WHOM WILL HE TEACH?
Text: Isaiah 28:8 thru 13
Following the Sunday morning service, the pastor stood at the back of the church, shaking hands with the worshipers as they left.
As one man was leaving, he looked intensely at the pastor and said,
"Powerful sermons, Pastor. Thoughtful, well researched. I can always see myself in them…uh…could you please stop?!?”
Listening to God’s Word can be challenging for each of us…if we let it.
If you don’t…you will not change
Joyce Meyers said it so well,
“I am not where I need to be, but thank God I am not where I used to be. “
The Bible can change any of us. Likewise, we need to understand that our world is constantly changing (also).
Change is not usually bad.
In fact change is normal – it can be healthy. Change is really a sign of life.
Listen to what the medical definition of death is a -
“body that does not change... “
Medical Science has a lot to say about how we all change.
Our skin replaces itself every month
Your stomach, your liver, and all of your bones change periodically....
Men - your whole body every 5 years, where the women....it is every 7 years.
During my sermon your body is going to change – modern science says that about ½ million cells in your body are going to die and be replaced with a half a million new cells during my message.
Come on - I won’t preach that long…
Change is a natural & constant part of us.
But we should understand that our world today is in a warp drive kind of change...
Example: Did you know that the digital watch you have on your wrist contains more computing power than existed in the entire world in 1961.
How about your car? It has more computer power to get down the street than all the computers combined in the Apollo 11 spacecraft that carried Neal Armstrong to the moon.
I read recently –In the next five years, your new car will be steered, stopped & started with only a printed circuit board.
Millions of drivers will soon be depending on a computer to literally drive their cars.
How about the pager they give you at a restaurant? I was recently at an Outback and asked if I could take my pager and go check in at the hotel across the street. I got out of the parking lot and a strange noise started sounding.
(As you might expect, I ignored it.)
I learned that these pagers are hooked up to a satellite somewhere in outer space.
Listen; we are now living in a world where it is cheaper, faster and safer to a send a signal over 20,000 miles to a satellite and back again than it is to walk 20 feet (across the restaurant) to tell you that your table is ready...
We live in a fast changing world...
It has been estimated that more information has been generated in the last 30 years than in the previous 5,000 years....
Have your kids ever asked you, “Hey dad tell me what it was like in the olden days when you had to walk across the room to change the TV channel...”
Think about what is going on…
Not long ago people cooked on wood stoves... And when grandma said, “Log On” she meant make the wood stove hotter.” And when she said, “download” she meant, “You kids go down & load up on some more firewood...
No matter where you live or how you live, you are constantly changing. The question is, “Are these changes for the good for you, or are they bad?”
You see we all are influenced (in some way) by the changes around us.
A well-known Jewish author, Elie Wiesel, tells this story: “A just man once came to the sinful city of Sodom hoping to save it. He picketed the streets, going from marketplace to marketplace, shouting, ‘Men and women, repent. What you are doing is wrong. It will kill you; it will condemn your soul!’
They laughed at him, but he kept on shouting. And then one day a child stopped and asked him. ‘Hey strange man, don’t you see it’s useless?’
‘Yes,’ the just man replies.
‘Then why do you keep preaching?’
He told the child, ‘In the beginning, I was convinced that I would change the people. Now I go on shouting because I don’t want them to change me.’"
This is similar to the backdrop of our text in Isaiah 28. Sin was at a fevered pitch.
Judah was destroying itself with evil.
The nation of Judah was
· Once a beautiful nation, but now was in jeopardy with God
· Succumbing to the evils of their day, just as our nation is in our day.
· Quickly changing and giving into their evils ways.
· Drinking wine in excess.
· Being spiritually destroyed by it’s drunken priests and prophets
· Becoming filled with pride.
· Rebellious and rioting in their streets
· A filthy place to live
There had been a lot of changes, just as there are a lot of changes taking place today in our society.
It is now time for the saints of God to beware of these days and all sinners need to repent and come back to God. These changes (we see in our day) are a threat to our way of life and our eternal relationship with Father God.
We don’t have time to just have church.
I cannot afford to preach a friendly and satisfying gospel of milk toast religion.
There is a lot of changing taking place all around us. People leaving God and His commandments. People may be trying to convince us that the sin they are living in is okay and won’t hurt anything.
My friend, if you don’t take charge of the changes taking place in your life, someone else will. Perhaps the demons or the devil, himself, wants to change us.
We cannot allow this to happen!
Listen – God loves you, but He hates sin!
I hate sin! Do you hate sin?
Some have wondered why we are so determined to learn God’s Word here.
Why is it so important for us to be so intense about studying the Word of God?
The book of Ephesians instructs us to grow in our spiritual lives. It says ~
“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming” .
If we are not careful we will find ourselves being tossed by the waves of deceit.
I desire to learn how not to let this happen by looking at our text in Isaiah 28.
Look at verse 8. It explains to us how sickening sin had become for the people of God.
For all tables are full of vomit and filth; no place is clean.
Church – that’s bad, sickening. Sin stinks.
Well how can we stop this or keep this from happening? Read verse 9 and 10.
Can I tell you like it is ?
What this is saying is –
We gotta’ -
1. Teach our children the knowledge of God
2. Learn and understand the message
3. Change, grow up,
4. Stop sucking on the milk.
5. Dig in deeper into the Word of God.
I don’t see how the average person is going to make it to heaven without the Word of God getting in on the inside.
I feel like that man (I told you about) on the streets of Sodom. ‘(At one time) I was convinced that I would change them. Now I go on shouting because I don’t want them to change me.’"
God help us! Let us proclaim the Word of God. All of it…every last word. “…precept upon precept… line upon line…here a little…there a little…”
We cannot afford to leave anything out. We gotta’ read it all, study it all and proclaim it all.
This Gospel has to become more real to us today than it was yesterday.
We cannot rely on the Lord just as a way of escape, or another way of thinking. We gotta’ believe and proclaim this Gospel to this lost and dieing world!
And then we see what we must do next in verse 11,
For with stammering lips and another tongue he will speak to this people,
Well what does that mean?
I want to explain this to you.
Text: I Corinthians 14:21 and 22.
It is important for all believers to have a healthy understanding of why it is important to speak in an unknown tongue. The purpose, as far as God is concerned, is that He desires to convince us all of Who He is.
And this may be a surprise to some, but He does this often with the moving of His Holy Spirit on the saints of God.
He convinces the believer Who He is by the prophetic tongue and interpretation.
Whereas, God convinces the unbeliever of His awesome Spirit with the speaking of the unknown tongue.
There are those who would want to argue this, but they would arguing with the scripture in Isaiah 28 and I Cor. 14.
Some would call us strange to talk to God in what the NIV calls a “strange tongue”.
Folks, this is simply the way God does things with people just like you and I.
You show me a believer who would say that speaking in tongues are not important to today’s believers, and I will show you someone who can easily change their mind about the Lord.
I have seen many believers who fall away from living for God, and most (if not all of them) did not have a genuine prayer language with the Lord. There is something very unique about how the Lord works His ways with our praying in unknown tongues.
I can assure you that the devil does not want you speaking in tongues.
He does not want you to have your own prayer language.
The devil knows that the Holy Spirit will use our prayer language to bring conviction to and win the lost for Jesus.
The gift of tongues as it is taught in I and II Corinthians was a fundamental reason that the early N.T. church grew so rapidly.
Likewise, the gifts of prophesy and the interpretations of tongues helped significantly the believer to grow and mature in the things of God.
They needed it then for these reasons and we need it now for the same reasons.
We see this at the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2:4
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (NKJ)
Later on the Apostle Peter was preaching to some folks about Jesus ~
Acts 10:44-46
44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word.
45 And those of the circumcision who believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also.
46 For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God. Then Peter answered,
And later the Apostle Paul experienced the same thing with some other folks ~
Acts 19:6
And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.
Even the Christians heard about being baptized in the Holy Spirit and how important it was to speak in theses “strange tongues”.
Rom 8:26
26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
What we find recorded for us in the Book of Acts, the book of Romans, and the two books of Corinthians is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that we read in Isaiah 28.
For with stammering lips and another tongue he/God will speak to this people,
Can you understand why the Lord is so determined that we be baptized in the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking tongues. It is the same reason today as it was in the day that Isaiah was written.
The people of that time and the people of this time live in a world that is continuing to change for the worse.
I see this great nation of ours changing and turning away from the things of the Lord. The change is that this world is becoming consumed with the evils and enticements of this world.
We do need the great oracles of God,
“…precept upon precept… line upon line…here a little…there a little…”
