Doug McMasters: Good morning, beloved.
Doug McMasters: Stick our Bibles and turn with me over to the book of Isaiah, chapter 1.
Doug McMasters: For those of you that are with us or don't have a Bible, you can find a Pew Bible in front of you, and you can turn to page 600, page 600 there.
Doug McMasters: We're in the early days of a study through the book of Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: This morning we'll be looking at verses 10 to 20.
Doug McMasters: There's a Roman emperor who ruled from 361 to 363 A.D.
Doug McMasters: by the name of Julian.
Doug McMasters: He was the nephew of Constantine the Great.
Doug McMasters: His immediate family was murdered, and the too often dynastic struggles had happened in Rome, and his uncle, Constantine, forced him to study Christian doctrine as a child.
Doug McMasters: And sadly, that bred within him a lifelong hatred of Christianity, so much so that he was called Julian the Apostate as an emperor.
Doug McMasters: But despite his deep-seated hatred for Christians and Christianity, there were some things that he had to admit about them.
Doug McMasters: And in his letters, we have a little excerpt of how he spoke directly about Christians and the effect that they had had not only on him, but also on the community.
Doug McMasters: Now he uses two derogatory terms to talk about Christians.
Doug McMasters: He calls them impious Galileans.
Doug McMasters: He called them Galileans as a derogatory term to talk about the obscure place where Christ came from, didn't come from the major powers of Rome or other cities, came from Galilee.
Doug McMasters: And he also called them impious because Christians did not honor the gods.
Doug McMasters: And so they were seen as atheist, even called atheist by some of the Romans, because of their singular focus on God.
Doug McMasters: So you'll hear that in this quote.
Doug McMasters: And you'll feel his disdain as well.
Doug McMasters: Julian wrote in his letter, It is disgraceful that the impious Galileans support not only their own poor, but ours as well.
Doug McMasters: Everyone can see that our own people do not receive aid from us.
Doug McMasters: Though he didn't like it, Julian saw the meshing together of Christian devotion to Christ and love for one another and even people outside the Christian faith.
Doug McMasters: He found that refutable and persuasive despite his strong contempt for Christianity.
Doug McMasters: This demonstration of Christians who were giving sacrificial love not only for their own, but even for others, pagans who were in real need.
Doug McMasters: James chapter 1 and verse 26 says this if anyone thinks he's religious without controlling his tongue, his religion is useless and he deceives himself.
Doug McMasters: Then he goes on to talk about what true devotion looks like.
Doug McMasters: Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this, to look after the orphans and widows and their distress, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
Doug McMasters: The Apostle John also wrote in chapter three of his first epistle in verse 16 this is how we know we have come to know love.
Doug McMasters: He laid down his life for us, speaking about Christ.
Doug McMasters: We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
Doug McMasters: If anyone has this world's goods and sees a fellow believer in need, but withholds compassion from him, how does God's love reside in that person?
Doug McMasters: Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth.
Doug McMasters: And this is how we will know that we belong to the truth, and we'll reassure our hearts before him.
Doug McMasters: Well, that brings us into this passage in Isaiah chapter 1 in verses 10 to 20, where there is a flagrant disregard for and disconnect between the people of Jerusalem's worship and life.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah is a book that is vital for us in the 21st century because it's easy.
Doug McMasters: The temptations that they had lay in our own hearts.
Doug McMasters: It's easy for us to get into a pattern of religious observance and have it disconnected from the way we live our lives the rest of the week.
Doug McMasters: And this passage of scripture will discover that God despises devotion to him that doesn't also draw the worshiper to others in their need.
Doug McMasters: But we'll also discover that despite God's disdain for that kind of hypocrisy, he has a full heart to forgive and to release and to receive sinners from the judgment they deserve.
Doug McMasters: We'll look a little bit later at this, but in verses 16 to 20 is one of the most famous calls to repentance and forgiveness that are found in Scripture.
Doug McMasters: Though your sins be as red as scarlet, they shall be as white as wool.
Doug McMasters: We even sing songs with those phrases.
Doug McMasters: At the core of that forgiveness is the transformation of the heart of that sinner.
Doug McMasters: Someone who was once rebellious and unyielding now becomes willing and obedient.
Doug McMasters: We'll get there.
Doug McMasters: But first we need to walk through the passage and find out how we get to that spot.
Doug McMasters: And the first thing I want us to notice is the rebuke that's found in verse 10.
Doug McMasters: When Isaiah opens up his prophecy to the people of Jerusalem, he challenges them with a reality that they're unwilling to admit.
Doug McMasters: And he does this by giving them labels and terms that speak to the reality of who they are.
Doug McMasters: They don't want to hear these words, but hear them they must.
Doug McMasters: And these hard truths speak to the people to let them know that they're not embodying what God's people ought to be like.
Doug McMasters: That they simply are speaking themselves as God's people, but not living out that life.
Doug McMasters: So last week we saw in verses one to nine that they were called rebellious children in verse two.
Doug McMasters: They were called denser than donkeys in verse three.
Doug McMasters: They were called a sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, children who deal corruptly.
Doug McMasters: They were described as sick and wounded and not seeking a remedy.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 9, they made an admission: well, we're bad, but maybe not all bad.
Doug McMasters: There's some of us still alive, and if the Lord of armies had not left us a few survivors, we would be like Sodom.
Doug McMasters: We would resemble Gomorrah.
Doug McMasters: Well, yeah, we may be denser than a donkey, but we're not dead donkeys.
Doug McMasters: And now the prophet's about to make a stronger announcement.
Doug McMasters: He's about to wake them up with some turns.
Doug McMasters: He's about to shock them.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 10.
Doug McMasters: Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom.
Doug McMasters: Listen to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah.
Doug McMasters: Wait a second.
Doug McMasters: I thought we weren't like Sodom and Gomorrah.
Doug McMasters: But from God's point of view, they are.
Doug McMasters: People of Jerusalem, the holy city, the rulers of this place where God inhabits his presence, is actually described as Sodom and Gomorrah.
Doug McMasters: The people were just about ready to thank God that they weren't like Sodom and Gomorrah, but God says they're exactly alike Sodom and Gomorrah.
Doug McMasters: Because they really resembled those two cities that were destroyed.
Doug McMasters: What is the connecting point here?
Doug McMasters: The connecting point is that Sodom and Gomorrah and the people that are living in Jerusalem and Judah at this time are living in habitual self-indulgence.
Doug McMasters: They are concerned only about themselves.
Doug McMasters: Now, that self-indulgence can express itself in all sorts of ways.
Doug McMasters: But at the essence, its nature is the same.
Doug McMasters: And this is the connecting point.
Doug McMasters: These rulers and the people of Jerusalem and Judah were living sinful lives of self-indulgence that at the heart was exactly like the sinful life of self-indulgence of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Doug McMasters: Ezekiel in chapter 16 says, Now this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom.
Doug McMasters: She and her daughters had pride, plenty of food, and comfortable security, but didn't support the poor and needy.
Doug McMasters: Self-indulgence.
Doug McMasters: Jeremiah chapter 23.
Doug McMasters: Among the prophets of Samaria, I saw something disgusting.
Doug McMasters: They prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray.
Doug McMasters: And among the prophets of Jerusalem also I saw a horrible thing.
Doug McMasters: They committed adultery and walked in lies.
Doug McMasters: They strengthened the hands of evildoers, and none of them turns his back on evil.
Doug McMasters: They're all like Sodom to me.
Doug McMasters: Jerusalem's residents are like Gomorrah.
Doug McMasters: Here we have it: self-indulgent lives expressed in oppression of the weak and unacceptable worship.
Doug McMasters: The sins of which they were guilty are as plainly condemned in the Word of God as the sins by which the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah had polluted their towns and villages.
Doug McMasters: Someone said that all sin is rebellion.
Doug McMasters: And if you're going to rebel against God, it doesn't really matter which weapon you hold in your hand.
Doug McMasters: Second thing that we learn here is that we can be utterly unaware of our real character.
Doug McMasters: This shocking phrase, Sodom and Gomorrah to Jerusalem, made them realize that God had a perspective about them that they didn't have about themselves.
Doug McMasters: Self-delusion is universal.
Doug McMasters: It's easy for us to think about ourselves differently than others think about us.
Doug McMasters: For instance, when something good happens to us, we think, well, it's because I'm so smart.
Doug McMasters: When something good happens to somebody else, we think it's because they're lucky.
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: If something bad happens to us, well, the circumstances just weren't for me.
Doug McMasters: If something bad happens to someone else, it's like, well, they're just a fool.
Doug McMasters: What is it?
Doug McMasters: We estimate ourselves so much better than others.
Doug McMasters: One researcher at Rutgers University discovered that college students would rate themselves better than their fellow classmates is able to get a good job and to buy a house and to make a good living.
Doug McMasters: In a survey of business managers, 90% of them rated their performance as superior to their peers.
Doug McMasters: In Australia, 86% of people rate their job performances above average, and only 1% at below average.
Doug McMasters: This is not Lake Wobagon, where everyone is above average.
Doug McMasters: There's got to be an average somewhere.
Doug McMasters: But even in these lesser things, we see this bias toward self, don't we?
Doug McMasters: That bias toward self can make us blinded to the realities of who we are and not seeing ourselves for what we actually are.
Doug McMasters: Laodicea, the church at Laodicea in Revelation chapter 3, Jesus said to them, You say, I'm rich, I have become wealthy and need nothing, and you don't realize that you're wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.
Doug McMasters: They don't see themselves for what they really are.
Doug McMasters: David was confronted by Nathan with a story about this man who oppressed someone who couldn't stand against the oppressor and stole what he had.
Doug McMasters: And David was infuriated with the man in that story and said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die.
Doug McMasters: Because he's done this thing and shown no pity.
Doug McMasters: And it wasn't until Nathan said, You're the man that David realized the story was about him.
Doug McMasters: Both Laodicea and David were at perfect peace with themselves until all of it came crushing down with the exposure of God's truth.
Doug McMasters: How often that can happen to us?
Doug McMasters: This sense of self-delusion is not only common, it's sadly disastrous.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus at the end of the Sermon of the Mount talks about the disaster of self-delusion.
Doug McMasters: That people would come up to him and he says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, is going to enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Doug McMasters: There will be people who will stand up and they will say, Didn't we prophesy in your name?
Doug McMasters: Didn't we drive out demons in your name?
Doug McMasters: Didn't we do many miracles in your name?
Doug McMasters: And he'll say, Depart from me.
Doug McMasters: I don't know you.
Doug McMasters: I never knew you.
Doug McMasters: Depart from me, you evil doers.
Doug McMasters: And that leads us to a third lesson here.
Doug McMasters: God sees us for who we are.
Doug McMasters: These people presented themselves as great, miraculous workers for God's kingdom, and he said, You're lawbreakers.
Doug McMasters: God sees us for what we actually are.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't accept our boastings as reality.
Doug McMasters: And what he sees is sometimes very, very different than any kind of term that we would give ourselves.
Doug McMasters: Jesus talked about a wealthy man in Luke chapter 12.
Doug McMasters: He seemed to be the envy of everybody in the community.
Doug McMasters: This man had been successful as a businessman.
Doug McMasters: He had gained a lot of crops.
Doug McMasters: He worked in the agricultural industry.
Doug McMasters: And the harvest was so plenteous, he sits down with himself and he says, What am I going to do?
Doug McMasters: I'll tear down my barns, build bigger ones, store all my grain and all my goods there, and then I'll say to myself, you've got many goods stored up for many, many years.
Doug McMasters: Take it easy.
Doug McMasters: Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.
Doug McMasters: This man had built a successful business.
Doug McMasters: This man had ended his career at the peak of the market.
Doug McMasters: This man had a surplus that was full enough, so full, that he contemplated actually tearing down his storehouses to make them larger and then retire.
Doug McMasters: He didn't even have to conserve at the very end.
Doug McMasters: And just as he's planning to, you know, go off to the architect's office and pick up a few drawing plans for what that might look like, he thought he'd stop over at the travel agency and get a brochure or two for a luxury cruise that he could enjoy now that he's about to retire.
Doug McMasters: His neighbors, I'm sure, probably saw him as a, well, certainly a prosperous farmer, but perhaps a shrewd and wise one, too.
Doug McMasters: But what has Jesus called him?
Doug McMasters: You fool.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because that day he was going to die, and he had vested all of his life in mere earthly possessions rather than eternal reward.
Doug McMasters: God's estimate of him was far different than the estimate he had of himself, far different than what anybody in the community might have thought of him, too.
Doug McMasters: So here are these people, these rulers of Jerusalem, the rulers of the holy city, the rulers of where God dwells.
Doug McMasters: The Sodom and Gomorrah.
Doug McMasters: What is needed for them?
Doug McMasters: What is needed for us whenever we get into a position where we have to have a hard rebuke shake us awake?
Doug McMasters: Well, what we need is prayerful self-examination.
Doug McMasters: And sometimes that prayerful self-examination only begins when we're confronted with a hard reality, just like God confronts the people of Jerusalem and Judah with a hard reality, with these strong emotional terms.
Doug McMasters: And we'll look at this later, but this rebuke is not simply God wanting to condemn them for their sin and leave them there.
Doug McMasters: This isn't just him calling them Sodom and Gomorrah and walking away from them.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 10 again.
Doug McMasters: Hear the words of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom.
Doug McMasters: Listen to the instruction of God, you people of Gomorrah.
Doug McMasters: These strong words are God's loving confrontation to bring them truth that would embarrass them so that he might save them.
Doug McMasters: This unflattering portrait that Isaiah brings to the people in Jerusalem and Judah in chapter one is God's way of disrupting and disturbing them until they get to the point where they start asking God-oriented questions about themselves.
Doug McMasters: Because up until that point in time they weren't.
Doug McMasters: It's not that.
Doug McMasters: It's not God simply crushing our spirit.
Doug McMasters: Conviction of sin is a health-giving injury, if I can put it that way.
Doug McMasters: It's the scalpel of the surgeon rather than the blow of the soldier.
Doug McMasters: Conviction of sin is the Holy Spirit being kind to us by confronting us with truth that we don't want to admit, with light that we don't want to see, with guilt we don't want to acknowledge.
Doug McMasters: It's the Holy Spirit kindly showing us those things.
Doug McMasters: Conviction is the severe love of God to overrule our compulsive dishonesty, our willful blindedness, our favorite excuses, and to stop them all cold.
Doug McMasters: Conviction is a merciful God declaring war against the false peace that we've settled into our heart.
Doug McMasters: He wants to bring us out of all of that to joy, to genuineness, to authenticity, to wholeness and health.
Doug McMasters: And so let's go deeper through this passage.
Doug McMasters: We've only looked at the rebuke so far, but let's see what we're getting at here.
Doug McMasters: What sin the Lord means to lay bare and confront the conscious with among the people of Jerusalem and perhaps us.
Doug McMasters: And the first thing he brings up besides this rebuke is the refused worship, the refused worship that we find in verses 11 to 15.
Doug McMasters: Now, when God calls Jerusalem Sodom and Gomorrah, people might have countered and said, You know, God, there's a big difference between us and Sodom and Gomorrah.
Doug McMasters: They were all pagans.
Doug McMasters: We worship you.
Doug McMasters: We go to the temple, we make our sacrifices, we honor you.
Doug McMasters: We're called by your name.
Doug McMasters: They never were.
Doug McMasters: But God's response to that temple worship is completely negative in this passage of scripture.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at the descriptions in verses 11 to 15.
Doug McMasters: Verse 11, I've had enough of burnt offerings.
Doug McMasters: I have no desire for the blood of bulls, goats, lambs.
Doug McMasters: Verse 12.
Doug McMasters: What is this trampling of my courts?
Doug McMasters: Verse 13, stop bringing useless offerings.
Doug McMasters: Your incense is detestable to me.
Doug McMasters: A little later, I cannot stand iniquity with a festival.
Doug McMasters: Verse 14, I hate your new moons and prescribe festivals.
Doug McMasters: They've become a burden to me.
Doug McMasters: I'm tired of putting up with them.
Doug McMasters: Verse 15, I will refuse to look at you even if you offer countless prayers.
Doug McMasters: I will not listen.
Doug McMasters: Wow.
Doug McMasters: I thought you just had to be sincere in heart, and everything would be okay.
Doug McMasters: No.
Doug McMasters: God was sick of their sacrifices.
Doug McMasters: He considered them worthless.
Doug McMasters: They were a burden to him.
Doug McMasters: He hated their feasts.
Doug McMasters: He had no delight in them.
Doug McMasters: He called it an abomination.
Doug McMasters: That's a big word in the Bible.
Doug McMasters: Now, hang on a second.
Doug McMasters: All of that was prescribed by God in the Pentateuch.
Doug McMasters: All of that was laid out as things to do.
Doug McMasters: So obviously, it's not what they were doing in the form of it all that is negative.
Doug McMasters: There's something deeper.
Doug McMasters: There's something wrong at a deeper level than just the mere operations of worship.
Doug McMasters: There was something going on inside.
Doug McMasters: And what you I find interesting about this passage is that Isaiah never accuses them of simply offering mere formal worship, as if they were just doing it by rote memory rather than sincerity of heart.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't call them to be more connected with what they're doing.
Doug McMasters: He speaks about something different yet.
Doug McMasters: So it is possible that they really did mean every hallelujah.
Doug McMasters: That they really did have a heart of urgency when they cried.
Doug McMasters: That there wasn't really a mismatch between their feelings and their expressions in worship.
Doug McMasters: No, there was something different.
Doug McMasters: There was a disconnect not between their heart in worship and their mouth in worship.
Doug McMasters: There was a disconnect between the heart of worship and the heart of life outside the worship.
Doug McMasters: That's where the problem was.
Doug McMasters: Verse 15 indicates fully God's conclusion of his displeasure with all of this.
Doug McMasters: Your hands are covered with blood.
Doug McMasters: And that gives us a clue of what God is driving at with them and what he really is finding as the source of the problem.
Doug McMasters: When their hands are raised in fervent praise, God looks down on them and says, I see blood.
Doug McMasters: Now he's not talking about the blood of the sacrifices, he's talking about the blood that they have extracted from each other.
Doug McMasters: As they spend their life in self-indulgence by callous, careless actions toward other people.
Doug McMasters: The blood is their fellow Israelites.
Doug McMasters: Now, obviously, these people are not actual murders, all of them, but they were living lives of indulgent self-pleasure, persistently looking out for themselves.
Doug McMasters: Those in the ruling classes, the priests, the princes, and the prophets, all manipulating the system, the system of taxes and laws and landholdings in order to gain more for themselves.
Doug McMasters: Enacting policies that would ignore those who had no power, refusing the care of the orphans and the widows, and depriving farmers of their ability to have a livelihood, abandoning any conviction at all that God's word meant that vertical worship must be intimately intertwined with vertical or horizontal care.
Doug McMasters: These people lived lives outside of the worship that betrayed what they did inside of worship.
Doug McMasters: And God's attitude is clear, and God's attitude is chilling.
Doug McMasters: Look at verse 15 again.
Doug McMasters: What a horrible, horrible place to be.
Doug McMasters: To actually be engaged in worship and God says, I'm not showing up.
Doug McMasters: This isn't something I take pleasure in.
Doug McMasters: Unless we think that this warning is simply tailored for Jerusalem and Judah in Isaiah's day, I'd like to draw your attention to a passage in 1 Peter 3.
Doug McMasters: You don't need to turn there.
Doug McMasters: You can if you want, but I'll read it for you.
Doug McMasters: Husbands.
Doug McMasters: In the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as a weaker vessel, as if she were, with the kind of delicacy you would hold up a piece of china rather than a chunky piece of pottery.
Doug McMasters: Handle her with care.
Doug McMasters: Showing them honor as co-heirs of the grace of life, listen, so that your prayers will not be hindered, thwarted, refused.
Doug McMasters: I will not listen if you treat your wife wrong, husband.
Doug McMasters: I will not listen if you don't honor your wife, husband.
Doug McMasters: I will not look on you if you treat her with disdain, husband.
Doug McMasters: Peter doesn't just leave it for husbands, though.
Doug McMasters: He continues, all of you, be like-minded and sympathetic.
Doug McMasters: Love one another, be compassionate and humble, not paying back evil for evil or insult for insult, but on the contrary, giving a blessing, since you were called for this, so that you may inherit a blessing.
Doug McMasters: For the one who wants to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking deceit, let him turn away from evil and do what is good.
Doug McMasters: Now listen let him seek peace and pursue it, because the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to Their prayers.
Doug McMasters: But the face of the Lord is against those who do what is evil.
Doug McMasters: That was written to the New Testament church within the context of family life, saying that our worship will be affected by our life.
Doug McMasters: The reception of what we do on Sunday morning, in God's point of view, starts after the service is over, all the way until the time you show up again.
Doug McMasters: God's words indicate the importance of a proper attitude, both of Him and of others.
Doug McMasters: Merely showing up nicely dressed and well spoken in a worship service doesn't cut it in the eyes of God.
Doug McMasters: Now let's move on.
Doug McMasters: We got the rebuke, we got the refused worship, but what is the received worship?
Doug McMasters: The next paragraph, God speaks about two things.
Doug McMasters: He talks about repentance of heart and reconciliation of heart.
Doug McMasters: Reconciliation to him and reconciliation to others.
Doug McMasters: And this paragraph is filled with nine bullet point exhortations, nine commands, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, just thrown out there, rapid fire, that illustrate what that looks like.
Doug McMasters: And the prophet here is persuasively, forcibly calling us as listeners to that kind of life.
Doug McMasters: Seven of these imperatives identify positive things, and two of them are to turn away from current behavior.
Doug McMasters: Let's listen to those nine words.
Doug McMasters: Wash yourselves, cleanse yourselves, remove your evil deeds from my sight, stop doing evil, learn to do what is good, pursue justice, correct the oppressor, defend the rights of the fatherless, plead the widow's cause, rapid fire.
Doug McMasters: These nine punchy imperatives stress the basic heart decisions that we are to have.
Doug McMasters: And it begins with our orientation to God.
Doug McMasters: Talking of the word washing there, speaking of a ritual washing that is indicative of a purity of heart, that the clean hands represent the clean heart of repentance toward God.
Doug McMasters: And when our orientation to God is right, then it will flow out into our relationships with others.
Doug McMasters: We will value and look for things that are right and righteous and just.
Doug McMasters: And we will pursue those things.
Doug McMasters: And in the pursuit of those things, we will stand against oppressors.
Doug McMasters: We will surround the fatherless and the widows.
Doug McMasters: We will care for those that can't care for themselves.
Doug McMasters: We will stand up for those who don't have the strength to stand themselves.
Doug McMasters: One of the things we do, even outside the church, is to estimate one's character by what they do with people who can't pay them back or can't fight back, right?
Doug McMasters: What is your character like?
Doug McMasters: Well, if you're kind to people who can't pay you back, and you're kind to people who can't fight against your strength, that's an indication, even outside of a Christian circle, of a person of integrity.
Doug McMasters: How much more so here?
Doug McMasters: When we cleanse ourselves before God, we find the overflow pouring into how we relate to others.
Doug McMasters: The acceptable orientation to God becomes a caring orientation to others.
Doug McMasters: And here in this context, particularly how the leaders, those who are in places of power, the prophets and the priests and the princes, how they took their responsibilities seriously and cared for the whole community rather than to indulge themselves in the positions that they had.
Doug McMasters: And obviously, in a church situation, that means we have equal care and regard for one another.
Doug McMasters: We love each other as a body, not just individuals.
Doug McMasters: And we're not playing power games with one another to try to attain some greater position.
Doug McMasters: In fact, our Lord Jesus said, if we want to be great in his kingdom, you become the servant of everybody.
Doug McMasters: You take care of them.
Doug McMasters: So God is calling on Israel at this juncture, using loving, biting words to awaken them to God-oriented questions about themselves, so that they might repent and reconcile themselves with God and with each other.
Doug McMasters: And he has to do it with these terms so that there might be a reunion of their worship with their life, that there be a consistency in it all, that their repentance would evidence itself in true love and true care.
Doug McMasters: People in Jerusalem's day had to wait until chapter 53 to find out who that was.
Doug McMasters: We don't have to wait anymore.
Doug McMasters: We know exactly who that is.
Doug McMasters: It's Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Let's get to the reasoned response.
Doug McMasters: So we've got the rebuke, the rejected worship or refused worship, the received worship of repentance and reconciliation, and then the reasoned response.
Doug McMasters: And here in this last little bit, God's words take an interesting twist.
Doug McMasters: Up until this point in time, God has been acting as a prosecuting attorney.
Doug McMasters: And he's called heaven and earth into the courtroom.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at the first verse or second verse.
Doug McMasters: Listen, heavens, pay attention, earth, for the Lord has spoken.
Doug McMasters: All right, we're in a courtroom.
Doug McMasters: We've got a prosecuting attorney, and we've got witnesses called heaven and earth.
Doug McMasters: And we've got someone who needs to be accused, and it's the people of Jerusalem and Judah.
Doug McMasters: And God is speaking against them about their sinful state and about their wickedness, bringing indictment after indictment after indictment against them.
Doug McMasters: But then we turn to verse 16.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 16, everything begins to change.
Doug McMasters: And then in verse 18, instead of being a prosecuting attorney, we've got one who wants to be at the table of conciliation.
Doug McMasters: Come, let us settle this, says the Lord.
Doug McMasters: Instead of being a prosecuting attorney, now he's an encourager.
Doug McMasters: Now he's a reconciler.
Doug McMasters: Now he's even an advocate and lays out promises.
Doug McMasters: Come, let's settle this, says the Lord.
Doug McMasters: Though your sins are scarlet, they will be white as snow.
Doug McMasters: Though they're crimson red, they'll be like wool.
Doug McMasters: He wants them to find the solution.
Doug McMasters: Will they listen?
Doug McMasters: The situation appeared hopeless until this moment, didn't it?
Doug McMasters: They seemed so indifferent, so calloused, so unconcerned, so caught up in self that they didn't know who they were and they didn't know what danger they were in.
Doug McMasters: But now God speaks with whispers rather than warnings.
Doug McMasters: And he talks about the possibility of settling this conflict between him and them.
Doug McMasters: He wants them to heed the warning before there's a complete and utter separation where there's no recovery.
Doug McMasters: And he tells them it doesn't have to end like that.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't have to end that way.
Doug McMasters: And he doesn't demean them, he doesn't demand, he doesn't act closed to their movements.
Doug McMasters: He says, Come.
unknown: Come.
Doug McMasters: The end of the book of Revelation, the very last chapter of the book of the Bible, the bride and the spirit say, Come, come.
Doug McMasters: God is still inviting people.
Doug McMasters: Come, let us determine what is right.
Doug McMasters: Let's restore this relationship.
Doug McMasters: Now, one thing you won't see in this passage is that God is not going to enter into an argument about whether or not Judah sinned.
Doug McMasters: Well, you've got a different definition of the way I live my life than I have.
Doug McMasters: And uh maybe, God, you need to just sort of welcome me as I am.
Doug McMasters: God says, no, that's that's not the point of conversation here.
Doug McMasters: Well, Lord, you you know, we really didn't mean it when we prayed.
Doug McMasters: We we we really did have full hearts when we sang.
Doug McMasters: We we we really did take animals from our flock to sacrifice to you.
Doug McMasters: Shouldn't you like accept that?
Doug McMasters: That's not part of the conversation either.
Doug McMasters: What is the part of the conversation?
Doug McMasters: Your sins are like scarlet.
Doug McMasters: That's the point of conversation.
Doug McMasters: The red like crimson.
Doug McMasters: You're guilty.
Doug McMasters: What is the let us come and let's settle this?
Doug McMasters: It means agreeing with God.
Doug McMasters: Listen to this, agreeing with God in his estimate of you.
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: Seeing yourself the way God sees you, not the way you think you are, or maybe not the way your best friend thinks you are, but thinking of yourself the way God thinks of you, which means coming to terms with reality that we were not willing to admit before.
Doug McMasters: That we are before a holy God, sinful people, that we really are full of self-indulgence, that we really do disconnect things that we might say about God from the way we talk about each other, that we really do only worship with words, and not the reality of a holistic life.
Doug McMasters: However, when we acknowledge that and admit that before a holy God, listen to what he says.
Speaker: I'll forgive you, I'll receive you, I will cleanse you, I will wipe away the stay, as if it never was there.
Doug McMasters: You see, God is not someone to be feared unless you refuse him.
Doug McMasters: But if you realize your sinfulness and come to him, he will never cast you out.
Doug McMasters: He is a receiving God to those who acknowledge that truth about themselves.
Doug McMasters: And this is the beautiful truth that awakened my heart in 1983.
Doug McMasters: When someone opened up the Bible and it said, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.
Doug McMasters: For whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Doug McMasters: And I had run from what I thought was an angry God my whole life until that very moment, and for the very first time I saw that he was not a God holding his arm stiff at me, but was calling me and willing to embrace me, as ruinous as I was, and as reckless as I was, and as rebellious as I was.
Doug McMasters: What's the promise?
Doug McMasters: Let's settle this, the Lord says.
Doug McMasters: Though your sins are scarlet, they'll be white as snow.
Doug McMasters: Though they're crimson red, they'll be like wool.
Doug McMasters: And he puts the choice before them.
Doug McMasters: Which way will you go?
Doug McMasters: If you're willing and obedient, you'll eat the good things of the land.
Doug McMasters: But if you refuse and rebel, you'll be devoured by the sword.
Doug McMasters: For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Doug McMasters: If they came to that place of recognition of who they really were, and came to the God of heaven to be reconciled, they would be received and welcomed.
Doug McMasters: They would be reconciled and they would be cleansed.
Doug McMasters: But if they refused, certain judgment awaits, the day of which only God knows.
Doug McMasters: And God plays on words here.
Doug McMasters: In verse 19, you will eat the good things of the land if you come to him.
Doug McMasters: But if you refuse him, the sword will eat you.
Doug McMasters: It is there's no other option.
Doug McMasters: It's either eat or be eaten.
Doug McMasters: It's either be destroy the food and happiness or be destroyed by the sword and judgment.
Doug McMasters: There's no middle ground here.
Doug McMasters: There's no other choice.
Doug McMasters: There is the choice between it divine blessing or divine cursing.
Doug McMasters: And it lies at the door of every one of us.
Doug McMasters: This way of thinking is repeated in the New Testament by Jesus Himself.
Doug McMasters: He said, No man can serve two masters.
Doug McMasters: He will either hate the one and serve the other, or he'll be devoted to one and despise the other.
Doug McMasters: There's no new neutrality here.
Doug McMasters: There's no Switzerland to step your feet into.
Doug McMasters: You're either giving yourself to God or you're giving yourself to something else.
Doug McMasters: And you're a creation of God, and he calls you to be his.
Doug McMasters: Let's wrap this up.
Doug McMasters: God speaks harshly to help us.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't leave us in the ground.
Doug McMasters: He wants to pick us up if we'll hear it.
Doug McMasters: And sometimes he has to speak so loud and so harshly that we might find ourselves immediately offended by it.
Doug McMasters: But he comes in behind those words with a flourish of care and love that's undeserved.
Doug McMasters: He has every right to snuff us out, but he doesn't.
Doug McMasters: And at the core of this forgiveness is going to be a transformation of our hearts.
Doug McMasters: We who were formerly rebellious and unyielding, he will move within us and make us yielding and obedient.
Doug McMasters: And our regrets will not be that we gave our life to him.
Doug McMasters: Our regrets at the end of our days will be that we didn't give enough of our life to him.
Doug McMasters: But this question stands before us.
Doug McMasters: Is there sincerity between what you do here on a Sunday morning and what you do outside of this service?
Doug McMasters: Is there a consistency of life?
Doug McMasters: Is there a true regard for others evidenced by your true love for Him?
Doug McMasters: Or do you need to hear the rebukes?
Doug McMasters: And if you do need to hear them, receive them.
Doug McMasters: Because God wants to receive you.
Doug McMasters: He wants to say to you right now, let's settle this.
Doug McMasters: Let's fix this now before it becomes an eternal problem.
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the word of God, which is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing and dividing down to the very recesses of our spirit.
Doug McMasters: We thank you that you know not only the thoughts and intents that we have, but you know the thoughts and the intents of the heart.
Doug McMasters: You know the secret things of the secret things.
Doug McMasters: And Father, we thank you that you desire for us to worship you in spirit and in truth.
Doug McMasters: To be right with you and how we understand you, but also to be right with you in the way that we regard you and your creation, which includes our fellow man, our fellow believers in Christ, our fellow church family, our family.
Doug McMasters: Lord, we pray that you would do your perfect will with your word and accomplish your good will and purposes through it, as it's been heard by us all.
Doug McMasters: May we truly heed your warnings and truly receive your promises.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.