The Final Appeal Of The Lord

The Final Appeal of the Lord

Isaiah 1.1-20

God’s warning to the nation of Judah is a very timely message for the church today. The church has two things in common with Judah.

1—The condition of the church today is similar to the condition of Juday in the day of Isaiah.

2—Judah was God’s chosen people

Deut 14:1-2 Ye are the children of the LORD your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead. (2) For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.

1 Peter 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:

There are four things that I want us to see in our text this morning.

1—The Charge God Made against Judah (1-3)

Isa 1:1-3 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. (2) Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. (3) The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.

A—God made His charge against Judah in front of two witnesses in v. 2—the heavens and the earth.

The charge is two fold—First, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.

Does this sound like the Christian of today? God has nourished us and given us salvation and eternal life through Jesus Christ. Yet we rebel against God and become complacent

We have no commitment for the Lord. Our commitment is stuck to the pew along with our backsides.

The second part of the charge is inconsideration. What were they inconsiderate of? First and foremost—they are inconsiderate of God. They turned their back on everything that God had commanded them.

They did as they wanted to do. “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Oh, how this describes the church and Christians today.

We do what we think is right, and our way of thinking is shaped by the world and society around us because we refuse to be in God’s word and fellowship with Him daily.

We refuse to do the things of the Lord because the things of the world look and feel so much better.

But I will let you in on a little secret folks, the things of this world won’t last and the good feelings are fleeting. We are eternal beings and we need to be about the business of the Eternal One.

The second thing we need to see this morning is:

2—The Condition that Prevailed in Judah (4-15)

First, lets look at their spiritual condition before God in 4-9.

(4) Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.

They have backslidden. The church is full of backslidden Christians today.

(5) Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. (6) From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. (7) Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. (8) And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. (9) Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.

These verses describe in detail the spiritual condition of Judah, but folks, they describe most of today’s churches as well.

The description is from head to the sole of the foot. That means from the top of the church in the pastors and leadership to the layperson in the pew, the church is sick and backslidden before God.

How is the church backslidden—We don’t witness anymore. We don’t minister to the needs of others anymore. Oh sure, we minister to one another, but the church is not here for the church, the church is here to minister to the Lost and Dying sinners of the world,