Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] All right, let's grab our Bible and turn to psalm 19. Psalm number 19.
[00:00:11] Psalm 19.
[00:00:26] We will read verses one through six.
[00:00:31] Psalm 19 is divided into two parts.
[00:00:35] We will read the first part.
[00:00:38] Both of the parts of psalm 19 deal with the revelation of God. And there are two types of revelation by which God has revealed himself. And so we want to look at the first one this morning.
[00:00:53] Psalm 19, verse number one.
[00:00:57] The Bible says, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.
[00:01:05] Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.
[00:01:12] There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.
[00:01:17] Their line is gone out through all the earth and their words unto the end of the world.
[00:01:23] In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
[00:01:37] His going forth is from the end of the heaven and his circuit unto the ends of it. And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. Let's pray together.
[00:01:50] Thank you, Lord, for the chance to focus on what your word says and to hear your word. Lord, please give us ears to hear and hearts to receive what your word says plainly, and to receive not only the revelation of your word, but also the truths that are seen in your revelation from what you have created.
[00:02:14] Lord. You know, Lord, that I do not know the needs of each and every person here.
[00:02:20] I don't know the thoughts of the heart. But, Lord, you are the one who knows everything. Just as the sun says here, nothing is hid from the heat thereof, so your knowledge is your knowledge. You know every single person, and you see every, every need that each person has and where each person is and what their condition, what their state is before.
[00:02:44] Lord, I pray that you would guide us as we study your word as we look at these truths. And I pray that the name of the Lord Jesus Christ would be glorified. And I pray for your spirit to truly prick the hearts of each person here and encourage some. And, Lord, if there be some among us that do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, Lord, that you would reprove them of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, Lord, that they might see their need to come to Jesus.
[00:03:13] We ask these things all in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:03:18] What these verses in psalm number 19 tell us is that God has revealed himself by means of his creation. You notice in verse number two, the Bible says, day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge that day in the day, night in the night indicates that from one day to another, every day, every day, day in, day out, day in, day out, the wonderful acts of God's creation are shouting, are speaking to every person under the heaven, every person on whom the sun shines. It says, nothing is hid in verse six, from the heat thereof, from the heat of the sun. So, in verse one, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. So, last Monday, I had the chance to take charity and Isaiah on a 20 hours, grueling, 20 hours road trip to Indiana, when, in 2017, we were in Cambodia, and therefore, we were not in the US whenever the 2017 total eclipse came over Greenville. And so I made a promise to myself in 2017, after seeing the videos and that kind of thing, I made a promise to myself, and I put it on my calendar, and I said, in 2024, I didn't have any idea where I would be in 2024. But I told myself, in 2024, I'm going. Unless I am laid up in a hospital somewhere, I'm going to.
[00:04:56] So we went up to Indiana, to the path, as they call it, the path of totality. And as we watched that event, my mind went to these truths.
[00:05:12] I've told people that when people asked me about it, and a few people that had not seen one before, they asked me about it, and I told them that seeing that sight, to me, it permanently altered my perspective.
[00:05:30] Perspective. It really did. It really. And I know you guys saw the one in 2017, and, you know, you might be like, you know, yawn. Like it wasn't a big deal. But that wasn't the case with me. It was profound, the way it affected me and what it made. What? How the Lord used it to direct my thoughts and my thinking to him. You see, God did not create those things. He did not create the heavens. He did not create the earth. That we might marvel in the glory of those things. No, no, no. If that's all we marvel in, that we have fallen far short. God created those things as a declaration of his own glory.
[00:06:11] And so if we're looking at that, those, as it says in verse one, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. If we see those things, but our heart and our thoughts are not drawn to the Lord, then we need to readjust our thinking, because we're not seeing what the Lord intends us to see.
[00:06:32] You know, we oftentimes the people in the scientific world, many of whom, not all, but many of whom are hostile to Christianity and they believe and tell us that the Bible is just fairy tales. It's fantasy. And we believe in science, not religion, they say, but we have to remember that our God is a God of science. What do I mean by that? What I mean is science cannot exist without the laws that God has established to order it. There is order because a God of wisdom and of order and of compassion and care and beauty created order and wisdom and knowledge and beauty, and he did that for us. I mean, the Lord is not lacking beauty. If you look at the descriptions of the Lord in heaven and there's descriptions of his throne and the different angelic beings and all the things that are near his throne, the Lord's not impressed with the beauty of flowers and the beauty of the sun and the moon and the stars. He's not impressed with that. He did that for our eyeballs that we might be impressed with it, but he did that because he is a God. That is all wise.
[00:07:54] He created it out of the grace and goodness of his heart.
[00:07:59] The Lord intends us to look at those things and our mind and heart be drawn to the God of creation.
[00:08:08] Now, you might not know this, but did you know that the Son is actually in the Bible, an illustration or a picture of God? Now, the sun, of course, is not God. The Son is an object in the created universe. But it just like many things, as we've been studying on Wednesday night, you know about the different parts of the Old Testament and how those picture and, and symbolize other things. So the Son is an illustration or a figure, a picture of God. Now I'm just going to read you a list of verses here because I want to kind of establish this in your mind before we move on. Psalm 67, verse one says this, God be merciful unto us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us, say la. So in that way, the language used for the sun shining is used of the Lord and his looking down upon us. Psalm 84, verse number eleven, says this, for the Lord God is a son and shield.
[00:09:11] The Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.
[00:09:18] Isaiah 60, verse number one, says this, arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee, picturing a sunrise, but God himself being the sun.
[00:09:36] Malachi, chapter four, verse two.
[00:09:38] But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness. That's s u n, son of righteousness. This is referring to Jesus. Now arise with healing in his wings, and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall. And of course, as we come to the New Testament, the Bible says in John eleven, verse number nine, Jesus answered, are there not 12 hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not because he seeth the light of this world. What is the light of this world?
[00:10:12] The sun.
[00:10:14] But then in John eight, notice what he says. Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. So you have this picture of the son. And again, I don't want to confuse anybody. God is not the son. God is not in the sun. God created the Son, but in the same way the Son gives us is a blessing to us. So the Lord himself is figured and pictured in that. Think about the sun real quick. The sun is ever present.
[00:10:53] Now we know the sun is not eternal. The scientists try to convince us in their theology that the universe had no beginning, has no end. It's eternal. It's divine in essence, because eternality is a characteristic of divine, of the divine nature. So the universe is now eternal. But that's not true. It had a beginning and it will have an end.
[00:11:18] But as far as from our perspective, the sun is ever present. Even if you can't see the sun, it's there, right? Even when the earth rotates and the sun's on the other side of the world. I can bear witness because I was there when it was on the other side of the world. And it's there and it's hot, at least where I was.
[00:11:36] It might be dark here, and it might not be where we can see it. But we know that the sun is always present. So the Lord ever present, even when it is not obvious to us, the Lord is ever present. In fact, the Bible says he does not want us to think that he is distant, the sun, 93 million mile away. The Lord says he is not far from every one of us.
[00:12:00] But you know what the son also is? It's unregarded.
[00:12:04] You know why? Because we see it every day. How many of you, by a raising of the hand, how many of you came to church this morning? You drove in the sun, you got up, you saw the sun, you came to church. How many of you raise your hand if you lifted up your eyes and gave one thought to the sun this morning?
[00:12:26] Two, three? What did you think of the sun when you thought about it? Do you remember?
[00:12:33] Still there, the majority of us. And I'm not one of the ones that can raise my hand.
[00:12:40] I gave no thought to the sun. I got to the office, I didn't look at the sun. I'm doing a message about the sun here. I didn't even think about the sun until I got in here and started looking at it.
[00:12:52] See, the sun is something that's always there. We trust it's always going to be there and it will always be there as far as, from the human perspective, as far as our lives are concerned.
[00:13:01] But so many people don't regard it at all, pay no attention or think about it at all, ever. And yet its blessings, you know, physically, its blessings pour out upon the earth every day. Every day, every day. And nobody pays any attention. Now, im not suggesting that we should thank the Son. The Son has no way to receive thanksgiving. The son is not a person.
[00:13:22] We should be thanking the God who created the Son.
[00:13:26] We also see that the sun shines upon all, right?
[00:13:31] The sun shines upon all, both the evil and the good.
[00:13:37] Matthew 545 says this, that ye may be the children of your father, which is in heaven, for he notice what this says, the Lord speaking now, for he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good. See that his son, that son's not our son. It's not your son, it's not the earth's son, it's not the universe, not the milky way's son. It's God's son, and he makes it shine. But here's the thing I want you to understand. Just as the sun shines upon everyone, whether they're good or evil, whether they know Christ or don't know Christ, whether they love God or hate God, it shines on every one of us. And so the goodness of God that pictures the goodness of God, that's what this verse is saying. Did you know that when you sin, God is still good to you?
[00:14:25] Did you know that we have this idea that somehow God stops being kind to us when we sin, does that mean God approves of our sin and our wickedness? No.
[00:14:37] But that doesn't alter his person. That doesn't alter how the Lord is. He is good just as the sun is bright and shines, and that is what it is. And so God is kind and gracious even to sinners.
[00:14:53] He doesn't just send his son on people that are thankful to him and love him. No, no, no. The sun shines upon everyone. So the goodness of God.
[00:15:02] So we might not be aware of the Lord, but he is always aware of us.
[00:15:06] We might not think about him, but he is always thinking about us, not just his people, either, not just his children.
[00:15:14] His eye is upon us all the time. Now, that might, to some people, be. That might make them uneasy, that God is always seeing us in the dark, in the light.
[00:15:26] But to those of us that know him and love him, that's one of our greatest comforts, is knowing. It's like when you go outside, especially in this weather, you go outside and you feel the sun on your face. And the way that feels on your body is what we feel when we know. And we're reminded of the fact that God sees us at all time. His eye is upon us for good.
[00:15:54] And then lastly, we see that the sun gives. We know, in the scientific sense, the sun gives life. There would be no life on the earth if it wasn't for the influence of the sun. For the plants need the sun for photosynthesis to grow, and then the animals eat the food produced by the plants, and then we eat the animals.
[00:16:21] And so everything needs the sun from the top to the bottom. It gives life to all. And so the Lord, the Bible says that the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, upholdeth all things by the word of his power.
[00:16:36] That speaks to what I said earlier, which is the fact that God is a God of science. And by that, and don't misunderstand. I'm not saying that the Lord approves of everything that parades itself as science, because that's certainly not true. But God is the God who created the material universe.
[00:17:00] But we don't give much thought to the son until there is a dramatic event.
[00:17:13] You know, when we were driving up to Indiana, I think it was Batesville, Indiana, I think we ended up going. We were driving up and the sun was out. Did you know? I didn't pay very much attention to the sun at all while I was driving to see an eclipse.
[00:17:34] But all of a sudden, when there is a dramatic change in the sun, it demands our attention.
[00:17:42] How many of you by a raise? You know, we had three hands, three or maybe four hands raised when I asked the question just now, on April 8, last Monday, around, what was it, 03:00.
[00:17:56] How many of you paid attention to the sun then?
[00:18:01] That's a lot more. Why?
[00:18:06] Because there was a big change, right? There's something different.
[00:18:10] So here you have something that we don't ever pay attention to, except at this moment, because something different is happening. There's a dramatic change happening which demands our attention.
[00:18:24] And so how many people do you think it was in on, on April 8 in the United States that looked up into the sky to observe. I'm sorry. How many people before April 8 looked up to the sky and looked at the sun and gave it any thought? Especially any substantial thought? Almost none. But all of a sudden, on April 8, millions looked at it. Millions eyes were pointed up to the heavens to see the sun when it was in an eclipse.
[00:18:51] Millions.
[00:18:53] Let's go to the book of Isaiah. Chapter six, verse one.
[00:19:26] Isaiah was a prophet in the land of Judah.
[00:19:31] This king mentioned in verse one, King Uzziah is one of the kings of Judah.
[00:19:40] Verse one says, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up. And his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims. Each one had six wings. With twain. That's two. He covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet. And with twain he did fly.
[00:20:07] So these aren't angels per se, but they're, we might say, angelic beings.
[00:20:14] And one cried unto another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. Now, I just spoke those words. But these seraphim, you know what they're doing? They're crying, they're screaming.
[00:20:32] The whole earth is full of his glory. Is that not what we just read in psalm 19?
[00:20:39] The whole earth is full of his glory.
[00:20:43] Just as the sun enlightens every square inch of the earth.
[00:20:49] But we're not conscious of it.
[00:20:55] So the Lord's goodness and glory is over all of his creation. Notice we live down here and pay no heed to God.
[00:21:07] His glory is everywhere. His fingerprints are everywhere. The only reason we don't see it is because our eyes are Holden. We're blind to it and deaf to it, and we don't. So it's a matter of our heart.
[00:21:20] But his glory is there because these angelic beings, these seraphim are saying, they're not even down here. They're looking from a distance, you might say. And they say, the whole. Or everywhere we look, we see God's fingerprints. Everywhere we look, we see it dropped out there for a minute.
[00:21:44] But we're unconscious of that fact.
[00:21:48] And these, verse four. These seraphim cried so loud, the Bible says. And the post of the door moved at the voice of him that cried.
[00:21:56] And the house was filled with smoke.
[00:21:59] Then said, I, woe is me, for I am undone.
[00:22:08] Because I am a man of unclean lips. And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the king, the lord of hosts.
[00:22:21] Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar. And he laid it upon my mouth and said, lo, this hath touched thy lips and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged.
[00:22:39] Also. I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then said I, here am I. Send me. And he said, go now. Just pause there a second. So I want to say something about this.
[00:23:03] First Corinthians 1541 says this. We've already looked at the sun, and how the sun pictures is representative, you might say, of God and his goodness and his glory, because, of course, we know that the sun has glory. You look up the sun and it's blinding to you. You see that glory and it's bright in your eyes. That is physically what the glory of God is.
[00:23:29] First Corinthians 1541 says this. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars. For one star differeth from another star in glory. So this verse in first Corinthians tells us that when we look up at the sky and. And we see the angel, not the angel, the heavenly bodies, as they're called, and we see the sun, and at night we see the moon and we see the stars and they're shining, there's glory from those things. And sometimes we see those things and it causes us to have awe. A couple of years ago, my wife got me a telescope. Was it for Christmas or my birthday? I can't remember. Anyway, she got me a telescope, and I was able to look at the stars, which the stars are kind of uninteresting, because no matter how powerful your telescope is, they always look.
[00:24:17] There are always points of light. I mean, might as well not have a telescope for those. But the planets are interesting, but each one of them has a kind of glory. It strikes a kind of awe. And one thing, when I was at the eclipse and when the eclipse went into totality, it was like it sucked the awe out of you. At least with me, it wasn't. You know, even though I knew, you know, scientifically, what's happening, of course, I had read some on that and I knew what was happening. But the glory of that event, that celestial event that I was seeing, not by video or not, or recording, but seeing it in person, it just sucked it out of you. And I have a video to prove it. And you just can't. You just can't.
[00:25:09] It just comes out. It's amazement.
[00:25:13] That's from the glory of the event, right?
[00:25:20] But you know what? When the. So you have the sun, you have the moon, you have the stars. Each of them have glory. And you might say they have light, they shine down.
[00:25:28] But you know, when the sun of the. The glory of the sun was blocked by the moon, you know, that moon, that sun, you know, that sun's really bright. And you use the glasses and you can start to see the crescent forming.
[00:25:41] When the sun began to be blocked by the moon, of course it got dim. But as it got dimmer and dimmer and dimmer, all of a sudden things that were there but you couldn't see started to appear like the stars.
[00:25:55] Now, the question is, why couldn't you see the stars? I mean, it's not like they moved in. They were already there. But why couldn't you see them?
[00:26:05] You know why? Because of the glory of the sun.
[00:26:09] You see the sun, the moon and the stars, what this verse tells us, they each have glory, but the glory of them relative to one another is different.
[00:26:20] And so when the sun started to be obscured and blocked by the moon, the glory of the stars appeared.
[00:26:26] Now, the glory of the stars is relative glory because they're only visible because the glory of the sun is diminishing.
[00:26:38] They're only visible because the glory of the sun is temporarily obscured.
[00:26:46] And even on a normal night, you know, you think of the moon on a normal night and the sun, the glory of the sun, goes below the horizon.
[00:26:56] That's when you see the moon and the stars. Each of them have their own glory. You see the moon for my telescope, it's very good at moon watching because you can see all the detail of the moon in the telescope my wife bought me.
[00:27:12] But you see, when you're at night and the sun goes down and you look up at the moon, the moon seems amazing, especially when you're looking at it up close with the telescope, you see all the craters and it shines. Even in the marines when we did nightland navigation always hope that you would have the moon, you'd have a full moon because you could almost walk without night vision or flashlights. Just from the moon, it was that much light shining down. And so there's a glory with the moon.
[00:27:42] And from that perspective, the moon looks glorious. And compared, now, remember, the sun, the moon and the stars have glory, but each of them is relative. And so even though you have the moon, even though you have the stars, they're out there too. But compared to the moon, their glory is not very impressive in comparison to the stars. The moon is indeed glorious. And it is glorious, that is, until it approaches the sun.
[00:28:13] Now hear me, please. I'm going somewhere with this, I promise.
[00:28:17] You see, during an eclipse, as that moon approaches the sun, from our perspective, as it approaches the sun, it's invisible, right? And as it begins to cover the sun, and as it covers the sun entirely, the entirety, all the light, the direct sunlight that's coming from the sun so that we can't see it, of course, the last thing that happens is that they call it the diamond ring. You know what I'm talking about? Say the diamond ring. It's the last little sliver of direct sunlight and it looks like a ring with a diamond on it.
[00:28:55] You see the last bit of the glory of the sun obscured by the moon.
[00:29:03] But then when that happens, the moon covers the sun completely. What appears is an aspect of the glory of the sun that was there the whole time. But you couldn't see it. You can only see it because the sun was covered, which is the corona, which is that ring, the shining ring that you could look at with the unaided, without glasses or filters.
[00:29:29] But here's what I want to get to.
[00:29:34] But at that moment when you see the corona and it's shining and you're just, you're awestruck at the beauty and the magnitude of something, this celestial event. At that moment, what's, where's the moon?
[00:29:48] At that moment, the moon is, you know what it is? It's a black disk. It's gone. You can't even see it.
[00:29:55] It has disappeared because it is now overlaying the sun.
[00:30:03] It is black in comparison to the sun because it is the sun is backlighting the moon. The moon is just a black disk.
[00:30:13] So at that moment during the eclipse, you know what the moon is? It has no glory.
[00:30:20] None. It's gone.
[00:30:24] Why is it gone?
[00:30:25] It's gone because of its proximity to the sun.
[00:30:31] The sun's glory completely overshadows, pardon the pun, completely overshadows the glory of the moon to the point that the glory of the moon, which just 12 hours earlier, only 12 hours earlier, was shining brightly, is now gone.
[00:30:51] The moon, once glorious in his own right, is now black in comparison to the sun. All his glory is nothing in comparison to the sun.
[00:31:03] Look at verse five.
[00:31:06] Isaiah is seeing, I don't know if the Lord transported him up to heaven to where God's throne is, but whatever happened, Isaiah saw this vision of the Lord. He went into, as it were, the throne room where God himself was, and he saw the seraphim and he heard what they said and he described them and his response, it was like the eclipse. It was sucked out of his body.
[00:31:34] It wasn't volitional, it wasn't on purpose. Isaiah sees the Lord and he says, woe is me, for I am undone.
[00:31:48] Undone means. It means I am destroyed. The word woe means cursed. It means cursed.
[00:31:58] Keep reading there. Look what it says. Because I am a man. Here's verse five. Why did Isaiah say, woe is me? He said that because I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.
[00:32:18] So here you have Isaiah. He might have thought he was a good guy. He was a prophet of God.
[00:32:26] He was in the 1% of God's servants. You might say Isaiah was a man who was faithful to God. You might say Isaiah was like the moon in its glory, his goodness, his faithfulness, his righteousness, or however he lived, he was a prophet of God. After all. It was shining at night when he wasn't near the sun. But the moment that Isaiah came near the almighty and he saw the Lord as he really was, and he heard those crying out, holy, holy, holy. He was instantly blackened.
[00:33:06] And the knowledge of his sin was right in front of his face. Because of the glory of God, which in this case, we was primarily God's holiness. He hears them cry, holy, holy, holy. And his response is, look at me. I am black like the sun. When it eclipses the moon, when it eclipses the sun, that which had glory has none. Now, because of its being, it's being overtaken by the glory of the sun and the Lord, the Lord's glory, the Lord's holiness, the Lord's righteousness. Listen.
[00:33:48] Makes all of our righteousness as black.
[00:33:53] Please listen to me.
[00:33:56] You see, we have a tendency.
[00:34:00] We're like the moon of the stars.
[00:34:03] We compare ourselves with the glory of these things. We look at our. And by glory, I mean our goodness and our righteousness. And we look at ourselves and we, we look at ourselves compared to another person and we say, well, I'm not like that person. Or, you know, well, you know, I don't say and do things that they do. Or, you know, we always like to compare ourselves with each other. Like we might compare, well, this planet, there's Saturn and there's Jupiter and there's Venus. And that's the way we compare the glory of the two. And we compare our glory between each other. And we think that's how we judge ourselves.
[00:34:38] That's how we judge ourselves. I am a good person because I am not as bad as x.
[00:34:46] I am a good person because I am not as bad as y.
[00:34:51] See, we are setting that person as a standard. We're comparing the stars.
[00:34:59] But remember, the standard of comparison is not the other stars or the other people. It is God himself.
[00:35:12] And when you liken to the sun, when you approach the Lord, remember heaven. Heaven. Heaven is God's throne, right? Heaven is where God is.
[00:35:24] When you approach that, you have to understand that whatever goodness you might think you have is going to go away. It is just goodness in comparison to other people. But if you're gonna go to God's heaven, you're gonna have to see yourself as you really are in God's sight and in comparison to him.
[00:35:46] Do you see this?
[00:35:48] And when, if you like Isaiah, ever get a glimpse of how God truly is, his glory and his holiness? And really what I'm talking about right now is holiness.
[00:36:00] We think of God as good and God is good. I already said that. Right?
[00:36:05] But you know what? Even above that, God is holy.
[00:36:09] God doesn't allow his goodness to cause him to do evil.
[00:36:14] He is holy, perfectly holy. And as long as we compare our goodness and our own righteousness with other people, we can tell ourselves, well, I'm pretty glorious. I mean, I'm almost as nice as Jupiter. I'm almost as nice as Mars. I'm almost as nice as the other. The stars that are out there. We can compare our glory, our goodness with one another. But the moment that eclipse happens and that moon approaches the sun, it loses all of its glory. And listen, this is exactly what the Lord wants us to see.
[00:36:49] Compared to him, we have no glory.
[00:36:54] We have no goodness.
[00:36:56] We are black.
[00:36:58] This is what Isaiah said, I am undone. Woe is me. He says, why? Because I am unclean. I am full of sin. Do you see yourself full of sin? Do you see yourself as unclean? Do you see yourself black?
[00:37:18] Or do you think of yourself as a good person, not as bad as others doing? Okay, I have some faults, but all in all, I'm probably okay.
[00:37:35] Listen, when it comes time for you and I to stand before God, we will not be standing in comparison with the other stars. We will be standing in comparison to the Son himself.
[00:37:53] And what we are will be known. And what we are will be like the moon in the eclipse, black, no glory, none.
[00:38:03] What we think of as righteousness. You all know this verse, but we are all as an unclean thing. This is actually from the book of Isaiah. But we are all as an unclean thing.
[00:38:15] And all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
[00:38:21] We think we're doing good and righteous. We think we're pretty good. And the Lord approves of us. And we're good people. And the Lord says, you're not. You need to look at me. By looking at the Lord, you realize there is no glory.
[00:38:37] Let me say something.
[00:38:42] It is for this reason.
[00:38:45] Because people have never compared themselves. And seen themselves in light of who God is.
[00:38:53] That people profess to know Jesus, but are not converted.
[00:38:59] Because they came to God to give him their goodness.
[00:39:06] Instead of coming to God with no goodness.
[00:39:11] Now, what are you talking about?
[00:39:13] Hold your place here. Look at John, chapter nine.
[00:39:16] I'll look at two verses really quick.
[00:39:22] John 939.
[00:39:30] The Lord Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees. Who are the people who are most righteous of them all outwardly righteous. They had. They were religious. They did all the works.
[00:39:41] Verse 39 of John nine says this. For judgment, I am come into this world.
[00:39:48] That they which see might not. They which see not. I'm sorry. That they would see not might see. And that they which see might be made blind. What is he talking about? Keep reading. And some of the pharisees which were with him. Heard these words and said unto him. Are we blind? Also?
[00:40:07] Jesus said unto them, if ye were blind, ye should have no sin. But now ye say, we see.
[00:40:18] Therefore your sin remaineth.
[00:40:22] See? These pharisees were saying, no, we're good. We see.
[00:40:26] We're not blind. We see, we're good. We keep the law. We do the works. We're good. We've got glory. And the Lord says, as long as you think that your sin remaineth.
[00:40:37] Because you have not yet seen. That you are black like the moon in the eclipse. That you have no glory to boast of. If that's not it, look at mark, chapter two.
[00:40:49] Look at mark, chapter two, verse number 17.
[00:41:07] Or verse 16.
[00:41:10] It says this. And when the scribes and pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners. They said unto his disciples, how is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners? You know what? I'm glad the Lord does that. But, you know, everybody thinks that this is the Lord. Basically saying, oh, yeah, yeah. You just do whatever you want. Everything's fine. Jesus will eat with you. No, no, no, no.
[00:41:32] The Lord loves sinners. That's because that's the only kind there are.
[00:41:37] If he didn't love sinners and eat with sinners, he would never love or eat with anyone.
[00:41:43] But look at what he says on the heels of that. And when Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, they that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick.
[00:41:55] I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
[00:42:01] You see that?
[00:42:03] Have you ever seen yourself as sick?
[00:42:13] Listen, many, many people, the vast majority of people operate in religion based on this fact.
[00:42:23] If I do good, and I'm a good person, God will accept me. And the Lord is trying to tell us that's not the way it is.
[00:42:32] You must see yourself as you truly are. Compared to the Lord there is, you have no goodness, you have no righteousness, and you have no glory to boast of. Because compared to God's glory, which is the standard, you are black and I am black.
[00:42:55] In this terminology here the Lord says, they that are whole have no need of the physician. They think they're whole, but they're sick. It's the ones that see that they're sick. It's the ones that see that they're sinful. They see they're hopeless. They see they're condemned. And listen, as long as we delude ourselves in our own righteousness, thinking that God must receive us on that we are ignorant of God's righteousness and his holiness, we think God's gonna just let everything slide. And he's not. He is thrice holy.
[00:43:38] But the same God. Listen now, the same God who is glorious and who is holy, holy, holy is the same one who invites dirty black sinners to come to him. Even Isaiah, Isaiah. He just fell down and he grieved at his. How dirty he was, knowing he was just sinner. Nothing to brag about. He's not bragging at all. He's I am undone. Woe is me. And the Lord said, he took a coal and he put it on his lips, and he says, basically, you're forgiven.
[00:44:18] Go back to Isaiah six. We're almost done. Isaiah six verses, verse seven says, and he laid the coal, laid it upon my mouth and said, lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged. In other words, Isaiah was sinful. He acknowledged he was sinful. He knew that he was black. He knew he was undone and cursed. He knew that. But when he came to the Lord and he confessed it, and he said, lord, I have nothing. I am black like you say. I am dirty. God said, I will forgive you, for a savior died for sinners, and he was forgiven. And it is only then that we read verse eight.
[00:45:10] Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then said I, here am I sin.
[00:45:18] You see, there is no service for the Lord until there is first a clear view of him and of yourself in light of him. That's what we call salvation.
[00:45:32] You see, as long as we're persuaded that we're righteous, that we're good people, we can never be saved.
[00:45:41] You know what? That trips up a lot of people.
[00:45:46] A lot of people do not want to admit that they're not good.
[00:45:52] They want to hold on to that one little bit of glory.
[00:45:57] And God says, you got to come to me sick.
[00:46:00] Black the moon with no glory.
[00:46:04] You know what happens? Here's the beauty of it. Not only will God forgive your sin, but you know that moon as it crosses there? Of course, the moon goes black.
[00:46:16] The moment the moon goes black and you see the corona in the eclipse, you forget all about the moon. What moon?
[00:46:23] Why? Because now the moon is haloed with glory. But it's not its own glory.
[00:46:30] It's the glory of the sun encircling the moon.
[00:46:36] The moon and its glory is blackened before the sun. But what do we see? We see the magnificent glory of the sun which frames the blackened moon. And nobody says, wow, look how beautiful the moon is. No, all they see is the sun, you see? And so when a person comes to God. Listen to me now. When a person comes to God and they say, God, I'm black. I'm just dirty, not a good person. We come to God and we say, but Lord, you, the Lord Jesus died for sinners and he took my place, and we trust in him.
[00:47:11] He. We are still black. We're just. We're sinners. We're forgiven, but we have no glory. But our glory becomes, is. Comes from God's own glory.
[00:47:24] And we're in Christ. And because we're in Christ, his glory shines out around us and nobody sees us anymore. You know what they see? They see the Lord.
[00:47:36] The moon is forgotten.
[00:47:38] But because of the position of the moon in relation to the sun, the sun's glory is visible, noticeable. You know what? You know what it does at that moment? Can't see the moon. Nobody cares about the moon. But because that moon is there, because that moon is black, everybody's eyes go to the heavens and they look at the son, and that's what a Christian is supposed to do.
[00:48:04] We have no glory. I just want to ask you this.
[00:48:10] Have you come to understand that you aren't good and that you are sick and that you need Jesus to forgive you and you have nothing to brag about or both about.
[00:48:27] Are you still trusting in the good things you do and your own righteousness? Or have you come to understand that you have none?
[00:48:38] That's the invitation.
[00:48:41] If you have come to see that you really you have been trusting in your own goodness and your persuasion that you're a good person, I want to invite you to come, and we will sit down with you and we'll show you from the Bible how that you can know for certain that your trust is resting solely in Jesus and what he did for you. Let's pray.
