Alright brethren, let's turn
now to Isaiah chapter 51. Isaiah 51. We see the craziness going on in this world
and we hear the news and we read the papers and we become fearful
in our hearts and so we pray to the Lord. I get up Sunday
mornings, and I'm finishing up, looking over my notes and things,
and I pray to the Lord. Usually I pray on the way over
here, on the ride over. Then I get here, and we have
the men's meeting in the back, and we pray in the back. We get
up here to preach, and we pray two times in the first hour,
and we pray two, three more times in the second hour. I go home. I thank the Lord for giving the
message and for praying He'll bless it then. And we just continually
pray. And a believer lives in a life
of continual prayer. Wouldn't it be good if we could
hear the Lord answer our prayer? We could hear Him answer us.
Well, that's what we can do today, right here in our message. We
can hear Him in our text. We can hear the Lord answer.
That's what the title is, Prayer Answered. Remember last time
we saw the prayer of the saints here? Now we're going to hear
the answer. Today, this is our Mediator, Christ. He's taken
it to the Father, our prayer to the Father, and then He's
returning the prayer and answering it to us now. Here He is speaking
to us. He's answering us. First of all,
this will be our divisions. We see our Savior reminds us
that God's our Comforter and He's our Creator. Verse 12, Isaiah
51, 12. I, even I am he that comforteth
you. Who art thou that thou shouldest
be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the Son of Man which
shall be made as grass? And forgettest the Lord thy Maker
that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations
of the earth, and hast feared continually every day because
of the fury of the oppressor, as if he were ready to destroy.
And where is the fury of the oppressor? And secondly, our
Savior reminds us God is the Lord of hosts. Verse 14, he says,
The captive exile hasteneth that he may be loosed, and that he
should not die in the pit, nor that his bread should fail. But
I'm the Lord thy God that divided the sea whose waves roared. The
Lord of hosts is his name. And then thirdly, our Savior
reminds us His purpose in all things is our salvation. Verse
16, And I've put my words in thy mouth, and I've covered thee
in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and
lay the foundations of the earth, and say in design, Thou art my
people. Now that's the answer to that
prayer that we saw last time in Isaiah 51. There's prayer
answered. The answer Christ gives from
the Father into our hearts is to correct us and to remind us
that His very purpose for creating this world and for everything
that comes to pass in it is our everlasting salvation. First
of all, we see here Christ, our Mediator, reminds us that God
is our Comforter. He's our all-powerful Creator.
Verse 12, He says, I, even I am He that comforteth you. Christ
is our comforter, and He reminds us, He comforts us by consoling
us with His consolation, and God's our comforter. He's our
Creator. He reminds us God shall continue
to comfort us. Back up there in verse 3, He
said, The Lord shall comfort Zion. The Lord shall comfort
Zion. He'll comfort all her waste places. The Lord will do that. Over in
Isaiah 66, verse 13, He says, As one whom his mother comforteth.
so I will comfort you." You should be comforted in Jerusalem. And
He comforts us. Look over at 2 Corinthians chapter
1. He comforts us for a reason.
Look over there, 2 Corinthians 1 verse 4. Verse 3, He's called the Father
of mercies and the God of all comfort. And then he says, verse
4, "...who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may
be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort
wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings
of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by
Christ." That's what he does so we can console our brethren.
He promised us, brethren, he said, I will not leave you comfortless. I will comfort you. I'll come
to you. So be comforters one of another. That's what we're
to do for one another. The preacher has a commission
from the Lord in Isaiah 41. He said, Comfort ye, comfort
ye my people. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem. Tell her that her warfare is
accomplished, that the Lord has rewarded her double for all her
iniquity. So we're to comfort one another.
And I'll tell you this, when you comfort your brethren, as
you comfort your brethren, the Lord comforts you. He gives you
great comfort to hear yourself saying the words of comfort.
will comfort your own heart, too. He'll comfort you. So the
Lord then asks us a question. He's going to correct us some,
too, now. We've prayed and asked Him, then He comes and He corrects
us. This is what He speaks in our heart. This is what He does,
not audibly, but what He does in our heart. He says there in
verse 12, Who art thou that thou shouldest be afraid of a man
that shall die, and of the Son of Man which shall be made as
grass? Man's not one to fear. Man's
not one to fear. Look at Isaiah 40. Look over
there, Isaiah chapter 40. The voice said, cry. And he said,
what shall I cry? Isaiah 40 verse six. What shall
I cry? He said, all flesh is grass.
And the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The
grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord
bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass. The
grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall
stand forever. Back over there in Isaiah 51
and verse 7, He said after He declared to us that His gospel
is going to go forth, and as long as He's got a people in
the earth, He's going to hold His people and keep His people
so that gospel can go forth. And after He declared that, He
said this in verse 7, Isaiah 51 7, Harken unto Me, ye that
know righteousness, the people in whose heart is My law, fear
ye not the reproach of men, Neither be ye afraid of their revilings,
for the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and a worm shall
eat them like wool. But my righteousness shall be
forever, and my salvation from generation to generation. What
are some ways that you and I fear man? What are some ways we fear
man? You take a young believer, they're
out with a group of friends, and the group wants to do something
that's not honoring to that believer's Savior. But you become fearful
that if you speak up, say, stop the car, I want to get out. Or
if you say, I don't want to do this. Or if you say, let me call
home and have somebody come get me. You become fearful because
you're afraid of what they're going to say about you. That's
fear in man. That's fear in man. The Lord
says, who art thou that thou shouldest be afraid of a man
that shall die? You're the Lord's people. The
Lord's. The Lord is your God and your comforter and your keeper.
He said, why are you fearing a man? Somebody, you're sitting
at work with your co-workers and you're eating lunch and maybe
the boss comes in or something and he's sitting there and he
says something that's not right. He says something that's blasphemous
against your God. But you fear to speak up and
say something because you're fearful that, well, this is going
to hurt me in my job. It's going to hurt my You know,
my relationship here with my boss, that's fearing man. The
Lord said, who? He said, who are you? Who are
you that you should fear a man? Say somebody comes and they hear
the gospel and they sit and they hear for a while and they know
they're hearing the truth. But somebody else in the family,
they don't like it. Somebody else in the family,
they don't come and they say, I'm not going there. So that
person stops coming too. That's fearing a man. That's
fearing a man. Maybe it's something worse than
that. Maybe it's something more fierce than that. One time some
men took Peter and John, they threw them in prison and they
commanded them. They said, don't speak in his name anymore. Peter
and John said, whether it's right in the sight of God to hearken
to you more than God, you judge. Well, we can't help but speak
the things we've seen and heard. We have to speak the truth. And
our Lord is telling us here, who are you? Who are you that
you should fear a man? Those days are coming again,
you know, the days whenever the church is going to be persecuted.
I've showed you this before, tried to show you last time,
that it's always the pattern, it's bondage before deliverance.
Bondage before deliverance. Pharaoh bound Israel before God
came and delivered them out of that bondage. And here Babylon
bound Israel before the Lord came and delivered them out of
that bondage. And you had the elect bound in Jerusalem when
the Lord came and delivered them out in person. So that's always
the pattern, bondage then deliverance. And it's coming. The Lord has
said, He said clearly in His Word that perilous times shall
come. And before He returns, times
are going to get bad. This church is going to be persecuted.
We've never borne persecution. We don't know what that's like.
But it's coming. That time is coming. Now you
can see it. You can just almost see it now
in the laws and things that's being passed. That day's coming. And those that don't have root
in themselves now to stand with us, surely won't stand with us
then when there's true persecution in this earth. They won't then.
What are we going to do when things get worse and worse and
worse? What do we do when men reproach us and revile us? What
do we do when that happens? cling to Christ, up close to
Christ. We watched this Nature Channel
the other day and there was a helicopter and they were filming from up
in the helicopter looking down and they were filming some buffalo. That was the subject they were
filming and these wolves would come up and they would chase
these buffalo and the buffalo would just take off running and
the buffalo would have these little newborns, you know, that
just couldn't get around very good, couldn't run very fast.
And these wolves just run them. They just run them across these
prairies until they can just tire them down, you know, and
get that little calf separated from its mother. And that calf
would just hug right up, I mean get up to where she's touching.
that mother buffalo. And you'd see them, they'd run
through some trees, and you'd lose sight of them, and you'd
think, well, I bet that wolf got them when they got in those
trees. And then they'd come out the other side of those trees,
and that little calf would still be just, she'd just be up tight
on that mother. And they'd get them and circle
them, you know, and they'd get to nipping at their heels and things,
and the mother would be going after the wolves, you know, and
every way she'd turn, that little calf would turn with her and
just stay right, I mean, right up against her. That's how we're
going to be protected from the wolf. Stay up, cling to Christ. Cling to Him. Cling with His
people, under His Gospel, in His Word. Cling to Him. Cling
to Him in prayer. Christ reminds us not only is
God our Comforter, He says here, but our Savior is God, our all-powerful
Creator. That's why we cling to Him. Look
at verse 13. He said, why do you fear man? And then he says
to us, and forget us the Lord thy maker, that stretched forth
the heavens, that laid the foundations of the earth, and has feared
continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor,
as if he were ready to destroy. And where's the fury of the oppressor?
Where's he going to get that power to destroy you?" He said.
Our Maker stretched forth the heavens. He laid the foundations
of the earth. Our Maker, I've read that to
you in Isaiah 40 where it says that He meted out heaven with
a span. And I've told you, the span is from the tip of your
finger right here to the tip of your thumb. And you take that
little, you take your computer, and you open that window, you
know, like that, and you span like that, and you open that
window. That's how the Lord created. He just did like that and it
opened up. He just spread it out. That's
a big hand. That's a mighty hand, a mighty
powerful hand. It says, He stretched out heavens
as a curtain. Just like that. He just stretched
them out, spread them out. and made them like a tent for
us to dwell in, like raising up a tent in your backyard where
you can just get in it. That's how He just made everything.
That's our God. That's who He is. And He said
the inhabitants of the earth to Him are grasshoppers. There's
no reason to be afraid. He made everything for Himself.
He even made the wicked for the day of evil. He made them. We just saw early in the first
hour, He said, I raised you up, Pharaoh, for this very purpose.
I raised you up to show My power, to make My name known to My people.
So he created the wicked for the day of evil, even the oppressor.
So he asked us, he said, why are you fearing continually because
of the fury of the oppressor as if he's got power to destroy
you, as if he's going to be able to do anything to you? Where's
the fury of the oppressor, he said? Where's Pharaoh? They dumped him in the sea. Where's the king of Babylon?
He put him down. Where's the Pharisee? Where's
the scribe? Where's the disputer of this
world? He's put him down. He's made him nothing. Look at
Isaiah 54. Isaiah 54. And just like He spread out that
heaven and that earth, and just like He laid the foundation of
this earth, That's what He's done by His redemption. That's what He's done by His
blood. He's created the new heavens and the new earth by His blood,
by His redemption. That's what He's doing. But look
here at Isaiah 54, look at verse 5. Verse 5. He says, Thou Maker
is Thine husband. Thine husband. The Lord of hosts
is His name. And Thou Redeemer, the Holy One
of Israel. The God of the whole earth shall
He be called. That's who our Redeemer is, brethren.
Our Redeemer, our Maker is our Husband. The Lord of hosts is
His name. When it says Lord of hosts, it
means He controls everything. The hosts of armies, the hosts
of, like He called the flies. in Egypt, and they just came.
He called locusts and they just came. He's the host. He's the Lord of hosts of everything. Now look down at verse 16. He said, look at the end there,
I have created the waster to destroy. Does that scare you
that He created the waster, the one that's doing the wasting
and doing the destroying? He made him. He said, I made
him. Should that scare me and you who are his people? No, look
at the next verse. No weapon that is formed against
you shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against
thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the inheritance of the
servants of the Lord. Their righteousness is of me,
saith the Lord. You see, he's going to protect
his people. We vainly imagine, this is what we think, this is
why we don't speak up when we have opportunity to, when we're
speaking to somebody who's in charge or who's a ruler or something
like that. We vainly imagine that our judgment
is in their hand. We imagine that our judgment's
in their hand. So we don't speak of the one
in whose hand we really are. We don't speak of him because
we're fearing this little man who we think our judgment's in
his hand. Listen to Proverbs 29, 26. Many
seek the ruler's favor, but every man's judgment comes from the
Lord. You see, speaking the truth is always better. The Lord just
might bust his heart wide open. And the Lord might just call
him by his grace. And the man thank you and say,
that's the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Thank
you for telling me. Thank you for speaking the truth to me.
Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after have no more
than they can do. But I'll forewarn you of who
you shall fear. Fear him which after he's killed
hath no power to cast him to hell. I say unto you, fear him."
That's what the Lord said. He's talking about God. Fear
God. You know, this is true. You that have never cast your
care into the hand of my Lord and the hand of my Savior, you
listen to me just a minute. You know why you haven't? You
fear men. You fear men. You fear what men
are going to say. That's one of the reasons. But
that's true. You fear men. You fear what men are going to
say. You're afraid that your friends or your family or somebody
like that is going to revile you and reproach you. And they
will. They will. But the Lord says, who are you
to fear man? You take some man, he's up in
years, and his mother's up in years, and he believes the Lord,
but he won't confess her in baptism because he's afraid he's going
to offend his mama. He's going to offend her. If
you believe the Lord, don't fear men. Confess Him. Confess Him
publicly in baptism. It may be the Lord uses your
public stand with Christ to help that loved one and to speak into
their heart. It may be. Alright, that's the
first thing He does. He comforts us and He corrects
us. He comforts us and corrects us.
Then secondly, Christ our Savior reminds us that our God is the
Lord of hosts. Look at verse 14. He says, the
captive exile, that's what we are. We get into captivity. He
hasteneth that he may be loosed. He's anxious to be loosed, to
be freed. That he should not die in the
pit, in the prison, nor that his bread should fail. That he
starve to death. But I'm the Lord thy God, he
said, that divided the sea, whose waves roared. The Lord of hosts
is his name. You take a man, he gets into
captivity. He comes into captivity. And
this is how we come forth. We come into this world captive,
like I told you this morning. You sinners sitting here now,
you're captive. You're in bondage. You're under
the power of the prince of the air. You're in bondage. If our
gospel be hid, it's hid to them that are lost. whose minds have
been blinded by the God of this world. You're in prison, you're
in captivity, you're in a pit. You're without God, you're without
Christ, and you're without hope in this world. That's where you're
sitting now. And you and I as believers, we
get in captivity too. Last night driving home, I just
had this worst fit of of just fear come over me. I started
talking to Melinda, just to tell her how I just feel like a complete
and utter hypocrite to try to speak in God's name. And we get
that way. But here's the problem is, when
we get that way, when we see something about our sin, and
we start trying to hasten to deliver ourselves, we start trying
to hasten to make sure that we don't die in the pit, to make
sure that we can provide bread for ourselves, and we try to
save ourselves, that's worse. That's a worse condition. That's
a worse bondage. And He says to us here, I'm the
Lord thy God. I'm the one who divides the sea.
I'm the one whose waves roared. The Lord of hosts is His name.
That's what He said. You who have been born of the
Spirit of God, He says here, I'm the Lord thy God. I'm the Lord thy God. That's
what He said. I'm the Lord thy God. And some
of you sitting here who never believed on Him, it might just
be today that He's speaking into your heart and He's telling you,
I'm the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God. I'm your God,
He said. That's what He said. And he's
the only one that can save. He's telling us he's the only
one that can save. We cannot save ourselves. It
does no good to put our hand to the work and try to save ourselves,
to try to reform our lives and make things better. We can worry
and fret and go around and be frowning all the time and worried
that we're going to just fall off the face of the planet. It
won't do any good. It won't do any good. We got
no power in ourselves to save ourselves whatsoever. None. None. But He has all power. He's the
Lord of hosts. Christ Jesus came into this world
and He walked this earth and He fulfilled all righteousness
for His people. He came, just like He said, I
raised Pharaoh up for this purpose, God raised Him up for that purpose.
He raised Christ up in the earth and raised Him up to show us,
here's my righteousness, here's my love, here's my justice, here's
my longsuffering, here's my forgiveness, here's Here's who I am, God said. And Christ walked this earth
and He fulfilled everything. He's that husband that came down,
our maker, our husband that came down and He fulfilled everything
for us. He built the house. He provided
all the furniture in the house. He filled the cabinets with dishes. He made sure that our bank account
was full. He made sure everything was done
for us. And He calls us and He comes
and He gets us and He brings us home and He shows us, I've
done everything for you. I went to the cross and I laid
down my life and by my blood I completely purged away all
of your sin. He comes to you and He tells
you, by my life I've completely fulfilled all righteousness for
you. By my blood I've put away all your sin. I've justified
you completely. I've made you a living stone
in my house. I've made you a branch in me
who is divine. He comes to you and He says,
I've made you one with me and one with our Father. And He says
to you now, don't worry. Don't fret. I'm the one who bore
the waves of God's justice, and I've divided the sea for you.
I've divided your sins as far as the east is from the west.
I've divided you from death by dying the death that you owed,
and I've condemned death. Completely condemned and he comes
to you and he says now it's done and he says now my bride whom
I love whom I've loved everlastingly he says Don't fret don't worry. Don't don't get yourself beside
yourself thinking that something's in your hand to provide for you
He says I'm providing everything for you. I'm a faithful husband
to you and I'm the Lord of hosts and I have power over everything
that moves and everything that don't move. I've got power over
everything in heaven and everything in earth. I've got power in things
in the light and in darkness. I've got power over things you
see and things you can't see. I've got power over all. I can
turn the king's heart withersoever I will. That's what he speaks
into our hearts. And he tells you now, don't be
afraid. He says, I've spoiled principalities
and powers. I've made a show of them openly
triumphing over in everything I did over them. That's why they
were made, to make my name and my power known in the earth and
who I am. And he says, you see that one
standing before you that's got you so worried and got you so
scared and got you so cast down in yourself that you think that
you just don't know what's going to happen? He said, I set that
one up in front of you and I brought you right here to the place that
you are so that this giant mountain is in front of you and you can't
get through it. Just so I can show you my name and my power.
Just so I can bring that mountain down to a plane and just make
a way right for you to go through it. That's what He says to us,
brethren. He says to us, the king of Babylon
said it, all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing
and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and
among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand
or say unto him, what doest thou? This is our Redeemer. This is
our God. This is our Savior. This is the
one who created this world for this one purpose. To tell you
that, you who are his, that's why he did it. He did it to come
to us and tell us this and show us this. You're a sinner or you're a saint,
whichever one. Don't look to any other. Don't
look to anybody else. The largest, most ferocious,
most furious oppressor in this earth is a little bitty ant in
the hand of our God and our Redeemer. He says, look to Me, I'm the
Lord of hosts. That's what He said. Now this
is what happens. We get into this fear and He
says, now call on Me. I'm going to be inquired of to
help you. And so we call on Him, just like they did here. They
said, come Lord and make Your power known as in days of old.
And so, He doesn't do something that everybody sees. He doesn't
do something that makes everybody just stop all of a sudden and
look and think, you're somebody special. The Kingdom of God comes
without observation to this world. But He speaks into the heart,
and He speaks real into the heart. And I could tell you, you could
have You can be in the most tranquil
place with a bluebird sky and just flowers blooming and the
bees are buzzing and everything. Just be perfect and be so shaken
and terrified and afraid in your heart if he removes his presence
from you. And just the opposite, you can
be in the middle of a hailstorm with complete darkness and thunder
coming down upon you and armies gathered around you and everything
that could possibly look wrong. And you have the most peace in
your heart because He's spoken in your heart and said, this
is all in my hand. That's what I'm talking about.
If you don't have this anchor, you're just tossed to and fro
all the time. If you don't have this one who
is the Lord of Hosts, who's showing you what He's doing in this earth,
you don't have this. And you don't have this anchor,
you don't have this stability, you don't have this good hope
that's entered in before you, where the forerunner's entered
for us who believe, and it's set down at the right hand of
the Father, and it's doing all this. If you don't trust Him,
and you don't have Him working in your heart, speaking peace
in your heart, you have nothing! I don't care what you get. I
don't care what you can carve out in this world. I don't care
how you wage war and live by the sword in this life until
you can get everything you can get. Without Christ, you have
nothing. Nothing. And your life's useless. It's worthless. It's absolutely
worthless. All you're doing is using God's
air and God's space and God's resources and abusing them. That's
it. Without God, without Christ,
without hope in the world. But the believer has everything.
The Lord of hosts is our God, our Savior. Here's the third
thing He shows us. Christ our Savior reminds us
that the purpose for which He's done all things is our salvation.
Verse 16, I put my words in thy mouth, and I've covered you in
the shadow of my hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the
foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people. Now you get the gist of that.
Get what he's saying there. He's saying I put my words in
your mouth, I've taught you the Gospel. I've come to you and
I've given you life and I've regenerated you. My Spirit's
entered in. I've put my words in your mouth."
Just like when the Redeemer walked here, God the Father put His
words in the Redeemer's mouth. He poured out His Spirit upon
him without measure so that he was unlike any of his fellows.
And He's done the same thing for His people. He's not to that
degree, but He's poured out His Spirit in our hearts and He's
put His words in our mouth. And He says, I've covered you
in the shadow of my hand. I've got you completely held
in my hand. I stand here before you right
now as one in whose mouth he's put these words. I stand here
before you without any power in myself, any ability in myself,
any strength in myself, any goodness in myself, any righteousness
in myself whatsoever, but I stand here as one covered in the shadow
of his hand. And I'm telling you the purpose
for which He gives us the words of eternal life and the purpose
for which He covers us in the shadow of His hand is this. He
says that I may plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the
earth and say to Zion, Thou art my people. What does that mean?
I thought it said He'd already created the heavens and the earth
and the foundations. Not this heaven and this earth
and these foundations. When He comes and He plants His
words in the mouth of one of His children, and He plants His
gospel in our heart, He's planting that new heaven and that new
earth. When He comes and He takes us from off that sinking sand
that we've been putting confidence in and sinking down in, and He
sets our feet and He lays us flat down on the foundation,
that one foundation, Christ Jesus, He's laying the foundation for
that new heavens and that new earth. So that one day He'll
stand there face to face to us, looking face to face to us, and
He'll say unto Zion, I told you you're my people. Didn't I? That's why He's doing all this,
so that face to face one day we're going to stand before our
God, this one that's speaking to us in that new heavens and
that new earth, and He's going to say to us face to face, you
are my people. Look at you, perfectly righteous. Look at you without a spot in
you. Look at you with no blame whatsoever. You've never done
anything ever but perfect righteousness and being perfectly holy and
perfectly pleased me. That's all you've ever done.
And we'll sit there and say, oh, glory be to your name. Oh, glory to him in the highest
for what he's done. You see, Zion is his people.
It's not a mountain of dirt in the Middle East. Zion, it's His
church, it's His people. It's not a building of sticks
and stones. His kingdom is His people. It's not a political
kingdom in a sin-cursed earth. He made this heavens and this
earth so that after all of that, after it came under the curse,
He could come and redeem His people out of it and bring us
into that new heavens, that new earth. And when He's finished
doing that, this heaven and this earth He's going to fold it up, just
like that. Say, I'm done with it. I'm done
with it. It's served its purpose. This
is our God we're talking about. And if you're in this heaven
and this earth, and this is all you got, and that's all you putting
your confidence in, He's going to fold you up and throw you
away with it. Ah, He shall not fail till He
has set judgment in the earth and the isles. All His elect
from among every nation in this earth shall obey His Word. They're
going to obey His Gospel. They're going to rejoice in Him,
every one of them. God who preserves us is the God
of absolute and unalterable purpose. And His purpose is the purpose
of grace to save us from our sins into His presence. That's His purpose. make us perfect
and spotless so that we can have perfect communion with Him. What
shall we say then to these things? If God be for us, who can be
against us? This is what he speaks from the
heart. I gave you this illustration last week. I'm going to give
it to you again. Give it to you again. This time
we'll use art. Art's gone away. He's in a far
country somewhere, and one of y'all calls him up. You say,
Art, Joshua, little Joshua, he's got the house locked, and he's
got Cheryl and all the kids thrown out there in the yard. He won't
let them in. They're freezing, they're cold, and there he is
in the house, got it all locked up. And he's saying that he's
been watching the news, he's been talking to his friends at
school, and they've been telling him how bad the world is, and
how bad the economy is, and how bad the wars are, and how bad
everything is. And he's scared to death. He's
worried that he won't have a roof over his head, and he's worried
he won't have clothes on his back, and he's worried he's not
going to have food on his table. And so he's locked the door,
and he said he can't let anybody in, because he just can't afford
to share any of this with them. He's got to hang on to it. And
Art called me up and he said, you go over there, Clay, and
you give him this message. His father called, his father
called. The one who loves him, he called
me and he said, go over there and tell him this. And I go over
there and I say, Joshua, here's what your father said. Your father
said for me to tell you that he loves you and you're his son. And it's that house that you're
in, it's his house. That furniture in that house
is his furniture. That ground that's sitting on
is his ground. Everything there is his. And he told me to tell
you, don't worry. Don't even fret. Don't have any
worry in your mind. He's gonna keep you clothed,
and he's gonna keep a roof over your head, and he's gonna keep
food on your table, so you don't even have to give that a second
thought. You do not have to worry about it whatsoever. And that's
what God our Father has done. Some of you have been praying
to Him. Some of you have been speaking
to Him. Some of you have been saying, My brother, he's so scared,
he's so worried about, he's been listening to the news, and he's
been talking to his friends, and he's been hearing all about
the trials, the wars, and the economy, and everything in this
world, and he's worried about his job, and he's so fretful. Would you comfort him? He's got
himself all locked up, and he's not able to love his brethren,
not able to do anything. He's just frozen. He's just locked
up. Would you help him, Lord? And the Lord sends a message
to his preacher, and he says, you go tell him this. You go
there and you tell him what I've told you. Tell him, he's my son. I bought him with my blood. Tell him his house is my house,
everything in it's mine, the ground it's sitting on is mine,
and he's mine. Tell him the world's mine, everything
in it's mine. And tell him as long as he's
in that world, I'm gonna keep clothes on his back, I'm gonna
keep food on his table, I'm gonna keep a roof over his head. Tell
him he's mine. And so I come forth and I preach
this to you. And it'll take God answering
those prayers, speaking into your heart, and tell you just
what we've been looking at today. Why are you fearing, man? I'm
your father. I'm the Lord of hosts. I'm your
comforter. I'm your redeemer. I got everything under my hand,
and I'm going to keep you and bring you to myself. That's what
he's saying. He that spared not his own son,
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also
freely give us all things? Fear not man, fear the Lord.
Cast all your care into His hand and just rest in Him. Amen.