Jesus' Goal: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 In Isaiah chapter 41, we’re going to be going through this chapter, and at the beginning he’s going to start out telling us about our enemies, God’s enemies, and their worthless religions and their worthless gods. Verse two of Isaiah 41, “Who raised up one from the east?” Now, I know your commentaries say this is Cyrus of Persia, but I’m going to tell you it’s Assyria, and I’m going to tell you why. He’s been talking about Assyria for several chapters, hasn’t he? Remember our past lessons, Assyria came, and then last week [unclear] they took all the cities of Judah and they surrounded Jerusalem, the king of Assyria, all right, and, uh, God came and slew their army. So Assyria is to the east, and.

▶ 1:06 Uh, he says, who raised this nation up, who raised this king up, who gave nations unto him, who gave him the ability to conquer other nations, including Egypt, and made him rule over kings? Who has performed and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? Genesis 1, Genesis 2. “I, the Lord, am he.” Then he answers who did it. I raised up Assyria, I raised up the king of Assyria, and I said that Assyria was a nation and a people at the very beginning. Okay, which means he’s a supernatural God. Now, you go to Genesis 2:14, the third river is [unclear], it is one which goes toward the east of what? Assyria.

▶ 2:11 Assyria, and he said the generations from the beginning. A generation can be the lifespan of one person, it can be a generation of a race, it can be a generation, a time period of a nation, and God at the very beginning named Assyria before it was even, there was only Adam and Eve, and yet he named Assyria at the very beginning. So I disagree with the commentaries. I do a lot of disagreeing, but I can give you biblical reasons why. And so God said it, and yes, at the beginning God talked about Assyria before it was even a nation, when it was just Adam and Eve. And then in verse 7, Isaiah, through the Holy Spirit, says the craftsman, the skillful worker, encouraged the goldsmith, the one that works with gold, and the goldsmith encouraged him who strikes the anvil, the one that works with iron, and the anvil worker encouraged the one who fastened it with pegs so that the, it would not totter, it wouldn’t tip over.

▶ 3:33 See, and what is he doing? He’s embarrassing them, because he’s showing them that it takes men to make an idol, and it takes something to hold it down so it won’t fall over, and if there is a real God, he don’t need any help and he don’t need to be fashioned by anybody. Okay, and that was the gods of Assyria, they worshiped idols. “Let them bring forth and show us what will happen.” So God is challenging the religions of the world. He said, if you really have a God, then let your God tell us what’s going to happen, because I, my God, Isaiah said, mentioned Assyria from the very beginning when it was just Adam and Eve. What do your God said that really happened? Amen.

▶ 4:31 “Show the things that are to come,” verse 23, “that we may know that you are gods.” Predict something. Show us your God. He says, “Do good or do evil.” An idol can’t do good or it can’t do evil. It can’t part the Red Sea, it can’t bring rain on the harvest. These people that worshiped idols, and if, if the normal seasons brought the rain, then, you know, they said their idol did it, and their idol wasn’t doing anything, and if the rain didn’t come, then they thought their idol was mad at them, and so they did things to appease this idol that can’t do anything. It’s just logic. They have eyes, the Bible says, and they can’t see, they have ears and they can’t hear, they have a mouth, they can’t speak. So what good is an idol? And why the Catholic church uses them is beyond my biblical understanding.

▶ 5:39 “Their [unclear] images,” verse 29, “are wind and confusion.” They are just confusion, because they can’t do anything. Listen, folks, lighting candles, burning incense, all these things that we substitute for the simplicity of humbling ourselves in prayer and worship and just living right, don’t do a thing. It doesn’t do anything to let it kindle. We feel like it does. You see, it doesn’t do anything. Prayer and talking to God, worshiping him are the principles he’s given us. Now remember, atheism, humanism are religions. The Supreme Court of the United States declared atheism as a religion, because a religion is principles that man use to worship, or, uh, teach and, and express a God. So atheists who don’t believe in a God, they have a lot of rules and a lot of teaching why there is no God, so they are religion. If there wasn’t a God, why would they even address the issue? The Supreme Court gets it right every once in a while. And the humanists, they just flat out said, we are the religion of secular humanism. They say they are a religion.

▶ 7:12 Now, the liberals and the progressives, no difference between a liberal and a progressive, they just change the word every once in a while to get us confused, but, and the homosexual activist, the hedonist, like, uh, you heer the evolutionist and the communist, socialist, they all adhere to, there’s no God, and the Bible is a book of myths, prayer will not help, God cannot help you, you got to help yourself, and, uh, the Bible is not a book of truth. And so they adhere to the humanist and the atheist religion. Now, their idols are themselves and their philosophies concerning Christ and the Scriptures. In Colossians 2:8, remember it says, “Beware lest any man capture you through philosophy,” see, through views and thinking that is just vain deceit, “after the tradition,” the customs of men, “after the principles of the world,” the secular world, “and not after Christ.” And so you don’t have to have an image, you know, they worship themselves and they worship their philosophy, and that’s our enemies today.

▶ 8:57 Now, now, we’re going to see that God corrects his people for sinning, and yet God is still with his people to restore them back to doing what’s right. You see, even though God is dealing with his people, he doesn’t cast them away. And in Isaiah 41:8, “But you, Israel, are my servant, whom I’ve chosen, you’re the descendants of Abraham, my friend.” All right, now he’s talking about the people of God, the followers of God. “You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth.” Now, why has he taken his people from the ends of the earth? Now, a lot of this he’s covered before in Leviticus 26:14. Why are God’s people at the ends of the earth? God says, I will punish you for your sins. When he brought, brought Israel out of Egypt, he said, listen, I’ll punish you for your sins. If you sin, I will discipline you, I will correct you, I will punish you. And he gives five ways he will punish and correct: diseases, famine, acts of God, and defeat in war, and in Leviticus, “I will scatter you among the nations.” That’s the last discipline he said he would do. If none of the others wake you up, I’ll scatter you among the nations. And then in Ezekiel, that, uh, hall of fame where Noah, Daniel and Job are listed, God says, if I bring a plague, if I bring acts of God, if I bring a war, if I bring a famine, and Job and Daniel and Noah are there, they can save no one but themselves by their righteousness.

▶ 10:57 So God does deal with and discipline his people, but he’s letting us know he never leaves us. He’s been there to restore. Back, the whole purpose of dealing with us is restore us back to righteousness. “I have not cast you away. Fear not, I am with you.” You see, even when we think God isn’t there, even when we think we’re so bad that God can’t answer our prayer and we can’t even be saved, God is saying, I’m there, I’m with you, I want to restore you back. Come on, son, get up, let’s go. And that’s very important for us to understand this stuff. “Be not dismayed, I will strengthen you.” Don’t be depressed about this.

▶ 11:50 “And I will strengthen you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. All those [unclear] and anger against you shall be ashamed and perish.” See, I’m going to deal with you, and I may use other people to deal with you, and those people that are angry with you and [unclear] up against you and opposing you, I will shame them. And why would he shame them? So they would turn and come back to God and do what’s right. And if they don’t, they will be destroyed in the lake of fire forever. “Those who war against you shall be as nothing, as a non-existent thing.” So one of the goals of God is to shame his enemies and turning back to what is right. Amen. And his goal is to correct his people to come back to what is right.

▶ 12:55 All right, in Jeremiah 2:19 we see this again, “Your own wickedness will correct you, and your backslidings will rebuke you.” You see, you take drugs, you’re going to have problems. Okay, you engage in the sexual revolution and have sex, this one-night stands and that, you’re going to get an STD, you’re going to get a sexually transmitted disease, and 50% of Americans have a sexually transmitted disease or had one. And now, I couldn’t believe it. Just 5 years ago, when I did a research on this, only 25% of young people had a sexually transmitted disease. Now, according to the Center for Disease and Control in our government, Washington, DC, 50% of young people now have a sexually transmitted disease, and 25% of them are incurable. You see, your sin will correct you. You steal, somebody’s going to clobber you. They’re not going to like you taking what they got. They may even shoot you. You break into the, you’re going to see, sin will correct you. Your backslidings will rebuke you.

▶ 14:23 Now, backsliding has to be God’s people, because sinners haven’t fronts slided to begin with. So it has to be Christians that are gone back to the vomit, as the Bible says, gone back to the [unclear]. All right, Jeremiah 30:1, “Though I make a full end of all nations where I’ve scattered you, I will not make a full end of you.” Folks, don’t ever give up. As long as you have breath, you got to understand that God is on your side. Once you come to Christ and you accept Christ and you repent of your sins, you are his child, and as a father he is going to do everything he can to keep you on the road of life and righteousness. Don’t ever believe the lie that there’s a place where you can’t be saved anymore, and you, you know, God, God is making it very plain here that he is out to [unclear] you. Amen, amen. So quit being so hard-headed. Let him straighten you out.

▶ 15:39 Now, “I will not let you go altogether unpunished.” These people that think they can just do what they want and live the way they want and God is just going to bless their life, God says that’s not going to happen. I’m going to bring things in your life, you’re going to bring things in your life, number one through sinning, and I’m going to bring things to try to correct that. I won’t leave you. Did God punish David for his sins? Did he? A man whose heart was after God? Absolutely. Why? So the nations would know that God deals with his people when they’re wrong. That’s what he said, so the nations will know. Hallelujah. So when bad things happen to you, there could just be bad things happening to you. You know, a car runs a stop sign and hits you, that’s just an accident. But some things, like when you can’t pay your bills, that’s not an accident. That’s usually our bad choice, and we need to make good choices to get our finances in order and pay our bills and so forth. Amen. And I can go on and on and on. Some sicknesses of God to correct us. Some sickness is just because you live here on earth, it’s going to happen. The key is you just say, God, what are you trying to teach me? Because when it’s God, even when God didn’t create the problem, he can teach you in the problem.

▶ 17:20 All right. Now, once saved always saved is not in the Bible, and I can prove it to you. Solomon, who had a heart after God, later his heart turned from God. Okay, Judas, who was out doing miracles, preaching the gospel, casting out demons, when he betrayed Christ, he hung himself, he died in that sin. You see, he was once saved, but he wasn’t saved now. Are you there? And in Timothy, 1 Timothy 4:1, it says the Spirit distinctly, it clearly speaks that in the last days some will depart from the faith, okay, given heed to seducing spirits, lying spirits, deceiving spirits, and doctrines of demons. Now, is God lying? Can we depart from the faith? Yeah. Did they depart from the faith? Yes. You see, we’re saved by grace through faith, but we can depart from the faith.

▶ 18:50 But my point is this, see, God so loves us and so works with us that we almost feel that once saved we’re always saved, cuz he never gives up on us. He’s always there to convict us and to draw us to him. So you know, you can almost mistake in that for men, yeah, no matter what I do, he’s with me, hallelujah, I’m saved no matter what. No, you’re saved because you’re saved, but when you’re wrong, you’re wrong, and he needs to correct you. And I’ve told you over and over, when I used to do Billy Graham crusades as an altar worker, I never been anybody that needed to be saved. Everybody that I come in contact with was already saved. They were just rebellious children. They needed to correct their life, they needed to turn it around. Amen. Jesus only died one time for our salvation, and you can only be born one time in the flesh and one time in the Spirit. Amen. So I had to take these people and I had to say, you don’t need to be saved, you need to get your act together, you need to straighten your life up. Amen, hallelujah. And he does. And I just found it’s best not to make it difficult, just, just learn and just change. You make it easy, you know. If my kids listen to me, their life will be easy. They don’t listen to me, things happen and they pick the hard way, yeah, and, and the more they pick the hard way, the harder it gets, that just keeps making the discipline stronger. Wake up, boy. And that’s the way God is.

▶ 20:46 Now, here’s a prophecy about the goal of Jesus in Isaiah 42:1, and it parallels with Matthew 12:15. Okay, it’s fulfilled there in Matthew 12:15. Isaiah prophesied it in Isaiah 42:1, “My servant, my elect one, my chosen one, I have put my Spirit upon him, and he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. He’ll declare justice to the Gentiles.” A lot of your translations say judgment, and they’re both the same word, justice, judgment. Judgment is the arrest, okay, the trial, we’ll prove if you’re guilty or not guilty, and then the verdict, whether you’re guilty or not guilty, and then the punishment if you’re guilty and the freedom if you’re not. And so when I read that as a young Christian, you’re going to pass judgment on the Gentiles? Yeah, Lord, get them, put them in hell, like a fire, burn them out, teach them. And because that’s all we ever heard, boy, if you don’t serve God, God is going to judge you, you’re going to go to that lake of fire, you’re going to go to hell, not, boy, you’re just in trouble. But I want to show you this morning that that is not what that statement is saying at all. Are you there? Hallelujah.

▶ 22:27 Now, we know the Gentiles are what? Those that don’t believe, those that, yeah, non-Jew, non-Christian, anybody like that is called a Gentile, a pagan, a heathen in the Bible, same word for pagan and heathen. So he’s going to bring judgment to the Gentiles. Justice is the better word, and I chose this word because justice means right. Justice means you, you know you’re going to do what’s right, you’re doing what’s right, and you’re going to be dealt with rightly. “He will not cry out nor raise his voice or cause his voice to be heard in the street.” In Matthew 12:19 he says, “I will not quarrel.” I’m not going to argue out in the street. I’m not going to take my argument to the street, okay. I’m not going to raise up my voice out there in the street. Now, how many of you out there have a house? How many of you have a house with no street? Get it? Yeah. He’s going to knock on your door. He’s going to come to your, hey, not going to be out there in the street yelling and, and preaching. He’s going to come, and that’s what Revelation says, “I stand at the door and knock. If any man open the door, I will come in and sup with him and he with me.”

▶ 23:59 God’s going to come to you personally. He’s going to come to your house yourself, and he’s going to talk to you. Now, I like that. Are you out there? Hallelujah. “A bruised reed he will not break.” Okay, here we got a plant, just pretend for a minute, you’re out there in the field, you’re riding horses with Mr. Barns, and you go by this plant and the horse just knocks it over. Okay. Now, this, I don’t, we actually got a reed on the property, but I didn’t think of it till too late. So what he does is he comes back, straightens that reed up, puts a dressing on it, and, you know, that plant will reattach itself and grow. Normally, see, he’s not going to break it off because it’s wounded. He’s going to what? Heal it. And these are Gentiles he’s talking about. Ain’t this powerful? These are Gentiles, these are people that don’t know God, and if he’ll do that for Gentiles, will he do it for his people? Of course, of course.

▶ 25:36 “A smoking flax he will not quench.” Back in the old days people had a lantern. Oil was used to burn, and they had a wick in it, and if that wick was intended to, that wick would build up soot and deposits to where the oxygen couldn’t get and flame up the oil in the wick, and so it would get smaller, the flame would get smaller, the light would get dimmer and dimmer and dimmer, to finally it’s just smoke, it’s just embers burning in the wick, cuz it can’t get enough oxygen. So what’s God going to do? He’s not going to put it out. Jesus doesn’t come along and say, well, you idiot, you Gentile, bam. No, he’s going to come and what? Trim the wick. How many know that’s a good judgment? Yes. He’s not interested in people going to hell, he’s interested in them turning back to righteousness. Hallelujah.

▶ 26:47 “He’ll bring out justice for truth. He’ll not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth.” You see, in Matthew 12 he says he’ll bring forth justice to victory, in another word, judgment, and justice is going to win over sin in the Gentiles. Okay, “He shall not fail or be discouraged until he’ll establish justice in the earth.” In Matthew 12 he says, “In his name the Gentiles will trust.” So what’s his whole judgment here? To deal with the Gentiles, to heal them, to [unclear] their fame, so that they put their trust in Jesus Christ and follow what’s right. Now, isn’t that a great judgment? That’s a good judgment. Hallelujah. And that’s why it’s important that we understand that yes, the heathen, or the evolutionist, the hedonist, and, uh, the communist and the atheist and the humanist, yeah, they’re attacking the Bible, they’re attacking Christ, they’re attacking the church, and yes, they are our enemies, but God wants to save them. Hallelujah.

▶ 28:14 “I, the Lord, have called you.” I, the Lord, have called you. Who’s you here? It’s not the Gentiles. “And my servant Jesus.” Jesus is the servant. Jesus is the, the chosen one who’s going to do all this. See, “I’ve called you in righteousness.” Jesus only judges righteous judgment. You see, he only judges fair judgment. “I will give you as a covenant.” Jesus was given as a covenant, the contract, through his death, burial and resurrection, to the people, who are the people? The Gentiles, “and as a light to the Gentiles.” [unclear] And so, church, it’s imperative that we get this message out to the liberals, the hedonists, the atheists, the homosexual activists, the humanists, the religionists, the evolutionists, it’s imperative that we get this message out so that God can heal our enemies. You can’t go around hating these people to where you’re wanting things to happen. You, you, you got to know they are enemies, and we have to fight with our enemies with truth, but at the same time our whole goal and God’s goal is that they might be saved. “The Gentiles will trust in me,” Jesus said. You got that?

▶ 29:49 And until this church gets a vision and gets organized and gets this message out to the Gentiles and the saints of God that are scattered because they’re sinning, there’s two harvest fields, I’ve told you that for years. One is the ones that oppose God. The other one, the one that believe God but they’re not following God, and, and somebody needs to tell them they can be restored, and the Gentiles need to be told that they can turn from their sins and come to God. Could that be an amen? And so someone needs to rise up in this place and say, let’s get organized, let’s get on radio, TV, let’s get tracks out, let’s get the printed word out, let’s get on internet, let’s get the message out, let’s take it to the, to the people. See, we can’t just talk right here in this room, that’s, see, we got to go down on their street, knock on their door, we got to knock on their heart, we got to go to them. Amen. And when a church does not have a main focus of reaching God’s people that are sinning and the sinners that are sinning, they are not going to stay a church. They’re going to turn into a social club, or they’re going to dry up and wither away. Amen.

▶ 31:31 So Jesus is called to what? “Open the eyes of the blind, bring out those in darkness.” Who’s those? The Gentiles. “And the prisoners from prison.” And we are his messengers. Hallelujah. I’m glad you’re excited. You see, it’s amazing to me that if someone gets sick, we visit him. Someone gets down financially, we help him get up. But we pass over multitudes that are dead spiritually or sick spiritually, and we think nothing about it. Does that make sense to you? You understand that? Yeah. Which is more important, the eternal part or the temporary part? The eternal part. And somewhere we’ve got to get organized, we got to get this thing done, we got to put our money and time into it, and Jesus will do the rest. Jesus will turn the Gentiles to trust in him.

▶ 32:48 Now, verse eight, “My glory I’ll not give to another.” You remember last week, the glory of the Lord was grace and truth. Okay, Jesus was the glory of God, and he was filled with grace and truth, divine enablement, divine influence and truth. All right, and God says, I’m not going to give my glory to another or my praise to carved images. Verse 9, “Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things do I declare.” What he’s saying is, I spoke you decades, hundreds of years ago that Ishmael would be born, and I named him before he was born. Isaac would be born, and I named him before he was born. Solomon would be born, and I named him and what he would do before he was born. Josiah would be born, and what he would do before he was born, and he fulfilled it when he was born. Cyrus, a heathen king, I named them hundreds of years before. He came around and they did what I said they would do. So he says the former things have come to pass. He said Israel would go down into Egypt for 400 years and then he would lead them out. He went and he did that. See, that’s God’s argument. It’s a good argument, isn’t it? Yeah. But he says, I’m going to do some new things, and then you got, of course, John the Baptist and Jesus Christ himself. But he says, I’m going to do a new thing.

▶ 34:27 “New things I’m going to declare unto you before they spring forth. I will tell you of them.” Now remember, we found in Isaiah 2 that the house of the Lord, the mountain of the house of the Lord, will be established at the top of the mountains and all nations would flow into it, and out of that house would flow the word of God and the law of God. See, that’s the new thing. He also said there would be a time when the lion would lay down with the lamb. That’s a new thing. And we read all this in Isaiah. He said there will be difficult times coming. He said the stars and the moon and the sun, the, the heavens are going to be rolled up like a scroll, stars are going to fall from heaven, the moon is going to go dark, the moon, the moon’s going to go dark, the moon’s going to turn into blood, and the sun’s going to go dark. How many know that’s a new thing that we haven’t had? And see, it’s going to happen. Jesus, Jesus is going to come back, the Bible says, and it’s going to happen. And what these people don’t understand is because God fulfilled everything before he said he would do, he’s also going to fulfill what he said he would do in these last days. Amen. And so they got a big awakening coming. And so he’s telling us, Isaiah is telling us these things before they happen.

▶ 35:58 Now, verse 10, “Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise among the ends of the earth.” And that’s why every Protestant church has music and singing and hymns and all that. All through the Bible he tells us to sing his praises and so forth. Pray, worship is a very important part of a church service. “And he shall prevail against his enemies.” He’s going to win this battle. And folks, we don’t have to wait for the end time. We can take the message out and Jesus can win this battle now by turning the Gentiles to trust in him and restoring his people back to righteousness. Amen, hallelujah. Yeah, you see, and that’s what God wants to do, that’s what God will do, but we got to take the message out there. The new thing.

▶ 36:58 All right, 2 Corinthians 3:18, “But we all, all us believers, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord.” He said he wouldn’t give his glory to another. See, up there we all can behold the glory of God, which is who? Jesus Christ, and which is what? Is filled with grace and truth. We can behold the glory of the Lord, we can behold the grace and truth, and we are changed into the same image. What image? The glory of God, filled with grace and truth. Wow. Wow. Church, powerful promises of God. See, he said he wouldn’t give his glory to another, meaning he’s not going to give it to people with their own religion, he’s not going to give it to carved images, but he is going to give it to those that follow Christ, and he did it, and he’s doing it. Can we today be filled with grace and truth, divine influence, divine enablement of God to live for Christ, to understand things, to learn him of him and follow him? And truth, you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. The word will heal you, the word will cause you to grow, everything is focused on Christ and his word. And so we have to go to churches where they’re teaching the word so we can grow, and we got to read the Bible ourselves so we can grow and maintain our growth. Amen. It’s all in the word. Healing, a healthy mind, a healthy spirit, all through the Bible and Jesus Christ. And we are changed. We don’t get it like God, Jesus did, he was perfect from the conception. We aren’t. We’ve got to be changed. How many you got some things in your life you need to change the rest of your life? Yeah, because I know this book. When I got saved I had a, a lot of things that still needed to be worked out in my life, man, and God takes it step by step, line upon line, pre... and he changes us, and he does it by the Spirit of God. So the Spirit and his word is spirit, those two things work together. The Holy Ghost never contradicts the Bible. Never. Hallelujah.

▶ 39:58 Ephesians 5:27, “That he might present it to himself.” Jesus died for the church, gave his life for the church that he might present it to himself. What kind of church? Glorious church, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. You see, full of grace and full of truth. So when he comes back, what kind of church is he coming back for? A glorious church. What kind of glory? Grace and truth church. Are you there? Are we like that now? No. You see, this has to be fulfilled before Christ comes, and I don’t know about you, but I want to be on the generation that possesses the grace and truth. You know, Paul was one born out of due season. We don’t have to wait for the universal outpouring. We can experience it as an individual now. Yeah. Hallelujah. Powerful. Very powerful.

▶ 41:05 So this morning we saw the goal of Jesus is to turn the Gentiles to trust in him, who he says is God’s enemy and our enemy. So we got to keep a balanced attitude, that yes, there are enemies, and we have to oppose them with truth so that also they can turn and put their trust in God. Amen. So therefore I can’t hate them, I can’t look down on them, I have to approach them with respect, dignity as a human being, as, remember, we are all the sheep of his pasture. They may be a spotted sheep, they may be a rebellious sheep, but they’re still a sheep of whose pasture? His pasture. And so I got to approach them that they are a child of God, they are created by God, and it’s my job to teach truth. You know, when they that do righteous and speak righteous contend, they war with the wicked. So I don’t have to be personally antagonized or angry at a sinner. All I got to do is live right and speak right, speak truth, and I’m at war with them, and Jesus can turn them and put their trust in him.