A Sin Sick Nation Part 2

Pastor Mike will be speaking on A Sin Sick Nation Part 2. He will be reading out of Isaiah 1:1-10.

And when you are lying to yourself and you’re under some delusion that just because you have wealth you somehow are okay with God when the truth is that you stand naked before God and you stand bruised before God and you need the fact and the work of the gospel in your life. Hello this is Pastor Mike Sanders from the Open Door Church and I’m delighted to welcome you to the Hope Worth Having radio program. Today we’re going to be continuing our study in the book of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 1 verses 1 through 10 and we’re talking about a sin-sick nation.

So I want you to grab your Bible and join me as we study this passage because I love to break down the word agnostic which means not intelligent or I don’t know anything is how it could be translated. I don’t know anything and I think about you know you declaring your agnostic tells me how you really don’t know anything. They can see the beauty of this earth, the heavens declare his glory, they can see the majesty of a sunset and yet they’ll deny that there is a God in heaven.

They’ll see pictures from space and they’ll say there is no God. Only to be disproven by the beauty and the glory of God in all of creation. But I want you to consider the this this morning is that you and I may say we’re certainly not agnostic pastor.

We’re not atheists but I want to ask you this. Maybe you’re not in your what you believe and what you know but are you practically practicing agnosticism or atheism? Do you know how you live your life? Do you actually demonstrate in your life that you know God and that God knows you and that he lives in you in your conversations? Do you talk like an atheist or do you talk like someone who is filled with the Spirit of God? Do you pray? Do you have enough humility in your heart to acknowledge that it’s the Lord who provides all things, everything that you have? He is the source of all that is wonderful and beautiful and good in your life? Or do you just go through your day in a busy hurry? Yes, I believe in God. Yes, I’ll go to church every once in a while.

Yes, I’ll worship the Lord and read my Bible every once in a while. But do you practically live your life as if there is no God? Because that’s what the nation of Israel was doing. They were outwardly religious and we learned from verse 11 all the way down to verse 16 that they went through the motions and buddy they could put on the show and they could do the performance but their heart was far from God.

Yes, we see that the ox knows and the donkey knows but God’s people do not know and they do not consider. It is astonishing that the ox, the donkeys recognize the voice of God. They recognize the work of God.

They recognize this as creations of God but yet we find ourselves distancing ourselves from God. Look at verse 21 of chapter 1, just giving us more insight to the charges against the nation. How the faithful cry has become a harlot, meaning unfaithful.

It was full of justice, righteousness lodged in it. But now murderers, your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water, your princes are rebellious and companions of thieves. Everyone loves bribes and follows after rewards.

They do not defend the fatherless nor does the cause of the widow come before them. What is the result when you and I choose to not know God like we should, when we choose to be stagnant and apathetic in our relationship with God? We begin to live our lives in such a way that we don’t even reflect our godly core value, that we begin to distance ourselves from God. As Christians, we must ask ourselves, are we living under the authority of Christ? Because every time we refuse to submit to his word and to submit to his truth and to follow his path, we are saying, God, I’m in charge, not you.

I will run my life how I want to. We not only see spiritual rebellion but I want you to see that moral declension that takes place. We jump down to verse 4 of chapter 1, a last sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors.

They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel. They have turned away backwards.

Wow. A lot of different actions that the people have taken and God is confronting their sin. And in every society, we can see that when sin abounds, that it becomes more and more reckless uncontrollable and we see that it begins to grab a hold of the way people not only think but the way that they live our lives.

We think about our nation. We think about a country that was founded on people who were searching to come to a land where they could worship God in freedom. We think about how far our nation has come and how we have turned our hearts from God and that even now that in our political systems, on their platforms, they deny God and even I’m gonna knock your socks off but even in the Republican Party, they say they no longer want to support traditional marriage and they no longer want to be pro-life because those things won’t win elections.

Do you see what’s happening to our nation? Do you see what’s happening to our country? There are times I look at our political figures and I have to be honest and I say, is this the best we got? Out of all the people of 330 some million people that live in America, is this the best we got? And it’s only a reflection of the nation. It’s a reflection of our spiritual life as a nation. That little by little, drip by drip, we have been ripping God out of every part of our life and we’ve said we don’t want God in the public square and we don’t want the Ten Commandments in the courtroom because they remind us of our sin and they remind us of God’s expectation and they remind us of the calling of who we are in Christ.

And so let’s hide those things. Let’s get rid of those things over and over again. And that’s why in verse 5 he says the whole head is sick, the heart is fainting, and he reminds us in verse 6 that the body from the sole of the foot even to the head, we might say it just the opposite, from head to toe, the body’s a mess, amen? But here he’s speaking metaphorically to us.

From head to toe, yes, our nation’s a mess. From head to toe, yes, we even as God’s people have gotten away from the truth. And what we’ve seen is that even our churches are being afflicted by sin.

That sin is infiltrating our churches. Churches even here in Franklin County platforming people who do not even believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who embrace a lifestyle that is contrary to the Word of God. Confusion abounding as to what is a man and a woman and people are confused about what genders they are.

You ask them, how do you define a woman? And they’re offended that you asked the question. You talk about crazy. You say, what’s wrong? I mean, I grew up in a world where that was very clear.

But why is there so much confusion? Because that leads me to my second point, is the damage of sin. Verse 5 and 6 remind us of the damage of sin. There’s no soundness but wounds.

There are bruises and sores. And so like a battered human body, so it is that our nation and the church has become affected by sin. Why? Because we want the world to like us.

We’re more interested in pleasing the world than we are in pleasing God Almighty. What if you woke up every day and said, I want to please Christ today. I want to please a holy God today.

I want to live my life for His glory. And if other people don’t like it, that’s what they got to work on. But that’s what you have, people running around trying to please everybody, trying to please the world so they can grow their church, please the world so they don’t offend the culture, please the world so everybody will be happy, when only finding out that the church has become corrupt and sin has invaded and taken over.

What is it that are some of the damages of sin? First of all, we might say stupidity. Sin does not help the intellect. It just does not.

And we could go on and on, but again we find ourselves very much like Jesus said of the Pharisees, swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat. The things that don’t matter, we’re not focused on, and we’re all worked up about it, and we really need to get focused on where is our heart and where are we with the Lord Jesus Christ. But the damage of sin is not only that we become more ignorant, and in a real sense, and I don’t want you to get mad and upset and have a meltdown on me, but we become stupid.

And sin makes you stupid. Can God’s people say amen? And if you want to send me an email, just send it to Carl McKee. No, just kidding.

The damage of sin is suffering. We see in verse 4 and 5 and 6, a body that is wounded and bruised, because you know sin hurts, doesn’t it? Sin hurts families. Sin hurts individuals.

It causes much suffering. It causes bleeding, and it breaks hearts. It does not bring comfort, but rather just the opposite.

It brings discomfort. There is no peace in the heart. Wars and crimes and plagues that invade the world.

Suffering is the product of sin. As we see that so many find themselves in these predicament, and their lives are a mess, and their relationships are a mess, and things are messed up because sin has gotten into the world and gotten into our hearts. I’ve said to you many times, church, and I’ll continue to remind you over and over, your life is about relationships.

And if you can’t get that right, you’re just not going to get anything right in your life. And it’s first and foremost your relationship with God. You must love the Lord Jesus Christ with all of your heart.

That must be the priority of your life. And you’ve got to be more than a talker. You’ve got to walk it.

You’ve got to show it in your habits, in your character, in the decisions and choices that you make. Jesus Christ must be number one. We were talking in Sunday school, and one of the students said, you can’t serve two masters.

And I say to you, amen. You got to make your choice, church. And when you choose that you’re going to follow the world, and you’re going to raise your family for the world, and you’re going to have a mindset of the world, it’s no wonder the havoc that it has upon your family.

Sometimes parents will say, what happened to my kids? What happened, my friends? You, through your priorities, sometimes demonstrate what’s important. I know you guys don’t like me saying it, but listen, you run your kids all over the state of Pennsylvania and Maryland for sports, but you won’t take them to Sunday school. You won’t take them to youth group.

You won’t get them involved in the basic programs where we’re trying to reinforce godly core values in their life, and you say that these things are more important than Jesus Christ. It’s a hard pill to swallow. You got to make a decision.

I’ve been there, done that, raised children, and had to make those tough decisions, but Christ has always got to be number one, and it has to be true in your priorities and your decisions, and you must make this the number one focus of your heart. And in your relationships with others, it must be rooted in the core values, and so we see that the damage of sin is stupidity, suffering, and sickness. As the Bible says in verse 6, we are sick from top to bottom.

We are sick within and without. Isaiah’s vision in verse 7 of burning cities was intended to be a wake-up call to the nation, but today it serves as a warning sign to all of us, and we turn around and we see this. We see our nation’s burning.

We see these news people standing in front of a camera and fire flames of the city being burned right behind them. We see the chaos and the confusion, and we are only reminded that we have become a sin-sick nation, and the damage is that our cities are going up in flames. And why is it? Because we keep drifting farther and farther and farther from Jesus Christ.

The third thing, don’t become discouraged, church. I’m going to bring you hope. But we see the disregard of sin.

We see the disregard in sin. It says here in the end of verse 6, they’ve not been closed or bound up. The sores, the bruises have all just been left there in this metaphorical body that has been damaged by sin, and no one is doing anything to minister or to treat or to bring a remedy to the wounds of this nation or to the wounds of the heart of the people of God.

There hasn’t even been any ointment. There’s been no ointment. And thus, verse 7 says, your country is desolate.

All the programs of the government do little. All the programs of the world will not save us, will not heal our spiritual wounds. The only program that works, church, is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What I would say to you as a people of God is, don’t be ambitious for the next election. Be ambitious for Jesus Christ and the gospel of the Lord Jesus. Be ambitious to talk to your neighbor about salvation.

Be ambitious to reach children with the gospel through the different programs going on. I know, morning and night, many become consumed, even believers, thinking that the solution and the remedy and the antidote is somewhere out there. But I tell you, my friends, we must fight for the gospel.

We must fight sin, and we must bring the ointment of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we are to see urban renewal, if we’re to see spiritual renewal, if we are to see financial renewal, if we are to see any kind of renewal or awakening in our nation, it is going to be through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is not only true for our nation.

It is true for our hearts. It is true for our families. It is only the blood of Jesus Christ that takes away the sin of people.

The Bible says that the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. As Isaiah starts out in this courtroom scene, giving his charges before all of heaven and earth, his goal is not to crush the heart of God’s people. His goal is not to destroy their morale.

It is to awaken them and say, what went wrong? What do I need to change? What do I need to confess to God? What do I need to work on in my own heart? And I pray that this will be true for each of us. Isaiah’s name literally means Yahweh is salvation. That is, that only salvation comes from God, Almighty Church.

And that is the ointment that needs to be applied to our heart. And whether you’re here this morning and you don’t know Christ as your Savior, or maybe you have drifted in your fellowship and your walk with God, I’m telling you the ointment is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that will bring healing to your heart.

Amen? Thank you. Yes. I want you to just jump over.

We’ll be back in Isaiah as we wrap it up, but I want you to go back in 1 John chapter 1. I just quoted verse 7, but I want you to see verse 8 and 9 because this is why the cross means so much. This is why Christ means so much to us. This is why our focus is always upon Christ.

In 1 John chapter 1 verse 8, it says, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive who? You see, church, you’ve got to be careful that you don’t deceive yourself, that you yourself are not delusional. And so when I see a nation that is falling apart, declining in its core values, drifting from its foundation of faith, the first thing I do is I say, Lord, where am I at? What do I need to work on? I don’t want to be deceived in my own heart, and this must be something that we must recognize. He says, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Remember, the truth, Jesus said, will do what? Set you free. That’s right. And when you are lying to yourself, and you are living in denial, and you’re under some delusion that just because you have wealth, or just because you have a nice home, and you have things, and you can eat a meal tonight, that you somehow are okay with God, when the truth is that you stand naked before God, and you stand bruised before God, and you’re a sick spiritual person before God, and you need the ointment of Christ in your life, and you need the fact and the work of the gospel in your life, you’ll never ever get out of that sick bed unless you turn to Jesus Christ.

He goes on to say, and here’s the key, if, verse 9 of 1 John, if we confess our sins, He is what church? And He is just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all of our unrighteousness. What is the antidote? It is for you to acknowledge your sin. It is you to agree with God.

Don’t argue with God. When the Word and the Spirit speaks to your heart, and God opens the truth in your life, and He points out something you need to change, listen, I want to challenge you this morning that you would say, Lord, I confess that to you. And you see, you don’t have to go to a priest to confess your sin, and you don’t have to go to the pastor to confess your sin.

You can be anywhere, everywhere to go straight to the mediator, the man, Jesus Christ, and confess your sin. Aren’t you grateful for that, church? I couldn’t handle the load of all your sins, but Jesus can. I’d be so depressed, so discouraged, I’d want to be like out, but Jesus can take every sin in your heart.

He can handle every sin in your life, but you must confess it. This word, confess, not only means to agree with God, but it is written in the continuous action, which is the idea that something we keep doing, you say, oh, I did that at vacation Bible school, pastor, I confessed my sin. I did that at the altar.

Oh, yeah, I did that as a young man or a young lady. No, my friends, it’s something you do every day of your life. Remember the Lord’s prayer, forgive us of our death.

Lord, it’s easy for me to point the finger at a nation that’s a mess and a government that’s a mess, but the question is, am I allowing God to point his finger at me and say, Mike, here’s what you need to change. Here’s what you need to work on, and so this beautiful verse says, he is faithful. God’s not gonna quit.

God’s not gonna give up. God is gonna be faithful. He’s not gonna say, I told you so.

He’s not gonna put the wall up or the hand up. He’s not gonna push you away. He’s faithful, and he’s just.

How can God be faithful and just at the same time? Let me tell you, the cross. I’m not worthy of forgiveness, and no one is, but how is it that God could justly forgive us of our sins even though we’re not worthy of it? The cross, because Christ on the cross, he bore the wrath, the punishment of our sin, and every time I come to Christ and I come to God Almighty and I confess my sin, Jesus who is our advocate, Jesus who is paid for our sins, he reminds the Father I died for them, and my friends, that’s why you could come boldly to the throne of grace, and he goes on to say he’ll forgive us of our sins and not just forgive us positionally and theologically, but he cleanses us emotionally. He cleanses us within our spirit and within our minds.

He cleanses us from all unrighteousness, and so we have a new beginning in Christ. Would you go back to Isaiah? Yes, I know I’m almost done, trust me, but I got to show you something in Isaiah that wraps all this together, because when you read these charges, and we’re not, I didn’t even get beyond verse 10. I didn’t think you and I could handle more than 10 verses emotionally, right? But I want you to get to verse 18.

That’s what I love about the prophet Isaiah. He is not only bold in pointing out what’s wrong, he is bold in pointing out the hope, the antidote, and the solution. He says in verse 18, come now and let us reason together, says the Lord.

Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. I think verse 18 is one of the great texts in the Bible.

The very invitation that God would invite a sinner like me to come into his presence, and I can do that because of the work of Christ on the cross, but he says, come, Mike. Let’s reason this out, Mike. As if somehow I would even have the capacity to intellectually compete with God, amen? But out of great grace, and favor, and kindness, he says, Mike, come.

Come. And every one of you are invited to come to Jesus, to come to him and know his salvation, and experience his salvation. But even as a believer, you are invited to come.

And as we are invited to come, he says, your sins, they’re like scarlet, but I’m gonna make them white as snow. Every once in a while, I have a shirt that reflects the many stains of that big hamburger I took a bite in, and that mustard came flying out. And no matter how hard my wife works to get rid of that stain, it’s just still there.

Those shirts become my Saturday shirts. That’s the bum shirt. But they’re nice shirts, but they’ve got this mustard and ketchup.

But Jesus, he takes our sin that is stained with this red sin, and he, through his blood, wipes it white as wool, white, perfect before God Almighty. My past is a mess. My thoughts are a mess.

But somehow, some way, through the work of Christ, I stand before Jesus, blameless. I want you to remember that I love America, and I know that our country is strong militarily and financially, and we have a lot of things going for us, but we’re not strong spiritually. And we need to get back to God, and we’re a sin-sick nation.

And just like the nation of Israel, we need to repent and come back to God. And that’s what we see in this text, is that God is teaching us, through his prophet, how important it is for us to make things right with the Lord. And so I hope that’ll be true.

And sometimes we may not see that as a nation, but we certainly can see that as an individual. And if you feel like you have gotten off the path of following the Lord, this is a great opportunity for you to get back at it. Now I want to remind you about our podcasts.

If you go to hopeworthhaving.com website, you can run across many of our podcasts, and you can keep up with things and how they’re going. And so I want you to take advantage of that. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.