They never let that go when you hear His voice. Isaiah chapter 28 this morning, we're looking at a people who God was directly speaking to, and we're going to look at that this morning and just see what we can draw from it. So if you have your Bibles, open to Isaiah chapter 28, we're gonna read verse one down to verse 22 together, and then we will begin breaking that down as we do. So if you would stand with me as we read Isaiah chapter 28, beginning in verse one. It says, Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine. Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hell and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet, and the glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer, which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand, he eateth it up. And that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people. and for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate. But they also have erred through wine and through strong drink, are out of the way. The priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean. Whom shall teach knowledge, and whom shall he make to understand doctrine, them that are weaned from milk and drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little. For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people, to whom he said, this is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing, yet they would not hear. But the word of the Lord was unto them, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little, that they might go and fall backward and be broken and snared and taken. Wherefore, hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem, because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death. And with hell are we at agreement. When the overflowing skirt shall pass through, it shall not come unto us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation, he that believeth shall not make haste. Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet. And the hell shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand when the overflowing scourge shall pass through. Then ye shall be trodden down by it. From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you, for morning by morning shall it pass over, and day by day, and by night, and it shall be a vexation only to understanding the report. For the bed is shorter than the man can stretch himself on it, and the covering narrower than he can wrap himself in it. For the Lord shall rise up, as in Mount Parazim. He shall be wroth, as in the valley of Gibeon, and that he may do his work, his strange work, and bring to pass his act, his strange act. Now, therefore, be ye not mockers, lest your bans be made strong, for I have heard from the Lord God of hosts a consumption even determined upon the whole earth. Let's pray. Father, I ask now that you would help me to articulate the truths that you would desire to be shared from your word this morning, Lord God. Please be heard, and just have your Holy Spirit move among us. We thank you for all you do for us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, chapter 28 of Isaiah, as you saw, covers a whole lot of territory. There's a lot of things that we could talk about in here, but it really could be summed up in one question, which is also the title, and that is this. What are you building? What are you building? Who here has built a house? I mean, I know Brother Ron has like literally built houses, and a bunch of them, I imagine. How many houses have you built? Do you keep track of that? No, he said, no, it's just beyond what you can do. But who here has had a house built? I mean, several people probably have. Who here has bought a house before? You own a house, or you rent a house, or you lease a house, right? You have an apartment, whatever. So you have these buildings that we live in, and we have a purpose for them, right? And the desire is for us to enjoy the building in which we live. So my wife and I, we have moved a lot. So we were married in Indiana. We lived there for like a year. And then I joined the army. She stayed there. And then I moved her to California for like two years. And then we moved back to Indiana for about another six years. And then I moved her to Ohio for about five years and then back to Indiana for six years. And now we've been here for three years. So we've been like all over the place. So we keep getting these houses. and we never really get to enjoy them, right? Because I always make her buy broke down houses because I'm like, oh, we can fix this and we can do this and we can do that and we can adjust this and we can knock out a wall here and we can do this. And so, you know, here we are on our like, I think this is just the third house we've owned, but like the seventh one we've lived in or something. I don't know what it's in, but it's the third one we've owned. And again, we live with no flooring down on the first level. The top's finished. The kids' rooms are great. We have carpet down up there. We have their rooms all painted, all decorated. We have a guest room. It looks nice. I've remodeled the half bath downstairs, put new tile in it and, you know, Wayne's coating and decorated it. I put tile in the laundry room and we've repainted the rest of the house except for the kitchen and the master bath. And then there's no flooring in that lower level. And so it's not exactly what you would want to live in at this point. And you think about that though, what do you want your house to look like? I mean think about right now you can make a house how you want it. I can tell you what mine would look like. It would be significantly different than my wife's I imagine. But you know we'll start off with it have a big kitchen. My wife likes to cook and I like to eat so yes we would have a big nice kitchen. We'd have a big you know eat-in kitchen there like a I don't know a dining bar or something that we could eat around and We'd have a big living room because I know that's important to my wife. We'd have a nice size dining room. All our bedrooms, who really cares about that? We'd have a massive master bathroom with a huge walk-in shower because that's just the way it should be, you know what I mean? Like the big rain heads, the big shower, like lots of water, right? You need it down here because you walk outside and you're dirty instantly because you start sweating. So you need to like just be able to push a button and it jets you all off instantly, right? Because that's how many showers you need a day down here. So you just, and it's like you're walking through a car. Maybe I would just have a walk-through car wash. Like, that'd be pretty sweet. So, I mean, I'm getting to pick my house right now, so I got that. Then I would have this massive, like, gun reloading room, okay? So, like, I would have my reloading table, my reloading bench. I would have, you know, like, something you could see through to see all my firearms, where I could probably covet after them more than I should, right? Anyway, so I'd be looking at them, like, oh, they're so nice. And then I'd have a spot in my living room where my elk heads were and my deer heads. and my turkeys and I got a full-size bear that's fully mounted that just sits in a storage garage right now so I need somewhere for that to go and it would be awesome and then you know I'd have a massive room for my wife's shoes and another room for all her watches because they both need their own rooms you know what I mean and so it wouldn't be bigger than we needed but it would be what we wanted and you know it would have these things that I would think about that house and that house would it would make me happy. Because it's got everything that I need. It would have a big garage with a lot of tools and to work on them too because you need to work on stuff and eventually the house is going to need repairs and I need somewhere to go to get all that stuff and I like working on things in the garage and tinkering on whatnot. When I really break it, I just call Brother Sean and I'm like, hey Brother Sean, I broke something that I was trying to fix. Can you fix this for me? I love having Brother Sean here. It's awesome. So that's what my house would look like. Hopefully at the same time you were building your house. So you imagine that I got this house and I really like it and it brings me a lot of joy. Well, when I get joy out of that house and something goes wrong with it, I'm not really mad about fixing something in it, right? I kind of want to take care of it and over time you like want to do upgrades and you want to do different things to it, right? And so you like it and so you are okay investing more into it. But if you have a house that you don't really like, you don't really want to invest in it, right? You have this house and you build it or you buy it and like it's all you could afford and you're like, well, you know, there's 12 of us and it's only 400 square feet, but we can make it work, right? You're not really that excited about pouring all your money into like, know 700 square feet or something like that if there's too many of you to fit in that house you're like let's save all the money we can and we'll put it into the next house or we'll save it for the next house and so when it's a house you love you're willing to give to it to help it to build it and when it's a house that you kind of despise if you will that has issues you kind of keep back from it Well, in our text, we see that going on. Look at verse 21 and verse 22 with me. That's really kind of the summation of what's going on here. There's a lot of building terminology as we lead up to this, but God is summarizing how he's going to handle the building once it's built up in verses 21 and verse 22, where it says this. It says, For the Lord shall rise up and mount Parazim. He shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work, and bring to pass his act, his strange act. Therefore be not mockers lest your bands be made strong for I have heard from the Lord God of hosts a consumption even determined upon the whole earth Well, what are these two verses talking about? Can anybody in here? I was just curious about this. So I thought I would ask does anybody know what happened to Paris him? All right. Can anybody remember what happened in the Valley of Gibeon? All right, so and they're only both mentioned really one time in the Bible in the Mount Parazim is So in verse, sorry, if you go to Joshua chapter 10, if you want to look there with me, you'll find what happened there in Gibeon. We'll look at that one first. But you'll find two... accounts of God doing incredible, tremendous works. So in Joshua chapter 10 and verse 12, it says, Well, Joshua here is a man who served God. He loved God. He followed God. He took over from Moses after Moses passed off the scene. And at this time, Joshua had led the Israelites and they defeated Jericho and then they defeated Ai and after the defeat of Ai the countries of the the nations of the the land around them saw Israel's coming in and they're kind of a scary place and so they get five kings together and they say ha ha we can get together and we're gonna destroy you Well, they go to war against Joshua and the Israelites, and we know God is helping Joshua and the Israelites, and they start destroying these five countries. And, you know, there's not enough time to kill enough people. So what does Joshua do? He does what any normal person would do. He says, son, stand thou still. And God does it. And then you jump down to Joshua chapter 10 and verse 13 and it says, So now you have a long, long day. There's people that are in California here. They're in America. They're natives to America. They're hanging out in California. And they're on the beach for 36 hours. They're like, man, this is a long day, right? The rest of the world, or maybe I guess it would have been a long night because it's on the other side of the world. They were all in their beds. They woke up. They're like, man, it's still nighttime. Let's go back to bed, right? And so they do that about 25 times, and now they've been sleeping for 40 hours, and they're like, oh, the sun finally came up. But there they are in the Middle East, right? And the sun is just up, and it's up, and it's up. Can you imagine a 24 hours extra of daylight? Like, that is an awesome, I love long days, but man, I could really use some 36 hour days. I would get so much more accomplished if every day was 36 hours. I mean, that would be wonderful. But God does that. Can you imagine such a mighty work? You pray to God and you're like, God, I need to get some more stuff done. Could you just go ahead and keep this up? And God does it. The other event happens to King David. It's found in 2 Samuel 5, verses 19 and 20. It says, and David inquired of the Lord, saying, shall I go up to the Philistines? Will thou deliver them into my hand? And the Lord said unto him, David, go up, for I will doubtless deliver the Philistines into thy hand. And David came to, here it is, Belparazim, it's the only place that Parazim is mentioned in the Bible other than the place we read it in Isaiah. And it says, and David smote them there and said, the Lord hath broken forth upon mine enemies before me as the breach of waters, therefore he called the name of the place Belparazim. And it simply means breaking forth of waters at Belparazim, and so it gets shortened to Parazim seemingly later on. David says, are we going to defeat the Philistines? And God says, you're going to defeat the Philistines and you are going to have victory. And they go and they fight the Philistines. And David says it was like God gushed forth water. It's like God broke a dam open and just absolutely annihilated the Philistines. And so we see two prayers here that God answers. He does these mighty, powerful things. And the point is unstated, but it's undeniable, and that is God is immutable, God is unchanging, God is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore, and the God of Joshua, and the God of David, the God that answered these wonderful, mighty prayers, He is the same God today, and He will work for you if you will build your house like He wants you to build it. Right, because if not, we see the opposite in verse 22. He says there's a consumption determined upon the whole earth. So either you're going to build your life in such a way to where God sees it like that house that you imagine that you want to do all the good to, only God's looking at us as his house and saying, I want to do that house good. Or he's looking at our house and he's saying, no, that is vile, it is broken, it is contemptible, it is not what I wanted. And he says, I will consume it. I will destroy it. It will have issues. And so the question for all of us is, what do we want? And I think the answer is, abundantly clear to each one of us, we want to see God's undeniable power. We want to see what he calls his work, his strange work, to bring to pass his act, his strange act. I want to see God do a strange act in our lives. That word strange there, it comes from a Hebrew word that means from afar. I mean, when we think about it, it's a miracle of God. It's coming to pass, and we don't even recognize who it is. It would be a similar word to what they use for foreign, or it's something that's completely foreign to them. It's strange. I want to see God do strange things like that. And God tells us in this passage how we can go about that. But while God wants to do this in the lives of those who build up upon Him, we must note, first of all, that God starts with a warning. And so the first thing that we study here in this passage is the mockers of God. The mockers of God. While God wants to do this type of great work in your life, we cannot be among the mockers. Again, look at verse 22. Verse 21 tells us the results of a house that's built up strong. Verse 22 says, now therefore, be ye not mockers. Lest your bands be made strong, for I have heard from the Lord God of hosts a consumption even determined upon the whole earth. If you want to see God's incredible power, first of all, you can't be a mocker. And he gives us two examples of mockers in this text. The first ones we find in chapter 28, verses 1, basically down through verse 8. And there it's talking about Ephraim. Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine. Now many years before our text today, we have the split of Israel, right? Israel under King David was strong and it grew to perhaps its height, maybe it grew some more under Solomon, not a lot more under Solomon. Solomon really kind of beautified the country and built up forts and stuff in it, but he didn't grow the territory very much. He wasn't a man of war like David was. And so we have this solidified country under David. Solomon takes over. He's a pretty good king for part of his life. And then he starts to marry these ungodly women, and they take him out of the way. And then his son Rehoboam takes over. And when Rehoboam takes over, they say, please, will you make the burden upon us a little easier. Apparently Solomon had been overworking and overtaxing the people. And so they say, will you do this? And Rehoboam, you know, if you recall the story, he gets counsel from people that were Solomon's counselors. And then he has counselors that are his own age. And one says, yes, do it. The older people say, just make it easier. the ones his age, say, no, tell them that, you know, my loins are going to be, my thumb's going to be heavier on you than my father's loins. And he puts very harsh language upon him. He basically says, I'm going to be cruel to you. What was he thinking? Who wants to say, yes, please sign me up for the cruel leader. I want them. So what do they do? They split, right? The 11 North tribes went and they became under subject to Jeroboam, who was the king of the North. Well, Jeroboam, we are told, in 1 Kings 11, verse 26, that he was an Ephrathite, which means he was from the tribe of Ephraim. And so he was the first king of the divided nation, and he would have been in the house that had power and authority. And in verse 1 we see that they were the crown of pride, as it says, and they had glorious beauty. This tribe had flourished. It was the strongest tribe. It was generally thought of as the most powerful tribe in the 11 northern tribes of the North Kingdom. And the Bible tells us two things about them. It says they flourished, but then it says they were drunk. And being drunk here speaks of two things. First of all, it means literally they used alcohol. It means they were ones who used alcohol as a part of life. The Hebrew word there translates to habitually intoxicated. They were constantly at alcohol. And two times here we would see they were called drunkards and then in verse seven it says they were swift to air and wine and strong drink. So they gave their self over to alcohol. They gave their selves over to these type of pleasures that they wanted and they were chastised for this very literal intoxication. But there's more than a literal connotation here, there's also a spiritual stupor that alcohol represents. And we would know that it covers both because we get down to verse 9 and it says, So we see that not only did they drink alcohol and God says that's wrong, we see that they went further and they refused to understand the truth of what God wanted. So Ephraim is missing the mark. They didn't understand who God really was and they didn't understand what God really wanted. Yes, they claimed to be his people. We are the 11 northern tribes. We are Israel. We serve God. But then they did things such as worshiping calves and they did things such as engaging in adultery and a whole lot of other sins that they found themselves in. But all the while, they continued this pattern of neglecting God's will. They neglected it, and they neglected it, and they neglected it. And in verse 2, we see what happens. It says, So judgment had begun, right? God's people, they separated, they went in two different ways. The northern tribe, they went pretty instantly into sin, and for that, God began to judge them. And eventually Assyria would come, and Assyria would wipe them out. Why? Because they mocked the name of God. They mocked him through the literal use of alcohol, they mocked him through their spiritual stupor, through their refusing to do what God wants. And so the first thing we see if we want God's powers, we can't mock God in the ways that they did. We cannot engage in this open type of sin, this drunken and reveling type of lifestyle, this spiritual stupor where we just deny God in every way. But then there's a second example, and it's not of Ephraim this time, it's of Judah. And Judah is the southern kingdom, the ones that really kind of stayed closer to God throughout history. They stayed under Rehoboam, and Rehoboam was good king for about three years, and then after that, he turned and started doing other things as well. And then after Rehoboam, we would have bad king, good king, bad king, good king, and it would rotate, sometimes a few good kings in a row, sometimes a few bad kings in a row. But the nation, it did stay the course, serving God longer than their northern counterparts, but now they are starting to refuse to live it. They, again, they were like the northern tribes, they acknowledged God, they lived some of his word, but we're told that they are starting to confidently deny God. Look at verses 14 and 15. It says, wherefore, hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men. Now he's talking to Judah. How do we know that? It says, that ruled his people, which is in Jerusalem. And Jerusalem is the head of Judah. Because ye have said, we have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement. When the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves. So they, and God is calling them out for this, they have lied to themselves about who they are. It says we made a covenant with death and with hell we are at agreement. They said a scourge is coming, right? But it's going for the northern kingdom. It's not coming for us. We're not worried about it. We are convinced that we are living right. But then God calls them out on it. He says, but it says for we have made lies our refuge and under falsehood we have hid ourselves. They have found a way of reading God's word and saying we're okay. God says you're living in sin. They see we're living in sin, but they're like, but the Bible says we can do that. Or it doesn't say anything about that. They are hiding what's really going on. Now I got to ask a question to you this morning. Have you ever told yourself a lie? I imagine we all have. We've probably all been at the store and we saw something that we could not afford and we told ourselves we could. Or you bought a car and you're like, oh, I can buy that. Now I can't afford that. I can afford that. I'll just work a few more hours a week. I'm fine. And we lie to ourselves. Or one of the best is like, Men, this is for us specifically, okay? So you think back to high school, like, because this should get us all out of being married territory, right? So move yourself back to pre-marriage, right? And you're going through life, and you see like dating couples or married couples, and you're like, she is so far out of his league, right? And then you see that happen a few times, and then you're like, why can't I get someone out of my league, right? And you build up your confidence. You're like, well, if she said yes to him, then she'll say yes to me. We kind of get our confidence a little high sometimes, and we're like, let's just go for it. And we may, from time to time, find out that we were lying to ourselves with a rejection that may come. I mean, I won't ask for a show of hands who has done that, because that might be humiliating and embarrassing. But it's one of those things. We lie to ourselves about a lot of things. I told you before, I wrestled throughout middle school and high school. I started wrestling in sixth grade. 65 pounds right here, sixth grade. Oh, yeah. I was huge. I was ripped. I was like skin and bones with like nothing else, right? And so I wrestled for sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade. And you know what I mean? I remember basically nothing that happened there except for spin drills and having to do them every day. And if you don't know what those are, that's OK. They just make you dizzy, and they're awful. Um, so anyway, I get to high school and I'm a freshman in high school. I made it up to 119 pounds. Yeah, thank you. I was, I was, I was getting pretty, pretty hefty then still skin and bones basically. And so, uh, I started wrestling, but I made the varsity team as a freshman, which, you know, it wasn't something that happened a whole lot, but there I am 119 and I'm on the varsity team and I'm kind of starting to think, you know, I'm something. I'm a freshman, true freshman, from the very beginning of the year. It didn't take one of my other teammates getting hurt. We called them wrestle-offs. You had to wrestle for your spot. And every week, we had to do it. You had to determine who was varsity every single week. You could challenge the guy in the weight class you wanted to every single week to try to take his spot. And so I was at 119, and I had to defend my spot, and I got my spot. But the first meet of the year came, the Decatur Invitational. This is like marred in my mind. Decatur Invitational, I'm a true freshman. So what record do I have in high school? I have zero. So what seed am I? I am the last seed. Okay, so I'm like a 16 seed against the number one seed, Nathan Chalice. His name is forever ingrained in my mind along with his face and everything that he did to me that day. But you know, we're leading up to it. I had never wrestled at the high school. I was okay in middle school, never wrestled in high school, but I'm like, well, I'm going against the number one seed, and I know that I'm the last seed, and I know I don't have any record. But you know, I eventually convinced myself, not that I would win, but that, you know, he wouldn't like, yeah, I could hold my own. You know, he was probably gonna beat me, but we got out there, and we shook hands, and Man, I can tell you what a mat tastes like, okay? Like, I mean, like, if there's a definition of using somebody as a mop or mopping the mat with somebody, I was that kid, okay? Like, Nathan Chalice absolutely mopped the mat with me. I'm not sure there's a part of that, he didn't pin me in the first period, so I think he did it in the second, so I held out for a minute, so I'm glad for that, or for two minutes, because in high school it goes to two minutes, but, wow, like, I still feel pain from that day. And I'm going to tell you, I was lying to myself thinking that I had any chance of holding my own with him. He was very excited. He was a senior. He was expected to win state. He was a great kid. I think he'd ended up winning state that year. But I was like his warm-up, like he was stretching on me. It was atrocious. Has anybody ever lied to yourself? And that taught me something, though. I lied to myself, but I learned, OK, I better get in the weight room. I better start practicing more. I better start running. And I did. I worked out. And you use it to your advantage. You use it to get better. But at that moment, I was just outright lying to myself. I believe we've all done that. I think every one of us, I mean, most of us may be too proud or we just don't want to think about it. It's incredible the things that we can say we've never done because we're not willing to go back in our mind and think about when we've done them. Because I could probably think of a whole list of lies that I've told myself and I could probably, talking to each one of you, come up with some that you may have done, right? And you guys could probably come up with some that I've done. You're like, Pastor, you thought we could do that? There was no way we could do that. You were lying to yourself, right? So it happens. We do it. And it's not always intentional, but we do it. And that's what God is saying that Judah is doing here though, right? Not in the same way, not in a, I'm building myself up to go wrestle a kid, or I'm building myself up to ask a girl out or something like that, or to buy something. But he's saying we're very capable of lying to ourselves about who we are as believers. And I just wanna give four examples that I see as the most common things that we lie to ourselves about. And then we'll go back, and there's plenty more. And we're going to come back to this later, but it goes. to the sum total of what we're looking at. So just think about these. Church attendance is probably the number one thing that people are willing to lie to themselves about. You think about Judah here, and they're abandoning God at this time. They're abandoning the sacrifice. They're abandoning the synagogues. We know that historically they are not offering the sacrifices. They're going to the high places. They're going to the groves. They're worshiping Bell. So they've stepped back on serving God. And we can look at that, and we can see that in the same way many believers will go other places than church like they're supposed to. And the Bible is very abundantly clear. I mean, I beat on this verse and I know I do. Hebrews 10, 25, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as a manner of some is, right? But exhorting one another in so much the more as you see the day approaching. Not forsaking, right? Not abandoning, not leaving, not doing something else other than assembling with the church when the church says to assemble. And yet, even though it is so very clear A lot of people do it. How do I know that? Because the crowd we have right here won't be the crowd that we have tonight. And the crowd that we have tonight won't be the crowd we have at Wednesday night. There are more people on a Sunday morning, there are on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights. And yet the Bible says to 100% of Christians, forsake not the assembling of ourselves together as a manner of some is. It's command, right? Go back to the Old Testament, we talked about this on Wednesday nights, going through systematic theology, and we can go to even the Ten Commandments when it starts talking about remembering the Sabbath, and that develops that pattern for habitually being where we are supposed to be when it comes to the house of the Lord. And then when Christ dies, he fulfills the Levitical law. That's made clear. He resurrects on the first day of the week. That becomes his day, as we see in the book of Revelations. And now we see in the book of Hebrews, Paul writing, or whoever the writer of Hebrews was, I believe it was Paul, saying, forsake not the assembling of ourselves together. The pattern's clear throughout the Bible, and then the very words are clear, and yet a whole lot of believers are willing to say, that doesn't apply to me. That's not what the Bible means. The Bible's being deceptive there, or I'm just gonna block it out. We are lying to ourselves, because God wants what God wants, and he says not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. And so we lie to ourselves about it. Probably the second biggest lie that I believe that we convince ourselves about is the Great Commission. I don't have to tell other people about Jesus. And it may be an overt thought, or it may be something that's more internal. But one way or the other, if you're not telling people about Jesus, you're not fulfilling the Great Commission. And you're lying to yourself about the fact that it's important to you. Because if it was important to you, you wouldn't be able to ignore the person at the cash register, you wouldn't be able to ignore the person at work, you wouldn't be able to ignore the person at school, you wouldn't be able to ignore our Thursday night outreach efforts here throughout the summer, our Saturday outreach efforts throughout the winter, or other things. No, if you believe that we are to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, then you would do something about it. And when you don't, you're lying to yourself. There's plenty of people who are physically unable to come out to outreach. Ms. Atwell right here, Ms. Catherine, she probably should not be walking the streets of Houston with us in 92 degree weather with 100% humidity. That's probably not good for Ms. Atwell's health. But Miss Atwell sows and she gives tracts to all of her customers and she talks to them all and she invites them to church and they come to church from time to time. She's telling me, right, she's doing something. If it's important to you, you'll be at church on outreach if you can be. If you can't be, you'll be doing something. We all need to be somewhere doing something. And if you're not, if you can't think of a time you've told a person about Jesus Christ this year, you're lying to yourself. I mean, really, I would say if you can't think of a person in the last month that you've tried to convince about the truth of Jesus Christ or to come to church so that the gospel can be preached to them, you're probably lying to yourself. Is it important to you or is it not? The third thing that I think we lie to ourselves about very commonly, and it's what we talked about last Sunday night when we were looking through the book of Luke in chapter 12, and that is our words. We act like our words don't really matter. And yet Matthew in chapter 12 and verse 36, Jesus saying, but I say it, Jesus speaking, but I say unto you, every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment. And we just look at, be ye kind one to another, tender heart, right? When's the last time you spoke an unkind word to it? Well, the Bible doesn't mean that. No, the Bible does mean that. We are to be kind in every single word we say. We're not to be proud. Seven things does the Lord hate, yay, right? And then we can go through the abominations to God and we got lying, we do that with our mouths. We have pride, we show that through our words, right? We engage in these things and it's like we have determined that that's such a little thing that it's really not sin. And yet, as we looked at last Sunday, I look up last Sunday night's message if you wanna know more about it, but there is verse after verse after verse after verse after verse in the Bible that says you should not even speak bad about someone. We're not to be back biters, we're not to be tattlers, we're not to be liars, we're not supposed to speak ill of anyone. And yet we do it over and over again, because we are lying to ourselves. And then the last one that I see a whole lot, and statistics bear it out as well, even within the church, and that's the idea of lusting. It works into pornography and the whole gamut from lusting after a person to having a full problem with pornography or even adultery. It's incredible the number of people that have a problem with this. And it's not just men, it's men and women. Statistics show that we're nearly even as a society now with men and women. Men may be a few statistical percentage points above women with this issue, but not much. And we have immoral thoughts and lust and desires, and it may go further than that. We sin in multiple ways, in all of these ways. And somehow people will go for year after year after year lying to themselves about the fact that that's sin. Have people come to me, Pastor, I've struggled with this for year after year after year. And you just now realize there's a problem with it? It's because we're lying to ourselves. Like, I don't say any of this to pick on anyone. I just want you to see that these are four common areas in which we are prone to lying to ourselves about. And I would guess that those four areas probably cover everyone in this church, to some level or another. If we can understand this in this plain open scenario, how much more sin is there underlying those four things? What God says we do when we lie to ourselves about such things is that we mock His holy name. Right when you engage in those sins, He says, you mock me. And there's condemnation, there's a consumption coming. And so the reason that we, first of all, don't have the wondrous power of God, the strange act, the mighty act, the perfect acts of God in our lives is because we mock Him. We mock Him by lying to ourselves and as it works out in our lives. But the second thing we see is there's a better way of living. God tells us that rather than picking and choosing how we live, we are to intentionally build ourselves upon him. Look at verse 16. It says, therefore, thus saith the Lord God, behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. He that believeth shall not make haste. not make haste to destruction being the implication there. If you want the power of God in your life, the place that it starts is by building your life upon Jesus Christ. He is that cornerstone, Ephesians 2.20, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone. If you want that life of blessing, it starts with building your life upon him, but it all begins with the foundation. The power of God on a life, his goodness on a life, his peace and blessings within a person comes when that life is built upon Jesus Christ. Matthew 21, 44 says, and whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. So we see two things here. We see, first of all, whom it grinds to power. Those are those who reject Jesus Christ. That's talking about the judgment of God. We're talking about the end of time when every soul will stand at the great white throne judgment that has not put their faith in Jesus Christ, and they will be judged guilty. They will be found wanting before God. They will be cast into a lake of fire for all eternity to suffer. And those who reject Him will be crushed to powder, as it says, by this stone. But those who fall on Him and are broken, they will be lifted up. Well, what does it mean to be broken here? It means we see who we are. We understand that we are sinners. We understand that my sin condemns me to hell. My sin keeps me from God. My pride is what keeps me in my sin, right? My pride is the reason that I refuse to turn to God. My pride is the thing that tells me I am good enough to go through this life without God. So only when I break that pride upon Jesus Christ, only when I see that I can't do anything to get to God, it's only the work of Jesus Christ, only then when I break myself of my pride, break myself on Jesus Christ, then can I be saved. It's only when we humble ourselves enough to call upon the name of Jesus to save us that we will begin to build that foundation upon Him. And if you've never done that this morning, you can do that. If you will see that you are a sinner right now, and if you will know that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, if you will call upon his name in repentance, he will save you right now. And God will give you a new name. He will become your father. You will be his child. He will become one that wants a relationship with you. He will give you his Holy Spirit. You will begin to feel and know and understand and see his power in your life. But this is just the foundation. From here, believers take divergent paths, right? We take the paths of either the mockers or those who are built upright. The foundation of Jesus is strong and firm. He gives a person who trusts Him, the Holy Spirit, to guide us to build upon that foundation, right? We get saved and we are just this bare foundation, right? This big block of Jesus Christ, the cornerstone. We build ourselves upon Him. and everything we build thereafter is to be led by the word of God and the Holy Spirit. Like, God is saying, I want you to be this type of house, right? I want my reloading room, I want my giant kitchen, I want whatever I want. God says, well, I want you to have this, and I want you to have that, and I want you to build this, and I want you to build that, and he's telling us through the Holy Spirit, and he's telling us through his word, and he's telling us through the preaching. He's saying, do this, and do this, and do this, and you will be built upright, and then God is saying, I will take joy in you, and I will show you my strange jacket, and I will show you my strange power." Do you have that? Look at verses 9 through verse 13. It says, "...whom shall he teach knowledge, and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts." For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little, for with stammering lips and another tongue will I speak to this people, to whom he said, this is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing yet they would not hear. So we see there in those first few verses that God is saying, this is how it works. You get saved, you're like a, and we have the comparison to a child on milk who needs to be drawn away from the breast and given fuller doctrine. But then he makes it clear, we gotta build precept upon precept upon precept, line upon line upon line. We're built up here a little and there a little. And he says, if you will have that, you can be, you can have the rest, you can have the refreshing, you can have the goodness of God. But verse 13 says, But the word of the Lord was unto them, now he's saying to those who are liars, to those who reject God, to them it is just precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, hear a little and there a little, that they might go and fall backward and be broken and snared and taken. To them it's only words. To the people on this side, to the people who are lying to themselves, it's just a set of words. And they're like, well, God's saying another thing. Whatever. And they lie to themselves about it over and over and over again, and they end up with this shack that is unpleasing to God. The construction did not match the instruction over here. Right? The Holy Spirit, the Word of God, it's saying, do this, do this, do this. And while they have the instruction, they're not building their lives in that way. Whereas if we want God and we want His glory and we want to see His power, His strange act in our lives, it must be precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line. And so it's time, is what God is saying in our text. It's time to start examining the structure of your life. Step back and look at it. Step back at your life and take a realistic look. What am I building? It would be like having a building inspector come into this house you built. You build this house, and you bring in the city inspector here of Missouri City. He comes out. and he's going to start checking some major things. He's going to get his little tool out, and he's going to put it in the outlet. And if it's got the two lights on the right on, then it's wired correctly. If it's got all three lights on, I can't remember what it means. If it's got the two on the left on, you've got a grounding problem. If it's flashing, you've got a big problem, whatever the case may be. It's a problem, and it's just a common one. We're just putting this little three-pronged thing into each outlet, seeing if they work right, seeing if they work right. And if they don't, we have an issue. It's a common issue. And that's where we go back to these four things. We can start by looking at these four major things because they're indicative of a person who is building that really didn't care that much. And we're looking at ourselves now, though. So we're checking, do I really go to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night? Do I really care about the not forsaking of our assembling of ourselves together? Do I really care about the spreading of the gospel? Do I really care about the words that come out of my mouth? Am I really trying to control my thoughts and my lust and my appetites and my mind? Because that gives you a pretty good indication. If you have those four issues or any one of those four issues, then you probably need to take a much deeper look. But even if you don't, you might need to take a deeper look. I mean, you think about the house and you're there and you're living in it, even though it may have been built good initially, you know, you might start seeing some water spots, right? We have those circle spots there and there. I think they used to be fire detectors. I don't know what they are. There's a crack in the back of the auditorium, pointing out all the flaws to the auditorium to you right now. There's some water damage up here. I don't know if you can see the bubbling underneath the stained glass window up here, right? Can you guys see this? I don't know. It bugs me every day. Some people are like, we didn't notice that until you pointed it out. Now everybody will know. Right here, it's all bubbled. Can you guys see this? I got like 50-50 yeses and noes, all right? But anyway, so you think about the church was built good, the church was maintained well, but still, sometimes we get a leak, right? Something comes in. And even though we were built solid, If we don't keep maintaining, a little hole will come in and start doing some destruction. Right, we had some, I don't know, Brother Pat, you spent a lot of time out here. He was caulking, I think, the window and filling grout. Did you do both? Yeah, and so, I don't know, it's not leaking anymore. So we got that fixed, but there was a problem, and sometimes it's hard to identify that problem. But we have to identify the problem if we're going to want God's blessings, because we want to be the house that God wants to bless. Right, if this church gets in such a state of disarray, right, if we let it go, and we, I just got some quotes to paint the building and fix all this stuff if you're curious, but anyway, if we keep letting it go and letting it go and letting it go, it'll get to a place to where we kind of despise the building. Like, that takes too much money to fix up. We don't even want it. Let's just level it and start over. Let's sell it and move out. Let's do something else. Right, we become such that it's so broke down that I don't even want it anymore. And not that God will never want us, but we do see God's saying there's a place where we get to where God says it's consumption that's coming. And he says, you need to check your life. Verse 17, he tells us he does. Judgment also will I lay to the line and righteousness to the plummet. The line there, that word in the Hebrew is akin to tape measure, right? I mean, they don't use that word in the Bible anywhere, tape measure. But if you'll look it up, it talks about a line that's used to measure distance. And then the plummet is a plumb line, right? A weight at the bottom of the string. And so he's saying, I'm checking everything. I'm making sure it's square. I'm making sure it's flush. I'm making sure it fits. I'm making sure it's like I want. And if we want God's blessings, then we gotta make sure it's what he wants. We have to stop lying to ourselves. We have to inspect our lives. These things are going to be hard, right? It's hard to really examine yourself. We may see it and step back and say, but it's so good here. You know, the North wall is good, and the South wall is good, and the West wall is good. You know, the East wall is okay, but if I just stand over here, I never have to look at it. Right, I just see the rest of my house, and it's good, and we're fine. But God sees it all. And God wants all of you. And he's telling us in the book of Isaiah this morning, if you want his blessings, you have to be completely holy. That's what he desires, complete holiness. There's not an area of your life that's hiding from God. He's inspecting it. But if you're missing out on his blessings this morning, if you feel like you're not seeing his power, if you're not hearing his voice, as the song said this morning, there might be a reason. You may have some sin in your life that you're unwilling to look at. So the question this morning is this, will you inspect your life? Is there something that does not fit God's design? Is there something that's not in His plans? Is there something that you're refusing? God will help you remodel. It's the wonder of God. He'll help you to rebuild. He wants you to be what he wants you to be. He wants to bless you. That's the wonder of God. You go to verse 21 and you see that he wants to show you his mighty act. He says, just like I did for Joshua and just like I did for David, I want to do that for you. He wants to show his strange work. He wants to show his strange act. But if you want it, you have to inspect your life.