Now let's read here in Isaiah
45, let's read from verses 20 down to verse 25. It says, Assemble
yourselves and come. Draw near together, ye that are
escaped of the nations. They have no knowledge that set
up the wood of their graven image. And pray unto a God that cannot
save. Tell ye and bring them near,
yea, let them take counsel together. Who hath declared this from ancient
time? Who hath told it from that time? Have not I the Lord? And there
is no God else beside me, a just God and a Savior. There's none beside me. Look
unto me and be ye saved. all the ends of the earth, for
I am God and there is none else. I have sworn by myself the word
is gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return that unto
me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Surely, shall
one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength. Even to him, to
the Lord, shall men come, and all that are incensed against
him shall be ashamed. In the Lord shall all the seed
of Israel be justified and shall glory. Verse 20, the Lord says,
assemble yourselves and come. He says, draw near together,
ye that are escaped to the nations. He makes this statement. He says,
they have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image
and pray unto a God that cannot save. Every, every God that man,
that supposedly exists, that men worship, and all the various
religions in this world, all of them were created in the desperately
wicked heart of men. All of them. And there's not
any God that man has imagined, that man has created. You can
check this if any religion there is. There is no God that man
has created that can save apart from something having been done
on the part of the sinner. nothing that their God can do
to save unless man allows it or contributes to it. The reason
that is is because man made those gods. Man created those gods. They have no knowledge. No knowledge of what? No knowledge
of the true and living God who set up the wood of a graven image
They have no knowledge of the true and living God who pray
unto a God that cannot save. Who pray unto a God that has
no hands but your hands. The hands of God are the Lord
Jesus Christ. The feet of God are the feet
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has done the work. He has
accomplished the salvation of His people Himself. He's God
come. Every other religion says, except
ye do something, even under the banner of Christianity. except
ye be circumcised, except ye keep the law, except you be baptized,
except you keep our man-made traditions. All of those things
are exceptions that man have made, that man says you have
to do, and that's, the true and living God is exactly opposite
to that. He's exactly opposite to that.
That's what I want you to see here. He says this in verse 21,
Tell ye, bring them near, bring all the gods near, bring them
all together, together, and let them take counsel together. Let
all, every god that man has ever come up with, This is what none
of them have ever done. Who hath declared this from ancient
time? There's not one God that man
prays unto that said from the very beginning, from the beginning
before the beginning, from the time, that ancient time when
there was none but God. There's no God that man has imagined
in his mind that has told from the beginning how the end would
be. Not one. Because man couldn't
come up with that. Man that makes his own God couldn't
imagine that. And he couldn't tell that. He
couldn't say what the end from the beginning is going to be.
And so his God can't tell you the end from the beginning. But
this God can. This true and living God tells
he entered into a covenant of peace before the world began.
He purposed how everything would end before he ever made a beginning
of time. And He's absolutely ruled everything
since that beginning to make sure everything comes together
just as He said it would. He said here in this verse, over
in verse 7, He said, I form the light and create darkness. I
make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.
Evil coming into this world through the fallen angels wasn't out
of God's control. That wasn't out of God's purpose.
In order for Him to save men from evil, there had to be evil.
In order for Him to save His children from sin, there had
to be sin. He didn't make the evil, He didn't do the sin, but
it wasn't out of His control. It served His purpose in saving
His people from their sin. So he determined this from the
beginning, from the very beginning. He says here in verse 21, he
says, and who's told it from that time? As soon as Adam sinned
in the garden, and he went and hid himself, when he heard the
voice of the Lord come in the garden. He hid himself. And then
that call came to him particularly and said, Where are you, Adam?
Where are you? And then he answered God. Because
that call is effectual. And he answered God. And when
he answered God, God from the very beginning said, There's
a promised seed that's coming. There's a promised child that's
coming. There is a son that's going to
be given a child that's going to be born. He's going to be
born of a woman and he's going to come and he's going to be
the salvation of my people. He's going to crush the Satan's
head. He said from the very beginning
when he slew an animal and made coats of skins to cover Adam
and Eve, he began to tell it from the very beginning. Your
fig leaves won't save you. Your righteousnesses won't save
you. The very best righteousness,
righteous deed that the very best of men have ever performed
on this earth are filthy rags before God. Altogether vanity. altogether fallen short of the
glory of God. He began telling this from the
beginning. It's going to take me providing my son, my lamb. It's going to take me slaying
my son, my lamb. It's going to take me providing
my own righteousness, which is illustrated in that covering,
those coats of skin. It's going to take me stripping
you of your righteousnesses. It's going to take me clothing
you in the robe of my righteousness. It's going to take God doing
this for His child. He began to tell that from the
very beginning. And He spoke. He spoke that to
Adam. And Adam believed God. We saw
that a few weeks ago. Adam believed God. And he put
an altar at the edge of the garden with a flaming sword that turned
every way between the cherubims. And Adam taught his children
to worship God. He taught his sons, this is the
place God has appointed where he'll meet with you. This is
the place to worship God. He taught them that from the
beginning. And they came there, Abel came there by the Spirit
of God and worshiped God. And Cain said, I'll worship Him
like I want to worship Him. I'll make my own God. I'll be
my own God. I'll worship God the way I want
to worship Him. I don't have to worship Him at that altar.
I don't have to worship God where God tells me I have to worship
Him. You do and you will or you won't. That's right. You will worship in God's prescribed
way, in God's prescribed manner, in the one God has said will
come in or you won't worship God. You may be sitting in the
finest, broadest house that man can make in the name of religion
and be apostate with your back turned on God and your fist shoved
in His face and say, I'm going to worship Him the way I will.
That's so. He's been telling this from the
beginning and down through the line, all the prophets. Let me
read this to you from Hebrews 1. Hebrews chapter 1. God who at sundry times and in
divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
prophets. God's always had a witness and
He always will. He always has spoken to the fathers
by the prophets. And He came and spoke in person
to us. And this is what the conclusion of that is in verse chapter 2.
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things
which we've heard, lest at any time we let them slip. It's just
so. God's told this from the beginning
how He's going to save. Look down at that verse again,
back at Hebrews 45, verse 21. He says, who's done this? Have not I the Lord? And there's
no God else beside me. You realize that there is no
God else besides the God, the God I'm declaring to you this
morning is the true and living God. Not maybe, not, well you're
just being too narrow, you're being too bigoted. There's people
that worship God in their own way, in their own form. Yes there
is, but there's only one people that worship God in God's way,
And that's the people whom He calls. And He's the God. There's none else beside Him.
None else beside Him. Look at this. This is another
thing that no other God that man has ever imagined in his
heart could ever do because man could never imagine this. Man
could never come up with this. Man can't do this. As hard as
men may try, man can't do this next thing. Look, a just God
and a Savior. Thoroughly, perfectly just, and
at the same time, thoroughly, perfectly merciful. No! No! that men have made have ever
been able to do that. The just God did this from that
ancient time, from the beginning. He chose His Son. He chose His
Son because there was no man that could do what His Son is
going to do. Not just because there just wasn't
any man by chance, because God purposed there wouldn't be any
man that could do what He was going to do. His whole purpose
in creating everything was to show forth His glory in the person
of His dear Son. The just God chose His Son, because
it was the just way to manifest His justice. The just God, in
the process of time, made Him of a woman. Made Him in the likeness
of flesh, because His children were flesh. And He made Him of
a woman, not of Adam, not of man, of the Holy Spirit, the
seed of woman, because it's just. That's the only just way it could
be done. He's the Holy One. But just God made him under the
law because his children were under the law. He made him under
the law so that Jesus Christ came forth and fulfilled everything
that was written of him. Everything God had spoken and
told from the beginning and declared through his prophets and told
by moving all things in providence to shadow and foreshadow and
show forth his son to come. He came forth and fulfilled all
of that. Everything God said he would
fulfill. And he made him under that law
so that he could be proven throughly, just like that lamb was put up
and examined throughout the Old Testament. He was examined and
proven to be throughly righteous, perfectly, holy, harmless, spotless,
undefiled, a perfect sacrifice, and a just God. The just God,
who considers it an abomination for those who justify wicked
men, and considers it an abomination for the innocent to be slain,
for the innocent to be charged and punished for sin when there
is none? That just God, it was just for
Him to make His Son sin before He did anything injustice to
His Son. His Son had to be guilty if God
won't be just and pour out wrath upon His Son in the place of
His people. I don't know how he did that,
but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He had
to do that because God will not punish an innocent person. He
will not. He can't and remain just. He
made him sin, who knew no sin. that he might justly pour out
the sentence upon him in justice. And then when he did that, this
just God poured out, forsook his son, set a Waco sword, and
punished his own son to the full satisfaction of divine justice
in the place of his people. And the just God, because His
Son fulfilled everything promised, because His Son in perfect fidelity
did everything God required of Him, was obedient unto Him even
unto death, the just God raised Him from the dead and raised
Him to His right hand. And the just God gave everything
into His hand, gave Him the inheritance of all things in heaven and all
things in the earth, even judgment to come, put it all in the hands
of His Son. The just God did that. And that very same just God is
Jesus Christ, our Lord, who came into this earth and fulfilled
all righteousness and made propitiation for His children. And He is the
one who justly now, according to His justice, because His justice
demands His justice demands that in order for Him to be just,
every sinner for whom He died has got to hear this good news,
and have got to be drawn to Him, and have got to be made to cast
all their eternal care into His hand. Every single one of them
must. And He says, I'm going to speak
this word in righteousness. It's coming out of my mouth in
righteousness. The God of heaven and earth,
the God who's able to control the sun and move it back ten
degrees, the God who can turn the king's heart whithersoever
he will, that God, from the beginning, has sent His gospel in truth
to every one of His children. You can't know truth by knowing
a lie. It's impossibility. Try as you
may, you just can't do it. Turn all the lights out and get
in complete darkness and say it's light. You can say it all
you want to, it just ain't so. You can't know truth except by
knowing the truth. And this is the God of truth.
This is the God of righteousness. He's bigger than you. He's bigger
than me. Don't look at men and say, well,
if that's so, this person over here might not believe the truth.
That's not the issue. The issue is God saves in truth. The issue is God's able to save
in truth. The issue is God's able to take
His Word to wherever His lost sheep is. The issue is God's
able to bring the truth to His people. The only thing that would
make us deny that is if we're holding on to something other
than truth. Because that's just how it is. That's how God saves. That's how He's always saved.
He's a just God. And this very just God is the
Savior. He's the one now that has made
justice and mercy kiss in perfect harmony so that when He calls
you, He makes you to behold. He's absolutely just to show
you perfect, total, complete mercy and grace. Because He's
done everything required to show it to you. He's done everything
required that He might be gracious to you, and yet remain this holy,
just God of heaven and earth. No man's ever come up with a
God that could do that. No man. Men today that stand
up and preach in the name of this God, using this book, don't
talk about Him that way. It's not entered into the heart
of man. It's not, eye hath not seen,
ear hath not heard the things that God has prepared for them
that love Him. Man can't, he can't know them. He can't understand
them. He don't talk about righteousness
and justice and holiness and mercy and God's absolute ability
to be the just God and Savior of His people because he don't
know anything about it. We were looking at this Friday
night. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. That word
substance is made out of two words, a compound of two words,
under and stand. And Americans say, think he understands
this intellectually all he wants to, but by faith we understand. By faith we understand that the
worlds were framed by the Word of God. They were made not by
things that appear, but by things that don't appear. And that's
how He makes His second creation. And until He makes His new creation
in the heart of His people and gives us faith, we don't really
understand. We just don't. We just don't. That's who He is though. Look
now, He says, and there's none beside Me. There's none beside
Me. There's no other God like this.
None that man could imagine. Now how is it that this God who's
done all this, when He does call His child, how is it that He
makes His child to be a partaker of all this grace and mercy and
holiness that He's done? What is it that the sinner has
to do? What is it that you have to do?
Look at the next word, verse 22. Look. Look. That's the complete anti of everything man tells
you to do. Look. That's look. How much effort? How much work? How much exertion is there on
your part in a look? It's look. That's what he said.
Look where? Look unto me. look under me in
the wilderness and look over at numbers 21 in the wilderness. I have to hurry here. Numbers
21. There was a Verse 6 says, there were fiery
serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and much
people of Israel died. And therefore the people came
to Moses and said, we've sinned, we've spoken against the Lord,
against thee. Pray unto the Lord that He take
away the serpents from us. This is where God's going to
bring us. He's going to bring us to see that we've spoken against
the Lord, we've spoken against His Word, against His messenger. And He's going to bring us to
cry out, praying to the Lord that He take away the serpents
from us. And Moses interceded for the people. And the Lord
said unto Moses, Make a fiery serpent and set it upon a pole. And it shall come to pass that
everyone that is bitten, when he shall look upon it, He shall
live. That serpent that was made was
the thing that was biting them. It was made and raised up on
a pole to be the thing that was causing all of their death. Christ was made sin. He was made the thing that caused
your death and raised up on Calvary Street and then raised to the
right hand of the Father. And God says, look, Look to Him. Look to Christ and Him crucified. Look to Him. Believe on Him. Trust in His blood and you shall
live. You shall live. That's how He
puts away sin and saves His people. Look at this back now at Isaiah
45 and let's look at this next word. Look unto Me. Look unto Me. Not work. Not anything that a preacher
tells you you've got to do, or some man tells you that's necessary
in order for you to be saved. Now, oh, you can look, but now
there's something else you're going to have to do. Just look.
Look to Christ. Don't look to a man. Don't look
to a place. Don't look to a people. Don't
look to a church. Don't look to a denomination.
Don't look to a profession. Don't look to your works. Don't
look to anything you've done. Look to Christ. It means believe
on Him. Call on Him. Come to Him confessing
what you are. Come to Him He's going to be
called on by you. Call, come to Him, confess one.
Look unto Me. Now look at this next word. I
love this word. Be and be ye saved. And be ye saved. The most passive
word that there can be. And be ye saved. And B, you say,
whenever the person is out there and a disaster's come, a flood's
come or whatever, and he's out there and he's thrashing around
in the water and he's trying to save himself or whatever,
and the rescue line comes down and the lifeguard comes down
to him, the lifeguard tells him, stop doing. Stop your working. Stop your thrashing. Stop your
moving. Stop trying to save yourself.
Relax completely. Just let go of everything and
relax and be saved. I'm going to do the same. You
don't have, don't you try to, you're going to, you're going
to interrupt what I'm doing if you try to do anything. Stop
doing anything. and be safe. That's what it is to be safe.
Who does that apply to? Who does that apply to? Look
at the next line. All the ends of the earth. All
the ends of the earth. It doesn't matter if you are
about to be an Ivy League graduate from Princeton University. or
if you are a prisoner in a jail cell in San Quentin, where you
can't even hardly move around, you're so confined. It doesn't
matter if you're in North America or if you're somewhere out in
the outback in Australia. It doesn't matter if you're educated
or uneducated. It does not matter if you're
rich or if you're poor. It does not matter if you're
black or you're white or you're red or you're yellow. It does
not matter if you're a Jew or you're a Gentile. It doesn't
matter where you are, who you are, or what you are. All the
ends of the earth, all have sinned and come short of the GLO. They've all sinned and come short
of the brilliance, the glow, the glory of the righteous Son
of God who is the brightness of His image, the very brightness
of His glory. All have sinned and come short.
So if any are going to be saved, and everyone that shall be saved,
they're going to look unto Him and be saved, no matter where
they are, who they are, what they are. This is how we're saved,
the only way. Look at the next word. For, here's
why, I am God and there is none else. You know what I'm beginning
to think that God wants us to understand in this chapter? I'll
show you what I think He's wanting us to understand in this chapter.
Look at verse 6. that they may know from the rising
of the sun and from the west, there is none beside me. I am
the Lord, and there is none else. Look at verse 14. Thus saith
the Lord, the labor of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia,
and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and
they shall be thine, and they shall come after thee, and chains
they shall come over, and they shall fall down unto thee, they
shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in
thee, and there is none else. There is no other God. Look at
verse 18. He said at the very end there,
I'm the Lord and there is none else. Look at verse 21 at the
end. There is none beside me. Look
at verse 22 again. I'm God. There is none else.
You see, There's only one way a sinner's going to be saved.
There's only one way a sinner's going to be saved, and it's going
to be God doing the saving. There is no other way. There
is no other God. There is none other besides God.
Why would you perish? Why would you look in? It's just
so clear. It's just so obvious. It's just
so plain. I would have to say If I don't
believe Him, if I don't cast my care into His hand, the only
other option I have is in my heart of hearts to be saying
right now where I sit, I don't believe you, God. I don't believe
you. I think you're lying. I think
you're a liar. I think there is another God. And that's what
we're saying. Every day of our unbelief, that's
what we're saying. Alright, let's finish this up
now. Verse 23, I've sworn by myself, take a swear by no greater,
He swore by himself. The word has gone out of my mouth
in righteousness. He went out of his mouth from
the very beginning in the garden. It's been going out of his mouth
through his prophets ever since. It came out of his mouth when
his son came to this earth. It's come out of his mouth through
those ambassadors he sent since Christ is risen and is the head
of his church. He's spoken this word. How? In righteousness. In righteousness. I know men
don't speak this word in righteousness, although I know that there's
liars in this world. And they speak not according
to this word, it's because there's no light in them. And men that
believe them, they don't believe them and they deny that this
word goes out of his mouth in righteousness because they're
liars and want to hold on to a lie. And a lie will sink you,
a lie will put you right in hell. You wake up, imagine if you woke
up this morning, just like you do every morning, but instead
of waking up and going through your normal routine, you woke
up in front of the thrice holy God. Naked with no covering no
hope and God told you everything you've ever done in your religion
everything you've been holding on to is a bald-faced lie of
your own making a worker of iniquity It'd be better to find out the
truth today, wouldn't it, than to meet God like that. You would
find out. And that day, you know what you'll
find out? If you meet God that way, without an intercessor,
without a covering, you'll find out that the man who told you
the truth and righteousness was not your enemy after all. He
was your friend. But you know what you'll still
do? You'll argue with God. You'll still argue with God and
say, raise somebody from the dead and send them back to my
house. Because if somebody went back from the dead, they'd believe
them. And God will say, they got Moses and the prophets. If
they won't hear the word of God, they won't be saved. That's how
it's going to be. The word's going to go out of
my mouth in righteousness. And it won't return. It won't
return unto him void. This is what it's going to accomplish.
Unto me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear.
Every one of his elect, we're talking about right here, surely
shall they say, each one of them is going to say this, in the
Lord have I righteousness and strength. He's all my righteousness. He's all my strength. He's all
my salvation. Even to him, to the Lord, shall
they come. They're going to come to him
and bow. All of them are. This word's not going to, there's
not a word going to drop from his lips in vain. He's going
to accomplish this. He's going to make every one
of His elect children bow. He does this in righteousness. How does He say it goes out of
His mouth? In righteousness. He's going to bow to the righteousness
of God. God didn't purpose to do something with a liar. He
didn't send His Son and have His Son bleed and have His Son
rejected and despised and have all His prophets from righteous
able all the way down through the ages to be slain by men who
hated the Word of God. He didn't have that done. to
do something by a lie. He did it because he's saved
by truth. All ye that are incensed against him, this is the other
thing that his word's not going to return void. Those that hate
it, they're going to be ashamed. Every knee's going to bow. Every
knee's going to bow. Every tongue's going to confess,
Lord, it's just as you said it was. In the Lord shall all the
seed of Israel, Jew and Gentile, bond and free, male and female,
his elect over all the ends of the earth, all Israel shall be
justified by the Lord. And every one of them, every
last one of them is going to give all the glory to God. All of them. Sin makes us divide. Sin makes us have to split up
and go back to our cursed ground and get our fruit by the sweat
of our brow and do all those things we do. This right here,
what Paul did the night before he departed there from It was
in Ephesus when he, I can't remember now, but when they met, and it
says they break bread, and Paul preached the gospel to them,
and they worshiped together to the breaking of the day. That's
what God's people are doing right here, through our whole life.
We're meeting together, we're breaking bread, and we're going
to do it till that day still arrives, and we're with Him perfectly
in glory. And we do it right now, and stay
here, do it continually right now, if it wasn't for sin. But
when sin's gone, That's what we're going to do continually.
If I don't want to do it now, I sure won't want to do it then.
Be amongst a bunch of holy people. Oh, that'd be misery for an unholy
man. We're justified by him and glory
in him. Amen.