The Hope For Rebels

It is good to be back today we went out of town last week to escape the heat of moncks corner to go to the heat of the upstate of South Carolina, I couldn't tell much of difference. I'm told this is the hottest day or time in the history of the world, I'm gonna have to know that. But anyway, that's what to say. And to me, it just feels like summer, man. I mean, it just feels like normal summer to me. We're starting a four week, sermon series here in the as we go through the Old Testament in Isaiah, talking about the hope for rebels, the hope for rebels when we talk about rebels in our culture. A lot of the times it's viewed in a positive light. For instance, as we just celebrated America fought for its independence and a rebellion. Right, we were the rebels who won who defeated tyranny. Southerners fought for rights in the civil war, they were called rebels. There's even this thing called a Rebel Yell you may have know what I'm talking about. If you watch the Star Wars movies, the the rebels are the good guys fighting against the evil empire in a lot of pop culture, and the rebel is the cool guy. The person that everyone wants to be like, the rebel, the the nonconformist, this person who, who walks to the beat of their own drum. But spiritual rebellion is not cool. Spiritual rebellion is not positive. And that's what we're looking at and talking about today is we're in Isaiah chapter one. She's going to read verses one through nine. Today, as we get started. First one, the vision of Isaiah the son of a MAS, which he saw concerning Judah, and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah kings of Judah. He says in verse to hero, heavens and give Eero earth, for the Lord has spoken. Children have I reared in brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, the donkey its masters crib. But Israel does not know my people do not understand. sinful nation and people laden with iniquity, offspring of evil doers, children who deal corruptly they have forsaken the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel. They are utterly estranged. Why will you be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel, the whole head is sick, a whole heart faint. From the soul, the foot even to the head. There is no soundness in it. But bruises and sores and raw wounds. They are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil. Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire. In your very presence, foreigners devour your land, it is desolate as overthrown by foreigners. And the daughter of Zion is left like a booth and a vineyard, like a lodge and a cucumber field like a besieged city. If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Saddam, and become like the Mora. Father in heaven, we thank you for today. We thank you for the music. We've already heard we thank You, Lord, that these are the days of Elijah as we've been reading about Elijah, Lord this past few weeks and we pray, Lord, I pray that You would give us men and women with the spirit of Elijah. Those who would be who would be bold for your truth. And the words we hear from you today we would we would hear your truth and we would, we would enact it in our lives. What I pray that Your Word speaks through me today that, that you fill me with your Spirit today you preach through me that that that I speak your word, and only your word, and that the people here receive it. God's people live it. We ask these things in Jesus name, amen. I'm going to spend the majority of the rest of our time in the Old Testament as we read through the Bible, in the books of the prophets. And each prophetic book has its own theme. But the overarching themes for for all of the provinces pretty simple, overarching things for all the prophets is pretty simple. Repent from your sin, and turn in faith to God. That's pretty much the main idea. Repent from your sins and turn in faith to God. Now the events of Isaiah his life, you can read about him in Second Kings 15 through 20. And he was a prophet to primarily the southern kingdom, which was Judah where Jerusalem was, and he served four kings in his name, Isaias name literally means Yahweh God, Yahweh is Salvation. So whenever someone said his name, they heard God saves. God saves. Now it's believed that by trade, Isaiah was a priest, who he was born into the priestly line. But he was then called by God to be a prophet. So he seems to have been called while while doing temple work, which was he was born into that job. So it wasn't necessarily a calling from the Lord. But as he's in the temple of Jerusalem performing the priestly duties, he gets called by God to speak His word to the tribe and kingdom of Judah. And that's an Isaiah six you can read about that there, which had, which had separated Judah had separated from the rest of Israel. And unlike many of the prophets, some of his warnings were heard, amen. Some of Isaias warnings were heard, and revival actually came to the land under King Hezekiah. But each of the four kings that he served had the same problem they dealt with the same main problem. To go along with idolatry. They dealt with the threat of the growing empire of Syria, which would, which would eventually overtake the area. A Syria was conquering countries, one after the other barbaric people in Israel was next in line, they were on the doorstep of Israel. And each King dealt with the Syrian problem differently. Some turn to fate, God and faith, while others turned to themselves or to other kings. And Isaiah, his role was to speak truth into their lives, as well as the lives of the people because as the king directed as the king influenced the people then followed, some turned to faith. Some rebelled. So today, I want to give you four truths about rebels, four truths about spiritual rebels in the kingdom of God. Number one, rebels are God's children who are estranged. Rebels are God's children who are estranged. verse one says that Isaiah got this vision. And he got these visions during the days of these four kings. So rulers came in with kings came in and went, but God's prophet was always there. And it seems during these times, that God would typically raise up one main prophet for Judah, and one for Israel. So you had Elijah and Elijah and others that we've read about, but God always gave a prophetic voice speaking truth to the children of Israel, no matter how good the king was, no matter how bad the king was. For Israel, it was the prophets calling to speak truth to God's people, and keep the rulers and keep the people on track. Why? Because even God's people are like children who run away the verse to hear, Oh heavens, and give her earth for the LORD has spoken. Children have I reared and and brought up but they have rebelled against me. The ox noses owner of the donkeys masters crib, but Israel does not know my people do not understand the animals know its master. They knew the Master, my dog knows me. And even though I'm not the best to the dog, I feed the dog. I don't play the dog a whole lot. I try not to cuddle the dog a lot. But she won't let me she gets in my lap and buries her head and my chest bites me and things. She still knows that I'm the masters. She's excited to see me. Master calls. It obeys. But hear Isaiah saying not Israel. They're like a dog and animal that doesn't know its master. They're like children who don't know their father. Verse four. He says Austin for a nation of people laden with iniquity. Offspring of evil doers children who deal corruptly they forsaken the Lord. They have spies, the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged, the children of Israel became estranged when they left God, despising God. So those who don't believe in God actually despise him. That's why don't believe him. Those who turn from God to do their own thing. They do it because they don't want God in their lives. They've rebelled against God. They've rebelled against his role in their lives. And we can be prone to do that, from time to time. Even believers can be prone to do that. Unbelievers certainly do it all day long and every day. So Israel would like estranged children who who had left and they might never come back. The rebels are estranged children. Secondly, rebels are God's children who are dying. Spiritually speaking, they're dying. Verse five, says, why will you be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel, the whole head is sick. The whole heart is faint. From the soul of the foot to the head, there's no soundness in it, but you have bruises you have sore, you have walking around with raw wounds, he says. They're not pressed out. They're not bandaged. Due to this, like a person whose body is beat up and bleeding. With self inflicted wounds they will not go to the doctor, you'll know a stubborn person, they won't go the doctor but they hurt themselves. I cut my finger a few months ago, I did it to myself by accident. Now not not intentional. I went right to the doctor, I was bleeding. That's normal behavior. To go the doctor, right? Israel was showing abnormal behavior so your head sick. You're bleeding spiritually. You won't bandage it up, you won't take care of it. So Judah, you're like a person who's walking around with open gaping wounds that are killing you and you refuse to do anything about it. He then goes from this metaphor to reality. In verse seven, he says your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire. Foreigners are devouring your land. Verse eight, in the daughter of Zion is like a booth in a vineyard or like a besieged city like a lodge and a cucumber field. Things are not right in the country. One of the good things that all the good kings, one of things all the good kings repeatedly failed to do. One of the things even the good kings repeatedly failed to do was completely rid the land of false God worship. Now the good kings would, they would remove the idols from the temple, which is great. If people of God, they would take the idols out. So they can be worshipped there anymore. They would remove him from some of the holy places. But they always left some shrines out in the country, out on the outskirts, maybe I don't know why they wouldn't go out there and do it. Maybe you forgot about it. I didn't think they were importance and never completely cleansed the country. So Israel, by sin, not by designed was a religiously pluralistic society, that all different types of religions in their country even though it wasn't God's designed for them. They were to be a theocratic government, they only serve God they were to be a city on a hill, they were to be a nation of God were other nations would see how God was working in them, and they'd be drawn to their God. They would say, Wow, the God of Israel is the true God, look how he has worked. But Israel kept smuggling in false gods. And the result was that they were spiritually done. Now, America, the country we live in, and really the world, most parts of the world. It's a marketplace for false gods. This you realize that really is America is a marketplace for false gods. Now, part of this is by design. We celebrated this last week. Our founding fathers idea was that every person had free exercise of religion would not be persecuted for their faith, amen, which is why we can worship here today. It's why we're not part of the Church of England are forced to be Presbyterians or something like that. Or Catholics. Their idea was that a person could have the freedom of religion they could worship the God of the spaghetti monster if they wanted To that matter, it's up to them. But with that freedom, we find ourselves existing, and a plurality, multiple belief systems. So we have the opposite problem that Israel had. They were called to be a theocratic government with total devotion to God. Americans, on the other hand, were founded on Christian principles in the land that has made possible the influence for false gods and religious to be worshipped. It's it's possible that's part of the design of the country. The problem occurs when American Christians don't know the difference between pagan religions and Christianity. The freedom that we have, eats us alive. The problem is when American Christians adopt those pagan influences in to their own lives. One of the areas we continually need wisdom from the Lord is being able to differentiate biblical fidelity truthfulness to Scripture, from a cultural tradition, or cultural movements that are completely unbiblical and that are ungodly. Many people who claim to be Christians in our country today are spiritually dying. The following false teachers who who claim to be Christians who preach the opposite of the gospel, or worse, they follow unbelievers. And so like the Israelites cutting themselves and injuring themselves, many American Christians are cutting themselves and injuring themselves with this false gospel of individualism. America itself is highly individualistic. And there's a lot of good things that come from that. But it makes sense that forms of Christianity will come out of America, that make it all about the self. We want to look around and be sad. But what we see in our culture, the selfishness in our culture, the selfishness in our nation. We don't need to blame the culture. We need to blame the churches. We need to blame the pastors. We need to blame the lack of profits. We are in a marketplace of religions in America. And we have the true gospel. We have a right here. But we're being out marketed. Not because we don't have the best product. But because we're not marketing enough, Amen. We're not obeying the Lord Jesus. We make our walk with Christ. We make it all about our happiness. We make it all that our pleasure. What's in it for me? We're just like the Israelites. Rebels wandering from God with gaping open wounds. Rebels are God's children who are spiritually dying. Number three, rebels are God's children who are prideful, prideful. Careful, we talk about pride, right? Because we can be proud to be Americans and not sin. We can be proud of our kids and our and our families. But for the most part, I think we're using pride in different you know, different usage. And we say that way, because pride is the cheapest of all sins. The pride I'm talking about. Pride is the sin that got Satan, a third of angel has been removed from heaven. Pride is a sin that brought sin in the world do Adam and Eve. Look at verse nine. With the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors who would have been like Saddam, and become like Gomorrah. There always will be a large majority of people who claim to be children of God who were not, or who at least have temporarily rebuild. I hear some statistics that there's 2 billion Christians in the world. Evil I don't believe that. Maybe technically. There are 2 billion Christians in the world to be a lot better place Amen. There's always a remnant. Survivors. He calls them the Brynden of God's people. And Isaiah says if God didn't leave this remnant this chosen this time True believers that Israel will be like Sodom and Gomorrah. Way back in Genesis, who were Sodom and Gomorrah, well, they were cities that were so wicked. They were completely destroyed, completely destroyed. God could not even find 10 righteous people 10 righteous people who believe that the Lord in those cities Imagine if you could not find 10 People in moncks corner who believed in God, or 10 in Charleston who believed in God, right? This was the situation. Different places of Scripture comments on what Sodom and Gomorrah were like. They were first of all, they're prideful. Secondly, they were apathetic toward others. They had no care or love for other people. Spiritually, they were complacent, they were just going about doing what they wanted to do no spiritual growth. They were unconcerned for the underprivileged. And they were grossly sexually immoral. Not only was homosexuality running rampant, but all sorts of sexual sin was spreading through the cities, there was murder, there was rate it was bad. I'm not going to tell that you can read the details in Scripture. If there's ever a place that deserved God's judgment, it was Saddam. So Isaiah says without a written it, we would be Saddam. And that's anywhere anytime. America without a remnant we would be Saddam. Any country on this earth would be Saddam. So he says in verse 10. Here the word of the Lord, you rulers of Saddam. Now that would be an extremely offensive remark to tell God's people. Would you be offended if I called you a citizen of some think he would? Just what he says, Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people have Gomorrah. He says what to me is the multitude of your sacrifices. I have had enough of your burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of welfare beasts, do not delight in the blood of bulls or lambs or goats. When you come to appear before me who is required of you this trampling of my quartz bring no more vain offerings, instances in an abomination to me New Moon Sabbath in the calling of convocation, I cannot endure iniquity in Psalm assembly. He says listen here says don't come into my place into my temple and worship me living like you are a person of Sodom and Gomorrah. Because I don't want to smell it. I don't want to see it. I don't want to hear it. So God says the rebellious people of God were still worshiping. Still going to church, checking it off on their bots, their to do list. And Isaiah says God says, Your Worship to me means nothing. Because your heart is not right. Your heart is not there in meeting each week claiming to be the people of God while living wicked and evil lives. God says I hate your worship. Verse 14, he says your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates, they become a burden to me. I am weary of burying them. When you spread out your hands. He says when you're when you're worshiping and your hands go out, and you spread your hands out once you say I hide mines from you. Even though you make many prayers. I'm not listening. This is a scary place to be for the people of God. Amen. scary place to be. And they were there because their issues started with pride. They don't need God. They'll do their own thing and they'll worship God on their own time when they want to. God isn't the Lord of my life. I am the Lord of my life. I will give him what I want when I want I worship Him when I want and how I want and God says that's not how it works. I don't have to receive your worship. He says we should not let our pride for who we are. What we do, run our lives the only type of pride that is truly acceptable. is pride in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior? It is not sinful, to be proud to be a Christian, amen. This little light of mine, I'm going to turn it off. Nope. I'm gonna let it shine. And we're not proud because we found him. No, we're proud because he say this and for the God that who he is. See, we're humbled by what Jesus has done for us. We're humbled that he came to the earth and died for our sins on the cross that humbles up, pride puffs up pride bows up. Humility bows down. Humility is how Jesus lived. If there was ever a person who could have been proud, it would have been Jesus don't shoot No, he was tempted to do who knows what, it's not a sin to be tempted on the cross, when they mocked him. Come on down that cross. If you're a king of Jews may not be able to cross so fast. But I'm not Jesus. Y'all be going to hell. Alright. And then he was mocked. And he sat there. It didn't come now. Even though he could have destroyed them with a snap of his finger. Jesus was the opposite of proud. He was humble. He was loving. See, pride loves the self. Pride does not love others. And the heart of the gospel is the humble, loving of others. Rebels are God's children who are prideful. And finally, number four. The good news is rebels are God's children who can change. They can change. They've rebelled. They can change. Isaiah doesn't just outline. All the ways Israelites had been rebels, he lets them know that they can change. That's the thing about the gospel. We must know our problem. We must know our issue. Before we can change to my car to the shop a few weeks ago, I said my brake pads were down to like some kind of millimeter. So what does that mean? Does that mean I have a hard time breaking as I guess that's why I thought give me some new brake pads. And he put them on there and he wasn't lying to me because when I pulled out of the parking lot, I hit the brakes about went through the windshield, right. I had to know the problem. Before I could fix it, or pay to have it fixed. Amen. The Gospel says we must know we're sinners. In order to be saved, we must know we're lost in order to be found. That's what Isaiah is telling him here. He's saying here's all the ways you're in sin. But here's what you can do. Verse 16, wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widows calls. In other words, he says wash yourselves clean yourselves and serve others. So when he says learn to do good, Cease to do evil. Seek justice. If there's oppression, correct it Don't be a bully. bring justice to the fatherless, the orphan. Help the widow look outside of yourself. He says look outside of your family. Look outside of the church and find those who need help and give them Jesus amen. He says that people who live like this are people who know Jesus. People who are not rebelling against Him. And we can do this when we've been born again. It's really hard to be a Christian when you're not born again. Amen. It's talking to a pastor friend of mine who recently had some really horrible things happened to him. I mean, I'm not gonna get into all of them but really horrible things that I can't ever imagine happened to his church. Clearly the people that did these things did not know Jesus clearly. And I told him, it's very hard to pastor non Christians can't it's a spiritual thing. When you when you become born again, your your Spirit changes, become a new person. And so he says this in verse 18, come now let us reason together. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow, that they are red like crimson, they should become wool. Only God can change your heart. And then heart change brings about obedience, verse 19, if you're willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse the rebel, you shall be eaten by the sore for the mouth of the Lord. I spoken. It's not just about obedience. It's not just about doing the right things, or acting like you're doing the right things. He said, Don't bring that worship in here. I'm not listening. I'm not seeing I'm not hearing I'm not smelling incense. He says get your heart right, be obedient. Then you eat the good of the land. Spiritual rebels can change spiritual rebels can turn to faith in the Lord. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word. So close our time together today. All of us in here should have some feeling of where we've rebelled against you and we were prone to turn from you. And only if we're convicted, that's a good thing as a sign of salvation. sign of being born again. If we leave here thinking we're innocent, leave your thinking we have nothing to terms from eternity the more that is a scary place. There is only here today it was never placed the faith in you. There was today in terms of their sense of likes of faith in the Lord and spirit and in truth and true worship. vows released here today that we will continue to seek you seek your face your ways, continue in terms of sins, our lives and obey you for what you've done. Or we know that an obedience is a blessing. So we love you. Were six things that Jesus