The Weariness of Wickedness

The Weariness of Wickedness

Isaiah 57:3-13

A sermon preached by

Pastor Jim Scott Orrick

February 11, 2001

"I see a light!" Those words don't mean anything to you right now, but suppose that you were a coal miner in a mine where the roof had collapsed and you had been in there for several days; your air was running out and you knew that you were going to die. Then one of your comrades said, "I see a light!" Under those circumstances you would greet the news with great gladness, wouldn't you?

"I have some food!" Probably all of you have eaten today. It doesn't mean so much to you, but suppose you were one of the Donner party that perished in the Western mountains in the 1800's. Those people slowly starved to death when they were trapped in the mountains by an unexpected snowfall. Then, if you were hungry, you would receive the news with great gladness, "I have found food!"

"You all may go free!" Those words do not mean much to you now. Oh, some of you children may rejoice that you don't have to sit through the whole church service. But suppose that you were slaves in a galley ship back in Roman times, and you had been captured from your home country. You had been put on this ship, and for years you had been toiling. Other people around you had died from the terrible work day after day. But one day your ship is captured and you wonder what is going to happen. And then a smiling face, one of your own countrymen, comes and speaks in your own language, "You all may go free!" Then you would receive that with great gladness wouldn't you?

So, also, if I were to say, "You may rest now!" It doesn't mean so much to you as it would if you were terribly weary and had labored all day, were hot, thirsty, tired, and someone said to you, "You may rest now!" And so I could go on, "The doctor is here!" That doesn't mean much to you unless someone you love very much is sick and in need of a doctor. And similarly, my saying, "Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life!" won't mean very much to you unless you are hungry. My saying, "Jesus is the Great Physician" won't mean very much to you unless you feel yourself to be sick with the disease of sin. Saying, "Jesus is the Way!" won't mean so much to you unless you feel yourselves to be lost in sin. "Jesus is the Light of the world!" won't mean very much to you unless you feel yourself shut up in the dark cave or collapsed mine of sin, and know that you are perishing unless a light comes. Jesus’ words, “Come to Me and I will give you rest.” don’t mean very much to you unless you are tired of sin, unless you are tired of trying to please God in your own strength. I am convinced that much of the reason why today's evangelism finally proves to be so ineffective is because people are not prepared to hear the Good News. To say Jesus Christ died for sinners, is not good news to a person who doesn't think himself to be a sinner.

The title of today's message is "The Weariness of Wickedness." My text is in Isaiah 57. I want you to follow along as I show you from God's Word how wickedness ought to make you feel so weary -- how that wickedness ought to make you feel like a man that is just on the verge of drowning. The truth of this text ought to make you feel like a man who has struggled nearly all that he can struggle, but just as his last ounce of strength has been expended, he catches sight of a hand reached out to save him and pluck him from a watery grave. The weariness of wickedness, some of us know it only too well from personal experience. Some of us can look back on lives that were wasted on sin, lives that for some time were expended in doing exactly what we wanted to do, but after a while what we wanted to do began to lose some of its luster. And occasionally, when engaging in that very activity that at one time gave us such great pleasure, we asked ourselves, "Why do I continue to do this? This is hurting me! I know that there is a God, I know that there is an eternity. Why do I continue to do this?" I think most persons, even those who have not come to faith in Jesus Christ and have never repented of their sins, have some flashes of light similar to that which I have just described. Maybe it is not best described as a flash of light, but rather as a moment of weariness, a moment of defeat, a moment of feeling, "What is the point of all this? Surely there must be more than what I am investing my life in."

Those moments need to be deepened. They need not be protracted in order to come to Jesus Christ, but the awful weariness of sin needs to be felt very deeply. I don't want to give you the impression that in order to come to Jesus Christ you must have labored for weeks and weeks under a heavy burden of sin. Instead of that, I tell you that today, if you feel yourself to be weary of sin, I have good news for you. I don't want to keep you in the dark; I want to tell you there is a Light that has shined. I don't want to keep you stumbling and staggering under the weight and burden of your sin. I want to tell you that Jesus Christ said, "Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." And the only thing that will keep you from coming to Jesus Christ today is your own willful stubbornness not to come to Him. How deeply do I want you to feel your sin? I want you to feel sin deeply enough that you will abandon it and come to Jesus Christ.

When I was a young boy hearing the Gospel, I knew that conviction of sin was necessary. And I would reason with myself like this, "I have never done anything really bad." Of course, I was wrong about that, but this is what I thought to myself. "I have never done anything really bad. I have never been drunk. I have never used drugs, I have never killed anyone." I could go through the list of the sins that I thought were very bad sins and pronounce myself , "Not Guilty!" of everyone of them. Of course, as I said, I was very wrong about not being guilty of great wickedness. Any sin is great wickedness! One of the proofs of that is how seriously God takes even one sin. God considers even one sin to be rebellion against Him and enough to merit eternal separation from Him. Of course, there is no one who is guilty of only one sin. I would reason with myself that maybe in order for me to be saved, I needed to do something really bad and then I could repent of that really bad thing and come to Jesus Christ and be glad of His salvation. I wonder if any of you had such twisted reasoning when you were still in sin? The fact of the matter is, you and I have already done enough bad things to condemn us to an eternity of indescribable torment away from God. But you need not go there if today you will turn from your sins and come to Jesus Christ.

There are three points that I want to bring out of this passage of Scripture, Isaiah 57. The first is the weariness of wickedness. The second point that we will see from the text is the twisted rationale, the twisted thinking of those who continue to live a life in the weariness of wickedness. Then the third point will be the awful end of those who don't repent. The title of the message is taken from verse 10. Let me just read that and then we will go back and pick up the context. "You are wearied in the length of your way; Yet you did not say, There is no hope. You have found the life of your hand; therefore you were not grieved." This text says that even though wickedness brought weariness to you, yet you would not abandon your wickedness and say there is no hope, but instead, you found something that would continue to motivate you in the pursuit of what you believed would give you happiness. And therefore you were not grieved.

I realize that not everyone is weary in sin. One of the reasons I am preaching this message is to try to help people be weary in sin who ought to be weary in sin, and then persuade them to come to Jesus for rest. But I recognize that not everyone is grieved; not everyone is walking around with a burden on his back. Some people are quite happy to be living the life that they are living, but in order to continue doing so, they must engage in some foolish thinking, some foolish rationale. And no matter how their twisted rationale may enable them to justify themselves in continuing to live as they do, still God will bring them to a terrible and dreadful end.

Let's see first of all the weariness of wickedness. I direct your attention back to verse 3. (Isa. 57:3-9) "But come here, you sons of the sorceress, you offspring of the adulterer and the harlot! {4} Whom do you ridicule? Against whom do you make a wide mouth and stick out the tongue? Are you not children of transgression, offspring of falsehood, {5} Inflaming yourselves with gods under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks? {6} Among the smooth stones of the stream is your portion; They, they, are your lot! Even to them you have poured a drink offering, you have offered a grain offering. Should I receive comfort in these? {7} On a lofty and high mountain you have set your bed; even there you went up to offer sacrifice. {8} Also behind the doors and their posts you have set up your remembrance; for you have uncovered yourself to those other than me, And have gone up to them; you have enlarged your bed and made a covenant with them; You have loved their bed, where you saw their nudity. {9} You went to the king with ointment, and increased your perfumes; you sent your messengers far off, and even descended to Sheol. {10}You are wearied in the length of your way; yet you did not say, There is no hope. You have found the life of your hand; therefore you were not grieved."

The first thing we learn back in verse 3 is that those who persist in living lives of sin are not children of God. Now don't misunderstand me here; every born again child of God still struggles against the flesh. Every born again child of God still has remnants of the old man that he must struggle with, that he must put down. He must mortify himself. And yet it is also true that every child of God does not willfully and persistently continue in a life of sin. You have heard the saying, "You can't keep the crows from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair." That is just the sort of thing I am talking about here. Because your depravity continues until God eradicates it at your death you are going to have sinful thoughts that go through your mind. You are going to be tempted with opportunities to sin; you must deny yourself and take up your cross daily if you are going to follow after Jesus Christ. But there is a vast difference between, on the one hand, having unwanted thoughts prey upon your mind, and on the other hand treating those same sinful thoughts as if they were a welcome guest at your house. A skunk may find his way into my house, but he won't be welcome there. I'm not going to treat him like a welcome guest. I want to get him out and fumigate the place as soon as possible.

It's common knowledge that elephants have ancient dying grounds. But it's little known that opossums also have ancient dying grounds. Now I know this from personal experience. I heard a few chuckles, but the church I pastored in Buffalo, West Virginia, was built on an ancient opossum dying ground. No matter how hard we tried, we could not keep opossums from burrowing under our church building (built in 1856), and finding their final few moments in the peace and quiet of their ancient opossum dying grounds. The church didn't give me a written description of pastoral responsibilities when I came to pastor that church. But it seemed to be generally assumed that the pastor was also the opossum remover. In all fairness, there were several dear brothers who were willing to help with possum removal, but since I was in the church building nearly every day, I would usually be the first to discover that a possum had made his way under the church. The way it would usually happen was this: as I was walking through the church building on my way to my study in the morning, I might smell something a little foul, and think hopefully, "It could be a mouse." The next day I would come in and the smell would be a little stronger, and I would think, "Maybe it's a cat." By the third day it was bad enough to smell like a sheep, and by the fourth day, it could have been an elephant. Then I knew I had to do something about it. I would go down into the basement and peer back in that dusty, dark, crawl space, shining my flashlight through a century and a half of cobwebs and dust. Then I would see it. I won't go into further description here, but I will admit what went through my mind occasionally. “Lord, I don’t recall my agreeing to remove dead possums when you called me to pastor. Surely someone else in this church has the gift of possum removal.” And then I would reason with myself, and I would imagine Jesus saying, "Are you too good to remove possums from underneath My church?" And then I would say, still with my feelings a little bit miffed, I would say, "Jesus, I'll do it for You." Now I didn't want those opossums to get under there, I wanted them to keep away, but when I found that they were under there I got rid of them! I knew that they were going to cause trouble, I knew that they were going to be disruptive, and I knew that they were going to stink.

A child of God has that attitude towards sin. There are times when we find that a sin has entered into our lives. At first we may think, "Oh, it's just a little sin, maybe it's just a dead mouse." But with a little bit of time, that sin becomes something loathsome to the child of God. And if it doesn't become loathsome, then there's something wrong. You can mark it down, if you are able to continue living a life of rebellion against God, you are not sons of God, but as verse 3 says, you are “sons of the sorceress, offspring of the adulterer and the harlot!" We don't have to go into all the cultural background of that. Let me just say that it means that you are not a child of God. Throughout the Scriptures we'll find that children behave like their parents. Jesus says to the Jews in John 8: You are not children of Abraham as you protest, you are not children of God as you say, but your father is the devil because you are acting like the devil. And so the Lord says when you continue to live a life of sin, “You are not acting like someone who belongs to Me. If you were my child, you would hate sin. Instead, you are acting like the kind of people who wallow in sin and the kind of people who actually enjoy playing with the dead.” This is, of course, what sorceresses and sorcerers do; they call upon spirits, evil spirits, to assist them in accomplishing what they want to do. Now you may not think that this description fits you very well. You may not think that you are a child of the devil, but I want you to know that you are going to be finally judged, not from your perspective but from God's perspective.

During the days when I was playing basketball, there were times when the referee would call a foul on me that I didn't think I had committed. I learned that it was always very foolish to argue against a referee; you can never get a referee to change his mind. If the referee called 5 fouls against me, I had to sit down even though I didn't think that I had committed 5 fouls. But the fact of the matter is that everyone had agreed, "We are going to run this game according to what the referee calls, and you are going to be judged by the referee's perspective." That's how it is in life. When God says something about us, you may mark it down in your book that it's true, and that even though you don't think that you have committed that foul, in the end you're going to have to sit down on the bench because God says that you did. Those that persist in sin, no matter what they say that they believe in, are not children of God. In fact, if you look at verse 4 you will see that God regards sin as blatant, disrespectful, rebellion against Him. He says that when you continue to live the way you have been living, you're like a little child who is making an ugly face at his authority. "Whom do you ridicule? Against whom do you make a wide mouth and stick out the tongue?" I think you all can imagine what that looked like. I don't guess you knew that ancient Israelites made that face. There may be some extra-biblical evidence that they also said, "Neener, neener, ha, ha!" as well. I'm not sure. But at least the Lord says that you're acting like the children who make this little ugly face when they are being very disrespectful. You're blatantly rebellious and disrespectful towards me; you make a wide mouth and stick out the tongue. Few of us have fully appreciated just how personally God takes sin. He regards sin as though you are doing something against Him. I know that when I was living a life of rebellion against God, I never thought of it that way. I never thought that I was doing something personally against God, but God takes it personally. "You're mocking Me when you act the way you are acting. You are certainly not acting like my children." He reiterates that at the end of verse 4: "are you not children of transgression, offspring of falsehood?"

Beginning in verse 5, we see that men will go to great extremes in their pursuit of wickedness. Verses 5 and 6 tell us that men will go extremely low down in the valley. And then verses 7 and 8 tell us that men will go extremely high, even up on the mountaintop. This valley and this mountaintop that the Lord is mentioning have special religious significance. Some very horrible sins were committed in the valley, even the sacrificing of children. And very horrible idolatrous acts were committed on high places and on mountaintops. I will allegorize those valleys and mountaintops and say that men go to great extremes in their sin. They go low and commit very base acts. And then, maybe in high society they commit acts that really look religious and are acceptable by most people in the culture, but God regards them as adulterous acts. They ought to get weary in these great extremes, so weary that they will turn from them. But according to verse ten, they continue on in sin in spite of any weariness they encounter in their wickedness.

Let's look at how low men will go in pursuit of sin. In verse 5 we read: "Inflaming yourselves with gods under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys." This seems so brutal to us, but it is true that some of the peoples that lived around the Israelites would offer their little children as sacrifices for their gods. Departure from the true God always means trouble for little children. It always means trouble for women. It always means trouble for the people who are the weakest in society. Devotion to false religion has perpetrated countless human tragedies, but all of the atrocities that are committed against weak people and against women and children are not carried on in the name of religion. Sometimes those atrocities are carried on simply in the name of "Freedom of Choice." Sometimes those atrocities are carried on simply under the guise of convenience. Such are the great atrocities that are being committed against the unborn children in this land today. We say that the peoples we rerad of in our text were heathens for doing what they did, sacrificing children in the name of worshiping God. They were unutterably terrible, but let me tell you that what's happening in America is even worse, because people are killing babies, not for religious purposes, but for the purpose of convenience. Even these heathens were not that degraded; they wouldn't throw out their babies for no reason. They were at least doing it as an act of worship to their god. But it's worse than that in America. You can mark it down, when people depart from the true God, the little ones will suffer. And these Israelites, who had revelation from God and who knew better, were nevertheless engaging in the horrific practice of “slaying the children in the valleys.”

Men will go extremely low and become extremely degraded in their pursuit of pleasure. No doubt you have seen on the streets of Kansas City, or some other great city, a poor besotted man, staggering down the sidewalk, dirty, unable to walk a straight line, much less hold a job. Perhaps he is so debauched in sin and his mind has become so deranged that all he can think about is getting something else to drink or something else to shoot into his body. Don't you know that when that man started out taking his first drink or first using those drugs, he had no intention of getting that low. He had no intention of getting that low, but as he took a few steps in sin, Satan clipped a ring in his nose and then took hold of the ring and said, "You're coming this way, you're coming down, down, down." Some people who are mean to little children and are mean to weaker people, afterwards have feelings of remorse. They had no intention of slaying the children in the valley, but when they departed from God, Satan put a ring in their nose.

Now observe this: even though these people were engaging in despicably low practices and worshipping false gods, they were still trying to worship the true God too. Notice verse six: “[The idols] among the smooth stones of the stream [are] your portion, they, they are your lot, even to them you have poured a drink offering, you have offered a grain offering." Even down there in degradation, they were still thinking that they could worship the true God. God had commanded that drink offerings be poured out to him, and God had commanded that grain offerings be offered to Him. And then as they would come back from their sinful practices, they would wipe their mouth and say, "God, receive these our praises." But God says, "Should I receive comfort in these? Am I supposed to be happy with this when you are living all your life in rebellion against me? Am I supposed to be happy that you come to church? Is that supposed to please me? Or that you give money to a charitable cause, am I supposed to be comforted in that? You have gone very low in your pursuit of wickedness."

But then verse 7 tells us that some will go extremely high in their pursuit of sin. Not all the vile sin in the world is committed by the “down and outs;” just as much is committed by the “up and outs” – those who are respectable and have money. "On a lofty and high mountain you have set your bed; even there you went up to offer sacrifice." God made human beings for Himself, and when we don't live for God, then God says that you are like a wife who is accepting other lovers. How would that set with you men, knowing that your wife was intimate with other men? It would not set well at all with us, would it? God says that's how it sets with Him. "When you, whom I have made to love Me, to glorify Me, to enjoy Me forever, when you go trying to find pleasure somewhere else outside of Me, you are committing adultery against Me. You've enlarged your bed, you've made a covenant with them, you've loved their bed where you saw their nudity." Sometimes these pursuits of wickedness, whether very low or very high, are extremely costly in capital and in effort. Verse 9 says, "You went to the king with ointment." The word king there could be the god Moloch, very similar to the Hebrew word for king. God may be saying, "You've gone to a heathen god," specifically the god Moloch. "When you've gone there you've gone with ointments and you've gone with perfumes." Ointment and perfume were used by the ancient people to try to cover up the stink that was on their bodies. Sometimes the people of today will try to cover up the stink of their sin the very same way. But also, ointments and perfumes were very expensive. You might remember that Mary came in and broke a pint of pure nard on Jesus' feet, and some of the disciples were indignant at the waste. Why was this? "This could have been sold for a year's wages." They mentioned a specific sum, but it was the amount that an average working man would have made in a whole year. Think of that! Think of how much you make in a whole year: it's broken and poured out. It was expensive.

Sin need not be very expensive; a poor man can sin just as well as a rich man. But often people will nearly bankrupt themselves in the pursuit of sinful pleasure. So in the pursuit of greedy enchantments, or hobbies, houses, cars, recreational equipment, we'll spend a lot, we'll go far, send messengers far off and even descended to Sheol. With all of this traveling, with all this expensive expenditure of capital and resources, you grow weary in the length of the way. Many grow wearied in wickedness, and yet they still find some reason to keep going on. Some of us know personally how this cycle of weary self-deception works: "I didn't do so well this week, but next week it will be better. Tonight ended in disaster, but what else can I do? I'm sick after this weekend, but Friday's coming, and I'll try it again." It's astounding to me, on this side of conversion, how I was willing to try almost everything except Jesus. It astounds me that others will try almost everything in the world except Jesus, every ridiculous fad in religion or ridiculous expenditure of money. It seems like there is almost no limit to the foolishness in which men will engage, trying to satisfy their souls. If you dare to mention Jesus Christ to them and His cross then you will be repulsed.

I remember a time when I was in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was sitting at a place downtown, popular place, where a lot of tourists went. Along came a band of fifteen or twenty young persons dressed in a way that, back in the 1980's, looked unusual. It wouldn't look so unusual today, but back in the 1980's it was unusual. They were wearing a lot of black clothing. Many of them had dyed their hair an unnatural black and had hairstyles that were not calculated to make the wearers attractive. They gathered around my companion and me, obviously with the intention of intimidating us and running us off. They had a large boom-box that they were playing so loud as to be obnoxious to that whole block. After we had sat there for a few minutes and they had engaged in their wild gyrations around us, I said to the man holding the box (I say man because some of them were in their 20's), "Could you turn that down for a minute?" I admit that I was surprised when he turned it down. I said, "I want to talk to you." They gathered around and listened to me, and I said something like this: "It's obvious that you have problems against society, you are not pleased with society, and so you are trying to show that you are choosing a different way. Although I may look very different from you, I want you to know that I, too, have problems with society and have chosen a very different way. But you and I are not so radically different from our culture as was Jesus Christ different from His." It was quite amazing that they listened to me up until the point that I said the words, "Jesus Christ." And when I said "Jesus Christ" they began hissing like snakes. They took their boom-box and left. They were willing to cut themselves, they were willing to pierce themselves, they were willing to shave and dye themselves. They were willing to, no doubt, cause their parents a great deal of grief and heartache in their pursuit of happiness. They were willing to try drugs, alcohol, and all sorts of risky sexual practices in their pursuit of happiness. But Jesus Christ was utterly repugnant to them.

Now not everyone displays repugnance so graphically as to hiss when the name of Jesus Christ is mentioned. But many will think, "What a ridiculous idea Jesus would be for me." I am so thankful that God in His sovereignty has made provision so that rebels like I was can have our minds changed. If God had not intervened, I never would have had my mind changed. The sovereignty of God is the only hope for people who love sin. Until our minds are changed we will always choose what we think will bring us the most happiness, and we will never think that's Jesus Christ until the Father enlightens our minds. That's why Jesus says, "No one can come to me, unless the Father who has sent me, draw him." And then again He says, "It is written in the prophets, 'They will all be taught by God.' Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from Him comes to Me."

So why were you made to hear God's voice and entered while there was room, while others make a wretched choice, and rather starve than come? Why was it? It's because God taught you. And even though you and I were rebels against Him, and even though you and I were willing to try everything in the world except Jesus Christ, yet the eternal council said, "Almighty love, arrest that man." We felt the arrows of distress, and we became wearied in the way and for the first time in our lives we never found the strength of our hands to go on, we never found another reason to go on. But like that drowning man who has gone down for the last time and can just see the world of light fading above him, we cried out of the depths, "God have mercy upon me," and instantly a hand came and pulled us out of the depths. How is it that we were able so long to go on? We were able to justify it in our minds.

So very quickly let's look at some of the foolish rationale that enables people who are weary in wickedness to continue going on in wickedness. Look at verse 11. The first thought that we had is, that there is something more powerful, or more important than God. So God asked in verse 11, "And of whom have you been afraid or feared, that you have lied and not remembered me, nor taken it to your heart?" In the case of the children of Israel, it was probably some deity or god of a neighboring people. They thought, "Oh, this god Moloch will be able to help us; this god Asherah is stronger than Yahweh, so we will worship them as well as Yahweh, because we are afraid of them." God says, “You are so foolish; of whom have you been afraid that you have lied and not remembered me?” For many of us, it is not the god of some neighboring people, but instead, it's the god of greed, or the god of social approval. We would rather have our possessions than have God. We would rather have the approval of society, or we would rather have money, or position, or rank than God. So we foolishly rationalize the behavior that we engage in that keeps us on a path away from God.

But notice that in the second phrase there in verse 11, God says," that you have lied." All sin is a lie. Romans chapter 1 talks about people engaging in sexual promiscuity in this way, "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever blest." They exchanged the truth of God for a lie. Not only is sexual promiscuity a lie, promising happiness that it cannot deliver, but all sin is a lie. And when we live a sinful life, the Lord asks us, "Of whom have you been afraid or feared that you have lied and not remembered me?"

And this is yet a third characteristic of those who go away from God and continue in wickedness: they put God out of their mind. There are those uncomfortable times when the Lord intrudes upon our thinking. And as quickly as we can, we occupy ourselves with some kind of distraction. I'm talking about before we know the Lord. Occupying ourselves with some kind of distraction: "Not remembered me nor taken it to your heart." These impositions, these interjections that God makes into our lives of weariness, we don't think about them, we don't take them to heart. And we think that because God does not actually show Himself or does not actually speak to us in an audible unmistakable way we don't have to pay attention to Him. "Is it not because I have held my peace from of old that you do not fear me?" If you are waiting for an audible voice from heaven, you probably are not going to hear it. I have never heard one. If you are waiting for a great rush of emotion that God might send to you, you may or may not ever have it. There was not a great rush of emotion in my life when I came to Jesus Christ. What are you waiting on? Do you think that God does not exist because He is working the way He has chosen to work, through the preaching of His Word? You are making a dire mistake if that is your foolish rationale..

In verse 12 we see yet another instance of foolish rationale: we think deep down that we are not such bad people and that finally our righteousness will prove to be good enough to save us. But God says, "I will declare your righteousness and your works, for they will not profit you." God says, "I will give you full credit for every good thing that you have ever done, and it's not going to do you a bit of good, it will not profit you." You see, God requires something that you and I cannot give Him. He requires a life of perfect works, and if we are to get into God's heaven, we have got to have a life of perfect works. Our only hope is if someone gives it to us.

Now let's look finally, at verse 13 which tells us about the awful end of those who continue in wickedness. The first thing that I want you to see here is that you get what you sought after. That's not a good thing. God says. "When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you." That's what they wanted, wasn't it? They wanted the help of these idols; they said, "We'll trust in them rather than the help of Yahweh." God says, "Very well, in the end, if you don't repent, you'll get just what you want. So let them deliver you when you cry out." But we see secondly, that they are all useless and futile in the day when the storms of God's wrath are blowing. The second part of verse 13 says, "But the wind will carry them all away, a breath will take them." Whatever it is that is keeping you from coming to Jesus Christ will look unspeakably stupid on your deathbed. If you were to die today and think about what it is that's keeping you from Christ, you could almost pull your hair out, as you think about how foolish you have been to have squandered your life with this when you are staring eternity in the face. But how different it will be for you if you are able to sing as we did a few moments ago, "My Jesus I love Thee. I'll love Thee in life, I will love Thee in death. I'll praise Thee as long as Thou givest me breath, and say when the death dew lies cold on my brow, if ever I loved You, my Jesus, tis now." The Good Shepherd that has carried you all of your life will carry you over that final river in His arms, and He will not forsake you when the waters of death are swirling around you and going over your head.

This sermon has intentionally been one in which I have tried to probe the wound and describe to the patient how bad the sickness is. But I want to end on a hopeful note because verse 13 ends on a hopeful note. It says, "But he who puts his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain." If God lets me, I'll preach on that next week. In New Testament language the last part of verse 13 is stated like this: "Come to me," Jesus says, "Come to me all ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." Are you weary in wickedness? Jesus says, "Come to me and I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart." And listen to this next sentence, "and you shall find rest for your souls." Do you long for rest? Are you tired of serving in the devil's army? Are you tired of living in the city of Destruction, and do you fear the certain doom that will come to the City of Destruction? Then heed the words of Jesus Christ. Flee from the wrath to come and come to Him, and He will give you rest. Trust in what He did for sinners when He died on the cross. He was not dying for His own sin; He was dying for the sins of all who will believe in Him. And if you will believe in Him, then you may put your weary soul at rest, knowing that Jesus Christ died for you. Repent, then, of that which causes you weariness. Turn away from sin. Come to Jesus Christ and He will give you rest.

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Scripture from The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by
Thomas Nelson, Inc.