of it to your heart. It is a marvelous thing that
God has left us, his written word. This is the full revelation
of God. This is revealing to us of the
mind of God and the will of God and the ways of God and the works
of God. We have this book before us and
it is our duty and our honor to take the word of God and read
this book and ask God if he would give us understanding and give
us wisdom of that which we read. And I would say this to you,
you need not think that God will do anything for you other than
using his word to do it. That's why you need to take your
Bible. That's why every boy, every girl,
every man, every woman ought to take the scriptures and read
as we do. And ask God to do something for
you. I remember when I was growing
up and my mom and dad began to take us to the Baptist Church
in Bassett, Virginia. And they got each of us Bibles. And when I was six years of age,
my mom and dad made sure I had my Bible, my sister had her Bible,
my brother had his Bible. We came to church and we sat
there and we listened. Or at least we acted like we
did. We took the Bible. And if we
wasn't following along the scriptures, if we decided to doodle or something
like that, we'd hear about it when we got home. Any of y'all
raised that way? That's the way it was in the
house in which I grew up. But I'll tell you what it did.
It gave me a great respect for the word of God. And so I want
you children to follow with us also in the Bible. And you ought
to also sing with us. Take the songbook. When we sing, you open the songbook
and you sing. Just right along with us adults.
You see, these worship services, I don't want the young people
of our congregation to ever get the idea, oh, these services
are just for the older folks. This is for all of us. It's for
all of us. And I want you to listen, no
matter what your age is. We got young ones here tonight,
and we've got, well, we'll say seasoned folks with us. And we're
thankful for everybody, the young and the old and those who fall
somewhere in between. And we ask God to speak to us,
but he's only going to speak to us through the Bible. And
I say to you moms and dads, you need to have your Bible with
your child open. And you need to indicate to them
just how vital the Bible is to you. If you take the things of
God lightly, and I'm sure none of you do, but if you were to
take the things of God lightly, then they will do just as you
do. So we're all open now to Isaiah
chapter 45. And this is my subject. You'll
find a phrase repeated in two verses of scripture. in Isaiah
45, verses number 16 and 17. And you'll be able to recognize
the phrase. It's repeated, of course. Isaiah
45, verses 16 and 17. They, they shall be ashamed and
also confounded. Who's the they? The wicked. the unbelievers, they shall be
ashamed and also they shall be confounded. He says, all of them,
all of them. And they shall go to confusion
together that are makers of idols. But that's one group of people. But there's another group of
people, but Israel, Israel, they shall be saved in the Lord with
an everlasting salvation. Ye shall not be, ye shall not
be ashamed. That other group, they gonna
be ashamed, but you shall not be ashamed nor confounded. They gonna be confounded, but
you're not gonna be confounded. And well, how long is this gonna
last, world? without end. So my subject is
ashamed and confounded. Now in verse, the first verse
that I read to you, verse 16, this is what's going to happen
to people who are unbelievers, who die without God, without
hope, without Christ, without the blood of the Redeemer. And
let us all remember that God, though he is good, and though
he is merciful, he is also just, and he is holy, and he will by
no means clear the guilty. There's this idea that has always
been afloat in the world, that because God is a good God, because
God is a giving God, that he's not gonna punish people who die
without Christ unless they've just been really vile, ungodly,
sinful people. Be warned. Be warned. God will punish sin. He's got
to punish sin. Every transgression against God's
holy law shall receive a just recompense, the scripture says,
a reward. We read the wages, the wages
of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal
life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let the wicked be warned. Let those here tonight, any who
are gathered tonight who are unbelievers, you don't look to
Christ Jesus for all of your salvation. You're not looking
to His blood. You're not looking to His righteousness. Somehow or another you think
that, well, others who are worse than you, they need a Savior,
but you're all right. No, you're not all right. You're
not all right unless you're in Christ Jesus. Unless you're washed
in his sin atoning blood. Unless you're robed in the garments
of God's salvation. Unless the righteousness of the
Lord Jesus has been imputed to you. You are not all right with
God. And God will punish the wicked.
And he says here in this verse of scripture, of those who are
unbelievers, they shall be ashamed. And they shall also be confounded,
all of them. And it doesn't matter the sincerity
that they had, or the religion that they had, or the works that
they did. Those things don't matter. These
people who are outside of Jesus Christ, who don't believe Him,
who don't rest in Him, who don't look to Him as their only hope
of glory, who have no real heart interest in what He did at the
cross of Calvary, in His death, in His substitutionary sacrifice,
in the offering up of Himself to God as that which paid the
penalty price for all who believe Him. Those who don't believe
Him now and who die without faith in Christ Jesus, they're going
to experience this. They're going to be ashamed.
and they're going to be confounded, all of them. And they're going
to confusion together. All who are makers of idols and
including worshipers of idols. This is the portion of the wicked,
the wrath of God. Psalm 11 verse six, the psalmist
says, upon the wicked the Lord shall reign, snares and fire
and brimstone and an horrible tempest. This shall be the portion
of their cup. God will, he will punish with
everlasting punishment all idolaters. It doesn't matter what somebody
might call their idol. You see, an idol is that which
takes the place of God, that the place that is rightfully
God's. Thou shalt worship no other God
before me. Anybody, anything you put before
the Lord God of glory, that's an idol. And God's going to punish
all idolaters. Now, men call their idols by
very familiar names. There are people who call their
idol Jesus. There are people who call their
name, the name of their God, the Lord. But unless the Jesus
that you worship, the Lord that you bow down to, unless he is
the God of the Bible, the God who is holy, the God who is just,
the God who is righteous, the God who's sovereign, the God
who does his will among the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants
of the earth so that no hand can stay him or say unto him,
what doest thou? If you don't worship that God,
the God who's so holy that he can only save sinners through
a suitable substitute, if you don't worship that God, You're
an idolater no matter what you call your God. And you may say
he's Jesus. You may say he's the Holy Spirit. But unless your God is identified
in the Bible, as he has set himself forth, as the creator, as the
one who is the God of providence, as the God who's the God of salvation,
unless that's the God you worship, unless that's the God I worship,
listen, we're idolaters. And if we live and die in that
state, then one of these days we're going to be ashamed and
we're going to be confounded. And all of us are gonna go to
confusion together because we're idolaters. You see, this is what God has
got to do. He's got to save us from idolatry. We need to understand
that every man, every woman, every boy, every girl is an idolater
by nature. We're born being religious, but
our religion is altogether wrong. Hold your place here. Look at
1 Thessalonians 1. And this is where the subject
of repentance arises. Because here in 1 Thessalonians
1, these people were idolatrous, the people of Thessalonica. They
had their idea of what God was like, but they worshiped the
wrong God. And when the apostle Paul went
and preached to them, he dealt with, in all of his preaching,
he dealt with the real identity of God. And therefore the people,
as the Spirit of God took the Word of God, the people realized
the gods that they had been worshiping were merely the vain imaginations
of their own heart. You see, the images that men
worship, be they rocks or trees or a false Jesus or a false God,
they all come out of man's imagination, man's evil imagination, which
the scripture says is only evil continually. Images are born
in men's minds. And men worship them often from
their hearts with sincerity, with the desire to satisfy or
to please their God. I don't deny the sincerity of
a lot of people, a good many people in religion today. I don't
deny that. There are people who are very
committed, they're regular in their church attendance. They
read their devotional books. They go to their Sunday school
classes. They go to their church worship
services and they enter in and they sing songs and they have
some version of the Bible that they read a little bit and they
feel like that all is well between them and a holy God. They're
very sincere and very committed. But here's the problem. Most
people worship an idol. It's just a figment of their
vain imaginations. You see, Jesus is not who you
say he is or who you think he is. Jesus is who he says he is. He's the Lord of glory. He's
the King of kings. He doesn't need your pity. He
doesn't need your tears. He doesn't need your help. He's
the sovereign of the universe. Because he did the work of redemption
God gave him to do, he's been exalted. And he reigns at the
right hand of God. And all things are fulfilling
his will. He is not waiting on you to let
him do anything. He's God. He's the Lord. He's omnipotent. and He's sovereign. He does His will everywhere in
the heavens above, on the earth and beneath the earth. And all
men and all demons and all angels answer to Him. And everything
moves on His timetable. Is that the God you worship?
If that's not the God you worship, if that's not the Christ that
you believe in, listen, you need to find out right now, you've
been worshiping an idol. If your Jesus needs you, if he
needs you to open your heart for him, if he needs you to let
him do something, you got the wrong Jesus. And he can't help
you. And I'll tell you what God will
do. He will bring you to do what he brings all of his people to
do, to repentance from idolatry. This is what's said of the people
of Thessalonica. The apostle Paul writes to them.
I preach from this portion of scripture here just a few weeks
ago. We said this is the first letter that he wrote and he addressed
these believers in Thessalonica. And he writes to them and he
says, I hear good things about you. And for the sake of our limited
amount of time, drop down to verse nine. For they themselves,
that is these other people, from different locations, they manifest,
it says the word show, they manifest, they tell us what manner of entering
in we had unto you. In other words, they tell us
how you responded to the word of God, how you loved the gospel
that I preached. Now watch it, and how you turned
to God from idols. That's what repentance is, it's
turning to God from idols. I came to realization one day,
many years ago, that the God I had been worshiping was not
the God of the Bible. I repented of that. And the Jesus
in whom I trusted, the Jesus in whom I placed my ever-living
soul, He couldn't save me. And in turning to the Lord Jesus,
I necessarily, I turned away from that false Jesus. A pitiful Jesus can't help you.
He can't save you. And this is what the apostle
says, you turn to God, you turn to God as you turned away from
idols. Have you turned away from your
idolatrous Jesus and that God you used to trust in? And you
thought, well, that's the God of the Bible. And then you found
out it's not the God of the Bible at all. I was wrong. You know, it's a blessed day
when the Spirit of God invades the heart and he shows us, he
convinces us we've been wrong about these things. Because we've
made up our minds, we're right. I got it right, preacher. I've
always been a Christian. I've always been a child of God.
I've always believed on Jesus. No, you haven't always believed
on Him. And I guarantee you haven't always believed the gospel of
truth because you can't believe it till you hear it. That's what
it says in Ephesians chapter one. in whom you believed. After that, you heard the word
of truth. What is that? The gospel of your
salvation. You heard a full redemption by
Christ Jesus. You heard about this work of
reconciliation that the Lord Jesus Christ, the savior of sinners,
he rendered to God the father. You heard the gospel then, and
then you were saved by that very gospel, and here's what happened. You turned from your idols to
serve the living God. Let's go back to Isaiah chapter
45 then. Go back to the text. Now concerning
people who persist in idolatry, this is what the Lord says. Look
again at verse 16. They shall be ashamed. That means he'll be put to shame
before God. Literally, it means to be drastically
disappointed due to the exposure of guilt. That's literally what
it means. That's a full definition of it.
It means to be drastically disappointed before God due to him exposing
your guilt. You see, in the day of judgment,
the books are going to be opened. That's what it says in Revelation
chapter 20. The books will be opened and
the dead shall be judged out of those things written in the
books. And God will put on public display for all of the world
to see the vileness and the ungodliness of the wicked. And the evidence
will be presented by God himself. God will be the judge. God will
be the jury. God will produce the evidence. And people in that day will be
ashamed. That is, they will be so disappointed
that the gods in whom they trusted can do them no good. They never
did do them any good. They're like the gods have mentioned
like Baal in 1 Kings chapter 18. When Elijah squared off against
those false prophets of the groves, the prophets of Baal, they had
reached an agreement. King Ahab had reached an agreement
with Elijah and all the people of Israel that if If when Elijah
brought an animal sacrifice and these prophets brought an animal
sacrifice, whichever God devoured the sacrifice, who sent fire
from heaven, that's the God they'd all worship. Well, Baal couldn't
answer the pleas, the cries, the prayers of those prophets. because Baal is just a dead,
he's a dead idol. It's like David wrote about,
he has eyes but he can't see, he's got ears but he can't hear,
got feet but he can't walk. In fact, here in, look over in
Isaiah chapter 46, Isaiah writes about these idols. First of all,
Isaiah quotes the Lord, Isaiah 46 verse three. The Lord says, hearken unto me,
O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel,
which are born by me from the belly, which are carried from
the womb, and even to your old age, I am, I am he. Even though whore hairs will
I carry you, I have made and I will bear, even I will carry
and will deliver you. He says, to whom will you liken
me? and make me equal and compare
me that we may be like. And the Lord speaks of the foolishness
of the people. He says, they lavish gold out
of the bag, they weigh silver in the balance and they hire
a goldsmith and he maketh a God. They fall down, yea, they worship. They bear him upon the shoulder,
they carry him, they set him in his place and he stands there. And from his place, he can't
remove, he can't move. Why not? He's dead. There's no
life in this God. Yea, one shall cry unto him,
but he can't answer. That was Baal. In 1 Kings chapter
18, they cried to Baal. Oh, Baal, save us. Oh, Baal,
hear us. And they got up, they got up
on top of the altar and began to cut themselves and bleed. My friends, that's sincerity
there. That's people who mean business. But Baal couldn't hear them.
Baal couldn't answer them. They all couldn't save them out
of their trouble. And God says, remember this and show yourselves
to be men and bring it to mind, O ye transgressors. Remember
the four former things of old. Remember the things that I've
done. That's what God says. For I am
God. There's none else. I am God.
There's none like me. I declared the end from the beginning. And from ancient times, the things
that aren't yet done, I say my counsel shall stand. And I will
do all my pleasure calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that
executed my counsel from a far country. Yea, I have spoken it.
I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it. I will also
do it. These gods can't help you. That's
what the Lord is saying. And if you persist in worshiping
an idol, he says one of these days you're going to be put to
shame. And you're going to be so disappointed that your god
can't help you. You think about it, it's a very
sad thing. There's so many people who mean
well, and as I say, and I hate to overuse that word, they're
sincere, but for lack of a better word, I'll use it again. They
just mean business. Oh, how disappointed they're
going to be when they face God at the judgment. And there's
no blood that has washed them. There's no righteousness to robe
them. There's no salvation to cover
them. And all the good that they thought
they were doing, all the worship they thought they were rendering
to God, they were really rendering it just to an idol. Hold your
place here, look at Matthew 7. Let's just read this. I know
that you know this passage of scripture well, but it bears
reading many, many times again. Matthew chapter 7. I don't wanna
be in this number. I don't want you to be in this
number either. He says here in Matthew chapter
seven, verse 21, not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. I can't tell you how
many people who've said to me through the years of a loved
one said, well, he loves the Lord. But just cause you say
you love the Lord and just cause you call him the Lord, it don't
mean that he is the one you worship, the Lord God of glory. Not everyone
that says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom
of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which
is in heaven. What is the will of the Father
who is in heaven? That everyone who saith the Son
and believeth on him shall have everlasting life. That's what
the scripture says. That's God's revealed will. It's
his revealed will that you forsake all other hope and help. and
you run to Jesus Christ as fast as you can. You believe on him,
you look to him. Now look at verse 22. Many will say to me in that day. This is scary. Many, not just
a few, not just a handful of people, but many will say to
me in that day, say to the Lord at the judgment, the great white
throne judgment. When our Lord Jesus Christ puts
on the black robe of justice, many will say to him in that
day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? We preached,
we preached. And in thy name cast out devils,
we cast out demons. and in thy name done many wonderful
works. All those things we did, Lord,
is for you, because I love Jesus. And then I will profess unto
them, I never knew you. I never knew you. I never loved
you. I never had any affection for
you. Depart from me. Ye that work
iniquity. Let me tell you something about
false religion. This is scary. Because false religion is all
around us. And it's throughout the world. All the works, all the deeds,
all the worship of people who are in false religion are just
works of iniquity. That's all they are. Just works of iniquity. Just
more vileness building up against them. And this is what Isaiah
is talking about. He says, they shall be ashamed.
They're going to be so disappointed. They're going to be disappointed
in the day of judgment. When you stand before the Lord,
will you be ashamed? Are you going to be disappointed? Will you be put to shame by God? Go back over here to the text.
He says something else too. He says, not only ashamed, but
confounded. Also confounded. What does that
mean? It means God is going to disgrace them before all peoples
and angels. They will be absolutely humiliated
by God. They will be dishonored by God
Himself. I'll tell you, men have no idea
of the holiness and the justice of God. And they think that everlasting
punishment is reserved only for the vilest of the vile of society. God will punish all sin. And
if you need undeniable evidence of that, take another look at
the cross and you see God's darling son in his immaculate glory. You see him there, the innocent
one, that one who's harmless, that one who's without any fault. Blameless. You see him on the
cross of Calvary, dying naked. And God turns out the lights
and deals with his only begotten son in the most severest of justice
and judgment there is. He poured out all of the wrath
of all of the people of God that they would have to endure forever.
It fell on Christ Jesus and God forsook him. God turned his back
on his only begotten son. You wonder if God's gonna punish
sin? There's no doubt about it. God
spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. And listen,
He wasn't infected with guilt and sinfulness like we are. It
was imputed to Him, charged to Him, laid on Him, made to meet
on Him, but He wasn't in His innermost being defiled and ungodly
like we are. And yet God didn't spare him
when he bore our iniquity. What is going to happen to us
if we die and we do bear our iniquity? What's going to happen
to you? What's going to happen to you
one day? What's going to happen to me? You who are watching,
what's going to happen to you? I tell you, those who die without
Christ are going to be ashamed. And they're going to be confounded.
They're gonna be confounded. Oh, how awful to die without
Christ Jesus. And he says, all of them, they
shall go to confusion. They'll go to everlasting dishonor. All of their hopes have turned
to everlasting disappointment. These people are ashamed and
confounded. They believed their make-believe
Jesus. They trusted the God that they
concocted in their own imagination. But he couldn't save them. He
couldn't help them. The Lord even says that in this
very passage of scripture. Drop down here to verse 20 in
Isaiah 45. Assemble yourselves and come,
draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations. And God
says they have no knowledge that they set up a wood, they set
up the wood of their graven image and they pray to a God that cannot
save. And bless their hearts, most
religious people, they're praying to a God who can't save. He can't
save them unless they say he can save them. And that's a pitiful
God, isn't it? He can't reign unless they let
Him reign. Well, what kind of God is that?
It's like one man said, well, listen, preacher told him, said,
you know, God can't do anything unless you let Him. He said,
well, then when I stand before the judgment, God says, I'm going
to send you to hell. He said, I'm just going to say
to God, no, you're not. I'm not going. I'm not going. Well, that makes just about as
much sense as what these fools are saying today. I've got to
let God do everything. Well, then in the day of judgment,
I'm not going to let Him damn me. Well, that's a stupid statement. And it's absolutely stupid to
think that you have to let God do anything. Like God needs your
assistance and your permission before He can act. That's a lame
God, isn't it? That's a pitiful God that needs
that sort of cooperation. But, let me get this. But, verse 17, but Israel, who
is Israel? Well, this is not national Israel.
I know it's not national Israel because not all of national Israel
is saved. A lot of them are already in
hell when this was written. This is spiritual Israel. The
apostle Paul said in Romans chapter nine, not all Israel are Israel. And just because they say we're
the children, the offspring of Abraham, doesn't make it so.
But Israel, God's people. God's chosen people from old
eternity. They shall be saved in the Lord. They shall be. Don't you love
the Lord shalls? They shall be saved. with what
kind of salvation? An everlasting salvation. And
watch what he says, ye shall not be ashamed. Ye shall not
be ashamed. Have you ever, years ago with
this kind of preaching I heard that at the judgment, The Lord
gonna bring every child of God, every sinner saved by grace before
him and reveal his or her life's failures to everybody. And then
you'll be ashamed, you'll lose rewards. You've heard that kind
of stuff before. But the Bible says, you shall
not be ashamed. ye shall not be ashamed. Why is it that we won't be ashamed? Aren't we ashamed of the failures
and the faults and the sinfulness, the guilt that we've had through
life? Well, sure, we're ashamed now
of those things. We're thankful for forgiveness
of sins. But in that day, when we stand
before the Lord, ye shall not be ashamed. Why not? Not going to have anything to
be ashamed of. The scripture says, in that day, the sins and
iniquities of Israel shall be, they shall be sought for, but
they won't be found. Listen, the Lord Himself have
already said, He's judge and jury. And He's got the books. And when He looks in the books,
pertaining to the deeds and the works of all of his people. It's
only perfection. It's the perfection of our representative. It's the perfection of Christ
himself. We're not gonna be ashamed. Have
nothing to be ashamed of. Have no sin. Nor confound it. Nor confound it. We're not gonna
be disgraced. We're not gonna be humiliated.
We're not gonna be insulted. Not at all. We're gonna stand
there with boldness. Stand there in the beauties of
Christ our Savior. But how long, how long is this
state going to last? World without end. World without end. We won't ever be ashamed. We won't ever be confounded.
Not the people of God. Not those for whom Christ died. Not those whose confidence is
in the Lord Jesus. We have nothing to worry about. Our focus is on Him. He stands
for us. He stood for us in the covenant
of grace. He died for us 2,000 years ago. He represents us to God right
now. And in that day, in that judgment
day, when we stand before the Lord and the books are open, find anything against us? Nothing to charge us with, just
perfect righteousness. We stand in the beauties of our
Savior. But for those who know not Christ
Jesus, I must give you this word of warning again. It will not be well with you
if you die without Christ. Oh, sinner, seek the Lord. While he may be found, call upon
him while he's near. Forsake all your ways, all your
ideas, all your thoughts about how God needs you and all that
kind of tommyrot, and fall down before the God of the Bible.
Be like that leper. who met the Savior. Master was
up on the mountain preaching. There's a poor leper. He's cut
off from society. He couldn't join them. He couldn't
go to church that day. He couldn't go listen to the
Master preach. But he camped out right down
there at the bottom of that mountain. And here came the Lord of glory
walking down that hill. And right down there waiting
for him was a poor needy soul. And he said, Lord, if you will,
if you will, didn't he mention his will? Lord, it's up to you. If you will, you can make me
whole. And he did. The Lord made him
whole. And you come to Christ Jesus
that way. And you'll go away whole. World without end. It's a glorious gospel, isn't
it? Well, let's sing it.