Well, I said earlier on that
it's my intention to start a series in the book of Isaiah, and how
long we'll be here I don't know, because there's a lot of it.
But this is the Gospel according to Isaiah, the Gospel according
to Isaiah. And it was written 800 years
before Christ was born, so 2,800 years ago. In the days of some
kings, we read about them in the first verse, in the days
of Uzziah, of Jotham, of Ahaz, of Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
And if you read in the books of Kings and of Chronicles, you
will see where they fit into the scheme. This is beyond the
days of glory of David and of Solomon, when it was a kingdom
of settled peace and prosperity, the envy of the world. And it's
a few hundred years later and there have been good kings and
bad kings who did evil in the sight of the Lord and those who
did that which was right in the sight of the Lord. And on the
whole, these ones mentioned here, Hezekiah especially, was a very
good king, but nevertheless There's a strong indictment against the
people who called themselves the people of God in those days.
It is, as it says in the first verse, the vision of Isaiah. The vision. What do you mean?
He's dreaming fanciful dreams? He's going off and having some
weird experiences? No, it means it's a revelation
from God. It's something that he's sensing. You see, we've got five senses,
haven't we? We've got sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. But he didn't get this message
through any of those. He didn't hear it with the ears.
He didn't see it written down. He didn't find some copper plates
in a forest as some false sects go and claim that they did to
get the Word of God. No, this came by Holy Spirit
revelation from the Spirit of God, and it is a vision about
His people. It tells us that. It's a vision
about Judah and Jerusalem. It's talking about them, concerning
Judah and Jerusalem in the days of those kings. It's the words
of God. He says, I have spoken. Hear,
O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. Do you
know the generation in which we live pays no attention to
the voice of God? Do you know that God has spoken?
Have you heard that God has spoken? You know, you look at the people
all around, our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends, those
that we interact with all the time, They're completely unaware. They choose to be completely
unaware that God, the true God, has spoken. Hear, O heavens. Give ear, O earth. The Lord has
spoken. The Lord, God, has spoken. Who
is God? Who is God? The one who made
you. The one who made all things. God has spoken. Ought we not
to listen? This is the word of God. You
know, your unbelieving relatives, your unbelieving neighbours,
all those all around us, God has spoken! God has spoken! In this book, there are 66 chapters. Do you know why there are 66
chapters? Because a monk in the Middle Ages, I forget his name,
but he divided the scriptures up into chapters and verses,
and he did us a great favour. They weren't written with chapters
and verses originally, But no, it makes it so easy, I can say
go to Isaiah 53 verse 3 and you know exactly where I mean, you
can find it. So, for all of the disservice that many monks did,
that monk did us a service, it's good. He divided the book of
Isaiah into 66 books, into 66 chapters. And whether that's
coincidence, or whether it's by divine arrangement, it's interesting,
isn't it, that the Bible has 66 books. the entire Bible has. It has the same number of chapters
as the Bible has books. And this book of Isaiah is full
of gospel grace. It's full of the story, the account,
the declaration by God of salvation from sin accomplished by the
Christ of God, by the Messiah of God. It's full of that, yet
it's also full of warnings about sin, and its just and its eternal
condemnation. And so he says, Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! Listen! Now
our text this morning, and it's the one that I think most preachers
would go to in Isaiah chapter 1, and I looked to see if I could
go anywhere else but I can't. I have to go to verse 18. Come
now And let us reason together, saith 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. If ye be willing
and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. I've called
this message a summons from the Lord. A summons from God. A summons from the Lord. Note
there it's L capital O capital R capital D. This is Jehovah.
This is Jehovah. When you see L-O-R-D, it's Elohim,
which is Christ, the manifestation of God to his people. But listen,
here is God speaking to his people. And so there's a conference to
which we are summoned, and God has a proposition to make. So
first of all, a summons and the reaction. Come now. Do you hear
this? This is the word of the Lord.
And he's talking to you. He's talking to all of you. He's
talking to you as young as you are. And he's talking to you
as old as you are. He's talking to everybody in
between. Are you all listening? Because God says, come now. Come
now. All of us here. Those of you
out there on the internet watching, either live now or watching the
recording in the coming week, and any who later listen when
the sermon goes up on Sermon Audio on Free Grace Radio, are
you listening? God says, come now, come now,
can you hear the call? You see, if any of you well,
any of you that are British citizens at any rate, were summoned to
a royal investiture to be awarded a CBE, one of the British Empire
medals, an OBE or something like that. Oh, wow, would you jump
up and put your best bib and tucker on and get yourself there.
You wouldn't be late for that. Oh, it would be the thing that
all your friends would know about for a long, long time. Maybe
that's very unlikely to happen to you. Very few of us get that.
But what about if you've got a favourite rock star, singing
star? And there's a gig, as they say,
on somewhere, and they say, a message comes to you, come and meet me
backstage. You know, the star of the show
says, come and meet me backstage. Oh, wow, you'd be there, wouldn't
you? Come now, come now, you'd be there. You would, you'd go.
or you're a tennis fan and you'd love to get into Wimbledon and
an invitation comes, come and share the royal box with a member
of the royal family on the final of one of the singles finals
at Wimbledon. Wow, you'd listen, wouldn't you?
Now look, here is God in his word. eternal God, speaking through
his word now and saying to you and to me, come now and let us
reason together. Can you hear him? Come now and
let us reason together. How are you going to react? How
might you react? How might many people react?
You might react like Pharaoh said to Moses. Moses said, I've
come from God. in Exodus, early chapters thereof.
He said, God has sent me to tell you, Pharaoh, to let the children
of Israel go, let my people go. And Pharaoh says this, who is
the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know
not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go. I don't know who you're
talking about. You think about all the people you know, and
you say to them, the Lord God has said to you, come now. He
said it in his word here, Isaiah chapter 1 verse 18. He said,
come now, let us reason together. And what will they say to you?
I know not the Lord. Who is this Lord to me? I don't
know him. I'm not going to do anything
to do with this God. I don't know him. I'm going to
react like those people that we looked at a couple of weeks
ago in Job chapter 21. Therefore they say unto God,
depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.
Leave us alone. What is the Almighty that we
should serve him? We don't know of any God. What
profit is there in it? What profit should we have if
we pray unto him? What's the point of it all? We
don't know about anything like that. You see, so many people
Maybe you dismiss God as irrelevant. Don't they? They do. Do you say,
who is this God who you say is summoning me to a conference?
Why should I take any notice? I'm getting along quite nicely
without bothering God, as they say, or without God, if there
is one, bothering me. Okay. Okay. If that's your reaction, we'll
leave you alone. We won't bother telling you what
he has proposed in this conference. It's not relevant to you, is
it, at your stage of life? But we'll just put to one side
the fact that God exists, that he is the only source of life,
that your beating heart and your breathing lungs and your thinking
brain is only now a result of the living God who has given
you life. that He made all things, including you, who refuse to
acknowledge Him, that He is your Creator, He is your, you make
something, it's responsible to you, isn't it? He made you, you're
responsible to Him. Ah, you respond, ah, you respond
in your arrogance, you say, ah, but science has proven there
is no God, it's on the TV all the time, we know, you're talking
rubbish, there is no God, science has proven it. I tell you, I
tell you, the clearest voice I possibly can summon that science
has not proven there is no God. Science is incapable of proving
that there is no God. Science cannot give an explanation
one little bit of how the simplest living cell came to put itself
together. Oh, you say, evolution did it.
No, it didn't. It couldn't. It can't. It's impossible. All evolution can do... Oh, I'm
going to shock you now. I believe in evolution. Yes,
of course there's evolution. There's selection within gene
pool types. Yes, of course there is. We can
see it. But evolution never invented
one solitary new gene. Evolution didn't invent anything. Evolution never invented one
solitary living cell. Evolution can't. So you're left
with a problem. How do you explain your existence?
How do you explain it? You see, what you're doing is
you're hiding. I told you that this book is
replete with the truth of God, and so it is. In Isaiah 28, again,
the prophet speaking on God's behalf says this, to people like
you, people in general, you're hiding in a refuge. And do you
know what your refuge is? It's a refuge of lies. You're
hiding in a refuge of lies. And do you know something? God
will sweep it clean away. God is true. The scripture says
this, let God be true and every man a liar. You and me, you might
think you're honest. You're a liar compared with God.
God be true and every man a liar. So if God made me, what is he
like? How can I know? How can I know
what he's like? And what is required of me? And
how am I? Surely if God made me, I relate
to God. You might say, leave me alone,
we don't want to know about you, but you can't avoid it. It's
appointed to man to die once and then the judgment. What is
He like? How can I know? There's only
one way you can know, and that's through His Word. His Word. If
they speak not, says this book again, Isaiah 8 verse 20, if
they speak not according to this Word, there is no light in them.
Do you know what you should do, you who doubt God? You should
be like the noble Bereans. And what I'm telling you now,
you should say, I'm not going to believe him unless I can find
it in this book, in this scripture. Look at this book. If they speak
not according to this word, there is no light, there is no truth
in them. Because I tell you, God himself has said, Psalm 138
verse 2, he has magnified his word above all his name. God's word is magnified above
all his name. And it tells us that he is holy. The God with whom we have to
do is perfectly righteous. I mean, if we say, what do you
mean by righteousness? Then there's only one answer
to that. God is the definition of righteousness. Who he is, what he says, what
he requires, the way he acts, is perfectly, perfectly righteous. And it's the theme of the angels.
Turn over a couple of pages to chapter 6. And verse 3, where
Isaiah has a vision of God. He actually has a vision of the
Lord Jesus Christ before he came to earth. We know that from John
chapter 12. And in the temple he sees this
vision of God the Son in all of his glory, and the cherubim,
the angels, the holy beings in the presence of God. And verse
3, one cried to another, one of these cherubim, these angels,
cried to another and said, Holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The
whole earth is full of his glory. That's spiritual truth. That is spiritual reality. That is what Isaiah saw. He is
intolerant of sin. He is, as Habakkuk says, of purer
eyes than to behold iniquity and cannot look upon sin. He
is perfectly just, for he cannot clear the guilty. And the soul
that sins, it shall die. And he must punish sin. And what
am I? What am I? Look at it. Verse
6 of chapter 1. Verse 6 of chapter 1. What am
I? I'm the same as you and everybody else. From the sole of my foot,
even to the head, there is no soundness, no goodness, no righteousness
in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores They have
not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
That's what we are in the judgment and reckoning of God. I am, and
so are you. Are you hearing? Has it hit you
yet? Has it hit you that you cannot
say, who is this God? I want nothing to do with him.
Has it hit you that you stand in the judgment of God, condemned
as a sinner? Has it led you to cry out, what
should a man do to be just with God? What can I do to be just
with God? I know that I'm a sinner. I know
that I face judgment. Is your soul crying out to understand
your position? Well, here's a summons from God
himself. Here's a summons from God to
you and to me. Come and let's talk. You and
me, come, says God, let's talk. Us, us, you, a hell-deserving
sinner and God who rules all creation. Is that not utterly
amazing? Come, you who dwell in the gutter,
as far as holiness is concerned, come into the pristine, holy,
perfect, sinless presence of God. Come there. Come there. Come and let's talk. You a hell-deserving
sinner and God who rules all creation. Is that not amazing?
Come let us reason together. Reasoning with God. Reasoning
with God. A conference. Is this not what
he's saying? Come to a conference. And what
happens at a conference? There's discussion goes on. Discussion. Cards are put on the table, as
it were, we use that expression. It means, I'll tell you my position,
now you tell me your position, and let's see, let's negotiate
about this. And the objective of a conference
is agreement. They always like, when they have
these big political conferences, to come out at the end of it,
holding hands, shaking hands, and saying, here's the statement
that we've agreed. The objective of the conference
is agreement. The objective of the conference
is peace. It's peace. God, who is holy
and must punish sin, says to you and me, sinners, come, let
us reason together. Let's understand the starting
point of the parties at this conference. There's God in unchanging,
perfect holiness and sovereign power. And you and me, as unholy
and sinful and unstable and in debt to God's holiness and justice. And the Bible is full, it's replete
with the charge sheet. We read Isaiah 1, the first 20
verses, and didn't you see again and again, all your religious
doings and tryings. I hate them, says God. They're
vile, they're an offence to me. I don't want your sacrifices.
I don't want the blood of your bulls and your goats. Don't bring
your vain oblations to me. Your incense is an abomination.
Your religious doings and tryings, I can't stand them, is what the
true God says. He says you're full of sin. He
said you're a sinful people. You've turned away from the truth.
The Bible is full of the charge sheet. And strict divine justice
requires no more than the quick execution of the penalty. When
you read about the final judgment in Revelation 20, there's no
trial of Satan and his fallen demons. No. There's no point
in a trial. In the justice of God, they're
utterly guilty. they're cast straight into the
lake of fire. And so it is with our sin that
strict justice requires no more than a quick execution of the
penalty, which is, the soul that sins, it shall die. Not it shall
be annihilated, but it shall suffer eternally the consequences
of its disobedience of God and its sin and its rebellion against
the living God. But, but, Isn't it good, so often,
if you read the scriptures, you will read again and again, a
charred sheet read out, and then you'll read two words, which
are some of the most blessed words you will ever read, but
God. Here's the situation, but God,
but God who is rich in mercy, I'm quoting one verse, God who
is rich in mercy, he's just, he's perfectly just, and he really
must punish sin, but God who is rich in mercy for his great
love wherewith he loved us. Wherewith he loved us, us, you
and me, sinners. God says, come, let us reason
together. You, sinner, God says, come,
let us reason together. If he says that, surely he intends
good, doesn't he? If God says, come, let us, you
a sinner, me the holy God, if he says, come, let us reason
together, surely he intends good. Perhaps some Spiritual light
is breaking in your rebellious soul. Perhaps you sense your
true condition before this holy God. Perhaps you sense your sinnerhood. How can I, a sinner, reason with
the holy God? I've started to see what I am.
How can I reason with the holy God? How dare I claim anything
from God? Do you know, Jesus pointed to
two men praying by the temple wall in Jerusalem. And one was
a Pharisee, a proud, self-righteous Pharisee. And the proud, self-righteous
Pharisee said, God, I thank you that I'm not as other men. I
fast three times a week. I give tithes to the poor. I
do this, that, and the other. And oh, aren't I good in your...
I'm not like this publican with scorn and sneering in his sentiment. And Jesus said, now look at the
publican. There he is. He's known as being a vile person. He does nothing other than extort
the poor and deal corruptly, but he knows he's a sinner. And
there he is, he stands there and he says, God, be merciful
to me, the sinner. That's all that a sinner can
claim. You see, if thoughts like these
have crossed your mind, what a blessed thing it is. Surely
God intends good. It is God's Spirit who teaches
us what we are. It is God's Spirit who teaches
us the fear of the Lord. That's the beginning of knowledge.
That's the beginning of wisdom. But God says, come, let's talk
about it. Come, let's talk about it. But
you say, what about my sin? You see, you're starting to understand,
and you say what Isaiah 59 verse 2 says. Your iniquities have
separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his
face from you, that he will not hear. How can I reason with God?
I'm a sinner, and he's already said. I'm separated from him,
and he can't reason with me. How can my sin not eternally
condemn me? Surely it's inevitable, isn't
it? Should I tell you how inevitable it is? Imagine that you go and
stand on the platform of Nebworth Station, on the fast track, and
a train is coming up at 125 miles an hour. And with about two or
three seconds to go, you step off that platform into the path
of that train. You know what's going to happen
to you, don't you? It's a horrendous thought. You're going to be killed.
You're going to be crushed. You're going to be destroyed.
Do you know something? I know that's a gruesome picture
to paint, but do you know, It's like what it must be for that
which is sin to come up against the holiness and justice of God. There is an utter inevitability
of the consequence. There is no wriggling out. There
is no making of excuses. There is no, oh, it will turn
out all right for me in the end. No, it won't. You will be crushed
as surely as you would be crushed by that speeding express train.
So what does God propose then? What does he propose? Hear what
God puts on the table. Everything you feel about your
sin is true and more. What does he say? Though your
sin be as scarlet, oh for sure, your sin is shining red in its
guilt. There is no hiding it. Though
it be red like crimson, totally soaked in the dye, it shall be
white as snow. it shall be like wool. God is
saying, yes, you're a sinner, but here's my proposition. You're
a sinner burdened down with guilt and responsibility, but you shall
have no sin. Your sin shall be taken away,
it will be removed. How can it be? How can it be? Death is demanded by offended
justice, and God's holy character must receive the penalty due.
Surely God ought to punish my sin. It's not right that God
doesn't punish my sin. This is the reasoning that goes
on in the heart that is being awakened. But God says, it shall
be white as snow. You shall have no sin to be punished. He says elsewhere in Jeremiah
chapter 50 verse 20, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for,
and there shall be none, and the sins of Judah, and they shall
not be found. Why? For I will pardon them whom
I reserve. How does God pardon? How does
he do it? How is he able to? Surely he's
unjust if he pardons the guilty. You reason that your flesh always
inclines to sin. How are we going to deal with
that? What about that? But God says in his word that he will
deal with that. He will remove in His people
the propensity to sin. Not until we die will we be free
of this body of sin, but He will remove the propensity to sin.
He will give a new nature. He will impart a new nature.
Along with the righteousness of God in Christ which He imputes
to the believer, He will impart a new nature that is more inclined
to the things of God. But you still ask, how can these
things be? And that is the message of the
whole Bible. How can these things be? How
should a man be just with God? By God becoming a man to be the
substitute of his people. His people? His elect people.
Who are they? Chosen in Christ before the foundation
of the world. Oh, so it's very limited. No,
it's a multitude that no man can number. Oh, it's only for
white people. No, it's of every race and tongue
and kindred. Only for English-speaking people.
No, for every race and tongue and kindred. But a fixed number. He's elect, chosen in Him before
the foundation of the world, particularly. And for those people,
Christ, the Son of God, the manifestation of God, true God, God in human
flesh, in Him dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He came
as the surety of His people. Why in flesh? Because if sin
is to be forgiven, if sin debt is to be paid, it must be paid
for in flesh by the shedding of blood. Without the shedding
of blood, there is no remission of sin. So he came in flesh for
the suffering of death, to bear sin, the sins of his people,
not his sins, but the sins of his people, in his own body on
the tree. That's what we saw in Peter.
He bore our sins in his own body on the tree, the sins of his
people, not everybody's that ever lived, the sins of those
the father gave to him to redeem them from the curse of the law.
How did he redeem? How did he pay the price? That's
what it means, redeem. How did he pay the price, the
sin debt of the curse of the law? By him being made a curse
for us, for cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree. And he
hung on that wooden cross, that tree. Where has the sinner's
sin gone? Isaiah 53, verse 6. Again, in
this book, the Lord hath laid on him, on whom? On Christ, the
Son of God, the iniquity of us all. Who are the us all? His
people, those he chose in Christ before the foundation of the
world. In the New Testament, you know, it says this, He made
Him, Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him. And Christ, bearing
sin, was forsaken by the Father. He truly paid its debt. He judicially
paid and removed it. So that, Toplady wrote in his
hymn, Payment God cannot twice demand, First at my bleeding
surety's hand, and then again at mine. The illustration is,
if you go to a place of heathland where they get fires in the summer,
do you know the safest place when the heathland is burning
is on a patch of ground that is already burnt? Because it
cannot burn there again. It's burnt up. And if you're
in Christ, the wrath and fury of God against your sin cannot
fall again on you, because it has already fallen on him, and
he has borne it. How? You see, that's the objective
facts. But how does it work? I don't
know. I don't understand. In Revelation
19 and verse 12, we read of this glorious Christ, who is triumphant
over all his enemies at the end of time, and it says his name
is the Word of God, and on his thigh there's a name, the King
of Kings and Lord of Lords, but then it says he has a name which
only he knows. Only he knows. That I believe. The name is the character, what
the person does. And I believe that that is saying
that the way in which the death of Christ removes my sin, which
I am constantly aware of in this body, and I don't understand
it, he does. He knows how he did it. He has
a name that only he knows. Only Christ knows, ultimately,
how he accomplished the redemption of his people. Now, you who thought
it wise and sophisticated intellectually to dismiss God as a stupid superstition
that we've grown out of. Will you believe God? Look what
it says. If you be willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land. Willing and obedient. If you believe, it is proof that
Christ bore your sin. It's not that your believing
makes it that Christ bore your sin. No, not at all, not at all. It's if you believe it is proof
that Christ bore your sin, not the other way around. As Jesus
said to those Pharisees, he didn't say, you are not my sheep because
you haven't yet believed. No, he said, you don't believe
because you're not of my sheep, because all of his sheep will
hear his voice and will follow him and will come. Does that
make you better than others if you believe? Does it mean that
you did something that others didn't do? No, even God did that. For God, Psalm 110 verse 3, makes
his people willing in the day of his power, willing to believe
him, if ye be willing. If ye be willing, God has made
you willing in the day of his power. His spirit gives faith
to obey the gospel call. Have you heard it? Have you believed
the Son of God? If so, You have eternal life. But if you refuse, listen to
me. I know these are solemn words,
but they're serious. If you refuse, you will have
nobody to blame but yourself when you bear the just punishment
for your sin against God. Amen.