Doug Batchelor - Crisis of Identity (Sabbath School Study Hour)

[Music] invite you to bow your heads as we have a word of prayer dear father we are indeed so grateful for the opportunity to just take a break from the business of the week and gather in your presence on this special day that you've blessed now lord we know there are folks scattered all over the country that are part of our study time together we can't be united in person at the moment but lord we are grateful that we can be united in your spirit and we're all sharing the same faith we're looking at the same scriptures to build our faith and so father we ask a special blessing upon our time today be with those who are listening and pray that you guide them be with pastor doug as he opens up the word and we launch into a whole new series of studies on the book of isaiah how exciting this is so thank you lord for being with us and we commend this time in your keeping in jesus name amen our study on the book of isaiah begins today and pastor doug will be leading us in our first lesson i want to welcome our friends that are studying the word of god with us today i'm very excited about the uh the new study that we've got going today because we're dealing with just one of the most magnificent books in the bible the book of isaiah and that was as was mentioned uh for those who may have tuned in late we're just beginning a new quarter study now keep in mind that some of you are watching this stream live that's because here at the granite bay church to provide the sabbath school program for the other satellite networks we record it three weeks in advance so that we can do the editing and put in the subtitles and so forth and but it will play nationally uh the first week of january but we're getting to get into it here with our friends who are watching online and i'm excited about isaiah because it's just a wonderful book it's basically like the gospel in the old testament now the lesson for today lesson one is called a crisis of a den uh identity and we've got a memory verse and the memory verse is from isaiah 1 verse 18. now we've got a few families here with our support staff that are helping us with this production they're welcome to say it with us isaiah 1 18 and i bet some of us know this one by heart even before we we were told it was our memory verse come now let us reason together says the lord though your sins are like scarlet they shall be as white as snow though they are red like crimson they shall be as wool there you've got the gospel all summarized in that verse the lord can take our sins though they're just as red as scarlet he can make them white as snow that's a wonderful promise now the study today just you don't get confused you might be wondering how are we going to study 66 chapters of isaiah in 13 weeks and the way i think that they're doing it i haven't read the whole quarterly yet is there they'll be bouncing around and doing some things based on content and sections so our assignment today we're going to be studying chapter one of isaiah and part of chapter five and then i believe in future lessons they'll back up and look at isaiah 2 3 4 and so forth and so it'll be covering certain themes now i thought it was appropriate today as we're getting ready to enter this majestic book of isaiah that we have a little bit of introduction to help understand it the word isaiah the name it means salvation is of the lord and he is really a gospel prophet in the old testament and it says isaiah is the son of amos and the word amos means strong strength to be firm and so here you've got this person whose name is salvation of the lord he is the son of strength and just even in the names bible names mean something and you know when they were naming their babies in the bible they would pray the holy spirit would guide them and that name would somehow be the mission of their life or have some prophetic significance and when jacob went from jacob which means deceiver and he wrestled with god he was renamed no longer the deceiver now he's the prince israel and so they would even change their names sometimes when their destinies changed so isaiah's name salvation is of the lord and the time period of isaiah when you read your bibles isaiah is both a historical book it covers bible history and it is also a prophetic book the time of his ministry is about 47 years of public ministry from about 760 to 713 bc now the the talmud which is the jewish tradition it tells us that he was ultimately killed by king manasseh and he was executed supposedly because isaiah said that he had visually seen the lord and they said that was not possible you read in chapter 6 he says in the year the king as i died i saw the lord and that's at least the pretense that manasseh used for executing him i doubt that was the real reason but tradition says that he was sawn in two now that's very possible because you read in hebrews 11 37 that some of those that's in the great chapter of faith some of those who died were sawn asunder and they believe that is a reference to how isaiah died he started as a prophet early his prophetic ministry covering 47 years maybe 50 years but he was a contemporaneous prophet with jonah that's right jonah was a real prophet in the northern kingdom amos hosea but he was a contemporary of micah who was the prophet in the southern kingdom now you realize that when isaiah was involved in ministry a civil war had happened long ago much earlier between the northern 10 tribes and the southern kingdom of levi benjamin and judah and isaiah's ministry was almost exclusively the southern kingdom working in and around jerusalem the northern kingdom was being plagued by the assyrians at this time and they had their cadre of god's prophets up there isaiah was a prophet unlike elijah isaiah was married how many of you know the name of his wife she was a prophetess the bible says i don't think her name is given but do you know the name of one of isaiah's sons mayor hash baz so if any of you are expecting you might pass that on but uh so he was actually married evidently to a prophetess but i don't know that her name is given and if i'm wrong you can correct me on that isaiah is a fascinating book because it in many respects it is one of the oldest books that we have copies of a complete copy of the scroll of isaiah was found among the first dead sea scrolls that were found and it clearly dates to at least a hundred years before christ possibly 300 bc actually the historians say you're always supposed to say bc first bc300 and meaning that the prophecies that you find in isaiah such as chapter 53 where he talks very clearly about the messiah were written before the event and so it is a fascinating book not only that because isaiah lived about 760 to 713 bc about 150 years before the king of persia was born he specifically mentions the king of persia by name and has a message for him in his book that's pretty fascinating you know i remember reading in the um the writings of josephus the jewish historian that when alexander the great after he finished conquering tyre he came down to jerusalem and the priests went out of the city kind of waving the white flag and they a procession of priests went to alexander and they said do not attack us you are here our god said that you would be the king that would destroy the persians you're going to succeed and they showed him through translators of course they showed him the books of daniel that talked about the greek king that would go forth and conquer and it says alexander got on his knees and he worshipped at that point so this is not the first time that great conquering kings were foretold before they lived but yeah even cyrus he could have read about himself written by name alexander is not given by name but cyrus is mentioned in isaiah by name in chapter 45. so in the prophecies of isaiah it talks about prophecy he prophesied the fate of many kingdoms and they all came true babylon assyria the philistines moab syria ethiopia egypt edom arabia judah and tyre and so it's it's a very um thorough book now there are 66 chapters in isaiah but it's not the longest of the prophetic books do you know who the longest prophetic book is it's a jeremiah don't can't always go by chapters jeremiah's got 52 chapters but jeremiah has 33 000 words i don't think that's including his book of lamentations and isaiah's only got 25 000 so sometimes the chapters are longer are the the um yeah the chapters are longer and there's more words in them and so this is just a little background in the book of isaiah to uh tell us that and of course isaiah has quite a few prophecies that talk about the coming messiah and let me see here there were some other little facts yeah i think i covered i covered the main point oh isaiah is quoted more than 50 times in the new testament jesus frequently refers to the book of isaiah so if there's any question about if isaiah was really a prophet of god jesus said he was and so with that and i may share a little more as we get into other weeks let's get into the first section of our study today and it says hear o heavens now we're going to read the first two verses i'm looking forward to the day when we can move into normal sabbath school and worship service you know there was a time we used to pass around microphones and ask people to help us read the verses had it a little more interactive and i'm hoping that that day will come again soon but i'll read this for you isaiah chapter 1 verse 1 and 2 the vision of isaiah the son of amos which he saw concerning judah and jerusalem in the days of isaiah jotham and ahaz and hezekiah kings of judah so we know that his ministry spanned the reign of several kings who is the longest reigning king of judah manasseh manasseh comes right after hezekiah who is the second longest reigning king of judah isaiah so isaiah's life is bookend by the two longest reigning kings isaiah is when he starts manasseh is when he ends so that's just a little interesting piece of trivia he starts out then and he says in verse 2 hear o heavens give ear o earth for the lord has spoken i have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me now he starts his message by saying hear o heavens is he asking the atmosphere to listen is it the gases that he's speaking to and when he says give ear o earth was isaiah a pantheist and he's talking to the trees and the rocks what does that statement mean well you know if you want to understand something in the bible what's the key compare scripture with scripture if you look in deuteronomy 30 verse 19 moses is speaking here he said i call heaven and earth as a witness today against you that i have set before you life and death blessing and cursing therefore choose life that both you and your descendants might live i call heaven and earth as a witness go to deuteronomy 31 28 28 gather to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers that i might speak these words in their hearing and call heaven and earth to witness against them so why did these bible writers appeal to the heavens and the earth you know i think it's interesting at one point um israel i think it was a tribe of manasseh they built an altar and joshua and the other tribes got upset and they said you're only supposed to sacrifice at this one altar they said no we just created this altar to be a witness are the rocks are a witness and then when they cross the jordan river and the river parted joshua said take 12 stones out of the base of the river before it closed up again and stack them up as a witness really a reminder and so when they said hear o heavens and earth now let me give you one more thing to think about are there beings in the room today other than human beings i don't mean pinto beans i mean if you read in ephesians it says we wrestle not against flesh and blood and but against what principalities and powers and rulers in heavenly places so when you say hero heavens for the believer in jehovah is there a spiritual world are they witnessing what's happening here on earth as well and so when it says give witness heavens and earth it's really calling all the humans angels good and bad uh the angels above the angels beloved it says we're giving witness of the word of god this challenge so isaiah is making a declaration for all to hear the beginning of his book you can also read in micah 1 verse 2 hear you peoples all you pay attention o earth and all that is in it let the lord god be a witness against you the lord from his holy temple all right so he's making an appeal what he's about to say so what does he say now when he says hero heavens look in verse 3 isaiah 1 verse 3 the ox knows its owner in the donkey its master's crib or stall we would say but israel does not know my people do not consider a last sinful nation a people laden with iniquity a brood of evildoers children who are corrupters they are forsaken the lord they provoke to anger the holy one of israel they've turned away backward why should you be stricken again and you revolt more and more i'll pause there before i get to the the other section here in this passage uh with verse six or with verse five rather he says the ox knows his uh his master the donkey is master's crib but my people don't know me you know if a uh if a horse bucks off his rider you know where the horse is going to go back to the barn where the food is and if you've got a dog that takes off and runs they will almost always come home when they get hungry and if you've got a homing pigeon and you put it in a crate and you take it from st louis to new york and then the crate breaks and it takes off you know where it's gonna go it's gonna fly back to st louis one of the longest pilgrimages a homing pigeon was being shipped it was a very expensive homing pigeon from england to some collector in south africa and on unloading that pigeon it escaped about six weeks later it showed up in england it knew how to find its way home that's why they're so famous as homing pigeons so he's saying even the animals know where their owners are it says but my people forgot that i am your father i'm the one who led you out of egypt you're going after these other gods you're forgetting about me and then he he talks about what's at the heart of it all this is isaiah 1 verse 5. why should you be stricken again you will revolt more and more the whole head is sick the whole heart faints from the soul of the foot to the head there is no soundness that means no healthiness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying that word putrefying means stinking decaying corrupting sores it's not a very pretty picture future fighting swords they've not been closed or bound up it's it's like talking about gangrene or soothed with ointment your country is desolate before i get into that part here he describes the condition of sin can you think of somebody in the bible that was sick from the crown of their head to the soul of their foot when job was afflicted and by the way keep in mind the afflictions of job were a type of the sufferings of christ for our sins and it says that job was afflicted with boils painful boils and he had to scrape himself so these are open sores it's like what isaiah is talking about i know it's not pretty but this is what the bible says from the crown of his head to the soul of his foot how does paul describe sin it's like a physical sickness it's a disease or a dis-ease and this is what isaiah is saying and he says i want to heal you jesus is called the balm in gilead it says these wounds have not been closed or bound up by the way we're going to study later on isaiah does a little medical work did you know that when king hezekiah is sick he's got some kind of a fever and isaiah has to tell him he's going to die and there's a sign that comes to him and it says you know the sun actually stops and goes backwards 10 degrees and then god tells isaiah tell hezekiah that he will recover and that he's to place a lump of figs on the boil so evidently he had some kind of open infection and isaiah is the one who gave him the prescription it's interesting that he didn't just do a healing like jesus and say be healed but he used a medicinal remedy so they had some rudimentary idea about healing back then and nothing was being done he says you're sick and you're doing nothing about it they've not been closed or bound up or soothed with ointment your country is desolate your cities are burned with fire strangers devour your land in your presence and it is a desolate as overthrown by strangers now so when isaiah is writing part of the time at least historically when isaiah is writing the assyrians are rampaging through the northern kingdom in fact at one point in isaiah's writing and this was also mentioned in chronicles and in kings that the king of assyria came right to the gates of jerusalem in order for him to get to the gates of jerusalem they had to conquer and burn through all the fortress cities of judea and so with all of this these enemies at the gates so to speak the people are not turning to god they're spiritually sick they're threatened by their enemies they're economically devastated and he said what's with this you're not turning to me you're not praying it says your cities are burned with fire strangers devour your land in your presence and it's desolate as oh they're overthrown by strangers so the daughter of zion god's people the church is left as a booth in a vineyard now you know you might some people if you're going to live in a house for a long time you might have a substantial house with stone walls and a tile roof in bible times but the farmers sometimes when they were working and watching their crops they would have these little uh booths made out of leaves that would be out there in the farm or the garden you know they were living scarecrows back then and they had these little boots out there and he says your cities are they're beginning to look like a hut in a garden of cucumbers pretty like a booth in a vineyard or a hut in a garden of cucumbers as a besieged city unless the lord of hosts had led to us a very small remnant we would have become like sodom we would have been made like gomorrah now of course sodom and gomorrah were obliterated they were annihilated no survivors and god said look i'm giving you a remnant the 10 tribes in the north are going to be carried off by assyria your country has been invaded by the land because of your sins you've turned to other gods and isaiah he goes into the specifics of what those sins are many times in his books but the southern kingdom was still going through the sacrificial system they were still going through the uh the rituals and we'll get to that in just a minute so he said if it wasn't for the mercy of the lord you wouldn't even have a remnant i'm sparing a remnant next section rotten ritualism and jesus spoke about this and i'll be reading isaiah 1 10-14 hear the word of the lord you rulers of sodom notice how he starts that next verse give ear to the law of your god you people of gomorrah to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me says the lord they still have the temple they still have the services they still went through the the rituals they went through the sham of going through all the the sacraments and but he said what good is it if your life is wicked and if you're gonna talk about people who are really wicked there's only a couple places you can point that are the epitome of wickedness sodom and gomorrah and the people in the days of noah by the way jesus said that's what the world will be like before he returns and this is what israel had become like before the babylonian captivity to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices says the lord i've had enough of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle i do not delight in the blood of bulls or lambs or of goats what can the blood of goats and lambs and those animal sacrifices do they wash away sin no they all pointed to the only one who can wash away sin and that's jesus and so if we're living high-handed sinful lives but we say well well you know we're giving a big offering does that cover our sin god is saying what good is that if you're living wickedly and you're going through all the pretense of religious you know ceremony it says when you come to appear before me who has required this of you from your hand to trample my courts to bring bring no more futile sacrifices incenses an abomination to me the new moons and the sabbaths the calling you're saying now does that mean he did away with the sabbath no just meant you're not honoring me when you come to worship me on sabbath and you live like the devil the rest of the week the new moons and the sabbaths and the calling of assemblies i cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates their trouble to me i'm weary of bearing them now that's pretty strong language it's like when jesus said to the religious leaders you rob widow's houses and for a pretense you make long prayers so can you be excused from robbing widows if you just pray a long time no amos 5 verse 21 he says i hate i despise your feasts i take no delight in your solemn assemblies even though you offer to me burnt offerings and grain offerings i will not accept them and the peace offerings of your fat and animals i will not look upon them what is the condition to having the lord accept our sacrifices repentance humbling of our hearts sincerity if we sincerely repent of our sins and come he he accepts our worship he accepts our sacrifices but if if we're living in open rebellion and then we're going through just the you know the sham of religious ritual that doesn't please the lord it's like you remember the parable that jesus tells two men went up to the temple to pray one was a publication one was a pharisee pharisees were very religious and the pharisees stood and he prayed thus with himself lord i thank you i'm not like other men i pay tithe of all that i have and i fast and i'm not like this public and back here he's just trusting in his own self-righteousness but the publican would not so much as lift up his head unto heaven but he smote upon his breast he's standing in the back says the lord have mercy on me a sinner he's repenting this is what the lord wants the bible says a contrite heart god will not despise he wants us to have broken hearts repentance for our sins amos 5 24 explains what he's looking for but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream and moving on to isaiah chapter 1 verse 15 when you spread out your hands i will hide my eyes from you now that's a scary thought that we might pray we're talking about when you spread out your hands and you pray when you spread out your hands i'll hide my eyes from you even though you make many prayers i will not hear your hands are full of blood wash yourselves here's that verse that we were memorizing wash yourselves make yourselves clean put away the evil of your doings before my eyes cease to do evil learn to do good seek justice rebuke the oppressor defend the fatherless plead for the widow then he says though your sins be a scarlet they'll be as white as snow so what does the lord want from us wash yourselves make yourselves clean through the blood of the lamb turn to jesus repentance put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes cease to do evil learn to do good now that's a very important verse learn to do good you know why if you decide you want to turn to the lord and you repent if you can't change everything in one day don't get discouraged there is a learning process when i first came to the lord it took a while for me to learn how to talk without cursing it was a learning process but through the holy spirit god was able to put the brakes on and so um you know if you've spent your whole life doing evil and you decide all right i repent of my sins you may need to take some time to learn to do good right that makes sense rebuke the oppressor defend the fatherless plead for the widow psalm 66 18 if i regard iniquity in the heart in my heart the lord will not hear me that's why he said in isaiah 1 15 if you spread out your hands i'll hide my eyes so if we're living in deliberate sin and we're giving god our christmas shopping list and say lord do this and this and this god says look i want your heart i want you to be surrender i want you to be turning from your sins and following jesus and then we're really saying lord i want to be on your team matthew 23 14. i already read that actually woe to you scribes and pharisees you devour widows houses and for a pretense you make long prayers therefore you will receive greater condemnation and even in isaiah 58 he uses the same principle he says what good is your fasting if you fast for strife and debate and to strike with the fists of wickedness you'll not fast as you do this day to make whether you're not fast as you do this day to make your voice heard on high jesus in his ministry said woe to you scribes and pharisees matthew 23 23 you pay tithe and pay tithe is good but he says you pay tithe of mint and annis and cumin and you've neglected the weightier matters of the law justice and mercy and faith these you ought to have done without leaving the other undone don't neglect pain tithe and even in the small things but he said we cannot cloak our unrighteousness by you know giving an extra offering and you know i've we've all seen it not just me in the church you've got some people that major in minors they're extremely religious in exacting in certain areas uh you know i'm a vegan and uh that's you know i'm not trying to make you feel bad if you're not i'm just saying that i believe in healthful living but i've met some people that are vegans or vegetarians they're very fastidious about the way they eat and they're as mean as snakes so you're not saved by veganism are you you know what i'm talking about and so what god wants is righteousness in us it's it's not just a few legalistic outward forms of worship woe to you scribes and pharisees you cleanse the outside of the cup in the dish but inside they're full of extortion and self-indulgence blind pharisee first cleanse the inside of the cup so what does jesus want cleanse first you want the outside to be clean you really got to clean the inside all right and the next section we're going to is the argument of forgiveness and this is isaiah chapter 1 verse 18 come now let us reason together says the lord though your sins are like scarlet they'll be white as snow though they are red like crimson they will be as wool so here you've got this incredible contrast and you know whenever i read this verse a couple of stories come into mind one is when i lived in new york city growing up new york city is better now as far as the the it's they're having a hard time under the current times but they are better than back when i was a kid you know now when people walk their dogs they kind of clean up after the dogs they didn't do that in new york city and they had a lot of dogs and that just to give you one example and the buses did not have catalytic converters there was a lot of smog in the city and you know in our buildings in new york city we did not take the trash out we went to the the landing and there was an incinerator we threw our garbage into a big burner that was in the basement you could from the 15th floor you could throw your garbage in this chute and you could hear it as it fell down and poof into the incinerator you can open up the door and you feel the heat coming up from the incinerator on top of all the apartment buildings in new york they had incinerators and there was ashes in the city on the street it was a dirty city back in the 60s when i was living there i woke up one morning and i thought something weird going on i couldn't hear anything usually outside my window in new york city you always heard the buses stopping and starting and the taxis honking and and the people yelling and there's always noise it was dead quiet i thought what happened i went to the window i looked at about a foot of snow had fallen during the night and it paralyzed all the traffic it may have been more than a foot of snow but there was no no no vehicles were moving there were no snowplows out yet and it made everything so quiet it insulates noise and everything suddenly went from dirty to pure and it was the most amazing transformation i'll never forget that but then i had another experience when i read this verse i was in maine i was going to school in maine and it was winter time and they were driving on the snow in maine they knew how to do that and i was going down the road in a truck with one of the teachers and we were on some school erin to go to the store and we were driving by this farm and this beautiful gray and white dog ran out as dogs sometimes due to bark at trucks that go by and it slid on the ice and it slid off under the truck it normally probably would have been fine and we hit it but we didn't kill it right away and we felt terrible we hit it and it went and tumbled out from underneath the truck and we pulled over and went out and the dog was on the snow and it was looking up to us and it was badly wounded it was bleeding and the red blood on the white snow i'll never forget that picture and if we watched it it died there in front of us and i just think about the contrast of the steaming red blood on the white snow and how different it was whenever i think about jesus and it says scarlet though your sins be a scarlet the whitest know i think because of the scarlet blood of jesus our sins are made white as snow and the contrast can't be any greater between those two so this is what he does for us and he says it will be like wool and of course they would they they knew how to dye even white wool to make it very white back then and so god is saying it doesn't matter what your sins are though they are like scarlet it's interesting that isaiah wrote this and then one of the most wicked kings in the world manasseh whose sins were very much like scarlet he repented and god forgave him and then when he says come now let us reason together what does that mean let's argue this out it's like jesus said what prophet is there he wants us to take into account and think use our noodle as i used to say think about it i'm willing to forgive you in revelation 3 18 i counsel you to buy of me gold in the fire that you might be rich and white garments that you might be clothed that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed and so this white represents the purity of christ's righteousness and then isaiah 44 a similar teaching he says i am blotted out like a thick cloud your transgressions as you think not a cloud of you can always tell when you see a fire on the horizon if the smoke is white it's usually a grass fire if the smoke is black it could be a car or a house because there's toxins and things in there that produce black smoke and so when it's talking about your sins are like a cloud it's talking about a black cloud of sin it says god can make us pure it says like a cloud your sins return to me for i have redeemed you all right and then we're going on to the section to eat or be eaten this is isaiah 1 verse 19 if you're willing and obedient you will eat the good of the land so when we come to the lord what does he want from us a willingness now some of you might say oh you know i'm not sure i'm prepared to make a christian commitment i've got so many changes i need to make i don't know that i'm even willing you know what you can do you can pray that god will make you willing to be willing i mean everybody you could be willing to be made willing so really everybody's without excuse say lord i make me willing to do your will says you'll eat the good of the land but if you refuse and rebel sin is really rebellion you will be devoured by the sword for the mouth of the lord has spoken he know they did refuse and rebel and the sword of the babylonians did ultimately come how is the faithful city become a harlot it was full of justice now does revelation talk about a harlot city revelation 17 in revelation 18 it does jerusalem was to be god's bride calls her zion and now it says you've become like a harlot your silver has become draws 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 therefore the lord says the lord of hosts the mighty one of israel ah i will rid myself of my adversaries and i will take vengeance on my enemies i will turn my hand against you and thoroughly purge away your dross and take away your alloy i will restore your judges as the first and your counselors as at the beginning afterward you will be called the city of righteousness in the faithful city zion shall be redeemed with justice and her penitence with righteousness the destruction and transgression of sinners shall be together and those who forsake the lord will be consumed for they will be ashamed as the terraminth trees which you have desired they were worshiping under these trees and you will be embarrassed because of the gardens where they have their idols which you have chosen for you will be as a terabith whose leaf fades and is a garden that has no water the strong shall be as tinder and the work of it as spark let's talk about judgment coming like the tinder and the spark both will burn together and no one will quench them isaiah and jeremiah talked about them struggling because of judgment and that they would be burned with unquenchable fire now did this prophecy of isaiah come true because they did not turn they temporarily repented during the reign of hezekiah and they found some deliverance then and even during the the reign of um of josiah but then ultimately the babylonians came and destroyed the city and the last section here we've just got a couple minutes isaiah chapter 5 now we're jumping from isaiah 1 to chapter 5 because we're doing these things in segments and verse 1 through 7. now let me sing to my well beloved the song of my beloved by the way isaiah writes many of his prophecies in poetry and you know something is lost when you go from hebrew to english you know if i tell you a poem in english roses or red violets or blue whatever there'll usually be some rhyme to it but when you take the poetry from one language to another sometimes you lose some of the rhyme of it but this was written often in poetry and it's a lot more beautiful i understand in the hebrew let me sing to my well beloved a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard my well beloved has a vineyard now where do you find something about my well beloved in a vineyard isn't that also in what they call canticles the song of solomon on a very fruitful hill and he dug it up and he cleared out its stones and he planted it with the choicest vine he built a tower in its midst and he also made a wine press in it so he expected it to bring forth good grapes but it brought forth wild grapes and now o inhabitants of jerusalem and men of judah judge please between me and my vineyard what more could have been done to my vineyard that i've not done in it why then when i expected it to bring forth good grapes that did bring forth wild grapes can you think of a parable in luke chapter 13 where jesus talks about a man that had a um fig tree planted in his vineyard and it didn't bring forth any fruit and he and the owner said just cut it down it's taking up ground these are fruitless trees and he said i'll give it one more year the gardener said let me dig around it let me fertilize it i'll irrigate it and then hopefully it'll bring forth fruit i'll do everything that can possibly be done let's be patient and so god is so patient with his people back then and is he patient with his people now i'm not sure but it could be true that the the worldliness that existed in the church in the days of isaiah might be existing in the church today what do you think was there warnings that came they had to repent or there'd be judgment yeah what more could be done to my vineyard and now oh inhabitants of jerusalem i'll tell you why then when i expected it to bring forth good grapes it brought forth wild grapes please let me tell you what i'll do to my vineyard i will take away its hedge the walls of jerusalem and broken down and it shall be burned and i'll break down its wall and it will be trampled down i will lay it waste it will not be pruned or dug and there will come up brayers and thorns and i'll also command the clouds that they do not reign upon it for the vineyard of the lord of hosts is the house of israel and the men of judah are its pleasant plant he looked for justice but behold oppression and he looked for righteousness but behold a cry now he said that there'd be judgment because the vineyard did not turn now this happened twice god's people were judged the very prophecy that isaiah made came true in the days of the babylonians jeremiah when the city was destroyed the wall was destroyed everything was burnt it was thorns came up on the land of judah jerusalem he restored them gave them another chance and after the teaching of christ jesus message was very much like that of isaiah he said this generation will not pass away until there won't be left one stone upon another the same thing happened again now has god changed he's calling again for his church to repent and i think that message is going out did you what did jesus say to the um you read in matthew chapter 20 chapter 22 he tells these parables about the vineyard workers who abused the owner of the vineyard and they did not give him the fruit and he gives two or three parables about the vineyard and i think he's pointing back to that passage there in isaiah chapter five the vineyard represents the house of god well i hope you got something out of our introduction to isaiah and i want to and remind you if you tuned in a little late we have a free offer that's available to everybody and it's called the point of no return this is a great book it talks about how do you how do you get the point of no return like in the unpardonable sin what is the unpardonable sin you'll really enjoy this book by joe cruz and if you'd like a free copy you can download it by texting sh051-40544 and that asks for offer number 177 if you call the number is 866-788-3966 that's 866 study more god bless you friends lord willing we will study the next lesson in isaiah next week don't forget to request today's life-changing free resource not only can you receive this free gift in the mail you can download a digital copy straight to your computer or mobile device to get your digital copy of today's free gift simply text the keyword on your screen to 40544 or visit the web address shown on your screen and be sure to select the digital download option on the request page it's now easier than ever for you to study god's word with amazing facts wherever and whenever you want and most important to share it with others amazing facts change lives it was it was ongoing with me i would get up and drink i would go to work and drink i would come home and drink and that was that was my way of life i had an older sister and in 2008 we received a phone call from her husband saying that she was involved in a very serious home accident she had fallen outside on her patio was a concrete patio and she hit her head because she was in a drunken stupor and she needed emergency uh emergency brain surgery because of the trauma that she had suffered and so they were able to stop the bleeding in her brain but her organs started shutting down one by one so here i was you know i hadn't hadn't had a drink being a full-blown alcoholic myself hadn't had a drink in in probably a full day which was you know a lifetime for me and during the time we were watching there and they said that she wasn't going to make it and we had made the decision as a group you know with her children present and her husband that they were just going to go ahead and pull the plug and during that time watching her fade away god forgive me but i sat there asking her to die fast so i could go get a drink and you know i didn't even see it then i didn't see how bad i was at that time but you know i look back at it now and it just it tears me up but alcohol that's what it does to you i was walking out to go to work one morning with my my breakfast which was a six pack of beer and as i was climbing into my truck it just it just hit me that it was enough so i turned around i took the six pack of beer and i threw it in the trash can and i went and told my wife i needed help there's two things i never do ask for help and throw away beer and you know thank god i was able to do both well when i finally got to the hospital and they came got me and took me in and when they did a blood alcohol on me they had to do it twice because they weren't quite sure it was right but it was .38 they were all amazed i was even able to walk in there little you know being conscious it was about two months after i got out of treatment and starting my fresh life i left home left my wife and i was going to start my new life for sobriety and she wasn't going to be part of it so i had moved out and i was on my way to the store one morning when i was t-boned broadsided by an oncoming suv on the driver's side door of my truck and this driver was doing an estimated 65 to 70 miles an hour let me smack on my side of the door i woke up in the passenger seat of the truck and i remember coming to and hearing people standing outside look he's still alive there was hairline fractures in my pelvis and was a compression fracture in my spine and so on all intents and purposes i walked away from an accident i had no business living in well with a broken back i wasn't allowed to be vertical for but very short periods of time and i wasn't very mobile with a with a fractured pelvis so i was forced to move back home and you know thank god i've got a stubborn wife who was willing to take me back and put up with all this but during my recovery the only thing i could really do was watch television and so as i was thumbing through the channels i noticed a gentleman and i happened to stop because he was proclaiming that you can't prove biblically that the sabbath was changed from saturday to sunday and that it's not biblical and i thought well you know what i think i can do this you know so i took up my bible and i did something strange to me which was actually studied you know and over the course of several months of watching this man who i would later discover was pastor doug batchelor um i started uh trying to disprove everything he was saying and the more i read and the more i studied the more i found out that i not only could i not disprove it i was believing it and i realized it was the truth then i started soaking up everything that amazing facts had i was at their website you know doing all the reading i was looking at the sabbath troops i was you know downloading streaming everything they had you know and i was really really getting it and it helped me so much over a process of about three months while studying you know with doug batchelor and the amazing facts team and then you know of course my bible but over that three months i had fallen in love with christ like i had never had before and not only was my back and my pelvis healed but my soul was healed and i i experienced an emotional and a mental healing that you know i had been longing for for years i've got to do something what do i do next so i looked up in the phone book and i found the number for the local pastor and i called him and i said hi my name's brian i've just been converted where do i go and the poor guy was like brian it's nice to meet you converted from what and go where and i said that's what i want to know but we had a little laugh over that and he thought i was going and before he knew it i was you know heart and soul into this little church and i was studying with the pastor and decided you know i want to be baptized i want to be rebaptized and we thought great so we i did some study and we agreed that that was going to be baptized in this date well the next morning my wife asked me so do you realize what day this is i said well it's sabbath and you know sabbath was amazing in itself but she said look at the calendar and when i looked at the calendar on that day it was my one year anniversary of my sobriety i was being baptized one year after being sober and i just thought you know there's no such thing as coincidence that was just amazing that god would work that for me god has done amazing things with my life and i am i have to give him you know all the credit because short of just responding you know i've done nothing and it's been it's been him and it's just it's pleasure absolute pleasure to be called a child of god i'm really thankful that god used amazing facts television program and pastor doug batchelor to make a change in my life together we have spread the gospel much farther than ever before thank you for your support amazing facts change lives [Music] you know we grew up in a neighborhood up up in the midwest that was a pretty bad neighborhood and when i became a teenager i started using drugs i was on i started using meth when i was like i think 16 15 something like that i was having some problems in my life i really didn't know how to deal with the only thing i really knew was violence so this night here i was going to inflict violence on myself i was really high and really depressed so i took you know i had this 40 caliber so i remember i put one in the chamber and i stuck it to the side of my head like this and uh that that gun had a hair trigger you know i remember i was tapping it because and a part of me said no i don't want to do this but there was something very evil present there saying do it i just said to myself i said god if you're real show yourself to me my mother took me to church when i was a little kid and we used to sing jesus loves me and i remembered that song it started playing in my mind and almost had like a vision of me as a little kid you know and uh in sabbath school we used to bang those sticks together [Music] and sing jesus loves me and i heard that in my mind so i said wow so i just kind of like put the gun down and i kind of fell on my bedside there and i said lord i just basically just prayed this crazy prayer i said you know i told him everything that was wrong with me and i remember one day i was driving around i kind of felt lost and i drove by this church and i seen tom out there tom was just out there watering the flowers you know so i caught a vision of the side of my eye this big husky guy with tattoos walking up and they saying hello and i said so i asked him if i could help him he told me that he drives by the church on occasion and every time he goes by he's thinking if he should stop in after he showed me around the church you know i was like okay man it's nice meeting you and this and that so i jumped in my car and i started heading down the driveway and the next thing you know in like my peripheral vision i see him coming around the corner [Music] like jerry rice running a football no not that fast but you know he was uh taking off after me and he says hey hey hey hold on hold on i asked him if he would like to have some bible studies and he said yeah he would come by the house we'd all start we'd start hiding the beer cans and trying to air out the weed smell and there was a presence that came with tom that was comforting you know what i mean even though i wasn't taking the bible studies as serious as i should have looking back there was just a presence about him being there in the house that was comforting i told tom i said tom you know you can't win everybody i looked at him and i knew i i said to him reuben i never get anybody i says the holy spirit will do that and and i kind of in my heart knew that the holy spirit was going to work on reuben so then tom kind of left the picture for a while and then i think one day at my mother's house they were watching the final events of bible prophecy so i watched that and i remember the scene where they had the hellfire and stuff you know they're outside the city and it showed the hell fire coming down and burning people and stuff and i remember saying to myself that's where i would be right there after the hellfire scene i saw the saints in the city in the new jerusalem and jesus recreating the earth and i said i want that to be my me and my family there was something about the way doug preached and things that i felt that touched me because he's kind of like myself you know he's he didn't he didn't grow up like that you know he uh he'd done drugs and things so i kind of found these common grounds that i had with him and and i liked how he just kind of like kept it real with his preaching and then pastor rodley came to the church and i got to know him very well and we started doing some finishing studies he wanted to make sure i understand what i was doing and things he baptized me my wife my brother no matter what you've done where you come from where you've been no matter how bad of a sinner you think you are the lord jesus loves you no matter what you've done friends it's because of god's blessing and your support thousands of others just like reuben have found jesus and eternal life [Music] [Music] you

Channel: SDA Burgas

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Keywords: doug, batchelor, crisis, of, identity, sabbath, school, study, hour, sda, burgas, seventh, day, adventist, amazing, facts

Id: mVm2drnr4Nc

Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2020