. Don't come with money. Don't
come with a prize. Don't come with your works. Don't
come with your free will. Don't come with your resolutions. Come freely. And your sins, though they are
as crimson, what a picture is painted in this first chapter
of Isaiah. I didn't even come close to telling you what it
says. But though your sins be all of
that and more than I can even express, they shall be made as
white as snow. How can sins be white? We've
all sinned and come short and God must punish sin Shall not
the judge of all the earth do right? And you know what's right?
Abraham was trying to get God to spare some in Sodom and Gomorrah.
And you know how he pleaded? He said, shall not the judge
of all the earth do right? And you know what God did? He
put them all in hell. That's what he did. There weren't
even 10 righteous in that city. He got his servant Job out of
there and he put them all in hell. He burned them up. The
judge of the earth is sure enough gonna do right. According to the strict and unbending
law of God, and that's what he called them, Sodom and Gomorrah.
There's no difference. No sinner can go unpunished.
But our sins are made white. Why? Because the chastisement
of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we're healed. We're pictured in Isaiah also
as being full of wounds and bruises and putrefying sword from the
top of our head to the sole of our feet. But by his stripes,
when he was punished in our place for our sin, we're healed. Our flesh is fresh like a baby's,
healed. Now in Christ Jesus, we who were
at one time a far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. How can God say, come to a sinner
like me? We're made nigh unto God. We're
able to come to God. We're drawn to God. We're brought
to God by the blood of Jesus Christ. Because of Christ and
in Christ, God can and has in unrestrained fury poured out
his wrath against my sin. And he did it upon his own son. He crushed his own son. And yet I go free. He's merciful to me, bestowing
all his blessings and all of his goodness and all of his favor
upon me. All that which Christ deserved,
I receive. And all that I deserve, Christ
took it. Christ redeemed me from the curse
of the law. How? He was made a curse for
me. White as snow. That's righteousness,
that's purity, that's holiness. Me, white? Job said, though I
wash myself with snow water and make myself never so clean, God'll
plunge me in the ditch. How am I gonna wash white? The blood of Christ, he washes
us clean. We just come to him. This is righteousness, whiteness
is righteousness, and God's, you know, remember what God said
about the righteous? It shall be well with the righteous. There's none that doeth good,
so who is righteous? The sinner that chooses God.
God looked down, it says, in the Psalm to see if there's anybody
that did good, anybody that did understand, anybody that sought
after Him, and there weren't any, Psalm 14.2. So who is this? How can we be righteous? It is not of him that willeth. I know what they say. But it's
not of him that willeth. I know what God says. He said
it had nothing to do with your will. That your will is the problem,
not the answer. It's not of him that runneth
or striveth or accomplishes anything, that does anything, that exerts
any energy. Nothing you do, nothing you desire,
nothing you will, nothing you do, nothing about you at all,
will get it done. Has anything to do. with being
righteous before God now. It's not of him that willeth,
it is not of him that runneth, it's of God that showeth mercy. And
mercy happens at the mercy seat because that's where the blood
is splashed. Colossians 119 through 22, if
you wanna jot that down, if Christ made peace for you, by the blood
of His cross, then there's peace. There can't be peace without
righteousness. There's righteousness by that
blood and there's peace because of righteousness. He's reconciled
you to God in the body of his flesh through death that you
might be holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight.
That's white as snow right there. That's the spiritual equivalent
of white as snow. Unreprovable, unblameable, spotless,
holy in the sight of God. And God said, it'll be well with
you. How do I know if I'm one of those? When Christ died for sinners,
did he die for me? Because that's the difference
now. If you know him at all, you understand that. If he died
for you, then you're not gonna die. If he paid for your sins,
then you're not gonna suffer the consequences of your sins.
If he came to redeem you, you're redeemed. But did he? Did he
redeem me? Did he shed his precious blood
for me? Well, I'll tell you this. I don't have the book of life
to look into to see if your name is there, but here's what I do
have. I have this book right here, and you know what it says?
Come. Come. Come to me and I will give. That's how you know. Have you
come? Do you believe on Him? He that
believeth on me hath everlasting life. I believe, Lord, I believe. And
I trust Him that I'm righteous and holy. I don't see it in the
mirror. I don't see it in any of my actions. Don't see it when
I look in here, but I see it when I look in here. I see it
when I look in the face of God's Son. I see God's glory in saving
a vile worm like me and taking somebody laden with iniquity
and washing them clean. I come to him by his grace and
I say, Lord, if you will, you can make me white. And he said,
I sure will. I sure will. Come. Come now. Come now. Your sins have got
to be dealt with. And there's one who can make
them white. The Lamb of God takes away sin.
The Lord Jesus Christ. All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me, and him that cometh to me, I won't cast him
out. I will have mercy on him. Lord, if you will, I will. For I come down from heaven,
not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me,
and that's his will. That of all which he hath given me, I
should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day.
And this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone which
seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting
life. And I'll raise him up at the
last day." Come now. Come to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Are you vile? Are you hideous? Let's pray.