Sermon
# 189 Series: Isaiah
Title: God’s Thoughts and Your
Thoughts
Text: Isaiah 55:7-9
Subject: A Contrast Between God’s
Thoughts and Man’s Thoughts
Date: Sunday Evening – September 18, 1994
Introduction:
Our
text is talking about thoughts, God’s Thoughts and Your
Thoughts; and
that is my subject tonight. Unlike all
other earthly creatures, man was created in the image of God. As a creature in the image of God, he was
given the ability to think. Man was created to think. When men do not think, the degrade themselves and
behave as brute beasts. Thoughtless souls move across the earth like animals, looking for
nothing more than temporary things, food, and drink, and shelter. Thoughtful men and women rise above the mundane, the
earthly, and the temporal. They lift
their eyes toward heaven. They seek
things that cannot be found upon this ball of clay. They know themselves to be
immortal souls. Therefore they seek
immortality and immortal things. But
there is a problem. Fallen man’s highest, noblest thoughts are but the thoughts of fallen man. Man’s thinking cap is warped. His thought process is perverse. Consequently, whenever man thinks about
immortal, spiritual, heavenly things, his thoughts are always wrong. So at the outset of my message, I want you
to understand three things.
Proposition: In our text we are told that specifically in the area
of redemption, grace, salvation, and the forgiveness of sins, God’s thoughts
and man’s thoughts are poles apart.
I. God’s Thoughts about Creation
are Higher than Your Thoughts.
Man
thinks the world is somehow out of sector, a little rough, unbalanced. But it is not so. God made everything, gave order to it, and pronounced that it was
very good, and gave it to man, his noblest creature (Gen. 1:1,
29-31).
Whether
you look at God’s creation with your own eyes, through a telescope, or through
a microscope, unless your mind has been perverted by the accumulated thoughts
of men, you cannot fail to see that there is a tremendous to this vast universe in which
we live.
Take the finest needle a man ever made, and put it under a microscope. It looks like a rough, ragged piece of
iron. Then put a drop of water, or a
drop of blood on a slide, and look at it through the same microscope. Multiply it 10,000 times, 100,000
times. The more you magnify it, the
more precisely orderly it appears.
Now,
understand that this whole universe is the result of God’s thought! Yes, the Almighty thought it into being.
II. God’s Thoughts About
Providence Are Higher Than Our Thoughts.
Everything
in time marches in one direction and is ordered by one all-wise purpose (Rom. 11:36; 8:28-29).
III. God’s Thoughts Regarding The
Future Are As High Above Man’s Thoughts As The Heavens Are Above The Earth.
I
have said all that because I want to elevate your thoughts of God. I want you to see that God is not a
man. He does not have any of the
limitations of a man. And his thoughts
are not the thoughts of a man.
IV. Particularly, God’s Thoughts
About Salvation and Grace Are Not Your Thoughts.
Read
Isaiah 55 one more time and understand how high God’s thoughts are above ours.
V. Now, let me conclude this message by pointedly
showing you what the text itself is designed to teach us – God’s Thoughts About The Pardon and Forgiveness of Sin Are
Not Our Thoughts.
Illus: Noeman – “I Thought”
The Rich Young Ruler
Application: Illus:
The
Disfigured Mother.