Isaiah 24
Amen. Turn to Isaiah 24. Isaiah 24, 25, 26 and 27 are
a lump of passages that go together. They’re often referred to as
the little apocalypse. In a sense, they are a small
sort of book of revelation telling about future things while revelation
speaks of the ultimate end. This has a kind of a twofold
view, the end of Judah with the destruction that comes in the
form of Babylon and people are carried off to Babylon. But as
we know, there’s a return, there’s an exile or a return from exile
and a rebuilding in a small way. And then ultimately it does look
to the end as portrayed in the book of Revelation. So as we
read 24, Look at the poetry. Look at the
descriptions of doom and gloom. I think our prosperous American
church loves to go out of the way to soften God’s commands. It loves to go out of the way
and soften the blow of God’s coming judgment. And it loves
to, I think John MacArthur says this well, it loves to be God’s
PR man. and make God not seem so nasty,
but. Remember, God has revealed himself
to us. He’s wise. And the way he reveals
himself is probably, I say that tongue in cheek, probably the
way we ought to read him. No, it is the way we should read
him. And judgment, coming judgment ought to be something we contemplate.
Yes, we’re thankful that we aren’t in the crosshairs of God because
those crosshairs were on Christ. But we also ought to pity the
nations. And so think on that as we read God’s word. This is
Isaiah 24. And it shall be as with the people,
so with the priest, as with the slave, so with his master, as
with the maid, so with her mistress, as with the buyer, so with the
seller, as with the lender, so with the borrower, as with the
creditor, so with the debtor. The earth shall be utterly empty
and utterly plundered for the Lord has spoken this word. The
earth mourns and withers. The world languishes and withers. The highest people of earth languish. The earth lies defiled under
its inhabitants, for they have transgressed the laws, violated
the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse
devours the earth and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt. Therefore
the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are
left. The wine mourns. The vine languishes. All the merry-hearted sigh, the
mirth of the tambourines, is stilled. The noise of the jubilant
has ceased. The mirth of the lyre is stilled.
No more do they drink wine with singing. Strong drink is bitter
to those who drink it. The wasted city is broken down.
Every house is shut up so that none can enter. There is an outcry
in the streets for lack of wine. All joy has grown dark. The gladness
of the earth is banished. Desolation is left in the city.
The gates are battered into ruins. For thus, it shall be in the
midst of the earth among the nations and when an olive tree
is beaten at the gleaning, when the grape harvest is done. They
lift up their voices. They sing for joy over the majesty
of the Lord. They shout from the West. Therefore,
in the East, give glory to the Lord. In the coastlands of the
sea, give glory to the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.
From the ends of the earth, we hear songs of praise, of glory
to the righteous one. But I say, waste away. I waste
away, woe is me, for the traitors have betrayed with the betrayal
the traitors have betrayed. How about that one? Terror and
the pit and the snare are upon you, O inhabitants of the earth.
He who flees at the sound of terror shall fall into the pit.
He who climbs out of the pit shall be caught in the snare
for the windows of heaven are opened and the foundations of
the earth tremble. The earth is utterly broken and
the earth is split apart. The earth is violently shaken.
The earth staggers like a drunken man. It sways like a hut. Its transgression lies heavy
upon it and it falls and will not rise again. On that day,
the Lord will punish the host of heaven in heaven and the kings
of the earth on the earth. They will be gathered together
as prisoners in a pit. They will be shut up in a prison.
And after many days they will be punished. Then the moon will
be confounded and the sun ashamed. For the Lord of hosts reigns
on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and his glory will be before
his elders. There’s a spider. He must die. That’s why I paused there for
a second. I saw that thing. Yeah. So we’re talking about judgment
tonight. There you have it. In our, uh, in our catechism,
I forget if it’s in the confession of faith or the larger or shorter
catechism, it’s somewhere in there. There’s a little phrase
that always stands out. Uh, and it says something like
this. We should tremble at God’s threatenings. We should embrace his promises
and we should yield to his commands. I’ll go backwards. We should
yield to God’s commands as we read them in the scripture. We
should embrace his promises as we see them printed on the pages
of holy scripture. And we should tremble at God’s
threatenings. Now we, well, I gotta be careful
saying we, our culture, does none of the three. We don’t tremble
at God’s threatenings because we have defamed God. We have created a God unto our
own liking, a God unto ourselves. And, you know, we say things
like, well, the Old Testament God is a God of wrath. The New
Testament God is a God of grace. Well, they haven’t read about
the second coming, have they? They haven’t read about Jesus,
you know, little Jesus, meek and mild. I think he comes back
on a white horse. And I think maybe to use an American
phrase, he comes walking tall and carrying a big stick. And
I don’t really read Meek and Mild into that, but we should
tremble at God’s threatenings, no matter what the culture says.
We should embrace God’s promises. Now I’m probably going to get
myself in a little bit of trouble here. We love to embrace American churchianity
cliches, right? But we should know and embrace
the promises of God. They’re way better than the,
than the cliches. Some of y’all I think have heard
me tell about being at Dollywood and maybe if you’ve been to Dollywood,
you’ve seen the little picture and it says Jesus died on a dogwood
tree. Y’all seen that? It’s heresy. It’s pure heresy.
I’ve had some spray paint. I would have spray painted it.
But it says when Jesus died, the dogwood tree cross bloomed.
I mean, where is that in the scripture? But how many people
pass through Dollywood, bless her heart, and they read that
sign and they think, Oh, Jesus died on a dogwood tree. So every
time I see a dogwood tree, you know, Jesus did die. And yes,
it’s brought great blessings, but think of it the biblical
way we should, we should embrace his promises. Um, uh, what about
the other one? We should yield to the commands
of God. I think we got to be careful
because we think, well, Jesus has died for my sins. And if
he’s died for my sins, I don’t have to obey him anymore. Well, go back and listen to this
morning’s sermon about pleasing God. It takes a little effort
to please God. Not saving effort, but heart-changed
effort. Think about this as we look at
Isaiah 24 tonight, trembling at God’s threatenings, trembling
at God’s threatenings. God made the world and everything
in it. He made it a beautiful place, a perfect place. Day by
day as he made things, he blessed them. He gave them his benediction.
Adam was the final act of creation on day six. And when God made
Adam in his own image and his own likeness, He didn’t just
say, behold, it is good. He said, behold, it is very good. And so seeing that man should
not be left alone, he took a rib from Adam during that deep sleep.
And from the rib of Adam, he gave him Eve, whom Adam said
is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. And God put Adam
in the garden. to work the garden, to keep the
garden. Work meant to make it produce, make it fruitful. Keep
is a protection word. And he gave him Eve to be his
help meat. So Adam called all the animals to him. He named
them. He began to make God’s creation flourish. And the goal
was for God to dwell with Adam there in that garden and for
Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. and to listen and obey
God’s commands and to spread the glory and the obedience of
God to the ends of the earth. It was sort of the first great
commission. Now, Jesus’ great commission in Matthew’s gospel
would be the second great commission, wouldn’t it? redeemed humanity
gets to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the earth with more
Christians. And we do that through the generations. We do that through the work of
evangelism and the work of the church. But you get the picture
that God made the world and everything in it to be a place of beauty
and joy and grace. Now we know that Satan came in,
having fallen before in the heavenlies, he decided, what was it? That
he would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. And so
he came to Adam and Eve in the garden and he tempted them. He
tested them and he had them fail God’s one command, not to eat
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So when they
did, they realized their nakedness. They realized their shame. God
found Adam, even Satan, lined them up and gave them their curses,
curses on the serpent, curses on the woman, curses on the man.
But we also know there are curses on the earth. Y’all been studying
Romans in Sunday school, most of you, many of you, and you
know that in Romans eight, it says all creation groans. under
the travail of sin, all creation groans under the weight of the
curse that man placed on this earth due to sin. And so all
creation eagerly awaits the adoption of sons because when we get made
new, guess what? The earth gets made new. We look
forward to a new heavens and a new earth. But Adam and Eve,
maybe for a moment trembled at God’s threatenings. In the day
you eat, you will surely die. No one seemed to tremble at the
preaching of, we mentioned this morning, Enoch. No one seemed
to tremble at the preaching of Noah. No one seemed to tremble
really, except a few at the preaching of all the prophets. And even
in Jesus’ day, Paul’s day, the apostles’ day, and throughout
the ages of the church, faithful preaching is often met with scoffing
and scorning. And it’s why I think in today’s
American culture, many churches have become the place where people
who have itching ears gather teachers unto themselves, that
will say God is not angry with sin. You know, sin is not, it’s
no big deal. It’s just mistakes. God wants
you to be good. God wants you to feel good. And
God is there like Santa or 911 emergency if he’s needed. And we have removed from our
thoughts, the sovereign creator, the sovereign judge. We have
moved from our thoughts, the sovereign one who says he’s coming
back. and he will judge the earth in equity and righteousness.
So do we tremble at the threatenings of God and tremble so that we’re
thankful for Jesus, but also tremble in that we, we proclaim
before a wicked generation that Christ is coming. And it’s not
little Jesus, meek and mild. It’s not baby Jesus in the manger
or blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, you know, on the portraits. It’s
Jesus, the righteous judge who is angry at sin. We ought to,
after reading this passage, Isaiah 24, be thankful that we are found
in the Lord Jesus Christ. For we get a picture in this
passage of God dealing with covenant breaking, just as he dealt with
Adam breaking the covenant in the garden. He’s now coming to
pronounce judgment on the covenant breakers in Judah and in Jerusalem. And yes, there’s a longer look
picture to the end when the people of the earth who are covenant
breakers like Adam, who failed to keep God’s law and fought
word and deed are ultimately judged. But God, is coming to
judge sin. And so we need to remember in
all this the good news. And there’s a little good news
in this passage. It’s that a remnant, a number of people will be saved
by God’s grace. And we know that to be true in
two ways. About what, 42,000 people returned from exile and
rebuilt Judah and Jerusalem. Well, it was last year. We studied
that. It was a small band of faithful
people that God moved in their hearts to leave the comforts
of Babylon where they had lived for a generation or two and to
go back and make that treacherous journey to a rubble-filled city. that lay in ruins. And they went
to rebuild the city, to rebuild the temple, to rebuild their
houses. And most importantly, to reestablish the presence and
worship of almighty God on the face of this earth. Sort of like
Noah had to do after exiting the ark. Sort of like Adam and
Eve and Abel and Seth and Enoch and others had to do after the
garden incident. And it’s something that has to
be done generation after generation as people fail to follow God
and reformation comes. Well, I want us to think about
two big pictures, two big headings tonight, that they are judgment
and restoration. Judgment, pretty difficult. Restoration,
pretty glorious. And I want us to think about
it in light of what we might call ultimate questions. Ultimate
questions are the questions that everybody has. What happens when
I die? What’s the meaning of life? How
do I know right and wrong? Questions like that. And depending
on your worldview, depending on what book is on your shelf
and what your beliefs are, your faith are, you will answer that
question accordingly. We answer it from the five books
of Moses, particularly the book of Genesis. We know that God
is the ultimate mover and creator. We know that the end of all things
is the glory of God. We know right and wrong because
God is the lawgiver and it’s God’s standard that sets our
standards and so on. So we want to think about ultimate
questions. So let’s think about ultimate
questions in light of judgment. What is the goal of human history? It’s the glory of God. Well,
that, as we mentioned a moment ago, got messed up on earth at
least. And God is in the business of
making all things new. He’s in the business of sending
his son to redeem and fix what man through sin has broken. But
the meaning of human history is the glory of God. And what
will bring God glory? It’s judgment. That’s a hard
one to swallow, isn’t it? The judgment of the wicked is
part of the end of all things, but also the restoration of all
things, all things made new. But before all things are made
new and before God gathers His righteous ones in His sight into
His presence, the earth will go through the curses and the
turmoil and the pain of the curses of sin. We just heard a storm.
There’s likely, go home and watch the 10 o’clock news tonight.
You’ll see that trees fell across power lines or limbs broke through
the roof of a house or perhaps someone was driving down the
road and something happened where they got into an accident. Perhaps
within 50 miles of us, any way you go this moment, somebody
is in great pain or even has passed from this life to the
next. because of the travails of the earth under the weight
of sin. And so we look forward to all
things being made new. But before that happens, we must
run a course through life in this sin-filled, cursed world.
We get to do it by the grace of God and with hope of heaven.
But we also, and perhaps if we don’t taste death, we will see
the coming of Jesus. We will see what every eye will
see, even the eyes of those who pierced him and put him on that
cross. There is a day of universal judgment. And our passage tonight showed
us that. It doesn’t matter if you’re the slave or the master,
the mistress or the maid. It doesn’t matter if you’re the
creditor or the debtor. It doesn’t matter if you are
in a low position or a high and exalted position, whoever you
are, whatever you are, whatever you have accrued and amassed
doesn’t matter. In the eyes of God, it’s whether
or not you were righteous. That picture of the rich man
who ate sumptuously and even had so many crumbs that the dogs
were well-fed. Outside his door was Lazarus,
who was sick and sore and had no dignity, no real blessings
in this life. He passed on to the next and
their places were switched. And so in judgment, there is
great devastation for those who are not found in Christ. Last week, there was the statement,
let us eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. And perhaps
that’s the worldview. That’s how some answer the ultimate
questions. But remember this, God is an
equal opportunity judger. You know, we like equality, don’t
we? Don’t like anybody left out or
left behind that sort of thing. Well, God, God doesn’t do that.
He judges by his righteous standard. You are either righteous in his
sight or unrighteous in his sight. And this judgment as we read
is quite a picture. I think about modern weapons
of warfare and somewhere along the way, I heard there’s some
bomb, maybe it’s a bunker buster, hyperbaric missile or something. And when it’s dropped, the first
thing it does is it spreads a gas. And the second thing it does
is it ignites that gas. And it literally sucks the oxygen
out of that area. What a terrible piece of warfare.
And we’ve witnessed in some of our lifetimes, at least I know
it in history, the atomic bomb. We live under the threat of nuclear
war from several rogue nations. Men can do terrible things to
one another. Men are doing terrible things
to one another. You just read the national news, watch the
national news, the headlines are awful. But it is far worse
what God can do. And it is far worse what God
will do. God will come and he will judge
the earth with righteousness. He will judge the earth. And
as those days march forward, our passage seems to say the
joy continually is stolen from the people. Even the wine does
not rejoice. Even the wine, the vine does
not produce. You know, you look at culture
today, especially Labor Day weekend, you know, and you, you get behind
somebody and you look at their bumper stickers, you know, lake
life, beach life, or maybe they’ve got a little silhouette of a
margarita glass or, or, whatever it is, some things we don’t put
on the back of our car. Like I don’t think I’ve ever
seen some, you know, some cocaine rocks or anything like that.
But, but, but we have all these coping mechanisms, don’t we?
We have all these coping mechanisms to delay the inevitable and,
and, and it won’t work. And our passage shows us how
great is God’s judgment. how wide it is, not just with
people, but he begins to take the things that bring them joy. Even the earth itself groans
under its defilement. And God will come and there will
be no joy and there will be no mirth and he will deal with those
whose sin is unpardoned. He will deal with those who fail
to look upon Christ. And haven’t we seen all kinds
of pictures of looking to God in faith? When Noah built an
ark for a hundred years and he preached righteousness and as
he hammered and nailed and sawed wood and he dealt with the taunts
of the people, he had the object of salvation right there. Maybe
some of you have been up to the ark encounter. I think it’s pretty
big. And don’t you think it was a big sign visibly, physically? Might’ve seemed folly to them,
like the cross, to generations since Christ. But don’t you think
it was pretty clear to them? You either get in this boat and
live or you stay out of the boat and die. Or how about the bronze
serpent in the wilderness? If you were bitten by those vipers,
those poisonous vipers, and you were sick and dying, you could
simply look to the bronze serpent and live. And now of course there’s
Christ and the cross. But people fail to hear. People
fail to tremble at God’s threatenings. They fail to embrace God’s promises
by faith and they fail to yield in obedience to his commands.
And that’s why Isaiah and other places will say, seek the Lord
while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. We need
to preach judgment. You know, the most famous sermon
ever preached on American soil, I believe it’s sinners in the
hands of an angry God, their foot shall slip in due time. The picture that Edwards, Jonathan
Edwards gave of people, he says, you’re walking on a rotten, bridge
over the pit of hell. And he would use that phrase,
that biblical phrase, their foot shall slip in due time. And so
we need to be concerned. First of all, are we saved? Do
we put our faith and our hope and our trust in the righteousness
of Christ alone? Nothing in our hands, nothing
in our resume, nothing in our skillset can erase the debt of
sin that we owe, that there’s a penalty due to us for that
sin. Nothing can erase it except the paschal lamb, the Passover
lamb, the scapegoat of Jesus Christ. Our sins had to be laid
on him and he had to pay the penalty as the righteous spotless
lamb for our sins. And so to escape the coming judgment,
we need to be found righteous in God’s sight. Righteous as
God defines it. and as God provides it. But we
also ought to be concerned about the salvation of others. And
as we live generationally, it’s wonderful and good and necessary
to show our children and our grandchildren, our great grandchildren,
or the people under our influence, the wisdom of righteousness in
Christ. But we also ought to have pity
for the lost. You know, sometimes we look at
the news and we say, what a wicked bunch of people. They’re gonna
get what’s coming to them and boy, do they deserve it. And
we say, glad that’s not me. But Isaiah several times in the
book weeps over the coming judgment for Judah and Jerusalem and the
people do we weep for those who are not saved, but are perishing
day by day in their disobedience towards God. Well, that’s the
judgment side. How about the restoration side?
Again, ultimate questions. What happens when you die? Well,
that depends, doesn’t it? If you’re not righteous, your
spirit is raised up and cast into outer darkness like the
rich man. You’re cast away into that place
of eternal fire where at the day of the resurrection, your
body is united with your soul and your body and soul will last
forever in the place of torment. That’s what happens when you
die. If you’re not in Jesus, there’s no other option. Now
in Christ, our souls are raised up in glory and openly acknowledged
and acquitted the day we pass into glory. And at the resurrection,
we’ll be united with our bodies and we will have a whole body
and a whole spirit that will be in fellowship with God forever
in eternal bliss and the presence of almighty God. But another
ultimate question pops up and maybe this is an ultimate question
that really Christians think about. And it’s one we ought
to think about. And it’s one that troubles us.
And it’s one you may walk around, walk out of here tonight, thinking
about. And you may wrestle with the
question. You may wrestle with the answer and you may wrestle
with the God who has ordained these things to be this way.
But why doesn’t God save everybody? Could he? Yes. Does he? No. Why? Well, that’s up to him. That’s his wisdom. There is glory. This is, this is the hard thing
that pops up in this passage. There is glory and joy. in the judgment of the wicked.
That’s a hard thing to swallow, but you see it in chapter four,
beginning at verse 14. After all the judgment comes,
it says, they lift up their voices and they sing for joy over the
majesty of the Lord. They shout from the West. Therefore
in the East, they give glory to the Lord. That’s a tough one
to swallow, isn’t it? That people will rejoice. People
will glorify God in the judgment of the wicked. I pick through
a Psalm every week personally. And this week it was Psalm 69,
I think. And in Psalm 69, it speaks, I’m
sorry, Psalm 68 is the one this week. And David is asking, David’s
asking God to, hey, take care of business for me. I got some
enemies, take care of them. And it says, the righteous shall
be glad. They shall exult before God with jubilant joy. And what
are they responding to? When God arises, when God scatters
their enemies, when those who hate him flee before him, and
when as smoke is driven away, he drives them away as wax melts
before the fire. So the wicked shall perish before
the Lord. So why is it that the righteous have joy in the everlasting
punishment of the wicked? That’s a tough one to swallow.
And what if it’s our loved ones? What if it’s people we know and
love that have heard the voice of Christ and have denied him
and have rejected his offer, his free offer of righteousness
and everlasting joy. But we’re reminded of God and
how he established a kingdom of light. We’re reminded of God
and how he established the world and everything in it. We’re reminded
of God and how good and gracious he was to Adam and to Eve. And he gave them the option.
and the ability to obey him and to obey him perfectly so that
at some point his perfect obedience after eating the tree of life
would have remained forever for him and all who came after him.
But God in his wisdom ordained and allowed and permitted sin
so that he could send his son to redeem a people for himself.
And we begin to get maybe like the apostle Paul, And we run
out of things to say. And we run out of things to say.
And so we just break out in joy for from him and to him and through
him are all things. Who has known the mind of the
Lord? Not me. Even Paul admitted that. And so there are now kingdoms
of darkness and kingdom, the kingdom of light. There’s the
kingdom of righteousness. There’s the kingdom of sin. And
the scripture tells us God does not take pleasure in the destruction
of the wicked. In fact, Peter writes, God is
patient. He’s not slow in the second coming. He’s being patient.
He’s being patient for the gospel preaching to take place and for
more and more men and women and boys and girls to turn to faith
in Jesus. But he does shut the door of
the ark. He does take down the bronze serpent. He does end history
with a judgment and a reaping of the earth. and a winnowing
of the unrighteous from the righteous. And maybe before you get upset
with God, think about what Miriam and Moses sang when they crossed
the Red Sea, or the Dead Sea, yes, the Red Sea, and they turned
around and saw the sea swallow up Pharaoh. We’re cool with Pharaoh
dying, aren’t we? He’s a bad guy. We’re cool with
the Egyptians getting sunk But what did Miriam and Moses do?
They say, oh God, you are so ungracious and unkind. No, they
sang, we will sing unto the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously.
The horse and the rider have been thrown into the sea. What will the souls under the
altar of heaven do when God answers their prayer for how long, oh
Lord, Will it be till you go and you judge and avenge our
deaths? The souls of those who gave their
lives for the sake of Christ, the martyrs are crying out day
and night, Lord avenge our deaths. How long? What will they do?
Well, they say, Oh Lord, you shouldn’t have done it. That
wasn’t nice. They weren’t that bad. Now those souls know exactly
how wicked the powers of darkness are. And so there is joy in judgment. And in verse 15, it says, in
the East, they will give glory to the Lord. In the coastlands
of the sea, they will give glory to the name of the Lord of Israel.
From the ends of the earth, we hear songs of praise of glory
to the righteous one. We see that also in the book
of Revelation. Now, just a little bit ago, we
had this awful storm and it looks like it’s cleared up pretty good.
It looks like you’ll be able to walk to the car and the only
thing that’ll be wet is the bottom of your shoes. But an hour or
so ago, the rain was sideways, the wind was blowing and it was
hard to see and you couldn’t stay dry in any way, shape or
form. And after the judgment, after
that cataclysmic where God comes and judges and the unrighteous
flee for the hills and they cry out that the rocks would fall
on them because they’d rather be crushed by a mountain than
the fierce wrath of Almighty God. The storm will subside and
God will gather us into his place of peace, the new heavens, the
new earth, the new Jerusalem. But I want you to think tonight,
I want you to think and reflect on this a little bit. That wonderful
hymn we We could have sung it today, sang it today, sung it,
sing, sing, sung. We could have had it today in
our worship service. I just change verbs when I don’t know which
proper one tends to use. We could have used that today
in morning worship. I can get that right. How sweet and awful
is the place? where Christ has entered in.
And we sing that wonderful phrase, why was I a guest? Remember the
bridegroom goes out the highways and the byways, come to my wedding,
come to my wedding, come party, come celebrate. Nobody comes,
the invited don’t come. So Jesus says, go out and get
anybody that’ll come. And that’s us, we are the guest.
We are the guest of Jesus. But I love how that song goes
towards its end, pity the nations. pity the people who don’t call
on Jesus and bring those people in. That’s our goal as Christians,
to pity the nations, to pity the people who don’t hear and
don’t believe, perhaps that by our pity and our word, our gospel,
we can bring them in. Now we know Two ends to all this
judgment. One is that some do return from
Babylon, utter destruction, utter judgment, hauled off for 70 years.
Some will come back. A remnant does return and they
rebuild. And there’s some semblance, maybe
teeny tiny, but the glory of God on the earth and the people
serving him in Judah and Jerusalem until the coming of Jesus. And
also we live this day, this side of the cross, we have the message
of the gospel, we have the church. The nations or the world thinks
very little of the church. Sometimes I think the church
thinks very little of the church. But one of the great hopes we
have, perhaps maybe you’ll turn on the news this week and see
the headlines, is we have the hope of the righteous one coming
and fixing what is broken. And we live in a world, especially
our American world, where so many people are enamored with
life here, life now, I think even Christians. We’ve married
the American dream with the gospel. Now it’s the prosperity gospel.
And we need to be willing to give up something for now in
order to have everlasting joy. And that’s to put our faith,
our complete faith and hope in God and his son, the Lord Jesus,
and in the message and the labor of the kingdom, and it will pay
eternal dividends. But there is a darkness of God
and his justice and judgment coming, and we should warn folks
of that. I love how one of our senior
saint members says of their family, I tell them every day I see them,
I want you to be where I am. and you know what you need to
do in order to be there. May that be our message. Pray
with me. Lord, we ask that you would help us to leave tonight, embracing
your promises and yielding to your commands, yes, but most
of all, trembling at your threatenings. And help us not to go away, having
seen in the mirror what is true of us and forgetting it, going
on about the business of whatever life and noise there comes, but
help us to reflect and ponder on these things. And we pray
it in Christ’s mighty name. Amen. We want to respond to the
word of God. Number 324 is a hymn, Christ
is coming, that points us to that great truth.