says, Cry aloud, spare not, lift
up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression,
and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight
to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook
not the ordinance of their God. They ask of me the ordinances
of justice. They take delight in approaching
to God. Wherefore have we fasted, say
they, and thou seest not? Wherefore have we afflicted our
soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast
ye find pleasure in exact all your labors. Behold, ye fast
for strife and debate, to smite with the fist of wickedness.
You shall not fast as you do this day, to make your voice
to be heard on high. Is it such a fast that I have
chosen, a day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his
head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Wilt thou call this a fast and an unacceptable day to the Lord?
Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bands of
wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens and to let the oppressed
go free, and that ye break every yoke. Is it not to deal thy bread
to the hungry, that thou bring the poor that are cast out to
thy house? When thou seest the naked, that
thou shalt cover him, and thou hide not thyself from thine own
flesh? Then shall thy light break forth
as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily,
and thy righteousness shall go before thee. The glory of the
Lord shall be thy rare reward. Then shalt thou call, and the
Lord shall answer. Thou shalt cry, and he shall
say, Here I am, if thou take away
from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger,
and speaking vanity. And if thou draw out thy soul
to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy
light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday. And the Lord shall guide thee
continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat
thy bones. And thou shalt be like a watered
garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee
shall build the old waste places. Thou shalt raise up the foundations
of many generations. Thou shalt be called the repairer
of the breach, the restorer of past dwellings. If thou turn
away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my
holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord,
honourable, and shall honour him, not doing thine own ways,
nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words,
then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord. And I will cause
thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with
the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord, has
spoken it. Now this particular chapter in Isaiah's prophecy is given to announce what the righteousness
of God actually is. Now, when you look at what he
says here, this is the Lord speaking, cry aloud, spare not, lift up
thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression,
the house of Jacob their sins. Now, the Lord says to Isaiah,
show the people what their sins are. Show them what their transgressions
are. Now the nation of Israel had
many transgressions just like all peoples in the flesh have
many transgressions. But notice what it is that the
Lord singles out as the transgression of this nation. He said, They
seek me daily. Now that's a good thing, isn't
it? Somebody to seek the Lord. and
delight to know my ways." Sounds good, doesn't it? I mean, wouldn't
you say, I mean, that's a good thing. As a nation that did righteousness.
Nothing wrong with that. And forsook not the ordinance
of their God. They ask of me the ordinances
of justice. They take delight in approaching
to God. Isaiah said, show them their
sins. He said, here's a nation that to all outward respects,
as far as men could see, as far as the religious world views
it, these folks are right on track. But you see, as God is pleased to show us
the truth in His Word, you can see that there is a contrast
between that which seems right to men, as Brother Don used that
scripture last week, there is a way that seems right to men,
but then they are over the ways of death. There is a religious
mindset that men have that does cause them to become convinced
that they are doing a good thing. seeking the Lord daily, he said. This is in their mind. Now, we know this, that the Scripture
indicates very plainly that they that seek Him shall find Him. He said, if you seek Me with
all your heart. Knock and it shall be opened
to you. Seek and you shall find. There is never going to stand
a man before God in the day of judgment and be able to say,
I sought thee with a broken and contrite heart. I sought thee
in fear and trembling. I sought thee after the manner
that thou hast bid men to seek after thee. And you turned a
deaf ear to me and did not hear me. It is never going to happen. Never going to happen. But the
Lord plainly said that there will be many in that day that
will say unto him, Lord, have we not done all of thy works? And he will say to them, depart
from me. I never knew you. It is not about
the things that men see. You see, men see with natural
eyes. And it would appear that sincere
people, sincere religious people, insofar as outward sincerity
is concerned, would be those whom God would have a mind to,
would it not? I mean, if you had to look around
the community and you had to decide, well, who are the people
of God, you would certainly begin by looking at the places where
people gather together in the name of the Lord, would you not?
I mean, if you had to determine, well, who are the chosen people
of God, in this day you would have certainly began to look
at the nation of Israel, would you not? I mean, that would have
been the place to have looked, but yet the Lord said, show my
people their sin. What is their sin? It's not all
the wickedness of the flesh. He didn't say that was not sin. He said, but here's the sin.
This is the place where men trip up. See, everybody knows that. Even the most ungodly man knows certain things are wrong. I mean, he knows it's not right
to take another man's wife. He knows it's not right to carouse
around and do things that all men know is wickedness. He knows that. All men know that. Religious men look at that and
say, see there? There's wickedness. There it
is. If you want to know where the
wicked folks are, you go down to the bar room and, buddy, you'll
see some wicked people there. And you will. You will. They're right about that. You'll
see them there. You'll see them walking up and
down the street. You'll see them everywhere. But the wickedest
man you'll ever see is the one you see every morning in the
mirror. You see, he's the one you need to be concerned about. When the Lord says to Isaiah,
show the people the house of Jacob, their transgressions,
he's not concerned about the Philistines and the Amalekites
and all of these people out here that are worshipping and serving
all kinds of gods. I wouldn't even begin to try
to identify all the gods that are being worshipped today. Many
of them in the name of worshipping Christ. Now, I'm not saying everybody
is worshipping the wrong god because they don't see things
my way. That's not what I'm saying at
all. But what I am saying is this, that the God who is speaking
to Isaiah here is the true and living God. There is not another. And what he is saying to Isaiah
here is some serious business. And he is saying, these are the
people I want you to go to. They seek me daily and they delight
to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness. They are not
ungodly people in the sense that men call them ungodly. But he
said, here is what the sin is. He said, Behold, ye fast for
strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness.
Ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be
heard on high. Is it such a fast that I have
chosen? A day for a man to afflict his
soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, to spread sackcloth
and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast? The
acceptable day unto the Lord? Has the Lord said you need to
make a big deal out of about how bad you feel? No, the Lord
never told us to do that. That is the way it is. But you
see, here's the difference between what he's upgrading the nation
of Israel for. See, they said, Oh, brother,
you need to fast and pray. You need to be faithful. You
need to do this. And you need to follow the Lord.
And you need to work at it. And you've got to give up this.
And you've got to give up that. And you've got to be bowed down
with all these things. See, the Pharisees, they thought
that it was wrong to do good on the Sabbath day. Why? Because
they were Sabbath keepers. In whose eyes? Did the Lord look
at them and say, Well, you're keeping the Sabbath? They were
convinced they were keeping the Sabbath, were they not? I mean,
if you'd ask any one of them, they'd have said, Brother, we
keep the Sabbath. Now, we may fall down in this or out of the
other, but we are keeping the Sabbath. We are righteous people.
We are doing these things. He said, here is the fast I have
chosen to loose the bands of wickedness, true wickedness,
to undo the heavy burdens and to let the oppressed go free
and that you break every oath. You see, the preaching of the
gospel in Jesus Christ is designed to do all of that. That's what
the purpose of it is. It's not to bind men with heavy
burdens. It's not to tell men, oh, come
and lay your sins down at Jesus' feet and then now it's all up
to you. You've got to go out here and
live a holy life and stay faithful so that when you die you can
go to see the Lord. It's not that. Because you see,
if that's the way it is, what good did it do to put your sins
away if then it falls back on you? So we're not to come preaching
a message that binds men with heavy burdens and say, Brother,
you better feel like this and you better weigh yourself down
under this heavy load or this or that. No, you see, the gospel
is to be preached to those who are already under a heavy load. They're trying to get rid of
it as hard as they can. They're not trying to get another
one. Now the average man out here in the world, he doesn't
have a heavy burden on his back. Oh, he's got problems. Everybody's
got problems that they'd like to be rid of. Who wouldn't say
that? But that's not it. What we're
talking about is being weighed down under the conviction of
our own sin. You see, that's that which the
gospel comes to relieve. We're not coming trying to weigh
men further down in it. or to drive them down and put
our foot on them and grind them down further, we are trying to
help them. That is what the preaching of
the gospel is. Is it not to deal thy bread to
the hungry? Now, the religious man says,
see all these people over here starving, we need to get us a
soup kitchen and go over here and feed them all. And then we
fed the hungry. Well, there's certainly nothing
wrong with that. That's a good thing. If you see
somebody in need, to meet that need is a good thing. There's
nothing wrong with that. But you've not fed the hungry
according to what Isaiah is talking about here because you gave somebody
a bowl of soup or a piece of bread. You see, to feed the hungry
is to tell men what their real problem is. Now, there are a
lot of people who take the words of Christ, of Isaiah even, where
he is talking about the work that the Messiah would do, we
would be healed by His stripes. And they take that and try to
apply it with, well, now we can all be healed of whatever disease
we've got because Christ By His stripes we are healed. Well,
then if that be true, if that is it, then why are we sick? I mean, if Christ, if by His
stripes we are healed, what they mean is by us believing it, by
us telling other folks about it, by us making out like it
is true, we will be healed. That is what they mean. Oh, brother,
you've got to have faith. Well, faith in what? Faith in
Christ. Well, here's what true faith
is. True faith is believing that
if Christ died to take away our sickness, then brethren, we can't
be sick. But you see, the healing that
Christ came to bring was the healing of the real disease that
men have. It is not all these things that
afflict these fleshly bodies, because these bodies are going
to crumble back to dust and they are going to fade away. And I
am not saying that the Lord does not from time to time for His
own purpose heal men in a miraculous way, because I have seen it happen
and I know that it is true. But it's not because we prayed
about it. It's not because we did anything. It's because God, who is rich
in mercy, was pleased to bring it to pass. Now, He may have
moved us to pray about it because He would cause us to rejoice
in seeing the answer to prayer. But you see, it's for the glory
of God. All things are. And that's the
place that we come back when we would declare the truth of
the gospel of Jesus Christ. It must always come back to the
glory of God. If it comes back to the thing
of shifting, well, this is what Christ has done for you now,
so it's up to you to live right. If it comes back to that, then
we have discounted what Christ did. Because you see, if what
Christ did is not sufficient, then we don't have any leg to
stand on anyway. But if what he did was complete,
then what is it that could bring a man who is under the blood
of Christ back into condemnation? Not one thing in the world. Nothing. There is therefore what now? No condemnation to those which
are in Christ Jesus. There is none. When God is pleased
to give a man faith to believe it, is that not the lifting of
a burden? Praise God! Hallelujah! I can't believe it. Y'all let
him get away. Let a wasp get away. If you let Him lift you, He would
have stayed there, see? So, what is the fast that the
Lord has chosen? What has He called us? What is
our religious duty? To proclaim liberty to the captives. To declare the acceptable year
of the Lord. To magnify the name of Christ
in the earth. because there is no other name
under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. You
see, this is a glorious proclamation. It is not the transference of
a line of duty, but it is the revelation that Christ has done
the complete work of salvation in the behalf of his people.
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, that thou bring the
poor that are cast out to thy house? I mean, have we done what
the Lord said? If we go down to Skid Row and
grab us up a couple of guys and bring them home with us, is that
bringing the poor? Is that what He is talking about?
No, He is talking about those that are blessed on the poor.
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. He's talking about those
who are made poor by the work of the Spirit of God. And we
are sent with the gospel that we might help them. When thou seest the naked, that
thou cover him. What can a man be covered in?
Well, brother, you need to come down here and join our church
because we can sure help you out. You can't help anybody with
anything. But I tell you, once you can
clothe the naked in this fashion, by declaring the work of Jesus
Christ as the righteousness of His people, that those that know
themselves to be naked might see that there is a righteousness
that can be put on them that is a covering for their wickedness. Yes, that is. that which covers
the naked, and thou shalt cover him, that thou hide not thyself
from thine own flesh. Then shall thy light break forth
as the morning, and thy health shall spring forth speedily."
Where is the health of God's people? Is it because we've got
some cancer that got removed? You can have cancer today and
it may be removed and healed and next week you may get heart
disease or the cancer may come back. Now is that because somebody
did not have faith or because something is wrong with the work
of Christ? Not at all. It is the way of
the flesh. This flesh shall perish. These
things wax old as a garment. It is ready to be cast aside. And the older that we get and
the more that we see death all around us, we are made aware
of that fact, that we are passing away. We are passing away. What is life but a vapor? It's here and gone. Now, a young
man finds that hard to believe because he sees everything out
in front of him. But the older you get, the more
you see everything behind you. And we went to a memorial service
yesterday for my cousin, and really his whole life was summed
up in about a ten-minute video. I mean, that was it, from his
baby picture until the last picture that was taken of him before
he went on out. Ten minutes. And everybody was
tired then and ready to leave. Now that's kind of funny in one
way, but you know it's so true as to how little significance
there is in all those things that men place so much stock
in in this world that passes away in a moment. But the Lord said, This is wickedness
when you bind men with burdens, when you weigh them down with
religion and duties and things that you tell men they must do
in order to please God. No, the declaration of the gospel
is what Christ has done to please God. You see, this is the lifting
of the burden to the man who is burdened down with his sin.
This is the helping of the man that finds himself naked and
without help. Thy health shall spring forth
speedily. Thy righteousness shall go before thee." Oh, brethren,
isn't that a glorious thing to think that our righteousness
goes before us? You see, Jesus Christ is already
entered in to the presence of the Father in our behalf, the
Scripture says. Our righteousness is already
established. It's not something that we've
got to wait until the end to find out if he held out to the
end. I mean, the Lord has a bunch
of scorekeepers out there. Find out, well, this one made
it and that one didn't. He fell by the wayside and mark him off.
We had good hopes that he'd make it, but he didn't. No, the righteousness
of the saints of God is Christ and Christ alone. Our righteousness
goes before us. The glory of the Lord shall be
thy reward. Now, that's an unusual word,
but it simply means our rear guard. Now, sometimes people
read that as reward, but that's not what that word means. That
particular word means He's our rear guard. So our righteousness
goes before us, and what else does it say? He's our rear guard. He's the one that's in front
of us, and He's the one that's behind us. And nothing can separate
us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Oh, is that not the lifting of
the burden? from the man that has bowed down
to sin. Now the man that thinks that
he is going to somehow please God, that is no help to him at
all. But when a man is brought to
the place where he knows he cannot do one thing to make himself
acceptable in the sight of God, he cannot be baptized and do
it, he cannot repent enough and do it, he can't fast enough,
he can't lay out before the Lord enough in a protracted meeting,
he can't do anything at all. When he is stripped naked and
barren without any hope, help or aid to come to him, then the
message of Jesus Christ and Him crucified is a sweet, a sweet
message. Oh, what a blessed thing it is. Then shalt thou call, and the
Lord shall answer. Thou shalt cry, and he shall
say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst
of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, the speaking
of vanity, the speaking of emptiness. I am telling you the lading down
of people with religious burdens is speaking vanity unto men.
It is emptiness. And if they believe it and they
adhere to it and they walk in it, they will walk in it to their
own destruction. I'm telling you, anything that
a man trusts in outside of the righteousness of Jesus Christ
will destroy him in the end. I don't care what it is. I don't
care if he says, I'm trusting Christ, but I'm trusting my holy
life. That's too much. You can't trust
those two things because, you see, When a man's brought to
Christ, he's given up on the holy life. He gave up on that. He tried that and he found out
that didn't work. Now there's a lot of people that
are good religious people. And they're just like this over
here. They say, they seek me daily. They delight
to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness and forsook
not the ordinance of God. They say, well, we're following
the Lord. Well, we're doing what God said. You folks over there,
you're preaching that grace stuff, and you folks just going off
all over. You just love sin. We don't love
sin. We love righteousness, and we're
going to follow the Lord. And you're going to find out
that that grace wasn't good enough. Well, dear brethren, if grace
is not good enough, we're all going to perish, because without
the grace of God, there is no salvation. Does not His Word tell us that
it's by grace through faith? And then what does it say? And
that not of yourselves. Now sometimes people argue whether
it's the grace or the faith. What difference does that make?
If it's the grace or it's the faith, if it's the gift of God
and not of works, lest any man should boast, what does that
tell us? It's not of the things that men do. It is not the works
of the flesh. It is not of the will of man.
But it is of God who gives man righteousness. And brethren,
this is the lifting of burdens. This is the helping of the poor.
This is the feeding of the hungry because it is that message which
is designed to aid those who are in a place of need. Even them will I bring to my
holy mountain. Wait a minute, I got off on the
wrong thing. It says, Then shall thy light
break forth as the morning. Thine health shall spring forth
speedily. Thy righteousness shall go before
thee. The glory of the Lord shall be thy rear guard. Then shalt
thou call, and the Lord shall answer. Then shalt thou cry,
and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst
of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, the speaking
of vanity, and if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy
the afflicted soul, then shall thy light arise in obscurity,
and thy darkness shall be as the noonday." It is in the preaching
of the righteousness of Christ alone as the hope of God's people
that the light of God's people arises. The Lord said, and I,
if I be lifted up, I'll draw all men unto me. He meant that
whenever, if he was crucified, that this would happen, but he
also had reference to the fact that when that which he has accomplished
on Calvary's cross is declared unto men in the fullness and
power of what it is. Now, Jesus Christ didn't go to
the cross to be an example. He didn't go to the cross to
try to do something. He went to the cross to secure
the redemption of His people, and He went there with a purpose
in mind, and He accomplished that, and He got that which was
His, and He said, It is finished! He did it! What a glorious thing
to sinners deep in debt, to those that know themselves, to be perishing. What a glorious thing! Thy light shall arise in obscurity,
and thy darkness shall be at that noonday." Oh, the world
can't see it. You see, the light of which the
gospel proclaims is a light that is hidden from the wise and the
prudent. It's hidden from those that fast
in order to make God take notice of them. It's hidden from those
who go about to establish their own righteousness. cannot be
seen. And the Lord shall guide thee
continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat
thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like
a spring of water whose waters fail not." Is that not what the
Lord said to the woman at the well? He said, If you had known
who I was, you would have asked of me, and I would have given
you a well of water springing up to eternal life. A well of
water that never runs dry. A well of water that is life. You see, that is the declaration
of the truth of Almighty God. He says, Come unto Me, all you
that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Not,
I will give you rest if you will be obedient. He said, I will
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn
of Me. For my yoke is easy and my burden
is light. Why is it light? Because He bore
it for us. You see, He's the one that's
pulling the load. You see, when a man is in the
yoke with Christ, there's not a load to be pulled because Christ
is the puller of the load. You see, He's the One who has
triumphed. He's the champion of His people. He's the mighty
Savior. He said, I am a Savior mighty
to save. I grow so weary when I hear men
speak of a Savior who's wimpy to save. He can't do anything
if you don't let Him. And even if you let Him, He can't
do anything if you don't stay faithful. Brethren, that's no
Savior at all. The One that we preach unto you
is Jesus Christ. Paul said, I determine to know
nothing among you. Nothing! Nothing! They said,
Paul, you're a libertine. Paul, you're leading people to
sin. You say sin that grace may abound. They accused him of all sorts
of things. But he said, I determined to
know one thing, and that was Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory,
as the Savior of His people. There is no other message than
that. That is light for those that
sit in darkness. That is help for those who are
helpless. And these waters fail not, and
they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places. They
shall raise up the foundations of many generations, and thou
shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of
the paths. You see, this is kind of a two-fold
thing. We know who the repairer of the
breach is. But, oh, I'll tell you, the Lord
has given unto us, the Scripture says, the word of reconciliation. You see, He said it's not even
in your very mouths. Let every man be ready to give
to every man that asks him a reason of the hope that's within him.
You see, this is that which is a light to those that sit in
darkness and a help to the helpless the restorer of paths to dwelling,
if thou turn away thine own." Now listen to this. Now those
that are religious, they say, see there, I told you it was
going to come back down to keeping the law. I knew it. All you preachers
of grace, you all don't know what you're talking about. This
is the way it is. Now here the Lord is really getting down to
something that you can sink your teeth into, that you can see. If you turn away your foot from
the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, see there? You've
got to keep the Sabbath. And call the Sabbath a delight,
holy of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor him, not doing
thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, or speaking thine
own words. Then shalt thou delight thyself,
what? In the Lord. And I will cause
thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with
the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken it." God's people are to be Sabbath
keepers. But how is the Sabbath to be
kept? By recognizing who the Sabbath is. You see, the Sabbath
is a day of rest. And if thy foot refrain not from
keeping the Sabbath, that is, from seeing Jesus Christ as that
One who has provided all righteousness for the people of God, then,
he says, thy feet from the Holy Lord Honorable shall honor Him.
How do religious men honor the Lord? Now, the righteous nation
that goes about As a righteous nation, they're saying we're
following the Lord. See, here they say, well, we
honor the Lord by doing what He said. I can't argue with that partially,
but that's not what He means here. You see, we honor the Lord
by doing what He says because He works in us both to will and
to do of His good pleasure and He causes His people to walk
according to the good pleasure of His will and walk in obedience
to His way. But what He means here honoring
the Lord is by recognizing what it is that He has done in our
behalf. See, that's what it is to honor
the Lord, is to give Jesus Christ all the praise and all the glory. And if anybody comes preaching
anything else to you, let him be accursed. That's what Paul
said. He said, put it away. I don't
want to hear it. It's Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And if it's anything else, it
doesn't make any difference how righteous it appears to men.
How sincere they may be in what they do, it doesn't matter. If
it's not Christ, it cannot be what it is that he's speaking
of here. Thou shalt honor him, not doing
thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine
own words. Oh Lord, cleanse our mouths. Is that not the desire of God's
people? A man in whom the Spirit of God dwells, does he not desire
that the Lord would cleanse his mouth and purify his heart and
bind him to the horns of the altar? I mean, isn't that the
place that those that hunger and thirst after the Lord are
constantly found? They don't have to be hedged
about by the words of religion and the duties of religion. They're
hedged about by the Spirit of God that constrains them. That's what He said. Not doing
thine own ways nor speaking thine own words. Then shalt thou delight
thyself in the Lord. Oh brethren, that's the place
of rejoicing. You talk about rejoicing. It's
there. You know, men often think of
heaven in carnal terms, and they think about the rejoicing aspect
of going to heaven. And they think about it in carnal
ways. And they say, Oh, that's going
to be, we're going to all be up there rejoicing. We're going
to see oh so and so. We haven't seen them in a long
time and we're going to get to see them again. And I have no
doubt that we are going to be gathered together with the saints
of God. The Scripture says we shall know
even as we are known. But brethren, that's not the
glory of heaven for the children of God. I mean, the glory of
heaven for the children of God is the same glory that they had
when they were upon the earth. It's Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And let His name be praised through
the ages to come. You know, I don't care if I know
anybody in heaven or not, and I believe I will, but that won't
make any difference to me if I don't. Because that's not the
glory of it. That doesn't mean I don't care
about people or love people or whatever. Maybe I don't. I probably
don't. Surely don't, as I should. But
that's not what God's people are seeking. Then shalt thou delight thyself
in the Lord. And what does he say? I will
cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth. There is
a lot of rejoicing in the saints of God. when God's pleased to
give them a glimpse of Christ. I'm going to tell you, when God
is pleased to cause you to see the fullness of the Godhead bodily
in Jesus Christ and see Him as that Redeemer who has taken away
the sins of His people, everlast jot and tittle, boy, that's a
place of high rejoicing for the saints of God. Now, we don't
always see that as clearly as we wish we did. Many times it
gets clouded by this little thing and that and Satan would certainly
love to cloud our vision and he would most assuredly love
to get us weighed down under religious obligations and duties
because that is the chief place that he would blind men is in
religion. No greater place of blindness
than the religion of men. They love it. They pat one another
on the back. They're glad to see one another
because we're all religiously connected. May our fellowship be in Christ,
not because we're religiously connected. What is that? I don't
even know what it is, but I mean, it has some bearing on some people.
I mean, if you're of their denomination, buddy, you're in. But if you're
not, they're worried about you. In fact, they're pretty well
convinced that you're not in at all. That's the way the Jews
were, wasn't it? I mean, they said, we're the
people of God. We're it. Isaiah tells the people what
their sins are. He said, they're seeking Me.
They sought Him after a fashion. Who could say that they weren't?
I certainly wouldn't say they weren't. They did after a fashion,
but they did it for the wrong reason. They did it with a misunderstanding. They did it to satisfy the flesh.
It's not about the flesh. The Lord seeketh such to worship
Him as worship Him in spirit and truth. They will ride upon the high
places of the earth and feed with the heritage of Jacob thy
father, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." Now upon
what does all of our hope rest? It rests on the work of Christ and the faith that God has given
us to believe that God is and that He is a rewarder of them
that diligently seek Him. How does a man seek the Lord? Only by the grace of God. But I believe it's a true thing
that you can't keep a man from seeking the Lord. begins to move in his heart and
show him what he is by nature. He will seek the Lord. The Lord
said, They that seek Me early, they shall find Me. The Lord will not despise a broken
and contrite heart. But He delights to see those
who are broken before Him. And He delights to show mercy.
to such as call upon His name and fear and tremble before Him.
Because He is the Savior. He is not the trier. He is not
the hoper. He is the Savior of sinners. What a glorious Savior we have,
full of grace and mercy to all that call upon His name.