Jesus said, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be when the Son of Man returns.
There's poison in this pot because the prophets felt that they could be spiritually liberal and allow for these diviners and these soothsayers and enchanters to be mingled in amongst them without protest when Israel's constitution, which is the law of Moses, prohibited these. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Isaiah.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Isaiah chapter three with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Isaiah chapter three. And as we examine these judgments through Isaiah on the lifestyles of the people whom he had before him, it brought God's judgment then and it brings God's judgment even now, though not immediate.
The meter is running. And this means that it has something to do with our lives. We're not just walking through the Old Testament because we're just a bunch of curious people.
We want to know what God wants us to know. And the way he really does that is through his word. In this chapter, and often in other spots of Isaiah, it is, these things are said with satire and caricature, without humor. The caricatures are exaggerations of a fact that is, of something that is there. And he's going to bring that out and I'll comment again on the caricature and the satire as we move forward. But this is what you have is a prophet trying to reach his audience through caricature and satire.
And other points he's just direct and other times he'll use allegory and images in chapter five, which we'll get to hopefully next session. He uses metaphor for Israel as the vineyard. And so this is a prophet hard at work and we can all benefit from learning the methods of God's men and women in Scripture. Verse one now of Isaiah three, For behold, the Lord Yahweh of hosts takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stock in the store, the whole supply of bread, and the whole supply of water. Now where he says for behold, that links what he is about to say with what he had already said in the last verse of the previous chapter in verse 22 of Isaiah two. And there he told the people to several relationships with those who were idolaters. And if God rejects the proud idolaters, then the faithful also must reject them. And so he says, Therefore, or built upon that, the Lord Yahweh of hosts takes away from Jerusalem.
So he's saying separate from them. God is going to judge them and don't identify with people who refuse to repent, who insist on defying the clear revealed word of God. And he is showing that the anti-Yahweh leadership in Judah brought about the collapse of their own society. We're living in a time that we're watching just immorality set up conditions for a collapse. And it is, you can look at it, you can ring your fingers, or you can pray for opportunity to address it. If God will bring people your way, you know, maybe there's a waiter or a waitress at a restaurant or something that you have contact with on a, maybe you go there for morning breakfast or something like that. And your heart, you know, they're on your heart or maybe it's somewhere else. That would be the Lord wanting to reach a member of this twisted culture. And if you listen to pastors from the 70s and the 60s, you hear them talk about how twisted the culture is in their day. And you're saying, man, if this is a contest, I'm going to blow them away.
How much worse can it get? The Lord, Yahweh of hosts, God is God invincible, his battle title takes away from Jerusalem and Judah the stock in the store. Well, we hear a lot about the supply chain. Well, Isaiah is telling them the supply chain is going to be taken away. And the whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water, he says in verse one, are going to be gone. The judgment through scarcity.
The coming shortages would create a desperate condition. You got to have this thing, of course, you have to have to live. You can't live without fire. You have to have fire. And if you scoff at that, you just point to the sun. The sun is on fire. And you say that's a tricky one.
No, it's straight out. We are not self-existent. God is and only God is. Well, again, judgments on the people in opposition to God. Just ask someone who's upset about God's judgment, has he no right?
Has he no right if he is God to administer judgment and accountability? Verse two, the mighty man and the man of war, the judge and the prophet and the diviner and the elder. Now, I'm going to have to break this up a little bit, but he's just going to list like in verse three, the captains of 50, the honorable man, the counselor, the skillful artisan and the expert enchanter. And then so this group, the prophet is saying there's going to be a social breakdown where the men of authority in the communities will be ousted. And God is going to bring this about, leaving behind the incompetent and the weak and the irresponsible and those who are cruel. The first fulfillment really comes when Nebuchadnezzar comes to Judah and begins removing these people away.
It will happen again in a more violent fashion when the Romans do it in 70 AD. And then, of course, it will all fall apart in the Great Tribulation, which will be centered on Israel, though the whole world will be in turmoil. The judge and the prophet and the diviner, that's the civil, the spiritual and the heretic. What is the diviner doing there?
It's like apple, oranges, staples. I mean, what is the diviner doing there? That's the problem. And the prophet, he is ingenious. He inserts that because they had their false prophets. They had the true prophets, too. Isaiah and Micah, for example.
This movie played out in the Northern Kingdom. A few people learned a lesson. But for all the misrule of these leaders by position, not performance, the worst was still to come. He says, and the elder. The elders were supposed to be men of renown, men who you would respect, statesmen, people who would lend benefit to society.
They, too, are going to be removed. Verse 3, the captain of 50, the honorable man, the counselor, the skillful artisan, the expert carpenter. Well, again, Nebuchadnezzar took anyone who had skill, he took them away, and he put them to work in his kingdom.
These positions, the people in these positions will be replaced. And yet, as he itemizes them, here's another word, the expert enchanter. It's a liberal sprinkling of charlatans amongst noble professions. The carpenters, the military commanders, and the commanders beneath them, which is really an indication that the kingdom had potential.
It should have done better. Not only did they have people as leaders, they had people that they could delegate who were supposed to be competent leaders, the skillful artisans. But these soothsayers and clever enchanters, again, what are they doing there?
And yeah, that's the whole problem. Already Judah was suffering, as told in Isaiah chapter 1, verses 5 through 9. They were already being pillaged and people being deported from other parts of Judah, not Jerusalem.
The Assyrians could not penetrate Jerusalem. The Babylonians will 100 years later. But Judah had all it needed to be a glorious kingdom that it once was. Warriors, mighty men, men of war, captains of 50, sages, elders, judges, noblemen, counselors, prophets, craftsmen, artisans. They felt secure with all of these. They felt very comfortable, as in the cities today, with people sitting at, you know, sipping coffee or having meals at bistros and coffee shops, not only oblivious to God, but antagonistic towards him.
Jesus said, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be when the Son of Man returns. There's poison in this pot because the prophets felt that they could be spiritually liberal and allow for these diviners and these soothsayers and enchanters to be mingled in amongst them without protest when Israel's constitution, which is the law of Moses, prohibited these, called for swift and immediate intolerance of them, capital punishments, banish them or execute them. There's poison in the pot, the spiritual mediums, charlatans, diviners, the enchanters, and you look at some of these so-called churches today and you say, they've got the charlatans.
They have the wicked in the pulpits and the people are loving it so much. You know, you don't have to say something outright heretical to be a heretic. All you have to do is suppress the truth. You can just tell people God loves you, but leave out the part about there's only one God, one savior, and sort of, you know, just suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because what is the unrighteous? Your motives are not matching God's motives. You don't want to tell people because you don't want to offend them. You want them to come back to church.
And there are many churches that do this and they're full. They're full of people who don't want to hear it. And so a guy like me gets up and says this and someone may say, ah, it's just sour grapes. Well, the sour grapes aren't because of envy.
If there are sour, if there's any sourness, it's because of pity. Not only because the charlatans are getting away with it and lining their pockets fat with cash, but the people are damning themselves. They have the Bibles and they will not read what's in the Bible unless they like it. And this is what the prophets, all of them, were up against. None of the prophets were sent when everything was wonderful. The priests were for that. You know, make the offerings to the Lord, your praise offerings, your peace offerings, your sin offerings to the Lord. But when there was trouble, God had to send troubleshooters. Isaiah, Jeremiah, all of the prophets. And today, the pastors have to make sure that when they preach, they preach the whole counsel of God, as Paul claimed to the Corinthians. I preached it all to you. Verse 4 now, I will give children to be their princes and babes shall rule over them. Not a blessing. This is payback.
When God says vengeance is mine, he means it. And here, the prophet is warning the nation that they would be stripped of all mature, experienced and competent government leaders. This is some of the satire and the caricature that I was mentioning earlier. Children will be their princes. Well, you're not going to have like a three-year-old up on the, you know, running the country.
That's the caricature. But he's saying, you might as well. Problem is, these incompetent people will be worse. When we get to verse 12, if you look down at verse 12, as for my people, children are their oppressors and women rule over them. Oh, my people, those who lead you cause you to err and destroy the way of your paths. Didn't Jeremiah say, go in the old paths? Go in the old ways? Established by Moses was the implication.
And the people did not want to do it. Well, today you say, go with the scriptures. The old paths have been laid out for us and they are trustworthy.
And they won't. And so their leaders who are suppressing the truth by not preaching the Word of God. Look, you don't have to preach verse by verse to preach the Word of God. Charles Spurgeon preached the Word of God.
And almost every Sunday it was topical message and midweek. Again, so there's, are you going to do expository teaching or are you going to do topical teaching that includes exposition. You expound. You open up the Word of God and it's truth.
And that's why he has 3,500 sermons in print and he's been dead over a hundred years. So coming back to this, when the experienced leaders are removed, as God said would happen, only the inexperienced are left, ergo the children, to fill the leadership positions. Children in the sense of inexperience and in-capability, you know, incompetence we would say. They're not capable a child.
Well, the men filling these positions won't be able to help. And this leads to chaos, corruption and oppression. I could alliterate that. Chaos, corruption, cruelty.
The three C's. But then you try to remember that alliteration and forget what the point was. Anyway, coming back to Isaiah chapter 3 verse 5 now, the people will be oppressed, and there's the oppression, every one by another and every one by his neighbor. The child will be insolent toward the elder and the base toward the honorable. Well, that's just what he's been saying. In such situations as he's been calling, promising is going to happen, justice and truth are the first casualty of the nation. People don't want to hear the truth, and justice becomes, you know, arbitrary.
Well, if I like it, then yeah. But if I don't, what he is saying is you're going to have low-class neighbors. The citizens of the kingdom will be low-class, whole neighborhoods. Not just, you know, they're everywhere. They are everywhere. You know, not an exaggeration or a figure of speech, but the reality is whole neighborhoods.
It says every one by another and every one by his neighbor. The insolent toward the elders. Well, because the parents are not instilling decency and no one's enforcing it. You have a rude, obnoxious child and no one is saying, you don't talk to your elders that way.
What's wrong with you? And the base toward the honorable. Here's hostile, low-class, arrogant people. Arrogant because they have nothing that they can contribute, but they think that they should be honored as though they are a great contribution to their environment.
They are indecent towards decent people. So you've got low-class people. When I say low-class, I don't mean uneducated because you can have a little formal education and still be a decent person. You can have high education and be a low-class person. Look at some of these entertainers. Look at some of the sports figures. So that's not, when we say low-class, people you don't want to be around with because they're not decent people.
They'll always do something that makes you not want to be around them. And Isaiah is saying your society is going to be infested with people like this. Your society has rotted. And not only has it rotted, he's telling his generation that the remedy, you ruined it.
There was a remedy, but you threw it on the ground and you ruined it. Verse 6, when a man takes hold of his brother in the house of his father saying, you have clothing, you be our ruler, and let these ruins be under your power. Well that's all messed up.
Before I say that, notice the prophet is not saying to the people, at this point, he will in other points. Here's the balance we need in life. You have your problems in life and God is interested in those problems. But that's not all there is to you. There's other things.
And one of the other things is righteousness exalts on nations. Sin is a reproach to any people and you'll have even more problems. And so if you're going through tough times in life, okay, that's a serious thing. I don't want to go through hard times. I don't want to be sick and suffer physically.
But I sure don't want to be sick and suffer spiritually either. And so it behooves the Christian. Whenever I use that word, I think of bees with hooves. Behooves. Anyway, a little bee smith there hammering out little shoes.
The balance is necessary. The thief on the cross, I mean it doesn't get any worse than that for an individual. And yet, he still began to minister as a newborn. You know, we have done nothing wrong. I mean, Christ has done nothing wrong. We deserve to be crucified. And these lessons, there's things to bookmark in our head for when tough times come. Well, coming back to verse 6 now, here's a poor standard to make a leader. You've got clothes. Listen to it.
When a man takes hold of his brother in the house of his father, there's a blood brother apparently that Isaiah is using in his caricature saying, you have clothing. Be a ruler. In other words, you must be successful. People think like, people think of a rich person knows what they're talking about on any matter. Well, they might know when it comes to making money for themselves.
Look at Retevia and fiddle on the roof. He sings that, if I were a rich man. And then part of the song he says, you know, because when you're rich, they think you know the answers.
And of course, it's not true. It shows that something's not working right here. Churches make this mistake. Rich people come into the church, they find out they're rich.
They want to appoint them to positions. James warns against that. He says, you know, a rich guy comes into church, don't go putting him in high positions in the pews and let the guy who has no money go sit in the back somewhere.
That's not righteous. Anyway, to sweeten the deal. We want you to be our leader, and to sweeten the deal, we'll throw in the ruins. That's what he says. When a man takes hold of his brother in his father's house saying, you have clothing, you be our ruler and let these ruins be under your power.
And nobody's going to do that. That's the caricature. That's Isaiah saying, you know, you folks are so messed up, you're going to be pulling little stunts like this beneath the table, but God sees it for what it is. And so he's not so much describing events as mocking the attitudes where leadership merits disappear. You know, to say to somebody, you know, I don't know who you are, you've been coming to the church a few months, but I like you.
Just a few times I've interacted. Why don't you be the head usher? See how crazy that would be? That's why Paul has to tell people, let them first be proven. And he lays out other standards. And here Isaiah is saying, you're going to make a mockery of this in your government. We've seen this.
We've seen there's nothing, there's something good about being an A student, but just because you are doesn't mean you're not stupid. That's going to be the norm with the leadership Isaiah is talking about. And there were those princes that would have gotten his document and some would have said, Amen, brother, you hit it right on the nose and others would be, I hate that prophet. And this is the ones he was talking about. Behind this character lies a reality of people without the standards of God in their life.
That's what he is saying. And he describes the final breakdown of the kingdom that was once so glorious. Attitudes of society, which treats obedience like a joke. We are living amongst more and more groups of people who are doing this. You know, it used to be you had certain pockets that of society you knew were into spiritual anarchy. But now it's becoming everywhere. If you say the name of Jesus, you may end up in an argument with someone. And I don't remember in this country being that way.
I understand that in Pakistan, but in America it's coming out. Anyway, not that this government, not anti-government, just a people and sin thing has always been squeaky clean. I mean, the Freemasons have had a lot to say about things in this country and there's certainly nothing spiritually sound about them. And if you're a Freemason, I don't apologize for you being wrong. I stand by it.
Maybe nobody's had the nerve to tell you before. But anyway, coming back to what we're talking about, the attitudes of society that treat God with no respect, the standards of decency and honor lost deprivation of honorable people. Verse 7, in that day he will protest saying, I cannot cure your ills for in my house is neither food nor clothing. Do not make me a ruler of the people. Well, what about the rulers?
Don't you still want them? For Jerusalem stumbled and Judah is fallen because their tongue and their doings are against Yahweh to provoke the eyes of his glory. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new additions of Cross-Reference Radio. Just search for Cross-Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick right here on Cross-Reference Radio.
