All right, brethren, Isaiah 56. Isaiah 56. I wanna just get a look at the last phrase in verse seven. The Lord says, mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. Mine house shall be a house of prayer, not sacrifice. House of prayer, house of worship, for all people, all kinds of people. We saw the first two verses last time, and the Lord was speaking to his elect Jews, and he was saying, Christ is near to come. Christ my salvation, Christ my righteousness is near to come. Believe on him, that's how you're gonna keep judgment and do justice. Believe on Christ, and live honestly with one another, Because he said, my salvation is near to come, my righteousness to be revealed. We keep the Sabbath from polluting it by trusting Christ. They actually took Saturday off, let their farm animals rest, let their servants rest. But in it, the true believer saw this is the rest my Savior gives me. keeping your hand from doing any evil, that involves not doing evil toward a brother, but it also involves not trying to add to the work Christ is for his people, to the righteousness he is, not trying to come by the works of our hands. But that was spoken to his elect among the Jews. Now, he gives us this word in verse three, and this is to the Gentiles. He says, neither let the son of the stranger, that's a Gentile, neither let the son of the stranger that had joined himself to the Lord speak, saying, the Lord hath utterly separated me from his people. All right, then he speaks to a different kind of person. He speaks to the eunuch. The eunuch was somebody who had, a man who had a physical deformity to where, or imposed upon him by another to where he could not produce children. He couldn't produce children. Let him not say, behold, I'm a dry tree. For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbath and choose the things that please me and take hold of my covenant, even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Also, the sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, to be his servant, everyone that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant, even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar, for mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people, for all kinds of sinners. Now, the reason they joined themselves, the reason they came and trusted the Lord and joined themselves is because the Lord gathered them. He said, verse eight, the Lord God which gathereth the outcasts of Israel. That's who his people are. He gathers the outcasts of Israel. The elect of Israel that God chose to save are the ones that the self-made Israelite cast out they didn't want them. Those are the ones that God gathered his outcast and he says and Yet he promises us this I will gather others To him besides those that are gathered to him So he's saying here. He's gonna save all kinds of people. God has some elect Jews. He has some elect Gentiles He has he has eunuchs. We'll see what that is My house should be a house of It won't be a house of prayer. It won't be a house of sacrifice. It won't be a house of works. It'll be a house of prayer, worship, praise, glorifying God. And it'll be for all people, for all kinds of people. A house of prayer for all. This is because salvation is entirely by grace. It's by the grace of God. This is because we're made righteous by the Lord Jesus. We're given a new heart, a holy heart by the Spirit of God through this good news of our Lord. We give our Lord all the praise, all the praise, and our Lord saves all kinds of sinners, all kinds of sinners. Now, I'm gonna make some general statements and then we're gonna narrow it down each as we go. Now, first of all, salvation is by God's grace, not by anything in the center or done by the center. And we see that in the fact here that the Lord's gonna gather some Jews, he's gonna gather some Gentiles, and he's gonna gather some eunuchs here in this passage. That means nothing is of us. Now think about it. If God saved a Jew because he was born a natural Jew, salvation would be by respect to person. It would be based on the fact he was a natural Jew. Same if the Lord saved a Gentile because he was born a natural Gentile. That would mean it was based on God respecting him being a natural Gentile. And here you have a person who's a eunuch. A man's got a physical defect. He can't produce fruit. He can't bring forth a child. If God saved him because of that, that would be based on That would be God looking at him, or if God saved him because he didn't have that, that would be God saving based on something in you. He saved you because you didn't have any defects, so he chose you. That'd be works. But we see here, everybody mentioned here, he's an outcast. Everybody mentioned here is a sinner. And so salvation has to be entirely of God's grace. This is what everybody has in common that God saved. This is what everybody is taught by God and what we all confess is we are sinners who did nothing, absolutely nothing for God to choose us, nothing. That's the first thing folks will say when they hear you speak about election. They'll say, you just think you're better than us. No. That's not understanding what election is. Election, we're saying we did absolutely nothing. We didn't merit anything. God chose his people by grace, by free grace, not because of anything in us. You know, he talks here about the son of the stranger. Now, that's a Gentile. In the law, the Gentile, he couldn't join with the Jew. But think about the son of a stranger. When Adam sinned in the garden, in his mind, he became a stranger to God. God was a stranger to him, and he came under the transgression, under sinning against God, and he hid from God in the garden. And so you're born having been made guilty by Adam, when you're born the first time, you're the son of the stranger. We are Gentiles, everybody here I think is a Gentile, but being born of Adam and being guilty sinners, we are sons of the stranger. That's what we are by nature, strangers to God. That's what we all are by nature. Ephesians 2.12, look there with me, and Mark Ephesians 2, I'm gonna come back, Ephesians 2.12, this is what was said of Gentile. This is so, brethren, spiritually speaking, this is so if a man's a Jew or a Gentile. No matter what a man's, where he's born in this world, what race he is, this is so of every sinner in Adam. But it's specifically said here of Gentile, at that time, verse 12, at that time you were without Christ. Aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Listen to me. If you're sitting there right now and you don't know the true God, you haven't believed on Christ, confess that there's nothing you can bring to God. You're totally dependent on God's mercy, begging God to have mercy on you and be found in Christ alone. If you don't believe Christ, that's your condition right now. You're without Christ. Oh, you're without Christ. You're an alien from the common wealth, from the wealth that God gives to all his true Israel. The common wealth we all possess freely given to us. You're an alien from all of it. You're a stranger. from God's covenants of promise, from him, the promise he's made and the promises that Christ fulfilled. You're an alien to him, stranger to him. You have no hope and you're without God in the world. That's what everybody is that God saves. That's how he finds us right there. That's what it is to be a son of the stranger. And each one that God saves is born the first time a spiritual eunuch. We're all spiritual eunuchs by nature. Unable, a eunuch was a man unable to produce a child. Look at it this way. You and I were unable to produce fruit. We were unable to produce any spiritual fruit. We had no spiritual life, we couldn't produce faith, we couldn't produce repentance, we couldn't produce love, we couldn't produce nothing We could not believe, we couldn't do anything. So there we are, we're guilty and we can do nothing about it. We've got to understand, that's what we are. That's what we are by nature. Listen, as it's written, there is none righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They're all gone out of the way. They're together become unprofitable. There's none that doeth good, no not one. Now that's God's word concerning everybody that he saves. That's true of everybody. That's true of everybody he saves. And when he saves a sinner, He's gonna make you know that's true of you, and you're going to know that's true of you. Isn't that right, brethren? They know what the Lord taught us? Salvation has to be of God's grace alone, because that's the condition we're in. It can't be based on any good in us, because there is none by nature. And if it was due to works that we did, all our works are evil, so God would have chosen none of us. So it's not based on any good or evil. It's simply God being gracious to whom he will be gracious. Look at Romans 4 in verse 16. Here's why salvation is by grace, right here. It's not to the man that keeps the law, and a man that doesn't have the law doesn't mean he's not gonna be saved. Listen to this, Romans 4 16. Therefore, salvation is a faith that it might be by grace. To the end, the promise might be sure to all the seed. Not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all believers. You see that? It's by grace That way, God makes the promise sure to all his people. God will save all his people. He's not gonna just save those that were born in Israel under the law. He's got some elect Gentiles that never had the law and were never under the law. It's by grace, so the promise is sure. My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people, all kinds of people. All right, here's the second thing. Let's go back to our text now. This word is to you who God has gathered. That's who this word's to. He's telling us there, this is to those who he's gathered and he's promised he's gonna gather others to us. This is to each sinner in whom God has created a new heart to believe the Lord and serve him. I told you last time that we're looking at Old Testament language, but the New Testament eyes, we have to look at it When he says, keep ye judgment and do justice, chiefly, that's trusting Christ. When he says, keep the Sabbath, chiefly, that's trusting Christ, because he's our Sabbath rest. Keeping your hand from doing evil is, don't add to his righteousness, trust him alone, him alone. And he says in verse three, neither let the son of the stranger that hath joined himself to the Lord speak, saying, the Lord hath utterly separated me from his people, neither let the eunuch say, behold, I'm a dry tree. All right, you're a believer. The Lord's called you. That's the case here. That's who we're looking at here. You're sitting here that believe the Lord. You're an elect Gentile. You're the son of the stranger. Why would you start saying The Lord's utterly separated me from his people. Why would you say that? And every one of us sitting here that God has saved are spiritual eunuchs. Why would we say, behold, I'm a dry tree? Why would we say those things? Only one reason. You went back and started looking at the law and you started looking at yourself. That's the only reason you'd say that. You looked at the law and you looked at you and what you are and what you've done. Anytime that we go to the law and anytime we start looking at ourselves, we're going to be discouraged like that and say, I'm separated from the Lord's people. I'm a dry tree. I haven't produced any fruit. That's the case here. was the middle wall separating Jew and Gentile, so the Gentile's looking at the law and saying, I'm not one of God's Israel. I haven't kept that law, I'm not one of his, I'm an outcast. And the eunuch goes to the law, and the law said, not only could the eunuch come into the house of the Lord, the eunuch couldn't, he couldn't be a priest. In fact, it applies to women too. If you couldn't bear children, or if you had any kind of blemish in you, or whatever, you could not have any, you couldn't serve any way in the Lord's house and you couldn't even come into the Lord's house. That's what the law said. What's the picture there? Sinners can't be accepted of God. We can't come to God if we're sinners. So if you start looking at yourself, what you gonna see? You're gonna see sin. You're gonna see what would separate you from God. If you start going to the law, you're gonna say, I'm separated. I'm not one of his. I'm a dry tree. That's what happens when we go to the law. That's what happens when we start trying to find assurance in ourselves, brethren. Listen, you're a eunuch because the eunuch typifies this. You and me can't produce fruit ourselves. You can't produce spiritual fruit and I can't either. Christ produces fruit in us. We're to look only to our Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what the Lord promises us here. Listen to what the Lord's promise is to the eunuch. He deals with the eunuch first here. He's gathered him, he's gathered you, he's given you a new heart, and he's produced fruit in you. Faith, and love, and repentance, and he's produced that. Listen to what he says to you, verse four. Thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbath, that believe on Christ, I rest. Rest in him, and choose the things that please me. God said, this is my beloved son whom I'm well pleased. He's gathered you to him, he's given you a heart to believe on Christ. He's taking hold of my covenant. Isaiah 42, God said, I'm giving Christ as a covenant to my people. All God's promises are yes and amen in Him. He wrote the covenant in His blood. He is the covenant. You've taken hold of Christ the covenant. This is what God says to you. If that's your case, you believe on Christ your Sabbath. You're resting in Christ the covenant. You're looking at him alone. He says, even to them will I give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Now here's what I saw in that first Samuel. Here's Hannah. Women were not eunuchs, but for all practical purposes, it's the same principle. She couldn't have a child, she's barren. And you know what that meant for a woman, and what it meant for a unit, for a man? Because God had promised the seed of woman is coming. Christ is coming through a woman in Israel. So every man, he wanted that son to carry on his name, but also he was hoping for Christ to come through his through his lineage, and the woman the same. So to not be able to produce a child and to be barren, oh, that was so sorrowful to him. It was, that was so. But Elkanah, Peninnah's like a self-righteous that thinks they got all this fruit. She had all these kids, and so she would just, she was the enemy of Hannah. She would just mock Hannah, because Hannah couldn't have children. And Elkanah, the husband, comes to Hannah. And he says just what the Lord says here. He comes to her and he says, I'm your husband. Christ comes to us and says, I am your husband. Am I not better to you than 10 sons or daughters? Am I not better to you? Listen now, listen. Oh, I wish. I want us to get this, but I would that people that are looking to themselves to bear fruit, I wish they could get this. Christ says to you, when you start seeing how unfruitful you are, and you start saying, I'm a dry tree, the Lord comes to you and he says, look to me, am I not better? than all the fruits you could bear. Am I not all your fruit? Am I not better to you than 10 sons and 10 daughters? Better than anything you could produce, I'm all of it for you. That's what, do you see that in Elkin? I say that to Hannah. I'm your husband, I'm your righteousness, I'm your holiness, I'm your acceptance with God. I'm better than any fruit you could ever want to produce. Oh, brethren. Listen, you become dead to the law by the body of Christ that you should be married to another, even to him that's raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. More than that being fruit in you is that Christ is there representing you as your fruit unto God. When he says in Ephesians 2, you're his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has foreordained that you should walk in them. Christ worked those works, and he comes and gives you faith, and you walk in his works. You trust his works to represent you to God, because God's before ordained. He'll be your fruit to God. And when you're down and looking at yourself and thinking, I'm not bearing any fruit, Christ comes and says, I'm better to you than all the fruits you could bear. I'm your fruit with God. He shall be called the Lord, our righteousness. and she shall be called the Lord our righteousness. So, and then here's his promise to the Gentiles. He's brought you to believe him, he's brought you to unite with his people now. Verse six, he says, the sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord to serve him and love the name of the Lord, to be his servants. Everyone that believes Christ keeps the Sabbath from polluting it. You rest in Christ, I rest. You take hold of Christ the Covenant, even them will I bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar, for mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. Here you got the eunuch and the son of the stranger, both saying we're separated, we're dry trees, and the Lord says, I'm bringing you to my holy mountain. He says, I'm making you joyful in my house of prayer. I'm making you joyful. He's our joy, and he's the one that makes us joy in him. I'll make you joyful in my house of prayer, and your burnt offerings and your sacrifices will be accepted upon my altar. Listen, go with me over to Ephesians 2 again. Here's how all this is so. We saw there in verse 2, As the son of the stranger, you were without Christ. You were aliens from the commonwealth. You were strangers from the covenants of promise. You had no hope without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. What do you think the Lord's gonna say to us when we start looking at the law and we start seeing ourselves as being separated? We build up that middle wall again. And we start saying, I haven't kept that. I'm separated from the Lord's people. The Lord's gonna make you see. I've brought you near. I brought you into my holy mountain by my blood. I took the wall down. Look, he's our peace. He's made both ones, you and Gentile. He's broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances. for the making himself of two, one new man, so making peace. He fulfilled the law for his people and made peace with God for us and made peace between us. He reconciled both to God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby, then he came and preached it to you and revealed that he's your peace. So through him, we both have access by one spirit to the Father. Now you're no more strangers and foreigners. Your fellow citizens were the saint you're the household of God He said don't say I'm separated. I've made you one With God, I made you one with each other. I made you one in me And you're built on him. You're not only brought to his house. You are his house You are his house. He said he said you're fitly framed together by me You're growing as a holy temple in the Lord. You're building together for a habitation of God through the Spirit Look at 1 Peter 2, verse 5. 1 Peter 2, 5. You know, I said to a eunuch and a Gentile, they could not be priests to God. They could not be. They couldn't be kings. They couldn't even, remember when the Lord was in the outer court? That's where the Gentiles were. They couldn't even come into the inner court of the tabernacle. They had to worship, or the temple, they had to stay outside. It's so sad in the South. There's churches that used to have, you know, and I've seen them here too. They got two doors in the front, the women went in one side, the men go another side. They gotta keep that middle wall. You can't be together. That's law, brother, and that's still having that middle wall. The Lord took that down for his people and made us one, but look here. He not only brings you to his house, he makes you the house. Verse five, you are lively stones built up a spiritual house. And not only has he done that, he's made you a priesthood. You're a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Look at verse nine, you're a chosen generation a royal priesthood. Not only are you priests, you're kings. You're a royal priesthood. You're a holy nation. You're a peculiar people that you should show forth. Here's what these spiritual sacrifices are. You shall show forth the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, which in time past were not a people, but now are the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. That's what he said. in our text, that my house be the house of prayer, not sacrifice. I'm gonna bring you to my holy mountain. I've made you one in me by my blood. Remember when he cast those money changers out? They were turning it into a house where they were making money off the people buying a lamp so they could go in and sacrifice. And the Lord said, my house is a house of praise, not a house of making merchandise of people and sacrifices and all of this. Listen, by Christ, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. He said, that'll please you better than a bull or a goat, to praise God. David prayed when he had sinned. He said, Lord, open my lips My mouth shall show forth thy praise, for thou desirest not sacrifices, else I would give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God, listen, you wanna hear what God's pleased with? The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. You know why? Because a broken spirit is trusting Christ only. A broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not, and how, when you come to God praising him, how's that accepted? How's this sacrifice of praise accepted of God? Peter said, accepted through Jesus Christ. Everything, all our acceptance for God is the Lord Jesus Christ. He made us a holy priesthood. He's making us reign, because he's ruling everything on our behalf. And he's made us priests so we can come and actually enter in and praise him and worship him. And even that is represented, is accepted of God by Christ only. So my house, he said, is going to be a house of prayer. My sacrifice is going to be for all my people, all called Jew, Gentile, male, female, rich, poor, educated, uneducated. They're all made equally righteous, equally holy by Christ, by Christ. Lastly, so don't ever forget, don't ever forget this. It's always the Lord doing the gathering. Verse eight, the Lord God which gathers the outcasts of Israel says, yet I will gather others to him beside those that are gathered to him. When we first came to Christ, you know how we came? The Lord gathered us. When you're the son of the stranger, looking at the law, looking at your flesh, looking at your works, and you become like the eunuch and like the son of the stranger, and you say, I'm cut off, I'm separated from the Lord's people, I'm bearing no fruit, I'm not exception of God. When you're in that place right there, who's going to gather you back to Christ? Christ. Christ, and he keeps gathering you back to him. Is that not what he just said? He said, in Isaiah 56, I'll bring you to my holy mountain. He's gonna bring you to his local assembly, and like he brought you here today. If you're here today, and you're here, he brought you here, and if you're hearing the gospel, it's cause he's making you hear the gospel. But the holy mountain he's bringing you to through this, It's him seated at God's right hand. And he's saying, set your affection right here. I'm all your acceptance with God. Quit looking at the law. Quit raising back up that middle wall. Quit looking at your flesh and your fruit. I'm all your fruit with God. I'm all your acceptance with God. And he never stops gathering you to his holy mountain. Ah, brethren, I'm telling you. This is what Paul's saying. If you're risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. Don't be looking on the earth, don't be looking at you, don't be minding your flesh, don't be minding your works, and don't be building that middle wall back up. Paul said in Galatians, when Peter did that, he said, did Christ work that? No, Christ didn't work that. He said, if I build again that middle wall that I claim was taken down, I profess Christ took it down and I'm here, but I build it up again. I just separated from them Gentiles and went over and set these two. I built that wall back up. Christ didn't work that. That means most of what people call sanctification, Christ didn't work it. This thing of saying, stand over there, I'm holier than you, Christ didn't work that. Here's what Christ works. He comes to you when you're saying, Lord, I can't be here. Look at how sinful I am. He put that in your heart to say, I can't, look, I need Christ. He put the need in your heart and he gathers you to him. Set your affection on him and makes you know again and again, he is everything. He is, that's what it means. He's salvation, everything we need. I pray he sets your heart on him. keep us looking to Him and looking only to Him rather. All right, amen.