World Challenge

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well term with me.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
In their scripture to Isaiah, the title my message this morning,
is there any hope for America? We're going to be
moving back and forth between Isaiah's chapter four, five, and six,
starting actually in chapter one, and then moving through the
Gospels and looking at the life of Jesus. We're going
to be moving in two different time periods, or actually
three different time periods seven hundred a d. The time

(00:23):
of Isaiah and what he was dealing with in his
nation in Israel thirty three AD, and what Jesus was
dealing with in his time period of ministry, and here
in America in twenty twenty one, is there any hope
for America? Let's pray, Father, we come soberly and seriously
in a message of warning, in a message of discernment,

(00:46):
in a message of understanding the times. And so I
asked for grace, Lord, to preach a hard truth with
words that are seasoned with kindness and grace, and yet
not to shy away from the things that I believe
your word says to us. When we can examine the

(01:08):
things around us and have some form of desernment, we
can see, Lord, it doesn't take a genius or a
spiritual giant to discern. As the scripture say that perilous
times shall come upon the face of the earth, and
we believe we're living in perilous times here in our nation.
But Lord, we are not without hope. We are not
without left without a remnant, a holy remnant that You're

(01:30):
going to be working through in mighty and powerful ways.
And Lord, this message is not just to help people
be aware of the times. But Lord, it's trying to
teach us and encourage us how to live most zealously
and fervently in the midst of the times we're living in.
It's not just to know that we're in bad and

(01:50):
difficult times. It's Lord, to be the people of God
raised up and stirred up and fired up in the
midst those of the hour that we live. We want
to be the great his testimony we could possibly be.
We want to be full of salt and light. And
so ask for power to preach this message and power
to hear from those who are listening today in Jesus name, Amen,

(02:12):
is there any hope for America? Was there any hope
for Israel? Was there any hope for Jerusalem? Isaiah Chapter one,
verse one starts off this prophetic book by saying the
vision of Isaiah, the son of Amos, which he saw
concerning Judah and Jerusalem. Isaiah had a vision. Many of

(02:35):
us in the church today, pastors, leaders, Christian leaders, we
have a vision. We want to see our ministry expand
we want to see more people reach. We want to
see God help with the finances enabled to enabling us
to do more than we've ever done before. Isaiah's prophecy,
Isaiah's vision. What Isaiah's seeing here is different than all that.
It's a difficult thing that he sees. I'm sure it's

(02:59):
the thing he doesn't want to I'm the sort of
thing he doesn't want to speak about anymore than I
want to speak about this troubling situation of judgment on nations.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
And yet he sees.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
The vision that he sees is of a nation that's
turning from God. He sees a nation that was once
had a dearness in their heart for the things of God,
had a closeness in a walk with God, had a
desire to obey God. And now they were walking in
rebellion and folly and foolishness, darkened in their understanding, living

(03:32):
in gross immorality and sin.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
This had to grieve the.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Heart of this prophet who saw the things of God
with purity and passion, and he was as certainly this
book seems to clearly indicate that he was grieved over
the condition of the people of God in his nation.
And this vision that he is having. He wants to
see a vision I'm sure of revival. He wants to
see a vision of spiritual awakening, just like you and

(03:59):
I do in ourn't nation today.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
He wants to.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
See a vision of repentance and a turning to God,
of a restoration of holy things, and a nation that's
once again a lighthouse for the things of God. That's
God to be his hope if he's worth his salt
as a prophet. But we're going to see today that
this is a troubling vision that he has. But he's
not alone in this vision. And today, as I said,
we're going to be turning from Isaiah in the year

(04:23):
AD excuse me BC seven hundred to the year A
D thirty three, the same city, Jerusalem. And if you
would turn to Matthew chapter twenty three, I hope you
brought your bible, or I guess everybody brings their phone
with them, so I'm sure you have that with you today,
but it's up on the screen if you need access.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
To it as well as Matthew.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Chapter twenty three, beginning reading in verse thirty seven, Jesus
cries out over his city. He has that same kind
of unction, probably even more so than Isaiah had a
concern for his people and his nation. And he says, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
city that kills the prophet and stones those who are
sent to it. How often I would have gathered your

(05:05):
children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
and you would not see your house is left desolate.
For I tell you you will not see me again
until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord. Chapter twenty four, Verse one, Jesus
left the temple and was going away when his disciples

(05:27):
came to point out the buildings of the temple. They
were saying, like, look at these beautiful stones, look at
this magnificent temple that's right in the heart of our city.
But in other words, not rejoicing over it, not saying
this is a feat of humanity's brilliant he says instead,
But he answered them, you see all these, do you
not truly? I say to you, there will not be

(05:49):
left here one stone upon another that will not be
thrown down. Isaiah was a preacher of the judgment of God.
Jesus was a preacher of the judgment of God. Oftentimes
we see Jesus as mister nice guy. He tried to
convince his father not to be so unkind in the
Old Testament, and he took over in the New Testament.

(06:10):
Now in the New Testament, he's the pleasant mister rogers
in the neighborhood Jesus.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
But that's not the reality.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Jesus spoke more about Hell than all the prophets probably
put together. He spoke more of impending doom and judgment
than most of the prophets did in their whole ministry.
Jesus was clearly one who saw the great work that
his father was going to do on earth. Jesus was
one who knew that he was going to die and
see many people come to salvation. Yet he knew there
would be much in the nation rejection of him. He

(06:36):
knew there would be hardened hearts. He knew there would
be an apostasy and turning away from God. And he
was not shy and preaching those things, those truths. And
here's what he's doing. He's saying, this is the condition.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Now.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Isaiah had a vision of the condition of Israel in
seven hundred BC, the impending judgment coming upon Israel. At
the time, Jesus in the year thirty three a d.
Was doing the exact same thing, same call. And Jesus
here is is speaking to religious leaders and he's asking
them to turn back to God. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how it

(07:11):
would have drawn you in your children to come to me.
But actually Jesus is strangely enough, if you look at
this passage, clearly he's actually bypassing the religious institution, bypassing
the religious leaders and saying to them, would you.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Allow your children to come to me.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
The young people here, I was told most you are
going to be sitting on the on they called you
this morning in the green room there, they called you
the right wing. So I don't know if that man's
politically or just sitting on the right side of the
preacher of the church, but a lot of young people are.
I want to say to you that Jesus was preaching
this passage here that we just read in Matthew, and
he was saying, there's a generation that I want to reach.

(07:49):
I want the young, these children to come to me,
that I might do something new in this nation, turn it.
But then he says, but you would not not saying
he's not speaking to the children here. Remember he's speaking
to the elders. He's speaking to the older generation, saying,
I want the young people to come to me. But
he says here in another translation, you know it says,

(08:10):
but you would not allow them. And the judgment that
Jesus has on Israel is that there'd be a generation
that instead of incurring the next generation to come up
and be stronger, to be, to be you know, our ceiling,
to be your floor. Instead, they're pulling them back. They're
having them withhold faith. They're getting them engrossed more and
more in their in their sins and in their folly

(08:31):
and what Jeremiah and Jesus called the woes of their
their generation. So these are these This was a godless, wicked,
sin saturated, haughty, deaf, blind, dumb. They were so astaunched
in the rebellion that they would not even give an
opportunity for anyone else the next generation, even to come
to a new place of spiritual awakening, of revival, of
godliness and of holiness.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Let's go back to.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
Isaiah again one more time. Isaiah fifth, chapter five, and
we're going to see here the condition of the vineyard.
Why why did they have this vision? What was this
vision about? What was the stirring in their hearts? What
was God trying to communicate to them?

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Well?

Speaker 2 (09:07):
In chapter five, verse one through seven, we see here
a parable so to speak, or a song, or or
maybe poetry put in the form of a song. And
the first verse Isaiah saying, here's what I want to
sing over my beloved, his beloved, obviously being God who
he so adores, Let me sing for my beloved my
song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on

(09:32):
a very fertile hill. He's speaking there, probably metaphorically of
the fertileness of the Lord opening up our heart, but
he's also speaking of the city of Jerusalem, on the
city on a hill. And he says, He's placed you
in a good place. He's put good things in your
heart as a nation, as a people, just as he's

(09:52):
done here in America, our history. He's put so much
good a Christian nation, a Christian history, godly leaders that
launched so much of our constitution or our nation. There
was such fertileness put in on our ground, such a
mission's emphasis, from the early days even till recently, such
giving and generosity like no other nation. The churches here,

(10:14):
the institutions here, the Bible schools, the seminaries, the missionary agencies.
That this is a fertile ground that God has us in,
and he dug it, and he cleared out all of
his stones. He took away the things that could hinder
it from growing. So there was no excuse for what
Jesus and Isaiah were seeing. There's no excuse for it.
It was cleared. And then he built a watchtower in

(10:36):
its myst to protect it, to warn with the trumpet
blowing the trumpet and Zion, warning against those things that
would come, false teachers, false era of sin, compromise coming
into the church. That he would have this trumpet in
the middle of it to warn you. That's what I
am doing today. I pray that the Lord would use
me as a trumpet to warn us about what's happening

(10:56):
in our nation today. And he ewed it out with
a wine vat and in other words, he put this
like a bathtub in there, saying that here's the expectation.
I'm going to fill this with wine and you stomp
it and it'll just be a huge like a barrel,
maybe six eight, ten twelve feet wide, and it would
be filled with the wine of the things that the

(11:17):
Holy Spirit is doing. And yet this it yielded no grapes,
that's what he says next. And he looked for it
to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes, wild off
the charge, not expecting what it is, what the reality
became of it. Another translation calls this sour grapes. It's

(11:37):
improper to the taste. The expectation was to taste something
good and it be sour in your mouth. It would
have turned, it would have not been the sweet wine
that was intended for it.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
And so you see here the troubles.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
And then he goes on to speak about this and
the condition is going to cause this, And now all
inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Juda, between me and
my vineyard, What more was there for me to do
for my vineyard? What more could I have done? Says
the Lord? What more could I have done to bring
her to repentance? What more could I have done to
bring her to holiness? What more could I have done

(12:13):
to bring a spiritual awakening and revival? What more could
I have done to make a healthy these grapes that
are sweet in my taste? What more could I have done?
And the answer to that, obviously is nothing. He's done
all that is more than necessary to keep you and I,
to keep our families, to keep our churches, to keep
our nations, to be the place that God desires us

(12:33):
to be. Walking in holiness, walking in purity, walking in sanctification,
walking in the glory of the Lord, walking in the
majesty of the Lord, walking into worship of the Lord,
walking in the study of the Word of God. All
of that He's planted in a good soil of our
hearts and in our nation. He's planted that as well.
He did it in Jerusalem in seven hundred BC, he

(12:54):
did it in Jerusalem in thirty three AD, and he's
done it in our day and age as well. What
more could be done? In verse five, and now I
tell you what I will do for my vineyard. I
will remove its head, and it shall be devoured. I
will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled.
I will make it a waste. It shall not be
pruned or hoed. The briars and thorn shall grow up,
and I will command the clouds that they rain no

(13:17):
rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of
Host is Israel, and the men of Judah are a
pleasant planting. And he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed
for righteousness, But behold an outcry.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
What more could he do?

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Is the cry of his heart? And the answer to
that is, there's nothing more I can do. And so
the response to that is judgment, the breaking down of
the walls, the crumbling of the tower, therefore allowing the
enemy to come in, the enemy coming in like a flood. Yes, certainly,
the Lord the Bible promises he raises up a standard
against that. And yet in these passages of scripture, we're

(13:54):
seeing where these walls are broken down, and there's things onslaughts,
and society coming, and we are seeing that like we've
never seen it before.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
In America.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
I'll tell you I've been in the ministry for forty years,
and these last five years are unlike any that I've
ever seen in my ministry. The speed, the speed, the
breakneck speed at which we're descending into a cauldron of
evil and wickedness, the speed at which there's a transition
from what is one considered pure now being considered evil.

(14:24):
We'll talk about that in a moment. Just it's just
escalating in its declension. I saw that when I was
pastoring many many years ago. I was in my late twenties,
early thirties, and I was pastoring in London, in England,
and the people that were telling me, you know, just
a few generations ago, maybe eighty ninety percent of the
people in England used to go to church. Many of

(14:46):
them were Anglican, the Church of England, but a lot
of them went to church. They are Baptist churches, there
were Pentecostal churches. But they said, now it's down way
under twenty percent, maybe even close to ten percent. And
they said, the declension not only of people that were
given their hearts to God, but the evil and the
wickedness and the culture. Things that would have been unnamed
cent two decades ago are now common practice in our society.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
And I saw that.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
In England, and when I moved back home to America,
it was my heart wrenching prayer. God, don't let the
same trajectory happen here in America. Don't let this downward
to clench and this moving away from God, this moving
into wickedness and evil. Don't let that become pervasive in
America today. And it's but it's happening. We are probably

(15:29):
in the same condition that the UK was in twenty
years ago, where now that they say maybe zero point
five percent point zero five percent a ten church on
a given Sunday, or consider themselves evangelical. And now here
in America we have found for the first time, particularly
when the millennials, that the that the number is declining

(15:50):
so rapidly that if it keeps up at that same pace,
should the Lord not do something miraculous, there could be
almost the same statistics in America as there were in
England and much of Europe and other places around the world. Folks,
we are living in serious and sober times. This is
a time to wake up, to be stirred up, to

(16:12):
be aware. The Bible says that the people of Issacar,
the sons of Issacar, had a knowledge of the times,
and they knew how to deal with the people and
if we don't have either of those, then we're going
to be missing out on what God's doing in this generation.
We won't be as mightily used by God as we
possibly can be to help either number one, stend the
tipe of wickedness and godlessness in our culture and our

(16:32):
society and our nation, or not to be that evangelistic
light of love and grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
So the condition of the vineyard, of this tearing down,
Isaiah says, now, if you would go back where again
we're skipping back and forth.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Now we're going to go.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Back to Jesus eighty thirty three. And look Luke chapter twenty,
Luke chapter twenty. And if you don't have your Bible,
it's up on the screen here. But Luke chapter twenty,
verse nine through eighteen. And you see here that Jesus
is doing something very similar. God has put on the Father,
has put on his heart, the same message that he

(17:12):
put on Isaiah's heart. And actually, as a matter of fact,
he uses almost exact same parable, this parable of the
vineyard with slightly different nuances to a verse nine of
Luke chapter twenty. And he began this Jesus preaching, and
he began to tell the people this parable. A man
planted a vineyard and led it out to tenants, and
they went into another country for a long while. When

(17:33):
the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants,
so that they would give him some of the fruit
of the vineyard. But the tenants listen to this, The
tenants beat him and sent him away empty handed. And
then he sent another servant, and they also beat him
and treated him shamefully, and they sent him away empty handed.
And he sent a third this one also, this one

(17:55):
also they wounded and cast out. Then the owner of
the vineyard said, what what shall I do? I will
send my beloved son. Perhaps they will respect him. But
when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, this
is the heir. Let us kill him so that the
inheritance may be ours. Then they threw him out of
the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner
of the vineyard do. He will come and destroy those

(18:17):
tenets and give the vineyards to others. When they heard this,
they said, surely not, this is not going to happen.
Your preaching is not a preaching of truth. This will
not happen. But he looked directly at them and said,
what then is this that has written the stone that
the builders rejected rejected speaking of himself, the stone that

(18:38):
the builder's rejecteds has become the cornerstone he was prophesying
his own rejection verse eighteen. Everyone who falls on that
stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls
on anyone.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
It will crush him.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Most of the commentaries there to speak of that verse
eighteen of maybe a bit of a confusing verse. One
you stumbled upon the rock, the other the rock crushing you.
And if you look at that, the preferences to fall
upon the rock that is Christ Jesus, to fall upon
him in times of trouble, to fall upon him in
times of difficulty, to fall upon him in times where
the world seems to be just going to hell in

(19:14):
a handbasket, gone mad, crazy and sin, to fall upon
that rock and say, God, my life is just cast
upon you, all my cares upon you, all my worries
upon you, all my anxieties upon you. I'm not worried
about the future. I don't fear what the government can do.
I'm not afraid of what a wicked culture can do.
I'm not afraid of the devil him. He can look
me in the eye and I'll tell him. Jesus reigns,

(19:34):
Jesus rules, and Jesus is in control.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
And so.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
But the contrast is then, well, there's another one who
don't fall upon the rock, but the rock falls upon them.
They get crushed. So Jesus is no milliy mouse preacher here.
He preaches with fire and brimstone. He preaches with passion,
he preaches with truth. He is uncompromising, he's unflinching. He's
unwilling to be preach what people might be might flatter

(20:03):
him by. And you know, if if if you want
all just comfortable messages, there's places you can get that.
But sometimes we need to stand up with this pulpit
and proclaim that we live in perilous times, and Jesus
predicted perilous times would come on the face of the earth.
I am so afraid, not not in the fearful way,
but just in the concerned way, that there are many

(20:24):
in our nation that are sitting in churches under problem,
under lightness, under frivolity. They're hearing ted talks, pep talks,
motivational speeches, happy peppy songs that just talk about we're
gonna jump in oceans and gonna be fun swimming.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Around in Jesus, you know.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
And it's just it's such a triviality that when persecution
and famine and difficulties and trials and tribulations come their way,
they're not going to be rooted on that rock. They're
not going to have been fallen upon that rock.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
And I believe it's time for the Church of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
And I want to just just preach those of you
that teach the word, and that preach the Word, that
teach Sunday school class, that are teaching your family, You
fathers that are oversee your families, there comes a time
where you have to not just say nice things, but
you have to warn them of the troubles to come,
so that their hearts are prepared to stand in the
midst of the storms that are coming our way. Jesus

(21:15):
did this faithfully. Isaiah did this faithfully. Noah did this faithfully.
He saw that in his time period and even later
on in Jesus's own disciples, they did the same thing.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
They preached.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
You read one of the disciples books like John the
Beloved who wrote the Gospel of the Story of Revelation.
You see the woes and the warnings and the concern
that he has. And so I want you to have
this understanding in your day today. And you see this
parable that Jesus. He differs a little bit from Isaiah
in here, but yet has the same strong warnings to it.

(21:46):
And he says, first of all, they took the first servant,
and they beat him, and they sent him away empty handed.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
So they came against the work of God.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
And then when God was expecting to see the fruit
of their hands, it says it was empty that had
nothing to offer.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
They had no good fruit.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
They had nothing of righteousness, of holiness, of truth and
justice in their lives. So they couldn't hand anything to
God and say, this is the fruit that you bore
in the vineyard that you've given to me the second servant.
It grows even worse. The word in the Greek there
him being beaten. In English it's the same word, but
in Greek it's a different word, and it's a more severe,

(22:23):
like a beating taking place, not just a strike, but
a beating taking place. And not only and they sent
him away empty handed, but they also send him away shamefully.
You see here, and I think this is happening in
our American culture today. It's not just an emptiness of
the things of the Lord, but it's a shaming of

(22:44):
the things of the Lord. It's it's putting it down,
it's calling it folly, it's calling it hate speech, it's
calling it weird and crazy and outcasts. And you know,
and church folks, things have changed in our society and
we need to live as if they've changed. You see,
we are now what Alexandra's social needs to called dissidence.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
We are no longer the moral majority. We are no
longer we should no longer have.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
The expectation that when we say things about the Gospel,
everybody says, oh, absolutely, this is a Christian nation. This
is not a Christian nation any longer. We are not
only not a majority, we are in a very small minority,
and we are not an accepted minority. We are dissenters
against the culture. We are we are fighting, so to speak,

(23:29):
in love with truth. We are fighting. We are counter cultural.
And if we are not aware of that, we're going
to be hoodwinked and deceived. We're going and not only
that We're going to be constantly bowled over by the
winds and waves of the culture around us. Were Listen,

(23:51):
don't be shocked when the Supreme Court makes wicked rules,
because we're living in a wicked nation. Don't be shocked
when your politicians say it an evil thing and they
lie and they steal, and they cheat and they deceive people.
Don't be shocked. That is our expectation. And so so
many Christians like, can you believe what this happened? And

(24:12):
can you believe the media said that? Can you believe
what CNN said? Can you believe what Fox does said?
Of course I can believe it because these people are
being led by the wicked spirit of this age.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
And you should not expect anything but that.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
But you should, and I should be in the middle
of we were talking about this in just a moment,
in the middle of it all. We should be salt
and light in the middle of law. We should be
a dissonant people, not fighting against the powers and principal not.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
Fighting against men and self.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
But there's powers and principalities that we are called to
tear those things down in the spirit of love and
spirit of grace and the spirit of intercession in the
spirit of personal holiness and righteousness of living as lights
in the midst of a dark culture. That is the
calling of God on our life. The second one that

(25:02):
has beaten even worse and treated shamefully. The third one
they actually double down. It gets worse. The thing here
he's in a third verse twelve, and this one they wounded.
It's a different Greek word there, and it doesn't speak
of just being beaten or beaten up. It speaks of
being beaten in a certain way that it's going to

(25:22):
leave a wound on you, a broken bone, scars. It
has a lasting effect, this wounding. And then they were
casting him out. It was not just he was empty handed.
Now it's like go away, never come back. We don't
want anything to do with you. You see the trajectory here.
It seems like the Bible is warning us. In the
Book of Isaiah and in the Gospels of Jesus Christ.

(25:44):
It seems like he's trying to get us to wake
up to something that culture tends to disintegrate. It tends
to And yes, there are certain revivals and certain spiritual awakenings,
and we continue to pray and hope God to God
for those things. But many cultures Christian nations, like UK
and like Europe and like now the trajectory here in America,

(26:04):
they have this oftentimes this downward trend of moving away
from the things of God. And we need to be
aware of that so that we can pray and intercede
with wisdom and grace and understanding of the things God
has for us. And so it's this, it's this idea
of casting off any call of righteousness, casting off any
it's you know, it's called like, you're hindering, you're hindering me,

(26:26):
You're you're coming.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Against my sexual lifestyle.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Those are you know, you're putting me in bondage to
this and you're not free to live. You know, that's
called casting off, casting off of restraint is what Scripture
calls this many times as well. At the end of this,
Jesus says, I'm going to come and destroy those tennants
and take away their vineyard and give it to another
group of people. He's speaking there historically of taking it

(26:50):
away from the Jewish nation and placing it in the
hands of the gentiles. And this happened within this generation.
Jesus says, these things will happen in your generation, not
saying they're going to happen in twenty twenty one. He
said they're going to happen in his generation. And they did.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
In the year A d.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Seventyan, the Roman Empire came into Jerusalem. They destroyed the temple,
just as Jesus said, every stone is going to be
torn down from another stone, not one left. And that's
not just physically, but metaphorically as well. Speaking of the nation,
the Jewish Hebrew nation that was worshiping God in the

(27:27):
form that they had. After that time, there was no
more sacrifice on the altar. He did away with altra sacrifice,
no more animals brought in for the cleansing, purification of sin.
There was no more worship. There's no more holy place,
no more holy of holies. And from that time on
even till today, you cannot find somebody called a Pharisee

(27:48):
or a sadduacey. The whole religious system was brought down.
And so Jesus is prophesying this is what's going to happen.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
The vendard will be taken away, and the people cry.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Out, surely, not, no way this is going to happen.
You know that's happening in secular society day. God's not
gonna you know, we thumb our nose that God. We
you know he winks at our sin if he exists
at all. But what is more concern to me than
that because I have that expectation that a secular person
would act that way. What I have is a deep

(28:19):
concern for the church when the church no longer believes
in the judgment of God. You see the judgment of God,
from the time of the Apostles, writing to the early
church fathers, to Saint Augustine, to Saint Alsom, into the
fifteen hundreds, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John's Wingley, to the
Puritan writers of the seventeen hundreds, to John Wesley and

(28:39):
Spurgeon in the eighteen hundreds, to Billy Graham, and the
nineteen hundreds to my father David Wilson. All of these
men believed one of the clear attributes of God is
not just love, grace, mercy, but it's the justice of God,
the judgment of God, and the wrath of God. They
have been preached for two thousand years as very clear
attributes of God, and has not been until this last
twenty or thirty years that we've now dismissed that as

(29:02):
a part of God's being. No longer do we see
that attribute of God as his wrath, his justice, his judgment.
And if we take that away from God, we no
longer have a God. We no longer have the power
of God. We no longer have God with any resource
or recourse to change the course of history and society.
We no longer have a God who can bring revival,

(29:23):
because revival doesn't come without repentance, and repentance doesn't come
without wrath and judgment.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
And justice of God.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
So we need to be awaken church, and never be
careful that we would never be in a church of craft.
Surely not, surely not what you're saying, Pastor Gary is
coming true.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
You don't know.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
I have an inside track and there's going to be
a great revival in America, and there's going to be
a supernatural awakening. I pray so, I pray so, but
I'm also and I'm not prophesying one way or another.
I'm just sharing scriptural precedence with you of what, in
many cases happens and what may be very clear reality
of what could be happening in America, especially if we're

(30:01):
not careful. It happened in Noah's day, it happened in
seven hundred BC, and Isaiah's day, it happened in thirty
three AD, in Jesus's day, And the question remains for
us today, in our generation, the same question Jesus asked
that Isaiah asked, what.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
More can I do for my vineyard? What more can
I do? Says the Lord?

Speaker 2 (30:18):
What can I do to bring repentance into your hearts?
What can I do to bring revival into your churches?
What more can I do to bring awakening and cleansing
and restore a people to holiness in your nation?

Speaker 1 (30:28):
Why was this judgment coming?

Speaker 2 (30:30):
And I'll wrap things up here in just a few minutes,
But why was judgment coming? In seven hundred BC Isaiah
chapter five, beginning in verse five, and I won't take
the time to read all these things.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
I know our time is running short.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
But in seven hundred BC he's prophesying, and in chapter
five he begins to pronounce these woes, woe is Israel.
Here's the judgment of God because of these things that
you're finding yourself entrenched. And in the first one I
call the pride of prosperity, the pride of prosperity.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
In verses eight through.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Ten of five, he says, you increased of your there's
been increased in your lands. There's an increase in your houses.
They are large and they are beautiful. You see these
things increasing in your life. As a matter of fact,
It goes on to say, you have large vineyards of
ten acres the common plot of land among the people,
that they would be to have ten acres of vines

(31:21):
growing up, and they were expecting prosperity, and they're expecting.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
But yet their hearts have turned from.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
The Lord, and so this message of prosperity was no
longer applicable to them. And yet they will continue to
preach this message, continue to proclaim and take the pride
in the sense of their prosperity. But God says, I'm
stripping you all that it's an unyielding land.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
It's not going to rain upon this land.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
And so here they are preaching and proclaiming and living
in the pride of their prosperity. When God is saying
that message won't rise to the tide. It's not going
to make it. It's not a true message. It's not
what it's not what I'm doing in this time and
the season. And yet all across America there are false
teachers called disparity of faith and prosperity teachers, and they
stand in their pulpit week after week and they deceive people.

(32:06):
They tell them peace, peace, when there's actually sudden destruction
that could come upon the land. They tell them everything
you dream, that God is a genie with a magic lantern.
And if you'll come to my church and just have
a little bit of faith and tithe and give and
then believe God, and He's going to give you everything
you want. You're gonna have the best job you ever
had in your life. Your if your wife is ugly,
she's going to turn beautiful just when you start confessing it.

(32:28):
If if if your car doesn't run, you just speak
over speak word of faith and your tongue, and your
tongue can heal your car. You don't need two thousand
dollars to pay mechanic your tongue. You know. And there's
this deception. It's lies from the pit of hell, and
we're not preparing. People that are sitting under that message
are not prepared to stand in the midst of the storm.

(32:48):
And I'm not afraid to speak the truth. I do
it with love, saying it's time to come out. If
anybody outside of this church is hearing this message, and
maybe online, and you're caught up in that, that false
doctrine of this hyper faith and prosperity, it's time to
come out of that because number one, it's not going
to do you any good because they're not worshiping a

(33:09):
true God there, they're worshiping an American idol. They're worshiping
an idol is just of prosperity. It's the pride of prosperity.
And Jesus says.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
It's going to come down. And then people say, surely
not that.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
You know, those big megachurches that preach this, they're not
coming down. I believe they'll become a time where they'll
be coming down, whether it be the pastors giving up
caught in sin, or the church is falling apart. I
don't think God's going to stand up for it. And
even if he were to be continues to be gracious
and merciful, our nation will eventually be a place where

(33:41):
those people will begin to say themselves, what am I
getting here?

Speaker 1 (33:45):
I'm not getting the truth.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
I'm not getting scripture I'm not getting the word of God,
and they'll be a turning.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
And that's the pride of prosperity. The second one is
the pride of the party spirit.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
It's in the midst of it's in the midst it's
like Noah's time, where there's eating and drinking your marriage
and giving a marriage, this drink and this drung and
says here there was this pride of the party spirits.
It's yeah, life is hard, and there's bad things going
on in our nation, and people are turning from God.
But hey, let's wake up in the morning and drink,
and let's rink ourselves to sleep at night. Let's play
music and dance and saying. And it's the idea here

(34:16):
is not discerning the times, not knowing the soberness of
the hour, and not taking it to intercession, and not
taking it to be that holy light in the midst
of a dark culture. And therefore they are brought under
judgment as well. It says they will be exiled verse sixteen.
And they brought low and humble. The third one is
what is called what I'm calling the pride of perversion.

(34:37):
And again we see, just like Jesus is teaching about
the vineyard, how things progress worse and worse, wicked, more
and more wicked, and more and more ungodly. We're seeing
that here in this from prosperity to blind partying to
now straight out perversion, perversion, just as the parable the vineyards,
those culture becoming more and more wicked, this culture becoming wax,

(35:00):
worse and worse, immorality rising, coming to the point of
not only practicing such sin, but they begin to call
their sin good, and anything good they.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Begin to call evil.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
They become so depraved in mind that they no longer
no longer not only do they know not only not
only do they know not how to not sin, they
don't even know how to call it sin anymore. They
become so depraved in their mind that the whole thinking
becomes backwards. And this is found in verse twenty there

(35:31):
where it says, you call evil good and good evil,
you call light dark and dark light, you call sweet
bitter and bitter sweet. And there you see just this
confusion in society. This is what Romans chapter one talks about.
If you've not studied right Romans chapter one, I want
you to study it this week because it will show
you a picture of America like no other place. In
Scripture and Romans, one begins to speak about different types

(35:55):
in three different verses. It says that they were given over.
First of the given over to the lust of their flesh.
They were given over to their sexual immorality, and then
thirdly they were given over to their deprived minds. Same
thing is happening here, that's happening in these passages that
we're reading today.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
You see the progression growing worse.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
First they're giving over to some lusts, but then that
lust becomes defined. They're given over to women having intercourse
with women and men with men, so it's becoming a
different type of level of sin. And then thirdly it says,
and I've given you over to a deprived mind. This
is what I'm talking about here when I speak of
the pride of perversion, because your mind gets so depraved.

(36:35):
And by the way, let me suggest to you, this
is the worst type of judgment that God has.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
You would be much better off to.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Be in a place where He sends fire and brimstone
and hurricanes and windstorms and famines and pestilence. You'd be
much better off that because those type of warnings throughout
scripture are almost always accompanied by God saying, and I'm
going to come back, and I'm going to renew you.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
I'm going to turn your heart back to me.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
He's using those things as wooing, as callings to his people.
But this last form of judgment is the worst kind
of all, because it says, I'm giving you over, what more?

Speaker 1 (37:11):
What more can I do for my vineyard?

Speaker 2 (37:14):
And it just it's almost like he washes his hand
and says, I'm turning you over. And this turning over
gets worse, first to us, then to this sexual perversion,
then to depraved mind. The depraved mind is a mind
that can't even think straight anymore. The depraved mind is
in the Benson commentary, it says this about the depraved mind,
says in which men accustomed to their vices, they're so

(37:36):
steeped in their vices, they begin with the things themselves.
So they take their vice, and they begin to lose
the name of it. And then they put a draw,
they draw a veil over it. So the vice is,
you know, it used to be called adultery or sexual immorality.
Now it's called an affair. You know, Now it's called
a fling. And so you put kind of a sweet

(38:00):
sugary you're more name on top of it. You cover
it with that name. You no longer name your sins sin,
you call it something else. And then it goes on
to say, and as it were, over there impieties listen
to this by sanctifying their crimes with names of virtue.
So they take a crime, they take ungodliness, and they

(38:20):
and they begin to name it as a virtue. So
they begin to say they no longer say it's the
it's the ungodly, ruthless murder of unborn babies, it's the
ripping of babies from their mother's wounds with instruments of death.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
No, they don't call it that anymore.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
It's it's pro choice, it's it's it's it's a name
that somebody that doesn't know what they're thinking about, well,
all of a sudden say like, well, that sounds reasonable
that a woman can have a choice, But it doesn't
really talk about the real issue of what's taking place.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Calling sexual perversion, calling it pride.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Gay pride, it's it's it's a it's a sweeter name
to cover over over it. Just recently, the latest medical
journal has put out instructions for their psychiatrists and psychologists saying,
please be careful when you're talking about little children and
trend with a transgender confusion. Be careful because they're listening

(39:16):
to this. They're not able to know whether their gender
is is right until they're two years old.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Do you hear what they're saying?

Speaker 2 (39:24):
I mean, I thought it was degradation when somebody said
an eight year old could decide. But now the medical
doctors are saying, oh, no, no, you know, let's let's
be mature adults here. Let's wait till at least until
they're two years old before they before you let them
decide what their gender is. Gender fluidity is what it's called.
And and and it's a tragedy that these nice terms,

(39:47):
these good terms, are put over evil things, and then
good things are called evil. Then, so this the preaching
that I'm preaching here today, If I put this on
my Instagram account, I could get blocked from Instagram or
Twitter because they because they're they're hearing what I'm saying.
And so so good things are called evil? What what
I'm preaching that could be called in some quarters hate speech.

(40:10):
And I believe it's going to get even worse to
the point where messages like this could get somebody imprisoned
in America. It's happening today even in Canada. Just somebody
they put a fence around his church because he wanted
to meet, like the Body of Christ is called to meet.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
With one another.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
And so we're seeing these things take place, and I
do believe it's getting worse and worse. Let me close
by saying this, because it sounds like what I'm saying
right now seems very hopeless. Maybe you might leave here
today to deject it and feeling like, well, is there
is there any hope? You know what Jesus says in
when he's teaching his disciples, he says to them about

(40:46):
this this idea of this.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Parable of the vineyard.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
But he says, you know, when he begins to describe
what that parable means to his disciples, you know what
he says.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
He says, listen to me. You have friends. The world's
not going to see this. They're not going to hear this.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Their eyes are are blind, their ears are death, they're
not going to understand this.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
But it has been geartless in this Here's the good news.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
You're ready for some good news, church, here's the good news,
he said. But Jesus said to them, but it has.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
Been given to you.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Your eyes are open, your ears here, your heart leaps
at the good news. In other words, there's something remaining.
The world may seem to be falling apart, it may
seem to be falling into evil and wickedness like never before.
But Jesus is saying to his disciples, but I've got
something in your heart. I've got a seed planted.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Now.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
It was taken away from one generation, but now it's
been planted. The vineyard's planted in your heart. And I'm
going to sanctify you, and I'm going to keep you,
and I'm going to purify you. And you're going to
be bold and relentless and faithful and loving and.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Just, and to have the heart of God.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
And all that you're doing, you're going to have the
things of God. And Jeremiah, excuse me and Isaiah. The
last of this passage where he's talking about these woes
and the vineyard being torn apart from them, he has
this promising verse in verse thirteen that brings us hope.

(42:05):
Is our hope for America there is? It's in this
it says, and though he sakd about everything else has
been just pulled aside, everything else has been beaten down
and cast away, so to speak.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
And thenbody said, Ah, but there's this.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Coming, and though a tenth remain in it, a tenth
remain in it. The Bible speaks in the Old Testament
of this. Some people call it tithe in some portions
when it speaks to giving, but it's also a tenth
has often used many times in scripture as a remnant
a holy people that's left. The promise of Isaiah, the
promise of Jesus, the promise of Noah, the promise of
every generation, the promise of the future for you and I,

(42:41):
the promise of until the second coming of the Lord
is He's always going to have a people. God's going
to have a holy remnant. God's going to have a
people that are zealous about him, are on fire for him,
our startup in their heart for him, who are relentless
in pursuing Him with every fiber in their body. Isaiah says,
there's going to be a tenth of you, and the

(43:03):
passion will burn in your heart, and you'll be a
testimony to those who are under judgment and under judgment
and wrath and depraved minds. They're going to be confused
and hurting and wounded, and they might need a place
to turn to. And you might be that place if
you're not spewing out vile speech against them, but you're
doing what you're doing and speaking the truth, as we

(43:24):
said in love, then they might turn to you at
a time like this. And yet there be hope for
our nation. And he goes on to say it will
be burned again even though there's a tenth left. That
doesn't mean you won't be going through a fire. The
minority will go through a fire. The Holy Remnant will
go through a fire, a fire of persecution and tribulation.

(43:46):
But out of it, it says, like a terrabinth or
an oak whose stump remains when it is felled. The
Holy seed is a stump, you see. The tree may
be cut, the nation may be cut off from revival,
from awake, but God is going to be in the
middle of it all, and he's gonna have this holy stump.
He's gonna you know, when Isaiah saw this, he said,

(44:06):
I saw the Lord. Remember Isaiah six, I saw the Lord,
and as high lifted up in the train of his
robe filled the temple. I imagine Isaiah would have been thinking
to himself there, like, oh, I'm getting the fire. My
lips are being touched, and I'm gonna go out and
proclaim the gospel and people can get saved, and the
nation's gonna be healed and delivered. But God says, no,
I have touched your lips. But here's your message. You're
gonna hear, but not here. Yours won't be open. Your

(44:28):
eyes will see, but they'll be blind, your heart will
be hardened. And part of our message is that. But
that's not the whole of our message. Here's the other
part of this message. The other part of the message
is you're going to be that that holy stump, that
holy seed that God's gonna And then one more thing,
and then I'll close. Isaiah Chapter four, Verse two. He says,

(44:49):
in that day, this is Isaiah saying, in this day,
this day of trials and tribulations and troubles and persecution
and hardship and wickedness and turning from God. In that
day the branch of the lords, how'll be beautiful and glorious.
This is speaking about Christ. Now you see the picture.
There was a tree and because of judgment. God cut
some of the trees and the branches, but he left
a stump. He says, it's a holy stump. It's only

(45:12):
one tenth of it left. But what I'm gonna do
with that stump, I'm gonna grow the righteous branch out
of it, and out of the people of God will
come righteousness that will spread. I think it's Mark chapter
four or five, can't remember right now. It says, You're
going to be like a tree of righteousness, and branches
are gonna spread, and the birds of the air will
come and nest on it, and it'll give shade to
many around you. That's the that's the grace of God

(45:32):
in the midst of his own judgment, that he were,
that he yet holds out grace through a people of God,
saying I'll be shade.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
And provide this righteous branch.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
And I wish I had the time to take you
through history and see that the people at one time
thought Adam was the righteous branch. But then he send
and then it was well, maybe canaanable, but then there
was sinned there and then well maybe it's Moses, no,
but maybe it's Noah.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
But he sinned.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
After the flood, and none of these guys were the
guys you can hang your hat on. So to speak,
you there weren't the branch of righteous busness. They stemmed
up and then they fell away. But then now to
Isaiah's proph, saying, oh.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
There is this one. There's only one righteous branch.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
We hang our faith, we hang our hope, we hang
our life on this one righteous branch, Jesus. And he says,
this grows, this power of Jesus, this righteous branch, It
grows most in the soil of difficulty and trials and
tribulation and hardships in a nation.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
That's where the stump begins to grow. This beauty.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
It calls it beautiful, it calls it glorious. And the
fruit of the land shall be the pride and the honor.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
Of the survivors of Israel. Verse three.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem,
who will be called holy? Hallelujah? Can you say Hallelujah?
Can you say praise God? Can you say thank you? Jesus?
You're gonna call me holy in the midst of a
perverse and crooked generation. You're gonna let me be holy.
And You're gonna let me preach holy words and bring
people to holiness of the things of God. And everyone

(46:58):
has been recorded for life, life, Amen, life, holiness, Life.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
You're gonna have abundant life.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Jesus said, in the midst of all the storms, you
don't have to hang your head down. You don't have
to be bent over, you don't have to feel, you
don't have to be corrupted like a lot. He says
his soul was grieved when he was in that spirit
of a sodom around. You don't have to have that grieved.
You can grieve for the sins of your nation, but
you don't have to live in grief. You can live
in overcoming joy and delight called holy recorded with life.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
Verse four.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
And the Lord shall have washed away the filth, hallelujah,
wash us away our filth were and then they's cleansed
us from the bloodstains of Jerusalem. And in the midst
of this is the spirit of judgment.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
You're gonna have discernment.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
You're gonna be able to know when to turn from
wickedness and from compromise, a spirit of judgment. And then
it says, lastly, a spirit of burning. Hallelujah. God's gonna
just burn with fire inside of you. You're gonna be
raised up for the greatest things you've ever seen in
your life. The greatest testimonies, the greatest powers, the greatest miracles,
the greatest church awakenings, the greatest moves of God could
take place in the midst of a greater culture that

(48:04):
is steeped in ungodliness and unrighteousness and filth and degradation.
In the middle of that, God has this tenth. And
I tell you what, a tenth of America is not
a small group of people. That's like thirty forty million
people that are what we just described in Isaiah chapter
four burning with fire for Jesus.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
What can thirty million people do on fire for God? Holy? Pure?
Do we have hope?

Speaker 2 (48:30):
I think there's I think there's this Romans one passage
that we talk about that concerns us, doesn't it that
we might be turned over? How close are we as
a nation to being turned over allowing God just to
say no more judgment, just you're turned over to walk
the way.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
How close we are to that? It's very close.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
But I believe there's hope because there's still that tenth.
And maybe we could pray, maybe we could stand up
for the truth, maybe we could love, Maybe we could
reach out to the poor and the needy, maybe we
could maybe we could make a difference in in the PA.
Whether it be social media, is some of you have
a social media accounts, and just preach Jesus on that.
Then let people know about the love of God, the
power of God, the justice of God, the truth of God.

(49:11):
And I pray that there will be hope for us.
And I know there's hope for us. I pray there's
hope for our nation. But I know there's hope for
the church because this church is not going out and
I don't mean this one particular church, but the Church
of Jesus Christ is not going out with a whimper.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
It's not going out weak and defeated.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
It's not going bent over with weakneeds and feeble hands.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
It's going out strong in the Lord. Mighty.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Men and women of God who believe God and see
God accomplish great purposes.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Stand with me.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
If you wait, please, I just want to pray over you,
and I'm going to pray that you stand strong, that
you speak the truth, that you stand straight up in
the Lord, that there's no bending over in the sense
of certainly avow our need to the Lord. But I'm
talking about being bent over by discouragement or fear that
you have not have thought. If you need a special

(50:02):
touch today, say I've been letting the things of the
world number one either creep in and cause some compromise,
or number two creep in to disturb my spirit, where
I just I get anxious, and I get fearful, and
I get fretful. I just want you to I want
to pray for you right now. Would you just slip
up your hand, let me pray for you. If you're
in one of those two categories, Father, we just cast
out all our cares upon you, because you care for us.

(50:23):
And Lord, no matter what happens in our nation, we
know that you keep your hand upon this Holy Remnant.
And Father, if there's been a seeping in of the
worldliness around us, I pray that you would just cause
that spirit, like you said in Isaiah, for nothing to
be cleansed, that spirit of unrighteousness to be cleansed. All Lord,
the stain of the world would be washed away and cleanse.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
We thank you God. We'd just stand Holy Lord.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Let know this is not an hour to toy around
with compromises, sexual limorality, or imperior thoughts, or pornography or
anything like that. God, this is not the hour, never
has been, but especially now, God, we need the pure
already of God like never before. So Lord, touch our
hearts afresh. And now we take a moment just to
thank you as well. God.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
We thank you that you've not left us abandoned.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
You've kept a holy stomp, a holy seed, a holy remnant.
And God, we thank you that you put us on
fire for you. And I pray God that this message
would somehow stir hearts, that this church here and others
listening would come into the greatest revival and internally they've
ever had, and therefore launch out and touch many lives
around them. We get thanks for this in Jesus precious name. Amen, Amen, God,

(51:33):
bless you all. Thank you to joy me with your
under