Alright brethren, let's turn
in our Bibles to Isaiah 38. My mom and dad said to send you
their greetings. I can assure you that for those
of you that correspond with my mother, if you get an email from
her or a Facebook message from her, I wish you knew how difficult
it is to send an email or to do anything on a computer there. They have the worst internet
reception. So if you get an email from her
or some sort of correspondence with her, that's something because
it's hard. I mean, they're a step away from
smoke signals down there. Let's go to Isaiah 38, Isaiah
chapter 38. In those days was Hezekiah sick
unto death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son
of Amos, came unto him and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord,
set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live. about two weeks ago, I was flying
back from Mexico. And when I was in the Houston
airport, I got to my gate, I called my dad, like I normally do, and
just called him to chat like we normally do. And I was talking
to him, and he told me that he just come from the doctor. And,
and he told me he had colon cancer. And I began to look it up on my computer
to see what that meant. And I was shaken
by it. I was shaken by it. I was shaken
by it so much that I was at my gate and I sat right there and
watched Watched folks get on the plane, watched the door shut,
watched the plane pull away. And totally missed my flight.
And didn't even, it didn't dawn on me it was my flight. I'm sitting
right there looking at it. But my mind was a million miles
from there. And I got to thinking about,
you know, that's not even me that's getting this news, it's
my dad. And I thought about, what's it like to get that kind
of news? You don't ever know what it will
be like when you get it. And we have lots of friends,
lots of family that have gotten that news. I had my grandfather
when he found out his cancer came back. It was all over him.
He said his hands just trembled uncontrollably. This was a believer.
He said his hands just began to tremble. That's what Hezekiah
said. He said, I began to chatter like
a crane and a swallow. He said, I just You know, what
do you do when you think about it? You get the news that, set
thine house in order, and you shall die and not live. Think
about getting that kind of news. And you know, the truth of the
matter is, it's what I tell you when I stand here and preach
to you all the time. Set your house in order, because you shall
die and not live. It's what we hear, what we know
is so. You shall die and not live. None
of us know when we may get that news from a physician. You don't
know. It doesn't matter how old you
are. It doesn't matter how young you are. When I was in college,
my best friend and I had plans for the weekend. We were young
and healthy and strong and had all our lives ahead of us. And
he went to the doctor that Monday and found out he had cancer.
And so when the weekend came, instead of going out and doing
our plans, he was in the hospital, having all his lymph nodes taken
out. And I sat and watched this young man, who's strong and healthy,
just wither down to where he couldn't even get out of bed,
to nothing. You just don't know. My house
and your house is a dying house. It's a dying house. Sin causes
us to die the moment we are born. We begin to die. You know, you
can't control it. You can eat right, you can exercise,
you can use these anti-aging products and all this. You can't
control this. It's inevitable. You just see
your skin begin to deteriorate. Your mind becomes forgetful.
Your bones become weak. Your muscles are weaker than
they were. You can't control it. Our house
is slowly, slowly, it's a house of dust and it's slowly, slowly
going back to the dust. My house and your house, our
life and our body belongs to God and can He not do with it
what He will? He spoke it into existence. And
the reason right now that we have life and it's held in existence
is because God holds it in existence. The only reason that you and
I, He gives us food to eat. And then when you eat food, the
only reason that that food nourishes your body is because God makes
it nourish your body. I've seen people who would eat.
They didn't do a thing for their body. and they just withered
away and died. Everything's under God's control.
The little cancer cell, it's under His control. Whatever other
little disease it is that's so tiny you can't see it, that's
all under His control. He controls everything and God
can do with us what He will. The only thing He has to do is
turn His hand from maintaining our mortal bodies and we're going
to perish. He just takes the breath from
you and that's it. That's it. You shall die. You can put that out of your
mind, you can try to make excuses, but you're going to die. You're
not going to live. What caused that? Why is that?
It's because of sin. That's what it is. And you can
deny you're a sinner all you want to. Your body, every day,
says, you're lying. You look in the mirror, watch
your hair fall out, watch your skin wrinkle, and your body's
saying, you're lying. You're a sinner and you're going
to die. That's just so. When we ignore God's warning,
We're rebelling against God. Listen to this from Isaiah 1-2,
How so? Because we don't give God an ear, we don't give God
a heart, we don't give God Our body and our spirit, we don't
turn and submit ourselves to God. We take everything He gives
and just go on like this world was made just for me. And everything
I've got, I've got by my hand. And I'm waking up today and I'm
going to live today like I lived yesterday and I'm going to do
it tomorrow. Never knowing that you might be on the edge of a
cliff and tomorrow you might step right off. And it'll be
the end. And then you're in eternity.
And you're before that one you're ignoring. And that one that you're
puffing at. And that one that you're boasting
that you don't have anything to do with. Really and truly,
think about it. You're going to die. And you're
going to stand before God. We're going to stand right before
God. It don't matter how much we think
God don't exist. It doesn't matter how we try
to deny Him and boast about all the things men boast about, we're
going to die and stand before God. That's inevitable. You ever owned a dog that wouldn't
heed any of your commands? I had a dog one time. He wouldn't
do anything I told him to do. When I tried to feed him, he'd
try to bite me. If you let him out, he'd take
off and you'd have to spend all day trying to get him back. He
just was a wild, good-for-nothing mutt is what he was. What do
you do with a dog like that? You get rid of them. They're
not good for anything. Listen to this. The sinner that
won't consider that he owes everything to God, the sinner who will not
look into God's Word, the sinner who will not hear God's Gospel,
the sinner who rejects Christ, God's own Son, he's worse than
a beast. Absolutely worse than a sorry,
disobedient beast. Right after God said, I've raised
up these children and they've rebelled against Me, He tells
us how. Listen to this from Isaiah 1.3. He said, The ox knows his
owner. The ox knows his owner. And the
ass his master's crib. But My people does not consider. They don't know Me. They don't
even consider me. That means we're worse than a
beast by nature. The ox is better than us. The
ass is better than us by nature. That's what he's saying. That's
our rebellion. He said in Jeremiah 8, 7, the
stork in the heaven knows her appointed time. A duck will live
in the north and it starts getting time, winter starts coming, starts
feeling the cold, he knows it's time to fly south and he goes
south. He said, the turtle and the crane and the swallow, all
these migrating birds, they know when it's time to go and they
know their time and they go. They observe the time of their
coming, it said. But my people, they don't know
the judgment of the Lord. I know we think we're wise. We've
built some tall buildings and we've come a long way in technology
and all these things. And God in heaven says, by not
acknowledging God, and seeking God, and seeking to know Christ,
and to find out how to set your house in order. He said, you're
dumber than a bird. Dumber than a bird. We've heard
God use His preacher to declare repeatedly, Thus saith the Lord,
set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live.
You've heard me say that. You've heard me preach this over
and over and over. I guarantee you if you went to
the doctor tomorrow and he told you that news, you'd act like
you've never heard it before. Why? Why do we do that? It's
because it doesn't happen to us right now we think, oh, we've
got plenty of time. That's why God says don't seek
the times, don't seek the seasons of Christ's return. If we knew
when Christ was coming again, you know what we'd do? We'd put
it off. We procrastinate knowing Him
and seeking Him and following Him until right up to the last
minute. He says, set your house in order
now. Because you are going to die,
you are not going to live. And this life is not the end.
We are going to spend eternity somewhere. We are going to glorify
God for His grace, for saving us by His pure grace. Or we are
going to glorify God in His justice. because we rebelled against Him
and He justly punished us. But either way, we're going to
glorify God. Every day He's going to bow to
Christ. Every day He's going to confess
He's Lord. I want to do it in grace, don't you? I don't want
to do it in judgment. I want to do it in grace. Some
of you are already making plans for where you're going to spend
the spring and summer. You're already laying out those
plans and getting ready and planning all of that. Some have spent
their lives preparing for where they're going to spend their
retirement. And God says this, you don't even know what will
be tomorrow. Your life's a vapor. It appears for a little time
and it vanishes away. And we all know, God says, thou
shalt die, not thee. And who's preparing for eternity? That's a little bit more important
than where we're going to spend summer vacation. That's a little
bit more important than thinking of how we're going to spend our
so-called golden years. My dad's going to spend his golden
years getting chemotherapy. You just think about it, you
who are sons and daughters. If you found out your father
or your mother received news like this from a physician, that
they had cancer, Would it give you some hope and
make you feel more comfortable to know that they had spent their
time wisely and had set their house in order and they have
a good hope in Christ and they know Him? Would that make you
feel better? Would that comfort you? It does
me. It does me. Because that person
is going to spend eternity with Christ. Why don't we believe God? Why
don't we believe that God is real and heaven is real? Why
don't we believe that? This earth is real. Everything
about it is real. He created it. We see the things that He says
are and that He does. We see those things come to pass
and try to act like it's just all chance. Isn't that ignorance?
that we would want something in this world to be held by chaos,
and chance, and luck, and all these things, rather than God
actually doing it, and ordering it, and working all this sin
of men, and this rebellion of men, and the murder, and all
the things that men do in this earth, that to know God's ruling
over it and going to bring good out of it. It's an upside down
man. who would say, I'd rather it
just be all by chance. And then at the same time say,
well, I don't see how a good God could let bad things happen
like this. He says to you and me now, set your house in order. We ought
to be praying. Lord, teach us to number our
days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. You know He has to
teach us that. He has to teach us to number
our days. To realize that the wise thing to do is to apply
our hearts to Christ who is wisdom. He has to teach us to do that.
Otherwise, I preach this message right now to go in your ear and
out the other. Till you meet that physician, that earthly
physician that says, you're going to die. You'll believe Him. You'll believe Him. Christ is the great physician.
He's the great physician. He came to where His people are
and He healed His people. He put away our sin. It was a
legal matter. This whole matter is a legal
matter. It's a matter of justice. We broke the law and we were
sentenced to to life in prison, to the death penalty. We broke
the law and Christ came and undid it. He came and He put away our
sin. He came and He made us so that
we've obeyed the law. He made His people so that God
has no remembrance of our sin. And God comes to us and says,
now you're righteous, you're holy, I don't remember your sin
anymore. I can receive you now. And that's the only way God can
receive us. And that's what Christ has done. And then He comes and
He speaks in power. And He does it while this gospel
is being preached. I pray He'll do it today. I know some of you don't like
what I preach. I know you don't like my gospel.
I know there's always some in the congregation delight because
God's already been gracious to them. And there's some that He's
left to themselves that they just hate it. They don't want
to have, they wouldn't be here if they didn't have to be here.
I pray for those that don't know Him that God would come today
and speak in power through this Word. And here's what He'll say.
He's not going to say this audibly. You're not even going to realize
what's going on. But what He's doing is He's working this in
us. He's working this. If thou will
diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God and will
do that which is right in His sight. That's what He tells you. And you begin to hearken to His
voice. You begin to hear that word and you begin to say, that
seems like that would be the wise thing to do. He's hearkened
to the voice of God. and do what he says is right.
And then you find yourself with an interest. What does he say
is right? He's got to show you first you're
going to die. He's got to convince you of that. He's got to persuade
you of that. He's got to show you you cannot save yourself. When a man finds out he's got
cancer, that's when the man realizes, I can't do anything to heal myself. I'm going to have to do what
that physician tells me to do. Because otherwise, this is it. And so, when the great physician
comes and he says, now, you're going to die and persuade you
of that, then he makes you to listen to him, say, now, if you'll
diligently hearken to me, I'm wisdom. Now, I'm going to tell
you how you can be saved. And if you diligently hearken
to me and do that which I tell you is right, that will heal
you, you'll be saved. And this is what he does in our
heart. This is how, it's just like a doctor sitting you down
and saying to you, and making it so real to you, and showing
you the reports, and showing you the tests and everything,
to where you're persuaded, this is so. He's not making this up.
That's what God does spiritually in our hearts. To where you see,
He's not making this up. This is real. This is true. And then He tells you this. What's
His will? What's right in His sight? He
says, this is the work of God. You've been trying to do things.
You've been trying to work out a righteousness. You've been
trying to save yourself. This is the work of God, that you
believe on Him whom He has sent. You see, this is the greatest
thing. This is the thing that no sinner can do, is nothing. We can't do that. Try to give
somebody something. Just try to randomly give somebody
something. It's almost impossible. They're
going to try to pay you for it some way. And if they don't get
you to receive it then, they're going to bring it to your house
later. But they're going to try to pay you for it. We don't want
things for free. He says, believe. That's the
diametric opposite of working. Stop working. believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ. And he says this, this is the
will of Him that sent me, that everyone which sees the Son and
believes on Him may have everlasting life. He's free because Christ
paid it all. He can have it and I'll raise
Him up at the last day. Has Christ made you willing?
Has He spoken this to you and convinced you that you're a sinner?
Has He made you see that the right thing is to believe on
Him? That's the only way? That's the narrow way? That's
the only way of salvation is believing on the Lord Jesus?
Then He speaks in our heart and He says, If thou will give ear
to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I'll put none
of these diseases upon thee." He's not just talking about earthly
diseases. You may get an earthly disease.
He's saying this, those that I've brought upon the Egyptians,
blindness of heart, blindness of mind, arrogance and pride
and haughtiness and that self-will and that self-righteousness and
that self-sanctification so that they think they are the self-maiden
man. That's what they think. That's
a disease that God, He just leaves men to themselves. He brings
that disease upon them. He said, you hearken to me and
I won't put that disease on you. And I tell you this, if you can
hearken to Him, He's made a new man that don't have that disease.
And he says this, because I'm the Lord that healeth thee. I'm
the Lord that healeth thee. Many young people have thought,
oh, I'll seek the Lord. I'll just wait till I get older.
I used to think that. I used to think, you know, why
do that now? Because I like to sin. I enjoy
it. Why stop doing any of that? That's
not going to be any fun. I'm young, I need to kick up
my heels, and when I get older, then I can become an old narrow-minded
fuddy-duddy. But while I'm young, I'm gonna
just have fun and enjoy it. You know how many people have
thought they would do that and never saw their older years? Go to the graveyard sometime
and just walk around in there. See how many graves you find
that are a foot long, two feet long, three feet long. Look at
the dates on the headstones and see how many there are that died
young, young, young. He says, Remember now, thy Creator,
in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the
years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.
He says now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation.
Our sins completely separated us from God that He wouldn't
hear us. Men hate the doctrine of election. Let me tell you
what the doctrine of election is. The doctrine of election,
let's say this is the world right here. This is the world. And
here we are, sinned against God, hating God, want to have nothing
to do with God whatsoever. And every one of us, if God had
left us there, we would have died and perished, and God would
have been just to do it. You take a prison, you got a
whole prison full of men. They're all guilty. Every one
of them is guilty. Is it wrong to go in there and
say, I'm going to take this one, and that one, and that one, and
that one. And I'm going to complete, I'm
going to pardon You ever heard anybody, you ever
heard one of those prisoners yelling, that's not fair. The
president shouldn't do that. It's not fair. He shouldn't pardon
me. That's not fair to the rest of these inmates. Election opens the door to heaven. Election made it so some of us
could be saved. And if we're all guilty, cannot
God do with His own what He will? Can He not Say, I'm going to
save you. I tell you when you stop hating
that doctrine, is when you find God saying it to you, that you're
the one He's going to save. That's when you'll say, that's
a good doctrine. That's a good doctrine. When
you see you can't save yourself, and you see that if God hadn't
chosen you, you wouldn't have chosen Him, That's when you find
out, I'm glad He did the choosing. I'm glad He did the choosing.
Are you one of that number? It's a multitude no man can number. It's a huge multitude of people. Are you one of them? He said right now, the Lord's
near. He's sending forth His gospel
right now. That means the Lord's near. If His Word's going forth
in truth, He's near. And I will tell you something,
He's nearer to you than He is to people out here running the
roads that aren't hearing Him and don't even care. He's a lot nearer to you. He's
brought the Gospel to you. You ever wonder why that happened?
You ever look back at your life and wonder all these churches
you were in and the course you went and all this, and you ended
up here in this firehouse with this Word being preached to you?
Have you ever wondered why that happened? God did it. God did it. And He did it for a reason. He
did it on purpose. He did it for a people He's going
to save. What I'm saying to you is, Have
you ever thought about, maybe I'm one of them? Maybe I am one
of them. He's calling those He's loved
from everlasting. He said, I'm going to give them
a heart to know Me, that I'm the Lord, and they'll be My people,
and I'll be their God, and they shall return unto Me with their
whole heart. He gives you that whole heart.
Our heart by nature is sick. He gives you a whole heart. a
holy heart that's well, that's healed, that's whole, that He
made holy. And when He's given you that
new heart, He says to you, if you'll seek Me, you'll find Me. And He says, and when you search
for Me with all your heart, He don't take anything less than
all that heart. It's the heart He's made whole.
And He's not going to take it wavering between, well, I kind
of want to come to God, but I really want to go with the world. No. He says, you're going to have
to seek me. You're going to have to leave the world in that heart
and come to me with your whole heart saying, this is it Lord.
I'm in. I'm all in. All my eggs are in
one basket. This is it right here. He says,
then you'll find me. Then you'll find me. He'll never
make you to see you found him if you're waving between two
opinions. That's a double-minded man. He's unstable in all his
ways. You'll never know him. Never know him. He says, Seek
ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he's near.
He said, I love them that love me, and those that seek me early
shall find me. And as you hear this gospel week
in and week out, please understand this. Please understand this.
Do not ever imagine Do not ever imagine that there's some qualification
that you have to arrive at before you can come to Christ. Don't
imagine that. That's not true. That is not
true. You see, the Lord said, I didn't
come to call the righteous. I came to call sinners to repentance. And if we think that, well, I
just need to get a little better, then I can come to Him. I need
to learn a little more, then I can come to Him. I need to
get this or that, then I can come to Him. That disqualifies
you to come to Him. Because you think you have some
qualification that makes Him receive you. You've got to come
a leper that can't be healed any other way but Him. You've
got to come You've got to come so sick and so with a blood issue
that no other physician could heal. Nobody can do anything
about it. It just gets worse and worse
and worse. And come to Him with that heart saying, if I could
just touch the hem of His garment, I'll be whole. You've got to
come to Him with a heart that says, Lord, if You just throw
me a crumb off Your table, I'll be well. That's a heart that
believes He can really do it. He can save me. He is the only
one that can save me. That's what He's saying. Come
to Me with your whole heart. Come to Me with your whole heart.
Come alone to Him alone. And don't come any other way
but in your heart. Don't come to a preacher. Don't
come down a hallway. He says here, set thine house
in order. That means a preacher can't do
it for you and a priest can't do it for you. You have to do
it. It means set thine house in order. It means mom and dad
can't do it for you. And they must not try to do it
for you. Only you can do this. You are responsible to come to
Christ yourself and bow down to kiss His feet and say, Lord,
if you will, you can make me whole. Set thine house in order. You know if you rent a house,
it's a dishonest man that rents a house, tears it up, and returns
it to the landlord in that shape. That's a dishonest man. An honest
man wants to return that house to the landlord better than the
way he found it. where God's the landlord in your
house. You've torn it up. He's the only
one that can repair it. He's the only one that can make
it whole. He says, come to me. Christ said, come to me. I'll
make it whole. And then when you turn it, when you return
it to God, it'll be better than the way you received it. Eternally redeemed, eternally
well, unable to fall, unable to sin, unable to fall away again. Because Christ has made it that
way. He's the only one that can do it. The only one that can
do it. There's going to come a day when
it'll be too late though. Look at Luke 13. I'm going to
end with this. Luke 13. I got a couple of scriptures
I want you to read. There's going to come a day when
it's too late. Luke 13, 25. The Lord said this. Verse 24, "...strive to enter
in at the straight gate. For many, I say unto you, will
seek to enter in and shall not be able. When once the master
of the house is risen up..." He's the master of the house.
"...and once he's risen up and has shut the door, and you begin
to stand without and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord,
open to us. And he'll answer and say unto
you, I don't know you from which you are." Then shall you begin
to say, well, we've eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou
hast taught in our streets. Preacher, Lord, I sat there and
heard that preacher preach your name. I was there. I came to
the surface. That's all you did, though. You
just came to the surface. You didn't cast your care on
him. You didn't believe on him. He says, but he'll say, I tell
you, I don't know you from which you are. Depart from me, all
you workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing
of teeth when you shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the
prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. Look over now at 2 Corinthians
5. Listen to this, though. This
is true of those that set their house in order. This is true
of those who diligently looked into His Word and who went to
Him and prayed and said, Lord, help me to see You, help me to
know You. And by His grace alone, by faith,
by a new heart that He gave, they came to Him and cast their
care on Him. And this is what's true of them.
2 Corinthians 5, verse 1. We know that if our earthly house
of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, that
God built, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Look at verse 5. Now he that
hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given
unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore, we're always confident,
knowing that whilst we're at home in the body, we're absent
from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by
sight. We're confident, I say, and willing,
rather, to be absent from the body and to be present with the
Lord." Are you willing to be absent from this body to be present
with the Lord? You see, when the believer comes
to that time when the doctor says, Set your house in order,
you're going to die, you're not going to live. He's sad because he doesn't want
to, he wants to see his children grow up, he wants to see his
grandchildren grow up. He's sad because he loves his
wife, loves his family and things. But in his heart, there's a willingness. This is alright. I'm going to
be with my Lord. I'm going to be with my Lord.
I'm going to tell you something. That's what it's about. That's
why we're here. We're here to set our house in
order. Because we're going to die and not live, not in this
house. But then, in that house not made
with hands, we're going to live. We're going to live. You know
he called all these things right here foolish things. Paul said,
he said faith and hope, he said these things are foolish things.
The gospel, preaching of the gospel is a foolish thing. It's
a foolish thing. To God this is like child's play. This is just like toys to a little,
you who are grown looking at a baby playing with toys. That's
what these things are. He said when we grow up, When
we pass, put off this body of flesh and we depart, our departure
is at hand. And we depart to be with the
Lord. We're going to put away these childish things. Then,
we're going to start living like a man. That's right. I pray God will make you come
to Him and set your house in order. I pray He'll do that. Amen. Let's stand together, brethren. Father, we pray You bless Your
Word. Only You can. Make us tremble, Lord, not because
our physical house is fading away. Make us tremble because
we see we need Christ. Make us tremble, Lord, and drive
us to Him. We pray it for your honor and
glory, in Christ's name, amen.