WEBVTT 00:00:03.783 --> 00:00:11.894 You know, the incarnation is the most important event in the history of mankind. 00:00:11.894 --> 00:00:18.710 God literally came down to earth in the form of a helpless child. 00:00:18.710 --> 00:00:22.586 Immediately, his life was in danger. 00:00:22.586 --> 00:00:25.301 God was after him from the beginning. 00:00:25.301 --> 00:00:31.952 He came down in very humble circumstances to a very humble family. 00:00:31.952 --> 00:00:38.049 He lived the perfect life that you and I couldn't even begin to think of doing for just a minute. 00:00:38.049 --> 00:00:46.671 And he went to the cross a perfect sacrifice, totally sinless. 00:00:46.671 --> 00:00:50.225 And he died there on the cross. 00:00:50.225 --> 00:01:04.769 But, most importantly, what he did and we all know that, because sometimes we think about the pain of a crucifixion but the greatest pain he felt when he uttered those words my father, why have you forsaken me? 00:01:04.769 --> 00:01:11.111 He took on the wrath, the due penalty for the sins that you and I committed. 00:01:11.111 --> 00:01:19.811 It was the most amazing thing, and that atonement is something that we celebrate on Easter normally. 00:01:19.811 --> 00:01:33.367 But as we go through this Christmas season, we are going to focus on the amazing gift that it was, that he brought this light to the world, because, again, without the incarnation, we don't have the cross. 00:01:33.367 --> 00:01:48.213 And as we consider this amazing gift from God during the Christmas season, what we want to do is focus on the power and the work of Jesus, as illuminated through the words of the prophet Isaiah in chapters 59 and 60. 00:01:48.213 --> 00:01:53.489 And we're going to focus on him bringing light to the world. 00:01:54.400 --> 00:02:05.813 Now we've titled this Christmas series Reflection, and in this series we're going to be answering three questions that really are laid out in these two chapters. 00:02:05.813 --> 00:02:11.792 The first question is what would the state of mankind be if Jesus never came into the world? 00:02:11.792 --> 00:02:15.587 That's today's message, which I've titled the Darkness. 00:02:15.587 --> 00:02:20.588 The second message is why does it matter that Jesus came into the world? 00:02:20.588 --> 00:02:27.611 And the third message how does the light of Jesus continue to shine on earth until his glorious return? 00:02:27.611 --> 00:02:45.112 Now that brings us up to the fourth and final part of this series, and this is going to be pretty special because we're going to have three people from the congregation, three people give their testimonies about how Jesus took them out of darkness and into the light. 00:02:45.112 --> 00:02:49.350 And I'm telling you they're inspiring stories and I think they will bless you. 00:02:49.350 --> 00:03:03.032 So that's what this series is all about, and so I've entitled my sermon the Darkness, because we're going to look at what this world would look like without Christ if we did not have that hope. 00:03:03.032 --> 00:03:09.240 So let's go ahead and read the text, for today it's the first 15 verses of Isaiah 59. 00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:10.663 So let's go ahead and jump into it. 00:03:12.800 --> 00:03:18.831 Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, or his ear dull that it cannot hear. 00:03:18.831 --> 00:03:28.573 But your iniquities have made a separation between you and God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. 00:03:28.573 --> 00:03:34.491 For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity. 00:03:34.491 --> 00:03:36.364 Your lips have spoken lies. 00:03:36.364 --> 00:03:38.550 Your tongue mutters wickedness. 00:03:38.550 --> 00:03:41.084 No one enters suit justly. 00:03:41.084 --> 00:03:43.310 No one goes to law honestly. 00:03:43.310 --> 00:03:45.566 They rely on empty pleas. 00:03:45.566 --> 00:03:46.669 They speak lies. 00:03:46.819 --> 00:03:50.049 They conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity. 00:03:50.049 --> 00:03:52.687 They hatch adder's eggs. 00:03:52.687 --> 00:03:54.724 They weave the spider's web. 00:03:54.724 --> 00:03:56.950 Who eats their eggs dies. 00:03:56.950 --> 00:04:01.530 He who eats their eggs dies, and from one that is crushed, a viper is hatched. 00:04:01.530 --> 00:04:04.385 Their webs will not serve as clothing. 00:04:04.385 --> 00:04:07.487 Men will not cover themselves with what they make. 00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:11.689 Their works are works of iniquity and deeds of violence are in their hands. 00:04:11.689 --> 00:04:16.951 Their feet run to evil and they are swift, shed innocent blood. 00:04:16.951 --> 00:04:18.843 Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. 00:04:18.843 --> 00:04:22.990 Desolation and destruction are in their highways. 00:04:22.990 --> 00:04:27.990 The way of peace they do not know and there is no justice in their paths. 00:04:27.990 --> 00:04:30.045 They have made their roads crooked. 00:04:30.045 --> 00:04:33.108 No one who treads on them knows peace. 00:04:34.220 --> 00:04:37.971 Therefore, justice is far from us and righteousness does not overtake us. 00:04:37.971 --> 00:04:45.726 We hope for light and behold darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. 00:04:45.726 --> 00:04:50.266 We grope for the wall like the blind, we grope like those who have no eyes. 00:04:50.266 --> 00:04:55.252 We stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor. 00:04:55.252 --> 00:04:56.783 We are like dead men. 00:04:56.783 --> 00:05:02.088 We all growl like bears, we moan and moan like doves. 00:05:02.088 --> 00:05:04.165 We hope for justice, but there is none. 00:05:04.165 --> 00:05:05.949 For salvation. 00:05:05.949 --> 00:05:13.810 But it is far from us, for our transgressions are multiplied before you and our sins testify against us. 00:05:13.810 --> 00:05:32.646 For our transgressions are with us and we know our iniquities Transgressing and denying the Lord and turning back from following our God Speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart Lying words, judgment and redemption. 00:05:32.646 --> 00:05:41.449 Justice is turned back and righteousness stands far away, for truth is stumbled in the public squares and uprightness cannot enter. 00:05:41.449 --> 00:05:50.560 Truth is lacking and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey Father. 00:05:50.579 --> 00:06:08.581 As we read this account, it's humbling, father, the picture that the prophet Isaiah paints, the picture of godlessness, the picture of men without God and Father. 00:06:08.581 --> 00:06:24.225 As we enter into this sermon, as we unpack this Lord, we pray that you would do what you do so well through your spirit, and that is convict us, father, show us open our eyes and ears to hear that you want us to take out of this. 00:06:24.225 --> 00:06:40.028 Lord, and most importantly, father, I pray it gives us a perspective that we need as we enter into this season, a perspective, really, that's more than just this season, perspective that we should hold strongly for the rest of our lives. 00:06:40.028 --> 00:06:45.071 So we pray your blessing on this in the name of Jesus, amen. 00:06:45.071 --> 00:06:49.949 Well, that was uplifting, wasn't it? 00:06:49.949 --> 00:06:57.184 You know, I guess, if you could look at our sermon series from Good News, bad News, I pulled the short straw. 00:06:57.184 --> 00:07:03.468 I get to talk about the bad news, but you're going to see, it's important for us to know the bad news. 00:07:03.468 --> 00:07:04.442 It really is. 00:07:04.442 --> 00:07:12.225 The bad news, of course, is the answer to the question what would this world look like if Jesus never came? 00:07:14.319 --> 00:07:17.247 You know many churches, by the way, don't preach on stuff like this. 00:07:17.247 --> 00:07:24.161 Many churches don't want to talk about sin and the ugliness of sin, because it's not really uplifting. 00:07:24.161 --> 00:07:35.391 We want to talk about what Jesus can do for us, but we don't want to talk about the sin that is rampant in the lives of people. 00:07:35.391 --> 00:07:56.271 We want to scrub the gospel, we want to make it more palatable, but the Bible doesn't scrub the gospel, and I will tell you that if we don't understand the fallen nature of man, we don't understand that we will not appreciate what was done on the cross for us and the magnitude of that. 00:07:56.271 --> 00:08:03.459 So the purpose of this morning, I'm just going to walk through these verses with Isaiah 59 and I'm going to look at the fallen state. 00:08:03.459 --> 00:08:13.709 We're going to look at the fallen state through three different symbols that Isaiah brings out in this, and those symbols are the heart, the wall and the path. 00:08:13.709 --> 00:08:16.586 The heart, the wall and the path. 00:08:17.800 --> 00:08:30.029 Now, before we jump into this, it's really important that we understand the context of when these words were written and to whom they were written, because a lot of times, if you just jump into this, you would miss that. 00:08:30.029 --> 00:08:31.807 So we need to understand where this is coming from. 00:08:31.807 --> 00:08:35.009 So, obviously, this is written by the prophet Isaiah. 00:08:35.009 --> 00:08:54.488 He was a prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah and he actually, depending upon what source you look at, roughly 741 to 704 BC is when he prophesied to that kingdom and, by the way, he prophesied a message of both hope and judgment. 00:08:54.488 --> 00:08:56.471 The book has both. 00:08:56.879 --> 00:09:00.524 By the way, how many people are still doing the Bible project, they're reading the Bible project. 00:09:00.524 --> 00:09:04.610 Well, you remember we just went through, not too long ago, the book of Isaiah, right? 00:09:04.610 --> 00:09:10.629 So we've read this and, by the way, I think they did a wonderful job of the video that introduced the book of Isaiah. 00:09:10.629 --> 00:09:11.130 It was great. 00:09:11.130 --> 00:09:26.370 So he ministered excuse me, he prophesied to four different kings of the southern king of Judah Uzziah, jotham Ahaz and Hezekiah, and the two elements of the one is the message of judgment. 00:09:26.370 --> 00:09:29.548 That was something, as you read Isaiah, you cannot miss. 00:09:30.320 --> 00:09:40.049 There's a huge portion of it that is a message of judgment against the king and the kingdom of Judah because of their turning away from God. 00:09:40.049 --> 00:09:48.918 And, by the way, when we think about, you know, the kingdom of Israel or the kingdom of Judah, when we think about them turning away from God, what's the most prevalent sin? 00:09:48.918 --> 00:10:00.325 That's always mentioned Idolatry, idolatry, right, idolatry, which, by the way, if you were to grade sin, you could make a case for it. 00:10:00.325 --> 00:10:20.284 It's the worst one, because that's when you say, god, I'm rejecting you and I'm going to go worse, I'm not going to worship you, the living God, that I have a whole testimony of you pulling my people out of Egypt and parting the Red Sea and giving us manna and all these incredible things that you did. 00:10:20.284 --> 00:10:25.277 No, I'm going to worship this inanimate piece of wood instead. 00:10:25.277 --> 00:10:29.015 That requires me, by the way, to run my kids through fire. 00:10:29.015 --> 00:10:31.511 Just blows your mind to think about it. 00:10:31.511 --> 00:10:35.894 But that's what they did, and they rejected God. 00:10:35.894 --> 00:10:41.576 And so the message of judgment is that, Judah, you will be punished for this. 00:10:41.576 --> 00:10:44.131 And what did that punishment look like? 00:10:45.148 --> 00:10:50.325 Well, first it looked like the invasion of the Assyrians and then the invasion of the Babylonians. 00:10:50.325 --> 00:10:55.304 So everything Isaiah wrote about happened and, by the way, it didn't happen in his lifetime. 00:10:55.304 --> 00:11:00.491 He was dead about 100 years before that first invasion came, but God used him to prophesy about it. 00:11:00.491 --> 00:11:33.052 But there was also a message of hope, a beautiful message of hope, and that hope was that God was going to make a way, he was going to come back and he was going to restore and redeem the people of Judah, bring them back to their land, and that's a whole other series of sermons, right, but what's really interesting about Isaiah is, in all of these prophecies about the hope of the restoring of the kingdom, so many of them were messianic. 00:11:33.052 --> 00:11:35.086 Did you know? 00:11:35.086 --> 00:11:46.455 There over, well over, there's about 330 messianic prophecies in the book of Isaiah, 330 mentions of the coming of the Messiah. 00:11:46.455 --> 00:11:48.687 Of course most of us remember. 00:11:48.707 --> 00:12:03.249 The one that jumps to our mind, of course, is Isaiah 53, right, that's both a beautiful but a little frightening, and scary, but so detailed prophecy of Jesus Christ and what he came and did. 00:12:03.249 --> 00:12:16.099 So chapters 59 and 60 come towards the end of the book, okay, and they fall within a section of Isaiah where the prophet is describing how the servants of God will inherit the kingdom of God. 00:12:16.099 --> 00:12:21.304 And so this first part, this first Isaiah 59, is really broken into two pieces. 00:12:21.304 --> 00:12:31.491 The first part is a mere picture of what man looks like in the fallen nature and specifically, of course, the kingdom of Judah. 00:12:31.491 --> 00:12:35.594 Isaiah is describing what that current state looks like. 00:12:35.594 --> 00:12:40.995 But the second part is what happens when God redeems them. 00:12:40.995 --> 00:12:47.325 Okay, so, like I said, I got the bad news, I got the darkness, but again, there's a purpose for this. 00:12:47.485 --> 00:12:54.325 So, with that, let's look at these three symbols the heart, the wall and, of course, the path. 00:12:54.325 --> 00:12:58.634 So let's start in Isaiah 59, verses 12 and 13. 00:12:58.634 --> 00:13:05.153 For our transgressions have multiplied before you and our sins testify against us. 00:13:05.153 --> 00:13:10.331 For our transgressions are with us and we know our iniquities. 00:13:10.331 --> 00:13:23.437 Verse 13, transgressing and denying the Lord and turning back from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words. 00:13:25.846 --> 00:13:33.655 Isaiah knew something that most of us should all know, and that is sin begins in the heart of man. 00:13:33.655 --> 00:13:35.769 It begins in your heart. 00:13:35.769 --> 00:13:40.094 Everything we say reveals the condition of our heart. 00:13:40.094 --> 00:13:45.157 Everything we do reveals the condition of our heart. 00:13:45.157 --> 00:13:50.052 My mother-in-law used to have a saying that says a drunk man says what a sober man is thinking. 00:13:50.052 --> 00:13:52.570 Think about that. 00:13:52.570 --> 00:13:55.591 Go to your local bar, you'll find that out. 00:13:55.591 --> 00:14:01.576 But what's interesting about that statement is God knows what your heart is. 00:14:02.725 --> 00:14:04.712 Some of us have gotten pretty good at posing. 00:14:04.712 --> 00:14:11.278 You know we're going to pull ourselves together and hope we don't get into a road raid incident before we get to church. 00:14:11.278 --> 00:14:14.389 We can hold it together, but listen, god knows your heart. 00:14:14.389 --> 00:14:19.596 I had someone look at me recently and say do you think I'm saved? 00:14:19.596 --> 00:14:22.751 And I said I can't answer that question. 00:14:22.751 --> 00:14:30.211 God can and you can, because, if we're honest, we know our heart right. 00:14:30.211 --> 00:14:33.270 I can see your actions, but I can't judge your heart. 00:14:33.270 --> 00:14:35.168 God knows that. 00:14:35.168 --> 00:14:36.552 He knows that. 00:14:36.552 --> 00:14:44.398 So if we understand that, then we understand what Isaiah was trying to say here. 00:14:45.325 --> 00:14:48.304 He was saying we know our iniquities. 00:14:48.304 --> 00:14:50.325 This is a really important statement. 00:14:50.325 --> 00:14:52.131 We know our iniquities. 00:14:52.131 --> 00:14:55.974 He's saying that the sin is willful and purposeful. 00:14:55.974 --> 00:15:03.304 Most of the time I would say all the time people know that they're sinning, they know what they're doing is wrong. 00:15:03.304 --> 00:15:09.097 No person has ever lived will stand blameless before God and say well, I just didn't know. 00:15:09.097 --> 00:15:19.168 I just didn't know because, see, there is a moral law that's written in the minds and hearts of every man that has ever lived man, woman. 00:15:19.168 --> 00:15:26.325 Of course, cs Lewis has talked about this extensively in many of his writings. 00:15:26.325 --> 00:15:31.895 Mir Christianity has a whole chapter dedicated to this, but he has a quote. 00:15:31.895 --> 00:15:41.518 He says conscience reveals to us a moral law whose source cannot be found in the natural world, thus pointing to a supernatural lawgiver. 00:15:41.518 --> 00:15:50.738 And, by the way, this moral law that is in all man, all mankind. 00:15:52.307 --> 00:16:00.179 If you're ever dealing with somebody who doesn't believe in God, there's a question that there's a really simple way that you can help them understand God. 00:16:00.179 --> 00:16:03.815 And the first thing is you say do you believe there's evil in this world? 00:16:03.815 --> 00:16:05.229 Well, yeah, there's evil. 00:16:05.229 --> 00:16:11.056 Well, if you've identified that there's evil, then there must be good. 00:16:11.056 --> 00:16:14.071 Right, because how can there be evil without good? 00:16:14.071 --> 00:16:14.994 No, I agree with that. 00:16:14.994 --> 00:16:15.826 Okay. 00:16:15.826 --> 00:16:24.919 So you agree that there's evil and there's good, so you're agreeing that there is a moral law that's at work in humanity. 00:16:24.919 --> 00:16:26.607 And they say yeah. 00:16:26.607 --> 00:16:28.953 And then you say where did it come from? 00:16:28.953 --> 00:16:31.629 Where did it come from? 00:16:31.629 --> 00:16:37.215 Did it crawl out of the mud with us when we evolved? 00:16:37.215 --> 00:16:39.448 I don't think so. 00:16:39.448 --> 00:16:49.211 That moral code requires a moral code giver, and that's God, and that's God. 00:16:50.366 --> 00:16:55.456 So it's the heart of man that Isaiah identifies as wretched and broken and where all sin originates. 00:16:55.456 --> 00:17:06.325 And it's really important that we understand that, because when you look at that as a core element to this whole passage, then you can see everything that he's describing is coming from a sinful heart. 00:17:06.325 --> 00:17:08.325 Everything is coming from that sinful heart. 00:17:08.325 --> 00:17:14.325 And if I were to toss a couple of scriptures out, a lot of you would probably remember these scriptures Jeremiah 17, 9. 00:17:14.325 --> 00:17:25.115 Everybody knows that one right the heart, is deceitful and, above all things, desperately wicked. 00:17:25.115 --> 00:17:27.328 Who can know it? 00:17:27.328 --> 00:17:30.270 I know who knows it. 00:17:30.270 --> 00:17:32.368 God knows it. 00:17:32.368 --> 00:17:35.352 God knows what your heart is. 00:17:37.247 --> 00:17:43.278 But Jesus paints an even clearer picture of that in Mark, chapter seven, in verse 21 and 23. 00:17:43.278 --> 00:17:48.285 Look what he says about the heart, for from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts. 00:17:48.285 --> 00:18:09.038 And then he gives a list Sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness All these evil things come from within and they defile a person. 00:18:09.038 --> 00:18:24.529 Sin, first and foremost, starts in our heart, and I've heard great messages, by the way, about the process of sin, right, and how that begins with our heart, our thought, and then an action, right, this is where it starts. 00:18:24.529 --> 00:18:31.196 We have to understand that before we then get to the second point which we're going to talk about now, and that is the wall. 00:18:31.196 --> 00:18:39.037 Now, if the heart's unredeemed, the natural proclivity is going to be to sin. 00:18:39.037 --> 00:18:46.317 Right, and what he now talks about is how sin builds a wall of separation between us and God. 00:18:46.365 --> 00:18:48.351 So let's look at the first two verses of this chapter. 00:18:48.351 --> 00:18:52.869 Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened. 00:18:52.869 --> 00:18:57.657 In verse one it says that it cannot save, nor his ear dull, that it cannot hear. 00:18:57.657 --> 00:19:10.691 But your iniquities have made a separation between you and God, and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. 00:19:10.691 --> 00:19:19.006 Sin separates us from God. 00:19:19.006 --> 00:19:25.980 This is probably the most commonly quoted scripture when you're addressing this whole concept of sin separating us from God. 00:19:25.980 --> 00:19:27.337 It's really. 00:19:27.337 --> 00:19:27.779 It's not. 00:19:27.779 --> 00:19:40.164 Doesn't use this terminology anywhere else that really in the Bible except for here, and it's important that we understand that that sin does separate us and it does build a wall. 00:19:40.694 --> 00:19:41.719 Where did it all begin? 00:19:41.719 --> 00:19:43.819 Well, it began in the garden. 00:19:43.819 --> 00:19:47.357 Think about what happened with Adam and Eve when Adam sinned. 00:19:47.357 --> 00:19:53.781 Okay, when he sinned, one of the first things that happened was they were expelled from the garden. 00:19:53.781 --> 00:20:01.721 The garden symbolized the presence of God, and why couldn't they go back in the garden? 00:20:01.721 --> 00:20:04.000 It was a flaming sword. 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:08.943 They were the ones really that put that flaming sword there. 00:20:08.943 --> 00:20:16.105 That was the wall that separated them, and ever since then we've been separated from God. 00:20:16.105 --> 00:20:19.123 That's the result we're separated from God. 00:20:20.615 --> 00:20:25.723 And it's important to note here that the first verse in here says something pretty telling. 00:20:25.723 --> 00:20:34.585 It says behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or is ear dull, that it cannot hear. 00:20:34.585 --> 00:20:38.864 God is totally capable of saving. 00:20:38.864 --> 00:20:52.859 It's not that he can't do it and that he's incapable, but our willful walking away from him means he can't, he can't, and we have to understand that. 00:20:52.859 --> 00:20:54.221 Now I'm gonna do an object lesson. 00:20:54.221 --> 00:20:56.157 I'm gonna have a couple of people come up to help me with this. 00:20:56.157 --> 00:21:03.101 I like to do object lessons every once in a while, because I think sometimes when we see something, it makes it a little more clearly. 00:21:03.101 --> 00:21:07.982 So I've got two people that are gonna help me out, plus, of course, tim's gonna bring my props up. 00:21:07.982 --> 00:21:17.518 Now, what we have here is well, we have a height difference. 00:21:17.518 --> 00:21:24.105 But other than that, now Gary is going to represent God. 00:21:24.105 --> 00:21:29.823 Yes, I had to find a humble person for that. 00:21:29.823 --> 00:21:32.299 I don't know what it says about my friend Robert. 00:21:32.320 --> 00:21:36.104 Here, robert is gonna represent man, and sinful man. 00:21:36.104 --> 00:21:39.924 Okay, so this is, but this is really important that we understand this. 00:21:39.924 --> 00:21:45.961 So here we are, we're in this situation, and they are face to face, in fact, shake each other's hand. 00:21:45.961 --> 00:21:48.542 So this is the unity that they have. 00:21:48.542 --> 00:21:50.040 This is the unity we have with God. 00:21:50.040 --> 00:21:53.181 We're face to face, we're looking, we have a relationship. 00:21:53.875 --> 00:22:02.886 Now, when sin enters, the first thing that happens is there's a severing of the contact and we turn away. 00:22:02.886 --> 00:22:04.980 So, if you watch, he's gonna turn away. 00:22:04.980 --> 00:22:07.300 Now, just stop here for a minute. 00:22:07.300 --> 00:22:26.884 You'll notice that no longer is he looking at God, he's no longer seeing God, he's now turned his face away and, more importantly, when he begins to sin, take a step forward, he begins to build a wall between him and God. 00:22:26.884 --> 00:22:31.564 Okay, so as he continues to sin, take another step, robert. 00:22:31.564 --> 00:22:42.981 The wall gets bigger and he continues to sin, and the wall gets bigger and two things are happening. 00:22:42.981 --> 00:22:58.923 Not only is the wall getting bigger, you notice, he's getting farther away from God, and this will continue on until there's a wall that he's put in front of between him and God. 00:22:58.923 --> 00:23:10.137 But what's really significant about this, and I want to really help you understand this he turned, he moved, he built the wall, but what's God doing? 00:23:10.137 --> 00:23:10.720 The whole time? 00:23:10.720 --> 00:23:12.378 God hasn't moved. 00:23:12.378 --> 00:23:16.143 God is still wanting that relationship. 00:23:16.255 --> 00:23:17.559 God didn't turn and walk away. 00:23:17.559 --> 00:23:23.961 Sometimes we think of that because we put on God what is not a godly characteristic. 00:23:23.961 --> 00:23:27.438 God doesn't give up on us Praise God. 00:23:27.438 --> 00:23:33.400 He doesn't turn his back on us, although there are scriptures that talk about that and we understand that right. 00:23:33.400 --> 00:23:38.461 But in our relationship with him, if he's calling us, he's not gonna give up on us. 00:23:38.461 --> 00:23:41.141 In fact, oftentimes he pursues us. 00:23:41.141 --> 00:23:48.785 But this is what that wall of separation looks like and it's gonna stay this way until something changes. 00:23:49.234 --> 00:23:50.358 So, thank you, gentlemen. 00:23:50.358 --> 00:23:51.142 I appreciate it. 00:23:51.142 --> 00:23:53.480 You can leave those here, actually. 00:23:53.480 --> 00:23:55.478 Yeah, thank you. 00:23:55.478 --> 00:24:03.201 Now everybody's gonna tell Gary he's God. 00:24:03.201 --> 00:24:05.695 From now on, amy. 00:24:05.695 --> 00:24:07.982 We have to talk about this later, amy, I think. 00:24:07.982 --> 00:24:12.098 So the result of this wall? 00:24:12.098 --> 00:24:13.804 What is the result? 00:24:13.804 --> 00:24:21.363 Well, the result is sin runs rampant and we lose sight of any type of righteousness. 00:24:21.363 --> 00:24:30.460 Now, I don't like to read scriptures like this, but I think it's important to understand the depth of the depravity of the person that has walked away from God. 00:24:30.460 --> 00:24:33.201 So I got a couple of scriptures. 00:24:33.775 --> 00:24:37.079 Paul wrote to the Galatians, in Galatians five, beginning in verse 19. 00:24:37.079 --> 00:24:39.342 Now, the works of the flesh are evident. 00:24:39.342 --> 00:24:45.181 I love the fact he said they're evident, meaning you guys should be able to see these. 00:24:45.181 --> 00:24:45.843 They're evident. 00:24:45.843 --> 00:25:02.999 And he goes on sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealously, fits of rage, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like, and things like these. 00:25:02.999 --> 00:25:05.720 That's an ugly picture. 00:25:05.720 --> 00:25:09.422 And he picks this up, by the way, in the book of Romans, in the first chapter. 00:25:09.422 --> 00:25:13.738 He's talking about people that have rejected God and he says they are filled. 00:25:13.798 --> 00:25:15.984 In verse 29 of Romans one. 00:25:15.984 --> 00:25:20.780 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetedness, malice. 00:25:20.780 --> 00:25:24.964 They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. 00:25:24.964 --> 00:25:38.021 They're gossips, slanderers, haters of God that's a strong phrase right, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 00:25:38.021 --> 00:25:47.136 I'll never forget one time watching a video where someone says even if there was a God, I wouldn't worship him. 00:25:47.136 --> 00:25:58.746 That's a heart that is turned totally away from God and it's a frightening place to be. 00:25:58.746 --> 00:26:14.224 And, brethren, if there was no promised Messiah, if God never sent Jesus to this earth to redeem us, then all of this that was described would be the reality for you and the reality for me. 00:26:14.224 --> 00:26:16.851 Do we understand that? 00:26:16.851 --> 00:26:17.355 Do we grasp that? 00:26:17.355 --> 00:26:19.884 That would be our reality? 00:26:19.884 --> 00:26:22.424 This world would be hopeless. 00:26:24.521 --> 00:26:26.934 Satan's ultimate goal is to destroy all of mankind. 00:26:26.934 --> 00:26:28.755 That's what he wants to do. 00:26:28.755 --> 00:26:31.465 That's what he started in the. 00:26:31.465 --> 00:26:35.335 He started that in the garden and he continues that to this day. 00:26:35.335 --> 00:26:38.028 And he's he doesn't. 00:26:38.028 --> 00:26:39.194 He must know he's defeated. 00:26:39.194 --> 00:26:44.510 Christ took care of him in the wilderness, right, I mean, he knows he's defeated. 00:26:44.510 --> 00:26:48.547 We talk about Satan being defeated, yet he continues to try. 00:26:48.547 --> 00:26:54.515 But there'll be one day that we're all waiting for, when he will be cast into that other darkness. 00:26:54.515 --> 00:26:58.374 We cannot wait for that day, but until then he's trying to do that. 00:26:58.374 --> 00:26:59.825 He wants people to walk in this. 00:27:01.154 --> 00:27:16.318 I want to address a question, by the way, that naturally comes up, and that question of if mankind is so wretched without God, then why are there still some semblance of goodness in people that don't know God? 00:27:16.318 --> 00:27:18.531 Right, you see that? 00:27:18.531 --> 00:27:19.776 You see that all the time. 00:27:19.776 --> 00:27:25.695 Well, this can really be explained by the doctrine of what's called common grace. 00:27:25.695 --> 00:27:32.256 I don't know how many of you have heard of this doctrine before, but it's a really important to understand this and it is a huge topic. 00:27:32.256 --> 00:27:45.203 I don't have time to cover it today, but I wanna give you a definition of it, because you need to understand that without this common grace that God covers this earth, we would have this everywhere. 00:27:45.203 --> 00:27:53.992 So this is a great quote from Sam Storms, and he says this common grace as an expression of the goodness of God. 00:27:53.992 --> 00:27:56.553 Okay, common grace is an expression of the goodness of God. 00:27:57.194 --> 00:28:00.076 Is every favor Now falling short and limiting? 00:28:00.076 --> 00:28:01.220 It's not salvation, right? 00:28:01.220 --> 00:28:08.193 It's every favor other than salvation which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God. 00:28:08.193 --> 00:28:25.614 This includes the delay of wrath, the mitigation of our sin natures, natural events that lead to prosperity and all gifts that humans use and enjoy naturally, see, and there's plenty of scriptures that prove this, but again, I don't have time to go into it, but I just want you to understand. 00:28:26.690 --> 00:28:33.219 We sometimes, as Christians look at the fall and say to this world and go, man, satan's got control of this world. 00:28:33.219 --> 00:28:34.073 Where's God? 00:28:34.073 --> 00:28:45.178 If God wasn't here and if common grace wasn't on this world, you don't even want to know what kind of a catastrophic result that would be. 00:28:45.178 --> 00:28:52.960 God has his hand on, he's mitigating human nature, he's got a control of everything. 00:28:52.960 --> 00:28:56.198 If he didn't, it would be terrible. 00:28:56.198 --> 00:29:06.378 And I would really encourage you to study more in the common grace because it's important that you understand that the doctrine of common grace deserves its own sermon. 00:29:06.378 --> 00:29:13.778 But again, rest assured, without that, this world wouldn't well, it wouldn't be here. 00:29:13.778 --> 00:29:15.113 Let's just put it that way. 00:29:15.113 --> 00:29:18.659 So let's go to the third point, and that's the path. 00:29:18.659 --> 00:29:21.214 I say it talks about the path. 00:29:21.214 --> 00:29:23.297 Now, again, let's keep the first one the heart. 00:29:23.297 --> 00:29:32.298 When the heart is turned away from God, it begins to walk away from sin and, of course, builds that barrier, the wall. 00:29:32.298 --> 00:29:37.973 So you have the heart, the wall, and now we're gonna talk about the path and this path. 00:29:38.676 --> 00:29:45.932 Isaiah spends a lot of time with some really poignant imagery about what that path of wickedness looks like, and we're gonna pick it up. 00:29:45.932 --> 00:29:54.118 In verse seven he says their feet run, and I'm gonna emphasize the words that have this concept of moving and a journey and a path. 00:29:54.118 --> 00:29:59.417 Their feet run to evil and they are swift to shed innocent blood. 00:29:59.417 --> 00:30:05.298 Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, desolation and destruction are in their highways. 00:30:05.298 --> 00:30:10.957 The way of peace they do not know and there is no justice in their paths. 00:30:10.957 --> 00:30:13.695 They have made their roads crooked. 00:30:13.695 --> 00:30:16.477 No one who treads on them knows peace. 00:30:16.477 --> 00:30:22.018 Therefore, justice is far from us and righteousness does not overtake us. 00:30:22.018 --> 00:30:27.978 We hope for light and behold darkness and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. 00:30:29.171 --> 00:30:33.798 Really poignant imagery about what this path of unrighteousness looks like. 00:30:33.798 --> 00:30:40.294 And again, we've already said it, but again, adam was the one that put us on this path from the very beginning. 00:30:40.294 --> 00:30:42.074 Romans 5-12,. 00:30:42.074 --> 00:30:43.790 It's a memory verse for a lot of people, you know. 00:30:43.790 --> 00:30:51.810 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all of sin, we. 00:30:51.810 --> 00:30:54.057 Adam is our federal head. 00:30:54.057 --> 00:30:59.372 We now are children of his from that beginning, from that time. 00:30:59.372 --> 00:31:00.236 And so we sin. 00:31:00.236 --> 00:31:02.953 We're nobody's guiltless. 00:31:02.953 --> 00:31:05.540 Nobody's guiltless. 00:31:05.540 --> 00:31:24.875 And I love and I've said this before, but I'll tell you it's so poignant, just if you ever think that maybe you're not that bad, okay, I wanna pretend that we could put up on this screen your thoughts for the last six hours and then play it for everybody. 00:31:24.875 --> 00:31:26.134 Any takers? 00:31:26.134 --> 00:31:29.532 No, no way. 00:31:29.532 --> 00:31:32.817 Okay, so maybe you're not that good. 00:31:32.817 --> 00:31:35.212 You see what I'm saying. 00:31:35.212 --> 00:31:38.217 It's important that we understand that. 00:31:38.349 --> 00:31:52.476 And when we're on that path that Adam put us on, when it's not, when we don't have a redeemed heart this is what happens, and he talks about some imagery here their feet run to evil. 00:31:52.476 --> 00:31:54.191 They don't go. 00:31:54.191 --> 00:31:56.333 Oh, look, there's evil over there, I'm gonna go check it out. 00:31:56.333 --> 00:32:00.512 No, they run to evil, runs to evil. 00:32:00.512 --> 00:32:05.200 You know, I recently went to Las Vegas on a business trip. 00:32:05.200 --> 00:32:12.218 Fortunately, I was stuck in one place most of the time, so I was in a trade show and in one of their big meeting rooms and stuff. 00:32:12.218 --> 00:32:16.855 But you know the phrase what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. 00:32:16.855 --> 00:32:31.738 Think about that phrase I'm gonna live life the right way here in Knoxville, but then I'm gonna go into Las Vegas and I'm gonna sin, sin, sin, sin. 00:32:31.738 --> 00:32:34.314 But then I can just walk back here and there'll be no consequences. 00:32:34.314 --> 00:32:35.992 Are you kidding me? 00:32:35.992 --> 00:32:39.435 But that's what people try to do and forget Vegas. 00:32:39.435 --> 00:32:41.402 That's what we wanna do. 00:32:41.402 --> 00:32:43.376 We wanna run to evil. 00:32:44.880 --> 00:32:50.401 That's the way the mind is, and I like the imagery where he says desolation and destruction are in their highways. 00:32:50.401 --> 00:32:58.520 The sinful man, the sinful heart, leads a life that's desolate of meaning. 00:32:58.520 --> 00:33:06.700 You know, I've heard it said everybody has a God-shaped hole in their heart, right, that only can be filled by God. 00:33:06.700 --> 00:33:13.817 When you think of desolation, has anybody ever watched the movie the Martian with Matt Damon? 00:33:13.817 --> 00:33:16.278 It's a pretty neat movie. 00:33:16.278 --> 00:33:21.182 Yeah, I mean, he's on Mars with some crew members of theirs. 00:33:21.182 --> 00:33:26.132 They've got a compound there and they're well, this big storm comes up and they gotta go. 00:33:26.132 --> 00:33:27.517 It's gonna knock their spaceship off. 00:33:27.517 --> 00:33:29.557 So they all trying to get there in the storm. 00:33:29.557 --> 00:33:35.815 Well, he gets hit by some flying debris and they take off without him and now he's stranded there. 00:33:35.815 --> 00:33:43.256 Okay, now he doesn't have enough food to last him until the rescue mission comes, right. 00:33:43.256 --> 00:33:45.330 So now he has to grow food. 00:33:45.330 --> 00:33:52.244 The landscape of Mars is a desolate place. 00:33:52.244 --> 00:33:54.561 Nothing is going to grow there. 00:33:54.561 --> 00:33:59.807 He has to end up trying to grow food inside of his little dome where he was living. 00:33:59.807 --> 00:34:01.622 But that's desolation. 00:34:01.622 --> 00:34:03.361 There's nothing that will grow there. 00:34:03.361 --> 00:34:04.616 You think of it. 00:34:04.616 --> 00:34:08.289 You know there's places on this earth where nothing grows, right. 00:34:08.289 --> 00:34:13.384 Well, that's the heart, that's the desolate heart of someone who doesn't have God. 00:34:15.295 --> 00:34:21.865 Satan is out to destroy us and the other word, destruction, is so powerful. 00:34:21.865 --> 00:34:23.641 Don't fool yourself. 00:34:23.641 --> 00:34:27.855 He wants to destroy you and you know how he can destroy you. 00:34:27.855 --> 00:34:30.516 He wants to get a twofer Meaning. 00:34:30.516 --> 00:34:34.885 If I can destroy Tyler, then I could destroy a lot of people. 00:34:34.885 --> 00:34:39.219 I can destroy his family, I can destroy his church. 00:34:39.219 --> 00:34:52.101 It's one of the reasons, by the way, we ask you to pray for the elders, because Satan's going to come after us all the time, because he knows if he can get one of us to fall and we've all heard the stories Usually it's sexual failing of some kind. 00:34:52.101 --> 00:34:54.661 Right, we've all heard the stories that have been in churches. 00:34:54.661 --> 00:34:57.340 I've been in a church where that happened. 00:34:57.340 --> 00:35:03.713 I bet you, many of you, have had right, because Satan wants to get us so he can try to wipe out as many people as he can. 00:35:03.713 --> 00:35:08.222 Right, but forget that he will still come after each person individually. 00:35:08.222 --> 00:35:25.447 If he can get somebody in a marriage to commit adultery Now, suddenly, their mate is impacted, their children are impacted, their extended family is impacted, their church is impacted, their circle of friends. 00:35:25.447 --> 00:35:26.875 It's a terrible thing. 00:35:27.657 --> 00:35:32.483 Sin is ugly and this is the thing that we can't wink at sin. 00:35:32.483 --> 00:35:33.639 Brethren, do you realize? 00:35:33.639 --> 00:35:36.681 We tend to want to do that? 00:35:36.681 --> 00:35:37.744 We just want to wink at sin. 00:35:37.744 --> 00:35:38.998 Oh, this is a little sin. 00:35:38.998 --> 00:35:41.440 I can guarantee you something. 00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:48.882 The only thing that's wrong is that the Son of God, he, doesn't wink at sin, and you want to know why? 00:35:48.882 --> 00:35:52.461 Because that sin required the sacrifice of His Son on the cross. 00:35:52.461 --> 00:35:58.840 I don't care if you tell a lie to your five-year-old or you murder somebody. 00:35:58.840 --> 00:36:09.666 The consequences on this earth are different but when it comes to Him on His throne, he's not winking at sin, because that required the blood of the only Son of God. 00:36:09.666 --> 00:36:11.757 We understand that. 00:36:11.757 --> 00:36:13.757 This is why it's important. 00:36:13.757 --> 00:36:22.402 We understand this, because if we understand this, we will now understand the greatness of this whole season and the greatness of what Jesus did. 00:36:22.914 --> 00:36:29.559 The incarnation changed the course of human history and gave us hope that we didn't have. 00:36:29.559 --> 00:36:33.139 No one treads on them. 00:36:33.139 --> 00:36:35.400 He talks about the highway of evil. 00:36:35.400 --> 00:36:39.202 No one treads on that highway of no peace. 00:36:39.202 --> 00:37:19.045 You know, every morning I wake up and I thank God that he's given me salvation, that he opened my eyes, because every day I know it's not on me, I know that the sovereign hand of God is over top of me and it's walking, and even though I've got to walk through some tough things sometimes some of you are walking through some really tough things right now but I know one thing is that God never leaves me and he's there, no matter how terrible it is, he never leaves me. 00:37:19.045 --> 00:37:21.581 That's peace, brethren. 00:37:21.581 --> 00:37:22.724 That's peace. 00:37:22.724 --> 00:37:29.202 It scares me to death to think about the fact that I have to wake up every morning and know that everything that happens that day is on me. 00:37:29.202 --> 00:37:31.099 Oh, that would be scary. 00:37:31.099 --> 00:37:36.378 That would be no, that would be terrifying to me and so many people. 00:37:36.378 --> 00:37:42.443 That's why, when something happens in their lives, they fall apart because they see no purpose in it. 00:37:44.617 --> 00:37:47.965 Have you ever been to funerals that are not believers? 00:37:47.965 --> 00:37:54.875 I'll never forget a funeral where a young man was killed in a car accident. 00:37:54.875 --> 00:38:03.059 He was probably in his 20s, left a young widow and a child, and I heard her cries. 00:38:03.059 --> 00:38:13.523 They were just mournful, they were just ripping my guts apart. 00:38:13.523 --> 00:38:16.282 They were cries of no hope. 00:38:16.282 --> 00:38:23.603 Listen, we've lost some really close, wonderful loved ones here, even in this last year, and there were tears. 00:38:23.603 --> 00:38:26.762 Of course there's going to be tears, but they're not tears without hope. 00:38:26.762 --> 00:38:32.465 Scripture says we don't grieve like those who have no hope. 00:38:32.465 --> 00:38:37.402 We have hope, but I'll never forget the cries of that young widow. 00:38:37.402 --> 00:38:39.059 She had no hope. 00:38:39.059 --> 00:38:42.081