How to Save the World
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Intro
Intro
As you look around the world you can see things are in a bad way.
Your life might be pretty comfortable, but there is plenty of bad stuff going on all around us all the time.
There are men who use and abuse women, and women who humiliate and manipulate men.
There are children who are mistreated and abused and indoctrinated with godless ideologies, then there are those who protect their abusers.
There are children murdered in their own mother’s womb before they can see the light of day, and there are those around that mother, deceiving her into thinking she’s doing a good thing.
There are people who enslave other people, and those who turn a blind eye for political expediency.
There are those who make and sell damaging drugs, and those who have their lives ruined by them.
There are those who create unjust laws and those who are unjustly punished under them, or at the very least dragged through an endless stream of demands and threats and letters and court fees such that even if they are not at fault, they have been effectively punished by the process.
There are gossips who spread misleading impressions under the guise of “concern” for others, and those who will not stand up and speak when they ought to.
There are those who deceive others and those who suffer under that deception.
There are those who are disobedient to their parents, and those whose parents refuse to love their children through discipline.
There are those who know that God calls them to submit to him, but they refuse him insolently.
All around our nation, all around the world, there is great evil and wickedness in every corner.
It is overwhelming.
It is hard to comprehend.
Evil has pervaded every country, every neighborhood, every family, and every heart.
We are in a bad way.
We are desperate for a solution.
Some will turn to more liberality: “If only there was more acceptance of my evil, then life would be better”
Others will turn to conservatism: “If only we go back to the past where we put the evil behind closed doors, then life would be better”
Some will turn to being culture warriors: “If only we expose all the evils and campaign for slightly less evil, then life would be better”
Still others will turn to escapism: “If I check-out of communal life, i will be blissfully unaware of the evil” This includes both those who will bury themselves in distractions like work, video games or even squirrel themselves away from wider society.
We’re in a bad way, and there is nothing that you or I can muster up to change things.
Even if you put to work all that was within you to reform your neighborhood, and you toiled day after day to drive evil out from your streets; you love and served and exhorted your neighbors till they either give-way, or move away. Even then with all your labours, you will have made only one small dent in a vary vary large problem. It is but one neighborhood in all the world.
What if then, we instead went big, and you sought a nomination as a federal parliamentary Representative. You won, and after a time you were made Prime Minister, you changed all the laws and revised all the policy, you cleaned out all the demonic bureaucrats and did so over the course of two decades. Even then with all your labours, you will have made only one small dent in a vary vary large problem. You will not have changed even one human heart.
<pause>
The problem of the human heart is so universal, so complete, that even the people who belong to God, the standard of holiness, justice, goodness and beauty, even they cannot escape the insipid effects of evil within them.
Back in ancient history God rescued a nation. He chose them as his own special people and entered into a covenant with them.
Gave them Law - standard of righteousness
They failed - miserably
God judged them, and punished them.
But God holds out hope, a hope in the midst of their world falling apart around them.
This hope is a hope for us.
This hope is the only hope we have of saving the world!
God will set a Sign
God will set a Sign
v18-19
Isaiah lived through a time of cultural decay, national decline
International instability, national security issues
Problems with social cohesion and morality. People were two-faced and not genuine. People were
These people were nothing like what God has called them to be.
While there were faithful pockets of people, the vast majority had turned their backs on God, and were living in opposition to God.
God was going to judge them, but not them only, all the nations.
“For behold, the Lord will come in fire, and his chariots like the whirlwind, to render his anger in fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire will the Lord enter into judgment, and by his sword, with all flesh; and those slain by the Lord shall be many.
all peoples everywhere though all time will come before the Lord in Judgement
d
But the Lord will not utterly destroy!
Isaiah 66:18 (ESV)
“For I know their works and their thoughts, and the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory, and I will set a sign among them.
What is the sign?
The promised Prophet, The Son of David to restore the throne, The Messiah, The Christ.
All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.
God will Show His Glory
God will Show His Glory
v19
Isaiah 66:19 (ESV)
And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations.
Survivors, those of God’s people who didn’t get destroyed by God’s judgement, the faithful remnant.
Declaration of the sign to all the nations
Fulfilled in the Gospel
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while.
Go!
God will be Worshiped in a New World
God will be Worshiped in a New World
v20-23
And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the Lord, on horses and in chariots and in litters and on mules and on dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord, just as the Israelites bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord.
Many peoples will turn to the Lord! They will become “brothers”!
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
And some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites, says the Lord.
The wil even serve God as presits, unthinkable
“For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord.
This world in some sense is a lost cause, it must be remade!
But the new world will be full of God’s glory, and it will be full of perpetual worship!
(if you don’t enjoy worshiping God, I implore you to address your heart and learn to love true worship, because you will be doing alot of it!)
God will Judge
God will Judge
v24
“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”
Will you gaze upon your loved ones slain?
It will be just! It will be good. Everyone who is mean to be there will be there. But you will still wonder - if only I had shared the Gospel with them! If only I had been an ambassador of Christ to them!
No-one who goes to everlasting death was a mistake. God only sends the deserving.
Yet God uses means, God uses tools like you and me to warn and call people to turn to God.
So, the LORD forbid, that anyone who goes to damnation should have gone without hearing the Gospel from our mouth.
They need have heard from our lips that they must repent of their wickedness lest they face the wrath of God, and condemnation to hell.
Jesus quotes this verse when he warns us to turn away from evil.
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’
Turn, turn! Flee!
(It is unhealthy to have a full diet of “turn or burn”, but is just as unhealthy to have a diet with none! Especially when the bible is full of such passages!)
How can we save the World?
How can we save the World?
The world is in a dire state
This world will be Judged
But there is a hope of Salvation.
We will save the world by bringing people into the new world.
They must look to the dign, the revelation of God’s glory in our midst and come from their far away place to come to God!
Come and worship him with the offering of your very self!
Judgement is coming, and the only hope is Jesus Christ -
We have a goal here at this church to see 10% of this town saved. This is one step, this is a good step. But it is not enough.
Sale needs Jesus. Every single one of the people here, and in Warruk, and in Longford, and in Stratford, and in Maffra, and in Rosedale, and in Heyfield, and everyone inbetween. Every single one of them has only one hope.
There is only one name that will save them.
There is only one door
There is only one path
There is only one God who will save them.
