All right, beginning at verse
10 in Isaiah chapter 1, we read, hear the word of the Lord, you
rulers of Sodom. Listen to the law of our God,
you people of Gomorrah. Now, Isaiah is a prophet from
roughly 150 to 200 years before Judah went into captivity. And
he spoke of things that would happen during that time, you
know, just before they went into captivity and then later that
they would be delivered from that captivity up in Babylon. Now here he is bringing God's
charge against Israel. He does it in picture form in
the First nine verses, that is, he speaks of it in terms of someone
who's been beaten, someone who's got wounds, bruises, and putrefying
sores, and this sort of thing. Now he begins to speak a little
more literally. He says, hear the word of the
Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Now he compares Israel to Sodom
and Gomorrah. Now in our day where The homosexual
community is trying to gain acceptance. They go to scriptures like this
and claim that God's judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah was not
about homosexuality. Because after all, he was saying
to Israel that they were Sodom and Gomorrah. And Israel was
not particularly guilty of that sin. All that is being done here
is God has taken an example that Israel was fully aware of the
most wicked of cities that was in the land that he had given
them to possess. Now, they were already destroyed
before he gave them the land to possess. He destroyed them
during Abraham's day. Nonetheless, every Jew knew about
the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah. And you know, like just about
everybody else in the world, they figured that Sodom and Gomorrah
was worse than them. Aren't we all like that? We'll
admit we're sinful, but there's always somebody we think is more
sinful. So God went to what the Jews considered to be the most
despicable people that ever lived. And he said, that's you. That's
you. Israel. the one who'd been given
so much, the nation of Israel, who had the prophets, who had
the temple, who had the ministry of the temple, who had the scriptures,
who had all these things, and yet, had they advanced themselves
or made good use of those advantages to advance themselves to being
any better than Sodom and Gomorrah? No. In fact, you know, in a sense,
Israel's sin was worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah because
when Israel sinned, she did so in the face of God's goodness. She did so with all those advantages. You know, if someone doesn't
have much advantages in life, we don't judge them so severely
as someone who had every advantage handed to them and still ended
up being a failure. They had every advantage, or
at least more advantages, spiritual advantages, than any nation in
the history of the world, and yet, they had degraded themselves
to be as despicable as Sodom and Gomorrah. Now note what things
he brings up to them as their sins. The multitude of your sacrifices,
what are they to me? Says the Lord. I have more than
enough of burnt offerings, of rams, and the fat of fattened
animals. I have no pleasure in the blood
of bulls and lambs and goats. Now, God has compared them to
Sodom and Gomorrah, the most perverse cities we have a record
of, whether in scriptures or anywhere else. We don't know
of any city wholly given over to the kind of things that went
on in Sodom and Gomorrah and some of the other cities of the
plain there. And God has compared His nation, Israel, to those
two cities. But doesn't He now bring up any
particular sexual deviancy on their part and say that that's
what disgusts Him? No. It was their worship. It
was them doing the very things He had commanded them to do and
so far from God was their hearts when they did it. It was to God
as though they were like the perverts of Sodom and Gomorrah.
I want you to think of that. How many people today are going
to church, and their heart is far from God, but they think
God is pleased with what they're doing? They're going, as it were,
offering their sacrifices, their burnt offerings, performing all
the duties that they believe God has given them to do, and
they think that God is so pleased with what they're doing. And
yet God says of them, as he did to the Jews here, you're like
Sodom and Gomorrah. All your religion means absolutely
nothing. It's disgusting to me. He says
in verse 12, when you come to appear before me, who has asked
this of you, this trampling of my courts? Now they might answer
that. Well, you did. You told us to
come here. Not like they were. You see,
God calls his people to his courts. Enter into his courts with thanksgiving.
Into his courts with praise. And we do. But God has absolutely
no desire for those to come into his presence and as it were trample
his courts with religious duties if their heart is not in what
they're doing. How often have I said In the
30 years I've been here, if you don't want to come to church,
don't. I do not mean by that, and I
always have to give this disclaimer, I do not mean by that if you
wake up some Sunday morning and you're not feeling so good, say,
you know, I maybe just won't go to church. I'm not talking
about that. I'm saying if it is not in your heart to worship
God, don't come to church thinking God's going to be pleased just
because you went through the motions. Heartless worship is
to God just like the perverseness of Sodom and Gomorrah. Stop bringing, verse 13, meaningless
offerings. Your incense is detestable to
me. Now think of that. These are
all things that God commanded them to do. And when they did
it, God said, that's detestable to me. Why? Well, they were meaningless. They brought, let's say they
brought an offering of a lamb. Now, if they brought an offering
of lamb as they should have done, they would have brought it confessing
their sinfulness, acknowledging that this lamb symbolically referred
to someone who would come who would be the substitute for them
in the punishment of their sins. They would not have brought lambs
proudly. They would not have come to the temple with the idea,
well, my lamb's better than his lamb. Or, look at me, I'm rich
enough to afford a lamb. Those poor people over there,
they had just a pigeon or a turtle dove. But that's what they were
doing. They were proud of their sacrifices
when their sacrifices should have humbled them. Because if
nothing else, the sacrifices were saying to them, you are
a sinner who cannot come into the presence of God apart from
some animal dying in your place. and how many proud Christians
are there? I hear people, on Facebook, every once in a while,
somebody comes on there, like if you're proud to be a Christian.
And I've always written, well, I'm not ashamed to be a Christian,
but it's not a thing to be proud of, because I had nothing to
do with it. And being a Christian involves
me confessing I've got absolutely nothing to be proud of and a
whole lot to be ashamed of. Trusting Christ is not a declaration
of the fact that I am good and noble and virtuous and that's
why I have trusted Christ. Trusting Christ is an acknowledgement
that I am poor, wretched, blind, needy. I am so wicked that nothing
other than the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, the bloody
slaughter of Him. Or as in Latin, in referring
to that, the word was holocaust. You know, if you say the word
Holocaust, we always think of what happened to the Jews in
World War II, and that was awful. But that was the word that was
applied to sacrifice, the Holocaust against Christ. And that happened
because that was the only way that God could justify me and
leave his just nature intact, intact. But these people, they
brought their sacrifices proudly, burned their incense with pride,
observed their new moons and their sabbaths and their convocations.
He says, I cannot bear your evil assemblies. The town I lived in, Huntington,
West Virginia. That is, it was a big town near
us. And on Fifth Avenue, Fifth Avenue in Huntington was actually
in Guinness Book of World Records for the most churches per mile.
And it was right. You couldn't. I mean, you know,
there are just churches all along Fifth Avenue. And don't you know,
Huntington was proud of that. And virtually every one of them,
if not absolutely all of them, were evil assemblies. Gatherings
of people proud of who they are. and what they were doing. Evil assemblies. Your new moon
festivals and your appointed feast. And notice this, he calls
them appointed feasts. Who is it that appointed them?
God. And they were doing them. And
what does he say? My soul hates. These are pretty strong words,
aren't they? I was told Last night in an exchange
I had on Facebook that only God's allowed to judge. Well, here's
one of God's judgments. On the one hand, I agree with
what that person said. Only God's allowed to judge,
but once he's revealed his judgment, it's all right for me to say
so. It's all right for me to say what God says. And God says
right here, his soul hates such meaningless, heartless, proud
worship. He said, they've become a burden
to me. They've become a burden to me.
I am weary of bearing them. I've heard people say, I'm going
way back here to the religion of my youth and my college years.
God has no hands but your hands. No feet but your feet. He's got
work to be done, but only you can do it. So what is that? They're saying that the work
of God is a burden to us. Our Lord said, your worship is
a burden to me. It's irritating. I can't put
up with it anymore. Can you imagine a message like
this being preached in most of the churches of the United States?
Can you imagine if God were to descend or to send some obvious
prophet of His into these assemblies, and have them declare such words
as these, if people have come to their church and all their
Sunday go to meet and close, and they've got their Bibles
tucked up under their arms, some of them so proud of the fact
they use the King James Version, others proud of the fact that
they have this or that translation, or as I did one time, I took
my Greek New Testament to the church, because I wanted people
to know that I could read it in Greek, And it's a horrible
mess, aren't we? But when they do that, wanting
to make sure everybody sees that they went to church, God says,
that's a burden to me. I'm weary of putting up with
you all. That's what he said. When you spread out your hands
in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Even if you offer many
prayers, I will not listen. People say, well, you know, we
can always pray. Yes, you can, but God does not promise always
to listen. He does not listen to these formal
prayers that people offer. When I say formal, I mean those
that have been carefully structured to say all the things that we
know we're supposed to say, but really do not arise from our
hearts. He's saying to these Jews, you can come in and you
can recite all the prayers that you've learned. And I don't care
how many times you recite them, I'm not listening. When you see the enemy come and
you come to me with your recited prayers, I'm not listening. When
you feel the hand of my chastening and you come to me with your
recited and heartless prayers, I'm not listening. And then he says, your hands
are full of blood. Whose blood? The blood of innocent brethren. What else had these Jews done?
Well, they were bitter at one another. And if we want to spiritualize
this, and I think that that's really what we should do with
stuff like this, what they had done is shed the blood of those
who had pled the blood of Christ through their sacrifices. In
other words, they had turned on the real believers. And he
says there's blood on your hands. And in our day, and really this
has been going on ever since Cain killed Abel. What did Cain
kill Abel about? He killed him over the gospel.
He killed him because Abel, by offering a sheep, by faith he
offered a better sacrifice. God accepted him. He wouldn't
accept Cain's sacrifice. And I don't know whether God
had some way of talking to them or it's simply that Abel went
away rejoicing that his sins were forgiven. And Cain went
away under a sense of condemnation. And he envied the joy that Abel
had. And therefore killed him. You know, this here, we find
a fulfillment of it in the days of the Lord Jesus Christ. When
our Lord would grant deliverance to some poor nobody, and they
would go away rejoicing. And what response do we get from
the religious leaders? They were angry, they were ready
to shed blood. And when preachers of our day
stand up and tell those who claim an interest in the blood of Christ,
that they are under the judgment of God. Tell them that if their
works do not match a certain level, that they are yet under
the judgment of God. There is blood on their hands.
They have slain the innocent. Who are the innocent? The ones
that truly believe Christ. They're innocent. Say, well,
I believe Christ. There's a lot of things I've
done. Yes, but in the sight of God, you're innocent. And for
any preacher to preach a message to you, that puts you under a
sense of divine guilt and judgment is for that preacher to have
blood on his hands. For he has slain one who has
no sin by the blood of Christ. He says wash and make yourselves
clean. Wash yourself. Acknowledge that it's not them
but it's you that are the evil ones. Make yourself clean. Take
your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do
right. Now, of course, he's speaking
here to a people who are under a covenant of works so far as
their national blessing was considered. But the works that they were
supposed to be doing were all works that pointed to the gospel
of Christ. They would, for instance, keep
a Sabbath day. And that's what they were supposed
to do. Because the Sabbath day was a day of rest intended to
picture our rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. But what did they
do with the Sabbath day? They made resting into a work. No wonder God was tired of putting
up with them. He's saying learn to do right.
Seek justice. You know, it would not be justice
for me to condemn someone whom God had justified. Paul says, who is he that condemns? Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies. It is
Christ who has died. Now quite frankly, I don't, at
least I can't remember when I ever said at least in the last 10
or 20 years, that this person's lost and that person's saved.
You know why? It's not my business. I've not
been given that authority. But if I preach a message that
brings the believer into bondage, I have not sought justice. I
have overthrown the justice which Jesus Christ satisfied at the
cross. Seek justice. Encourage the oppressed. Somebody sins, and they're oppressed
by a sense of guilt. This happens to our brethren,
doesn't it? It happens to us. We're believers. We say we believe. We claim all my sins are washed
away, which you know well, as fully well as I do, that we say
those things, but they're not 100% true. When we sin, and especially when
we sin notably or fall to some sin which has frustrated us all
our lives, we feel the oppression of guilt. Do you know what standard religion
does with that guilt? It takes that guilt and makes
a set of chains out of it and binds the person to that religion. That's not encouragement, is
it? Do you know how blessed it is to be able to say to someone
who is just overwhelmed with a sense of sin, and you say to
them something to the effect, well, is your hope in Christ
Jesus? They say, yeah. And then you
say, your sins are gone. You are free. If your hope's
in Christ, you're free. That's not what these people
wanted to do. They wanted to discourage the oppressed. Defend
the cause of the fatherless and plead the cause of the widow.
The fatherless and the widow being serving here as illustrations of those who in
themselves by their natural selves have no one to care for them. It says the Lord looked with
mercy upon the fatherless and the widow. And what did they
do? They stripped them. What did the Lord say to the
Pharisees in his day? You devour widows' houses. And
while I'm not sure exactly what it means, what I assume it means
is when widows, you know, their husband died, and back in those
days there was hardly any way for a woman to make a sufficient
living to care for herself, and therefore her household, her
house, the place she lived in, her husband was paying for it,
her husband paid the tax on it, he's gone, where does that leave
her? Leaves her in debt. There's debt to pay, and the
only way she can pay it is to sell the house. And those Pharisees
would see them in distress. And their house may be worth,
and I'm just going to use modern day figures, their house may
be worth $200,000, but they're in distress and need money immediately.
And they come up and say, I'll give you 50 for it right now,
cash on the barrel head. And in their distress, the Pharisees
deprived those widows of what was rightfully theirs. They devoured
their houses for pennies on the dollar. when what they should
have done, because most of the Pharisees were quite wealthy,
they should have told that widow, your house worth 200,000, here's
250. You're gonna need some extra to get along. But see, that's
what was going on in the days of Isaiah. In fact, that's what
was going on most of the time in Israel. The more I study about
Israel, you know, in the days of the Old Testament, you know,
we always think there were these godly people. They were a miserable
lot, I'll tell you that. Then he says this, and this is
amazing that God would say this. After such strong denunciations,
after such strong judgments, he 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 as wool. You know, the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ is not a denial of the sinfulness of sin. Once
again, as I was discussing this matter with someone, I say discussing,
it was just a few exchanges back and forth on Facebook over the
issue of homosexuality. And this person said, I didn't
know what I was talking about when I said that homosexuals should
be ashamed of what they do. And I said, there's only one
person who can be trusted with those things that are in our
closet. You know, you've heard about coming out of the closet.
Well, all of us are in the closet in some way or another, aren't
we? We should be. We should hide those things about
ourselves that are not fit for public display. And we don't
need to go around telling everybody about it. But there is one who
can who can handle what we really are, who can handle our closet
sinfulness. And that's God. But he does not
handle it by saying what you're doing is OK. It's not that bad. He says, oh, your sins are like
scarlet. I remember being told this when
I was in college and I think it was in our childhood education
in the church class. But the teacher said, when you're
teaching kids about sin, don't tell them sin is black. But for
one thing, and of course, this is the mid 70s and political
correctness was starting to take hold. Still, it said it might
be offensive to those who are black. But she went on to say,
but most of all, Because the Bible does not call sin black,
it calls it red. Have you ever tried to get red,
a red stain, out of clothing? From my understanding, and believe
me, I'm not trying to pretend I do the laundry at home, I don't.
But I have read, I have heard it said, that the most difficult
stain to remove from clothing is red. It's virtually impossible
to do. And so the Lord has picked that
color, which is most difficult to remove from a piece of cloth. And not only that color red,
has chosen the most vibrant forms of it, scarlet and crimson, and
said, that's your sin. And it doesn't matter how many
times you wash your clothes, it's not coming out. You may
make the world think you're just pink, I know you're scarlet. I know you're crimson. And you'll
never be able to convince anybody you are white. But he said, let's
reason together. And he was not saying here, let's
negotiate. Let's come to terms. He's saying,
let's be reasonable now. Let's you quit pretending. Let's
you quit putting on a show. Let's be honest now. Your sins
are like scarlet. They shall be white as snow. Though they are red like crimson,
they shall be like wool. Now I want you to notice here
that our Lord did not say, your sins are like crimson, you need
to straighten up. You mentioned straightening up
later, but not this point. This gospel being declared here
is not an offer, it's a decree. Do you see that? He did not say, though your sins
are like scarlet, if you'll come forward and shake the preacher's
hand and sign a decision card, I'll make them white as snow.
He just said your sins are like scarlet. They will be white as
snow. They are red as crimson. They
shall be as wool. The gospel is not an offer. in
the absolute sense of the word, it's a declaration. It's a decree
of the Most High God that He is putting sins away. So Isaiah in 18 verses has so
thoroughly condemned the house of Israel that if any of them
were listening, they would think there is no hope. That's the first 17 verses. Verse
18, he tells the decree of the Lord, your sins, horrible, awful,
uncleanable, but they're going to be white. And here's the miracle
of it, even though it doesn't say it at this point, what is
he going to use to get out those red stains? Blood. Only God can clean red. with blood. There's nothing normal about
the gospel, is there? Everything about it turns every
natural expectation on its head. I would think the Lord was going
to bring forth some kind of harsh bleach, some legal bleach, some
list of laws that would get that stain out. What did He bring? More red. And by the application of the
red blood of Christ, he makes us red-hearted sinners, white
like snow. All right, you are dismissed.