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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eugene Prewitt

The Best and Least Used Promises

Turn in your Bibles to Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 58.

If you ever do 1 of those studies, maybe no 1 here besides me ever does that kind of study.

But if you were trying to study, what chapters does Ellen White say that we ought to read or study?

And you tried to do it exhaustively or as exhaustively as you could, Isaiah 58 would be the second most often mentioned of those chapters.

And the most often mentioned would be John 17.

But we're not going there, we're right here in Isaiah 58.

Isaiah 58, and we're going to look at verse 8.

Then shall your light break forth as the morning, and your health will spring forth speedily.

That the area of my life that seems dark, that God is going to shine a light into it so I know what is right or what is best or why and that my health is going to prosper.

Then you will call and the Lord will answer.

You can't think of a promise much better than that, that when you pray, God is going to hear.

He says, when you call, I will answer, but when you cry out, that is when you're in desperation, he says, I'm going to be there.

Do you see that there in that same verse?

When I think of the promises in the Bible, I can't think of a promise much better than verse 11.

You can know which way to go, which thing to do.

Because we live in a nation where we have too much to eat, we don't make a lot of, we don't find a lot of value in the next phrase.

But in places where people are malnourished and struggling, to have healthy bones was a significant promise.

But notice what he says after that, you will be like what kind of a garden?

Like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters don't fail.

When we were flying today from California, we're in California, this is where we found the smog.

But when we were flying today, we were leaving Dallas.

And you could see the water, The lakes around Dallas are just down.

You can see docks that are just sitting on mud flats going down to where the water is.

And in our own house, just a few weeks ago, we have 2 little streams that run, I mean, they hypothetically run right near our home, but they were as dry as dirt just a short time ago.

What God promises is that, in verse 11, that we're going to be not just like a water garden but like a spring.

He said that out of you is going to come a spring of water.

And then John explained that he was speaking about the Holy Spirit.

38 and 39, you know what I'm talking about.

He said that you're gonna be like a spring of water, but he was speaking of the Holy Spirit, which was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.

The title of what I'm telling you this evening is The Best and Least Used Promises.

And what I mean by the best promises, I'm referring, many of them are right here in Isaiah 58.

A promise to be guided continually, to have light in my darkness, to have answered prayer and a present help in times of trouble, to be, to have God guard my back.

It looks like re-reward if you have a King James Bible like me, but it means the rear guard, that God will guard my back.

These are the best promises and yet some of the least realized in all of the Bible.

Now I want to teach you something that I just learned in the last few weeks, because that way I can know it for a few more weeks.

So I'd like you to look down at verse 14, Isaiah 58, verse 14.

"'Then you will delight yourself in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.

Verse 14 is nearly a direct quote from Deuteronomy.

Did you know that there's a song in Deuteronomy?

And that song in Deuteronomy is 1 of the most quoted parts of Deuteronomy.

I mean, Paul quotes from it a number of times, Jesus quotes from it.

It's only 1 chapter long, the entire song, and that song is a solemn prediction of the apostasy of God's people.

And this verse is quoting from that song.

I tell you that because I'm doing a study right now about music, I'm trying to understand what the Bible says about music, how it could anticipate, what can I learn here to help me understand the issues that we face in music today?

When I tell you that these are the least used promises, I mean that the promises in Isaiah 58 are all hinged on conditions.

I understand that Dave Fiedler was speaking here maybe last, maybe about a year ago, something like that.

How many of you were here when Dave was speaking about a year ago?

That's only like 7 or 8 of you, Unless you're German and you just don't raise your hand.

So the idea I'm about to share with you, I gleaned its most impressive part of this idea from his book, the 1 called De Sozo, the 1 that was given out for free at GYC and is being sold for $20 in the ABC in this town right now.

It was from that powerful book that I gathered some of this.

In Isaiah 58, these promises are hinged on a condition and that condition is so rarely met that the promises are rarely, rarely does someone qualify to claim them.

I mean, you can claim them without qualification, but you don't get any benefit out of it, you know?

If you really wanna be guided continually, you have to meet the conditions in Isaiah 58.

If you really wanna claim that when you call, God's gonna answer, you have to meet the condition.

If you want your darkness to be like the noon day, if you want your help to spring forth speedily, there is a condition involved in having that kind of blessing.

To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke.

Adventist should understand that verse better than average because we know that we live in the anti-typical day of atonement And we know that in the typical day of atonement, that they had to fast.

They had, well more particularly what they had to do is to afflict their souls.

And what you find here in Isaiah 58 is people who are afflicting their souls and It seems like God isn't even blessing them and they don't understand it.

That is, they're trying to do the right thing in the day of atonement, and even though they're trying to do the right thing in the day of atonement, their spiritual life is just at a standstill or on the downgrade, and they wish it was different, and now God begins to explain why their experience is subpar.

He says, is not this the fast that I have chosen?

To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, that you break every yoke, is it not to give your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor that are cast out to your house, that when you see the naked that you cover him and that you don't hide yourself from your own flesh.

It really wasn't a blessing to the church when America set up the welfare system.

I'm not faulting the government for a welfare system because the church didn't solve the problem itself.

But if the Christian churches of America had been practicing Isaiah 58, we wouldn't have needed a welfare system.

That makes sense to at least 1 person here, I'm saying.

That God arranged that the poor would be always with us.

We wouldn't always have Jesus with us, but who would we always have?

The poor, and whenever you want to, you can do them good.

But now someone else is taking care of the poor.

And I was speaking in Finland, which is even more socialist than we've become.

They don't like the word socialist there, so I didn't find a better word for it.

In Finland or America or Sweden, you're not likely to meet someone who's naked because they can't afford clothes, or someone who's starving because they can't afford food.

If you meet someone here who's starving or naked, it's probably because they have a drug addiction.

But we have a welfare state that takes care of us.

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The Best and Least Used Promises

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