Isaiah chapter 6, and tonight
we're going to be looking at verses 9 through verse 13. The title of the message is,
How Long Shall I Preach? Now, this is not a question of
how many minutes I should preach, so I want to clarify that to
begin with so the children don't get too excited. This is not
a message of how long I should preach. But it is a message concerning
how long shall we declare the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's the message, that's
the question Isaiah asks in verse 11. He said, Lord, how long? God tells him to go preach. He
tells him to preach to these certain people. He tells him
to give them a certain message. And he says, how long shall I
give this message? Well, let's go back a little
bit and see this, that Isaiah saw the Lord Jesus Christ sitting
on his throne. That was the first. He said,
in the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon his
throne high and lifted up and his train, his glory filled the
temple. He saw the pre-incarnate Lord
Jesus Christ. Every time that God is manifest
to men in the Scriptures, it is by the Son, Jesus Christ. He is the only manifestation
of God. He is the only manifestation
of God. He is sitting on His throne because
it is His rightful throne. It is His rightful throne as
God. And He has always sat on this
throne. This throne was His from before the world began. He sat upon this throne and He
has always been high and lifted up. Now, how do we know that
this is the Son of God? Well, the Lord Jesus tells us,
I believe it's in Matthew 11, No man knoweth the Son, but the
Father. Now, think about that. No man
knoweth the Son, but the Father. Now, in all my years of preaching,
I don't believe I've ever come across anyone who has not heard
or known of Jesus Christ. Not one. I mean, I've not been
in many jungles. I have not been in any jungles.
So I don't know any of the aborigine tribes or anything like that.
But what I'm saying is anyone I've come in contact with, in
my experience, I've not met one who doesn't claim to know who
Jesus Christ is. So how can this be true? How
can Christ's statement be true? No man knoweth the Son but the
Father. And yet everybody says they know Him. Everybody says
they know Him. Well, this is true. They may
all profess to know about Him, but this is true, that they do
not by nature know Him. They cannot by nature know the
Son. The truth is that they know of
Him, but they have no idea who He is. And I'll tell you, that's
a great difference, because if you don't know who the Son of
God is, you can know all you want to know about the Son of
God. But if you don't know the Son
of God, then you don't have life. Scripture says that he that believeth,
he that knoweth the Son, believeth on him, he has everlasting life. Illustrate this, when Jesus said,
I am the bread that came down from heaven, you remember what
the Jews response was in John 6? They said, hey, isn't this
Jesus? Don't we know him? Don't we know
his parents, Mary and Joseph? How is it that he says, I come
down from above? You see, they knew him, but they
didn't know him. They saw him, but they didn't
see him. They heard him, but they didn't
hear him. They didn't know him, who he
was. That rich, young ruler, he came
in great haste and he bowed down before Jesus and he said, Good
Master, what should I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus, understanding
that he did not know who he was, he didn't know who Christ was.
Jesus said, Why callest thou me good? There is only one good
and that is God. You see, he didn't know that
Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh. And friends, if
you don't know Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh, you
don't know Jesus Christ. You don't know Him. If you've
not seen Him on His throne, If you have not seen him high and
lifted up the only begotten Son of the living God, who is God
of very God and man of very man, then you don't know Christ. We
who know Christ know him as God. We know him as the only manifestation
of the Father. And how can we know Him? How
can we know the Father except the Son reveal the Father to
us? Jesus said, Neither knoweth any
man the Father save the Son, and to whomsoever the Son shall
reveal Him. You see, it is by Jesus Christ
that we know the Father. If we are to know the holiness
of God, how is it that we know this? only by the Son. If we are to know the power of
God, the justice of God, the love of God, the mercy of God,
where do we see these things? We can only see them by knowing
the Son. By seeing the Son, by faith we
see Him sitting high and lifted up. And Isaiah saw Him. He saw Him
high and lifted up. Isaiah was given the grace to
see the Son of God and to know the Son. And he was also given
the grace of forgiveness of sin. When a man comes to know the
Son, he also becomes aware of his sin. When God is manifest
through Jesus Christ, It's then we begin to see the true holiness
of God and the true sinfulness of our own nature. Every time that the Lord God
revealed himself to a man or a woman in Scripture, do you realize how surprised
they were that they did not die? They were all surprised. Surely
we have seen God. Surely we should die. John, when he saw the Lord Jesus
Christ, he fell at his feet as dead. And so did Daniel. So did Daniel. And so did Isaiah. Woe, verse 5, woe is me, for
I am undone. I'm a man of unclean lips. I
told you last time that that's a leprous man. The leper was
to cover his lips. I heard of this this week, and
it was a very strange thing. We were talking about death and
and somebody being embalmed. I think it was Moose and I, obviously,
if I get any information like this is from Moose. So it's something
anyway. Someone had said that this is
the part when you are decaying, he said, this is the part right
here that that decays first. And if you're in bomb, this is
the only part of the upper lip that decays. The rest of the
body may seem whole, but that that upper lip won't. Well, in
leprosy. They had to cover that up, they
had to cover that part of the lip up. and say, unclean, unclean. He recognized himself as a leprous
sinner. How grotesque would that be to
have that part of our face removed? It would be horrid. And that's exactly how we look
in the eyes of God concerning our sins. We began to see our sin nature,
but Isaiah experiences this. Not only does he experience the
holiness of God and see his own sinfulness, but he sees the mercy
of God by the forgiveness of sins. He experienced the grace
of God to send the messenger with a coal from off the altar,
we know that that coal That burning coal is the sacrifice, is from
the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's carried by the
tongues of the gospel message and applied by the Holy Spirit
of God to the heart. And Isaiah, being this picture
of salvation, then the question is asked of the Lord in verse
He said, also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall
I send and who will go for us? Then said I, here am I, send
me. This is the calling of Isaiah
to preach the gospel, to preach The Lord calls him to preach
the gospel that he himself had seen and heard and believed.
Preachers, the qualification for preachers is that they first
must be saved. Now, is that not really just
common sense? But it's true. You must have
experienced salvation. You must have known the grace
of God. You must have seen the holiness
of God. Your own sinful condition, you
must have experienced the forgiveness of sins. In order to declare
this message from the heart, you must have experienced it. Isaiah was called of the Lord,
and he willingly went. And this is the way that it works
for all preachers of the gospel. Every man that's called of God
is saved of God and willingly goes to declare the gospel. God puts a heart in a man to
love men, to love the souls of men, to desire that men be saved,
to desire that God's children be fed and nourished and raised
up. And we know that false free will,
works, religion, preachers are a dime a dozen. Some man wakes
up one morning and just has an itch. He doesn't have any talent
to do anything else. So what he does is, well, I guess
I'll just go preach. That's got to be the easiest
thing to do. And so he goes to a college and he gets a degree.
gets a piece of paper from some men saying that he's able now
to preach, and he goes out, and a group of dead sinners grab
a hold of him, having itching ears, desiring to hear the goodness
of themselves, desiring to hear their worthiness to approach
unto God, how in the world they can work their way to heaven,
how they can merit God's favor. And these two go together, and
this Man is praised of men, but not God's men. God's men are
not praised of men. I'll tell you what, if I was
accepted into the community of the Southern Baptists, I would
have to really consider what I'm preaching. I would really
have to go back and consider what I'm preaching to make sure
that I'm preaching the gospel. If I was accepted by just anybody,
any false religion, then I would go back and look and make sure
that I'm preaching the sovereignty of God, the salvation by the
grace of God through faith alone in Christ alone, by the word
of God being preached alone. God's men are called, and they
are sin of God, not the universities. God's men are called to preach
the gospel and despise to speak of the goodness of men. We despise to speak of anything
but Jesus Christ, who is God, manifest in the flesh. We desire
only to preach Christ. Anything else is not worth our
time and effort. And it's not worth your hearing.
It's not worth your hearing. And by Him alone are you and
I able to see the holiness of God. Now, friends, we have not
seen the full holiness of God, have we? As a matter of fact,
if we did, we would die. We would die. If God revealed
Himself to us in His fullness, surely we would either go insane
or die. I remember, and I won't ever
forget, the experience of asking the Lord to reveal my sin nature
to me and His holiness. And I begged and pleaded to see
more, to seem to know more. God opened just a little bit
more than I could possibly handle, and I thought I would die. I
could not find a low enough spot on the floor. I long to see His holiness, don't
you? I long to see His holiness only
in Christ. There is no other place I want
to see His holiness but in Christ. By Him we see the holiness of
God and we obtain this man. Jesus has obtained the righteousness
of God for us. And we know that the Father,
by Jesus Christ, has sent Him to make the acceptable offering,
the only acceptable offering by which we can be accepted of
God. This is the message we preach. We've seen Him by faith. Have
you seen Him by faith? Have you heard His voice by faith?
Have you understood? Has your heart been given affection
for God and His Word? This is only by the grace of
God. And this is only by the mediator, the God man mediator. Who can forgive sin? Now, the message and the people
that he is to preach to look at this in our text. In verse
nine, it says, and he said, go. And tell this people. Listen to this message. Hear
ye indeed, but understand not. And see ye indeed, but perceive
not. Make the heart of this people
fat, and make their ears heavy. And shut their eyes, lest they
see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand
in their heart, and convert, and be healed. Now, that doesn't
sound like a very great group of people to preach to, and it
sure doesn't sound like a great message, but it is. It is the
message we are given. Paul said, I charge thee, therefore,
before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick
and the dead at his appearing, preach the word. Be instant,
in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all longsuffering
and doctrine. In other words, preach when it's
convenient and preach when it's not. Preach when it's in season
and preach when it's out of season. Calvinism right now is in a season.
It's in a stride right now. Some people are really edumacating
themselves in the gospel. They really are starting to learn
Calvinism, but they have no idea who Christ is. We are to preach
the gospel no matter what, for the time will come when they
will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lust heap
to themselves teachers having itching ears, and turn away their
ears from the truth, and shall be turned to fables. But watch
thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist,
make full proof of thy ministry. We who preach the gospel are
sin of God, not for our glory. Not to promote ourselves and
not to make you a better citizen or a better person. That's not
what we're here to do. I'm not here to make you more
holy. That's not what I'm here to do.
I can't make you holy and I definitely can't make you more holy because
there's no such thing. You're either holy or you're
not. We're here to preach that God,
we're not here to preach that God needs you. I'm not here to
preach that you need to help God in some way to save you or
others. God doesn't need your help. This
is a myth. This is a fable that people have
turned to. We are sent to those and we are
sent to these people who have ears but don't hear, who have
eyes but don't see, who have hearts that are dead. That's who we are sent to. We are not sent to the best of
men. We are sent to sinners. God sends His men to sinners. And I know right here, I have
a bunch of sinners right here. You're here because you are a
sinner. Otherwise, if you weren't a sinner,
you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't have any need of
this message. But God sends his message to
those who see and hear, but don't see and hear. They see and hear
physically, but they don't see and hear spiritually. They understand
mentally, carnally, but they don't understand spiritually.
Now, I identify with that. I tell you, I attended church
for years, and I heard everything he said. I understood everything
he said. I saw everything he did. But
I didn't hear, I didn't see, and I didn't understand one thing
all those years. Yet he kept preaching to me.
He kept doing it faithfully. He said, Go tell the spiritually
blind and deaf. Go to them. Go to the ones who cannot know
God unless the Son revealed himself. That's who we go to. The hopeless. Jesus said, No man can come unto
me except the Father which hath sent me. Draw him. This is against the wisdom of
men. The wisdom of men is to go to
holy people, isn't it? The wisdom of men is to try to
preach to holy people, to religious people, to good people. No, that's not who God sends
preachers to. He sends preachers to vile, wretched,
outcast, undeserving sinners. That's who God sends His men
to. And we preach to them. We preach the gospel that is
a mystery. You know, the gospel is a mystery,
isn't it? To us, we see the mystery. We understand the mystery of
how God can be just and justify the ungodly. But men cannot by
nature know this. They can't see it. They don't
know it. Even though they say they do. They claim to. I was so happy the other day,
I actually usually when I when I witness or somebody asked me
a question, somebody's fooling us enough to ask me a question
and I give them an answer and I don't give them a short answer,
I give them the answer of the question. Well, usually when
I start this, the men of the diner get up and they know me,
get up and walk out, they just leave. Because they know what
I'm going to say and they don't want to hear it. Well, there
was a religious guy came in and he asked me a question. Well,
they got up and left and he didn't get the hint. So I began to preach. I began to tell him of the gospel. And it wasn't three minutes into
the conversation. Just answering the question,
what did you preach Sunday? I began to tell him. And sure
enough, three minutes he turned away and started talking the
way This ignored me. He didn't understand what I was
saying. I might as well have been babbling
to him. He didn't understand a word of
the message. That's all right. That's the
people we're sent to. That's the people we're sent to. No
man can come to God except he be drawn. And what is the result
of this faithful preaching to the blind and deaf? Well, it's
the same result as happened to Ezekiel when he preached to the
dead. What happened then? When God
told him to preach to dry bones. Scripture says that the bones
began to rattle. I love it when bones begin to
rattle. I love it when men become nervous because they're actually
hearing something. And God pulls the bones together
and the sinew and the muscle together and they're standing
there still dead. And He said, prophesy under the
wind. Preach to the wind. The Spirit
of God comes and gives life to sinners. And that's exactly what
Isaiah is being told. He said, you go preach to those
deaf and they'll hear. You preach to those that don't
have sight, and I'll give them sight. You preach to those who
don't understand, who don't believe, and I will give them faith and
understanding. I'll tell you, this preaching,
the gospel sometimes is weary. It becomes weary because I don't
see the results all the time. I don't. This is faith. I preach. By faith, because I
don't know what God will do with the message. I have no idea. Talking to that man this afternoon,
I don't know what what the Lord will do with that. All I know
is I'm supposed to do it. Without question. Without argument. Without debate. How many times
have I been so foolish as to debate myself? concerning speaking
to a man. Well, he's not going to listen.
That's not for me to judge. It is for me to preach. It is
for me to witness. It's not for me to guess who
will believe and who will not believe. That is not my business. And so then the question is asked
by the prophet, how long? How long are we to preach to
such men? How long will the wicked be prosperous
and the righteous suffer? Because that's what I see when
I preach the gospel. I see that few are chosen. Many are called, but few are
chosen. How long shall we preach the
gospel message of grace and hope with such little regard for it,
when men have such little regard for God and the gospel we preach? How long shall we endure? Well, the Lord gives the answer
to this. Look at your text. Verse 11. Then said I, how long? Lord,
how long? And he answered. Until the cities
be wasted without inhabitant. And the houses without man. And
the land be utterly desolate. and the Lord have removed men
far away, and there be a great forsakening in the midst of the
land." We are to preach the gospel knowing the grace of God and
desiring sinners to know God. That is how we are to preach,
and the result of this is God will save his people from their
sins. This is going to be the result.
God said it will. Well, how is this accomplished? Well, this is accomplished by
the Lord laying our cities waste. He said, until the cities be
wasted. Go to Hosea, chapter 2, and read
this account. And I think this will sum up
some of these verses, this verse I just read. Hosea, chapter 2. Right after Daniel. Hosea, chapter
2. And look at verse 6. This is
speaking of Gomer. Gomer, you know what Gomer means?
Wasted. Hey, that sounds kind of familiar. That sounds exactly like my nature.
Wasted. He says, therefore, behold, because
she has fallen after her lovers, he said, behold, I will hedge
up thy way with thorns and make a wall that she shall not find
her path. And she shall follow after her
lovers, but she shall not overtake them. She shall seek them, but
shall not find them. Then shall she say, I will return
and go and return to my first husband. For then it was better
with me than now. For she did not know that I gave
her corn and wine and oil and multiplied her silver and gold,
which they prepared for Baal. Therefore, will I return and
take away my corn in the time thereof and my wine in the season
thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax given to cover
her nakedness. And now will I discover her lewdness
in the sight of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of
mine hand. I will also cause her mirth to
cease, her feast days and her new moons and her Sabbath and
all her solemn feasts, and I will destroy her vines and her fig
trees, whereof she has said, These are my rewards that my
lovers have given me. And I will make them a forest,
and the beast of the field shall eat them. And I will visit upon
her in the days of Balaam, wherein she burnt incense to them, and
she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went
after her lovers and forgot me, saith the Lord." Therefore, behold,
I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak
comfortably unto her." All the things a man has in this
world, he thinks he's given because he's talented, because he's worked
hard, because He deserves them. He's just like Gomer. He thinks
that he gets all of these pleasures in the world because of himself. No, he could not have one thing
had God not given it to him. And I'll tell you what, praise
God when He starts taking those things away. This is a sign of
grace. This is a sign of mercy when
God starts taking those things of this world away from us. When
He drags us out and shows us the barren wilderness of our
depraved nature. When He exposes us for who we
really are, spiritual harlots. But the grace of God says, I
will allure her. Now, is that not something? You
find someone stripped without clothes or without food, without
any means, and then you have someone, a king come along, and
he not only tells her to get into the back of the carriage,
to get in the back, and we'll make you a slave. No! She enters
into his own carriage, and she becomes his bride. He says in
the next few verses, He says, and I will, verse 19, and I will
betroth thee unto Me forever. Oh man, what a wonderful God
who would take such a sinner and betroth us to Himself. How long? Forever! He'll betroth
us to Himself. He said, I will betroth thee
unto me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know, thou shalt know
the Lord. If you've never been in the wilderness
of your sins, you've never been saved. God allures us into the
wilderness of our sins, hedges us about so that we can go nowhere
but where he sends us. to the man of God to preach the
gospel of God to us, so that he might allure us with his love." Has your cities been laid waste?
Your defenses? That's what a city is, isn't
it? A defense? Has God leveled your defenses? Do you have anything
by which you're going to approach God in defense for yourself,
for your sin. Has God shown you that the house
that you dwell in, this temple, is empty of the man that He created
in the beginning? He created man in the image of
God. That image of God is marred within us. There's nothing left
of God in us. We're full of sin. Have you seen
that? Has God showed you that, emptied
your house of all your good works? Has God laid your land utterly
desolate? In other words, has he showed
you the fruit of your works are barren? What good is it Apple tree that
doesn't produce apples. What is it good for? Nothing. Nothing. Our land, our heart is barren
of good words. Nothing can we do to please God. And we preach the gospel until
the Lord removes all men. And there's a great forsakening.
What is this saying? Well, I looked at this and removed
all men far away. Far away from what? Far away
from sharing in the glory of His salvation. Have you been
removed far away from this? The glory of God, how short have
you fallen from the glory of God? How far have you been cast out? And we're to preach until the
great forsaken is in the midst of the land. This great forsaken
was the forsaken of God. who forsook his Son on the cross.
We preach until men see that Jesus Christ was made sin for
us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in Him. And look at this last verse in
verse 13, and we preach with confidence. But yet, and it shall be a tenth,
in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and it shall be
burned, eaten. And the teal tree and the oak,
whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves, so the
holy seed shall be the substance thereof." We preach because there's
a tenth. There's a remnant. We preach
until the remnant has come in. That's how long we preach. You
know that there's going to be a preacher on this earth until
God has saved every one of His elect people? That's how long
we'll preach. We'll preach until God saves
His people from their sin. We preach because there is a
remnant. Elijah thought, he said, Oh Lord, I'm in! There's no more,
just take me and let it be over. And the Lord said, No, I've got
seven thousand. I've got a remnant, he's always
had a remnant in every age. And friends, as the oak tree. All of the substance of the mighty
oak is found in the acorn. The substance of the believer
is found in the holy sea. Christ. The holy seed shall be the substance
thereof. We find in Jesus Christ that
he is all our substance. I don't have anything else. I
don't have anything to please God. I'm so far removed from
this. I was not there when they made
the covenant. I was not there when he chose me. I was not there
when he died for me. I was not there when he rose
again and ascended to the throne of heaven. I was not there. I
had no hand in it. And yet he did it because he
would. And there I was running madly
in sin. And then he saved me because
he would. He sent a man. preach the gospel,
and I believed. And we will preach the gospel
until all God's people believe. And then it's over. Then we will
enjoy Him who was from eternity our substance, our salvation,
our hope. I pray that we would look to
Christ, away from ourselves. Don't look inside yourself to
find anything of hope. Don't look inside to try to find
any merit. There's nothing there. Look to Christ. He's all our
substance. I pray that God will bless this
to your hearts. Let's stand and be dismissed in prayer. Cook, would you dismiss us in
prayer, brother?