MARCH RADIO MESSAGE WORSE THAN NOTHING
by Dr. Walter Wilson
M ost people don ’ t like to hear the truth about themselves. The five-word message I want to consider with you this time is from Isaiah 41:24. The declaration of God’s Holy Spirit is, “Behold ye are of nothing.” F irst of all, whenever we find a “Behold” in the Bible we should know that it is God’s “stop and look and listen” sign. There is something very important to be considered wh6n this word is used. The marginal reading is very in teresting for this verse. It uses six words, but is certainly more em phatic: “Behold, ye are worse than nothing.” Could anything be worse than nothing? What kind of people were these to be described in such a manner? The entire context reveals that these people had forsaken the Lord. Secondly, they had built cisterns. The final cause was that they had rejected the wells of water which God had gra ciously provided for them. These peo ple were a liability and not an asset; they were a curse to the land and not a blessing. Because of their constant and willful disobedience they brought sorrow to God’s heart, as well as trouble and grief to their owh lives. Are you ever a liability to God? Are you worse than nothing? Would it be easier for the Lord if He didn’t have you on His hands? If you are a Christian, then when you were saved, you gave yourself to the Lord, body, soul and spirit. But what has hap pened since that day? Have you moved forward in the faith and grown in the Lord’s grace? The judgment of God was upon these people and enemies were used to bring them to destruction. When He sent Nebuchadnezzar, God declared, “I will shave you (Israel) with a razor that is hired.” Think of how complete such devastation would be. When I was in Palestine recently I was inter
ested in seeing that the only trees to be found were those which had been planted since 1948 when they received their land back. God did just what He said He would. For a moment let us think about this next aspect of how they forsook the fountains of living water and dug out broken cisterns which could hold no water. Sometimes mirages come to our lives. We think of what might have happened if we had just bought up some certain property or invested in a particular stock. “If” is the story of our lives. There was a man I knew whose boy was kidnapped. He paid the ransom and somebody asked him, “Are you sorry you lost all that money?” With a burdened heart he truthfully re plied, “No, it was a liability to me. My money was what got me into trou ble. They wouldn’t have kidnapped the boy of one who wasn’t rich.” How true he was. The heavy sorrows were great when they found his murdered son. There was no rain for the Israel ites. The people dug the cisterns and tried to make something for their own joy, comfort and pleasure. Such a pur pose will never bring happiness. It Hr. Mery Fishback (left), executive director of Blola's Arizona Bible College, confers with Mr. Edwin Rogers, A.B.C. stewardship representative (center) and Hr. Pañi Schwepker, Biela Controller.
5
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online