Now, we already went over verse
18, but it kind of serves as a turning point in this chapter,
so let's look at that again and then go forward from there. In
verse 18, the Lord says, Come now, let us reason together,
says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be white as snow. Though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool. Now, when the Lord calls His
people to Himself, and enters into a covenant or promise with
them, it will always begin with simply stating how things are
going to be. The Lord God is sovereign. He
does not speak initially at any time in terms of possibilities. He talks about realities. He
said, let's reason together. And he's not saying let's reason
together and come to some kind of negotiated agreement. What
he's doing is he's saying to them, you are being unreasonable. You are acting foolishly. You're
not even thinking about what you're doing and how it's destroying
you. You're not listening to the hand
of chastening and discipline. Now, let's reason together and
by this he says, I'm going to tell you what reason is. and
then you believe it. The Lord God is not a negotiator.
He doesn't negotiate anything because He doesn't have to. Now
when humans come to disagreements, they need to negotiate. And that's
for a couple of reasons. No matter what we want, probably
what we want is going to come into conflict with what someone
else wants. And maybe what they want is every
bit as valuable and worthy as what we want. And so we're going
to have to come to some kind of compromise so that both of
us get enough of what we want to be satisfied. We have to negotiate
because often we're not wise enough to know what's good. And
maybe in the process of negotiation, the person tells us something
that changes our mind slightly. And we negotiate because we simply
don't have the power to force people to do what we want. But
God suffers from none of those things. First of all, there is
nothing we have that He needs. When we come to the negotiating
table, as it were, with God, we've got nothing to bring to
the table. So, it's not going to be a matter
of He deserves some things, has some worthy goals, and we have
some worthy goals, and we've got to find out how the two of
us can come to some acceptable agreement. We have nothing worthy. He has everything. And then secondly,
there's no lack of wisdom with God when He comes to the table,
so to speak. And we're altogether foolishness.
Because the Scriptures teach us that we've been blinded. and
rendered foolish because of our sinful nature, because of satanic
activity, we are blinded to what is truth by nature and the only
way we'll ever know what it is is if God shows us and he does
not negotiate about what the truth is. So wisdom is his, not
ours. We've got nothing to teach him.
It's not like he's coming up with a plan that He failed to
take into consideration all the issues. And we bring up some
issues he didn't know about. No. So God has no reason to negotiate. When He says reason together,
He's saying, I'm going to tell you how it's going to be. I'm
going to tell you how it has to be if you are to be saved
from judgment. This is the only way it can be
done. And he says this, Though your sins are like scarlet, they
shall be white as snow. Though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool. So he fully acknowledges the
condition that they're in. Their sins are red like crimson. They are like scarlet. As we pointed out a couple of
weeks ago, at least from what I've heard, the most difficult
stain to get out of clothing is red. virtually impossible
to get it out. And yet our Lord says of them,
your sins are like scarlet, they're red like crimson, but I'll make
them white as snow, they'll be like wool, and he's speaking
of course of most lambs, most sheep are white, so their wool
is white. Now it says in the book of Revelation
that there are those before the throne and they're standing there
robed in white. And the angel asked John, who
are these people? John says, I don't know. You're
going to have to tell me. And he says, these are those
who have come out of great tribulation and have washed their robes white
in the blood of the Lamb. Now, here's the miracle of the
gospel of God. He takes out red stains with
red blood. Only God could do a thing like
that. Now, verse 19. Now he talks about how this proclamation of his is going
to work in this world. There are the divine proclamations
of God and God's proclamations will come to pass. But now he
tells us how it's going to come to pass. He says, if you are
willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land. If you resist and rebel, you
will be devoured by the sword for the mouth of the Lord has
spoken. Now, what is he talking about
when he says willing and obedient as opposed to resist and rebel?
He's talking about being willing and obedient or resistant and
rebellious to what he has just said. Though your sins be like
scarlet, they shall be as wool. Though they be red like crimson,
they'll be white as snow. In other words, They have already
broken his law. They've already proved their
inability to keep it. Consequently, that is not what
he's getting at here. He's talking about them believing
the gospel of God's grace. And he says, if you're willing
and obedient, you'll have the best. And brethren, don't we? By the work of the Spirit of
God, we've been made willing and obedient to the gospel. We have not received from the
Lord any blessings because we started acting better and that's
for two reasons. We've probably not acted much
better and that's partly because we've been raised in a culture
that teaches fairly good morals. Now some, the Lord may have pulled
them, you know, saved them out of such gross conduct. They see
a great difference in the way they live. But most people in
what we would call Western civilization, our culture has been greatly
affected by the gospel. And so most people are brought
up to walk with basic decency. And whenever they want to be
indecent, they go hide. But if We did not have that background
for us. The Lord coming to us and saving
us would have made a remarkable difference in the way we live.
But the truth is, no matter how much difference God makes in
this life, there is sin. We can never live well enough
to earn God's favor. We shoot for perfection. and
we fall very short, don't we? The willing and obedience, willingness
and obedience. Scripture say, it is God that
works in you to will and do of His good pleasure. And what is
His good pleasure? That you should trust the Lord
Jesus Christ for all things. And this is the will of Him that
sent me. of all who see the Son, and believe on Him, I will lose
nothing, but raise Him up in the last day." They said, what
should we do? That we should do the works of
God, that is the work that God requires. And our Lord Jesus
said, this is the work of God that you should believe on Him
who He has sent. Now, God knew full well that
if these Jews, these rebellious people would lay hold of his
grace. And I know we don't lay hold
of grace until grace lays hold of us. But he's speaking here
now in terms of just as we experience it. He knew that if these people
laid hold of his grace, it would change their behavior. because
all the things that they were doing which were contrary to
the law were merely expressions of their rebellious hearts against
Him and against His ways. One of the proofs of that in
the world is very simply this, the less gospel there is, the
less decency there is in any society. That's true. That's why I've said, you know,
often say that preachers need to be bold and stand up and tell
the people of the United States of America that they shouldn't
live like this. Well, go ahead and see how that
works out. Preachers have been telling them
that as long as there have been a United States of America. And
beginning probably at least far back is the beginning of the
last century and even before then. It seems as though religious
preaching, church preaching just began to focus on that. It was
all about what you do. And there even became what was
called the social gospel. And people got the idea that
what the gospel is calling us to do is to be nice to our neighbor.
Well, if you believe the gospel, you will be nice to your neighbor.
But you can be nice to your neighbor and not believe the gospel. But
what happens is, When that kind of preaching starts, for a little
while, it may even seem to improve society, because society is running
along on the energy that was pushed into it, so to speak,
by faithful gospel preachers. But it's going to start to run
down. And the more that the preachers begin laying out how people ought
to live, rather than focusing on how it is we have life in
the first place, the society begins to corrupt. They begin
to say things like, God has no hands but your hands and no feet
but your feet. You need to go out and do this for God because
He's got to get His gospel out there. And before long, they
take that message to heart and think that it's God that needs
them instead of them needing God. And you know what that always
ends up with? Eventually they start to think
they are God. They can do whatever they want. Now that's the short
version of what's going on in the United States. There's very
little real gospel preaching going on. And I fear, even as
I read a lot of material that comes across my Facebook feed,
which as a quote, it seems good, and I'm not going to find fault
with what was said, but it seems as though now we have, the church
has become just like the world, we have these megastar preachers,
and they may be saying some really good things, but they're being
put forward and you hear folks write, oh you've got to go hear
this one, you've got to, he's so great, he's a It's all about
the preacher. And it's about saying gospel
things, and you're going to see just how not of this generation
I am, trying to say gospel things in a cool way. I don't know what
the word for it is now, but saying it in a way that appeals to the
cultural norms of society. Friends, the only thing that
does men any good is the straightforward, plain preaching of the gospel.
That's all. And it does wondrous things.
It is the power of God unto salvation to him who believes. But we preach
this gospel, and when it is preached, and the Spirit of God is willing
to attend that preaching, people believe, and the world is made
better. But he goes on here and said,
if you're willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land.
What does the Scripture say? blessed with all spiritual blessings
in the heavenly places in Christ. If God works in us to will and
do of His good pleasure, which is to believe on Christ, what
we discover is that God has given us everything in Christ. Talk about the good of the land,
the best of the land. The promise here is not that
things will get better. The promise here is not that
you'll scrape by. The promise here is that if you,
and we're just going to say believe because that's what he means.
If you believe, you get the best. God is not in the business of
handing out second class blessings. Now we get some of those in the
sense of we get the blessings of this life as well as blessings
of the next. What's sad is that we seem more
excited about the blessings of this life. I see, again, on my
Facebook feed, people talk about something that's enjoyable in
this life, and they say, oh, God's been good to me. And they're
right. But why didn't they say that
beforehand, when things weren't working out the way they wanted
them to? Do you realize that when God diminishes you, He's
being as good to you as when He enriches you? Do you realize
that for the child of God, sickness is every bit as much a blessing
as is health? Understandably, it's not as enjoyable. But nothing that the Lord sends
to His people is bad for them. But all that we have in this
world is nothing compared to what we have in Christ. That
is the best. Now he says if you resist and
rebel, if you don't like the idea of confessing that your
sins are like scarlet, if you don't like the idea that this
business of making you right with God is going to be totally
the work of God alone, you're not going to make yourself white,
He is. You're not going to wash your
robes, He is. It's not going to be your blood
that does this, it's going to be His. If you don't like that,
and a lot of people in this world don't. Last Sunday morning I
preached at my brother-in-law's church and I preached Well, remember,
I think last week I was here, I preached on Egyptian Christianity.
Well, of course, that all comes from the Passover, and I kind
of took some of the same things, but I preached simply on the
blood, where the Lord says, and the blood shall be a token for
you upon your doors. And when I see the blood, I will
pass over you. And I preached and preached about
the blood through the whole message. People don't like that. They
don't like the blood. because it testifies to them
of how sinful they are. It's interesting, you can preach
the law to people, and they say, hey, I did pretty good. Nine
out of 10, most of the time. Really? I've told you all about
that first Bible my mother got me for my birthday. It would
have been sixth or seventh birthday, somewhere in that neighborhood.
And it had the Ten Commandments written in the back. And so I
went through checking off all the ones I'd kept. Because as
far as I know, I hadn't cussed up to that point. Didn't have
any other God, no idols. Went to church every Sunday.
I thought that covered the Sabbath. It was kind of funny. I got to
that one about adultery, and I had to ask my mom what it was
about. And she gave me some, let's just say it was not a real
good answer. But I was pretty much incapable of that one. But
anyway, I thought I'd done pretty good. I was honest enough, I
didn't check the one that said, obey your parents, you know,
or honor your mother and father, however it's, you know, I admitted
sometimes I didn't do that. People read the law. It's not
the law's fault. They do it anyway. And they find
in it a way to justify themselves. But nobody can look at the cross
and justify himself there. If I'm so good, why did Jesus
Christ die? Really? If I'm that good, why
was so much required to save me? Now, in the remainder of the
chapter, Isaiah describes again some of the corruption. He says,
see how the faithful city has become a harlot, unfaithful,
selling her affections, for money, and that's what the city was
doing, Jerusalem. It was for its own supposed build
up and strength and enrichment and all that. It was willing
to prostitute itself to other gods. She was once full of justice.
Righteousness used to dwell in her, but now murderers. And he speaks of other things.
We don't have time to go through all of them, but you can you
can understand the kind of things that God's getting at. All these
things were revelations of how the life of God was not in them.
But he says here in verse 25, I will turn my hand against you.
I will thoroughly purge away your draws and remove all your
impurities. Now here's something that it
sounds a little bit weird, doesn't it? God in describing his salvation
says, I will turn my hand against you, and I will thoroughly purge
away your dross and remove all your impurities. Now, when God begins a work of saving
a man, the first thing he's going to do is come out against him
wearing the bearing of a just judge. Because you see, no one
ever comes to Christ until they are fully convinced they have
no choice except come to Him or die. And God first comes and
He says here, I will turn My hand against you. And God, through
the preaching of His Word, pierces the heart and reveals to a man
what a sinful person He is and reveals to him what divine justice
against sin is. how that experience goes is different
from person to person. Some people are more easily convinced
than others. Some people are like Saul of
Tarsus and nothing short of the actual appearance of the Lord
Jesus Christ and a blinding light that puts him on the ground,
completely laying him flat. That's what it took. It was not
a pleasant experience for Paul at all. but it was a glorious
thing. But I think there's something
else spoken of here when he says, I will turn my hand against you. Who is you? Us, represented by our Lord Jesus
Christ. On the cross of Calvary, God
turned his hand against us by turning his hand against us.
Lord Jesus Christ. He said, I will smite the shepherd.
That's what God said and that's what God did. He struck the shepherd
and by that He says, I thoroughly purge away your dross and remove
all your impurities. I will restore your judges as
in days of old. Now through the Lord Jesus Christ,
He got rid of all of our sins. He got rid of all the impurities. He got rid of all the dross.
And then he said, I'll restore your judges in days of old. He
restores our mind, restores our soul. The judges who were acting unjustly
in Jerusalem, they were wrong on two accounts. Number one,
they judged according to their own wisdom. not the Lord's. And secondly, even on those things
they might have known that the Lord said for a bribe, they would
judge the other way. And is that not like us? Before
the Lord saw us, our minds, we didn't see things as they were.
We didn't understand the gospel. We didn't understand how God
does things. We didn't understand his absolute demand for justice. And therefore, our mind led us
astray into a false way. And this is as true of those
raised under sovereign grace as those who are raised under
any other form of religion. There is an advantage to being
raised where the truth is preached, but it is no guarantee that the
person raised that way is going to believe. And in fact, until
they believe, they are just like everyone else. they are in a
false refuge of their own making. For the natural man even has
the ability to twist the gospel of Jesus Christ, faithfully preach,
and make it into some kind of scheme of works. It's not until
God restores right judgment that a man believes. Afterward, he said, you will
be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city. God imputes
to us a righteousness He calls us righteous. That word impute
means to count to, credit to, or to say about, or consider
about. And God says to us, He calls us the faithful, or the
city of righteousness, the faithful city. Even though you and I can
think of many sins, and you and I can think of a great deal of
unfaithfulness on our part. But God, by grace, not only through
Jesus Christ puts away all our sins, not only through His Spirit
does He restore right judgment to us, He also counts us and
calls us as righteous. Zion, verse 27, will be redeemed
with justice, her penitent ones with righteousness. But rebels
and sinners will both be broken, and those who forsake the Lord
will perish. He said, you would not have my
law, and I disciplined you, and you would not hear discipline.
Now hear my gospel. If you will not hear that, it's not just discipline you
will receive. It is destruction. Spurgeon said for, he said unbelief
or rejection of the gospel, transgression against the gospel is worse than
transgression of the law. Because for transgression of
the law, there is a remedy in the gospel. transgression of
the Gospel, there is no remedy. That's why it was said in the
book of Hebrews, if we sin willfully, having received the knowledge
of the truth, and he's not talking about just that we on purpose
committed a sin out there, we all do that. He's talking about
this rejection of the Gospel. Don't have time to prove it,
but that's what he's talking about. If we reject the Gospel, there remains
no sacrifice or sin. Because the old way is gone.
You can't go back and slay a lamb. That system's no longer in force.
The only means of acceptance with God is the Lord Jesus Christ,
and if you leave that, there's nothing left except a sure and
certain dread of facing God. All right, you are dismissed.