This week's message is entitled,
The Same Word from Three Prophets. It will require two weeks of
radio broadcast in order to cover all the material. If you are
unable to listen next week, both radio messages can be linked
from our website at www.rvgrace.com. Now, let us read three portions
of scripture. In Isaiah chapter 1, verse 18,
we find this, and let us reason together, says
the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool. Jeremiah 6 verse 16 says, stand
at the crossroads and ask for the ancient paths. Ask where
the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your
souls. Then in Matthew chapter 11, Verses
28 through 30, the Lord Jesus says, Come unto me, all you who
are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon
you, and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly of heart,
and you will find rest for your soul. Here we have the word of
three prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and our Lord Jesus Christ. Though
Isaiah and Jeremiah lived about 100 or more years apart, both
of them spoke of the same time in history, God's judgment on
Jerusalem and the land of Judah by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar.
But spiritually speaking, all three prophets pointed to the
same day, the day which Christ would inaugurate with His life
and death. Let us look at what these three
prophets said and wrote. and may God make use of it to
glorify His name and to benefit His people. Through the prophet
Isaiah, Jehovah said, let us reason together. The religions
of man are, for the most part, driven by emotion, not reason.
The mind of the flesh craves ecstatic experiences so much
that it will reject the plain preaching of truth, calling it
dry and uninspiring. And in rejecting such dry and
uninspiring preaching, it subjects itself to the most ridiculous
theories of God and salvation. But our God says, let us reason
together. God appeals to us by meaningful
and rational words, not intense emotions. Words are units of
thought. They communicate meaning to us.
It may seem silly to have to make such an obvious statement,
but in our culture, Words have been stripped of their objective
meanings and have become little more than missiles of emotion
designed not to inform us, but to excite our passions and incite
us to action. Stripped of any objective meaning,
words become dangerous. For deceivers can make artful
use of them and make a gullible person feel one way or another,
and the intensity of his feelings leads him to think he has arrived
at truth. Deceitful speakers craft their
speeches so that each listener may impress his own meaning on
what has been said. This is sad enough in the world
of politics and philosophy, as cunning speakers make merchandise
of the minds and thoughts of men, and enrich themselves to
the detriment of their listeners. But in the spiritual world, it
is disaster of the worst For these clever speakers make merchandise
of the souls of men, and drag their listeners to hell with
them. But God uses words full of meaning. When He came into
the world, He came under the character of the Word. He came
to inform, not to excite. He came to change our minds with
information, not to engage our emotions by dramatic speech.
So He says to us, let us reason together. Reasoning is what the
mind does with words. Reason will not always lead us
to the truth, but truth is always reasonable. Reasoning is simply
a thinking process. It is the logical progression
from premises to conclusions. If the premises are true and
reason is used, then the conclusions will be just as true as the premises. The word of the Lord is the premise. reasoning upon that word will
lead to true conclusions. When God called his people to
reason with him, his first premise was this, though your sins be
like scarlet, though they are red like crimson. Now right here,
we discover why men of reason still arrive at a faulty gospel. They do not start with the proper
premise. God begins with the great sinfulness
of man. A sinfulness so bad that man
has no capacity to remedy it. But natural man thinks he has
some essential goodness and that he can improve upon this goodness
to the point that God will accept him. Starting with such a faulty
premise as the goodness of man, it is impossible to reason one's
way to the truth. No, God begins with the truthful
premise of our essential sinfulness. However, then he does something
unusual. He does not add a second premise
so that we may combine the two and arrive at a conclusion. Rather,
He moves directly to the conclusion, they shall be white as snow,
they shall be as wool. Now, this is good news to be
sure, but we are left to wonder how we reasonably get from the
premise of our scarlet sinfulness to the conclusion of snow white
righteousness. God spends much of the remainder
of Isaiah's prophecy showing us the steps of reason between
scarlet and white as snow. But if all we have is the Lord's
first premise of scarlet and crimson sinfulness and His conclusion
of snow-white righteousness, we are left at Jeremiah's crossroads
wondering which path we should take to get from that premise
to that conclusion. By the mouth of Jeremiah, the
Lord tells us which path to take, the ancient one. There are many
who are walking an old path, but old is not the same as ancient. Some go as far back as parents
or grandparents and follow whatever path they took. This is the way
of our fathers and grandfathers, and that makes it old, so it
must be good. While the path in which our parents
and grandparents followed may be the right path, it is not
proven right by how old these ancestors are. Compared to the
antiquity of the right path, our parents and grandparents
are like newborn babes. So recent is their time that
every false path known to man is older than them. Shall we
trust our souls to the seemingly aged wisdom of those who are
merely nearer to death than us? No, we need something much older
than them. Some people go back as far as
the Reformation to find the ancient path. We have passed the 500th
anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. That's a long time
ago. Thanks be to God for the faithful
men and women of that day, who endured great persecution for
their stand for the truth of God and showed great boldness
in the face of grave danger. Yet, The Reformers are not nearly
old enough to be the signpost of the ancient path. If a thousand
years is as a day to the Lord, then the Reformation happened
earlier today. It occurred only half a day ago.
This hardly qualifies it as an ancient path. Some might agree
with that and say, why, yes, the Reformation is much too young
a path to be the true path. The original church goes back
much farther, even four times as far, to a full 2,000 years. This must be the ancient path. 2,000 years hardly qualifies
as ancient. On God's calendar, that's just
the day before yesterday. No church can claim an antiquity
to their way if it goes back only 2,000 years. Yet others
might rise up saying, you are most certainly correct that we
have the ancient path for our path goes back 3,500 years to
a mountain from which God Himself spoke. We have come to the crossroads
and we have chosen this most ancient path and are walking
Sinai's path. This is, most certainly, that
ancient path that is the good path that leads to life. There
can be no doubt that Sinai's path can lead to life, for it
is written The man who does these things shall live by them. Yet,
that path, however old it seems to us, cannot get us from scarlet
and crimson to snow and wool. Sinai's path is a fine path to
get us from snow to more snow, but it simply cannot get us from
scarlet to snow. The path of Sinai is a good path
for those who have no sin. But it is an utterly useless
path to those who, right from the very beginning of their journey,
are scarlet and crimson in their sinfulness. No, that path is
death to crimson and scarlet folk, for that path also says,
cursed is everyone who does not continue in every point of the
law to do it. So let us reason with the Lord.
If my sins are scarlet and crimson, and I walk the good path of the
law of Sinai, the end will not be good for me. It will not take
me to snow and wool, but will deliver me to let him that is
filthy be filthy still. That righteous and holy path
will prove to be the broad road that leads to destruction for
anyone who walks it, having started out from a scarlet and crimson
position. Nor is the path of Sinai nearly
old enough to be the ancient and good way for the scarlet
and crimson to walk. We consider 3,500 years to be
an incredibly long period of time. Three Methuselahs stretched
end to end would not cover that amount of time. Yet on God's
calendar, Sinai is only a half a week old, just three and a
half days. No, if we are to discover the
ancient path that is the good path for the scarlet and crimson
sinners of our race, we must not settle for anything that
finds its starting point within the time frame of sinful man.
In fact, we must go back farther than the period of man's innocence
in the Garden of Eden. This ancient path is so old that
if we come to the crossroads and look down some path and can
see the beginning of that path, we can be certain that that path
is not the ancient path. The ancient path for which we
look is so old that it predates time itself. It is as old as
the one who is that path, that only way to the Father, as it
is written. But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
too little to be among the clans of Judah. From you one will go
forth for me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long
ago, from the days of eternity." Who is this one who is from days
of eternity? It is none other than He who
is the Word, that unit of rational thought from the Lord. who was
already in existence when the worlds were first made. By his
innocent and righteous life, coupled with his substitutionary
and sacrificial death, Jesus Christ reasonably gets us from
scarlet and crimson to snow and wool. Next week, we will expand
on the subject of how Christ gets from our scarlet sinfulness
to a snowy righteousness, and we will show several characteristics
of that path which we can use to assure us that we are on it. Now that message is already uploaded
to the internet. If you wish to hear it right
away, just go to our website and click the link to our radio
messages, then select the same word from three prophets, part
two, may God enrich your souls by Jesus Christ.