Bringing the light of Jesus Christ into a sin-darkened world. This is the Lighthouse Radio Bible Study. Hello, my name is Ben Fordham, and I invite you to join us now as we study God's Word together. Welcome to the Lighthouse Radio Bible Study. I greet you all in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior and thank you for tuning in. As we look to the word of God today, I would like to draw your attention to the book of Isaiah, chapter 30, as we look at verses 8 through 17. This chapter began with a woe that was pronounced upon Judah for their rebellious spirit. They sought counsel, but not from the Lord. They desired to go to Egypt for help and strength. We found out the association or alliance would be unfruitful, that it would come to nothing. Yet we know that Judah would proceed with this course, trusting in their own wisdom. They refused to hear instruction. We find the instruction given to Isaiah to write plainly on a tablet and in a book the whole story, so that it may be known by all who see it and read it, that this people is a rebellious people and lying children. This is written for them, for us, and for all of the generations of God's people in between and to come. The lesson should be very familiar to us. We don't like preachers who tell us exactly what the Bible says. We don't like to hear the truth because it is hard to hear and it cuts us to the quick. We want qualifications and justifications. So we prefer soft lies to hard truths. We want the preacher to tell us that we deserve to be happy, even though we've piled up sins and continue adding sin to sin. We want to hear that we are basically good people with some bad tendencies. We look in the mirror and listen to our own wicked hearts tell us that we don't deserve all this wrath. We like soft lies. We are children who want to touch a hot stove and are terribly upset when our parents yell at us to stop it. We are like dogs who cannot distinguish between words and phrases and tone. If you use your best baby voice, you can always tell a dog that you're going to get ready to take him to the vet to be put down and he will wag his tail and nuzzle you like you're his best friend. Just say it in a voice that says, come here buddy, let's do this. Yell at him that you're going to give him a stake and he will cower like you're going to beat him. We don't like the truth, and if we don't mind the truth so much, we certainly oppose the tone. We have asked preachers to soften up the preaching and tell us some sweet little lies Fleetwood Mac style. And where has this led us? Truth is still true. None of this can change that. We are just now lost in a set of lies, in a pile of lies, if you will. And we wonder why, untethered from the truth and the God who gave it, that we cannot figure out who we are. Men, women, cats. So, what are we to do? What version of the plan are we on now? Let us look to our text. Isaiah 30, beginning in verse eight. Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come forever and ever, that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord, which say to the seers, see not, and to the prophets, prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits. Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path. Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. Wherefore, thus saith the Holy One of Israel, because ye despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon, therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. And he shall break it as the breaking of the potter's vessel that is broken in pieces. He shall not spare. so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it assured to take fire from the hearth or to take water withal out of the pit. For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest shall you be saved. In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. And ye would not. But ye said, no, for we will flee upon horses. Therefore shall ye flee. and we will ride upon the swift. Therefore shall they that pursue you be swift. One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one. At the rebuke of five shall ye flee, till ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on a hill. Verse eight. Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come forever and ever. Having announced judgment, the Lord now tells Isaiah to write it down on a table before them so that they could not deny that they had heard or read it. Think of a billboard that everybody could see. Isaiah is also instructed to note it in a book so that they in their posterity would know that the Lord had warned them and yet they refused to heed or obey. They will not be allowed to deny the warning or their own rebelliousness and get away with it. Isaiah will publicly write this before them. This had been done before. We have seen it already in Isaiah chapter 8 verses 1 through 4. And you'll see it again if you read Jeremiah in chapter 36. This kind of public instruction is given for the people in Judah and in Isaiah's day to see, and even for us today, to know what the Lord has done. Romans 15.4 tells us, for whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope. Verse nine. that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord. What will be written down in this book, what will be posted on the billboard, is that these are lying children who should have been well-versed in the Lord, well-versed in His word, but still have need to learn what we would call the first principles. It is declared that they will not hear. Isaiah had been told this before when he was commissioned in chapter six. Verse nine, the Lord said, go and tell this people, hear ye indeed, but understand not, see ye indeed, but perceive not. Verse 10, make the heart of this people fat and make their ears heavy and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and convert and be healed. Verse 11, then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate. Verse 12, and the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. Rather than these being the only words written, they include reaction to what he wrote. The writing in the book is the chapter that we have before us. Rebellion is something God hates. It is the cause for which Saul was removed from rightful kin and kingship. These men were liars, declaring themselves to be God's people, but not obeying his word. They were hypocrites who gave lip service in the hopes that they might placate God with their lip service, but their hearts were far from him. Verse 10, Isaiah 30, verse 10. which say to the seers, see not, and to the prophets, prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits. The wickedness of these men led them to tell the prophets that they were sent by God, that were sent by God not to prophesy. This is how God spoke to his people in those days. They may as well have directed God himself not to speak to them, and in fact that's what they wanted. I don't want to hear it, they would say. They would say to the seer, the ones who had visions of the future that are divinely revealed, don't tell us the visions the Lord gave you. We don't want to know. This is like telling the pastor we don't want to hear the word of God or his message to us. Do not preach to us repentance or tell us that we are sinners. Rather, preach to us smooth things. Sounds like some megachurch pastors I know. No thundering warnings against sin, no knowing the terror of the Lord we persuade men. They desired soft lies in the place of hard truths. And what this revealed is that they had hard hearts. Hard hearts don't like hard truths because they hurt when they collide. The soft lies, when they collide with hard hearts, bounce right off like nothing. Peace, peace, when there is no peace. That's the kind of thing they wanted to hear. King Ahab said in 1 Kings 22 verse 8, There is yet one man, Micaiah, the son of Emlub, by whom we may inquire of the Lord, but I hate him, for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil. Jehoshaphat said, Let not the king say so. The warning of the apostle Paul applies here. There will come a time when they will not endure sound doctrine, but will heap unto themselves teachers having itching ears. Do not be like them. God's preachers never wanted the job, and God chose the message. Verse 11. Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path. Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. Despite the abundance of things that they had and prosperity, These men desired nothing to do with the Holy One of Israel. They told the prophets to clear out, to get out of the way. And frankly, if the prophets didn't clear out, they killed them. Where the job of the prophets was to put the fear of the Lord upon the people and deter them from sinning against a holy God, the people desired to hear none of it. They said, stop telling us about God and his judgments. Get this, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. Despite the deliverance from every enemy they had ever faced, the great prosperity they were blessed with, the miracles they had seen, and being given every advantage of having the oracles of God, this people wanted all of the gifts but none of the giver. Verse 12. Wherefore, thus saith the Holy One of Israel, because ye despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon. This again, the Holy One of Israel, is now speaking. This is the One whom they desire to leave them alone, and here He is making a declaration against them. Since you don't want to hear from the Holy One of Israel, hear what the Holy One of Israel has to say again. They desired Egypt for refuge and help, anyone but God. There is a warning here that is coming. It will go something like this. Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. This is what depravity looks like. The judgment coming has been repeatedly promised and the offer of redemption has been repeatedly given. They ignored the first and outright rejected the second. Verse 13, therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. The sins of the people have piled up like waters behind a dam, or like weighty things, like many planks on top of a wall. And there is a weak spot now in the wall, a crack, if you will, in the dam. Water is leaking by, or the cracks are multiplying and getting bigger and bigger as the weight is more and more to bear. The weight on the wall is too much for it to support, too much for it to bear. And the failure has been building up, creeping, if you will. But now we see the promise of a sudden breaking. A ruptured wall, swelling outward under the weight above, can explode in an instant. David alludes to a similar condition in Psalm 62, verse 3. How long will ye imagine mischief against a man? Ye shall be slain, all of you, as a bowing wall shall ye be, and as a tottering fence. their alliance with Egypt, their trust in the strength of their enemies is going to end up exploding in their faces in a spectacular fashion. Isaiah warned of these kinds of disastrous results back in chapter 20, verse 14. And he shall break it as the breaking of the potter's vessel that is broken in pieces. He shall not spare. so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it assured to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the pit. This wicked association between Egypt and Judah is going to be broken. Sennacherib and Assyria's army are going to decimate Egypt and mock Judah for all their attempted alliances. God declares here that he would break this alliance like a potter's vessel, so that it would be completely shattered into small pieces. There will not be a big enough piece left to draw water. If you picture a mug being broken, you might be able to save some piece big enough to get a little bit of water in. Not so in this event. You might have a small enough piece maybe to grab a hot coal out of a fire or out of the hearth. But so utter would be the devastation that even a piece of this would not be big enough to draw the fire out of the hearth. No water, no fire, nothing can be used again. None of this potter's vessel will be useful again. Verse 15. For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest shall you be saved. In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength, and you would not. Here again is the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, declaring, return to me and I will return to you. The way to be saved is to return to him in repentance, resting in his grace. In doing so, they could quietly and confidently be assured of the outcome of Assyria coming against them. Assyria is going to come. Assyria is going to do what God has commanded them to do. They're going to come up all the way to the neck, all the way up to Jerusalem. The answer for those in Jerusalem, those in Judah, was to put their faith in God and repent of their sins, and they would see a mighty deliverance from God. When we read ahead and see history, we know that this is what Hezekiah eventually did. He did just this, and the Lord delivered them. But why would they not simply listen to what the word of God had said to them? Why would they not heed his counsel? It took them having everything else removed, all plans failing, before they eventually did as they were supposed to do. Verse 16. But ye said, no, for we will flee upon horses. Therefore shall ye flee. and we will ride upon the swift, therefore shall they that pursue you be swift. Plan B, if the Egyptian option fails, is that we will flee on horses. Plan B sounds like the plan B pill. Plan A was to be promiscuous and get away with it. Plan B is to destroy the result of our promiscuity by way of a pill. Plan C is to take them to the clinic and see if we can't get rid of it that way. We will put our trust in horses, they say, and riding away as fast as we can before we take any offer from Jehovah. Remember Psalm 20 verse seven, some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. Would to God that they had read this Psalm. In their hearts, they believe that there will always be a way to escape. That they can come up with another plan. Plan A, B, all the way to Z. but their pursuers, in this case, are going to be faster. The promise of the Lord is you might be upon swift horses, the people that pursue you will be faster. This reminds me of an old way of nicely implying that someone is not so bright. The saying goes, wisdom has been chasing you, but you have always been faster. In this case, they might be faster than wisdom, but their horses would not make them faster than their pursuers. Truly what we need to learn here is that we can make all the plans we want, but only returning to the Lord will work. Verse 17, 1,000 shall flee at the rebuke of one, and at the rebuke of five shall ye flee, till ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an instant on a hill. There is a great promise that if we rely upon the Lord, in Leviticus 26 verses 8 and 9, five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you. But we are also promised the inverse if we behave as these men of Judah, even in Moses' day, this word was spoken, Deuteronomy 32, 28 through 30. For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them. Oh, that they were wise, that they did understand this, that they would consider their latter end. How should one chase a thousand and two put 10,000 to flight, except their rock had sold them and the Lord had shut them up? This means that God has rejected them, that they would be ruined, and all that would be left of them would be tiny shards, a remnant, if you will, not able to do much, not able to pull water from the river, and not able to pull fire from the hearth. This is the small incense on a hill, the small light on a hill, an incense of the people. A warning and a promise. God will always have a remnant raised from the dead in a sense to be fruitful and to replenish the land. But it will be obvious that God has judged men when they see this small remnant left. Now some lessons for us. What we want to hear and what we need to hear. Stop for a moment and let us consider how blessed we are even in the current state of affairs. Here in America, we are blessed with an abundance of things, and we hardly ever consider the source of these blessings. Consider your cell phone, which according to Pew Research, 97% of Americans own, with 90% owning a smartphone. These didn't exist until 1973. In about 50 years, virtually everyone owns one, and there is no lack of supply. It would be safe to say that if you don't own a cell phone these days, it is by your choice. We have in our pockets 10,000 servants to do our bidding, order our coffee, and tell us how to get where we want to go. We can meet with anyone face-to-face through a screen and practically run a business empire on something we hold in our hand. Nebuchadnezzar never had it so good. No, really. Despite all our wealth, we are rocketing, though, towards new depths of depravity. We have maintained a form of godliness, but we have denied the reality and substance of it. We have infected the church with lies and compromised with an increasingly pagan culture. Instead of the ancient medieval practice of Christianizing pagan holidays, that old church, that old Catholic church, instead of Christianizing pagan holidays and cultures, we are now paganizing everything. We are paganizing the church. The word of God, though, is like a hammer and a fire. Jeremiah 23, verse 29. It is not my word like as a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh a rock in pieces. Instead of a hammer and a fire, we have desired it to be a marshmallow and iced cappuccino with upbeat music and cool kid pastors who tell us that there is no such thing as hell. Rob Bell says there isn't one, and don't you just want to believe him? The problem we have is that these lies do not change the truth. The same problem they had in Judah. They could tell all the sweet little lies they wanted, but the truth was still out there. The truth was still coming on a swift horse. Not hearing the truth doesn't change the truth. It seems like we're reaching a breaking point. What we wanted was all the good gifts without the giver. We desire to have the blessings of obedience without actual repentance and obedience. And now we have descended so far into the lies and hypocrisy that we can no longer tell what is up, down, east, or west. What we need to do is to take verse 15 and apply it. we need to remember that no lie on earth will be our strength, nor will the enemies of God with whom we have compromised be our refuge. What we must do now is repent and obey the Lord, putting our full faith and trust in Him. We must address the real reason that we've set aside our faith for pragmatism. We have feared man more than we have feared the Lord. We compromise and go along to get along until we find ourselves in the position to sin just a little more or a whole lot more. But we have failed to understand that the only real solution to this, all of this, as it has always been, is to return to the Lord and rest in Him. As we have said before, make all the plans you want, plan A through plan Z, and beyond. The only one that will work is to return to the Lord. I am confident that we will get there because eventually there will be nothing but small shards and a remnant left. But the Lord has always preserved a remnant, and remember that the whole world has been repopulated from a family of eight before. we seem to have a vocal minority turning our world upside down. And you know what I mean when I say that they can make 1,000 flee and two of them can make 10,000 to flee. And the reason they can do this is because we have feared them and not the Lord. Because we've not followed the Lord as we ought and we have not claimed him as our rock, he has abandoned us and we are fleeing. With that with but a faithful remnant, though, we may turn that thing right side up again, with the same promise that as long as the Lord is our refuge, we will prosper. So what are we to do? The instruction is plain, but I will repeat it here again. We must not live by lies. We, for certain, must not tell them, but we must not abide them either. We must not consent to the lies that are told us, nor tell soft lies for the sake of others. We must not love these soft lies. We must desire to hear the truth, and we must stop qualifying the word of God to such an extent that it never applies to anything. We must follow, as well, the instruction of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4, 6, and 7. Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. And may the Lord, in this, give us more light. bringing the light of Jesus Christ into a sin-darkened world. This is the Lighthouse Radio Bible Study. The Primitive Baptists who bring you this program each week do so with the following conviction. We believe that the Bible is the Word of God. It is our guide for what we are to believe, and it is our guide for what we are to do. We believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of God, and He is to be followed as Lord and Savior. And, we believe that His salvation is a free gift of God's sovereign grace, not dependent on any work that we do, but wholly dependent on His finished work done on our behalf. We present this weekly Bible study based on the premise of Psalm 119 verse 105, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. If you would like to contribute to the furtherance of this program, then please send your donation to this address. The Lighthouse P.O. Box 1317 Baxley, GA 31515. Again, that is The Lighthouse EO Box 1317, Baxley, GA 31515. Or if you would like to send a question or comment to us, you can also send your correspondence to that address. We also have a website where you can access our programs and other helpful information. It can be found at www.lighthousebiblestudy.org. That's all one word and with all lowercase letters. Again, that's www.lighthousebiblestudy.org. Until next week, this is your speaker, Ben Fordham, praying that God will light your world.