This Scripture teaches Scripture.
What helps me with that? Well, Luke's Gospel, Chapter 8, in explaining our free will. Otherwise, we're just little autotrons, drone bees, and we're not.
We're created in the image of God, and even though that image has been marred, enough remains that makes us a creature that is able to make moral decisions beyond instinct. 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. Now, here's Pastor Rick as he continues in the last part of Isaiah, Chapter 44, in this edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Beloved, we are children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. Now, this is glorification. But we know that when He is revealed, and when we actually see Him, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
Things will change. So, justification, you're saved. Sanctification, you're set aside, and while you're set aside, you're developed into a Christ-like character. You pursue righteousness.
And then glorification is when you leave this life. You will never be tempted to sin ever again. You will not sin ever again.
Those things will be gone. You will not die. You will not suffer pain. Oh, that's not heaven. God promises heaven, there is no pain, nor sorrow, nor tears, nor death, for the former things have passed away.
This is proving ground. This is how you get to there, by faith. And so, the identity of who we are is critical to sharing our faith.
For that to happen, for a Christian to lay hold of their identity, Christ has got to be real to them, not somebody else's God, not my dad's God, not my mom's God, my God. I have to meet Him. Now, we live in a day age where Satan is corrupt.
He corrupts everything. He's trying to corrupt people identifying these lunatics, and hopefully not such for some of you. Someone who identifies with, and it's always a noble creature, identify with a lion. Why not a tick? Why don't you identify with a bloodsucker?
So they pick and choose. Okay, I'll go along with that on one condition. All the creatures that you identify with, all of them have to unanimously agree you are one of them. And we can prove this.
We just go right down to the zoo, throw you over the wall, and see what the apes do to you. Anyway, that's my little thing on this identity crisis that Satan is really pulling off here. People just insisting that they can be other than who they are.
You can do that, and you're just lying. For the Christian, we're supposed to be telling the truth. I identify with Christ. I belong to Him. Clumsy as I may be in pulling off the faith, as many times as I fall, I still identify with the mercy He gives, which is new every morning.
And aren't we glad. In verse 22, I blotted out, here it comes, like a thick cloud, your transgressions, and like a cloud, your sins returned to me, for I have redeemed you. Now we've gone over this. These promises, these superlative words towards Israel apply to Christians. We went over that, so I'm not going to revisit that.
You have to listen to previous messages. Start at Genesis. Anyway, this presupposes that they were sinners, and that the sin they committed had to be blotted out.
It was there. Remember, Satan did not start out damned. He was a high-ranking angel of God, a cherub. And the Bible gives an indication that he even, you know, was a musician. And that's not a slight against not all musicians, just the ones you don't like. So, and that's true with everything.
Is it not? Because you could say, well, Judas was a pastor. He was, in the sense that God sent him out, and he did miracles. And so Satan, he did not start out damned, and Judas Iscariot did not either.
He was given every chance to not be who he became. Both got themselves blotted out, not their sin, them, the soul. One sinned in heaven, in the spiritual realm, and the other sinned on earth. Because sin violates the will of God. To become sin, what do I have to do for it to be sin? You have to go against what God said. You violate God.
We covered his rights of creatorship already. Psalm 51, this is David writing, after he committed just a terrible sin, murder was involved, and just horrible sin. And he writes to God, hide your face from my sins, blot out my iniquities. And God did that. Because David didn't get up in God's face, yeah, well, everybody's doing it. Or, you know, how do I know you're God? He just repented, eventually.
It took him like a year. Psalm 25, again, David, remember not the sins of my youth. We have a song like that, remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions according to your mercy remember me, not according to your law. When I stand before God, I want justice.
The trap door would open. I want mercy and grace. And he is abundant in those two things. Had God not done so, who could survive? I have blotted out like a thick cloud, verse 22, your transgressions. What if he did not do that?
Then there'd be no hope. Psalm 130, verse 3 and 4, if you, Yahweh, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand but forgiveness is with you? So this makes us love Jesus so much.
This is why we sing songs to him and get emotional over things of Christ, because he's real to us. And as the years go by, of course, you may get a little, develop a little bursitis on the, you know, the spirit, you're fighting being jaded. If you fight being this jade experience, it will pass. And you will mature. And just, you're just mellow. At least that's my, I think I've mellowed. You might disagree.
I don't want to know because I'm not that mellow yet. Anyway. Return to me, he says here in verse 22, for I have redeemed you. I have bought you back. Again, the greater meaning of redemption is coming. Bought off the slave block with holy blood for us. This is the, going to the New Testament, we've really covered the Old Testament understanding of redemption. And what he's saying to them, you will be taken to captivity to Babylon, but I will bring you back. It's going to be me. It's on my calendar.
It's not going to be this, ooh, look what happened. We escaped Babylon. No, you were delivered from Babylon. God called it long before it happened. And the prophets kept that in front of the people. The righteous Jews, they got it.
Anyway, return to me, for I have redeemed you. 1 Corinthians, fast forward, New Testament chapter six, for you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are gods, which belong to God. And there's that sanctification, that development, you know, the Allen red path, the conversion of the soul is a miracle of the moment, justification, but the manufacturing of a saint is the task of a lifetime. And that's sanctification 1.1. We are saints.
No one votes us into this. You don't have to do so many miracles to get in that club. You know, you just, Amazon, you don't purchase it on Amazon. Saint means sanctified. You're separated. It goes back to the sanctification. And that's why when Paul writes to the churches, to the saints in Rome, they were living, they were alive.
They're not dead people. So anyway, that's a heresy that is being perpetrated by the largest cult on earth. Coming back to this New Testament understanding, and you say, well, that offends me.
Well, change teams. You won't be offended anymore. Line up with the scripture and you, you won't, you should do better. Second Corinthians five. Now all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ. Read between those lines who bled for us, suffered for us on the cross more than any person has ever suffered. Christ did on the cross cause he took our sins on us. Not physically, it's spiritually. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me to be a part of the Godhead and go through that? You can't top it.
You can't touch it. Well, he continues, Paul does, and that second, that second Corinthian letter is so, I think so much sweeter than the first. The first letter he's got the, he's got the, the belt off and he's spanking them. In second Corinthians he said, okay, let's see if we can fix some of this. And then he has a break where he's got to deal with some more knuckleheads in chapter 10. But it's a, I just love second Corinthians.
I don't care too much for the first one if I had to, you know, which one do you want to read? Anyway, second Corinthians, that fifth chapter is one of the great ones. Now all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. So when you show up as a Christian, do you make it a crime scene or are you bringing the first aid kit to the soul?
Sometimes you have to make it a crime scene because you're dealing with somebody who's impenitent and they're just not going to own their sin and sin's everywhere. But overall, when we, we're looking for solutions to save souls, not damn them. Even Christ said to think not that I came to the world to condemn the world, but that the world through me might live.
Understanding who we are, what our mission is, and it's, you know, not compromising with what sin is, not mingling what the world has with what Christ has given us, but at the same time remembering that, you know, we're not better than anybody else, though we are better off as believers. Anyway, calls to return are for those who are lost, who once were not. That's why the return, you can't return if you haven't ever been there. I cannot return to the moon.
I've not been there. So when you come across that in scripture, there's a lot of history baked into that call to return. God through the prophet Isaiah is saying to the Jews, this is not who you are.
You need to come back to me. The whole story of Israel is that God saves the elected and those are the ones that choose to respond to his calling. That's how you are elected with, by God.
Sure, you can come into heaven. I elected you, come in, because you receive what I, the RSVP. We understand that. Don't you make, send out RSVPs, the ones that say, okay, I'm coming.
You expect them to come, and you make your plans based on that. Well, that's human. The human is of course flawed because a lot of people don't show up, and then you can send hate mail to them, like after that, God will bless that. Sarcasm, of course he won't. So, if you, what would happen if someone listened to that and said, I can, I can.
So, see. Anyway, all Israel was elected, but only those who did their part and not forsake Yahweh were saved. Only the Jews that did not turn from him. Some of the seeds of the prophets fell on good soil, and some did not. So, you know, we come to that proverb, train up a child in the way they should go, and when they're older, they'll not depart. It's a proverb. It's not a fixed law. You say, well, this scripture teaches scripture.
What helps me with that? Well, Luke's gospel, chapter 8, in explaining our free will, otherwise we're just little autotrons, drone bees, and we're not. We're created in the image of God, and even though that image has been marred, enough remains that makes us a creature that is able to make moral decisions beyond instinct. A dog, an animal, they're instinctive, but we, we are more than instinctive.
We have instincts, too. Luke, chapter 8, a sower went out to sow his seed. Now, of course, the sower is the Lord, the Spirit of God, the seed is the Word of God, what God says.
Violating what God says is the essence of sin, and sin is the abuse of good things. So, coming back to this verse, Luke 8, 5, and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside. Okay, the wayside is, so you have a big field, and you're growing your crop, but you, you want to get to the other side of that field, and you don't want to walk all the way around it, because it's enormous, so there were paths that would go through the farmer's fields, and those footpaths that were trodden were compacted, and when the farmer sowed seed, the seed that landed on those pathways, of course, wouldn't penetrate the soil, would remain on the surface, the birds of the air, who scripturally, in most cases, in parabolic illustration, represent Satan. And if you know anything about raptors, they're some vicious, they are, they eat their prey many times while it's still alive.
They got a pin down with one towel, and then they're pecking away, and the thing is, ugh. So, back to this, the seed that fell by the wayside is the word of God that doesn't get into the hard hearts, that's so trampled down through the activity of people things. So, coming back, let me keep it in context, a sower went out to sow his seed, and he sowed, and some fell by the wayside, and it was trampled down, and the birds of the air devoured it. So that part, it was trampled down, some will get the word of God, but they trample on it. They don't receive it.
That doesn't make them hopeless, there's still hope. As long as there's breath, there is hope, and Satan fears that law, because he has watched the most heinous sinners repent, and David is a great illustration of that. He is a man that was a godly man, he committed heinous crimes, plural, and he repented, and God picked him up and continued to use him. God's word is a seed, and when the seed is trampled, it is rejected, and what can God do after that? Force a person to?
He's not going to do that. You know, maybe people that resist God, they hear God's voice, and they hide themselves. That's exactly what the first sinners did, their first encounter with God after they became sinners. They used to be with God in the cool of the morning. Adam walked with God, but after they sinned, God came looking for them, and they hid themselves. And they said, well, we were naked, and God said, who told you that? God's not inquiring. When God asks a question, he is never looking for enlightenment.
He is extracting the answer. It's like a parent. You know, parents will do that. Where'd you get that from? And they know, so many times, they know where this is. Who told you that? And they know.
They want to hear you admit it so they can deal with it. Let's get this out in the open. Anyway, verse 23, and based on everything he's been saying about this redemption and God not forgetting them, sing, O heavens, for Yahweh has done it. Shout, you lower parts of the earth. Break forth into singing, you mountains, O forest, and every tree in it. For Yahweh has redeemed Jacob and glorified himself in Israel.
So it's a redemption song. The prophet understood it. And those who were, there were those in tune with Isaiah.
They got it too. None of them are named as we have, at least there were others with Jeremiah that are named, but one is Baruch. He's one of the most popular, he was an assistant to Jeremiah, and God gave him a special blessing for hanging in there. Let me correct myself. I don't use hanging in there. All right. For abiding with Jeremiah.
Or clinging. All right, coming back to this. Thus says Yahweh, your Redeemer, it's personal, it's not. And he who formed you from the womb, I am Yahweh who makes all things, who stretches out the heavens all alone, who spreads abroad the earth by myself. Now you got to catch God as saying, I did that, nobody else. He's the one person that can brag. When it comes to what he, you know, who he is, he's not bragging, not at all.
He's teaching. These are truths that they were departing from. Well, you know, some gods, you know, Neptune has the sea, and at that time Neptune wasn't around in the imagination of men. They had other fake gods.
Baal is the god of thunder and, you know, the weather and all this stupid stuff. So here's the difference between all false religions of the world from Cain, the first recorded false religion, until today. And that is the Redeemer.
That's the difference. What does it mean to redeem man? Who is the one that redeems them?
It is the Creator, the one who made man. The God who created man without sin is the God who saves man from sin. That's the Bible. Now, Galatians, New Testament, chapter 3, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. The Lord pronounces every man guilty. The Ten Commandments has no solution whatsoever. This is what God wants. If you mess up, you're guilty, and the wrath of God abides on you. Well, God has a fix for that. And so Paul writes, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. And again, back to 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
He took our punishment for us. We can understand this to a point, and it's a good point, and then it just becomes faith. I get it, Lord. I've got enough to believe. I don't need any more.
I'm good. Cain's religion came from, who cares? It wasn't God elsewhere.
Abel's religion, whom came murdered, came from God. You say, says who? Where do you get these things?
You stand up in a pulpit, where do you get them? None of your bug-eyed business. No, quite the opposite. It is your bug-eyed business. Well, verse 24, thus says the Lord. But see, that doesn't mean anything to the unbeliever because they trample the word. They won't look at the evidence.
They're too busy looking to fuss at it. Well, that can't be right. Okay, okay, okay. And, you know, remembering when I was lost, I can see how difficult it is to see the light. But now saved, I'm amazed that you can't see the light.
So it's this paradox. Verse 24, thus says the Lord. Verse 25, who frustrates the signs of the babblers.
We'll get to that in a minute. Verse 26, who confirms the word of his servant. Yeah, God has given us his word, but he backs it up with many infallible proofs through the millennium, not just in the days of Christ. Who says, in verse 27, that he actually does something. Verse 28, who says, he repeats that, but there it is in the appointment of people. So, he does things with things. He does things with people. Says who? The Lord.
That's who. The word of God is trustworthy and Satan puts everything he's got into trying to tell lost souls God's word is not trustworthy, but he doesn't stop there. He revisits the sanctified ones and he comes along later. This is okay. You know when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, it says the devil departed for a while.
Well, he couldn't do the same thing to us. You're strong in your faith for 10, 20 years and all of a sudden, you're getting hit with doubts and thoughts that you didn't see coming. But remember, God has made you ready for those moments that you should stand.
We see it in a microcosm in Peter. God says, when you return to your brother, you're going to forsake me, you're going to deny me, more accurately. But I have prayed for you and when you return and that I have prayed for you is, I'm in this with you, Peter.
I'm not leaving you. When you're in trouble spiritually, I'm there with you. I am Yahweh who makes all things, it says in verse 24, all alone by myself, quote unquote. New Testament says this is Jesus. John chapter 1 verse 3, Colossians 1, 16, Hebrews 1, 1. This is doctrine. This is knowing what you believe and why you believe it and it's right there on the surface.
You have to dig deep for that. You don't have to study any of the Greek words to read that in any translation other than Watchtower of the Bible. Again, the God who created man without sin, man did not have sin when God made him, is the God who saves man from the sin man fell into. Verse 25, speaking of himself, God says, who frustrates the signs of babblers and drives diviners mad, who turns wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolishness. Paul said it this way in the New Testament, seeking to be wise, they have become fools. They became too big for their britches is another way to say that. The babblers are those in religions and the heretics that claim the true religion that move forward without God's words.
And spiritually speaking, they become babblers. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.
You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new editions 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.
