prayers that God would give me
such liberty as I need. And not only liberty from here,
but that God would give you liberty to hear. We both need His grace,
His mercy. Make the word ever so plain as
I can, and I long to do that. Still it takes the power of God
to apply it. and just no way around it. And
I don't want any way around it. Do you? I want it that way. I
hope that God would give you the ability to hear. And I want the ability to preach.
I do. I want the liberty to preach. So pray for me as we worship
God together. If you'll take your Bibles and
turn with me to Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 25. Isaiah chapter
25. And I've entitled this message,
The Worship of God and its Cause. The Worship of
God and the Cause of Worship. Isaiah begins this word here
in verse 1, he says, O LORD, Thou art my God, I will exalt
Thee, I will praise thy name, for thou hast done wonderful
things. Thy counsels of old are faithfulness
and truth." The prophet here begins this chapter with a heart
of praise. That's what I desire this morning,
is a heart of praise. I desire to be able to exalt
my God, to lift up my God with a sincere heart. of worship. Isn't that why we're here? We're
here to worship God. This is what we assemble for,
the worship of God. He said, I will exalt, I will
praise thy name. And rightly so. Isn't it just
becoming of believers to praise God? It is. The psalmist writes
this in Psalm 147, he said, You, praise ye the Lord, for it is
good to sing praises unto our God for it is pleasant and it
is comely. Praise is beautiful for the believer. Now the world, the world promises
joy. The world promises peace and
it appeals to our flesh. It appeals to our nature and
we are often drawn in by the things of this world that are
exciting, exciting. But what do we find? We find
nothing but emptiness. We find those promises are vain. They cannot and will not fulfill
what they promise. In fact, the end of those things
is usually, at minimum, disappointment. And most of the time, very painful
and sorrowful things. But for the righteous, there's
only one pleasant thing. There's only one good thing for
us, and that is to praise God. Praise is becoming of the believer. It is, in fact, our nature, the
new nature, to praise God, to worship Him. You remember when
our Lord was with Mary and Martha and Lazarus. You remember Martha
was busy. She was fixing supper for God. Now is that not a great work?
That's a great thing. It was a good thing she was doing.
Nothing wrong with what she was doing. But you remember she complained
because Mary was not with her helping. And Jesus said, No. She hath chosen That good thing. That one thing. One thing is
needful. And Mary has chosen that one
thing and it shall not be taken. What was that one thing? She
was sitting at His feet. She was worshipping God. She
was hearing His word. And for the believer, this is
pleasant. This is good. I enjoy this. Do you? I enjoy it. The praise of God that comes
from the heart and by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit
is the pleasant thing that we as believers, we experience in
this world. It is the highest thing we can
experience in this world, is worshiping God. Yet, there is
much confusion about what is worship. What is worship? What is it to praise and exalt
God? In religion, people confuse emotionalism
with worship. They get a big band together
and they play great music and there's nothing wrong with music.
Wonderful. Beautiful music here. Music is wonderful. It's actually
an extension of praise. We sing praises unto our God
and music is wonderful. So they get big bands and they
get a church and they make it feel like a concert. They make
it feel something like a sporting event. They chant phrases, and
they stand up, they wave their hands, they cry, they weep, they
fall over themselves, they dance, they sing, they are excitable
people. And I'll tell you, this is appealing
to every one of us in the flesh. Those things are appealing to
the flesh. And what natural man says is, ah, look, that's worship. But how do we know it is not
worship? Well, we know when the man stands
up and opens his mouth to preach. When the man stands up and opens
his mouth to preach, and he preaches the false gospel of free will,
works, religion, this proves that all that they did was vanity,
empty. It's not worship. It's not worship. Because they worship not the
Christ, therefore the spirit that they worship under is not
the Holy Spirit. Now listen, I'm not saying that
God's people are without emotion. We are very emotional people.
We do sincerely with all our heart love God. We sincerely
want to worship and praise Him. We want, as Paul said, that I
may know Him. Now, do you want to know Him?
You who are believers, you know Him. You know Christ. Do you
want to know Him? Well, yes. With all my soul I
want to know Him. I want to be found in His righteousness,
not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law. I want to
be found in Him. This is a very emotional thing.
It's a very passionate thing of our hearts, of our souls.
We want to worship and praise Him for His work and His person. And surely we do with all of
our hearts. We weep over our sin. We bow ourselves before
Christ. And when we present our souls
and are lifted up, have you not experienced that His presence?
What a wonderful thing that is for the believer to experience
the presence of Christ. Do you realize He is among us
today? He is here with us. There is nothing more wonderful
to the believer's heart than to experience that. But our praise
and worship does differ from theirs, because theirs is not
of the Spirit of God. Theirs is the Spirit of Antichrist,
while ours is the Spirit of God. And how do you know? By the gospel
that is preached. What is the cause of our worship? Who, in fact, is the cause of
our worship? If you get that wrong, your worship's
wrong. Isaiah said he had a reason for
his worship. Look at this, look at your text.
He said, I will praise, I will exalt my God. Here's the reason
for, because thou hast done wonderful things. Thy counsels of old are
faithfulness and truth. Faithfulness and truth. You remember
when the Lord was teaching that woman at the well. He was convicting
her of her sin. He exposed her sin to her. And
she was confused as to worship. She didn't understand. She understood
she needed to worship. She needed forgiveness. She needed
pardon. But she was confused. She said,
you say, the Jews say, worship in Jerusalem. My fathers say
we worship in this mountain. And Jesus said, look, you guys,
you don't even know what you worship. Now the Jews, they have the form
of worship. They have the form that is set
out for worship, but they're not worshiping either. He said, The hour cometh, and
now is, when true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to
worship Him. God is the Spirit, and they that
worship Him must worship Him." How? In spirit and in truth. One translator put it this way,
They must worship Him with the Spirit and with the truth. You realize that no man can worship
God without the Spirit of God? You can jump up and down, you
can holler, you can chant, you can do a whole bunch of things,
but unless you're born again the Spirit of God, what you do
is not worship. It's not worship. You must be
born again of the Spirit of God. And those who are born again
of the Spirit of God, we know how He is worshipped. How? With the truth. Well, who is that? Jesus said,
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to God
but by me. So how do we worship Him? We
worship Him in spirit with the Spirit of God who gives us the
ability to worship, the desire to worship, and we worship only
through the person and the work of Jesus Christ. This is how
we are to worship. Now in this text, in this text,
I want us to see Three things that should stir the heart of
every believer to worship. Knowing that worship is what
is becoming of the saints. Knowing that we should be worshiping.
This morning it is our desire to worship. We know that we who
are born again are able to worship. We worship through Jesus Christ.
But now what is the thing that stirs our hearts? What moves
us to worship? The first thing is the counsel
of God. This moves us to worship. He said, I will exalt, I will
praise thy name for thou hast done wonderful things. Well,
what has he done? His counsel, his will. The counsels
of old are faithfulness and truth. The second thing is the fulfillment
of his counsels. This causes us to worship. And
thirdly, What causes us to worship is the revelation of His salvation. The manifestation of His grace
in the hearts of His people. These three things. So let's
look at each one of these. The eternal counsel of God. This
should move every one of us to worship and praise God. For His
eternal counsel is that the prophet here says His counsels are of
what? Old. I love to tell the old,
old, old, old story. It is an old story. It is one
that began before time. It is an eternal story. I will
praise Thee for Thy counsels. I want us to remember this, that
all the works of God that He has done, All the works of God that he
is now doing and all the works of God he shall perform is according
to the counsel of his own will. His own will. Everything that
is done is according to God's will. Everything. There's nothing
that happens outside of his determined will. Nothing. In Isaiah, there are many times
the prophet here by God determines to separate or show the difference
between a true and a false God. You know what the difference
between a true and a false God is? Will and power. The true God has both will and
power. Whereas the false God has no
will and no power. There's a difference. Look over
in Isaiah 46. Isaiah 46, verse 10. Listen to what the true God says. Isaiah 46 and verse 9, He says
this, Remember the former things of old. For I am God and there
is none else. I am God and there is none like
me. Declaring the end, when? from the beginning, from ancient
times, the things that were not yet done, saying, my counsel
shall stand and I will do all my pleasure. Friends, this is
God. This is a God who is worthy of
worship. Any God that is not like that
is not worthy of worship. Any God. that is not determined
all things and does the counsel of His own will. If that God,
He doesn't do that, that's not God. This is God. This is God. The counsel of God's will then
is by its very nature immutable, unchangeable. Remember those
wheels within the wheel in Ezekiel, how they went straight forward,
how they did not turn to the right or to the left, but continued
on forward. That is the will of God. And
so whatever is happening in providence is exactly what God determined.
When did He determine it? From the beginning. From the
beginning. And God will do all His pleasure. And seeing that God is omnipotent
in power and omniscient in wisdom, nothing then could obstruct or
thwart His sovereign decrees made by the counsel of His own
will. In fact, everything that opposes
His will is actually according to His will. Judas. Is that not a great example? Determined to be the son of perdition. Yet doing exactly what He determined
to do. He wanted to do it. He desired to do it. And yet,
He was doing God's will. Everything! There's no obstacle
to God's will. You got that? No obstacle! Nothing's
stopping God from doing what He will. Everything is happening
exactly according to His will. Now then, what is His will? What
is God's will? If nothing stops it, then what
is it? Here it is. The salvation of His people.
That's what God willed. That's what God determined is
the salvation of His elect. The salvation of Israel. It was God's sovereign will in
a covenant of free mercy, of love, a covenant of grace, that
He chose a people that He would save. He set His love on them
and in a covenant by an oath swore that He would save them
by Jesus Christ. In a covenant oath, He swore
that by His Holy Spirit, He would come to them and deliver every
one of them, and none of them should be lost. Every one of
them should be saved. Every one of them should be holy.
That was God's determinate counsel of old. It was His determinate
counsel. And so what does Paul do in Ephesians
1? He praises God for it, doesn't
he? He says what? Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why Paul? Who hath blessed us
with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.
According as He had chosen us in Christ before the foundation
of the world. For what purpose? That we should
be holy and without blame before Him. In love, here's the motive. In love, having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children. Here's the power, here's the cause, the
foundation of their salvation by Jesus Christ unto Himself. Why? According to the praise
of the glory of His grace. That's why. That's why he did
it. This is his counsel of old. In
the Old Testament, Israel, all through the Old Testament is
a picture of God's elect. They're a picture of God's elect. And here in this prophet, the
prophet here tells us in verse 2 something about, go back to
your text, look at verse 2, he tells us something about Israel's
future. He says, for thou hast made a
city an heap, a defense city a ruin, a palace of strangers
to be no city. It shall never be built. Therefore
shall the strong people glorify thee. The city of the terrible
nations shall fear thee. He's prophesying of their captivity. He's prophesying of their captivity
and bondage to Babylon. But you notice this, that in
this prophecy, He's not really prophesying so much about their
captivity as their liberty. So He's prophesying of their
liberty even before their captivity. Isn't that wonderful? And so
it is with us. Consider this, believer, God
prophesied of our liberty even before our captivity. before we were in bondage to
sin, before we were ruined by Adam's fall, before the chains
of sin and death brought our own soul into captivity to Satan
and the flesh and sin. God swore this, I will make a
ruin of your captivity. I will destroy your captors.
I will set you free. Behold, the ruined condition
of all God's elect is the same of all of Adam's race. We were
born dead in sin, by nature captive. We were bound in our hearts and
ruled by our lust and rebellion. But God declares in His counsel. God declares victory in His work,
even before it happened. Isn't that wonderful? He says
He's already done it before He done it. He did it before He
did it. Why? Because whatever God determines
to do, it's done. This is the promise of God's
salvation to all of His elect. Look at the next verse. He says
in verse 4, For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength
to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow
from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a
storm against the wall. He is showing us by His counsel
that God's people are going to be a certain type of people.
They're going to be a needy people, a poor people. And God has determined
that Christ should be their strength and fulfill all their needs.
Christ is going to do this. God says, My servant will do
this. He will fulfill all their need.
He will supply all their need. And not only this, He will be
a refuge for them. A refuge against the storm of
what? Against the storm of God's wrath. Against the storm of God's justice. God put us in Christ in an eternal
covenant so that He should be our refuge. so that He should
protect us. I have this painting, wonderful
painting. Obviously, I think it was a picture
of a man standing on a lighthouse and the ocean waves were coming
in behind him. And as the ocean waves hit the
lighthouse, they didn't hit him. It was a
refuge. It took the blow. And God says,
My Son shall take the blow for all My children, therefore, in
Isaiah 42, God says this, Behold My servant, whom I uphold, Mine, what? Elect. Elect. In whom My soul delighteth, and
I will put My Spirit upon him, and he shall bring forth judgment
unto the Gentiles. How shall he do that? In humility. He shall not cry nor lift up
and cause his voice to be heard in the streets. A bruised reed
shall he not break, a smoking flax he shall not quench, till
he shall bring forth judgment unto truth." And what's the result
of God's counsel concerning the work of His Son? He shall not
fail, nor be discouraged. Is this not the foundation and
fountainhead of all worship? The counsels of God. Can you
think of anything more sure than God's eternal covenant of grace?
There is nothing more sure and nothing that causes the believer
more joy. I know this, people say, well
why do you preach election? And they're always going to ask
you that question. Why do you preach election? That's just
offensive, that's divisive. No, it's glorious. To me it's
wonderful. To me it stirs my heart to worship. Now it may cause many distress,
but not to me. Not to us who worship in spirit
and in truth. We believe it. We trust it. And
Isaiah said, look, they're faithful and true. I worship and praise
my God because His counsels are faithful and true. You can count
on it. Whatever God has determined,
which is to save His people, you can count on it that He'll
save His people. How do I know that? Because of
this second thing, the fulfillment of this promise. The fulfillment
of this is found only in one place, in Jesus Christ. Look
at verse 1 again. He says, For thou hast done wonderful
things. Not only has God counseled to
do wonderful things, God has done wonderful things. He has
done. He fulfills His counsels. He fulfills His will. Now listen, what good is it if
we determine to do something but don't do it? Doesn't help any, does it? I know many times, which is our
experience, we determine to do something but lack either the
will or the power to do it. But friends, God neither lacks
the will nor the power to do what He determines to do. What
God determined to do, He will do it. Numbers 23 and verse 19
says, God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of
man that He should repent. He hath said, and shall He not
do it? He has spoken, shall He not make
it good? And so now let our hearts then
be fixed upon the fulfillment of it which is by who? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. He is the fulfillment of God's
eternal covenant. This one who was promised to
be our strength and the fulfillment of our need to be the refuge
for the poor saints. He has come And He has put down
all the enemies of our souls by the satisfying of God's justice
on Calvary's tree. Jesus Christ has come and done
everything God said He would do. Look in verses 2, again,
He said, For thou hast made a ruin of a city of heat. A defense
city. Isn't that what Satan's kingdom
is likened to? A defense city? Isn't that what our natural nature
is, a ruined city? We were in captivity, in bondage,
even though we were chosen in Christ, though God had purposed
our salvation in Christ, yet He must also come and fulfill
that salvation. He must do it. While we were in darkness under
the shadow of death, but now look and see the Son of God coming
down from heaven. The Son of God came down from
heaven. The Son of God took upon Him
our nature, excluding sin. He had no sin. He did no sin. Why was He to do that? Now that
was just His nature, wasn't it? To do no sin. It was the nature
of Christ to do no sin. Why must He come in the flesh
to do no sin? So that we should be saved. So that He should obtain for
the needy a righteousness that we could not obtain for ourselves.
This should cause you to worship that Jesus Christ has come in
and with His own hands hath made our righteousness. Made our righteousness. I read this recently that, you
know, God uses none of the wool of His sheep to make their robe
of righteousness, but the fine linen of Christ
alone. He, by His own faith, obtained
the righteousness, even the righteousness of God, which is by the faith
of Jesus Christ. He fulfilled it. What did the
prince of this world say? Jesus said the prince of this
world have found what? Nothing in me. There's no sin in me. And yet we needed something even
greater than that. We needed a redemption. We needed
atonement for sin. And so Christ Jesus Being in the very nature of man,
God, in love for us, made him to be sin for us. Who himself knew no sin. God laid on him the iniquity
of us all. This was the determinant counsel
and foreknowledge of God to do this. Isaiah 53 and verse 10
said, Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, to put him to
grief. When thou shalt make his soul
an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong
his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his
hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied. Satisfied. You realize God is
satisfied? God is pleased. God is pleased
with His righteousness. God is pleased with His offering. Why? Because that was the counsel
of God. That He should offer Himself
for all His people. That He should be their righteousness
and their atonement. And therefore we, who are in
Christ, we praise Him. We praise Him for this. I'm so
thankful that none of this depends on me at all. None of this depends
on me at all. In fact, salvation was something
accomplished and purposed outside of me. It was something done
before me, before I was even here. It was done. It was accomplished. It was finished. Even before
I came into this world speaking lies, it was done. I like the
way Paul puts it to Timothy. He said in 2 Timothy 1 and verse
9, notice the order of this. God, who had saved us, and then
what? Called us. You see the order? The order is altogether important.
Salvation was something done outside of me. Done completely
by Jesus Christ. It's perfect in every way. Needing
nothing of myself added to it. Completely done. But how can I praise Him for
such a thing except I experience it for myself? except I know that I'm His. How could this
comfort me? I can know all about theology.
I know your children. I'm sure that they can go to
any seminary and teach. They know more about the doctrines
of grace than most of the learned professors there in Louisville.
They don't know anything. But listen, have you experienced
the grace of God in your own heart? Because everyone God saves,
listen, He calls. He calls. And when He calls you, friends,
you begin to see what this scripture says when He says He gives strength
to the poor. When God calls you, the first
thing you know is you're poor. That you have a need. A need that your flesh and religion
cannot provide. And by this God causes us to
seek Him. And how then does He come to
us? How then does He come to a sinner?
By what we're doing here. Through the preaching of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. through the declaration and worship
of Jesus Christ. We are worshiping God this morning,
and it is by this means that God calls sinners to Himself. It's by this they recognize their
need and they come to Him. Now believer, when you came to
Christ, was there anything else you could do? Was there anything else you wanted
to do? I want Him. I'm poor and needy. Therefore,
in verse 6 of our text, listen to this. He said, and in this
mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast
of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full
of marrow, and of wine on the lees well refined. What is this
mountain? It is His church. What is the
feast? The feast is Christ. God sets
forth His feast for His people. And remember when Jesus talks
about this feast in the New Testament, you remember what He told in
that parable. He said He sent His servants
out. And what was the message of the servants? The message
is, all is ready! All is done. Isn't that what
I've been saying? The counsel of God is done. Christ
has fulfilled the counsel of God. Now then, in this mountain,
in this church, we declare it's finished. Come and dine. Come
and dine. Come and believe. Come and trust
Christ. And you know what? The counsel
of God will be fulfilled and all His people will hear that
message. And you know what? They'll feed on Him. They'll
feed on Him. This is how we worship, is we
feed on Christ. We feed on His message of His
blood and His flesh and His offering. That's what feeds our soul. That's
what stirs our hearts. Nothing in this world can stir
our hearts like that. No, Him and His love and His
grace and His word. We worship Him. We serve Him. We praise Him. And listen, this
feast is fat. You know what the fat is? The
fat is good. Now don't let health nuts tell
you fat is bad. That's what gives meat flavor,
isn't it? You've got to have some fat or
it just tastes chewy. The fat is Christ. The flavor
of the gospel is this. It's done. That's the flavor
of the gospel, isn't it? Isn't that sweet? And the more
so you can chew on. And listen, it's not only fat,
it's nourishing. It's the marrow of our souls. Friends, my whole soul, my whole
soul rests on it. Rests on Christ in His perfect
Word. And notice this, the wine on the lees. I'd look this up.
I don't know anything about wine. I'd look it up. The lees, they
say, is something that preserves the wine. It gives it its longevity. Now, in the Scripture, there
are two ways lees are looked at. When you see, like, Moab
leaned on his own lees, you know, that Scripture. He's talking
about man's work. And he said, that's very bad.
You don't want to lean on your own works. Moab leaned on his
own lees and he was destroyed, remember. So if you trust in
your own works, your own lees, you'll be destroyed. Your wine
is bitter. It won't last. But this wine, the wine of the
blood of Jesus Christ, is preserved by His work, His perfect work.
And so then we hear that Scripture, He cleanseth us from all our
sins. E-T-H, I love that, present perfect
tense. It means He did, He's doing it,
and He's going to do it. That's what it means. He's cleansed
me, and right now when I'm worshiping, He's cleansing me. I'm so thankful
for that, aren't you? That you're not depending on
even your worship? I'm not depending on my worship. I want to worship,
but I'm not depending on it. I'm depending on His blood to
cleanse me from all sin. And He's going to cleanse me
from all sin. Here's His wine on the leaves.
It's a preserving blood. An ever-present cleansing blood. It cleanseth His people from
all their sins. And look what He says. I'm just
going to go over this with you. He says in verse 7, And He will
destroy in this mountain the face of the covering, cast over
all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations. Remember
what He did at the cross. He rent the veil. What does that
mean? The way is open. It's open right
now. Come and welcome. Anybody have
a need? Anyone have a need for forgiveness
and mercy? Well, come. Come and bow down. Come and worship and believe
on Christ. It's open. The way is open. Listen, if you
don't come to Christ, it's your own fault. You'll die in your sins, it'll
be your own fault. But if you do come to Christ, that's God's.
That's God's. That's God's counsel. And God
is only by drawing you fulfilling what He determined to do. This
causes us praise. And listen to this. In verse
8, He will swallow up death in victory. Isn't that what He did
at the cross? He abolished death by the offering
of His Son. And I'll tell you, one day, death
completely will be swallowed up in victory when all of God's
people that He chose in that council, all of those that Christ
fulfilled their salvation for, all of those He calls to faith
in His Son, soon, very soon, we will experience the full measure
of His victory. Full measure. Death will be swallowed
up. Jesus said, I am the resurrection
and life. He that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Do you believe that? Do you believe that? You do if
you know His counsel and His will, you believe that. You know
if Christ fulfilled that, you definitely believe that soon
death will be swallowed up in victory. And it'll wipe away
all the tears from our eyes. Isn't that good? I'm sure maybe most all of y'all
never have too much trouble. I don't know. I do. This world is so full of pain. So full of sorrow, grief. We weep for ourselves and we
weep for those we love. You don't want to do this anymore
soon enough. You wipe away. Isn't that something
that God Himself is going to do that? You wipe away all tears
from your eyes. And there shall be no more sin.
Oh, what a day. How do you know that's
going to happen? God's counsel is always faithful. Christ is fulfilling. His Spirit
is calling me. He'll keep me. He that hath begun
a good work in you shall perform it. Now listen, does that stir
your heart to worship? If it doesn't, Something wrong
with your heart. If it does, everything's right
with it. I pray God will bless it to you.