We will be looking at Isaiah chapter 40 this morning, if you want to have that in your Bible. While you're turning, our song, have we put it all, sacrificed on the altar? Is it all there? Have we surrendered it all to the Lord? And that reminded me of Ephesians chapter 4. where it says in verse 27, neither give place to the devil. He's talking to the church. And that word place, if I recall, is the Greek word tapos, which means a specific jurisdictional area. So God is telling us as Christians, sacrifice all to him, even those little jurisdictional areas of your heart that you've reserved for yourself that are an entry point for the devil to work out different things. OK. So we want to make sure our whole heart belongs to him. OK. So, we're looking at Isaiah 40. Now, we're going to be talking about the creation today, tonight, tomorrow. Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night. But this morning, instead of talking about specifically about the creation, we're going to talk about the creator. Because without a creator, we would not have a creation. Right? Right. Now, some people would say, no, no, no. The Big Bang did it. We don't need a creator. No mind, nothing. It's just the impersonal plus time, plus chance got us all here. And so, we'll be dealing with that as we go. So, since we were here the last time, look what's happened in the last 7 years. Unbelievable. So, I'm 85 years old. I've never seen anything like this in my whole life. What's going on right now in the whole world, all right? Not let alone United States of America. I mean, we have the whole wake thing has popped up. We have the transgender thing that's all popped up. It's just unbelievable. We can go down through a whole list of all kinds of things that have just really just popped up. It's all coming together. So we're living in biblical times. God says, here's the way it's going to be right before I come back. We're watching it happen just like the Bible lays it out. And so praise God for that. So in the midst of all that, Let's not lose our perspective. Okay, that's going to be the title of this little sermon. Don't lose your perspective. Or let's keep our perspective. Maybe that'd be a better way to put it. And Isaiah chapter 40. Now, Isaiah is known, I'm sure you know this, but it's known as the Bible in miniature. Okay? The first 39 chapters of Isaiah. Really, it's dealing with the law and the judgments that come when you disobey the law and you start to worship man and idols and all that. There's consequences. That's really the first 39 chapters. Now, grace is always there. Then you hit Chapter 40, which is where we're going to be, which is the transition chapter, if we want to call it this, between Old Testament Tanakh way of thinking to New Testament way of thinking. All right? And so, 39 chapters, Old Testament thinking. Twenty-seven chapters, 40 through 66, New Testament type thinking. How many books in the Old Testament? Thirty-nine. How many books in the New Testament? Twenty-seven. It's called the Bible in miniature. Where does Isaiah 40 start in the transition? John the Baptist. Okay? Then it goes through the gospel. The best gospel presentation in the whole Old Testament, Isaiah 53. And then it ends up in Isaiah 65, 66 with the new heavens and new earth. And then the very last verse of Isaiah has an allusion to the lake of fire, where you're going to go if you don't know Jesus as your savior. So that's how the book is laid out, the Bible in miniature. All right, so Isaiah chapter 40. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. And by the way, he is our comfort. And he said, I'm going to go so that I can send my comforter to you. And then where is he? He lives in us now. So we have the comforter, the Holy Spirit. We have all the comfort of God. residing in us. So we don't need to worry about losing our perspective. We keep it because God lives in us. The full resurrection power of God resides in us. And nothing's impossible for him. Verse 2, speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her. that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. Now, it could mean double blessing if you look back over in Isaiah 61 about verse 7, but in any event, the next verse says this, verse 3, the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare you the way of the Lord, make straight the desert, in the desert a highway for our God, Okay, that sounds kind of familiar. Who said that? Well, that's in Matthew. If you want to quickly look over there, Matthew chapter 3, it says this, verse 1, in those days came John the Baptist. Wait a minute, is Isaiah talking about John the Baptist? In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now look at verse 3. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his path straight. What? Isaiah was written 700 years before Matthew came on the scene. And Matthew? is saying, Isaiah was telling us what John the Baptist was gonna say when he got here 700 years later, okay? See, the Bible, you can't just take part of the Bible and say, I'll take this. No, it is all hooked up. It's all hooked up together. All right, back over to Isaiah. What's gonna happen? John the Baptist, right there in the beginning, we're in the transitional chapter from Old Testament thinking to New Testament thinking. John the Baptist announced, okay, here we go. Verse 4, every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill shall be made low, the crooked shall be made straight, the rough places plain. Now, back in the day of Isaiah, if the monarch was going to come to town, if the king was going to visit your village, The people would go out and they would smooth out the highway. They would smooth, it's mostly dirt. They'd have boulders and ruts and they would clean it all up, smooth it all out, make it real nice so that when the king drove into town in his chariot or whatever, he didn't get bounced all over everywhere and be grumpy when he came to their town. So that was the custom. Well, when Jesus comes back, by the way, this is a lot of second coming talk through here too. When Jesus comes back again, it's going to rearrange the surface of the earth. It's all the crooked places will be made straight. The rough places plain. Verse five, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. Well, I mean, if God has spoken it, it's going to happen. The voice said cry. And he said, what shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the spirit of the Lord hath bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass. By the way, on college campuses, many times, I just, I teach Young Earth Creation when we get invited. And I'll say, death began with Adam. Death began with Adam. There was no death before Adam. By the way, that takes care of evolution right there. You can't have millions of years of things living and dying, living and dying, living and dying. Then you get to Adam, and God says, hey, Adam, if you eat of that tree of the knowledge and good and evil, you're going to die. What would Adam say? Well, God, what's the big deal? Everything dies. I'm just going to die anyway. No, death began with Adam. It was the penalty for sin, all right? So that takes care of evolution, by the way. But anyway, so the students will come up. You said death began with Adam. Well, tell me this, what if Adam ate a carrot before the fall? That carrot died. Well, no, no, God never says plant life dies, and he says it how he says it right here. They wither, they fade away, but he doesn't say they die. So there's different kinds of what we might call life. There is the life of a carrot, let's say, but it isn't really life as we know it because it doesn't die, but it does have flesh. That's what you eat, the flesh of the carrot. Then you have animals. Okay, now animals also have flesh, but they also have a soul, a nephesh. Same word for soul that we have. They have mind, emotions, will, animals. Same kind of a nephesh we have, mind, emotions, will. Okay, you got a pet dog. Does it have any emotions? Yeah. When you come home after you've been gone a while, does it show some emotion? Oh, yeah. Oh, boy, we're glad to have you home. I don't know what a cat does. But do cats do that? Oh, we're glad you're home. I don't know. But anyway, I've never had a cat. Okay. They've got a mind. Can they figure things out? Can animals? Just watch them. I mean, they really can figure things out. And if it's a goat, it'll figure out a way to get out of there. They just do. Okay. So they have a mind and they have emotions. Do they have a will? Yeah. Do they have a will? You try to take a piece of roast beef away from our peek-a-poo, not that big, you'll know they have a will. And I learned my lesson right here on the back of my hand. But it never did that again. Anyway, yeah, they do. But we also have a spirit, don't we? We're a body. We're a soul. And we're created above the animal kingdom with a spirit in the image of God. We are created in the image of God. So someone says, well, the carrot died. No. Not according to the Bible. That's not what it says about what happens to plants, okay? So there's different kinds of what we might call death. All right, let's keep moving. All flesh shall see it together. The voice, verse 6, the voice said, cry, and he said, what shall I cry? Oh, I read that. All flesh is grass, all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass wither, the flower fadeth, because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass, the grass wither, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God will stand forever. God's word is eternal. What are we supposed to invest our lives in, in this little bit of time we're here? God's word, the eternal things, God's word, God, and people. The three eternal things. Look over in verse 28. Verse 28, hast thou not known, hast thou not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator, God is eternal, his word is eternal, and people are eternal. And we're to invest our lives in the eternal things, not the things of this world, the temporal things, but in the eternal things. All right. So then he goes on, verse 9, O Zion, that bring us good tidings. Now look at this. Get thee up into the high mountains, O Jerusalem, that bring us good tidings. We're bringing the good tidings now. Lift up thy voice with strength. Lift it up. Be not afraid. Say unto the cities of Pennsylvania. No, Judah. Behold your God. You know what we've discovered? We Christians, we talk about God, we talk about the Lord. How often do you hear the name of Jesus in our conversations, even at home? See, it's at the name of Jesus that every tongue will confess, every knee will bow, at the name of Jesus. And we kind of choke on bringing up Jesus. I mean, we hand out these little animal card tracks, and there's bunches of them. You can take whatever you want back there. By the way, on our table back there, if you think you can use something, you take it, okay. But I want every family, I don't have enough for every individual, but every family to have a copy of my book, The Evolution of a Creationist. It's on the table back there. We got more under the table, okay. We'd like you to have it. because it talks about things I won't get to. But these are the arguments from science and the Bible that took me from being an evolutionist to being a creationist. So please get one. And these little animal cards, they're gospel tracks, okay? And if the people click on the QR code, it takes them right to the gospel in English and Spanish. And now we're going to have some things that they can see the gospel video type thing. It's working on that right now. Okay. Now, so we are to shout out the gospel. Don't be ashamed. Don't be afraid. Tell people about it. And then he goes on and he says this. Behold your God, verse 10, behold the Lord God will come, this is second coming talk, with strong hand and his arm shall rule for him. Behold, his reward is with him, his work before him. When Jesus comes again, he's coming in strength. He's the King of kings and the Lord of lords. But then look at the next verse, he shall feed his flock like a shepherd. and shall gather the lambs with his arm and carry them in his bosom and shall gently lead those that are with young. He is coming as the mighty warrior, but he's also coming as the gentle shepherd. because he is both. He is our gentle shepherd, and how gentle is he. We all ought to be dead. I mean, we sin in his face so many times, okay? And he loves us, and he forgives us. And so he's coming, but he's coming as king of kings, but also as a gentle shepherd to us that know him. And now he's going to say, okay, my people Israel, you have lost your perspective. You are worshiping idols. You're worshiping your fellow man. You're worshiping the creatures. You've lost your perspective. Now, he's gonna remind them who he is. Okay. Now, he's gonna tell them first, he's greater than anything in the creation. He's greater than everything. He is superior to everything. Here's how he says it, verse 12. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand. Do you know how much water is out there? God says, I know. I know how much water is out there. And meted out the heavens with the span. He knows how far the heavens go. We don't know. We keep putting up more and more powerful telescopes. Keeps going, keeps going, keeps going. Okay. There is an end to it, it's not infinity, there is an end. And I think he put a water canopy around the universe, Psalm 148, about verse 4, okay? The waters surrounding All of it. I think he put a water canopy around that. I think he put a water canopy around planet Earth before the flood. We'll get to some of that as we go through this week. So he knows how far the heavens go and comprehended the dust of the Earth in a measure. He knows how much dust there is. I mean, do you know how much dust is sitting on the end of your nose right now? We don't know how much dust there is. See, God is saying, hey, my people, you've lost your perspective. You've forgotten who I am. I'm the almighty. I am absolutely everything to you, okay? He's weighed the mountains in the scales. Well, if there was a mountain around here, how many know, does anybody know how much Pike's Peak weighs? No, you don't know, do you? God says, I know how much each mountain weighs. You see, don't lose your perspective here. Remember who I am. Then he says this. And the hills in a balance. There's a word for that in science. It's called isostasy. God says, I'm keeping this earth in balance. Because if it gets out of balance, it's going to wobble. So I keep it in balance. Well, what happens if we build a big city like Los Angeles? All kinds of raw materials going out there. That's changing the weight on this sphere. By the way, it is a sphere. I know the flat earth is coming on strong out there. It's a sphere. I just saw some more pictures just this week, but anyway. Okay, so let's say a big city goes up over here. If you went straight through the earth to the other side, Would you find some sort of building over here like another city or a cluster to keep it in balance? God says, I keep the earth in balance. So it doesn't just wobble us off, throw us off, okay? Amazing. Well, then he goes on. So he's greater than everything in his creation. And then he's gonna tell us that he is greater than any man or woman. Here's what he says, verse 13. Who hath directed the spirit of the Lord? In other words, or being his counselor, hath taught him. In other words, God's saying, can you tell me anything? Now we try, don't we? We try, oh God, your timing is way off on this. If you would have just acted a little sooner, it would have prevented all this. Or, oh, no, that was too fast, God. I wasn't ready for that. No, no, no, no, no, no. And we try to counsel God. We try to tell him what to do. He says, no, no, you can't do that. Verse 14, with whom took he counsel? Does he call you up and say, hey, what do you think I ought to do about this? No, no, no, no. You can't give him any counsel. Who instructed him? Can we teach God anything? No, we can't teach God anything. Who taught him in the path of judgment? Nobody. Nobody taught him anything about the path of judgment because he knows it all and taught him knowledge. can't teach God knowledge all knowledge comes from him when you come right down to it and showed to him the way of understanding God is saying don't forget who I am my people you've lost your perspective keep your perspective here okay and then so he's greater than everything in the creation He's greater than every man, and now he's gonna tell us he's also greater than every nation, okay? So he's gonna go to Lebanon. And Lebanon's finding some things out right now about God's power, because I think God is showing his power through the Israelis. I mean, can you imagine what they've been able, this teeny little speck of land surrounded by Muslims that wanna totally wipe off the face of the earth. And they are doing things that have never been done before in warfare, including whatever they did to those pager things, and then some cell phones that they rigged them. So all they have to do is hit the button, boom, they all blow up. And now they've got the technology to shoot a missile or a rocket. Let's say you have someone in a eight-story building, and they're on the third floor in apartment 537, 437, third floor, that'd be 337. And over here on this side, they can put a guided missile right in that room and get the person in that room. And it doesn't even set the whole building on fire. Think of the technology, where'd that come from? It came from our Lord. He gave it to them, okay? And then men abuse it, but they aren't. They're defending themselves. Boy, they really are. Anyway, let's pray for Israel. Okay, now look, he's greater than any nation. He picks up on Lebanon, verse 15. And Lebanon, well, we better do verse 15. Behold, nations are as a drop of a bucket. You've heard that saying. It's like a drop of a bucket. That's biblical. You're quoting scripture. Okay. What does that mean? Okay. You're going to feed the hogs. So you got a bucket of hog slop. You're going to take it down. You're going to dump it in the trough. And then you're going to look in the bucket. Oh, there's a drop left on the bottom of the bucket. So you take the bucket, you turn it, you get your finger in there, you push that little drop all the way out of the bucket. No, you don't even think about that. You take it and you go back to the barn, whatever. God is saying whole nations are like a drop in my bucket. It doesn't mean anything. What else? They're counted as the small dust of the balance. They're counted like a speck of dust on a scale. So you ladies, maybe some of you remember the day, you go down to the grocery store, you're going to buy three pounds of tomatoes and there's this kind of a metal container here with some little chains hooking it up to this big scale. And so before you put your tomatoes in that to weigh them, you took that metal tray, you pick it up and you went, and you blew the dust off and then you weighed your tomatoes, right? No, no, it never entered your mind. You might be weighing some dust. It is so insignificant. That's what God is saying. Whole nations are like just a speck of dust to him. Now, what else does he say? Small dust on the balance. Behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. He can pick an island right up out of the ocean. Can you do that? God is saying, look, don't lose your perspective. We're coming up to an election in our country. It's probably the most important election we have ever had. Don't lose your perspective. Who is in control? Who raises up kings, tears them down? Okay. I encourage you to vote one way or the other. Verse 16, Lebanon. is not sufficient to burn, okay? Take a whole nation, put it up as a burnt offering, and the beast thereof, sufficient for a burnt offering. Take the whole nation and everything in it and burn it. It's nothing, God says. And then look what he says, verse 17. All nations before him are as nothing. They are counted to him as less than nothing. How much is less than nothing? I mean, that's nothing, nothing. How do you think about that? God says, take all the nations of the world. Take Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, United States. With all their nuclear weapons, who knows what they have? God says, you know what? Compared to me and my power, they are less than nothing. Let's not forget that. Let's remember who our God is, OK? Oh, woe is me. No, let's remember who our God is. So, all nations less than nothing. Verse 18, to whom then will you liken God or what likeness will you compare unto him? These are kind of like an artist's terms in the Hebrew. God said, OK, draw a picture of me. You can't do it. You can't draw a picture of God, OK? You can't paint a painting of God. That picture you have of Jesus at home, that's not a photograph, okay? That was some painter's idea. Nineteen, the workman melt. Now, he's going to say, look what you're doing, my people, you're doing this. The workman melts the graven image and the goldsmith spreads it over with gold and casts silver chains. He that is so impoverished that he has no ablation chooses a tree that will not rot. You can't even make idols that don't rot. Not only that, he seeketh him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image that shall not be moved. You can't even make your idols so they don't just get toppled over. Look at Dagon. What happened to Dagon? They put the Ark of the Covenant in there, and the next day the priest comes out. Where's Dagon? Boom. Flat on the floor. So they prop him up, come back the next day, boom, smashed on the floor. God is saying, you can't even make idols that don't rot and topple over, and I am everlasting. I am forever. Keep your perspective. Remember who God is. Verse 21, have ye not known? Yeah, the answer is yes, you have. Have you not heard? Oh, yes, they had heard it from the beginning. Hath it not been told you from the beginning? Yes, it had. Yep, they had it all. Matter of fact, I really believe in what's called the tablet theory. whereas the original Genesis, the accounts were written down. And you can just check that out. I may get to that before the week is over. I think Moses had all those written accounts and put them together in, really, That's a different subject, let's keep going here. Hath it not been told you from the beginning, have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? They did, they understood, they were willfully going in a different direction. They had jurisdictional areas in their hearts they had not given to God. It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, or the sphere of the earth, or the vault of the earth. And the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers, that stretches," he stretches out the heavens, I think that helps with the speed of light problem, he stretched it out. Things were closer together, he moved them out. as a curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. He that bringeth princes to nothing, he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. These men that think they're so great and they're nothing compared to God. And they're supposed to deal righteously with the people. So now we have corrupt judges all over everywhere in our country, corrupt judges. They go against our very constitution. What? Well, why? Because we let them do it. We let them do it. The average Christian is silent. We can't be silent anymore. We got to speak up. Shout it from the mountaintops. Jesus is God. There is a right way and a wrong way. Verse 24, yea, they shall not be planted. Yea, they shall not be sown. Yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth. And he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither. Well, the most powerful person to ever live on planet Earth other than Jesus will be the Antichrist. How does God get rid of him? 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2, God gets rid of this powerful man that controls the whole world for seven years and then he stands before God and God goes, and that's the end of him. That's what he's saying right here. That's what he does, okay? He blows upon them, and they're gone. And the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. Then again, he reminds them, to whom then will you liken me? Or shall I be equal, saith the Holy One? And he is holy. Now he goes here, lift up your eyes on high and behold, who hath created these things? It's written in italics here and King James is referring to the stars. You can check that out in Psalm 147 verse 4. These stars that bringeth out their host by number. God knows how many stars there are. Do you? Does anybody? No. He calls them all by names. Okay, now there's a company that has decided to us gullible people, they're going to, if we'll pay them a fee, they'll name a star after us, OK? What we do with them, God already named the stars, they have a name. OK, you young people, if not one of them is missing, not one fails, what's a supernova? God says, I have a name for all of them, not one of them is gone. Something's still there after a supernova that still has the name of that star. Some of you young people, you're interested in astronomy, go to the Bible first, and then go out and look at things. Verse 27, why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel? See, these are God's people. We're God's people right now. My way is hid from the Lord. Why are you saying that? In other words, well, God doesn't know about me. God's not concerned about me. God's not involved with me, okay? No, he says, why are you saying such a thing? And you're saying things like, my judgment is passed over from my God. He's just kind of passed over me. No, he hasn't. No, he hasn't. He knows exactly where you are. He knows exactly what's going on with you. and he wants you to not forget who he is and not lose your perspective on all this. Okay, verse 28, hast thou not known? Here's the same question. You know, you know, hast thou not heard? Yep, yep, yep, you have, that the everlasting God, our eternal heavenly Father, the Lord, The creator, so it's got Jesus in here too, of the ends of the earth, he created it all. He fainteth not, neither is weary. There's no searching of his understanding. He doesn't wear out. He's involved. He is concerned. He loves us. He loves you. He giveth power to the faint and to them that have no might. He increases strength. Lord, I can't handle this. It's gone on so I just can't do it anymore. God said, oh yeah, you can. My grace is sufficient for you. Come on, let's get our heart right. Let's get straightened up here. Trust me, I love you. Yep, we're going to get through this. Some of you could give testimony to a lot of that already, things God has brought you through. You didn't think you could make it, but here you are. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and young men shall utterly fall. Get the strongest ones you've got out there. They're nothing compared to me. Now look what he says. But they that shall wait upon the Lord. That's hard to do. Wait upon the Lord. Shall renew their strength. By the way, that Hebrew word renew there is the word for exchange. What happens if we exchange me for Jesus? Put off that old flesh, put on the Lord Jesus. That's really what he's talking about. He said, they wait upon the Lord, they shall renew their strength. It's now not my strength. I've exchanged my feeble strength for the strength of Almighty God. They shall mount up. When we do that, what happens here? They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. And they shall walk and not faint. This, here's the idea here. Peter's in prison. He's chained, okay? The angel comes. The chains fall off. The angel says, Peter, put your sandals on. I mean, if He can make the chains fall off, why can't He make the sandals go on? You see, there's some things only God can do, but there's some things He expects us to do. One of those things is to receive Him as our Savior. He expects us to do that. He doesn't do that for us. We have to make a decision. Lord Jesus, I'm trusting in you. I'm trusting in your shed blood, your death on the cross. I'm trusting that you truly were raised up from the dead. I have put my trust in you. I was 27 years old when I did that, after being raised in an independent fundamental Baptist church in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. Didn't want anything to do with any of that because I saw all the hypocrisy among the people that called themselves Christians, okay? I don't want any part of that. But then at 27, I started looking at Jesus instead of people. And that's what we need to do. So our God is telling us, keep your perspective. Don't lose it because you can trust me. Are we trusting him? Are you personally trusting him? Nothing is impossible for him. Let's pray. Father, I just thank you that you're right here with us. You always are. You never leave us or desert us or abandon us. I thank you for this room full of people here today. And I pray if someone is here and they need Jesus as their Savior, they know it, and they've been putting it off for various reasons, all of them selfish, that they will today, they will today just turn all that, turn their back, repent, change direction from the world to you and put their trust in Jesus. And I pray for my brothers and sisters, Father, that we would all never forget who you are and never forget. You are our comforter. You live, you reside in us through your spirit. Nothing is impossible for you. So help us to be out shouting from the mountaintops, Jesus is God, Jesus is the Savior, and many will be saved in Jesus' name.