Good morning, everyone. Welcome here to our morning service at Calvary Baptist Church of Trehearne. It's nice to be in the House of Lord on the first day of the week. Please open your hymnals on number 132. 132. He lives. 132. Our Lord and Savior is in the world today. I know that He is living, whatever may be said. I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer. And just the time I meet Him, He's always near. He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way. He lives, He lives, salvation to impart. You ask me how I know He lives. He lives within my heart. In all the world around me I see His loving care. I know my heart through weary I never will despair I know that He is leading Through all the stormy clouds That in the midst of the rain Will come a flood He lives, He lives Christ Jesus lives today He walks with me and talks with me A long life's narrow way He lives, He lives Salvation to impart You ask me how I know He lives Rejoice, rejoice, O Christian, lift up your voice and sing Eternal hallelujahs to Jesus Christ, the King The hope of all who seek Him, the help of all who find None other is so loving, so good and so kind Namaste Papaji. Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful again for reminding us, even through this song, that we have a risen Savior, and we're thankful that we can also make the claim that He lives within my heart. We're thankful for the forgiveness of sin that is available through the blood of Thy Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thankful that we can know Thy peace and have Thy truth in our hearts. We pray for our country of Canada. We pray for our Prime Minister, for his cabinet, for the opposition parties. We pray for our provincial governments, as well as our municipal governments. Pray for the salvation of many. We pray, Father, for boldness to be willing to speak to them the truth and to help them to understand the importance of thy truth in their hearts and lives. We pray also for the nation of Israel. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem. We pray for the Philippines. We pray for our meetings that we have there, that we can be a help to the people. Pray for those that are listening to us or watching us from across the world, different countries. pray that our connection would be good, that people can catch the entire service and not be cutting in and out, and that we can be a help and a blessing to others. We thank Thee, Father, for the opportunities that there are to do good in the midst of a wicked world. And I pray that we would do that and seek to help others to know thy peace and blessing. Guide us here. We pray for each one listening. If anyone is lost, that they might see their need to repent toward thee. Be forgiven and saved through the blood of thy son. And we just ask that we would glorify thee in all that we say and do. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. And turn with me in 282. 282. Hiding in the 282. O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? So sinful, so weary, Thine the heart would I be, Thou blest Rock of Ages. ♪ In sorrow's long hour ♪ ♪ In times when temptations ♪ ♪ Calls o'er me its power ♪ ♪ In the tempest of life ♪ ♪ On its wide-leaping sea ♪ ♪ Thou blest rock of ages ♪ I'm hiding in Thee. Hiding in Thee. Hiding in Thee. Thou blest rock of ages, I'm rising when praised by the foe. I have fled to my refuge and read out my woe. How often with trials like sea millows roll, am I hidden in My soul And over to 472. 472. Heavenly sunlight. 472. Walking in sunlight, all of my journey, over the mountains, through the deep vale. Jesus, I said, I'll never forsake Thee, promise divine that never can fail. Heavenly sunlight, heavenly sun, with glory divine hallelujah i am rejoicing singing his praises jesus is mine shadows around me shadows above me never conceal my savior and god Heavenly sunlight, heavenly sunlight Lighting my soul with glory divine I am rejoicing, singing His praises, Jesus is mine. In the bright sunlight, ever rejoicing, Praising my way to mansions above, Singing His praises, Gladly I'm walking, walking in sunlight, sunlight of love. Heavenly sunlight, heavenly sunlight, flooding my soul with glory. ♪ I am rejoicing, singing His praises ♪ Jesus is mine. Take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Isaiah. We're coming near the end of that book. We're in Isaiah chapter 64. I'm going to be reading there from verses six through eight this morning, Isaiah chapter 64. If you have that, then please stand. We'll read that together. Isaiah chapter 64, beginning there at verse 6, it says, But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf. And our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee. For thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us because of our iniquities. But now, O Lord, thou art our Father. We are the clay, and thou our potter. and we all are the work of thy hand. Come on in, please. Mrs. Ennis, come on in and close the door. Thank you. Heavenly Father, we are thankful this morning that we have thy word. We thank thee for the privilege that we have of reading thy word, the blessing that it is for us to be reminded that there is nothing good in ourselves that the best that we can do is counted as an unclean rag in thy sight. And how important it is for us to understand that we need thee, we need thy son, the Lord Jesus Christ as our savior, before we can do anything good. And I pray that this would be understood today by each one that's listening how important it is. We know that the lost will take offense to this because pride gets in the way and people want to think, well, surely I can do something good. We know that our system, our school system and so on, is lying to people and brainwashing them into thinking that we need to protect people's self-esteem. And self-esteem is nothing more than lying or than pride. And we don't need to protect that. We need to slay that. We need to understand that there is nothing good in us outside of knowing Jesus Christ as Savior. I pray for those who are of that opinion. They're learning. They know some things. And they might think that they're fairly smart. but that they might understand that none of that matters unless they are saved. Because all the education a person gets if they don't know thee as their God and Savior, all that education is used for their own selfish ends. And we don't need that. We need to glorify thee. We were created to glorify thee. And so we pray, Father, that today might be the day when lost people listening to this message today would be saved, would see their need to turn to Thee in repentance and trust in the blood of Thy Son alone to save them. Do Thy work, we pray, that Thy will would be accomplished in this place and through the work of Thy Holy Spirit in the hearts and lives of each one listening. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. The title of the message this morning is, Is God Your Father? Is God Your Father? Now we know that in our lost and wicked world that many people today think that they are children of God. I listened to a doctor yesterday who is very smart when it comes to medical things. But that doctor is obviously a lost person because she talked about the Muslims and she talked about people who are not Muslims and she said, it doesn't matter what you believe, we're all children of God. And that's not true, that's a lie. That woman is deceived. Very deceived. We're not all children of God. We're all created. Man was created in the image of God, but we need to understand Genesis chapter three tells us that man fell. So man is not the same today as Adam and Eve were in the garden. We are fallen creatures. Yes, we still have that interest in spiritual things. Every person has a desire to worship. Most people worship themselves. You know, when the queen's body was being moved to Buckingham Palace, her daughter was standing there and waiting for that casket to go by. Keep in mind, the queen was dead. Her body was in a casket, and her daughter curtsied for her as she went into the castle. But you see, that didn't help anything for the queen. The queen's dead. She didn't see that. But you see, that daughter was, in a way, worshiping her mother. She's dead. It helps her nothing. That daughter would be better off to worship God, to know him and bow before him and worship him. And so we need to understand that the only way that God can be your father is if you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior. Then you are adopted into the family of God. You become one of his children. But apart from that, John chapter 8 verse 44, Jesus said to the Jews that believed on him, but they didn't believe on him as their savior. He said to them, ye are of your father, the devil. They didn't like that, but they needed to understand there's only two sides. You're either on God's side or you're on the devil's side. and the only way to get onto God's side is to be saved. We're all born lost sinners, we need to be saved. So we want to see first of all here from this passage today, man is unclean from conception. Man is unclean from conception. The word unclean there is a reference to the fact that we are sinners. It's not just that you are out as a mechanic and you got all greasy or you're out rolling in the grass or something else, but we're unclean inside. That's the concern. Jesus taught the importance of washing in the Old Testament. The priest needed to wash his clothes, he needed to wash himself before he went into the holiest place. The picture there was that the priest needed to be clean inside. God appointed and taught and commanded the outward washing as a picture of the inner washing that needs to take place. In John chapter 13, Jesus took off his outer garment and took a towel and he took a basin of water and he went and he washed the disciples' feet. There are some religious groups today that they practice foot washing. Some of them do it every week. Some of them do it whenever they have the Lord's Supper. They practice foot washing. But those same religious groups, if you follow their teaching, they don't follow the word of God. So you see they have taken an outward thing that Jesus did, but Jesus told his disciples when he was washing their feet, he's putting their feet in that basin, he's washing them, drying them, and he says, you don't know what I'm doing right now. He was washing their feet. They could see that. They felt it. But he says, you don't know what I'm doing right now. So obviously when Jesus was washing their feet physically, he was seeking to teach them a spiritual lesson that they could not grasp at that time. And that's important for us today as well. In Psalm 51, if you turn there in your Bibles, Psalm 51. Psalm 51 is a psalm that David was directed to write by God. After he sinned with Bathsheba, after he had murdered Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, and tried to bury all that, tried to hide it all, Nathan was sent by God to confront David with his sin. And after David finally acknowledged his sin, God directed him to write Psalm 51. And in Psalm 51, it says there in verse five, behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Now, David is not saying here that his mother committed adultery, and as a result of that adultery, David was born. He's not saying that. He's saying that his mother was a sinner and that he was conceived in sin. He was conceived as a lost sinner. Now, his mother was a godly woman, but the Bible says that we're sinners saved by grace. And the Bible tells us that even though my wife and I, we were Christians when our children were born, we were Christians when our children were conceived, yet our children were all conceived in sin. They had a sin nature from the moment of conception. There was never a time in our children's lives when they were pure from the moment of conception. They needed to come to the place of understanding they were lost and they needed to be saved. So did we. My wife and I, there was a day when we got saved. But we were born, we were conceived in sin, and we were born as lost sinners. We proved that by committing sin. Every child will prove that they are a sinner by committing sin. Many parents, it goes over their heads, they never see it, they never pay attention to it, they don't act on it, but that's the reality. Saved parents need to understand their children are sinners, they need to help them to see the importance of listening to God and being saved. They might praise them for cleaning up their room. They might praise them for taking out the garbage and different things, and that's all good. But they also need to be mindful their children are lost sinners who need to be saved. So in our text here, it says in verse six, but we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, And we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Everybody is born in sin. All our righteousnesses. Our world has many different opinions as to what is good. Our Prime Minister says that a person is good if he does what the Prime Minister says. But a person who doesn't agree with the Prime Minister is a bad person. He has said he doesn't know if we should tolerate those kinds of people. So according to our Prime Minister, over 65% of the people of Canada need to be wiped out. because he only got about 31 point something percent of the vote in the last election. So that's a lot of people that our Prime Minister says need to be out of here. If that were true, if that would be about 68 point some percent of the people removed from Canada, if that were to happen, his tax base would be much smaller. He wouldn't have the money coming in that he has now to blow, as he does. He'd be in big trouble. The deficit that Canada has, we'll never pay it back, even with all the taxpayers there are. But if he removed 68 point some percent of the people out of Canada, it's an impossible, this country would be bankrupt immediately. See, everybody has their own idea of what good is. But Jesus says, or God says here, all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. And that term there, filthy rags, is not talking about a grease rag. It's not talking about a rag where you cleaned up mud that someone has brought into your house when they walked in with their muddy shoes. This is talking about a menstrual rag. It's talking about something that I'm not going to go into detail because of the many ears that are listening, but it's talking about something that is filthy. That is, adults will understand it's filthy. It's something that we don't hang around with. It's something we discard. And that's what God says about our righteousnesses. We have none. There's nothing that we have that is of any value to God. You see, one of the things that the Bible teaches us is that God does not need us. If you go back into Genesis chapter one, we find there that God created man. It doesn't say there that God created man because God was lonely. It doesn't say that God created man because he needed man to look after the animals that he also created. It says that God created man for his glory. He created man to honor and glorify him. Anybody that gets saved, that's a blessing to that individual. But it doesn't make God complete. He already is complete. Heaven is big, and there's room for everybody on Earth in heaven. There's over 8 billion people, I'm told, living on this Earth now. All of those 8 billion people, plus the many billions that have died before us, all of them could fit into heaven. They're not all going to be there. Just a fraction of them will be there. But heaven is big. It's just like Canada. We're being told that Canada is becoming too populated. There's too many people in Canada. Canada is a big country. The Philippines is much smaller than Canada. The population of the Philippines is bigger than Canada's population. And yet the people in the Philippines can all live. They don't live as well as we do, but part of that is because of their pagan culture. But they're all living. In Canada, we have lots of land. Problem isn't that we have too many people. The problem in Canada and in every country is the lack of the knowledge of God. The lack of knowing him, that's where the problem is. And so it tells us here in verse six, it says, and we all do fade as a leaf. The leaves on the trees right now, if you've noticed, they're starting to turn color. You notice that? Starting to turn color. It wasn't that many months ago, April, May, when we saw the leaves coming on the trees. Remember that? But now they're starting to turn color. In our garden, our tomato plants, the leaves are turning color. Our potatoes are done. Our beets are done. But the other crops are still there. I mean, my wife was saying this week that you can see the pumpkins now much easier because the plants are starting to die back. And so as they die back, the leaves kind of lay down now and we can see the pumpkins. God says that's the way we as people are. It says, we all do fade as a leaf. There was a day when I could run around and jump and play like Jeremy does. I had all kinds of energy, or like Jethro and Abigail. I had lots of energy. I could do all kinds of things, could crawl around different places. I remember working for my neighbor, and he had arthritis. He was probably in his late 50s at that time. And he needed some stuff fixed in the top of his barn. And so he asked me to do that. And so I got up on the ladder, and I climbed up there. And then I climbed from the one rung to the next rung. And he says, boy, you know, I can't do that. How can you get around like that? Well, yeah, one time he probably could do that. But he was not in that kind of shape anymore. But today, if I was to do that same thing today, I maybe would still get up there, but it would take me a lot longer. I think Ronnie would get up there a lot quicker than I would. Because you see, as we get older, we're fading as a leaf. We're losing our senses. We're losing our ability to see well. We're losing our hearing. Our minds are not as sharp as they used to be. We don't walk as well as we used to. We're fading. That's the reality. And God wants us to understand that. You know, there are people that are going around looking for the fountain of youth. Let me tell you something, there is no fountain of youth. Some people, they age slower than other people, but every person is getting older. The Bible says so. We all do fade as a leaf. That's the reality. But notice also what it says. And our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. So why is it that we fade as a leaf? Why is it that man dies? It's because of sin. Our iniquities, iniquities is sin. You see, if you go back in your Bibles to the book of Genesis, chapter two, Genesis chapter two, and Genesis chapter two is before man fell. And in Genesis chapter 2 and verse 15 it says there, and the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. Now pay attention to verse 17. It says there, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat, for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. I'm gonna read that verse again because there's a lot of people that don't pay attention to this verse. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat, for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Hm? Which two words? But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. If you look at the front of my computer, which all of you can see there, except maybe one, but you'll notice on that computer there's an apple, right? And that apple has a bite out of it, right? And you know that most people, many people at least, believe that the tree that God was told Adam not to eat of was an apple tree. But if you paid attention to what I read, what was the name of that tree? The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's not called an apple tree. It's not called a cherry tree. It's not a plum tree. It's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, the founder of Apple was a Buddhist. He's dead. He died of liver cancer. He had a liver transplant, and that stretched out his life, extended his life for a few years, but he still died. You see, he proved God to be right, that we all fade as a leaf. But he also, he didn't understand that it was his sin and his sin nature that is the reason why we die. Adam was warned here that he was going to die the day that he would eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In Genesis chapter 3 we see that Adam ate of that fruit and we see in that chapter that Adam died. Now We go on and we read in Genesis chapter 5 that it says in verse 3, it says, and Adam lived 130 years and begat a son in his own likeness after his image and called his name Seth. And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were 800 years and he begat sons and daughters. And all the days that Adam lived were 930 years and he died. Now if we go back to chapter 4, And we read in verse 25, it says, and Adam knew his wife again, and she bare a son, and called his name Seth. For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. So in chapter 5, as we read already, that Adam was 130 years old when his wife gave birth to Seth. Adam was not 130 years old when he sinned in the garden. Because before he gave birth to Seth, he gave birth to Cain, and he gave birth to Abel. And yet it says in our text in Genesis 2, that in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. What's God talking about? He's not talking about physical death. He's talking about spiritual death. Adam was created unique, Adam and Eve were both created unique, but Adam is the one that God accused and credited with the sin of man, not Eve. Adam was responsible, Adam sinned, and you and I are born sinners because of Adam, not because of Eve. So the minute that Adam died, or Adam sinned against God, that very day, he died spiritually. The evidence we have in our text is that Adam and Eve, they both understood that they were naked, which they didn't understand before, they didn't see that, they didn't recognize that, but now they were naked. And we see there that the nakedness of Adam and Eve was more than just the fact that they didn't have any clothes on. And we know that because Adam and Eve sold themselves fig leaves and they had aprons. But even with those aprons on, they couldn't stand before God. They had to hide themselves. And God made coats of skin for them to cover them. But even then, they were still not covered properly by God, in God's presence. God sent them out of the garden. They could no longer live in that garden. That covering was only an atonement. It was something that covered them, but Adam and Eve, just like Abel, and just like Noah, and just like David, and Daniel, and all the rest of the Old Testament saints, would be kept in paradise after they died and would need to wait until the Lord Jesus Christ came to this earth and went to the cross and shed his blood on that cross. And then he went down into paradise and delivered the souls of the saints out of captivity, it says, and brought them into heaven. Because the Bible says the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin. It had to be the blood of Jesus Christ to be able to take the sin away. In the Old Testament, saints, that's why you see in the Old Testament the word atonement many times. And the word atonement means a covering. And so those who believed in God in the Old Testament, like Abel and like Noah, and David and Daniel and many others. Those people, because they believed in God, their sins were atoned for. They were covered. But those like Cain, even though Jesus Christ also died for the sins of Cain, Cain never accepted Jesus Christ as Savior. His sins were never covered in the Old Testament. They were exposed and he is in torment and will be there for all of eternity. He's been in torment now for over 4,000 years, and he's going to be there forever. Think about that. So when we look at our text again, the Bible is reminding us and warning us that we're all born as lost sinners, And in and of ourselves, our sins are taking us away. Our sins are taking us away. That's the danger for lost people. The saved, if you go in your Bibles to Luke chapter 16, Luke chapter 16 verses 19 through 31 is not a parable. Some people say this is another one of Jesus' parables. A parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. Luke chapter 16 verses 19 to 31 is not an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. It is a fact. So it tells us there in verse 19, it says, there was a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus which was laid at his gate full of sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried." You notice the difference there? The beggar died. And he was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. He was carried. In our text it says that our iniquities have taken us away. But the rich man was carried. He was carried, God was watching over him even after, not the rich man, the beggar. Even after the beggar died, God was still watching over his soul. but the rich man died and was buried. And you notice the very next thing that it tells us about the rich man in verse 23. It says, and in hell. Immediately when the rich man died, he was in hell, in torment. That's where lost people go, immediately when they die. They're in hell. But Lazarus, on the other hand, it tells us the poor man, he was resting in Abraham's bosom. And Abraham's bosom in that text is a picture, it's a type. It's being used here by God to speak of paradise. It's being used to speak of the good side of paradise. Because we read in that passage that there was a gulf fixed between where Abraham and Lazarus were and where the rich man was. In heaven there is no gulf. In heaven we don't see, we don't hear the cries of the wicked. We don't have any memory of them either. It's gone. Heaven is a different place than where Abraham was at the time in Luke chapter 16, because keep in mind, in Luke chapter 16, Jesus hadn't gone to the cross yet. So paradise could not be emptied, the good side could not be emptied until after Jesus went to the cross. That's when he set captivity free. So back in our text again in Isaiah, but we are all as an unclean thing and all our righteousness is as a filthy rag or as filthy rags. And we all do fade as a leaf and our inequities like the wind have taken us away. The wind blows. If there's a leaf laying there, it blows the leaf around. If there's a plastic bag laying there, it blows the bag around. If there's a cardboard box laying there, it blows that around. If there's a strong enough wind, it starts to blow heavier things around. But it just blows them wherever. You watch something that's being blown by the wind. It bounces this way, it bounces there. If it gets caught up in a tree, it sits there for a while. And then maybe the wind gets a little stronger and the tree is shaking and the thing lets go and blows somewhere else. And you know, that's how it goes with the wind. It just blows it around. And that's how it is with the lost, their soul. God is not careful with that soul. That soul goes to hell. But the saved person, God is watching over that soul. The second thing that we need to understand is that nobody is looking for God. Look in verse 7 of our text, it says, And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee, For thou hast hid thy face from us and has consumed us because of our iniquities. In Romans chapter three, Romans chapter three, the Apostle Paul was directed to remind us again, see that's the one thing about the Bible. That's why we don't need to have a stack of other books The Bible is the best commentary on the Bible, and the Bible covers everything that man needs to consider. It's all there. And in Romans chapter three, it tells us in verse 10, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. None that seeketh after God. Now you may argue and say, no, that's not true, I was looking for God. You know why you were looking for God? Because he was merciful and he was drawing you to himself. Without that reality, you would not have been looking for God, neither would I. But the fact is that God is drawing everybody to himself. The Bible tells us that every individual is born with a conscience. And in that conscience, that's why when you see a young child, And you will notice that when that young child sins, that child cannot look you straight in the face. That child generally will start to turn red and blush. They will try to avoid the sin that they've committed. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to address it. They don't want you to address it with them. They're guilty and they know it. because they have a conscience. Now what we're finding in our world today, which the Bible also tells us about, is that many people have a seared conscience. Many children have a seared conscience because their parents are training them to have a seared conscience. And when they lie, instead of the parent confronting them about the lie and helping them to understand that lying is sin, the parents just brush it off. Why? Because the parents are liars themselves. And they don't understand the importance of truth. And so they don't help their children, but they encourage their children to sin. Someone talked to me about that this week and I said, I'm not an enabler. An enabler is someone who comes alongside someone who's doing wrong and encourages them to do wrong. An enabler is someone who does that in many ways. He doesn't necessarily say, that's really good that you lied, you should keep doing that. But when you go up to a person that is doing wrong and you say, I feel sorry for you, I'll pray for you, you're an enabler. Because when we look at the Bible, we see that God confronts sin. Jesus didn't just tell the Pharisees, I'm gonna pray for you. He pointed out what the Pharisees did wrong. God sent, in the time of Pharaoh, he sent a man to Egypt by the name of Joseph. And Joseph was sent to, first of all, to Potiphar's house, and he was a slave of Potiphar. And then he was accused of being immoral with Potiphar's wife, which was a lie, and he ended up in jail, in prison. And he spent several years in prison. During his time in prison, Pharaoh was angry with two of his servants. One was the baker, the other was the butler. And those servants were in prison, and eventually Pharaoh had a birthday, and he threw a birthday party. And during that birthday party, he was thinking about his baker and his butler. And he decided, I'm going to hang my baker on a tree, and I'm going to give my butler his job back. And the butler and the baker, they both had dreams. And they dreamt about something similar to that in their dreams, and they didn't understand their dreams. And Joseph was in prison at that time, and he was a godly man, and so he understood there was something wrong with the butler and the baker. Their countenance was showing that there was something bothering them. So he asked them what the problem was, and they told him their dreams. And Joseph, being a man of God, God gave him the ability to interpret those dreams, and he told them, told the baker, You're going to be three days, Pharaoh's going to have a birthday, and he's going to call you up out of prison. He's going to hang you. And the butler, well, he told the butler his first, and the butler says, yeah, I had a dream, too, and here's my dream. And Joseph says, well, in your dream, Pharaoh's going to have his birthday in three days. You're going to be called up. You're going to get your job back. You're going to be his butler again. And it happened exactly the way Joseph said, because God gave those men their dreams. And Joseph said to the butler, when you get your job back, don't forget about me. Let Pharaoh know that I shouldn't be here. But the butler forgot all about him. He had his job back. That's all that mattered. Until God gave Pharaoh a dream. I believe it was two years later. Pharaoh got a dream, two dreams. He couldn't understand them. He called for his wise men. His wise men couldn't understand them. And then the butler remembered, there's a man that I met in prison. He told me my dream. And it came to pass exactly the way he interpreted it. And Pharaoh called for that man, Joseph. And Joseph prepared himself and went in before Pharaoh. And the first thing that he told Pharaoh was that there's a God in heaven that interprets dreams. He didn't let Pharaoh get the idea that he was so smart. He wanted Pharaoh to know that there's a God in heaven who interprets dreams. And God had been preparing Joseph all those years before. to stand before Pharaoh and to remind Pharaoh there's a God in heaven that he needed to know. Joseph was not an enabler. He didn't just come alongside Pharaoh and says, yeah, I understand that you've got some trouble and you're not sleeping well. I'll pray for you. You see, in the Bible, God expects his children to help the ungodly, to see the importance of knowing the true God. Because as we look in our text, it says, and there is none that calleth upon thy name. And that's the reality. You see, lost people, they don't know who God is. There's a lot of lost people that talk about God. There's a lot of lost people that talk about Jesus. And the Bible warns us that there are false Christs. And there are many people today, even many who claim to be Christians, but they don't know who God is, and they don't know who Jesus is. And you can tell that if you listen to them. They don't know who Jesus is. They have a Jesus, but they don't have the true Jesus. And they prove that they don't know the true Jesus because, as I mentioned in Sunday school, they get offended when someone tells them the truth. That's not the nature of a true child of God. And so, God doesn't want us to be enablers. He wants us to help others. And Isaiah here was not an enabler. He was seeking to help his people, the Jews. to see where they were at. And the context again of this chapter is talking about the time when Israel will recognize this, and that'll be at the end of the tribulation. But he says here, there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee, for thou hast hid thy face from us, and has consumed us because of our iniquities. See, again, too many people, their theology is backwards, twisted. We assume that if God is chastening a person, they must be his child. And yet here in verse seven, it says here, Thou hast hid thy face from us and has consumed us because of our iniquities. The nation of Israel in the days of Isaiah was not a saved nation. The nation of Israel today is not a saved nation. Most of the Jews today are lost. We have a member of parliament on the conservative side that's been elected in the last election, I believe, is when she was elected. She's a sodomite, and I didn't know it till this week, but she's a Jew as well. She's quite proud of the fact that she's a sodomite. She's the one that is doing a lot of speaking in Parliament, and so the new leader of the Conservative Party has put her as part of his leadership team, a sodomite. She's not saved. She's a Jew. And here in verse seven, Isaiah is writing about the unsaved Jews, those that Jesus, that God has hid his face from. and they're being consumed because of their iniquities. God has his way of doing things and I don't understand everything about God. Some people seem to cruise through life, some lost people seem to cruise through life. Everything seems to go fairly well. They make money, They get married, they have children, they have grandchildren, sometimes even get to see their great-grandchildren. Everything seems to go fairly well. The next lost person, boy, they have a tough life. Nothing seems to go well for them. Families don't go well, nothing goes well for them. But they're both lost. Yes, God does chasten his children. It's true. But we need to be careful that we don't confuse the chastening of the saved with the chastening of the lost. It's a big difference. And we need to understand that. That's why it's so important to study God's Word, to be careful that we're speaking truth, to help people to know the truth. And the third thing that we want to look at here is, who is your father? Who is your father? In verse eight, it says, but now, notice that, but now, O Lord, thou art our father, we are the clay, and thou our potter, and we all are the work of thy hand. This is talking, as we said already before, this is talking about the end of the tribulation when the nation of Israel is going to be saved. Right now, we have individual Jews across the world that are saved. But the nation of Israel is lost. The prime minister is lost, the president is lost. The police force is lost for the most part. Most of the Jews are lost. Sad to say. But now, oh Lord, thou art our father. See, when a person is saved, their family lineage is transferred from the devil as their father to God as their father. It's an adoption. They have a different father. And not only that, but they take on the characteristics of that new father, different than physical adoption. They don't become little gods. but they begin to think and behave the way God intended man to think and behave. They're different. And those who are saved, unlike an earthly adoption as well, a child that is adopted, generally when they get older, they wanna know, wonder who my real father is. I wonder who my birth mother is. And some of them will go to quite a lot of time and trouble to try to find their birth father and birth mother. That's normal. But once we're saved, we're not trying to find our original father. We're not trying to see what the devil, who he is and what he was like. The Bible already tells us that. We want to get as far away from that as we can. We want to draw nigh to God because we're now his children. And so if God is our father, it says here, we are the clay, and thou our potter. When you take a lump of clay, and if you have clay, you don't want that as the top coat on your road. Clay becomes very hard. when it's dry. But when it rains, it's very slimy. And if we had clay on the top of our roads, if it rained, you wouldn't be going anywhere. You'd be ending up in the ditch if you tried to drive. Because clay is very slippery. It also sticks to your feet. Hard to walk in. But clay does not have a mind of its own. It's clay, it's dirt, type of dirt. And so the nation of Israel says here of them, they're going to understand we are the clay and thou are potter. Now if you think back in the nation of Israel's history, you find that when they were still in Egyptian bondage and Moses was called by God to speak to Pharaoh to release them. And when Moses went to talk to Pharaoh, what did Pharaoh do after Moses first talked to him? You remember what Pharaoh did? He made things harder for them, didn't he, for the nation of Israel? And what did the children of Israel do to Moses when they discovered that it was because he had talked to Pharaoh that things were harder for them? What did they do? They blamed Moses, didn't they? They said, God hold you accountable for what's going on here. You see, Israel, the children of Israel, they were thinking, but they were thinking wrong. They were like the clay telling the potter what to do. And here in our text, it tells us that when God becomes your father, you don't tell God what to do. You understand that he's the potter. You see, one of the things that we're finding in our world, it's not new to our time, but one of the things is that most people have been brainwashed. We don't like that language, but that's a fact. We have been groomed, we have been trained by a secular, ungodly school teacher, politician, many parents, We have been trained to think that we know what is a good lifestyle and what is a bad lifestyle. And so then things come along, and even for a person that's saved, and things go difficult for us, and well, why is God doing this to us? And that's a good question to ask. Maybe there's sin in my life that God wants me to get rid of. But we need to be careful in that and saying that this is really not fair, God, you shouldn't be doing this. Someone said that recently about things that are going on around us right now. You know, this is just not, nobody should have to put up with that. Really? We're gonna tell God that, you know, maybe you're not doing things right, God? And the fact is that we are the clay and God is the potter. And those that are saved as a nation of Israel will be at the end of the tribulation. They will enter into the millennium with the understanding that Jesus Christ is the potter and they are the clay. And Jesus Christ has the right to establish the order under which man should live. just as God did in Genesis chapter one and two, God set the order as to how man is supposed to live. And Adam said to God, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna listen to the devil. He found out that wasn't a wise move, but yet his children, Cain did the same thing. He said, no, I'm gonna listen to the devil. Cain's children did the same thing. They said, no, I'm gonna listen to the devil. In Noah's time, most of the people said, no, I'm gonna listen to the devil. And today as well, most people say the same thing. But you see, when God becomes our father, we have to understand that. And the word of God makes it very clear to us that we are the clay, he's the potter. And it says, we all are the work of thy hand. Now stop and think about that statement. Now we know that the context here is a nation of Israel at the end of the tribulation declaring that they are now the work of God's hand. Think about that today in our time that we're living right now. A person claims to be a Christian. curses and swears, loves rock music, walks around with a cigarette in his mouth, bottle of beer, and he says, I am God's handiwork. Does that make sense? Does that really make sense? Can any true born-again Christian say, yeah, I can see that that's not the way I live, but yeah, he says he's a Christian. He must be one, because he says so. See, what we do is we ignore what God says and we say, yeah, but the man says he's a Christian. And that trumps what God says. And then when someone comes along and says, now wait a minute, let's look at what God actually says, that person becomes the bad person. Very interesting. But God gives us these words here to help us to consider the nation of Israel is going to come to the place where they're going to say, you're our father. Talking to God, they're going to understand he's their father. And the question that we need to ask ourselves today, who is your father? Is God really your father? You know, it always amazes me when a young child walks up to their father and says, no daddy, I'm not going to do that. Always amazes me, this little twerp, you know, maybe two feet high, stands there and looks at his father and says, no. Think about that. How do we get to that place of arrogance? Where a little child, you see, that's again a picture of the sinfulness of man. to think that that little child is going to tell their grown-up father, no, I'm not doing that. And some of them, they holler and scream, and daddy doesn't know what to do, and he's looking around, well, what can I buy them? What can I get them to kind of quiet them down? We don't understand. You don't, you're not an enabler, you need to be a helper. And you don't help that child by giving them a reward for defying you. And God never gives us a reward for defying him. He helps us to see the need to repent, to know his forgiveness, and to honor him. So I trust that as we continue to study God's word that we will allow him to be our father, to be the authority. He is the authority, but we need to submit to him. We need to let him change our thinking to make sure that our thinking is in line with what he says. And when we do that, we can know his blessing and we can also help others to know his blessing. That's what he wants. That's what he saves people for. He saves us to be able to help others to see that they too can be blessed if they turn to him and know him. New evangelicalism is such a poison. It's such a wicked thing. that needs to be exposed. And people need to know the truth. So if you're listening today, and you're one of those who says, I'm a Christian, but you are living for the world, you need to stop and think. You need to stop and listen to what God's word says. And you need to get saved today instead of waiting until it's eternally too late. Turn to God today in repentance, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone to save you, and begin to walk with God, with him as your potter, and you as the clay. For those of us that are saved, we need to be careful as well. We need to take God's word as our authority. Every one of us needs to take 2 Corinthians 10, verses 3 through 6 very seriously and consider that every thought we have must be taken into captivity by God. We need to let God correct our thinking so that it aligns with his word. We need to follow him. That's the way of blessing. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we're thankful for thy word. Thankful that the nation of Israel is there in their land today, that thou hast not forgotten about them, and that one day they are going to know thee as their God and their Father. And we pray that again today, we pray that many Jews would get saved in these days of grace, that they'd not have to go through the terrible suffering that is coming in the time of the tribulation. We pray for many Gentiles as well that they also would see the need to be saved today and not have to go through the suffering that's coming in the tribulation and the suffering that is eternal in hell. Pray for those that are saved today that we would walk humbly with thee and allow thee to direct us that we could be a help to others, that they could know thy forgiveness and truth. May thy will be accomplished, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.