Sermon #238                                                           Series: Isaiah

          Title:           ISAIAH’S BOLD PROPHECY

          Text:           Isaiah 65:1

          Reading:    Romans 10:1-21

          Subject:     God Stretching Out His Hands to Sinners

          Date:          Sunday Morning - May 5, 1996

          Tape #       S-50

          Introduction:

 

          The title of my message this morning is Isaiah’s Bold Prophecy. It is a prophecy found in Isaiah 65:1.  "I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name." The apostle Paul, when he quotes this passage in Romans 10:20-21, tells us that it stands as a very bold prophecy.

 

Romans 10:20-21  "Esaias is very bold, and saith, I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me. (21) But to Israel he saith, All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people."

 

This is a prophecy that required much boldness in Isaiah as he declared it and much boldness in the apostle Paul to expound it. Indeed, it is a prophecy that to this day requires boldness in the one who will faithfully deliver it. The man who declares that which is here revealed must have a God given boldness to do so for two simple reasons.

 

          First, this prophecy is a bold denunciation of self-righteousness. The Jews thought, like many in our day, that they had a monopoly on God. They had the idea that God was somehow obliged to bless them, that they were a superior race. Because their fathers were chosen and blessed of God, they presumed that they would be. When Paul spoke of his commission from the Lord to carry the gospel to the Gentile nations, they were furious. "They gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live" (Acts 22:22). If that was their reaction when Paul preached this message, imagine how the Jews must have responded to it in Isaiah’s day! Therefore, Paul says, Isaiah was very bold to have delivered this word of prophecy to that nation. That man who is called of God to preach the gospel must be a man with God given boldness. Men and women do not like to have their sin exposed, their self-righteousness condemned, and their pride abased. You can be sure of this: That man who faithfully and boldly declares the truth of God will not be called before the congress of the United States to receive a congressional metal of honor![1] God’s servants do not deliver their own words. They deliver God’s Word. Such men dare not alter their message, soften their tones, or speak smooth things. They speak with boldness, as God’s ambassadors. Any preacher who is ashamed to speak the truth ought to be ashamed to speak and will one day be ashamed that he ever spoke! It is nothing less than treason against God for a man to speak in God’s name who refuses to speak God’s truth!

 

          Second, this is called a bold prophecy because it is a clarion declaration of God’s free, sovereign, discriminating grace. Our text speaks of God’s rejection of one people and the calling of another. It speaks of both reprobation and election. It speaks of God justly casting off the Jews and of him calling his elect from among the Gentiles. In this day of Arminian, freewill, works religion, that man who proclaims the gospel of God’s free and sovereign grace in Christ has to have a backbone of steel and the boldness of a lion. In this day of cultured, well educated, religious reprobates, it takes boldness for a man to stand against the tide and preach plainly that “Salvation is of the Lord,” that God almighty saves whom he will, and that he does the whole work, without the assistance of man. May God be pleased to bless those men around the world today who dare to do so. May God be pleased to raise up men like Isaiah and Paul, who will dare to proclaim the message of his grace and glory in Christ.

 

Proposition:         In our text the Holy Spirit, speaking by the prophet Isaiah, declares to us that God bestows his salvation and grace upon those people that men consider the least likely candidates for it.

 

Divisions:             I want show you five things in this message.

1.    No one by nature can or will seek the Lord.

2.    God himself comes to sinners in the preaching of the gospel.

3.    When the Lord God makes himself known to sinners by the gospel, he causes them to seek him.

4.    It gives God great pleasure ad delight when sinners come to him by faith.

5.    The Lord God finds his elect in the most unlikely of places.

 

I. No one by nature can or will seek the Lord.

 

          Notice that our text describes those who do ultimately seek the Lord and find him as a people who sought him not and asked not for him. The fact is, man by nature never can or will seek the Lord. It does not lie within the realm of possibility that a sinner, left to himself will seek the Lord and come to him in repentance and faith.

·        Psalm 14:1-3

·        Romans 3:10-12

 

A.   Our depravity prevents us from desiring to seek the Lord.

B.   Our spiritual death means we have no ability to seek him even if we desired to do so.

·        John 6:44

 

          Before Adam sought God he was sought by God; and before the sons and daughters of Adam seek the Lord they must be sought by the Lord.

 

Illustration: The Story of St. Dennis

 

C. Some of you here today simply will not seek the Lord.

 

          You may have come here for any number of reasons; but it was not your intention in coming to seek Christ.

1.    You see no beauty or value in him.

2.    You do not know your need of him. You have never seen him.

3.    Yet, it may be this day that you will find him.

 

          It is my prayer that God may be pleased this day to seek you, causing you to seek him and find him.

 

Illustrations:         The Young Man in Peru

                             The Jogger in Australia

          Jim Wilson

 

II. God himself comes to sinners in the preaching of the gospel.

 

          Look at the first line of verse two. It explains what verse one is talking about. The Lord God says, “I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people.” I do not know how to say this forcefully enough. If God is now speaking by me, the message which you now hear is God speaking to you by the gospel. If the gospel blesses you, it is not the gospel blessing you, but God. God himself has come to you. Here is the awful solemnity of hearing the gospel. If God speaks, you are responsible to hear his voice and harden not your heart. If you really understood that, some of you would listen to the gospel in a very different way than you do now.

 

Illustration: The Little Boy Listening to Spurgeon

 

          Will you hear me? If God speaks to you by the gospel, to accept and obey it is to accept and obey him; but to ignore it is to ignore him. To reject it is to reject him. To despise it is to despise him.

·        Proverbs 1:22-33

 

God almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have come to you this day, stretching out the hands of mercy and grace in the gospel! What amazing mercy! What an astonishing responsibility!

 

A. The work of grace proclaimed in the gospel is God’s own, personal work.

 

          We live in a society today in which men, even religious men and preachers, try to shut God out of everything.

·        We are told that the universe is a great product of evolution rather than the result of God’s creation (Gen. 1:1).

·        We are taught that providence is governed by undefined laws of nature, blind fate, or superstitious luck, rather than the decree and hand of God (Rom. 8:28; 11:36).

·        We now hear preachers talking about salvation as the result of something sinners do (Their Works - Their Will - Their Ceremonies, etc.), rather than the work of God almighty.

 

That salvation revealed in the Bible, that salvation proclaimed in the gospel is the personal work of the Triune God himself (Eph. 1:3-14).

·        God the Father planned it.

·        God the Son purchased it.

·        God the Holy Spirit performs it.

 

B. God himself is the thing to be desired.

 

          Read our text again. Everything centers around God. Everything directs you to God. Everything comes from God. Everything goes back to God. Salvation is not a doctrine. Salvation is not a decision. Salvation is not a church. Salvation is not even an experience. Salvation is a Person. God is our salvation! Do you see that?

 

Exodus 15:2  "The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt him."

 

Psalms 27:1  "The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"

 

Psalms 35:3  "I am thy salvation."

 

Psalms 38:22  "Make haste to help me, O Lord my salvation."

 

Isaiah 12:2  "Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation."

 

Luke 2:30  "For mine eyes have seen thy salvation."

 

Revelation 19:1  "And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God."

 

C. It is the Lord God himself that we need.

 

          He says, “Behold me, behold me!” We look to God in Christ and find all that we want, all that we need in him. In the words of Spurgeon, “God is the sum of our necessities.”

 

Illustration: Should you find a little abandoned child, starved, naked, dirty, and sick, one that has obviously been abused, frightened and perhaps frightful to look upon, and you wanted at once to supply its every need, what would you look for? - A Mother!

 

          I am telling you that everything sinners need is to be found in God our Savior! Every lost soul needs a thousand things; but no sinner needs more than is to be found in Christ our God and Savior.

 

III. When the Lord God makes himself known to sinners by the gospel, he causes them to seek him.

 

          Remember, when Paul quotes this passage, he translates Isaiah’s words like this: “I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me.” This is very important. You must seek the Lord; but your seeking him is the result, not the cause of him seeking you.

 

A. The method, or the means by which God makes himself known to sinners is the preaching of the gospel.

·        Romans 10:13-17

 

          In expounding this passage of Scripture, Martin Luther said, the Holy Spirit here reveals and declares four impossibilities.

1.    No one can call upon the name of the Lord, no one can worship God, who does not believe on Christ.

2.    No one can believe on Christ until he hears the gospel of Christ.

3.    No one can hear the gospel of Christ without a preacher.

4.    No one can preach the gospel, truly preach the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, unless he is sent of God to do it.

 

B. If God the Holy Spirit speaks to you by the gospel, if he is pleased to issue to you the irresistible, effectual call of his grace, he will make you willing to come to Christ.

·        Psalm 110:3

 

          When God comes in saving power to a sinner, he makes that sinner...

1.    Willing to own and confess his sin.

2.    Willing to repent of dead religious works and lay aside all personal merit and worth.

3.    Willing to call on God for his mercy and grace in Christ.

4.    Willing to be saved by the obedience and blood of Christ, the sinners’ Substitute.

5.    Willing to part with everything and everyone that hinders his relationship with Christ.

6.    Willing to confess and bow to Christ as Lord.

 

Isaiah 1:18-20  "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (19) If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: (20) But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it."

 

          Now hang on to your seats. I want you to see this fourth thing. It is utterly astonishing. The more I think about it, the more astonishing it appears.

 

IV. It gives God great pleasure and delight when sinners come to him by faith.

 

          Please understand that I am speaking after the manner of men; but I make no apology for that. How else could we know God, if he did not condescend to make himself known to us after the manner of men? Our text appears to me to be an utterance of delight. God almighty is glad to be sought and found by sinners who once refused to seek his face. Imagine that! It gives the Lord God pleasure to see sinners turning to him.

 

Ezekiel 33:11  "Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?"

 

Luke 15:7  "I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance."

 

Luke 15:10  "Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."

 

Illustration: The Father Receiving the Prodigal

 

          Do not ever imagine that you will find God unwilling to receive you. It is written, “He delighteth in mercy!”

 

V. The Lord God finds his elect in the most unlikely of places.

 

          Notice that those who are saved by God’s grace were once a people who sought him not, a people who asked not after him, and a people who were not called by his name.

 

A. The objects of grace are all chosen vessels of mercy, prepared unto glory, from the ruined clay of fallen humanity, by the Potter’s own hand.

·        Jeremiah 18:1-6

 

          Usually, God’s elect are those whom we least expect to be saved.

·        I Samuel 16:12

·        I Corinthians 1:26-29

 

B. The message by which God saves his elect is so simple that most people miss it altogether.

 

          Look at our text one more time. This is what God says to you. Listen carefully. You will miss it, unless you are listening. God says, “Behold me, behold me!” He does not say, behold yourself, or behold your sin, or behold your deadness, but “Behold me, behold me!” That is the message.

·        Isaiah 45:22

 

Illustration: Spurgeon’s Conversion

 

          Here I stand as God’s ambassador. This is what the Lord Jesus Christ, my God and Savior has sent me to declare unto you: “Behold me, behold me!” Behold him as...

·        Your God!

·        Your Righteousness!

·        Your Sacrifice!

·        Your Salvation!

·        Your Lord!

 

          No preparation is needed. No works are called for. No feelings are demanded. He simply says, “Behold me, behold me!”

 

Application:

 

Isaiah 65:1  "I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name."

 

1.    Here is a cause for astonishment, wonder, and praise.

2.    This message of grace leaves no room for pride and self-righteousness.

3.    Our text offers the greatest encouragement imaginable for sinners to seek the Lord.

4.    Here is a word of encouragement to all who seek the salvation of lost souls.

5.    God will not always say “Behold me, behold me.”

 

          If you refuse to hear his voice, if you will not behold him now, if you will not believe on Christ today, the day will soon come when he will say to you, “Depart from me, depart from me, ye cursed!”


[1] Billy Graham was this week given that distinction by a congress that by law promotes homosexuality and abortion, while denouncing every public acknowledgment of God’s very existence!