HOLINESS AND GOD'S WAY
HOLINESS AND GOD’S WAY
September 15, 2017
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Friday night I had a dream (9/15/17). I was to preach Isaiah, Chapter 1 and preach on Holiness and God’s Way.
Isaiah 1:2: Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, My people do not consider.
Isaiah chapter 1 is the judgment to come and the separation of the remnant. Remember the dream I had in 2013 of the cottage in the cucumber patch (Isa. 1:8). It was a dream about Eastgate being a remnant. Within six months we were moved from that location to Willow Fork.
In this dream 9/15/17 I was preaching to a large crowd of people. Once I declared that the people must walk in Holiness and God’s Way, my preaching became a blur. When I finished preaching, people left angry or they came to me and said it was a powerful sermon.
Some people will turn to God with their whole heart and others will walk their own
way.
Isa. 1:28: The destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the LORD shall be consumed.
“None shall quench the fire of judgment. No man could do this who had not known God at one time and who did not have Him to forsake; so this clearly refers to backsliders who reject Him to the point of being destroyed. Men are warned not to forsake God.” (Dake)
This translates to the Gospel that we are to meet God’s requirements of salvation: repent, confess sins, believe the gospel in our heart; then God will do His part of forgiving and make us a new creation in Christ. There is a washing of the Water of the Word which the sinner must apply to himself, to be born again.
1. Jerusalem like an unfaithful wife, haf become a harlot. 1:21
2. It has become a den of murders instead of a center of righteousness and justice.
3. Its silver has become dross, having lost its pureness 1:22
4. Its wine is mixed with water – meaning the Holy Spirit is watered down.
5. Her princes are rebellious, are themselves lawless and unruly. 1:23
6. They are companions of thieves and tolerate robber bands for reward or part of
the spoil.
- They love gifts, so cater to the rich for material gain.
- They mete out justice by deciding in favor of those who can give them rewards.
- They do not give justice to the orphans and those in need.
- They do not mete out justice to the widows that come before them.
Dream 618/13): The location was the pasture of Little White Church. The pasture was full of cucumber vines. I saw our church and the scripture in Isaiah 1: 8-9 was written out. Our church is a remnant like the cottage (place of shelter, shade, booth, protection) in the vineyard, a lodge (night-lodge) in a garden of cucumbers.” (cucumbers = melons-Nu. 11:5)
Isa. 1:8-9: “The daughter of Zion is as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like Gomorrah.”
Matthew Henry: “Isaiah comforts himself with the consideration of a remnant that should be the monuments of divine grace and mercy, notwithstanding this general corruption and desolation. The Lord of hosts left unto them a very small remnant, that were kept pure from the common apostasy and kept safe and alive from the common calamity. This is quoted by the Apostle Paul in Romans 9:27, and applied to those few of the Jewish nation who is his time embraced Christianity. The Remnant is often a small one. Multitude is no mark of the true church. Christ’s is a little flock. It is good for a people who have been saved from utter ruin to look back and see how near they were to it, to see how much they owe to a few good men that stood in the gap, and that grace was given by a good, God, who left them these good men.”
Symbolism:
- Zion is symbolic of the sacrifice of Christ Jesus for the New Testament Church. Heb. 12:22: You have come to mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn…
In the Old Testament, Zion was the place of sacrifice of the religious (priestly) and political (kingly) center of David’s Kingdom.
2. The Hebrew word for “daughter” is bath. It is taken from banah, which means “to build. It is the feminine form of ben, the Hebrew word for son.
3. Cottage: sukka = tabernacle; booth of Feast of Tabernacles; pavilion.
4. Vineyard---a field set with plants of noble quality as a cultivated garden, an orchard, an olive garden.
5. Lodge: A booth in which garden keepers lodge.
6. Cucumbers: Vigor, fitness; affluence; confidence; refreshing, (negative=lusts of Egypt).
7; Besieged city---The Lord of hosts left unto them a small remnant that were kept pure from the common apostasy and kept safe and alive from the common calamity. Ro. 9L27: Isaiah also cries concerning Israel. Though the number of the children of Israel are as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved. (Paul is here speaking of the remnant of the Jewish nation who received Christ and became Christians.)
We must always seek to exercise simple faith in the wisdom of God’s dealings. He does all things well, and nothing but what is well. Nothing can come wrong to you that comes from his hand.
In verses 2:3, we meet Jesus Christ as the Owner of All:
1:2-3: I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib; but Israel does not know. My people do not consider.
Wickedness has infiltrated every area of Zion, but the call for a willingness to reason with Jehovah will whiten the pollution.
1:4: a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters; they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger, they are gone away backward.
In verse 5-7, apostasy is illustrated by the figure of a diseased body. Because of God’s punishment, the kingdom remnant was the only hope against complete annihilation. Israel and Judah had rejected the Lord and he rejected their empty worship.
Why should you be stricken any more? You will revolt more and more; the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and purifying sores; they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as over-thrown by strangers.
“This is a description of the progression in judgment of what is happening in the United States.” (written b y Carolyn Sissom in 2013).
1: 8-9: “The daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Except the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we should been as Sodom, and we should have been like to Gomorrah.”
In the United States from 2008-2016. Christians who were standing for the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman as Holy in the sight of God were besieged with laws and doctrines of devils that persecuted our faith in the Way of God and the Holiness of God.
This scripture is quoted by Paul in Romans 9:29: “As Isaiah said before, 'Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have been as Sodom and like Gomorrah.'”
Isaiah is exposing the sin of homosexuality in Judah, which is in rebellion against the very image of God.
Genesis 1: 26-27: God said, ‘Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them; and God blessed them, and God said them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion…
Isa. 1: 10: Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah.
In June 2013, the Lord called me to teach the Book of Isaiah. “We have to believe that though we awere a small remnant, (hidden as a cottage in a vineyard) that it was timely and imperative that we spoke, declared and proclaimed this word to this nation, the nations and the apostate church at that time. It is in obedience, expectancy and faith that I obey the Lord going forward.” (written by Carolyn Sissom in 2013)
Isa. 1:11-15: To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? says the Lord; I am full of the burned offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When you come to appear before Me, who has required this at your hand, to tread My courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination to Me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I can no longer endure. It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; they are a trouble to Me; I am weary to bear them. When you spread forth your hands I will hide My eyes from you; yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood.
The hands of government leaders and those who elected them in the United States are full of the blood of the unborn. It is absolute insanity to slaughter innocent babies who have done nothing right or wrong and call it justice for woman. This blood on the hands of our nation constitutes failure to care for the unborn who are without a doubt orphans (unloved and unwanted).
14 things in Isaiah – Chapter 1 that God is not able to endure by hypocrites: The Lord accepts a “holy” Temple or “holy” worship where the Lord is present. When Holiness departs, Holy departs also. It is a “Holy” altar when God accepts sacrifices or prayers from it. Petitions are “Holy” when offered by a people of holiness. Where He is, there is the “Holy.” He will not endure sacrifices or worship from immorality or a wrong motive.
Those who are perfect are the sincere---as opposed to the hypocritical. If any many offends not in word, the same is a perfect man. If you have attained the mastery over your tongue, you have made the greatest strides forward in the Kingdom.
The multitude of their sacrifices is their worship. There are four kinds of worship in the New Testament:
- Worship that is vain (Mt. 15:9).
- Worship that is ignorant (Acts. 17:23).
- Worship that is will worship (Col. 2:23).
- Worship that is in spirit and in truth (Jn. 4: 23-24).
Their suffering is a result of their sin, and yet they rebelled more and more. Their external acts of worship will not give them access to God. Their sins nullified their prayers and offerings so that God loathed them. He hated their practices, yet he loved His people and appealed to them to turn from their evil ways.
As ministers of the gospel, we must continue to preach, declare and proclaim the only approach to God is through the Blood of Jesus for the church, the nation and the leaders of this nation. We cannot back down.
Do not doubt, we are threatened. God’s true prophets will not be intimidated, nor will they back down at threats. The Lord will see us through. If I perish, I perish.
There are nine abominations in verses 16-17. We can compare with Galatians 5:22-23:
Isa. 1: 16-17: Wash, make yourself clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes, cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
James 1:27: Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Gal. 5:22-23: The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law.
Isa. 1: 18-23: Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you will be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.
By the LORD telling me to preach Isaiah chapter 1, we must consider that the judgment of being devoured with the sword (WAR) is now a real and present threat from North Korea. We know many have prophesied North Korea is not a threat. I do believe if America will repent and cry out to God, China will remove this wicked regime from power.
Time and time again, the prophet makes a direct appeal to his people, to listen and to change their attitudes and behavior. His words continue to constitute a challenge to any community at all times. If the nation will not repent and choose the path of willing obedience, nothing but warfare and invasion can be expected.
In verses 24-31, there is nothing conditional; the ultimate, unswerving intentions of God for His holiness are stated clearly. Jerusalem’s (the church universal, the U.S.A., etc) real enemies were not external, but those inside the government and temple who had emptied it of justice and right dealings. The city’s need, therefore, was not peace but righteousness and justice. It required purging and purifying, until it could truly be named the Faithful City. In these verses “redeemed” is roughly equivalent to ‘purified’.
Isa. 1: 24-28: ‘Therefore say the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, ‘Ah, I will ease Me of My adversaries, and avenge Me of My enemies; and I will turn My hand upon you, and purely purge away your dross, and take away all your tin. I will restore your judges as at the first; and your counselors as at the beginning; afterward you shall be called, the city of Righteousness, the faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with judgment and her converts with righteousness. The destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed.
“Ah” is an exclamation expressing satisfaction and determination regarding what God intends to do. “Turn My Hand” means to send judgment to bring them back to God. “Take away all your tin” means to purify and purge away all dross and all alloy in the furnace of affliction.
Isa. 48:10: "I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction." Remember that affliction has always been God's peculiar method of dealing with His own people. He instructs His scholars in the school of the Gospel, but he has another class for advanced learners, and this is the school of Trial. The white robed saint in Heaven has graduated from the school of tribulation. "Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from? these are those who have come out of great tribulation."
The faithful city Sion is the church or the high order of God (the overcomer). Heb. 12:22: “You have come to Mt. Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. See that you refuse not Him that speaks…”
The Mighty One of Israel is found only in Isaiah – here in verse 24 and again in chapter 30:29.
Now the accusation of idolatry is made. The details of worship under the oaks relate to the Canaanite fertility cult practices. Many trees were cut off at the top and made into totem polls. Isaiah offers no hint of when this transformation is to take place, in effect; his words constitute an appeal to his contemporaries to initiate the transformation.
Isa. 1: 29-30: For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which you have desired, and you shall be confounded for the gardens that you have chosen. For you shall be as an oak whose leaf fades, and as a garden that has no water. The strong shall be as a tow, and the maker of it as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them.”
The man and his work shall be burned. The makers of idols to be the spark to this destruction. Idols and their makers to be destroyed by fire together.
Taught by: Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.
Scripture from K.J.V.
I entered into the labors of Principles of Present Truth from Isaiah 1-39 by Kelly Varner; Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible; Visions of the Night given to Pastor Carolyn Sissom; Sermon notes of 6/13/13; Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of Brother Varner.
14 things in Isaiah – Chapter 1 that God is not able to endure by hypocrites:
- Immorality 1:10
- Multitudes of sacrifices offered in hypocrisy 1:11
- The fat of fed beasts
- The blood of animals
- Profanity of His courts. 1:12
- Vain oblations or gift offerings to secure favor with Him. 1:13
- Incense burning
- New-moon rituals
- Sabbaths, weekly and otherwise
- Calling of assemblies, even the solemn meetings 1:13
- Appointed yearly feasts 1:14
- Spreading forth the hands toward Him in prayer as if they were clean in his sight, when they are full of blood.
- Making of many prayers
- Hands that are full of blood.
10 Demands of Sinners by God.
- Wash yourself 1:16
- Make yourself clean
- Put away your own evil doings.
- Cease to do evil
- Learn to do well 1:17
- Seek judgment
- Relieve the oppressed.
- Judge the fatherless
- Plead for the widow.
- Come now let us reason together 1:18