Let Him Alone

Hosea 4:17: "Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone."


The Bible tells us that God will abandon you to your sinful choices if you continue in them. If you choose not to accept His salvation, He will allow you to go on in your sin: but there is a catch: God gives you the freedom to choose to sin, and even engage in the filthiewst of immorality, but He will not let you choose the consequences of your choices. In Galatians 6:7 and 8, the Apostle Paul says, "Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap coorruption; but he that soweth of the Spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting. " When God abandons a man to his immoral lifestyle, that man is headed for disaster.

I. First, we see that when God leaves you alone, He is judging you. We see this from God's dealings with the nation of Israel. After Moses and Joshua, the nation was ruled by judges, of whom the last and greatest was Samuel. Then came the United Kingdom, ruled by kings Saul, David, and Solomon. Solomon made bad choices of wives, and became the first king to allow their idols to be worshipped. After him the nation divided into the Northern Kingdom, which was sometimes called Ephraim, and the Southern Kingdom, called Judah. Ephraim had not even one good, godly king. Every one of their 19 kings worshipped idols, and the people followed their leaders. They were destroyed by the Assyrian Empire in 722 B. C. Judah had five of their 19 kings that were godly. They followed the Lord, and while they ruled, idols were not worshipped as much, and God's prophets were listened to more. Judah lasted until Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B. C. - over 100 years longer.

The Prophet Hosea prophecied near the end of the Northern Kingdom. In his book, chapter 4, verse 17, he said, Ephraim is joined to idols. Let him alone. They chose not to worship and obey the Lord, but to worship the gods of Canaan in addition to the Lord. So God let them go on in their own wickedness and degeneration right along with the Canaanites. In this verse, God was telling the Southern Kingdom, "Don't go there: Stay away from their influence."


Years later, Jesus spoke the parable of the Prodigal Son. It can be found in Luke 15. Look at verses 11-16: "And he said, A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his father; Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto him his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in the land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country: and he sent him into the fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him."


This boy took his inheritance while his father was still alive. Luke 15 tells us he wasted his money until a famine came and he had no more. Then he would up alone in a hog pen. In the Old Testament, working with unclean animals, especially pigs, was one of the worst things a Jew could do. But that is what the boy's sin had reduced him to.


Secondly, we see that when God leaves you alone, you are alone in your own sin. In Romans 1:21-28, Paul says, "Because that, when they knew God, thy glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing theselves to be wise, they became fools. And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an imaghe made like to corrupible man, and to birds, and to fourfooted beasts, and to creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleannes through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themsellves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up to vile affections: for even their women did change the use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which is meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.


The heart of man is unchanged. This world is a cesspool of degeneration and violence.


In Hosea's time, sin was rampant. Idol worship predominated over the proper worship of the true God. Canaanite worhip involved ritual prostitution, so their places of worship were do different than whorehouses. Worship of false gods resulted in false living. Injustice, violence and ungodlinness prevailed.


The Lord's attitude is well-shown in Psalm 81:8-16: Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me; There shall be no strange god in thee: neither shalt thou worship any strange god. I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth and I will fill it. but my people would not hearken to my voice: and Israel would none of me. So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels. O that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries. The haters of the Lord should have submitted themselves unto him: but their time should have endured for ever. He should have fed them also with the finest of wheat: with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied them.


God left them alone. He wanted to bless Israel, but because of their sin and idolatry, He left them to their own devices. He left them to live in their own sinful lusts. Instead of having victory over their enemies, they had defeat. Instead of receiving the submission of the idolaters, they were forced to submit to them. Instead of having food, they wound up starving. This is what happened when God left them alone.


His father left the Prodigal Son alone, and he wasted his money on riotous, ungodly living. He probably got drunk every night, nad the Lord only knows what else he did when he had money. Instead of being at home witha wealthy father who cared for him, inm an uncaring world, he wound up feeding pigs for a living.



III. Finally, we see that when God leaves you alone, you have a choice to make. God made people, not robots. You may choose to sin or not to sin, and God will honor your choice. You may choose to live your life as a drunken, drug-abusing degenerate if that is what you will, and God will leave you alone to do so. But here is the problem you will have: God will not let you escape the consequenses of your bad choices. You will reap what you sow.


Ephraim fell to Assyria. They became slaves in that empire. A few hundred years later, by the time of Christ, all Israel had been under the domination of the Roman Empire for about 150 years. Because Israel sinned and would not follow God, they were left with the consequences of that choice, one of which was the loss of their inheritance fom God.


The Prodigal Son also lost his inheritance. He sinned away his wealth. But at least he did make one right choice: He went home. He returned to his father. Look at Luke 15:17-24: "And when he came to himself, he said, "How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no longer worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.' And he arose, and came to his father. But when he wasyet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." But the Father said his servants, "Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him: and put ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it: and let us eat and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." And they began to be merry.


Alone in the hog pen, says Luke 15:17, he came to himself. Arriving home, he confessed in verse 21, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight and am no longer worthy to be called thy son." His father rejioced and called for a celebration. The best robe. A ring for his hand. The fatted calf. Why rejoice? Verse 24: "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."


As the father waited patiently for the prodigal Son, so God patiently waits for the sinner to come home. He sent His Son to die to save you from your sins. He loved you that much. you might have the most degenerate lifestyle imaginable, but God wants you to came to yourself. He wants you to come to Him, even as unworthy as you are, and be made His son or daughter. You don't have to be alone in sin any more. There is an infinitely betterr choice. In Lukew 15:10, Jesus said, "There is joy in thhe presence of the angels over one sinner the repenteth." Sinner, make the angels rejoice! Come home.


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I Saw the Lord in His Holiness

Please turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 6:1-9. That is the text for this sermon.

There was an incident that occurred while I was living in Michigan. At one o'clock one morning, I did not know why I woke up, but I felt strongly compelled to pray. A persistent feeling of something evil permeated the air. I prayed for about an hour, not understanding why I was praying. Then, exhausted, I feel asleep.

A few hours later, I did the things I routinely did every morning. I fed my cats, took a bath, made a cup of coffee, and turned on the television. It was a day I doubt any American will ever forget - September 11, 2001. I turned the TV on just in time to to see the plane hit the second tower of the World Trade Center.

I stayed very close to my TV that day. My heart went out to the people of New York, who were experiencing incomprehensible trauma. But when the plane hit the Pentagon, it became personal. My brother John sometimes works there. To say I was alarmed is putting it very mildly. Six anxious hours later, I learned that John called our father in Florida and told him he was a mile from them Pentagon when the plane hit. (Later John asked me to pray for the family of one of his best friends, who was killed at that time.) Relief that he was safe was tempered by sadness over the loss of life, and anger toward those who had murdered all those people.

There are those who would have the people of America, especially the Christians, cower in fear in the face of terrorism. this we must not do. Certain misguided people think they will be martyrs if thy kill themselves and others for their religion. They think murder is their ticket to paradise. That is not true. A martyr is by definition a witness for his faith, not a killer for it. What these people are doing is nothing but committing murder and suicide, and when they face God, they will be judged. But the religious leaders who mislead them into committing murder will face a far greater judgment, and a far worse punishment in hell.

Satan has been allowed to unleash terrorism in America, but Christians must have courage, and not give in to fear. As Proverbs 29:25 says, "The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe." If we truly trust the Lord, we will not need to fear any man. According to Proverbs 9:10, it is "the fear of the Lord" that "is the beginning of wisdom." If we reverence God and follow His ways, we will have no fear of what any man can do to us, as a nation or individually. If we believe God is in control, there is no reason to fear anyone.

We must not fear man, but we must reverence God in His holiness. As we look at Isaiah's vision in chapter 6:1-9, I want us to catch our own vision of God's holiness as it really is. First, we will see in verses 1-4 that Isaiah saw the Lord in His holiness, and not as people usually conceive it. Next, in verse 5, we will see that Isaiah saw himself as the sinner he really was before God, and learned he could not measure up to the standard of His holiness. Then in verses 6 and 7, we will see Isaiah's sin purged, and finally in 8 and 9, we will watch as the Lord calls him and sends him out as His Prophet.

I. The first and most important thing - Isaiah saw the holiness of God. He saw it as it really is, and not as men ordinarily conceive it. This can clearly be seen in verses 1-3: "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 he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried to another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

Holiness is a concept that is hardly understood or even considered today. We live in an age of extremely lax morality in which almost anything goes. It is an age in which Christians and others who wish to live decent moral lives are condemned by their peers as holier-than-thou Legalists or Pharisees. Of course, it must be admitted that there is a lot of Legalism and Phariseeism in the church these days. The Bible, in no uncertain terms, condemns a holier-than-thou attitude.In the Gospel of Matthew 5:20, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself said, "That except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven."

As Isaiah saw, God is truly holy. He will deal with the self-righteous in His own time and in His own way. But this is beside the point: God will not accept as an excuse for your sin and immorality what others say and do. Others will not pay for your sin. Unless you accept by faith the payment of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross for your sin, you must bear your own judgment before God and pay for your own sin in hell. Others must pay for their own sin.

I fear for this generation. We do not understand the holiness of God. Those who say, "You cannot legislate morality" are wrong. Every time a law is passed by a legislature, some kind of ethical principle is legislated, whether good or bad. But that is beside the point: God has already legislated all the morality needed to guide our lives on earth, to be found in His Word, the Bible.

Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, seated on a throne. The name for God here is Adonai, which in Hebrew means Master or Ruler. He is the Master and Lord of all. There is no one even close to being his equal in power, might or brilliance; because He created all and rules all. All sovereignty is His, and His alone.

His train filled the temple, and above it stood seraphim, "burning ones." These are referred to in Psalm 104:4, which is quoted in Hebrews 1:7. Referring to to God, the Psalm says, He maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flame of fire. The Hebrews passage tells us that the One Who made the seraphim is the Lord Jesus Christ.

These are angels of fire, burning in their love for God, and burning in their hatred for sin. They cried out, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory."

Holy is the Father.

Holy is the Son.

Holly is the Spirit.

God is holy, utterly separate from sin, and He will not share His glory with any of His created beings.

The scene in verse 4, "And the posts of the door moved at the voice of Him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke," is reminiscent of what happened when Jonathan Edwards, on July 9th, 1741, preached his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The pillars of the church shook, and people violently seized them or the pews, desperately trying to prevent themselves from falling into hell. This is a picture of what Isaiah was going through when he saw the Lord. Isaiah was not thrilled at seeing the holiness of God up close and personal: He was scared!


II. This brings me to my second point: In seeing the holiness of God, Isaiah saw himself as the sinner God sees. He saw himself as God saw him and as He sees the rest of us, and from seeing His holiness, he knew he could not measure up to God's standards. Unlike many people, Isaiah had the good sense to be afraid. In verse 5, he tells us, "Then said I, Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell with a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."


Isaiah was one of the greatest prophets the world has ever known. He was without question a true man of God, or he would not have been entrusted with this vision or the true prophetic ministry he had. Yet he knew better than anyone else that he was a filthy sinner, a man of unclean lips. I am no sure whether this was Isaiah's salvation experience. It may have been.


Isaiah compared his righteousness with the holiness of God and saw that he was sinful and unholy. This is the only right judgment to make. As he stated later, in 64:6, "All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags." God's judgment is the only one that really matters. Comparing yourself with another sinner might make you feel good, but no real good ever comes
of it. That standard of comparison is totally useless. The Apostle Paul, in II Corinthians 10:12 demonstrates the absolute uselessness of all such comparisons when he says, "For we dare not make ourselves of that number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves; but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise."


Sinners comparing themselves with other sinners will not make them righteous before God, because they are still sinners. Throughout the Bible, God's standard of holiness is Himself. He mean it when He says, "be ye holy, for I am holy."


The reason the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth was because we are sinners, born to rebel, and cannot possibly meet God's standard of holiness. God the Father sent God the Son, Who had come to meet the standard for us. The Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, is God, but also human. He is the One Isaiah prophecies of in chapter 53: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."




III. Thirdly, we see from the text that Isaiah saw his sin was purged. Verses 6 and 7 of our text tell us, "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 thy iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged."

Isaiah complained of being a man of unclean lips who dwelt with a people of unclean lips, and the times in which Isaiah lived were probably much like our own. Our language is covered with filthy speech. The world is full of cursing, taking the Lord's Name in vain, smutty jokes and innuendo. It permeates our culture. Hollywood movies are full of blasphemy and sex talk. What is needed today is a few live coals in our mouths to purge away our sins of speech. At the very least, I'd like to see a few bars of soap used to wash out the mouths of a few of those so-called "entertainers" whose filthy and offensive language defile the airwaves.

Are we really "one nation under God?" American language does not show it. By the way: "Jesus Christ" is not a cuss word! He is our Savior and Lord, and you will not be held guiltless if you take His Name in vain! Christian, you must clean up your act, and take a stand against filthy language and blasphemy.


Your sin must be purged by the cross of Calvary. Any other means of redemption is false. There is no other way. Every altar the Jews built at the direction of God was for sacrifices typical of the greatest one ever made; the sacrifice of Messiah on the cross. A hot coal from the altar was a picture of that redemption that was to come. Only the fire of God can purge sin.. Old Testament sacrifices were taken by fire. in the Scriptures the Holy Spirit is often symbolized by fire. As the sacrifices symbolized the future atonement by the Lord Jesus, so in symbolism grace was shown to Isaiah when the burning coal touched his lips. From then on , he would be a Prophet of God, and His Spirit would direct his speech.


Isaiah would never be the same again. If God has truly purged your sin,you will never be the same again. If you say the Lord has saved you, and your life has not changed, you are a liar. If you can be like a pig and wallow in the filth of sin as you did before, something is very wrong with your "salvation." If there is no repentance, there is no salvation. As John the Baptist commanded in Matthew 3:8, the people must "bring forth fruits meet for (Appropriate to) repentance." In Matthew 7:20, Jesus said of false prophets, "By their fruits ye shall know them." One who claims to be saved, yet continues to habitually bear the rotten fruit of sin and the works of the flesh, is not saved, but is a liar.




IV. My final point is, Isaiah saw the Lord send him out as his prophet. Verses 8 and 9 read, 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, and tell this people, hear ye indeed, but understand not, and see ye indeed, but perceive not."


As I said before, I am not sure whether or not this was Isaiah's salvation experience (it is possible it was), but it was certainly a call. For Isaiah, it was is call to the prophetic ministry. For the nation of Israel, it was a wake-up call. Isaiah did his job as God's Prophet, warning the nation of the holiness of God and of sin and its consequences. His prophecies showed that people their Messiah, who would be the Savior of the world. Tragically, Israel stayed asleep.

Today America has many preachers great warning of the holiness of God and sin and its consequences. The story of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, and the gospel of His death, burial and resurrection, is told in pulpits, and on television and radio all across America and around the world. Yet the world is degenerating more and more into sin. American Christians are asleep, living like the rest of the world. They are in a stupor induced by entertainment, money, and luxury.

The church is sleeping and refuses to wake up. Beware for as Hebrews 23:29 tells us, "Our God is a consuming fire."


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