If you will, open your Bibles
to Isaiah 40 again. I don't know what it means to
you, but to me this is the most important
hour of the week. And I don't mean when we assemble
in the church. I don't mean when we come to
what they call Sunday school in church and play religion for an hour
or two, socialize and fellowship. Somebody entertains us with gospel
songs and somebody challenges our intellect with an argumentative
message. But I'm talking about this hour
right now, this moment, this very moment. Right now, when
a man who has been called of God and commissioned of God and
sent of God stands before us to deliver his message for his
people for that hour. Now to me that's the most important
hour of the week. I know that we have what we call
our devotions and they're important. I know we have our time of family
prayer, and that's important. And I know we have our time of
personal study, and that's important. But God uses, and always has
used, and always will use, according to the Scripture, men to speak
forth at a given time His message. Now the fact that most are not
doing it doesn't change that fact. The fact that men have
been have compromised the position because of greed or covetousness
or fear. Doesn't change the fact that
God still speaks. There was a man sent from God
whose name was John. God sent him. God raised up a
man named Paul. He said, you'll be my apostle
to the Gentiles. They'll hear the word at your
mouth. God raised up a man called Moses, the sons of Korah. He
said, well, God speaks to everyone. Maybe so. But God sent them to
hell with their shoes on because they refused to follow Moses.
He just opened the ground and swallowed them up. They were
speaking some truth, but they were rebelling against God's
messenger. And I say this is the most important
moment of our entire week. If God is pleased to speak, He
may not be pleased to speak. He may not be pleased to speak
through his messenger. Paul said, I want to go down
here and preach. God said, don't go. Paul said, I want to go over
here and preach. He said, don't go. And during
the night, God spoke to him through the voice of the Macedonians.
And they said, come over here and help us. God said, go over
and help them. They've got an open heart, a willing ear. Go
preach to them. Even of our Lord, it was said,
He could do no mighty works because of their unbelief. That's what
it said. Again, it said, He would do no mighty works because of
their unbelief. If we have a hearing ear, God
may be pleased to speak to us. He may not. John Bunyan was shut
up in prison for 12 years. He was God's man of the hour.
He was God's man of the day. But God shut him up in prison
for 12 years and silenced his voice, and the people heard no
one. But while he was there, he wrote a book entitled Pilgrim's
Progress. But I have a burden to preach
God's message. I don't have a burden to preach
sermons. I'm not interested in preaching sermons. I'm not interested
in hearing sermons. I'm not interested in arguing
religion. I'm not interested in arguing millennial positions
or prophecy. I could care less as the years
go by. But the burden grows great and heavy upon me personally
to preach God's message for that hour. The most humbling and challenging
thing I face, and if the burden gets any greater, I don't think
I can stand it. But as God said, my grace is sufficient. But the
concern of my heart is that this church, at least this church,
if nobody else does it, but at least this pulpit and this church
will experience a return to the preaching of
the gospel of God's sovereign grace and glory in our day. Wouldn't
it be something if men could come from everywhere and know
that sitting here they can hear from God. They can hear his message,
his message. They can hear his gospel, the
gospel of his grace and his glory. Not hear a man, but hear from
God through a man. Barnard used to say, if my voice
is the only voice you hear, it won't do you any good to hear
it anyway. You've got to hear him speak, who speaks through
his word and through his servant. God must speak to the heart.
We speak to men's ears, God speaks to the heart. We speak to men's
minds, God speaks to their souls. We convince men of a doctrine,
God convinces men of a truth. We persuade men to join us. God persuades men to be united
with Christ. We're plagued in this day with
a gospel of works. I don't care what anybody says,
99% of today's preaching and religion is pure works, with
a little mixture of grace. A few words of grace, but mostly
works. We have today, we're plagued
with a religion of form and ceremony. We're plagued today, just like
Israel of old, ever learning and never coming
to knowledge of the truth. We have a zeal for God, but it's
not according to knowledge. Men today are going about to
work out their own righteousness and have not submitted themselves
to the righteousness of God, who is Christ Jesus. Preaching
is so shallow. Most preaching today is so shallow. Just two, four, six, eight. Who
do we appreciate? Jesus. Jesus. That's about all
it amounts to. I want to return to the message
that God used in other days, don't you? And I don't mean to
resurrect the Puritans. There's no need. They just preached
what Paul preached, what Augustine preached. I don't mean that we're
to go back to the these and thous. That won't do us any good. I
don't mean to go back to the long black coats and the shatter
of the broad brim and the strained black ties and the pitered wigs
and try to act like old pious Puritans. I don't mean that at
all. But I mean return to preaching in the language of present day
men and women to the message God used in olden days to awaken
sinners to their need of Christ. That's what I'm talking about.
That message that God used in days gone by to reveal his redemptive
glory. When we speak, God speaks in
men here, in a troubled and moved. That message that humbles the
proud Pharisee, that strips him, that knocks his foundations out
from under him. That message that sinners want
to hear. That message from God that draws
men and women off the streets and from the dens and hovels
and other places to come and sit and listen to good news! Glad tidings! I'm weary of false piety and
self-righteousness and men and women who pull their cloaks of
personal merit around them a little tighter and look down their noses
a little further at all the sinners in this awful world. I'll tell
you this. If Almighty God is pleased in
our day to speak through somebody, if God Almighty is pleased in
our day to once again let His voice be heard, His voice, not
the voice of a man, not the voice of the Baptist, not the voice
of the Calvinist, not the voice of the Reformer, not the voice
of the Fundamentalist, not the voice of Mr. Graham or any other
Mr. But if God's pleased in this
day to let His voice be heard, I'll tell you what'll happen.
Men will once again feel a sense of the awful presence
of God. How long has it been where you
worship or where you hear preaching, how long has it been since you
felt the solemn and awesome and awful presence of God? Isaiah saw his holiness and said,
woe is me. Daniel had a revelation of his
glory and he said, my comeliness melted into corruption. John
on the Isle of Patmos was aware of his power and presence and
he said, I fell at his feet like a dead man. Job said, I've heard of you,
Lord. I've heard a lot of talk. I've heard a lot of sermons.
But now, man, I see it thee. I hate myself. I repent in sackcloth
and ashes. Men will once again have a sense
of the awesome, awful presence of God. And gone will be the voice of
the proud sinner who inwardly debates whether or not he'll
let Jesus save him. That's about all our preaching
does today. Somebody stands out there and
debates whether or not he'll accept Jesus. Whether or not
today will be the day when he'll say yes to God. Gone will be
the haughty spirit of the proud sinner that debates whether or
not he'll let Jesus into his heart. Gone will be the bragging of
the religionists and the Pharisees and Sadducees who boast of their
righteousness, who declare in plain terms what they've done
for God this week. How many souls you want of Jesus? I've won ten. Thank you, Lord, I'm not like
other men. I fasted twice this week. I gave
tithes of all I possess and alms to the poor. Did you take note
of that, God, when I gave the fellow the dimes? God will be
the voice of the proud, self-righteous Pharisee who boasts that he's
arrived, he has his credentials, he's able to preach anywhere,
anytime to anybody. Just stand out of his way and
let him in the pulpit. He'll wreck souls like his own's
been wrecked. If God is pleased to speak once
again, we may hear men cry. We just may, I don't know, we
may hear somebody cry, depths of mercy, can there be? Mercy
still reserved for me. Can my God his wrath forbear
and me, the chief of sinners, bear? There won't be any debate
about whether or not he'll let Jesus save him. There won't be
any debate about whether he'll patronize the Son of God and
let him into his heart. There won't be any debate whether
or not he'll say yes to God. He'll be crying, and can it be
that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood? Died he
for me whom him to death pursued? Amazing love! How can it be that
thou, my God, should die for me? This generation of fundamentalists
And Bible school enthusiasts, and Christian school enthusiasts,
and Sunday morning worshipers haven't been in all their lives,
Jim, in spitting distance of the gospel. They never heard
it, they don't know it, and they don't preach it. You can tell by their attitude.
They're smug and complacent and presumptuous and they got a corner
on God and they're just like the old Jews in Luke 4 who were
sitting there that Sabbath morning and the Lord Jesus came and stood
before them and they said, do what you did in Capernaum. Show
us a little power and a little religion. He said, let me tell
you something. There were many widows in Israel when God sent
his servant, and he didn't feed any of them. He fed a Gentile. And there were many lepers in
the land of Israel in the days of God's prophet, and he didn't
heal one of them. He healed a Gentile. God will
be merciful to whom he will be merciful. He'll be gracious to
whom he will be gracious. You say that's hard. No, it's
just so. It's just so. I long to preach God's word,
whether it's comforting or convicting. I long to preach God's gospel,
whether it slays men or whether it saves men, whether it adds
to their condemnation or brings them to glorification, but God
be glorified. Necessity is laid upon me, Paul
said, I must, I must preach the gospel. I must. And I'll tell you this, necessity
is laid upon you, you must hear it. If you have to drive 175
miles to hear it, get in your car and get started. I'd rather
drive 175 miles and hear a man preach the gospel than to go
next door and perish and go to hell with the fella that's running
that show. If you have to get your tape and sit at home and
listen to somebody preach the gospel, get your tape. But don't
you go and listen to a man butcher the word of God. Necessity is laid upon me. Woe
is me if I preach not the gospel. In Isaiah 40, there's some good
news here. It begins with comfort, verse
40, verse 1, Isaiah 40, comfort ye. What a sweet title, my people. I've got some people, God says.
I got some people. You comfort them." What a sweet
title. He says, comfort my people, and
what a sweet revelation. He said, I'm your God. Comfort
ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak comfortably to
Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare's accomplished. Almighty
God will have a people. Our message is not all doom and
despair, all judgment by any means. We have a message of grace.
God will be gracious. Her time of deliverance is here,
God said. Now is the accepted time. Cry
unto her, her warfare's accomplished. The bondage of the law has been
lifted. The day of God's salvation is
here. Her iniquity is pardoned. Her iniquity is pardoned. She
hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. Double
measure of mercy. The sacrifice of Christ is sufficient
to atone doubly for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth
in the wilderness. Listen to this. This is talking
about John the Baptist. I know that. But it's talking
about every John the Baptist who dares to preach. That's what
it's talking about there. It's not just talking about John
the Baptist who came as the forerunner of Christ and prepared the way
like a pioneer for the master, but it's talking about every
John the Baptist who dares to lift up his voice, his lonely
voice, his single voice in the wilderness in faithfulness declaring
God's Word. I remember reading in John R.
Rice's Sword of the Lord not too many months ago years ago,
they were running an article on predestination. Of course,
they always have something bad to say about it. And they always build a straw
man, beat the daylights out of it. They don't ever express it
as it is, truthfully, beautifully. And one preacher made this comment.
He said, I used to preach. God's sovereignty and total depravity
in election, particular redemption, tulip. I think sometimes we ought
to just plant a bed of tulips all around this church. Let everybody
know what we stand for. I'm not ashamed of it. I feel
like Martin Luther when he stood before the Diet of Worms and
was surrounded by those compromising preachers. And when you preach
the gospel, the preachers are your worst enemies. You wouldn't
think that, would you? But they are. And he stood there
before the gaze of all those cardinals and bishops and archbishops
and all the rest of them. And he declared his confidence
in God's sovereignty and justification by faith. And he said, here I
stand. I can do no other. I can do no
other. Here I stand. If it costs me
my life, here I stand. If it costs me every friend I've
got, here I stand. But this preacher wrote in the
soul of the Lord, he said, I used to preach those things, but watch
this, quote, I saw it was ruining my ministry. My ministry. And I quit preaching. Let me
tell you something, you preachers who are here this morning, the
sooner you realize that you ain't got no ministry. It's God's ministry. Isn't that right, Ed? It's not
our ministry. Whoever said we had a ministry?
It's his ministry. It's his house. It's his vineyard.
It's his building. It's not mine. We're servants.
We're just little servant boys running around in the house.
That's all we are. I'm not head of this house. Christ is the
head of this house. He's the president, dictator,
monarch, king, sovereign, whatever. He owns this house. I'm a fellow
waiting on tables. How about you? I got no ministry. I got a stewardship. I got the work of a ballet or
work of a busboy or the work of a servant. I'm a bond slave. But it's his ministry. It's his
message. It's his church. It's his people. And he said it was ruining my
ministry. So he's got a ministry now. It's a big one, too. He's
proud of it. But he's out of God's ministry.
He quit God's ministry to get God's message. You quit God's
message when you get scared and refuse to preach God's message.
That's when you quit God's ministry. That's when the servant boy ceases
to be a bond slave, when he starts deciding how to do things in
the house. We take orders from above. Well,
I knew that you were a tough master and you reaped where you
hadn't sowed, so I just took this talent and hid it. God said,
I'll take it away from you, too, and I'll give it to the fellas
who already got ten. The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
lonely. He says, prepare you, verse 3,
the way of the Lord. That's all we're sent to announce
his coming, not our coming. Make straight in the desert a
highway for our God. He's the one coming. Every valley
shall be exalted. That is, the depressed over guilt
of sin, all the low-minded, the depressed, the guilty, the heavy
laden, they're going to be raised. They're going to be lifted. They're
going to be comforted. They're going to be given hope. And the
hills, the mountains, every mountain, every proud, self-righteous Pharisee
is going to be whittled down. And the hills shall be made low,
and the crooked are going to be made straight. and the rough
place is plain, and the glory of God is going to be revealed. That's what it's all about. That's
what this message, this ministry, that's what this church, this
worship service, that's what this is all about. The glory
of God shall be revealed. That's honestly, I say to you,
God knows my heart, God is my witness, all I care about today,
the glory of God. You see, the gospel, the true
gospel reveals the glory of God. the righteousness of God. To
those who are saved, the gospel is the wisdom of God, it's the
power of God, it's the glory of God. Therein is the righteousness
of God revealed. Now he says, you go out here,
you boys in the wilderness, you lonely prophet, You man that,
you fella that realizes at last you don't have a ministry, and
you don't have a job to protect, and you don't have a people to
pacify, and you don't have a work to accomplish. You're just a
voice. They came to John the Baptist
and said, who are you? Are you the Christ? No, no. Well,
who are you? Well, he could have said. He
could have said. My father was Zacharias. pretty
important man. Zacharias was somebody. My mother
was Elizabeth, who incidentally was a cousin of the Lord's mother,
huh? Well, we love our family trees. A lot of you folks are
ordering those and getting them on the wall up there, you know.
I tell you this, the roots are all, I tell you where the roots
are, they're all in the Garden of Eden, Adam. And the rest of
it's been ruined ever since he's been ruined. But John the Baptist,
he could have said my mother was Elizabeth. You do know Elizabeth. And I was supernaturally born,
I was a gift of God, and I was filled with the spirit from my
mother's womb, huh? He could have said all that.
Well, who are you? Well, we send out our brochures and our letters
of recommendation who we are. I read about them all the time.
He said I'm a voice! That's all I am, a voice. I'm a voice crying. I'm not a
voice that's been staled by popularity, or staled by personal ambition,
or staled by greed, or staled by covetousness, or staled by
ambition. I'm a voice that's crying. And
I'm out there in the wilderness. I'm not invited into the temple
with a steeple higher than the other steeple. I'm not invited
into the gold and silver speckled buildings. I'm not invited to
minister to the intellectuals. I was out in Texas one time in
a meeting, and the pastor said, there's a young man who wants
to meet you and pick your brain. And something like this. So we
went to dinner. And we sat down at the dinner
table, and the pastor, he introduced me to the young man. The young
man said, and where did you go to the seminary? I said, I didn't. He said, oh. And he didn't pick
my brain no more. He just figured I didn't have
any, because I didn't go to the seminary. Of course, he had never
pastored a church. He had never been in the ministry.
He'd never been used of God in any way. He didn't have a hearing
or confirmation, but he did have the credentials, and you want
to get those. You may never preach a sermon,
but get your credentials. Nobody may ever listen to you,
but get your credentials. Do that by all means. Get that.
You need that. The voice of one crying in the
wilderness, prepare you the way of the Lord. The valleys are
going to be raised, the humble. The broken-hearted, the guilty
are gonna be raised, and the proud and arrogant are gonna
be brought down, and God's gonna reveal His glory, His glory! His glory's gonna fill the temple! Somebody's gonna see His glory! Oh, I'd like to, wouldn't you? Oh, I'd like to. And everybody's gonna see it.
See verse 5? The glory of the Lord. In the
flesh, you're gonna see it. God's spoken it. God's going
to save some people. He's not going to be without
a witness. We can try to put him in our buildings and our
schools and our organizations and our forms and laws and ceremonies
and rituals and our doctrines and methods. We're going to cook
God up. We're going to get a corner on God. We've arrived. We've
got it. We're a proud bunch of Sadducees and Pharisees. But
God's going to reveal somewhere to somebody, if it's in the wilderness,
his glory. His glory, not our glory. His
building, not our buildings. His message, not our sermons.
Somebody's going to seek God's glory. Somebody, somewhere. God, he said, I've spoken it. I've spoken it. In the day of
our Lord, he didn't come down into the temple except to run
the crooks out. He visited the temple one day,
but he visited it not with a message of love, but with a whip. He didn't meet with Ecclesiastes,
he didn't meet with that bunch of preachers that were organizing
things, you know, getting everything organized. He didn't go meet
with them. He said, you're a generation of vipers, you're blind leading
the blind, you don't know God nor me. He went down there where
the sinners were and he met with them and talked with them and
congregated with them. He walked under a tree and called
a Zacchaeus. He went out in the tombs and
got a man possessed of devils. He went down to marketplace and
found a woman in adultery. He went here, he went yonder
and called sinners. And they looked down their nose
and said, he's a nobody. He hadn't got any education.
Nothing good ever came out of Nazareth. Who are you to teach
us? Well, you're not 50 years old,
you talk about knowing Abraham, everybody was anybody, turn thumbs
down on that Nazarene. But he that hath ears to hear
heard him. Somebody heard him. Because he
said, my words are not my words, they're the words of him that
sent me. And the work that I do is not my work, but the work
of him that sent me. Well, he said, cry, verse 6.
This boy said, hey, you're out there. You're out there. And God said, cry. Cry! But he said, what shall I cry? I want this low places brought
up. I want the hopeless to have hope
and the helpless to have help. and the miserable to have mercy,
and the guilty to taste his grace. And I want the proud Pharisee
to be brought low. I want the cocky, presumptuous
religionist to have all of his righteous, righteous fig leaf
rags stripped from off of him and have him brought down into
the dust. I want every mountain and hill
to be brought low. I want the crooked straightened
out, the crooked messages and the crooked ministry straightened
out. I want the rough places made plain. I want the Lord Jesus
to come in and his glory be revealed. Well, he said cry. Well, he said
what? All right, I'll tell you what
to cry. I'll give you a twofold message, verse 6. All flesh is
grass. That's what you go tell them.
All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower
of the field. And the grass doesn't droop and
sag, it withereth. And the flower doesn't fall,
it fadeth. Because the Spirit of the Lord
bloweth upon it, surely the people, all of them, from the high to
the low, the ins and the outs, the ups and the downs, the old
and the young, the rich and the poor, the smart and the ignorant,
they're grass, grass, just old withered grass. That's what you
cry. What else you want me to say?
Verse 9, O Zion, church of God that bringeth good tidings, get
up on the mountain, get up in a prominent place, high place,
where you can be heard and seen, and you cry. O Jerusalem that
bringeth good tidings, you cry. You lift up your voice with strength.
You lift it up. Don't you be scared. Don't you
be cowed by fear. Don't you be won by their favor. You cry and say, Behold your
God! That's what you cry. But I'm
telling you this, these are the two great lessons that most religionists
have never learned, but which a man, every man, will learn
it, he'll learn it, or he'll go to hell. Preachers, deacons,
Sunday school teachers, and the whole kit and caboodle. They'll
learn these two lessons. This is God's message. This is
preparation for the coming of Christ. I'm not talking about
his second coming. I'm talking about his coming in righteousness
and coming in revelation and coming in redemption. That's
what I'm talking about. You'll learn these two lessons that
you ain't nothing and God's everything. that all flesh is grass, and
all the glory of man is as a flower of the field. It withereth, it
fadeth, because the Spirit of God blows on it like a blowtorch
blows on a spiderweb, and it goes. Behold your God. He's all. He's
everything. He's all in all. He's not sweet
little Jesus, boy. He's not Jesus Superman, he's
not the good Lord, he's not the man upstairs, he's not somebody
up there who likes you, he's God Almighty. God. Man must learn the exceeding,
exceeding sinfulness of the flesh. He must behold by faith Jehovah
God in Christ. Look at these two lessons just
briefly. The first one is this, all flesh is grass. I wish I could, up here, I wish
I could start up here and move out there and wherever God lets
me preach and whittle us down where not even a little finger
to be wiggled in his presence. Wiped out, just wiped out, Jim.
That's it, just I wish the spirit of God would all our flesh, in
the flesh dwell. It's no good thing that God said
your whole head is sick, your whole heart is faint, from the
sole of your feet, clear down underneath where you're standing,
to the last hair on your head, there's no soundness in you,
nothing but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. There's
none good, no, not one. Too many preachers have never
learned, and you'll never learn this in college, and you'll never
learn it in the seminary. You'll never learn it. You'll
only learn it in the school of the Holy Ghost. You'll only learn
it by experience. You'll only learn it by revelation
from God Almighty. Too many preachers have never
learned that a man has to be lost before he can ever be saved.
That you'll never clothe a man till he's been stripped. I'll
tell you what we're doing. We're out here sowing the seed
on unbroken soil. We're out here trying to give
Jesus to people who don't need him. That's exactly what we're
trying to do. The average preacher doesn't
know. He wouldn't make a good farmer. He doesn't know that
you have to go out there and break it up, break it up, and
break it up some more, and plow it up, and disk it up, and turn
it over, and get the bottom on the top and the top on the bottom,
and then start sowing your seed. Only the sick need a physician.
Not the whale. All flesh is grass. Now this
convicting work of the Holy Spirit, I want you to watch this. First
of all, the real Holy Spirit conviction, I know a little bit
about it. Not only from this, but from this. It's unexpected. It's just unexpected. It's just
the way God does things is not the way we do things. Before
God Almighty, He'll save a man, He'll tear his heart out. Before
God Almighty, He'll clothe a man, He'll strip him and strip him
again. Before God Almighty, He'll save a woman, He'll whittle her
down and whittle her down. Down, sinner! But I'm down here,
Lord, just a little bit above everybody. Down, sinner! Well,
Lord, I'm down, I'm down here equal with everybody. Down, sinner,
Lord, I'm looking up at everybody. Well, you might be in the position
to be saved now. That's unexpected, that's just
not the way, well I thought, I thought when I went out to
the church that they'd be so glad to see me and everybody
would welcome me and they'd just want me to join what I could
add to their church and contribute to their congregation, and I
went out there and the preacher just put me lower in a bed bug.
Yeah, he put me down, he put me down in the dust and talked
about, that's right, that's where you are. Listen to this. John Newton, I asked the Lord
that I might grow in faith and love and ever grace. I asked the Lord that I might
more of his salvation know and seek more earnestly his face.
Isn't that something? It was he that taught me thus
to pray, and he that I trusted would answer my prayer. But the
way he answered it almost drove me to despair. I hoped that in
some favored hour, at once he'd answer my request. And by his
love's great power, he'd subdue my sins and give me rest. Instead
of this, God made me feel the hidden evils of my heart. God
let the angry powers of hell assault my soul in every part. Yea, more. With his own hand,
he seemed intent to aggravate my woe. He tore up all the fair
designs that I'd schemed, and he blasted all my hopes and laid
me low. Lord, why is this? I trembling
cried. Will you pursue this child to
death? Tis in this way, the Lord replied.
I answered your prayer for grace and faith. These inward trials
I employ from self and pride to set you free. and tear down
all your schemes of earthly rest, that you may find your rest in
me." Don't be disappointed when God shows you what an awful,
wretched, hell-deserving, ill-deserving, no count armament you are. Thank
God for it. Because that's the kind of people
he saves. Christ died for the ungodly. You see, I know this
is unexpected. This is not the way you get people
to join the church. This is not the way you get people
to accept Jesus. You talk about health and wealth
and home and mother and pie in the sky and a sweet vine by,
you don't talk about guilt and sin and corruption. Well, God does. All flesh is
grass. It's not only unexpected, it's
total. Watch it. Cry, what shall I cry? All flesh
is grass. All flesh. Well, that just means
everybody's going to die, does it? That just means that all
men are flesh, does it? I don't think so. I think it
means that but more. I think it means all that pertains
to the flesh is grass. Nothing about us is good. I know
we want to think it is. Nothing about us is good. Our
thoughts, our ways, our hopes, our good and bad, joys and sorrows,
love and hate, victories and failures. All flesh is grass. All the glory of man, the glory
of his family, the glory of his accomplishments, the glory of
his brain, it's grass, God says. It's all of it. It must wither. It must wither. All flesh is
grass. This conviction is not only unexpected
and total, but it's painful. It's painful. Paul said, I had
to lay down all that I was, all that I had, all that I hoped.
I look back, if any man hath anywhere anything in which to
glory, I more. Oh, I had something to be proud
of. I had a mom and daddy who were Hebrews, direct descendants
of Abraham. I had the mark in my flesh of
circumcision. I'd gone to school, had all the
credentials. I was a Pharisee of Pharisees.
I'd kept the law. In religion, I'd done all these
things, climbed the ladder above many of my equals. God said,
Don, be done with it! Burn it! Put it on the dunghill.
He said, I counted it, but rubbish. Garbage! Garbage! Oh, that's
garbage! And I may win Christ. Can't have
Christ in your garbage. There's nothing to be done with
this old flesh but to lay it in the grave. Lay it in the grave. Lay it in the grave. That's the
reason you wonder why God said, Abraham, get out of your father's
house and from the land. Get out. Lord, now wait a minute,
Lord. There ain't no use putting that
man out there behind. Get out. Surely Moses, raised
in Egypt, comfortable. We've got a man in a key position,
God. Now wait a minute, Lord, now
this is the way to handle this thing. Let's organize, and we can get
some men elected in key positions, and they'll turn society to God. They'll put prayer in the schools,
and they'll put the Ten Commandments on the wall, and they'll get
evolution out, get our senators and our congressmen, the president,
get them all on our side, and we'll get this thing legislated.
That's the way to do it, Jim. Phooey, you dumb-dumb. Moses
was in line for faith. Moses was in line for the throne.
His word would have been lost. Huh? He could have sent Israel
out by his own command. He's commander-in-chief of the
army, huh? Not God's way. Moses has got
to leave Egypt under a cloud of shame. rejected by Israel
and Egyptians. He didn't have a friend there.
The Israelites were saying, who made you judge over us? The Egyptians
were saying, head out of here, buddy. You're not one of us either. And old Paul, Moses, out there
in the wilderness, here this man turned his back on everything,
standing out there with a shepherd's staff for 40 years, looking over
a bunch of sheep. But I'll tell you, when God got
him down low enough, God was able for his glory to reveal
his glory and use that man to accomplish his purpose. That's
not the way we do things. A rich young ruler comes and
the Lord Jesus said to him, take all you have and sell it and
give it to the poor. Now Lord, now wait a minute.
Think what he could do with that. Think what it would mean to the
church, and I'll sell it and give it away. That's the reason
our Lord said, he that cometh to me must hate his mother, father,
brother, sister, husband, wife, yea, his own life. You see, all
flesh, I wish I could emphasize it, is grass. All the glory of
man is a flower. That's what you cry. Well, here's the second. Well,
very quickly, he said, and cry, Behold your God. Behold him,
yes, in his might and power and majesty and glory, but that's
not a saving look. Turn to Isaiah 45. Isaiah 45.
While you're turning there, Let me read verse 10 back here
in Isaiah 40. He said, you behold the Lord,
the Lord God. You see that? That's Jehovah
God. That's my Savior. Yes, we do behold him in majesty
and power and great sovereignty, who doeth all things as he will,
when he will, with whom he will. But that's not a saving glimpse.
He says in verse 10 of Isaiah 40, behold the Lord God. The
Jehovah God's going to come with a strong hand. He's going to
come with a strong hand. He's gonna come, his arms shall
rule for him, his rewards with him, his reward is in him, his
work before him, his work of redemption. He shall feed his
flock like a shepherd. That's the way we behold him
as our shepherd, as our redeemer. Isaiah 45 now, listen. Verse 20, Assemble yourselves,
and come, draw near together, you that are escaped to the nations,
that have no knowledge, they have no knowledge, that set up
the wood of their graven images, and pray unto a God that cannot
say, Tell ye, bring them near, yea, let them take counsel together.
Who hath declared this from ancient time? Who hath told it from that
time? Have not I the Lord? There's
no God else beside me, a just God and a Savior, a Savior. There's none beside me. Look
unto me and be saved. Look, behold your God. All the
earth, ends of the earth, I'm God and there's none else. See
what I'm saying? Over here in Isaiah 40, here's
the twofold message. Somebody preach it. Would somebody
preach it? Men need to hear it. The high
and mighty need to hear it that they might be brought low. Those
that are low and depressed