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Due to the large amount of sermons and topics that appear on this site I feel it is necessary to post this disclaimer on all sermons posted. These sermons are original to the author and the leading of the Holy Spirit. While ideas and illustrations are often gleaned from many sources including those at Sermoncentral.com, any similarities and wording, including sermon titles, that may appear to be the same as any other sermon are purely coincidental. In instances where other minister’s wording is used, due recognition will be given. These sermons are not copyrighted and may be used or preached freely. May God richly bless you as you read these sermons. It is my sincere desire that all who read them may be enriched. All scriptures quoted in these sermons are copied and/or quoted from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Pastor James May
IT’S NOT OVER TIL IT’S OVER
Isaiah 42:22-25, "But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses: they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore. Who among you will give ear to this? Who will hearken and hear for the time to come? Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the LORD, he against whom we have sinned? For they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law. Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the strength of battle: and it hath set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart."
The Jewish people, who shut their eyes against the clear light of the Gospel, and turned a deaf ear to Christ, and to his ministers, rejected him, and persecuted them were robbed and plundered by the Roman soldiers of all their riches and treasures, when the city of Jerusalem was taken.
After they were captured by their enemies and dragged out of their holes with animal snare, many were put in prisons, and there lay confined, languishing in a terrible condition, out of which they could not deliver themselves.
Isaiah wrote these words about 1730 A. D. and the Jews in 1948 once again became a nation. Thus they were enslaved and dispersed for 1700 years. They were in this condition, and yet none of the kings and princes of the earth had issued a proclamation for their return to their own land.
“Who among you will give ear to this?”.... Who will hear and listen to this prophecy of your destruction, and to what follows concerning it?
Who will pay attention and hear this warning for time to come: and learn from this, and repent and reform? None at all! Men, blinded by sin, are so blind, and deaf, and stupid, that we don’t learn from the past and we are destined to repeat the same mistakes time and again. We don’t notice the hand of God upon us, nor pay any attention to his rod of correction, any more than to the Word of God. The only hope for Israel is that one day Jesus will lift the veil that blinds their eyes and they shall see him as he is and then shall know the truth of the gospel.
We pity the Jews in their spiritual blindness and in their deceitful doctrines, but we must realize that this is the condition where so many of God’s people are living right now.
God’s own people (flock) have become prey for every hireling shepherd that attempts to spoil (rob, plunder). How many people who name the name of Jesus as their Lord and Savior have been snared by the traps of false doctrine? How many are held as captives from the truth of the gospel and are now trapped in the lies of their prisons of deceit?
Illustration:
Nine out of ten adults own at least one Bible and eight out of ten consider themselves to be Christian, but you’d never know it from the smorgasbord of religious beliefs professed by most people. A new nationwide survey conducted by the Barna Research Group indicates that a large share of the people who attend Protestant or Catholic churches have adopted beliefs that conflict with the teachings of the Bible and their church.
Six out of ten Americans (59%) reject the existence of Satan, indicating that the devil, or Satan, is merely a symbol of evil.
A slight majority of adults (51%) believes that "praying to deceased saints can have a positive effect in a person’s life."
More than one-third (35%) also believes that it is "possible to communicate with others after they die."
Although most adults are aligned with either a Protestant (54%) or Catholic (22%) church, a large minority of Americans believes that when Jesus Christ was on earth He committed sins.
Protection from eternal condemnation for one’s sins is widely considered to be earned rather than received as a free gift from God. Half of all adults (50%) argue that anyone who "is generally good or does enough good things for others during their life will earn a place in Heaven."
In yet another break from biblical teaching, three-quarters of adults (74%) agree that, "when people are born they are neither good nor evil - they make a choice between the two as they mature." In other words, the concept of original sin is rejected.
A considerable number of adults (44%) contend that, "the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths." Just 38% of Americans reject that idea.
Most adult Americans who claim to be Christian also believe that "truth can be discovered only through logic, human reasoning and personal experience."
By a two-to-one margin, Americans reject the idea that, "the Bible does not specifically condemn homosexuality."
"Over the past 20 years we have seen the nation’s theological views slowly become less aligned with the Bible. Americans still revere the Bible and like to think of themselves as Bible-believing people, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Christians have increasingly been adopting spiritual views that come from Islam, Wicca, secular humanism, the eastern religions and other sources. Because we remain a largely Bible-illiterate society, few are alarmed or even aware of the slide toward syncretism - a belief system that blindly combines beliefs from many different faith perspectives."
Source: Barna Research Online, www.barna.org
Where is the outcry from the true church, that Body of Christ that is made up of all nations, kindred and tongues, who truly loves and serves the Lord with all their hearts, to preach the truth? We know the truth, and we know that the truth has the power to set men free, even from their secret prisons of doctrinal deceit! But where are those shepherds who will hear the voice of the Great Shepherd and call out to the flock of God to turn from their error to pursue the true Word of God?
The church is too caught up in “turf wars” to be concerned about those who are in prisons of deceitful lies. We don’t want to associate with one another because we don’t want to take the chance that some of our members just might decide to leave and go to another church. We have our “growth secrets” and our “Christian corporate secrets” that have worked to build our church and we don’t want anyone else to know them lest those churches draw off some of the people that we have worked so hard to get.
Have we become too self-centered as a church, caught up in our own little world of successful ministry, to the point that we forget to call people back to the basics of holiness, righteousness and sanctification?
How many of our ranks are caught in the snares of sin right now? How many of our fellow soldiers of the Cross fallen in this spiritual warfare and we have not given them a hand to lift them up? How many church members, who were once so faithful to the House of the Lord, no longer darken the doors of the church? The numbers are far greater than they should be!
But why have so many fallen? Why are so many drawn away into their prisons of deceit?
Isaiah gives us the answer to these questions.
“Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the LORD, he against whom we have sinned?”
God is not pleased with a church that will listen to every wind of doctrine and every sound that seems good to our ears. We are to listen for the voice of the Lord, not the voice of every preacher that comes across the airwaves.
God is not pleased with Christians who cast aside any caution against getting involved in sin just to be accepted by the world under the guise of “relating to all people so that we might win some.”
God is not pleased with those people, whom he has chosen as his own, when they turn their back on the Bible and go chasing after the doctrines of devils because those doctrines don’t require anything of them. The vast majority of Christians in our world today don’t have a clue to what living a sanctified, holy life means. Their convictions have been compromised to the place where they have no more convictions and their conscience in seared, and their heart is hardened and they have turned a deaf ear to the calling of the Holy Spirit within to turn back to God.
2 Thessalonians 2:11, "And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:"
Paul is speaking about those in the church who have began to accept the teachings of false teachers that would draw them away from the gospel that he and the disciples of the Lord has preached to them. Paul refers to their error in doctrine as being a part of the Spirit of the Antichrist that was already at work in the world and that shall be revealed in its fullest extent during the latter days.
People of God, we are living in those last days that Paul spoke about and we are seeing that Spirit of the Antichrist being poured out like a flood upon this world, even into the very doors of the House of God.
I know that the true church will never be overcome by this evil outpouring because in Matthew 16:18 Jesus promised that, "…I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." But that doesn’t mean that sin won’t come in like a flood, even into the very House of God, right down to the altars and the pulpits, and those who aren’t founded upon the “Rock, Jesus Christ” and who are rooted into the Word of God, are being easily swept away into their prisons of doctrinal error.
God still calls sin, sin, no matter much we try to sugar coat it! When we willfully and wantonly disregard God’s warnings and forsake the ways of righteousness, then God has no choice but send correction our way. His love for his children will not allow them to go blindly into sin without sending the rod of correction.
Hebrews 12:6, "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth."
Part of the method that God uses as “chastening” for errant children is that he allows them to follow after their delusion and lets them believe the lies that they so want to believe anyway. He will let us go our merry way until we finally get to the point where we have no where else to turn and nowhere to go but back to him.
Paul alluded to this same process in 1 Corinthians 5:5 when he was preaching to them concerning the sin in the church and that man who would not repent of his sin when he said that the church was, "To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."
Isaiah said that God had given his people over to punishment, “For they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law. Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the strength of battle: and it hath set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart."
I can almost see the fires of judgment as they lick the lives of men and women who live in rebellion against the Word of God.
When the Bible speaks of Hell enlarging itself, I wonder if that wouldn’t also mean that the flames of that place of eternal and spiritual torment are not reaching and beginning to burn in the lives of people while they yet walk on this earth to some degree? I believe that the flames are a literal burning place but I also believe that those flames can be spiritual in nature as well. Earthly flame would not have the same effect upon the soul and spirit as those spiritual flames and I am convinced that hell will be physical and spiritual in its power to torment the souls of men.
With that idea in mind, I wonder how much of the flames of judgment have already burned in the hearts of those who are running from God? The torments, agony, pain, suffering, heartbreak, sickness and diseases that strike them with such magnitude that it shakes the very core of their being could be just the tip of those flames flickering into their lives. God may be allowing those things to come against them as a way of waking them up to the truth of their spiritual condition.
If God is allowing those flames to touch their lives, I surely don’t see very many who are waking up when the pain comes. It’s almost the opposite. It seems that the more God tries to awaken his straying people, and this straying nation, the more we try to get rid of him completely. We are turning a deaf ear and we aren’t allowing him to touch our heart.
I thank God for those of you, those of us, who are faithful, but what about the unfaithful? We must be concerned about reaching out to them and crying to them to turn back to God before it is too late.
Can we turn back? Will God take us back into his sheepfold and allow us to be a part of his flock again? Of course he will.
Isaiah 43:1-3, "But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.
This is where God wants to take us and these are the promises that He wants to fulfill in each of us.
God never created man to go through the judgment and fire of his wrath. He created man to worship him and serve him. God gets no pleasure out of chastising his wayward children anymore than you or I, as a parent, enjoy correcting our earthly children.
In the end, God is doing everything he can, short of ignoring our free will to choose whether we will listen or not.
God is trying to tell every wayward son and daughter that he has redeemed them. He has already paid for their sin. He has called them by name. He has already made a way of escape for all who would come back to him in repentance and forsake the deceitful doctrines that have ensnared them. He has called them by name to come forth from their life of sin.
Jesus stood before the tomb of Lazarus and commanded, “Lazarus, come forth!” Lazarus had been dead four days and he was already stinking, but the stinking attitudes and the hard hearts, and the dead spirits, and the thoughtless minds of those who are caught up in error, or who are running from the Lord, can be brought back into the life of God once again just as easily as Lazarus was brought back. Jesus is the Life and he speaks life into everyone who will listen to him and obey his voice.
Let us cry out to those in error and teach the right ways of the Word of God that those who are straying in darkness may hear and see the truth and come back to the life that Jesus offers.
Every one of us must go through some things in this life that are hard to bear; things that we would rather not face.
God promises us in Isaiah that, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior…"
Job 14:1 says, "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble."
Whether we stay true to God or not, those words will be and are true. Trouble comes from every side and sometimes every side all at once. But, thank God, he never lets us have more than he knows that we can handle.
God’s promise here in Isaiah is that when the waters seem to be too deep, they will not overflow us.
That word “water” in the Greek and Hebrew, carry a meaning similar to our word “sewerage”. In other words, when the sewage and the stink, and the smells, and the filth seem to be getting too deep in your life, God’s promise is that they will never drown you. He will lift you above all the filth and put your feet on higher ground.
God also promises that when the circumstances of your life get so hot that you can’t handle the pressure anymore, that if we will just lean on him, trust in him, and believe in him, that the heat of those circumstances will not have a permanent and destructive effect on your life.
One man that I know says it this way, “It’s not what happens, it’s how you handle it. You can either let your circumstances make you bitter or make you better.”
God’s promise, to all who stay into doctrinal error, to all who run from him and run toward sin, and to each of us who remain true and faithful to him is the same.
If we will allow God to be our God; if we will allow Jesus to be our Savior; if we will allow the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us into all truth through the Word of God; and if we will let Jesus be the Lord of our lives, then God will deliver us through the waters that attempt to drown us and the fires that try to burn us.
He is our God! Let’s turn to Him. Let’s pray for our brothers and sisters who caught in error. Let’s pray for our nation that seems to be slipping from our fingers. Let’s pray for a great revival in the land that will turn the hearts of our people back to God. He is our only source of life!
2 Chronicles 7:14 still says, "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."
Don’t give up on your wayward loved ones. Don’t give up on yourself. Don’t give up on your church! Don’t give up on your country!
God is still on the throne and it’s not over ‘til it’s over!
