Isaiah twenty eight. Look at. Go back to chapter one chapter
one Isaiah twenty Isaiah chapter one and then we'll look at. Twenty
eight a moment the book of Isaiah. As with all of God's Word starts
out. With. A condemnation of of man. God's Word, if you'll think about
it, from Genesis, from the beginning, it tells the story of how man
fell and became a sinful, foolish—man was a foolish and sinful creature,
and fell in all the misery that he heaped on himself. A rebellious
creature, that's what Adam and Eve were. He goes all the way
through and into the revelation, tells about how God's going to
destroy it all, but it's going to end good for his people. And
everything in between tells the remedy, tells the gospel, tells
the good news, tells how God is merciful and gracious and
has provided the way for guilty sinners to not be destroyed.
but to dwell with him some day. That's what Isaiah, the whole
book of Isaiah, which is quoted more than any Old Testament book
in the New Testament, that's how it begins. Chapter 1, verses
2 and 3, it says, Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the
Lord has spoken. This is what God has to say about
us. I've nourished and brought up
children, and they have rebelled against a bunch of rebels. My children, by nature, are a
bunch of rebels. Verse 3, he says, The ox knows
his owner, the ass, his master's crib, that is, these dumb creatures. We call them dumb, but God says
man, by nature, is dumber. Dumber than an ox. Israel, verse
3, doth not know. They don't know their creator.
They don't know their master. My people don't even consider. And that was me, and that was
you before God had mercy upon you. Didn't even think about
the God who made you. Go back to chapter 28 now. That's
where it begins, and that's how all men and women by nature are
worse than beasts. He said the ox and the ass know
their owner. and their master, and they at
least acknowledge him. And Paul in Romans 1, you know
how Romans, what it says, it begins, chapter 1, to tell about
how man is without excuse, that God, the existence of God, our
Creator, clearly seen, his eternal power in Godhead is clearly seen
by the things that are made. Yet people don't acknowledge
him as God and aren't thankful. So it says, well, God gave him
up, left him alone. And but by the mercy and grace
of God, he'd left us alone, too. And throughout Isaiah's prophecy,
he pronounces woe upon dumb, rebellious, unbelieving humans. Dumb humans. And then he keeps on declaring,
though, who God is. Who God is. He keeps on. I'm
God. I love this book. Isaiah. Dumb humans. And yet he keeps
on declaring the message of who God is. Now you need to know
this is life. To know God, who his Christ is. Repent. Believe. Know him. Chapter 28 reads like an indictment
against our generation, although it was written several thousand
years ago. This reads like an indictment
against our generation. Verse 1, Isaiah did not have
anything good to say about his day. He said, Woe to the crown
of pride, a bunch of drunkards. a glorious beauty. They're so—in
other words, he's saying my people are a bunch of proud, sottish, that is, drunken, sensual,
materialistic thinking. They're so fine and wonderful
and beautiful and just full of whatever. And they don't know God. Verse one, he said, they're full
of pride, full of pride. Men and women, men and women
in our day are rich in houses and lands which God made and
God provides, and yet rarely even think about God. Men and
women get literally fat on the food that God made. and gave
them, and yet don't give him thanks for it. And reject God,
and some merely give him lip service. That's what God said
in Isaiah, in another place. He said, this people draws near
with their lips. They go through their little
motion of giving thanks for the food, but it's just a show. When their heart is far from
really being thankful to God for everything. Boy, down in chapter verse 22,
look at verse 22, the last verse we'll deal with. He says, I've
heard now, verse 22, don't be mockers of this. Don't let this
slip now. He says, I've heard from the
Lord God of hosts a consumption even determined upon the whole
earth. Isaiah says, the Lord has told me that he's going to
consume this planet, it's all going to be over, it's all going
to be consumed by fire. I've heard it, the whole earth.
So he said, don't mock at this. And you and I have been studying
that our Lord said more about this consumption of the earth
than anybody, didn't he? Jesus Christ said more about
the destruction of this planet than anybody. All right, now
let's see what Isaiah says here in this chapter. Verse 9, look
at it. This is good. It spoke to me.
I hope it'll speak to you. Verse 9, he says, Whom shall
he teach knowledge? Whom shall he make to understand
doctrine? That's what he said over in Isaiah
53, didn't he? He said, Who have heard the report? To whom is the arm of the Lord
revealed? All men by nature, they don't
give God a thought. They're not interested. They
don't want a God. They don't want to have a God to answer
to. They don't want to be under his
law. They don't want this. They want
to be free to do whatever they feel like doing. Full of pride? Well, who's he going to teach
knowledge to? does teach some people, some
dumb humans, he teaches them. He chooses some wild asses, coach,
to teach them, to straighten them out, to tame them for his use. Who's he going to do that for?
Well, look at it. And he does it for some. He teaches
them who he is. Verse 9 says, them that are weaned
from the milk and drawn from the What does that mean? Well, turn quickly over to Hebrews
5, Hebrews chapter 5. Paul, I believe, is paraphrasing
that verse here in Hebrews 5. In other words, he says God is going to teach those who,
they don't, whoever he teaches, they start out as babies, right? Desire the sincere milk of the
Word that you may grow thereby. Our Lord tells us to be like
little children, to receive it, to receive it like a little child,
to hear the Word of God as like a little child, believe every
word of it. Tremble at it. Get excited about it. Believe it. Yet you don't stay
like, you don't stay a baby in understanding. That's what Paul
said. He said, we need to be men in
understanding. We need to be children in attitude,
but not in understanding. Don't stay that way. You grow. This is the sign of life, you
see. Where there is life, there's
growth. Always growth. Chapter 5, Paul complains here. Paul says of some people, chapter
5, verse 12, he says, You ought to be teachers. For the time,
you ought to be teachers. You have need that one teach
you again. The first principles of the Oracles,
or the Word of God, are become such as have need of milk, and not a strong mean. Everyone,
he says, verse 13, read it, everyone that uses milk is unskillful
in the word of righteousness. He's a babe. Now, we start out
like that. We don't know much. God doesn't
give us strong meat. We don't fully, aren't able to
fully digest, you know, strong meat. And God
just gives us the sincere milk, the basic truth, but then he
keeps feeding us, line upon line, line upon line, precept upon,
and they grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ. And everything
he teaches, they receive it. This is how you know you've got
a healthy baby, isn't it? What if a baby never wanted solid
food? What if it never took solid food? There's something wrong. It's
not going to grow into a man or a woman. But it goes on. And a sign of health is to keep
eating everything you put in front of it. Well, go back to the text now,
Isaiah 28. So who's he going to teach? Well,
they start out as babies, and they receive and desire the milk
of the word, but they don't stay there. They wean. They wean. And they go on, Paul said there
in Hebrews 5. They go on. And I didn't have
time to deal with it this morning. I was going to deal with it where
our Lord said receiving the word as a little child. If we cease to hear the gospel
in a excited way. You remember how when you first
heard the gospel it was every message was the best best you
ever heard you excited about it like little children get excited
about. New things and everything just
new and exciting. Happy. They're emotional. Aren't they? Little children
are emotional. You can make them cry. You can make them laugh.
You can make them happy. You can make them run. You can make them, you know,
just life growing. And this is the way it is in
a person who really, the gospel is a new life in them. They receive
it. And if we ever cease to lose that, Barnard used to call it
sweetheart love, something's wrong. Something's wrong. Something's
wrong. We're either in a prolonged state
of bad illness, or we're dead. This is the savor of life to
life. And, you know, till the day we
die, we're going to laugh, aren't we? Huh? We're going to smile. I'm making you smile right now.
Huh? When somebody weeps in front
of you, it causes you to weep. Or somebody plays a jig. You're going to flat foot, Jenny.
Aren't you? You're going to want to dance
if there's life in you. This gospel's a life. It needs
to be learned if it's lost its savor. Receive it as a little
child. You always receive it like that.
Mercy. All our days we're going to be
sinners, and if God mercifully keeps us knowledgeable of that,
oh, mercy. You never get tired of hearing
that, John, do you? Mercy. That milk, you keep drinking. I drink milk now, don't I? I
love milk. I like to put a little Nestle's
Quick in it. Man, I've been doing that since
I was six years old, been drinking Nestle's Quick. get downright
upset and then you didn't buy it at the store. I know I'm 46
years old but what what is it you eat Kellogg's cornflakes
don't you and somebody I mean Kellogg's uh what's it frosted
flakes I know one of you do that or Captain Crunch or something
admit it. This gospel we never cease to
receive it you know with joy and No matter how simple it is.
Brother Scott, Brother Todd Nyberg said, if a message, if a man
gets up and exalts God, and exalts Christ, and points you to Christ,
and he says it's a good message. I don't care how it came out.
I don't care if he yelled, hollered, couldn't holler. It was, it just
fell a little bit flat. If he said that, and got it from
God, it's a good message. It's a good message. And so generally
the problem doesn't lie, it's not in the word. And really the
power is not in the preacher. The problem lies, we must not
have been hungry that day. We must not, we must be a little
self-righteous so that mercy didn't mean much. Right? And our Lord said don't lose
that first love. He said, if some, you've lost that first
love. He said, if some, you've got that, you're lukewarm, you're
not hot or cold, I would that you were either hot or cold.
If you're cold, the gospel can get you hot again. If you get
too hot, He'll cool you off so that you'll, He'll just keep
you, put that lukewarmness where... He said, I'm going to spew you
out of my mouth. Those that are weaned, they're
weaned. They do love milk, still. But
they go on. They learn, in other words. All
right, go back. Look at verse 10. He said, For
precept must be upon precept. Precept upon precept. Line upon
line. Line upon line. Here a little,
there a little. That's how you learn things,
isn't it? We're just, we're no different
than an animal. You know that, Allison, we're
no different than a horse. How do you teach a horse? By
ropes, by repeat, repetition, repetition every day. Don't you,
Kelly? Same thing, same thing. And you
hope just to get it to learn just a little bit of it. If you
keep trying to tell it too much, it won't get any of it. And you've
got to start all over again. And the next day you go back
and what do you do? You repeat what you taught them the day
before. Don't you? That's a good... We got a real
horse whisperer in our midst, folks. That's how you do it. You go back the next day, you
teach them, then you go back the next day and you repeat what
you taught them the day before. Three or four days down the line,
you build on it, but you still go right back where you started.
Those basic lessons, precepts, you don't leave it, basic lessons.
You never leave that basic lesson. I pull right, you go right. Where
I hold this, you stop, man. Now, they sure learn a lot more
than that, don't they? Leg and all that. Anyway, that's
the way it is with us spiritually. God teaches line upon line, line
upon line. Precept upon precept, precept
upon precept. The same things over and over
again, but we build on them. Now, it's called precept. See that? The word precept means
absolute command. Absolute command. Now, again,
if I can use like the horse as an illustration, it's a good
one because the Lord uses animals as illustrations. He said you
put a bit and a bridle in a horse's mouth and you turn Well, you
can't just give a horse advice. You can't just make suggestions,
you know. You can't just give it your opinion
and say, well, if you want to. You can't allow it to have its
free will. In other words, you can't hope
that, now I know you want to be willy, but I'll let you have
your will. You know what it's going to do?
It's going to kick you, it's going to buck you, it's going
to run. It's a mandate. What you're telling
is a command. It's not an option. It's not
an option. Our Lord's word is not an option. It's not an opinion. It's not his advice. I hear preachers
say this in God's view, according to God's point of view. God doesn't
have a point of view. God doesn't have one. This is
one way of looking at it. Whatever God says, it's the only
way there is. Our Lord said, I am the way,
the truth, the life. Dogma. Dogma. Big word for, that means there
ain't no other way. Dogma. Truth. In other words,
you miss this. This is a precept. You miss this,
you miss life. There's no other way. Paul said,
now this is the gospel. There's a bunch of others out
there, but now this is it. This is it. Precept upon precept. Line upon line. This has to do
with God's Word. Line upon line. Precept upon
precept. Same thing over and over again
until he teaches. until he teaches. And over in
chapter 29, the last verse, chapter 29, until it says, verse 24,
they that erred in spirit are going to come to understand him.
And those that murmured, those that heard this line upon line,
they heard it. And at first they murmured, I
don't like that, I don't believe that, it doesn't say that, it
doesn't mean that. I know it says that, it doesn't
mean that. Murmur, you hear murmurs, don't
you? Old time, you did it, people do it. Now I know it says that,
murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur,
murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur,
murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur,
murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur,
murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur,
murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur,
murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur,
murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur and those teeth gritting turn
into laughter. Who's he going to do this for?
He does it, doesn't he? Well, he said, Christ said himself,
he said, all thy children shall be taught of God. They're all
going to be taught. All God's people are going to
be taught, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon precept
upon precept, the way, the truth, the light, precept upon precept.
All right? You've heard these things before.
And you're going to hear them. My dad has been preaching 50
years, Tammy. How long have you been listening
to it? Since you were a girl. You're
hearing the same things, aren't you? I mean, you're hearing the
same things over and over again. But he's building on it. But
I'm still not tired of hearing it. that God is God. Oh, God's people
never get tired of hearing this. My favorite subject, Stephen,
isn't it yours? For a man to stand up and talk
about the holy and just and sovereign God. Do you ever get tired of
hearing that? A man cannot exalt God enough. You can't make God sovereign
enough to please the believer. Make mention that his name is
exalted Oh, they love to hear it. God is God. We never leave. That's the foundation, isn't
it? That's where we start. That God is God. This is the
reason this world doesn't have a gospel. They have a God that's
not God. You don't have any purpose. You
don't have any plan. You don't have any... You've
got a world in chaos. You've got people... You don't
have any assurance. You don't have any comfort. You
don't have any peace. God is not God! There's no answer
to anything if God is not God, working all things after the
counsel of his own will. If God doesn't know all his works
from the beginning, if God isn't working in spite of man, if you
don't have that man, you better run hide in the cave. Or take
your kids out of public school. You better do whatever, get you
some guns. Don't eat red meat. Huh? God is God. And you better work hard. You
better be the holiest person you can be. God is God. Preset. This is preset upon preset. We
tell it every time, don't we? God is God. Holy. Jeanette and I were talking about
this, and it's so true that this world, the religious leaders
and they don't have any answers for all the things that are happening
today. They don't have any answers for
this, the terrorism and diseases, and they don't have any answers
because all they can say about God is God is love. And you can't
you can't you can't explain it evil by saying that God's only
love. You can't explain wars by saying
that God's on the line. You can't explain death. Well,
God didn't want that to happen. He loves you. Why didn't he stop
it? God loves everybody. Why didn't
he save them if God loves everybody? Huh, Henry? If he loves everybody
and wants to save them, why didn't he do it? Huh? What's wrong with him? He's
not God. He can't. Why does anybody bother
with a God like that? There's no answer to anything,
you see. If that's all your conception of God is, is love. Just some
big old granddaddy up there. There's no answer to nothing.
Why did Jesus Christ die on that cross? Because God loves you.
That doesn't tell me anything. God, Scripture says God killed
his son. Why? Because he loves me? What
are you talking about, man? I don't understand that in light
of God's love. I love you, Henry, but I'm not
going to kill my daughter because I love you. What would that prove? God is holy. If you come to understand
first that God is holy, God will punish sin. Every sin will receive
a just recompense. Man's just due. Romans 1 talks about that. His
just due and recompense of reward of his actions. God is holy. He will by no means clear the
guilty. God is sovereign. God chooses
whom he will. Whom he will, he let loose and
alone. Unless God does something, man's a goner. Man is not under
the love of God by nature, under the wrath of God. That's why
diseases and famine and sickness and death and all these things,
wars and rumors and wars, that's why all this evil befalling man. He's not under the love of God.
My daughter's under my love. I don't heap evil on her. She can't explain the God of
the Bible by only lies. I could go on and on with that.
God is holy. God is just. God is sovereign. He chooses whom he will. He'll
have mercy on whom he will. Whom he will, he hardens. Whom
he will, he passes by. He'll be gracious to whom he
will. He'll teach whom he will. I have
one daughter. I don't go out and get other
children and begin to teach them and provide for them. No, sir.
I love her. That's my daughter. Those other
ones aren't my children. And God has his children. You
can't explain it, can you, Ron? You can't explain anything by
simply saying God is love. You know, God is love. God is love. But his love is
not just some sentimental syrupy, oh, I love you and I want, I
want to, I want to do something for you and I hope to and I'd
like to provide for you. That's not love. People, a love
of a husband for a wife is he goes to work and provides for
us. You'll never leave her. A love for a father and a mother
for a child is they'll protect her, they'll provide him or her,
that they'll care for her on all the days they're in their
room. They'll let no harm come to them if they can help it. That's what love does, doesn't
it, Brother Stephen? Love, it sees the child in danger,
and if necessary, will lay down his life for that child to prevent
that child from dying. That's exactly what God did. Now we understand why Christ
died. Because God is holy. God sees a man with sin on him,
he'll punish him. That's what we see, I deserve,
not the love of God, but the wrath of God. That's what we
first see. Thieves on the cross beside Christ. One of them saw Christ as his
salvation and appealed to him, Lord, remember me, have mercy
upon me when you come into your kingdom. The other one cussed
at him. Who made the difference? God. God is sovereign. They both
saw the same one, heard the same things, were guilty of the same
crimes. This man got what he deserved.
This man got mercy. at the hands of a sovereign Lord. Whom shall he teach? Whom he
will. Man and wife come to hear the
gospel. God saves the woman, not the
man. It's his prerogative. God saves
the man, not the woman. It's his prerogative. God saves
both. Hallelujah! God saves neither. It's his prerogative. He's sovereign. God is merciful, God is gracious,
God is love. You understand the love of God,
though? If God loves somebody, he doesn't damn them. He saves them. If God loves somebody,
he sends his sons to die for them to make sure that they'll
never die. If God loves somebody, he sends
the Holy Spirit to them to convince them of sin, righteousness, and
judgment. to make their need bow and their
tongue confess and their heart and give them a new heart. That's
what he says over and over in Ezekiel 37. These are my people. I'm going to teach them. I'm
going to give them a new heart. I'm going to wash them. I'm going
to do that. about today, love that actually
saves. Precept upon precept. Man's dead. We're dead. Can you, you're having
a hard time paying attention to this message right now. Yeah, we are. Admit it. Anybody
like to admit that? Nobody wants to admit it, but
you are. Why? If I was standing up here playing
some bluegrass song, or whatever it is you like, what do you like? Bing Crosby, maybe, depending
on your age. Senior Hank Jr., depends on your
age, you know. If I was up here doing that and
doing a pretty good job of it, you'd be on the edge of your
seat, you'd be clapping, you'd be smiling, you'd be moving and
swaying to the beat, you know. It's time to go home, honey.
No, one more song! Why? I'm up here preaching God's
Word, and we have a hard time listening to it. Why? We're dead
by nature. For that which is flesh is flesh,
that which is spirit is spirit. flesh lusts against the spirit,
spirit against the flesh. You can't do the things that
you would. We're not spiritual by nature. I know these modern
philosophers or religious people like to talk about how spiritual
someone is. You know, he's a spiritual person.
We're not spiritual. We're no better than a beast.
We're no better than an animal by nature. The natural man, and
I can say this, our children hear it on TV all the time, the
natural man, all he thinks about is eating, sleeping, and sex. Look at the billboards, look
at the TVs, listen to the radio, look at the magazine, that's
all it's full of. Food, beauty, sex, indulgences,
animals do that. Right? Man was created to know
God, to walk with God. Man is a more noble creature.
Man is given a mind that animals weren't given. Man is given a
brain. Man is given a spirit. Animals have a soul or something
that animates the body, but man, Adam, was a living spirit because
he knew God. He walked with God, he heard
from God, he listened to God, he thought about God. Beasts
never look up, do they? They never look up. You'll never
see your dog stop and say, huh, well there's the constellations.
I wasn't aware that Orion was out this evening. Oh yes, there's,
you'll never, you'll never see a dog, a brute beast do things
like that. You'll never see a horse stop and say, now is that, are
you giving me right leg pressure or left leg pressure or is that
the, is that the basic riding? You'll never see an animal stop
and consider and think and ponder and meditate, consider his course
of his actions. Man, that's the way man was created.
Think about his creator. think about the consequences
of his action. I think it is better just to
totally indulge myself. When man is guilty, man is a
sinful, guilty, depraved, condemned, man lost that in the garden. When Adam and Eve sinned against
God, God removed himself, so they lost life, knowledge, And
all Adam thought about for a while was getting something to eat. Christ. God made another man,
or that is, a body for his eternal Son to inhabit. The God-man came
to this earth to do what? To help us out, to show us how
to know to live as a man, the way that God intended man to
live. A holy man, clean hands, pure heart, never swore deceitfully
or lifted up his soul unto vanity. He thought about God all day
long. He said, eat! He said, I am.
He said, man doesn't live by bread
alone. You eat all that you want, you'll still die. Whether you
eat of this bread or that, never die." I said, drink! He said, I am. Sleep! I am. Rest in. Acquainted with his God. Conversant with his God. Speaking
to his God. It's God speaking to him. acting perfectly upon what it's
God said. Right. Not just lip service,
but see that. He came. And he did that for
his people as a substitute, as a righteous representative. He
did it for them. Established that perfect life
as the God-man and brought in an eternal righteousness. Now
here's me, folks. I'm telling you some meat now
is gone. From skim milk, now we're eating prime rib. Jesus Christ established an eternal
righteousness which can never be lost. Adam and Eve were holy. They were holy. They were without
sin. They were righteous in that sense. Righteous is a better... I'm not sure which is a better
word. They were without sin. But they didn't have the holiness
of God. They didn't have the righteousness of God. God can't
sin. It's impossible. God can't even be tempted to
sin. That means impeccable. Not able to tempt God. You couldn't
tempt Christ with sin. It wasn't in Him. There was nothing
in there to tempt Him. God made man and woman susceptible. They had their own righteousness.
And they failed. They fell into nothing but sin. They died. Now all they can do
is sin. But Christ came with a perfect
holiness, righteousness of a man. And somehow, this is a mystery,
he imputes that to all those people. Charges it to them. So
that they have a righteousness now. They didn't have anything
to do with it, John. They didn't have anything to
do with it. They didn't have anything to do with it. Their
faith didn't get it. Their works didn't keep it. They
didn't have anything to do with it. They didn't ask for it. They don't shout it out. They don't make it sure. He gives
it to them. He freely gives it to them. He
charges it to them. They've got it now, and he's
going to present holy, unblamable, unreprovable in God's sight,
with no thanks to them, but all thanks to him. He made this right. It's a robe that he wraps him
up like you wrap a baby in. And they stand before God in
that righteousness. I know that. We hear that over
and over again, don't we? Precept upon precept, line upon
line. That's our dress code. That's
how we're going to get the glory, people. It's not something we
do. We help it out. Not a little
badge we put on it. That Christ did this work, now
I'm going to put a little badge of faith. I did accept it. No, sir. No, sir. Precept upon precept, precept
upon precept. Hear a little, learn a little.
Over and over we hear these things from a child. And look now at
verse In our text, verse 20, it says, well, no, I'm sorry,
verse 11. Verse 11 says, with stammering
lips and another tongue, will he speak to this people? Oh, my. Paul was the greatest
preacher to ever live, I believe, and he bemoaned his ability to
preach. Paul. I would have loved to have
heard Paul. I do. I hear him. I read him. But he
bemoaned the fact, he said, things impossible to utter. Who's
sufficient for these things, Paul said. These are heavenly
things. We're dealing with humans. They call him a vain babbler.
What's this babbler going to say? Strange language. Strange language. Other languages
all over the world. This gospel's heard, yes. And
verse 12. Now here's what it's all about.
Here's what this whole thing is about. This whole thing of
knowing God, salvation, this is what it's all about. Verse
12. To whom he said. Now who's he going to teach?
Who's going to understand? Well, this is what he says to
them. This is the rest. Wherewith you may cause the weary
to rest. He tells the preacher that this
is the rest. This is what you tell them to
rest. How then. All right, listen to it. Just
a few more minutes. All right. I'm going to quit. Moses said, oh, that they were
wise and would consider their ladder in. This body is going to lie in the grave.
This body is going to be laid to rest. Every one of us, when
we look in the mirror first thing in the morning, ought to be reminded
of this. You know, with each new gray
hair, with each wrinkle, with each passing day, with each passing
year. And boy, they're going, aren't
they? Bam, bam, bam, bam. Unbelievable how fast time flies. Well, the Lord said that. He
said, what is your life? It's a vapor. Here today, gone
tomorrow. There's a little fog out this
morning, but we're gone. That's what our life is. will
lay these bodies to rest. We've already, there's already
been several that were with us in body, several bodies, warm
bodies, living human beings sitting in our midst here. They're gone. Their bodies are out in a cemetery
plot, six feet under the ground. And it's going to happen to every
one of us. And you don't find in this life. And people don't find rest, real
rest. This is the reason people are
going after all the dust so they can get it. In what little time
we've got, you know, get it, get it, get it, get it. There's
not much time. Get it, get more, get more. That's not enough.
I want happiness. Got it. No, it's
not enough. You'll never find it. Never find
total happiness. Never find complete contentment.
You'll never rest, laboring and heavy laden. People in religion. I'll get
it in religion. I'll get it in religion. I'll find some peace
and happiness in religion. You'll never do. You can't work
hard enough. Can't be holy enough. Can't quit enough things. It's
just miserable. Bondage. But this is the rest. This is the rest. Our Lord says,
this is the rest, look at verse 16, I lay in Zion for a foundation
of stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation.
He that believeth shall not make haste. Here's the rock upon which
you can stand. Here's the bed upon which you
can rest. Here's the one upon whom you
can depend. Here's the peace which you can
know and nothing and nobody take away from you. Here's the joy
which surpasses all joy. Here's the knowledge which surpasses
all understanding. Here it is, Christ. I say this precept upon precept. Jesus Christ is all the religion
you need. None will say that to the day
I die. Jesus Christ is all the religion
you need. Look at verse 15. It says that Solomon made a covenant
with death and hell, an agreement. They said it won't come to us.
We've made lies our refuge, falsehood. Anything other than Christ is
a lie. He said, I'm the truth. Anything other than Christ, any
righteousness, he's the only one who has it, freely gives
it. Don't trust anything. It's a
lie. Don't trust yourself. Never trust yourself. Never. As long as you live, never trust
yourself. Don't put any confidence in your
flesh. You will do anything. You will fall at any given moment. And then where's your hope? Then
where are you going to depend upon? David was in his fifties. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus Christ's blood and his righteousness. I dare not
trust the sweetest crime, but wholly lean on the Lord Jesus'
name. On Christ the solid rock I stand. And if you go or stay, it will
be all right. to live as Christ, to know him
more, to die is to be with him. And it's a joy to get to know
him in this life, and oh, is it joy, I can't even say anything
about it. Brother Joe can preach a much
better message than I can right now. Oh, yes. Erlin Verlin. He's not a woman now, she can
preach. No male or female in Christ.
She could preach. Virgie! Boy, I'd like to hear Virgie
tell it. I wonder if she still has that accent. You see, I told you, them other
places ain't churches. This is the truth. This is the
rock upon which we stand. Who will he teach? Who will he
teach? Bless God, I believe he's taught
me. I believe he's taught some of you, those that erred, understanding, those that murmured. Why, they learned doctrine, because
they'll all be taught of God, everyone, by his grace. Precept
upon precept. Life upon life. Life upon life. Here a little, there a little.
until it dawns. That's what one verse down there
says, until he makes you to know and understand. Hey, it's like,
like this, until the day star arrives in your heart, Peter
said, until it dawns on you. Now, I see, like your dad kept
hearing it. I believe that. I think, I think,
I'm not sure. I don't know what he's saying,
but I know it's from the Word, and finally, I see. God's God. I believe. All right, let's sing a hymn
in closing. What number, John, did that number
pick out? What was it? Thirty-four. Thirty-four. Yeah. Immortal. Invisible. Invisible. Let's stand and sing First and
last verse. And so do we, with whom thou
wilt be kind, In light, in excess, and in time of night, The end of days, but now he lives
for you, thou great name we praise. Great Father of glory, provider
of light, Thine angels ever be, our saviors by...