Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to the podcast. This is Jim Ben and I am podcasting from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Well, if you were with us last time, I opened up a series dealing with a sad situation of the children of Israel who had, um, we’re in a very dire strait, kind of like we are.

I wanted to give you something that kind of kind of applied to our day. They were literally being attacked by the nation of Babylon. Eventually they were going to be carried away captive.

God had some things he was doing, and there were obviously people who wanted to go down to Egypt. They thought because they were military power, they’d find sanctuary there, protection. And God rebukes them for their trust in the wrong thing.

And friend, it’s so easy to trust the wrong thing even now. Trust politicians, science, whatever. But let’s not do that.

Let’s trust the Lord. But it’s interesting toward verse number fifteen of Isaiah chapter thirty. We were in the passage down through verse seven last time.

Uh, of course, he’s challenging them not to look to Egypt, but to trust him. And he says, you if you do this. Notice if you would please, we can look here, verse number eight.

Now go write it before them in a table and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come, forever and ever. That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord. Now that’s pretty bad situation.

They got basically into being disobedient to being untruthful. And they weren’t hearing they weren’t listening to God. And I will tell you, friend, that’s the danger that we all face when we go down to Egypt for help, when we look to the world to do what only Jesus can do.

So you say, preacher, what am I going to do that? What are you going to do if you’ve made some poor choices in this quarantine? Maybe you have viewed some things you shouldn’t have viewed.

Maybe you’ve snuck behind your parents back and watched things you shouldn’t have watched or done, things you shouldn’t have done. What’s the answer? Uh.

If you say, yeah, preacher, I have been disobedient, I haven’t been truthful, or I have not really been listening to God and listening to other authorities, my parents. Well, verse number fifteen of chapter number thirty does give us the answer, for thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel. In returning and rest shall ye be saved.

Now think about that in returning and rest you’re going to be saved. Now what does that mean? Well, I believe the salvation here is deliverance.

It’s talking about deliverance in the Christian life, delivered from sinful habits, delivered from wrong choices, delivered from satanic attack in your life, delivered from whatever it might be. God tells you the two things that deliver you, number one, return. Now that is the Old Testament word for repent.

It’s the idea. Deal with your sin. Now, you know, when you and I sin, uh, we often we don’t feel good about it.

I remember years ago asking one of my little girls, they’d done something wrong. I said, well, what do you how do you feel when you do wrong? And I loved her answer.

She said, daddy, I feel yucky. I thought, highly theological answer. Great answer, I feel yucky.

In other words, your conscience is bugging you. Holy spirit may be dealing with you. Sometimes even Satan comes along and he loves to accuse the brethren.

A lot of times he’s right when he accuses us. But the point at that moment, friends, you have a choice. Satan wants to get you into despair.

He wants to get you to justifying yourself, or he wants you to get you and ignore the problem. He wants you to blame somebody else.