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 are 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 microcosm, and Peter, God says, when you return to your brothers, you're going to forsake me, Peter.
You're going to deny me. 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 in Isaiah chapter 44 with this edition of Cross-Reference Radio. 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 them 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 in 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 did you get that from? And they know so many times. They know 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, 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. God says Yahweh, your redeemer, it's personal is it 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 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, Bau 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, not 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. It 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 can 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 microcosm in Peter. God says, when you return to your brother, you're going to forsake me, Peter. 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. It 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.
So I mean, if you say you have a print shop and you print things for people, well, that's not what he's talking about. But if that printer then starts talking about things about God that are contrary to God, then he becomes a babbler. And the madness of the false prophet encased, they were encased in their failed religions.
In this sense, they knew it was false, they saw it was false, and they continued. So if you were one of the magicians that stood against Moses and his serpents swallowed yours, don't you think you'd change teams? Like man, I thought I had some right stuff.
You got the right stuff. I'm going to forsake that. Tell me about Yahweh. That's not what they did. They doubled down until they perished. First Kings, when they went to Mount Carmel, Elijah said, fine, let's have the battle of the gods. You build an altar, I'll build an altar. And the God who answers by fire, he is God. And Isaiah, no, Elijah, who's not in the book of Acts, he poured water on his altar. It's just, he's saying, listen, just to make you understand, I'm not sneaking a torch onto this altar when it ignites. Where do you get that kind of faith? I don't have that kind of faith.
I'd like to pull up to a gas station and just say, watch this, the God who fills my truck with petro is the God who, it doesn't work that way. Anyway, so the prophets of Baal, calling on their God, we read about it in First Kings 18, so they cried aloud and cut themselves as their custom. You see their madness? As was their custom. They had done this before. So I guess, you know, when you'd see one of these prophets, if he had short sleeves on, or rolled up his sleeves to do something, you'd see the cuts.
Maybe he had them on his face, doesn't tell us. Anyway, as was their custom, with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. And when midday was past, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, but there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention. And as the prophets will want to do, they ridiculed them.
Like we ridicule, when we see people today who act like, you know, their identity things, all this evil, broke woke stuff, you look at it, you say, this is madness. They are, they double down. They know that they just made it up. They don't care. They honor what they make.
It's the God haters and the God makers club wrapped into one. And they are chasing our youth. And we are not going to go down without a fight. We're not going to go down at all. We're going to fight this.
Anyway, the prophets, they love to ridicule religious lives as they did in chapter 47. We'll get it. Stand now with your enchantments and the multitude of your sorceries in which you have labored from your youth. Perhaps you will be able to profit.
Perhaps you will prevail. Tell me, Mr. Scientist, the ones that are against God, what can you do for sin and what can you do for death? Nothing.
Will you have any comfort that you can offer anybody who's grieving the loss of a loved one? Nothing. Can you tell me what's going to happen to me when I die?
Nothing. All you can tell me is that I will decompose or be turned into ash or fed to some creature. But you cannot tell me what happens to me.
There's more to me than what you see. And my thoughts prove that. You can x-ray my brain. You can hook up electric things to my brain to see its activity. But you can't tell me my thoughts.
You can't take a picture of them. They're spiritual. And there's more to me than my thoughts. Bundle in my feelings. Bundle in my instincts, my memories.
How come I can think of something from my childhood 20 years ago and it's like it's right there like I'm watching it on the screen. I had these socks when I was like three. They were horrible. They were brown and green and tan and I hated them. And they didn't even stay up on my little ankles.
So I was an undisciplined civilian at the age of three or four. But I can see it. And you have the same kind of things.
But your socks. You're going to tell me I'm not spiritual? You're going to tell me that all there is to me is flesh and blood?
You're not only lying to yourself, you're mad. The sadness of the babblers, the diviners. And then if I told you we're going to have a seance, you might even chuckle at that.
So, you know, I understand that. But if I tell you about the Ten Commandments, oh no, we won't have any of that. Anyway, coming back, it's so simple once you know Christ.
You just see it all. But when you don't know Christ, that hardened heart won't let the seed in. It tramples God's word.
Anyway, the world's insists to salvage whatever they can about man-made ideas. First Corinthians chapter one, has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God.
It pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. You're not going to stumble into understanding who God is. He's going to reveal that to you.
That's the only way. We'll get it the last quote if I still have it in here. I think a quote Peter says has manifested himself in these last days. That's what the church comes in. That's where the Jews were supposed to be a light to the Gentiles. The church is a light to the world. That's how people are going to find out about God. It is a revelation. And Peter talks about the revelation of Jesus Christ. He's not talking about the book of Revelation.
He's talking about the person of Christ. Verse 26, who confirms the word of his servant and performs the counsel of his message who says to Jerusalem, you shall be inhabited. To the cities of Judah, you shall be built.
I will raise up her waste places. Wait a minute. Jerusalem's not destroyed, Isaiah. What are you talking about? The future.
Talking about the future. And everybody knew he was a prophet of God. Did he perform miracles?
A few. You know the whole thing with the healing of King Hezekiah. At first, to prove that it wasn't him with some faith healing power, he tells the king you're going to die. He gets to the courtyard while the king is upstairs praying. Isaiah doesn't know Hezekiah is praying. And Hezekiah calls out to God and then God says to Isaiah, go back up.
I'm going to let him live 15 more years. You've got to love how that is. If I wrote the story, I would say, then I figured it out. Here's the solution. But Isaiah portrays himself as a, I'm just a servant. I took the message up.
I didn't do anything. And what does he tell the doctors to do? Rather than go get the needle, put a lump of figs on it. I wonder, what? Write figs?
What kind of figs? You'll figure it out. Anyhow, that's biblical.
Where are we? Verse 26. So contrasting the false prophets with the true prophets, how does one become a true prophet? Well, God validates their ministry.
However, however, there is a caveat. God long early on said, there are going to be false prophets. And I'm going to use them to see if you believe my word. Deuteronomy 1, and if you've never read Deuteronomy and you just want a quick overview, chapter 13 is it. If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, let us go after other gods, which you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for Yahweh your God is testing you to know whether you love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul. That generation that received that, that generation of adults, had passed through the Sea of Reeds when God parted it, and all Israel went through.
That generation was old enough to recall Pharaoh's dead army washed up on the shores when God closed that sea. There was more to what God was giving them than his word, and that is true to this day. God has given us the Holy Spirit, and the one who convicts the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment to come, and that Holy Spirit also comes with this testimony of Christ, which is the approval of our salvation, because it's based on the gospel message. And so there will be, from time to time, signs and wonders. It's going to ramp up during the Great Tribulation period. But those who abide in God's word will be the ones that prevail, and those who sip the Kool-Aid will be the ones that perish. And one of the outstanding features of false teachings is immorality. There's a justification of sin, because that's who Satan is. He can't help himself, and those who follow him are like him.
They are of their father, the devil, and they may do a sign that they're in some sin that is blatant, and they'll justify it. And you'll know that's a false prophet. So that's a caveat to God confirming with his servants. He confirms, who says to Jerusalem, you shall be inhabited. Long before its fall, God promised to rebuild Jerusalem and the surrounding territories, and today's Israel is fulfilling this before our eyes, its final stage, a third temple, will be rebuilt. I'm not so sure in our lifetime, or before the rapture, but it will be rebuilt. Verse 27, who says to the deep, be dry, and I will dry up your rivers, who says to Cyrus, he is my shepherd, he shall perform all my pleasures, saying to Jerusalem, you shall be rebuilt, and to the temple, your foundation shall be laid.
Well, again, we covered this already. Cyrus named 150 years before he was born. God tops that when the unnamed prophet names Josiah going to be the king 300 years before he was born, and this is a big deal. It's a big deal, not only because it's predictive prophecy that 120 years later that he will send the Jews back, because God put it on his calendar. He's telling the Jews, it's on my calendar. These judgments are going to happen, and these solutions will take place, these counter judgments.
Ezra chapter 1, chapter 6 covers this. The plan of our salvation is older than God putting this on the Jewish calendar. Redemption had long been on God's calendar. 1 Peter 18, knowing that you were not redeemed, that's our theme for this evening, with corruptible things like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers. Yeah, because what is life without God? Aimless, he continues, with the precious blood of Christ, that's what you were bought with, not money, as of the lamb without blemish, without spot. He was sinless, can't say that about anybody else. And you can, but you'd be lying and flat out unbiblical. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you. These things are easy to prove chronologically that Peter wrote this long before, in the days of Christ, he wrote these things.
And one, you know, we can do that. If I told you, I remember when I was a kid with those bad socks, that I was texting somebody, you know it wouldn't be true. There was no texting as we know the word texting. Well, you can look at long-term history and eliminate lies and establish truths the same way. That's what people who come along say, well, they wrote that after.
No, there's evidences against that. Daniel chapter 10, from that chapter we learn that Satan was determined to influence the Persians against the Jews through the prince of Persia, which was the leaders of Persia, to not bring the Jews back. Well, Cyrus is the king of Persia, and God is the king overall, and God has already had it in his word that his shepherd, Cyrus, this gentile, would bring the Jews back.
We're almost done. And in their relationship with God, the Jews violated their covenant by not doing their part. We have our part. I don't have the quote that I wanted from Peter, and that's okay, but I do have two scriptural quotes dealing with doing our part. Isaiah 29, 13. Therefore Yahweh said, inasmuch as these people draw near me with their mouths and honor me with their lips, but have removed their hearts from me. And he goes on to express that they tell me that they're believers, but they're not doing their part.
It's all lip service. And they take what men say, and they make that God's law, the commandments of men. And God didn't like that. We come to the New Testament, and in contrast, James writes the simple word, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
In back of that statement, of course, was James doctrine, his understanding of God. To draw near to God, you've got to do it according to God. You cannot cut your own road to heaven.
There's one way, and Jesus is it. It's time to pray. Oh Father, your word, how many times, how many times have we been very mindful? It is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, and it throws the darkness away.
It causes us to see things not only differently, but far better. 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 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.
