If you would turn back to the
passage that Eddie read a few moments ago, Isaiah chapter 40. Here in Isaiah chapter 40, we
find great instruction concerning the proclamation of the gospel. It's an instruction in preaching
is what it is. And we're told how our iniquity,
how our sin is pardoned. That's of great interest to me.
It's in this chapter that the coming of Christ forerunner,
John the Baptist is foretold. And it's also in this chapter
that John's message of comfort, the gospel. That's the message
of comfort, isn't it? We see it described in these
verses. And there's no doubt that the
preaching of the gospel is the comfort of God's elect people. And in the verses before us this
morning, we have the pattern of all true preaching. And it's
a very simple outline. with basically two points. Who
man is and who God is. Who does the sinning and who
does the saving. This simple outline of gospel
preaching given by the Holy Spirit exposes just how far the message,
the preaching of modern day religion has fallen short. It falls way
short of comforting God's sheep. And as we look at John's message,
we find great comfort in this simple yet profound gospel given
to us by God. Again, verse three, speaking
of John the Baptist, we read, the voice of him that crieth
in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight
in the desert a highway for our God. Recently, someone was telling
me about a preacher that they listened to regularly, and their
comment was, he's so funny and entertaining. Has modern day
preaching been reduced to comedy and entertainment? It sure seems
so. Entertainment has replaced preaching,
but John the Baptist crieth. To cry means to publish, to proclaim,
to preach with fervency and passion. To preach the gospel is to cry
with conviction and with urgency, declaring the only means that
God has given us to eternal life. After all, the gospel is a message
of life and death. Folks sure don't act like it
is. David said, he that is our God is the God of salvation and
unto God the Lord belong the issues from death. Psalm 68 20. David's son Solomon wrote, keep
the heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues
of life. John's voice was a voice that
cried. What was John's message? What
did John cry? He cried, prepare ye the way. What way? The way of the Lord. Friends, the message of salvation
is the way of the Lord. And it's the only way. Salvation
is the way of the Lord. Salvation is Jesus Christ who
is the way. And no man and no woman, no sinner
comes to the Father for salvation, but by Him. No other way than
in Christ. No other way to get to God. No
other way to receive his mercy and grace. And John cried with
urgency. He cried with passion. He cried
as one who warned sinners, pointing them to the Lord Jesus. He said,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Now, true preachers
cry in this wilderness world in which we dwell and in this
desert of a world, they make straight a highway for our God
through preaching. Christ is that highway. He's
that only way to redemption and life eternal. And that was John's
message. And that's our message. That
was John's message for the coming of Christ as his forerunner.
And it's our message for his second coming. Prepare ye the
way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a
highway for our God. Now, does that mean that we are
to prepare our own way? Does that mean that we're to
straighten ourselves up? Well, obviously that's what the
multitude in religion think it means. I've told you this before
when I was a child and misbehaved, and I might add that was quite
often. My parents would often say, young man, you better straighten
up. Was that John's message? Is that
our message? Well, sadly, it's the message
that I hear preached today. Preachers today are telling sinners
to do the impossible. No sinner who's dead and trespasses
in sin, and all sinners are, no sinner can by a work of righteousness
that they do, make themselves acceptable unto God, who requires
perfection. John's message was for sinners
to repeat. John preached the baptism of
repentance for the remission of sins. But hear me when I say
that we cannot provide the perfection that God requires by just simply
repenting of our sin. Why? Because we've already sinned.
Why? Because we've already broken
God's law. We've already offended God's
justice. If we offend the law in one point,
we're guilty of the whole law. Repenting of our sin does not
excuse the sin that we've already committed. Repenting does not
remove the offenses that we're already guilty of. Repentance
is simply the proof of a work already done by God in the believer's
heart. If God grants you repentance,
God's already done a work of grace in your heart. Repentance
is a God-given desire put in the believing sinner's heart
to come to Christ, who is the great physician who makes us
well and whole. Those that are well have no need
of a physician and therefore will not repent. But those whom
God has shown their great disease, have you seen your disease? Has
God shown you your disease of sin? Those who have seen their
great need, they will repent. And it's God who makes their
way straight, not them. And it's by causing and enabling
them to embrace Christ, God, the son who came to save his
people from their sin. This is the message that John
preached. You know, this religious world has somehow imagined that
they can, by their own doing, make their way straight. But
our Lord said, without me, you can do nothing. And in our text,
the Hebrew word interpreted there, prepare, is very much the same
Hebrew word that we translate in English as repent. The word
prepare here in verse three of Isaiah 40 does not mean to make
ourselves ready for eternal life. The word actually means to be
turned back. Repent means to turn. You know,
it's like the military term about face. If the sergeant hollers
out about face, you know what they do? They turn around, don't
they? We're to turn from ourselves and our works to look to Christ. He's the highway for our God
to receive us. It's Christ who brings us to
God on this narrow and straight road. Christ is the only one
who can turn us to God. Jeremiah said, turn thou me and
I shall be turned for thou art the Lord my God. Turn thou us
unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned. Lamentations 5.21. That's what's wrong with today's
preaching. Men and women today are in the
process of saving themselves. Men and women have a zeal for
God, but it's not according to knowledge. And preachers have
not told sinners the truth about themselves and about God. Today,
it's all about what men do for God, not what God does for sinners. The popular message today for
preachers is to plead with sinners to serve God when they should
be pleading with sinners to beg for mercy and grace. Like that
publican that went up into the temple to pray. His prayer was,
Lord, be merciful to me, the sinner. Now men crying to the
sinner to do something for God. They say ignorant things like
God's done all he can do. He's left the rest up to you.
Does that sound like God to you? Preachers say God wants to save
you. Won't you let God have his way? Men have reduced God to
be a beggar, a helpless beggar at that. They say ridiculous
things like God's made salvation possible. But now you've got
to let go and you've got to let God. By your choice, by your
decision, you, the sinner, have got to close the deal. I think
about that poor, unclean leper that came to the Lord Jesus.
His flesh was rotting away. He was in bad, bad shape. So was the unsaved sinner. All
of us are born of corruptible sin. Do you remember what that
leper said? He said, Lord, if you will, you
can make me clean. And you remember what the Lord
did? He immediately put forth his hand and he touched him saying,
I will be thou clean. And immediately he was. You see
the Lord Jesus is both willing and able. He doesn't make salvation
possible. He makes it for certain. Bartimaeus
wasn't sitting on the side of the road in order to do something
for Jesus. Bartimaeus needed the Lord to
do something for him. He sat by the wayside begging. He was the beggar, not God. It's
the same with every sinner. We need Christ to do something
for us. God didn't find grace in the
eyes of Noah. That's the way men preach today.
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Did Noah do God
a favor by building the ark? No. The ark Noah built was to
the saving of Noah and his house. By faith, Noah being warned of
God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an
ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the
world and became an heir of the righteousness, which is by faith.
My men today preach with an emphasis on heaven and hell. The theme
of preaching today is don't you want to go to heaven? And men's
point of pleading with sinners is you don't want to go to hell,
do you? Salvation is not about heaven or hell. Salvation is
about Christ and our sin. Thou shalt call his name Jesus,
Savior. Why? For he shall save his people
from their sin. Christ is preached by men today
as an admission ticket to heaven and a far escape from hell. But
Paul and every child of God counts all things but loss for the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ. Our desire is to win Christ and
to be found in Him. It's the only way that our sin
can ever be put away. Many professions of faith in
Christ are made only with the desire of escaping and avoiding
hell. The minds and hearts of men and
women today are on pearly gates and streets of gold and mansions
in glory in heaven. And they can't wait to go cloud
hopping with Jesus. Well, where's the remorse? Where's
the regret? Where's the repentance of sin?
Where's the desire and the yearning for the Savior who can put sin
away and put it away forever? Friends, we aren't heading to
a place, we're heading to a person. Heaven's not a place, heaven's
a person. Heaven will be heaven because
Christ will be there. Concerning the various beliefs
of religious denominations today, I've heard men say, well, we're
all heading to the same place. We're just traveling different
roads. Listen, don't you believe that? Don't you believe it? There's one way that leads to
life. Christ is that way. Christ is the highway to our
God. There's a broad way, a broad
road, and it leads to destruction. There's a way that seems right
unto a man, but it's the way of death. But there's a straight
way. There's a narrow way that leads
to life. And the Lord Jesus said, I am
that way. to the repentant thief on the cross, Christ said, today
thou shalt be with me in paradise. The emphasis was not put on heaven
or paradise, but on Christ. He was going to be with Christ.
Paul said, I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ. He said, which is far better.
Paul didn't have his heart set on a mansion in heaven. Paul
had his heart set on Christ. Yes, men fear hell. And for that
reason, they very often make a false profession in Christ
as some kind of an insurance policy against going to hell.
Yes, men fear hell, but never consider the wrath and the judgment
of God against their sin, against their offenses that they've committed
against him and him alone. You know the verse well. We quote
it all the time. David said, against thee and
thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. And our
sin is against God. Our sin against God is what should
cause us to fear. Our sin is what will send us
to hell. But David went on to say in verse four there of Psalm
51, that because of our sin against God, that God is justified. He's right. He's just when he
speaks against us. We're guilty and deserving of
death. God is clear of any injustice in judging us and condemning
us to an eternity void of his presence. That's what hell is. It's being forever separated
from God. Christ didn't come into the world
to save people from hell. Christ came into the world to
save his people from their sin. Now on one hand, I don't know
of anybody that wants to go to hell, do you? Everybody wants
to go to heaven. Yet on the other hand, I don't
know many, if any, apart from a few here and a few there, that
want deliverance from their sin. I don't know many, if any, that
want to know Jesus Christ, who is the only one who can put their
sin away so that it's gone forever. I think about old Simeon. He
saw the Lord Jesus and he said, let me now depart in peace according
to thy word. Mine eyes have seen thy salvation. See, salvation's in a person
and it's the Lord Jesus Christ. Modern day preaching has become
a message to the head and not to the heart. Even gospel preachers,
myself included, preach very often what we believe and not
who we believe. There's a big difference. We
know what we believe, but Paul said, I know whom I have believed. And I'm persuaded that he is
able. Christ is able. Oh, we teach
the true doctrines of scripture. We preach and teach God's sovereignty. Oh, I love the sovereignty of
God. Wouldn't have it any other way. We preach and teach the
election of grace. I love the election of grace. Don't you? Wouldn't have it any
other way. We teach and preach predestination. We teach and proclaim all the
amazing and all the wonderful attributes of God. But if we
miss Christ in the preaching of our doctrines, then we've
missed preaching the gospel altogether. Men talk a lot about what they
believe. They talk a lot about when they
believe. But where is the talk about who we believe? And it's
becoming more apparent to me every single day that it's easy
to talk about having faith. And it's a whole nother thing
to live like we do. It's easy to believe God when
your faith's not tested. But the real test of faith is
believing God when you're in trouble. When things get tough
and doubts and fears assail, do we confess with David, it's
good for me that I've been afflicted? It's good for me that I've been
afflicted. Because it's then that we learn
something of God's statutes. Something of God's divine appointments. That meaning the appointed trouble
that God sends. It's God that sends the trouble.
God appoints and sends these troubles and He does so for our
good. How so? God sends the trouble so that
we'll trust in Him in the midst of our trouble. And that's exactly
what James meant when he said, faith without works is dead.
Being alone, confessing to have faith without the action, the
act of believing what God says is dead. We show our faith to
be true faith by the act of our believing. Our action in believing
doesn't save us, but it sure proves that God's already saved
us. The difference between the professor of faith and the doer
of faith is really quite distinct. The false professor says, oh,
I trust in God. But when trouble comes, they
falter. When trouble and trials and affliction
comes, they're afraid. But when trouble afflicts the
believer, the child of God, the one who's trusting in Christ
and Him alone, they, God's sheep, follow the shepherd. You see,
the believer walks with God. James said, show me your faith
without your works, and I'll show you my faith by my works. And friends, it's a long, long
12 inches from the head to the heart. And only God can make
the unsearchable riches of the Lord Jesus Christ that's heard
with these ears and make them effectual right here in the heart. A long 12 inches. Now look at
verse four. Every valley shall be exalted
and every mountain and hill shall be made low. But what does that
mean? Well, that means that John's
preaching Gospel preaching, the preaching of the gospel shall
exalt every valley. It means that every sinner who
is made low with the guilt of their sin, those that are humbled
by God in their own eyes, they shall be exalted. They shall
be raised. They shall be comforted by Christ. And the preaching of God's gospel
should cause those who are elated with themselves, with pride,
trusting in their own righteousness, to be humbled and brought low.
That's what the Lord said Himself. He said, for whosoever exalteth
himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall
be exalted. Isaiah continues here in verse
four by saying, and the crooked shall be made straight and the
rough places plain. You know, The prophecies, the
shadows, and the types of the Old Testament, they were dark
and seen very dimly by the Old Testament believers. But with
the coming of Christ and the preaching of Him crucified, the
salvation of sinners by divine revelation becomes clearer and
easier to see. We grow in grace and in the knowledge
of the Lord. Second Peter 3 18. Faith comes
by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Verse five, and
the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. Divine revelation. Christ himself is the brightness
of his father's glory. The glory of the only begotten
of the father. Read on verse five, and all flesh
shall see it together for the mouth of the Lord has spoken
it. Now all flesh there is not talking about everyone in the
whole world. It's referring to the Gentiles
along with the Jews. This scene is not referring to
man's physical eyes, but it refers to the eyes of our understanding
that are being enlightened by the Lord himself. And again,
we see the message here. Again, we see what John is to
cry. This is what John the Baptist
preached. Look at verse six. The voice
said, cry. Not the voice of John, not the
voice of an angel, but the voice of the Lord. It's the Lord that
gives this gospel message to the prophet Isaiah and to every
gospel preacher. What are we to cry? Read on verse
six. And he, John the Baptist said,
what shall I cry? All flesh is grass. That's the first point in this
simple two-point outline. All flesh is grass. We're to boldly declare the frailty
and the mortality of men and women alike. While man in his
best state is altogether vanity, Concerning man, the scriptures
say, there's none that doeth good. No, not one. There's none
righteous, not a single solitary person. There's none that seeketh
after God. Well, we've all sought and gone
our own way. Preachers today preach as though
they're afraid to offend someone. The apostle Paul preached and
he was afraid that he wouldn't. Paul believed that if the offense
of the cross was gone, that he wasn't preaching the gospel.
Modern day preachers come forth with their credentials and their
doctrines and their degrees, but God called preachers come
forth in the power of the Holy Spirit. Preachers today are hired
to preach what their church and their denomination and their
seminaries want them to preach. But God's preachers come forth
preaching thus saith the Lord. Preachers today preach and men
move from their seats to the front of the church. Men preach
and men move their membership depending on whether they like
what you preach or don't like what you preach. But when the
preacher of God preaches, God moves men and women's hearts.
They've got to be conviction before conversion. God empties
before He fills. God abases before He exalts. God kills before He makes alive.
God said, cry, cry that all flesh is grass and all the goodliness
thereof is as of the flower of the field. All man's goodness
is as the flower of the field, which appears lovely for a while,
but then fades away. All friends in our flesh, there
dwells no good thing. In the flesh, no man can please
God. Verse seven, the grass withereth,
the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon
it. Surely the people is grass. When the Spirit of God blows
upon this flesh of ours, when the light of God's holiness shines
on this flesh, when the perfect Word of God exposes this flesh,
when the law of God touches this flesh, it's seen for what it
is, it's dead. It's withered. It's corrupt.
It's rotten. Flesh cannot inherit the kingdom
of God. If every preacher today would
preach as John the Baptist did, we'd be hearing folks praying
this way, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. You know, when
the day of Pentecost had fully come, Peter stood in the power
of the Holy Spirit and he preached to his hearers the truth about
themselves. He said, this same Jesus that
you hated without a cause, this Jesus, this same Jesus that you
took with your wicked hands and have crucified and slain, this
same Jesus that you would not have to rule over you, God has
made this same Jesus, both Lord and Christ, and God's made him
the one with whom you have to do. And you know what the scriptures
say happened after that? When they heard this, they were
pricked in their heart. And they said to Peter and the
other apostles, what shall we do? Well, I remember when I first
heard the gospel, that was my question. What am I gonna do?
What shall we do? We're gonna have to believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. That's the only
hope that we have. And that brings me to the second
point of God's outline for gospel preaching. And I know I've got
to be brief. My time is about up, but it's
found in the last phrase of verse nine. Look at it with me. It
says, behold your God. All flesh is grass. Behold your
God. Behold your God. If a man or
a woman ever gets lost, you can tell them to behold their God.
And when a sinner sees that they're lost, they'll see that they need
this Savior, they need this God. Until God shows you your need,
you'll never desire this Savior. I can't tell you what I mean
as good as God can, so just look at verse 10 with me. Behold the
Lord, God will come with strong hand and His arms shall rule
for Him. Behold, His reward is with Him
and His work before Him. Look at this, verse 11. He shall
feed his flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with
his arm and carry them in his bosom and shall gently lead those
that are with him. The people of God are compared
to sheep. You know why? Because they're
prone to wonder, just like sheep are. Why are the people of God
compared to sheep? Because they have great need.
They're powerless in self-defense. They're unable to escape from
their enemies. Without the shepherd, they would
perish. Such are the people of God. We're
timid, we're weak, we're defenseless. We're unable to provide for ourselves. Totally depended on the great
shepherd. And it's our shepherd that makes
us to lie down in green pastures. It's he that leads us beside
the steel waters. It's Christ that restores our
souls. It's the great shepherd that
leads us in the paths of righteousness, and he does so for his own great
namesake. It's his rod and his staff that
comforts us, that keeps us safe. And it's because of him that
goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life. And he's the only reason that
we'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever. He's the only reason. Dear sinner, behold your God. He's a just God and Savior. Put
all you trust in Him, all of it. God will see to it that you'll
reside with Him in glory forevermore. Did you earn it? No. Do you deserve
it? Absolutely not. Did you do something
to merit it? One who's dead can do nothing.
All flesh is grass. Salvation is all of grace, all
of grace. May God make that effectual to
your heart and to mine.