I'd like for you to open your
Bibles with me to the book of Isaiah chapter 1. I have been preaching through
this first chapter and last week the message was entitled Learning
to Do Well. Look at verse 16 of Isaiah chapter
1. The prophet of God speaking to
the people of Judah, the nation in Jerusalem, that's where he
prophesied in, And he told the people, he commanded them as
God's prophet, he says, wash you, make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings
from before mine eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do
well. Now that's the title. That's
the title this week. This is the second part of that.
And if you didn't hear last week's message, don't worry, this message
stands on its own. Learning to do well. That's what
I'm going to talk about. He says in verse 17, seek judgment
or justice, relieve the oppressed. That means to. In essence, right
in the wrongs, or actually it's kind of like stand up for the
oppressed judge, the fatherless, the orphans plead for the widow,
the ones who've been abandoned. Come now, let us reason together,
sayeth the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool. And if you be willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be devoured with the sword, for the mouth of the Lord
hath spoken it." That's my text this morning, learning to do
well. I told you last week that what got me to thinking about
this subject is that many, many people talking about the state
of our own nation and how bad it is and how bad it's getting,
getting much worse. This past week, the president
gave the state of the nation address and according to him,
everything's just going so great. We don't see it that way, do
we? I don't believe the man told the truth. And I'm not just trying
to get political or anything like that, but the state of our
nation, we're in dire straits, aren't we? And we're not very
optimistic. We're in an election year. And
as I said, I'm not up here to have a political campaign. I
want to talk about how we as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ
are to view things. And it's not through society,
it's not through political campaigns, it's not through even economics,
it's through the word of God. And this is what Isaiah is doing
in his nation. He's delivering what you might
say is the state of the nation address. This is God's view of
the nation Israel, the southern kingdom of Judah. And he starts
off his first point from verses one to nine. I'm not going to
get into all that, but I already have. But he's talking about
the state, that the nation is in an awful state because that
reflects the state of all men and women by nature. That's what
it is. In fact, if you read those first
nine verses, that is a description, metaphorically, of the sinfulness
of all men and women falling in Adam. We've been ruined by
the fall. And you say, well, that doesn't
mean that everybody is as bad as they could be. Oh, I agree
with you there. Thank God that's the truth. But here's the point. Man by nature, fallen in Adam,
is dead in trespasses and sins. And the word that the theologians
use, or the phrase, and it's a good phrase because it reflects,
if you understand what it means, it's called the total depravity
of man. And again, the total depravity
doesn't mean that everyone is as bad as we could be. Think
about that. If, if God just removed his restraining
hand from all from this world, what would it be? It would be
destroyed, kill each other. Somebody says, well, I'm just
not that bad. Well, you not been in that circumstance. But total
depravity, how do we define it? We're like the scripture. I believe
one of the best descriptions or definitions you'll have of
it is found in Romans 3, verses 10 following, where he says,
there's none righteous, no, not one. You look at it on the sea
of humanity, falling in Adam, we do not have a righteousness
that answers and equals the demands of God's law and justice. We
don't have it. Secondly, man cannot work one.
By deeds of law shall no flesh be justified, declared righteous
in God's sight. We can't work it. The best of
the best of the best still falls short. And remember I told you
last week, if you don't believe that, then don't ever quote Romans
3.23 again. For all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. Because that's what that means.
We fall short. Even at our best, we fall short.
We cannot work it. And then thirdly, and this is
spiritual death, which is part of that depravity, man by nature
doesn't want righteousness God's way. Now I didn't say he didn't
want righteousness, but there's two problems. Number one, his
standard of righteousness is way lower than God's. Who is
the standard of righteousness in God's court? Christ is. Acts
1731, God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world
in righteousness by that man whom he hath appointed, in that
he hath given assurance unto all men, or whereof he hath given
assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
You see, Christ is the standard. And anything that doesn't equal
that standard, doesn't equal Christ, falls short. So man's
standard, if man thinks that he, if any man, or woman thinks
that he or she has attained righteousness by their sincerity, their religion,
their ceremony, their works, he's lowered the standard. God
will not lower his standard. God is a righteous judge who
judges according to truth, and God doesn't only look on the
outward appearance, he sees the heart, the thoughts. A man told
a preacher one time, he said he just didn't think he was that
bad, that he was still a sinner. And the preacher told him, he
said, well, if they could take a video of your thoughts in one
day, would you want that video to be shown before your church? You say, no, we're sinners. So man, that's the two problem.
Man doesn't want righteousness. He lowers the standard and secondly,
he doesn't want it God's way because God's way is totally
by grace, in the Lord Jesus Christ, which leaves men no room to brag
and boast and glory. God forbid, Paul said, that I
should glory, save in what? The cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What was he doing on the cross? He was working out righteousness
for his people. He by himself. And we didn't
help him. In fact, we were part of that
fallen humanity, dead in trespasses and sins that said, crucify him.
That's right. And nowhere, when you think about
it, man doesn't want it God's way, it goes all the way back
to Cain and Abel. That's what Brother Mark read.
Abel was brought by God to submit to the blood of a substitute,
the Lamb, which pictured Christ, His righteousness alone. That's
why he brought the Lamb. That's why he brought the blood.
Cain wanted it his way by the works of his hands and he was
rejected. So in that first passage there,
you see the state of all of us by nature. Secondly, beginning
at verse 10, going to verse 15 of this first chapter, Isaiah
makes this point that we're sinful by nature. If God ever gave us
what we deserve or what we earned, it would be eternal damnation.
And the second point says this, no amount of religion, no amount
of good works, no amount of ceremony, no amount of sincerity will save
us. What can wash away my sins? Nothing
but the blood of Jesus. We talk about our country, the
state of its morality. Question, do we in our nation
need moral reformation? The answer is without argument,
yes. Anybody who would argue against
that is crazy. Yes, we need moral reform in
our country. But that's not what saves sinners. That's not what makes us righteous
before God. And it will not take care of
the problem. It will not wash away sin. And
listen to me, it will not stop sin. You can pass every kind
of law you want to pass and it still will not stop sin. Somebody said you can't legislate
morality. Really you can. You can make
things against law. I'll tell you what you can't
legislate. You cannot legislate righteousness. You can pass every law that you
can think of and it still won't make you or the people that surround
you and your community and your nation and your world righteous
before God. It just won't do it. Do we as Christians, do we promote
immorality? No. The Lord himself. You remember
in John chapter eight, for example, when he was dealing with that
adulterous woman that they brought out into the street and they
were in vigilante justice, in their self-righteousness, judging
her, going to stone her. And he stooped down and he wrote
on the ground. When I was in seminary, we spent
our time arguing about what he wrote. Nobody knows. You know why? Because it doesn't
say. But you remember what he said to the woman at the well?
He said, neither do I condemn thee. And then his next word
was, go and sin no more. You see, he didn't say, this
is important, read it in John 8. He didn't say, sin no more,
and then I won't condemn you. That's works. In other words,
if my being saved from condemnation is based upon my sinning no more,
I got news for you, I'm gone. How about you? He said, neither do I condemn
thee. You know why? Because there's no condemnation
in Christ. That's grace, that's mercy. Now,
from that motive, fight sin with every fiber of your being. Fight
it, war against it. Think about it. God the Holy
Spirit never uses grace to inspire or motivate God's people to promote
or engage in sin. He never does. He always inspires
and motivates us to fight sin in a godly way. But when you come down here to
verse 16 now, and he tells you, no amount of religion, no amount
of sincerity, no amount of good works. Paul said that his Jewish
brethren, that is physically, We're lost. But he said, I'll
give them this much. They have a zeal of God. They're
religious. Man's religious by nature. He loves religion in
some form or another. But what he doesn't want, what
he doesn't love, is salvation totally conditioned on a God-sent,
God-appointed, God-sent, able substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. So here's Isaiah's point, beginning
at verse 16. The only thing that will save
a sinner from sin, the only thing that will make a sinner, an ungodly
person, righteous in the sight of God, and the only thing that
will give spiritual life is the grace of God in Christ Jesus.
And that's it. Salvation from sin. Salvation
from sin. Now he says in verse 16, wash
you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from
before mine eyes. Cease to do evil. Stop it. He's not teaching
salvation by works or by the wills of men. We cannot wash
away our own sins. You say, well, I don't agree
with you. Well, don't sing that hymn anymore. What can wash away
my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
You can't wash away your sins. You can fight sin. You can declare
war on it today. You can be like Job. You can
wash yourself with snow water. You can determine that tomorrow
morning when you get up, you're not gonna sin throughout the
day. You can determine that in your mind. You're gonna fail
now, I'm gonna tell you that if you do that. You've already
failed. And I'm talking to me too now.
I'm not just saying you, you, you. It's me, me, me too. But
you can fight it, you can fight sin either in an ungodly way,
legalism, self-righteousness, proud. The Pharisees, they declared
war on sin, but they didn't see themselves as they really were. They thought they were righteous
and they despised others. Or you can fight sin in a godly
way, the motive of grace and gratitude and love. But you can't
wash it away. You know how I know that? Well,
number one, the Bible says it. But number two, God sent his
son into this world to do what? To put away the sins of his people,
God's elect. And that's what he did. He bore
our sins away. And you know that picture goes
all the way back to the Old Testament, doesn't it? The scapegoat? He bore them away. He satisfied
the justice of God. So when he says, wash you, make
you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my
eyes, cease to do evil. He's not saying now try to get
saved here by works or try to make yourself righteous by your
works because that's just impossible. What is man that he should be
clean? and he which is born of woman,
that he should be righteous. What he's teaching here is a
truth that we all need to learn, and that's this, that love for
God cannot be measured by religious outward practices and ceremonies,
but how we treat our neighbor and how especially our brethren.
Look at it, verse 17, learn to do well. Seek judgment, seek
justice. Wouldn't you love to see the
courts of this land really seek justice? Relieve the oppressed. Judge
the followers. Plead for the widow. All of this,
you see. Does our nation need this? Yes,
it does. But think about this. Think about
the spiritual state of all men and women by nature. We're not
clean as far as our nature is concerned. Remember what I'm
saying, as we're naturally born. If we are clean in the sight
of God, how are we clean? We're cleansed by the blood of
Christ. That's it. Should we put away the evil of
our doings? Yes. Not only the evil of our immorality,
but even the evil of our religion. Do you know false religion is
evil in the sight of God? You know Isaiah is speaking to
a religious people. Now think about this, religion,
false religion, works religion, free will religion is evil in
the sight of God. Put away that evil too. Cease
to do evil, see, that's what he's saying. The evil of your
doings, what were they doing? They were praying, they were
assembling together to worship, but it was all false, it was
without Christ, it was without truth, it was without grace. People who seek to be religious,
thinking that they're going to establish a righteousness of
their own, what does the Bible say? They missed it, Romans chapter
nine, read it. Paul said, Romans 10, he said,
I bear them record. They have a zeal of God, but
not according to knowledge for they being ignorant of God's
righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness
have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
Verse four of Romans 10 says, for Christ is the end, the fulfillment,
the establishment, the finishing, the completion, the perfection
of the law for righteousness to everyone that believe. Now stop. trying to do what God
says you cannot do. And then when he says learn to
do well, do you know, according to God's standard, this learning
to do well does not come naturally to us. That's right. Jeremiah stated that over in
a verse in Jeremiah chapter 13 verse 23. He said, can the Ethiopian
change his skin? Can the leopard change his spot?
Then how can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil? And go back there to Genesis
chapter 4. Sometimes in biblical interpretation,
one of the main rules of biblical interpretation is the law of
first mention. Now, what we're going to look
at here in Genesis 4 is not the first illustration of this truth. That happened back in the garden
in Adam and Eve when they fell. But it's the first statement
of this truth. And the example is Cain and Abel.
Look at Genesis chapter 4. Look at verse 4. Here's Abel.
Here's a sinner coming to worship God, seeking salvation, seeking
acceptance, seeking to please God, seeking blessings from God. And it says, Abel, he brought
the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof. Now, in order
to do that, he had to slay an animal. I believe it was a sheep,
because that's what Abel was. He was a shepherd. Blood had
to be shed. Where was that precedent first
laid down? We'll turn back to Genesis chapter
3. Now you remember Adam and Eve, they fell. Adam disobeyed
God and the whole human family was plunged into sin and death.
What the scripture teaches, Adam the representative of the whole
human race. And immediately when they fell, their eyes were open
and they saw their nakedness, their shame. That's what that
is. Oh, they were literally naked, but they were ashamed now because
of their guilt. And being naked in the scripture
is a metaphor for being without righteousness. Did you know that?
That's why we stand before God without Christ. We're naked.
We stand there in our shame and our guilt. Well, what did Adam
and Eve do? They sewed fig leaves together
to cover their nakedness. That's a metaphor, a picture
of man trying to hide his shame behind religious efforts, behind
his own works. What did God do? Well, he removed
those fig leaf aprons and look over in Genesis chapter 3 verse
20. Look at it. It said, Adam called his wife's
name Eve because she was the mother of all the living and
unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of
skins and clothed them. Now what do you got to do to
make coats of skin? You got to slay an animal. You see what
God was showing there to Adam is that your works, your efforts,
your coverings will not do justice must be satisfied, the soul that
sins must surely die. Remember he told Adam back in
Genesis 2, he said, in the day that you eat thereof, you shall
surely die. The wages of sin is death. That's
what bloodshedding symbolizes in scripture, it's death. Somebody's
got to pay the sin debt. Somebody's got to die. And here
God set down that precedent. He slew an animal. He made coats
of skin. That is a picture of the blood
and the righteousness of the seed of woman over in Genesis
3.15. The Lamb of God. And so they
taught their boys. One received it, one rejected
it. Why did Abel receive it and Cain reject it? Well, because
Abel was a better guy than Cain. Huh? And he of his own free will
just made that decision for Christ? No. No. Abel was just like Cain, naturally.
But God chose him before the foundation of the world and wrote
his name in the Lamb's Book of Life. And here's what happened,
look at Genesis four and verse four. Abel brought the firstlings
of his flock and the fat thereof, and the Lord had respect unto
Abel and his offering, but unto Cain and to his offering he had
not respect. Why is that? Look back up at
verse three. In the process of time it came to pass that Cain
brought the fruit of the ground as an offering to the Lord. The
fruit of the cursed ground, that's the works of man. Fruit unto
death, Paul called it in Romans seven. Fruit unto death. And he told Cain, look at verse
7, Cain was angry. In verse 7, the Lord told him,
if thou, what? Look at it. If thou doest well,
shalt thou not be accepted? Have the excellency your concordance
might say? If thou doest not well, sin lieth
at the door. The picture there is like a wild
animal, like a lion, a crouching lion at your door, ready to devour
you. And unto thee shall be his desire. In other words, you will
not be able to get out of that mess. And thou shalt rule over
him. That literally means that you
have it to deal with and you'll fail. It doesn't mean you're going
to rule over sin because no man rules over sin. But it means you've got a fight
on your hands and you can't win it. You can't cure this sin problem. You know what? I made this statement
a couple of Sundays ago. What this nation needs. You know
what this nation needs more than anything else? This nation needs
the gospel. That's what it needs more than
anything. Whoever's president, whoever's in Congress, whatever
the state, this nation needs the gospel. That's what Isaiah's
telling the people of Judah. Go back to Isaiah 1. He says,
seek judgment, justice. Well, what is justice in God's
sight? Justice is salvation by grace in God's sight because
grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ
our Lord. You know why Christ had to come?
It wasn't just because God loved his people, God did love his
people. Christ had to come and die because justice had to be
satisfied. That's right. That's why he's
called the Lord our righteousness. Relieve the oppressed. Sure,
anybody who's unduly oppressed, we should help if we can, but
what about our state before God? Aren't we oppressed by sin? Don't
we need mercy? Judge the fatherless. That's
us by nature, like orphans out here. With no father, no mother. Defend us. Well, what defense
do we need in God's sight? We need an advocate. We need
a mediator. We need Christ. Plead for the
widow. What is our plea before God?
Well, here's what he says. Look at verse 18. Now, this establishes
what it is to learn to do well. Come now, let us reason together,
saith the Lord. He's not appealing to our natural
reasoning or our natural knowledge. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the spirit of God, neither can he know them. They're
spiritually discerned. First Corinthians two 14. The
natural man always reasons wrongly when it comes to salvation. That's
what it says in Proverbs 14, 12 and 16, 25. There is a way
that seemeth right unto a man and the ways thereof are death
and destruction. This is reasoning based on God's
truth and God's ways. It's not bargaining with God.
It's not having a council with God. It's not saying, well, I'm
going to sit down with God and we're going to figure this thing
out. No, sir. If I'm, listen to me, if I'm seeking to be clean
before God and righteous before God based on my works, you know
what? Then I reject Christ. Come now,
let us reason together. He says, though your sins be
as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be
red like crimson, they shall be as wool. How in the world
is that possible? My red crimson sins, glaring
sins before the eyes of God now, who looks upon not just the outward
appearance but the heart, how in this world could those be
made white? How is that even possible? That scarlet there represents
blood and it refers to death. the wages of sin. That word crimson,
that's an interesting word. It's the Hebrew word tolah and
it refers to a crimson worm whose blood they used to make red dye. It's the same word, look back
at Psalm 22 with me. It's the same word used in this
context in Psalm 22. Now you know what Psalm 22 is?
It's the psalm, they call it the psalm of the cross. It's
one of the many messianic psalms. This is talking about Christ
here in Psalm 22. He says, my God, my God, verse
one, why hast thou forsaken me? That's what he cried on the cross.
When he was alienated from his father, based upon the sins of
his people, imputed, charged, accounted to him. He was made
sin. So that's who this is talking
about. We'll look at verse 6. Here's Christ speaking as the
substitute, the mediator of his people. And he says, but I am
a worm and no man, a reproach of men and despised of the people.
That word worm there is the same word crimson in Isaiah 1. Crimson. It speaks of Christ's
substitutionary work. That's what Isaiah is talking
about. He explains it on into his prophecy. Look at Job. Turn back to Job chapter 25.
Let me show you just another interesting thing about that.
This is Job's friend Bildad the Shuhite, verse 1 of Job 25. He
says, Then answered Bildad the Shuhite and said, Dominion and
fear are with him that is with God. He maketh peace in his high
places. Is there any number of his armies upon whom doth not
his light arise? How then can man be justified,
not guilty, righteous with God? The question of questions. Or
how can he be clean that is born of woman? How is that even possible,
he's saying. Look at verse 5. Behold, even
to the moon and it shineth not. Yea, the stars are not pure in
his sight. Verse 6. How much less man that is a worm. The word worm there is different.
It's the word for maggot. That's us by nature. That's what
he's saying. Feeding off the dead. And the
Son of Man, which is a worm, that's a different worm, that's
the same word crimson, that's talking about Christ, stood as
the substitute of His people, dying in our place. How can man
be just with God? That's it. By His grace, through
that substitute who died in our place. And in his obedience unto
death, what did he do? He established the only righteousness
whereby sinners could stand before God. That's why he was made sin. Christ, who knew no sin for us,
that we sinners might be made the righteousness of God in him. His righteousness imputed. That's
how we stand before God. Now let me read these last two
verses and I'll close. Isaiah 1 verse 19, he said, Now
there is a physical application to these words to the nation
Israel under the old covenant, that conditional covenant. As long as the leaders of the
nation and the majority of the people were in obedience to the
covenant law, they prospered in the land. But now you go back
and read the Old Testament and you tell me out of the 1500 year
period from Sinai to the cross that the majority of the leaders
and the majority of the people were in obedience to the covenant.
How many times? None. They missed it. They failed. Now I'm not saying that in a
self-righteous way, talking about those sinful Israelites, because
I'm going to tell you something, if I'd been in that nation, I'd
have been right with them. You would too. America is not better
than Israel of old, folks. But here's the application that
I believe applies to God's people today. I read it last week, we
won't turn there, but it's in Galatians chapter 6, talking
about sowing and reaping. You're going to reap what you
sow. That's right. Well, what are you sowing? Are
you sowing salvation by works? Well, if you do, you're gonna
reap that, and you know what you're gonna reap? Death. If
you sow a false message, a false witness, a false gospel, what
are you gonna reap? The whirlwind, the wrath of God.
But if you sow grace, The gospel of God's free and sovereign grace
in Christ, what do you reap? Everlasting life. Doesn't mean
you earn that or deserve it. Doesn't mean you work for it.
That's just the way it is, folks. God gives his people life everlasting. They stand before him not guilty. We who sins are red like crimson,
scarlet. We're white as snow as we stand
before God in Christ Jesus. And that by his grace and by
his mercy. Learn to do well.