Watchman Radio Hour

David Schultz: Welcome to the Watchman Radio Hour, coming to you from Portland, Oregon, here in the beautiful Northwest. This is David Schultz, your announcer. The Watchman Radio Hour is a production of Watchman Radio Ministries International, an evangelistic ministry reaching out to the peoples of the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And now here is our speaker, Alex Dodson, to bring you this week's message from God's Word.

Alex Dodson: For our scripture reading today, let us turn to Isaiah chapter one, and we will read verses 21 and 22. Let us hear the Word of God. See how the faithful city has become a harlot. She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her, but now murderers. Your silver has become dross; your choice wine is diluted with water.

Our Father in heaven, we thank You for the Bible that You have given to us. We thank You that we can put our full confidence in everything that it says. And now, oh Father, as we come to study Your Word, we pray that You will send forth Your Holy Spirit in great convicting power. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

America has had some great revivals in the past. She recovered from times of spiritual and moral decay and became a righteous nation. She has fallen to low points but has come back. The Second Great Awakening at the beginning of the 19th century in America was a tremendous time of revival which lasted up to 50 years and has influenced the nation for much longer.

The First Great Awakening in the middle of the 18th century prepared a people for what lay ahead at the time of the revolution. The great revival of 1859 prepared the nation for the Civil War. In all of these revivals, righteousness and the acknowledgment of God in the affairs of the nation always resulted. Now we are living in a time of great spiritual and moral decline in this land.

God's judgment on the nation has already begun, though we refuse to see it. Will we continue in this decline, or will things change for the better? Will we become a more righteous nation in the future? Will we once again return to the God of our forefathers? All of that remains to be seen. We have sunk to a low that we have never reached before.

Only a tremendous outpouring of the Spirit of God can bring us back, and it is for that that we must constantly pray. We have become a wasteland of unrighteousness and moral decay. Our land is overgrown in thorns and briers. We are not what we once were, yet there is still hope. In Isaiah 32:13-20, it says, upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers.

Yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city, the fortress will be abandoned, the noisy city deserted, citadel and watchtower will become a wasteland forever, the delight of donkeys, a pasture for flocks, till the Spirit is poured upon us from on high. And the desert becomes a fertile field, and the fertile field seems like a forest. Justice will dwell in the desert and righteousness live in the fertile field.

The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever. My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest. When it haileth, it shall fall on the forest, and the city shall be in a low place. How blessed you will be, sowing your seed by every stream and letting your oxen and donkeys range free.

Here the prophet gives hope for a barren land. That hope comes only when God pours out His Spirit on that land. So we must not give up. We are living in very dark times. Our nation has declined to a point it has never seen before. We are deserting God, we are throwing off His laws, we are shaking our fist in His face. Yet things can change. A wicked nation can repent. We only have to remember Nineveh in the days of Jonah. They were wicked, but after Jonah preached, they repented.

Our text again is Isaiah one and verses 21 and 22 which again says, see how the faithful city has become a harlot. She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her, but now murderers. Your silver has become dross; your choice wine is diluted with water. We have become a nation that is fallen from righteousness. Our forefathers established a nation in righteousness. They acknowledged God and sought Him, but we are turning from all of that. We are going our own way, and that way will lead to destruction if we do not turn back.

Now let us see in the first place today that Judah and Jerusalem had turned away from God. The nation was no longer righteous. Though righteousness had dwelt there before, it had now left. Verse 21 says, see how the faithful city has become a harlot. She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her, but now murderers. Edward J. Young writes, when infidelity reigns in the heart in which righteousness once lodged, it will express itself in many ways.

One of these may have been idolatry, but since the following words seem to be explanatory, we may say that the presence of murderers and the general corruption of the state which has been described were all manifestations of this unfaithfulness. The word harlot is emphatic. And then he goes on to write, by judgment, we are to understand a condition of things in which the revealed will of God was positively realized. Calvin equates it with the word uprightness, included in the idea of the righteous administration of the righteous and just will of God.

Jerusalem used to be the home or the dwelling place of righteousness, in which it was a custom to find not a transient but permanent dwelling place. Judgment such as God would approve, together with a righteous condition of things and the resulting blessedness, were the former characteristics of the city. And then he writes, David was a man after God's own heart and so a type of the coming Messiah. In contrast with the present evil condition, the city at that time because of David's basic devotion to God could be called a city of righteousness.

Judah and Jerusalem had been a place of righteousness in times past compared to the present time. Keil and Delitzsch write, Jerusalem was once full of such right and righteousness was not merely there in the form of a hastily passing guest but had come down from above to take up her permanent abode in Jerusalem. She tarried there day and night as if it were her home. The prophet had in his mind the times of David and Solomon and also more especially the time of Jehoshaphat, about 150 years before Isaiah's appearance, who restored the administration of justice which had fallen into neglect since the closing years of Solomon's reign.

And the time of Rehoboam and Abijah to which Asa's reformation had not extended and reorganized it entirely in the spirit of the law. Compared to their former righteousness, they had now become a place for murderers. Keil and Delitzsch again say the contrast was glaring as possible since murder is the direct opposite, the most crying violation of righteousness. Matthew Henry writes, what the royal city had been, a faithful city, faithful to God and the interest of His kingdom among men, faithful to the nation and its public interests.

It was full of judgment; justice was duly administered upon the thrones of judgment, which were set there, the thrones of the house of David. Men were generally honest in their dealings and abhorred to do an unjust thing. Righteousness lodged in it, was constantly resident in their palaces and in all their dwellings, not called in now and then to serve a turn, but at home there. And then he goes on to write what it had now become. That beauteous, virtuous spouse was now debauched and become an adulteress. Righteousness no longer dwelt in Jerusalem.

Even murderers were unpunished and lived undisturbed there. Nay, the princes themselves were so cruel and aggressive that they had become no better than murderers. Once she had been a good wife but now had become a harlot. She had turned away from her God and followed her own way. John Calvin writes, how is the faithful city become an harlot? In order to make the rebuke more forceful and the crime of the people more shocking in having thus departed from God and from all uprightness, he cries aloud as if he had seen some monstrous thing.

And certainly it was a change fitted to awaken horror, that a nation that had been devoted to God and chosen to be a royal priesthood had now fallen from lofty piety to the lowest sink of wickedness. And then Calvin goes on to say it was full of judgment. He shows what fruits were produced by that allegiance to God at a former period. We may take judgment as but another name for uprightness, or if it be thought preferable, we may call it justice when men render to every man his own and judgment when the cause of the innocent is defended and the poor and needy are avenged.

For such is the use of the words in scripture when they are employed together. But as they are not perfectly connected in this passage, I consider judgment to denote uprightness so that the same thing is twice expressed with the purpose of explaining it more fully. She was once full of justice or judgment or righteousness, but now she had lost all of that. She is now become unrighteous in the sight of God. And then let us see that she had lost her purity.

Verse 22 says, your silver has become dross; your choice wine is diluted with water. No longer was she like silver but had become waste like dross. No longer was she like pure wine but now she was diluted; her purity was gone. Young writes, silver represents all that is noble and pure. How valuable to the city were virtuous princes and rulers. The thought is not that here and there specks appear upon the metal but that the metal itself has turned into dross. It is no longer silver but its opposite, the word dross, which is plural, perhaps for the sake of indicating intensity, denotes what is removed from metal.

It is the baser material which is separated from the pure metal by means of smelting. The metal that was so pure that light could find it in a clear reflection as well as the fine wine of the land was destroyed, the wine having been weakened by water. And then he writes, Jerusalem once possessed something desirable represented by silver and choice wine. A great change, however, has come over the city. The silver and choice wine are gone, and in their place are dross and wine mixed with water.

The city had fallen from its purity of the past and she was nothing like she used to be. Keil and Delitzsch write, the silver had now become dross or base metal thrown off from silver in the process of refining, refuse left in smelting. This pure, strong and costly wine was now adulterated with water, and therefore its strength and odor were weakened and its worth was diminished. The present was nothing but the dross and shadow of the past. She had fallen from what she once was.

Now let us see in the second place that this nation has fallen from its former righteousness. We were a nation that once honored God. We were a nation where righteousness prevailed. We were not perfect, but we sought God and honored Him. Halliday and Gregory described in their book, The Church in America and Its Baptisms of Fire, published in 1895, they talk about three great revival periods in America. They write, during the last century and a half, there have been three such movements or eras of revival extending to a greater or less degree over this country but reaching Great Britain also.

These may be distinguished as that of the middle of the 18th century represented by the Wesleys and Whitefield in England and by Edwards, Whitefield, and the Tennents in this country. The revival of 1740, as it has been called, which infused a new spiritual life into the church. Secondly, that of the close of the last and the opening of the present century represented by Dr. Griffin, President Dwight, and the elder Mills, and in its later phase by Nettleton, Finney, and others which led to the organization of the great agencies for the spread of the Gospel and for reform.

Thirdly, that of the middle of this century represented by well-nigh all the ministers and churches of 1857 to 60, and later by such evangelists as Moody, Mills, and others and by the Salvation Army which called out the hitherto comparatively inactive lay element and led to its worldwide organization into various societies for Christian work. Halliday and Gregory refer to the First Great Awakening saying, the Great Awakening in New England in the 18th century under Jonathan Edwards was one of the most remarkable religious movements of modern times.

They go on to say a revival of equal results today in the territory included in the Great Awakening would number millions of converts. These great revivals that occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries in America helped to mold this nation into the righteous nation that she became. Our forefathers honored God in His law. In his inaugural address on April the 30th, 1789, George Washington said, we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained.

Washington by so saying endorsed God's moral law and His rule over us as a nation. In his Thanksgiving Proclamation on October the 3rd, 1789, Washington said that we may then unite most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the Great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations, especially such as have shown kindness to us, and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord, to promote the knowledge and practice of the true religion and virtue and the increase of science among them and us, and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Our forefathers saw this nation as under God, not separated from Him. They knew we were under God, and they acknowledged our dependence on Him. And then let us see that we are now a nation that is turned against God. Thomas Jefferson writes, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever. And Abraham Lincoln said, it behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Today we are separating God from the public sector, unlike our forefathers who acknowledged Him in the public sector. We are sinking into sexual immorality further than any previous generation. We are making up our own laws and deserting biblical morality. We have rejected the biblical morality of our forefathers. We are inventing our own morality thinking everything is okay, but God will not withhold His judgment from a nation that rejects Him and His law.

And so in the third place, let us see a call to repentance. There is a great need for revival in this land. We need a visitation from heaven like the ones of long ago in the great revivals of the 18th and 19th centuries in this country. They are long forgotten by most, and many are totally ignorant that such revivals ever visited this land, but they did. We need another visitation from heaven on this wicked nation before it is too late. In John 16:8 it says, when He comes, talking about the Holy Spirit, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment.

What we need is conviction of sin. We need to know our sins and to know that God is displeased with our sinful condition. And then we need to repent of those sins and turn back to God. We need to turn back to the righteousness of our fathers. Despite the lies of revisionist historians, our history tells us of leaders who acknowledged God and sought righteousness in this nation. William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States of America was the grandson of Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the father of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States.

President William Henry Harrison served only one month in office before he died. In his inaugural address, March 4, 1841, he left this admonition for America. I deem the present occasion sufficiently important and solemn to justify me in expressing to my fellow citizens a profound reverence for the Christian religion and a thorough conviction that sound morals, religious liberty, and a just sense of religious responsibility are essentially connected with all true and lasting happiness.

In delivering his farewell address on March the 4th, 1837, President Andrew Jackson said, you have the highest of human trust committed to your care. Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number and has chosen you as the guardians of freedom to preserve it for the benefit of the human race. May He who holds in His hands the destinies of nations make you worthy of the favors He has bestowed and enable you with pure hearts and hands and sleepless vigilance to guard and defend to the end of time the great charge He has committed to your keeping.

And speaking of the Christian religion, Thomas Jefferson said, deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support. Today we are trying to cast off the Christian religion and confine it within the walls of a church building. We have kicked it out of the public square, yet this was not the way of our forefathers. We need to turn back and get the heart of our fathers again. We need to cast off our own invented morality and catch hold of the biblical morality of our forefathers.

We need to turn back to their God. We need to repent of our great sins and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Nations. In Psalm two, verses 10 through 12 it says, therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for His wrath can flare up in a moment, but blessed are all who take refuge in Him. We need to take to heart in our nation these words of Psalm two. Our leaders need to turn to the Lord, and our people do too.

But what about you? Your sins are great, and you need to repent at once and come to the Lord Jesus Christ and receive Him as your Lord and Savior and begin to follow Him in your life. Come right now before it is too late. Turn around at once and flee to the Savior of the world. Our Father in heaven, we do pray for this nation today. We know that we have fallen far from the righteousness of our forefathers. We know that our nation is deserting You day by day. Our sins are great; they are piled up to heaven. Oh Lord, we pray that You would have mercy upon this land and that You would pour out Your Spirit in great convicting power all over this nation. And we pray that the nation as a whole will realize its great sins and that the nation as a whole will turn around and repent and turn back to You. And we ask these things in Christ's name, amen.

Before our announcer closes the broadcast, I would like to bring to your attention our Children's Fund. We are helping children in Nepal, India, and Kenya. We need your help with this ongoing project. Would you prayerfully consider giving to our Children's Fund? You may give online through our website at watchmanradio.org. You may also text us at 503-841-9643. That's 503-841-9643, and indicate your desire to give to our Children's Fund. Also our announcer will give you our mailing address at the close of the program. We can help one child with just $35 per month. Your gift of any amount is appreciated. Thank you.

David Schultz: We hope this week's broadcast has been a blessing to you. If you have any questions about Mr. Dodson's message, please write us. You may email us at info@watchmanradio.org. Our mailing address is Watchman Radio Ministries International, Post Office Box 13251, Portland, Oregon, 97213. That's Watchman Radio Ministries International, Post Office Box 13251, Portland, Oregon, 97213. You may listen to this broadcast at any time on the internet at www.oneplace.com. In the list of ministries, just select the Watchman Radio Hour. This week's program and previous programs are always available there for listening. Our web address is www.watchmanradio.org. That's W-A-T-C-H-M-A-N radio.org. www.watchmanradio.org. For Alex Dodson and the Watchman Radio staff, this is David Schultz. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.