We're going back into Isaiah chapter 3 and as we continue to read and doing study, you can parallel Leviticus with this. First of all, before we read chapter 3, let's read Leviticus chapter 26 and we can see exactly what was going on. God warned us to begin with what was going to happen if we didn't listen. And this is in Levitical law. Chapter 26 gives us the blessings and the cursings, the promise thereof, of either if you obey, these are the results. If you disobey, these are the results. And then we see that play out all through the Old Testament with all the minor prophets. We see all the prophets are God's attorneys, and He legally pronounces His edicts on the nation and on the nations of the world through His Word. As we read in the prayer this morning, being light and salt in their Beatitudes, but also what really kind of wore me out this morning in our confession is the Valley of Vision. I don't know if you all have read much of the Valley of Vision, but it's the Puritan prayers. Wow, that slays me. I have a wild heart and I cannot stand before you. I am like a bird before men. I'm just thinking, our chickens tried to get in the car this morning, how they act before us. And that's how we act before him. That's amazing to me to see how little I love your truth in your ways. I neglect prayer by thinking I have prayed enough and earnestly. By knowing you saved my soul, therefore you predestined me to be safe, so I'm not going to do anything else. And that's sometimes where we get caught up in our reformed thinking, but we're still neglecting our responsibility. Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be an evangelical hypocrite who sins more safely Because grace of that. That kind of wore me out this morning in confession, because that's where I am most of the time. Most of the time, because I feel safety, though there is security, there is security in Christ, but that does not neglect our need for living in holiness and righteousness. If we are to be set apart from the world, that's what sets us apart is our holy living. We can't do that apart from Christ. And here in Leviticus 26, He sets out what we're supposed to do. And we see you shall not make idols for yourselves, no carved image, nor a sacred pillar. Shall you were up for yourselves, nor shall you set up an engraved stone in your land to bow down to it. What do the Hindus and the Buddhists do? What do the Shintos, the Taoists do? We see this in other man's religions. You shall not set up an engraved stone and bow down to it, for I am Jehovah, Yahweh, I am your God. You will keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am Jehovah. If, condition, if you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and perform them, then I will give you rain in a season. The land will yield its produce. And the trees of the field will yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last until the time of vintage, and the vintage shall last until time of sowing. You will eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land safely. I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid. I will rid the land of evil beasts, and the sword will not go through your land. You will chase your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will put to flight ten thousand. Your enemies will fall by the sword before you. I will look on you favorably and make you fruitful. Multiply and confirm my covenant with you. Remember, be fruitful and multiply. That's the creation covenant. You will eat the old harvest and clear out the old because of the new. I will set my sanctuary or my tabernacle among you when I dwell with you, and my soul will not abhor you. I will walk among you, Genesis chapter 1, 2, and 3, and be your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of bondage, that you should not be their slaves. I have broken the bands of your yoke and made you walk upright. If you do not obey me and do not observe all of my commandments, if you despise my statutes, or if your soul abhors my judgments so that you do not perform all my commandments, but break my covenant, I will do this to you. I will even appoint terror over you, terrorists, wasting disease, AIDS, famine, Ebola. Fever which comes will consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart and you will sow your seed in vain for your enemies shall eat it. Smithfield Farms is now owned by China. You all know that? Smithfield Pork was bought by a Chinese company. I will set my face against you and you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will reign over you and you shall flee when no one pursues. After all this, if you don't obey me, I will punish you seven times more for your sins. I will break the pride of your power. I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze and your strength will be spent in vain. For your land will not yield its produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit. Then if you walk contrary to me and are not willing to obey me, if you're still stubborn, I will bring on you seven times more plagues according to your sins. I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number, and your highways will be desolate. If by these things you are not reformed by me, but walk contrary to me, then I will also walk contrary to you, and I will punish you yet seven more times for your sins. I will bring sword against you that will execute the vengeance of the covenant. When you are gathered together within your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of your enemy, When I have cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in one oven, and they will bring back your bread by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied. After all this, if you do not obey me, but walk contrary, then I will walk contrary to you in fury. And I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins." Hmm. Well, let's pray. Lord God in heaven, we love you and we thank you for your word. Lord, it terrifies us and it scares me when we see, Lord, the fury and the judgment you have towards sin that we are certainly thankful for the Lord Jesus. Lord, that we do have hope and that we do have reprieve from this. But we know that we are still responsible. Lord, I pray you forgive me of my sins for there are many and I pray forgiveness of my own hypocrisy. Lord, I do ask for the unction of the Holy Spirit, that you will open the heavens for us, and that you will speak from your word, and that the Spirit will speak to us. Lord, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, I know this sounds very bleak, and it's a hard message, but I don't think we should back down from it by any means. Paul tells Timothy to preach and teach the entire counsel of God. I think now in modern-day evangelicalism, we get caught up more in the health, wealth, prosperity stuff, and when you come to Jesus, all your problems are taken care of. Where do you get that from the Bible? That's the problem. We must understand that if we really want true biblical change, and I have to use that language because that's what I do, counseling in the men where we are at the mission, we want biblical change. We don't want psychological change because psychology just nails an issue. It just does a symptom. I can condition my animals to do whatever I want them to do. We can confess and we can do all kinds of stuff through BF Skinner boxes. You can change personality. You can look in the mirror and say, I am somebody. I can change myself. You can do that all day long, this self-help nonsense. But that's not getting to the root of the problem. True biblical change is going to the heart of the matter. And that's what really Leviticus is about. If you don't get on the floor of your heart before Almighty God, that's where you're going to be. You're going to always be searching for something else apart from what you can get from Jesus Himself. Now, God has spoken. And He still continues to speak through His Word. Where we're missing it now is we try to find circumstances and other things that God is going to speak to us outside of the Word. When we do that, we can go a thousand ways away from the Scripture, but every one of them is going to lead us to hell. Because God has spoken once. He's given us what we need. And as we just read Leviticus, I mean, it sounds so hard because He's counting, counting all the time. the judgment on sin. And if you read Ezekiel chapter 17 through 35, you've got the same message. And also the Old Testament, even the New Testament, Jesus speaks more on judgment than he does on grace, which is pretty hard to deal with sometimes. And what we need to understand is that cup of mercy that God gives us is going to have limits at times. That's why there is judgment. And the same message that we read in Leviticus, you see this in Isaiah chapter 3. Behold, Jehovah of hosts takes away from Judah and Jerusalem the stock in the store, her materials, the whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water, the mighty man of war, the judge and the prophet, the diviner, the elder, the captain of fifty, and the honorable man. He takes away all of the honorable leaders. Where are we? When our country was founded, what kind of leadership did we really have? looking at the backbone of the Puritans, and we just read the prayer, but look what they did when they founded the country and even on into our Constitution and seeing how America really was formed in the New World. We wanted a nation that served Jehovah. They really wanted to institute theocracy, but we don't have one today. But we understand where they were coming from. We understand that if we don't listen to God, we're going to be cursed. What do you see today? The same thing that's going on in 2014 is what Isaiah was preaching about in the 7th century or the 5th century BC. Solomon said there's nothing new under the sun. That what already happened is going to happen again. And if you don't listen, God's not going to change His method of operation. If you don't listen, this is what's going to happen. But thankful for us, we have grace. And that's the cool thing about working for the mission is we get to see, I get people from all walks of life coming through our programs. I see those that have been in the wealthy communities. I see those who have been in entitlement program communities. The same grace saves us all. And it's the same Word that cuts through the heart. Tom Sullivan, one of the professors at Graham, told me one time that if I don't believe that the Word of God can cut through the haze of alcohol, the drugs, the abuse, and the sin, then I need to go to the house. If I do not believe that the Word of God can really cut to the heart through all that haste, then I don't even need to open my mouth. I do believe it, because it did me. And I understand that slave driver John Newton, when he said, when amazing grace saved a wretch like me, the man was a slave owner and slave trader. Amazing grace saved a wretch like him. saves me. And yet this holy Puritan that will be much more holy than I ever thought about being says, please don't let me be evangelically hypocritical. This is what's going to happen to us. But we're different. We are the called out ones of God. And that's what is so neat about being in a congregation like this. You all have the Spirit with you. You're different from some of these other ones because you really do hang on the Word of God. You stand on it. You believe in Him. You have faith. You've had faith for how many years? Continue on. Most of you have been walking with Christ longer than I've been alive. I hope that I can say that one day. I hope that I'm where you are one day. And I hope that He gives me enough time to live for Him in retrospect of living the other direction. I hope that I do have 27 years more to live for Jesus than I had living for me. And that's the point of the heart. The issue is here. Isaiah chapter 1, when we read that, the whole head is sick, and it just continues on in the introduction, chapters 1 through 5, until it begins the real prophecy. But after all this hammering of sin through chapters 1 through 5, it says, in the year that I saw, of the year that King Uzziah died, I saw Jesus. I saw Jesus high and lifted up amongst the pagans, amongst the Greeks, amongst the Assyrians, amongst all of this worldliness. I saw Jehovah high and lifted up, sitting on his throne. He's the one who rules. Does he really rule in our hearts? That's the issue. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. Blessed is the man and woman who does not walk according to the counsel of the ungodly, or stand against sinners, or sit in the seat of the scornful. Psalm 1. Then read Psalm 119. Almost a direct parallel to Leviticus 26. How many times does David say, How I love your law, teach me from your statutes, teach me your ways, that I may not sin. Thy word, O Lord, have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. The condition? I've still got the sinful nature within me. But now, in Christ, I've got the power to say no to it. The issue is, do I have the want to? Most of the time, I don't have the want to. Because I like this stuff. It feels good. The best thing that I do in the world is sin. I do it real well. But thanks to Christ, I have the power to put that underneath me. And Psalm 2 says, I've set my king on my holy hill and he puts all enemies under our feet. Sin will be under our feet one day. And one day, all this will be done and we will have no more sin. I'm looking forward to that day. When I wake up that day and see Jesus for who He is and know that I will sin no more. I won't have to deal with this. And that's a good day. And that's what we're working for. That's why you all should be gracious. loving and be hopeful for where you are. Because you have a great responsibility for the community. You all must be a salt and light. As we must be. And you all still are. You're still here. And the Lord has great plans. I don't know what the Lord has planned for this, but he has plans for his church. He will honor his word. And if we remain faithful to that word, He always produces results. And that's the thing that we try to teach at the mission. Obedience produces results. Not just giving Jesus all your problems. Obedience produces results. There is a law for a reason. And God spelled that out in Leviticus 26. The counselor and the skillful artisan, the expert enchanter, I will take away in Isaiah chapter 3. These are things that are going to be taken away. Jeremiah echoes the same thing also second Kings Ecclesiastes 10 16 here in verse 4. I will give children to be their princes I will give babes to rule over them the ungifted and the unfit Will be our rulers our politicians We need a Daniel today Who is willing to stand? When I get my rights back, I hope one day I can run for public office That's gonna be one of my next steps And I remember that seven-foot Dutchman. I don't know if you all are familiar with Dr. Henry Craubendon. He's in PEF. He's in the OPC as well with Lacey Andrews. He got in my face about three, four years ago, seven-foot Dutchman, and said, you'll go until God stops you. Okay. Well, here we go. We need Daniel. And if the Lord's really given me this work to do, then let me do it with all my might. Ecclesiastes says, whatever your hands find to do, Do it with all of your might. And there ought to be hope in these messages. Though it's very hard to hear the judgment of God because in their mainline churches all we hear today is just the love of God, the love of God, the love of God. I'm not denying God's love by any means. Because that's what saves us. That's why Jesus came. But we've got to understand that there is an antithesis to that. God's love and God's wrath. You've got to have one. You can't have one without the other. You must understand that there is a judgment. And I think that I'm preaching to the choir. Because you all understand what's going on in the world. You see it. We are in the end times. What are we going to do about it? So let's go. And that's the point of our own living. When we bow our hearts to King Jesus every morning in repentance so that we are not the hypocrites. So that one day he will restore our good leaders as we had at the beginning. So we'll have guys like John Winthrop, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield. And then you look at some of the guys that signed the Declaration of Independence who were Presbyterian ministers. Bring us those back. Maybe one day we will, as the Scots, sign a Ligon Covenant with Almighty God. And that's where we ought to be. And that's the point of this. Return from your wickedness. When Jesus and John both came, what was the first thing out of their mouths? Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is standing right in front of you. Do we realize that the Kingdom of Heaven is in front of us? Day in and day out. We live, we work, we breathe in the kingdom of God. There are not two kingdoms. There is one kingdom. It's God's. He rules. And we're either going to go to heaven or we're going to go to hell. You can't cancel the trip either way. Where are you going? And that's one thing that we preach in the mission. You've only got two choices. Where are you going? Because it's going to be a long time in either way. And when I'm finished, I've got one little dash. I've got 1982 to whatever date that I'm done here. And on that little gravestone, all I'm going to have is that little dash between the two. What am I going to do with that from now on? What are you guys going to do with that from now on? Are we going to continue in the lifestyles that we had? Are we going to continue to reap God's judgment upon us? Or are we going to listen, be obedient, and see those results? And see blessings? And then be a blessing to somebody else? When I walk in a room, do you all really enjoy to see me come, or is it, oh, here he comes again? Is that how we really act and live? Because I may be really the only Bible somebody ever reads. I may be the only Jesus somebody ever sees. Am I going to be the hypocrite? Am I going to be the reason that somebody does not come to a saving knowledge of Christ? If Ezekiel had not preached to those dry bones, they'd still be dry. If Noah had not built a boat, where would we be? We are still responsible. God is indeed sovereign. We understand that, but we are still responsible for our own actions, for our sin, and for what we're going to do. God has given us a commandment. Let's listen to it. And that's where we ought to be today. And we see this played out everyone and everyone by everyone, his neighbor. The child will be insolent toward the elder, disrespect. I will give children and babes to be their rulers. When a man takes hold of his brother, we just read this in Leviticus, saying, you have clothing, be, be a ruler, let these ruins be under your power. And that day he will protest saying, I cannot cure your ills. For in my house is neither food or clothing. Do not make me a ruler of people. For the city has stumbled. God's city has fallen because of their tongue and their doings are against the Lord. What does James 5 talk about? Tongue. Matthew 12, 33-37, you'll either be condemned by your words or you're going to be justified by your words. Now I know that I say that my words don't matter a lot of times. They don't in the eternal sense, but they do. They matter to what I say. So what is going to come out of my mouth if Ephesians 4.29 says, let no corrupt word proceed from your mouth, why am I not speaking, as Colossians says, Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and giving that word that breathes life into somebody? Because this is what we're going to be judged by. This is a test. And the whole picture of all of this is to turn to Christ. Because without him we have nothing. In him we move, we breathe, we have a very being. That's why we have a thought. That's why we have what we do. That's why we do what we do. I'm not talking about we as in my wife and I, but we as the people. The harvest is ripe. It's like PEF guys going to the race the past weekend. I'm sure you're all at the Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship. They had guys, and Charles was part of this. They went out preaching and handing out tracts and giving gospel testimonies for the people at the race. And if we don't believe that this can cut through the haze of materials and the haze of alcohol, then let's go to the house. Look at what the first century Christians dealt with. They did the same thing at their Coliseum. They did the same thing that we should be doing now. We ought to mimic what they were doing. Everybody we encounter, do they see Jesus in us, or do they just see another person? We ought to be different. That's the shining of light, and that's what this whole idea is about. And if we really could get our minds around that this is all about Jesus, our theology would come into play. And then we can see when we talked about the bouquet of flowers from Ephesians. Justification, the glorification, our salvation, the ordo salutis. How are we saved? By whom are we saved? By what are we saved? To whom are we saved? From what are we saved? And we get a whole lot of folks around that can tell you that they love Jesus, but can't tell you why. Why do we love Him? Because of what He's done for us. Because now we can stand in the face of adversity and give hope to the hopeless, help to the needy, and give a reason for why we can get up every morning and say, praise the Lord, no matter what situation we are in, no matter what happens when the bottom drops out of life, no matter what ailments, physical or monetarily, whatever happens, we can stand in the face of Caesar and say, praise Jehovah, the one who gives me life and strength. And that's what this whole message is pointing us to. All of us. And though it really is hard for me to read, I mean, how many times can I preach this hammering and hammering and hammering of sin? Kind of makes me feel like Jonathan Edwards. Of course, I'll never be that brilliant. Sinners in the hands of an angry God? And he monotonally read that message. And how many in the Great Awakening came to a saving knowledge of Christ? And I think that today we are still reaping the benefits of that. But look how deadness. Look at the deadness in New England now. But here, praise the Lord, we are still in what they call the Bible Belt. And as we talked about before, how many northerners and how many people come in from the race and everywhere else saying, you don't got a lot of churches around here. Yes, we do. Take heed. Look how dead your area is. And people keep talking about how nice we are down here. Moral, Christian, for the most part. Isn't that amazing to see how many Canadians and Floridians and Westerners West Coast people come to the cave and mention how nice people are and that we really do look like Christians in this area. It amazes me. And I think, well, this message today and the previous ones, the hammering of sin, am I really going to be a Christian to that man and show them the way to go so that they'll be in a place where they go back home, that they can go search for the word of God and get filled from that manna that comes from heaven? And I hope soon that we really get to have communion together. I want to worship with you that way and be a part of the communion of heaven. And it's so great to be able to preach and to speak, and I never in a million years would have thought about doing this. Five years ago, if you told me I was going to be a preacher and a mission worker, somebody that helped homeless people, I would have laughed at you. Especially if you told me I was going to be a farmer. But if I thought anything about living a Christian life, And actually having my heart changed in this manner, to have my complete nature changed, I would have laughed at you and told you to go on somewhere else. But I can remember seeing my parents looking at me through plate glass, son, the Lord's going to get a hold of you. Every single day that I talked to my mother on the phone, Lord, it's going to get a hold of you, son. Well, what happened? I'm glad that I've got a praying family. And they never cease from giving me this. And that's what we have to do. Because we are covenantally bound to God to give the rest of the world this Word. That's where Israel failed. When the Word came to them, they killed Him. And we're seeing that today in our own country. The Word has gone out, and we're killing it. Let us be revived today. And now, with the wisdom that you all have, I hope to attain at least a portion of that in my lifetime. We need you. Desperately. Because we see that our children are insolent and disrespectful to our elders. We don't rise when an elder walks in a room. We don't understand the respect and the wisdom that needs to be handed down. Are we going to act like what Rehoboam did? I fear that my generation is going to listen to our contemporaries rather than the whites. And I can see that definitely in our politicians today. But that's played out as we see here in Isaiah. And that's what I try to tell our guys. Just read the Bible and look and see what's happening. You're watching God's Word played out right in front of your face. So you really can see that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. It's in front of you. Now, where are you going to be in your heart? And true success is not just graduating a program and getting a little piece of paper. True success is living for Jesus ten years down the road. That's where the success lies. Have we really helped you to reform your life? Have we really helped you to see Jesus? Have we really helped you to live a productive life for kingdom of God and society? Are you really helping your neighbor? Are you loving your neighbor as yourself? Are you still going to go out and get high? What are you going to do? If not, we're going to reap the same, same curses in our own lives. But praise God that there's hope. Amidst all the trouble, all the sin, there is hope. And that's where we go. If I don't come to this and find solace in the Word, then I'm nothing. And then I think about 1 Corinthians 13. If I have the knowledge of everything and wisdom to understand all mysteries and prophecies but have not love, I gain nothing. If I give my body to be burned and I give all my goods to the poor, But don't do it in love? I am nothing. Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love, I have become a noisy cymbal and a clanging gong. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love endures. Love is hope of all things. It believes all things. Love never fails. Is that what we're really giving to the church? From the church to the world? That's where we ought to be. And that's the point of all this message. It's not just a hammering upon sin, which it is. But we point them to the cross. We try to deal with the seven steps to freedom in Christ, which is nonsense. There's only one step to freedom in Christ. It's to the cross. The seven steps to freedom is just Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. Repression of memories. Are we going to give them the truth? The Word that sets us free? If the Son sets you free, you're free indeed. For the Spirit of the Lord is their freedom. It's the Spirit dwelling in you. Obviously, the Spirit was not dwelling in the people of Israel. And you can read through Judges. I've been reading through Judges this week. And every time God would come save them, they'd turn right around and go back doing the same thing they used to be doing. Every time. Every single time. To every Judge. And then, Lord, help us. We got ourselves in this mess. We need you to help us out. He would do it. He would do it. I hope that we, one day, will cry out. And in 1 Kings, or I think it is, 1 Kings or Chronicles 7, 14, if my people will humble themselves and pray. Solomon's giving his prayer. If my people will humble themselves and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways and repent, I will heal their land. I will heal their land. Their land is sick. What's going on in Texas? The drought in the Midwest has been going on for how many years? I will heal their land. I will give rain in their season. Leviticus 26, verses 1-5. If you listen and obey me, it will be well with you. If you don't, it will not be well with you. Here we are. So we go and give them the truth. In the face of whatever we face. No matter what it is. Do we really give them Jesus Christ? And do you really know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, or does that need to happen in your life? That's the ultimate question. And if Christ is in you, so walk ye in Him. And as you have received Him, learn Him, live Him, love Him. And if you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I hope that tomorrow, that's not my prayer. And I hope that I'm a better Christian tomorrow than I am today. Lord, help me not to sin so much today as I did yesterday. Help me to be a blessing to somebody. That they will see your glory and not me. They will look beyond this flesh and beyond this person and see the person of Jesus Christ and what you have done in my life. Because I am a changed man. I am no longer that sinner. I am no longer that man that I used to be. I am a new man if I am really in Christ and I am a new creation. Old things have passed away. All things have become new. Paul says, I lay aside the stuff of the past and I reach toward the goal that's in Christ. Am I setting my treasures up at 1215 Bristol Caverns Highway or am I setting my treasures up here? And I hope one day that I can lay the crowns of the guys that come through the mission to defeat Jesus. Here are your people. Here they are. Here are your dry bones that I've given the Word to. Let us see the kingdom of God arise. And let's pray. Father, we are humbled by your presence. We thank you that you speak to us. We thank you that you are alive and that you're not silent, but you've given us a word. And I pray that we will listen to it, that we'll heed it, and that we will not, as The nations of the world have gone before us and have become a proverb. Lord, we speak of Rome, we speak of Greece, we speak of Assyria and Syria and the Huns. Lord, all these nations of history are nothing but history. I pray that we are not the same, Lord, but I pray that you will send your spirit among us and that these messages and this word will penetrate our hearts. and cause us to rend our hearts and not our garments, but that we will fall before Your face, on our faces, prostrate before You. And know that You are the ones, You are the one that gives us life. And I pray that You will give us the ocean of the Spirit to go out tomorrow and even today. And that somebody will see Jesus in us. And that Your Word will not return void unto You, but the knowledge of God will cover the earth as water covers the sea. Lord, we know that You are King, You rule, And I pray, Lord, that we will see revival in this country, that we will see revival in our churches, first of all, and let it begin with us in our own hearts. Lord, I do ask forgiveness of our sins before we fail you, but I thank you for this time, for this message, Lord, for this congregation and this church. I pray that you will raise it up for your own glory, that it will be a beacon of light for Johnson City and Washington County and for the surrounding communities. Lord, I pray that you will honor your promises and your covenants with us and that we will honor you and listen and obey. And we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.