Who Among You Will Hear What Is to Come?

"Who Among You Will Hear What Is to Come?" – Isaiah 42:23 One day we will leave this earth, and the question is how useful we were while we were on it. There is nothing better in life than to be a person who is current with his time; and one can tell whether he is in his time by the way he speaks and by the way he listens. The prophet asks a question that reaches all of us: who has the ear to hear what is coming? For one must be equipped to hear. If everyone says, "Do not speak to me of that, it upsets me," how are we going to be useful in that time to come? To hear what is to come is to know the times, to enter into the changes, and to be prepared for what stands behind the door, both in daily matters and in what God has for our life.

I. Who among you will give ear to this? Who will hearken and hear for the time to come? (Isaiah 42:23).

A. One must be equipped to hear what is coming.

1. Who has the ear to understand and know the times? For the one who is shaken by everything and says, "I want no problems, I do not want to get involved in situations," will never hear what is to come.

2. From the house to work, from work to church, to the store, to the television and to laughter: that is not the life we ought to walk. We must set our feet on the ground.

3. It is good to know how the earth stands, not to show off before others, but to be active in love, in passion, in prayer, and aware of what must be fought for.

4. We are not speaking of presidents nor of rulers. In the midst of these people stands destiny, stands what is to come; for no one carries the times: God carries the times.

5. What we are living through, God carried; and what we will live next year, God carries. The matter is whether we become men and women who know what stands behind the door.

B. What is to come is also in the everyday.

1. A married couple is attentive to what is in the womb: "Whom will the child resemble?" They are awaiting what is to come; and as it drew near, that which was coming arrived and took shape.

2. If you are an observant person, you will see how much the world has been changing. Every method is modern now; everything has been modernized, and we must learn to make that part of our own existence.

3. How actively we live attentive to the changes, and for what? To enter into the changes. We cannot live as we did twenty years ago, nor ten, nor five; and it has not been for ill, it has been for the good of the human being.

4. The times run in a series: one thing leads to another, and one must keep adjusting. If you go on in the old way, you will stop doing what you once did, not because you cannot, but because you did not prepare.

5. Overcome your fears. If you think, "I do not need it," remember that the generation beside you will need it, and the day you speak with a teenager you will not understand him, though he speaks to you in your own language.

II. Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the Lord, he against whom we have sinned? (Isaiah 42:24).

A. Most are deaf to the voice of God.

1. They would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law; therefore He strikes them, to see whether there is anyone among them who will give ear to this.

2. When a method, a manner, or a way does not work, another is tried. How many things have you done, always stubbornly the same, without result, and still you give no place to another?

3. It is like being wedged in by the feet: you go to move and you cannot. You have stopped listening to what is to come, to what is coming for your life.

4. If you are alone, you manage for yourself; but if you understand all that is in your surroundings, you must know your own future and the future of those beside you, for we are necessary to one another.

5. That is the calamity sin unleashes; that is what provokes God to be angry against a people, and in that way a war is kindled that sets everything ablaze.

B. If the voice of God is not heard, let us expect to be tested with hard discipline.

1. If with His people of the law God is displeased and punishes, what would be left for us of grace, having everything? They must fulfill a difficult law; we do not, because the Holy Spirit sets a restraint in us.

2. And what is the hard discipline? That every good heart leaves us, the good thought leaves us, and the impulse of the will leaves us.

3. When God works in us both to will and to do, it is an impulse and it must be acted on in the moment. "Well, I think not"; a week passes, two pass, and by the third you have forgotten.

4. For that reason you will not hear what is to come, you will be deaf to the voice of God, and you will live in slowness and in failure.

5. This is not about salvation, which is free: it is about how useful we ought to be on the earth. The earth is not made of idleness, nor of a little sleep and a little slumber, nor of complaint, excuses, and justifications.

6. God does not speak to the universe from heaven: God looks for men and women willing to face what is to come. If God knows there is a need on the earth, God needs someone willing to supply it.

III. Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live (Deuteronomy 4:1).

A. Diligent attention to the Word of God.

1. It is to show the people that they must keep closely joined to God and devoted to His service, firmly resolved not to forsake Him for any other god.

2. And it is easy to make oneself a god: you speak, you decide, and you do with your life whatever you want, and so you are left disarmed. "What the pastor said does not suit me"; you are already absolute, you speak to yourself as a god.

3. The problem is that the word, when it is congregational, is for everyone.

4. It is needful to give attentive ear and to fix the attention, in order to remember well God's statutes, judgments, norms, and rules, and to put them faithfully into practice throughout life.

5. Those norms are for the one moment in which you have communion with God; for afterward you are in the ordinary, in what this one said, in the newspaper, in the situation and in the problem, and that wearies the soul.

6. If you have that communion, you will be a man or a woman who hears what is to come and who will sense: "Wait, not this, I am not going to do that." That is God working in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

B. Beware of wickedness (Job 34:10).

1. Hearken unto me, ye men of understanding: far be it from God, that he should do wickedness; and from the Almighty, that he should commit iniquity.

2. When you see something that shakes you, that gives you distress and repels you, what is God making you see? That this is wickedness.

3. God wants us to know it because He detests it and abhors the man and the woman who live in it. And what comes upon them? Punishment, the evil day, judgment, shame, and desperation.

4. The just God never harms nor injures any of His creatures: His conduct is always upright. Ours is not; His is.

5. Therefore God does not do injustice nor pervert judgment: He does not manipulate nor distort, for wickedness and iniquity are not compatible with His nature.

IV. Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn... look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you (Isaiah 51:1-2).

A. To turn our eyes back to the quarry from which we were dug.

1. The people of God follow after righteousness and seek the Lord: they are not under curse, nor under affliction, nor under death.

2. Let those who distrust remember how Abraham and Sarah, alone and childless, were blessed. Why was that marriage blessed? Because they believed God; and God gave them a son.

3. Abraham understood that if God was going to make him a multitude, he would get nowhere with his wife alone. What did they have to do? Move.

4. That confidence, that way of seeing what is coming, must stir us and produce faith; and faith is the evidence of things not seen. All that we believe of God is what makes us begin to perceive what is about to arrive.

5. How hard was the rock from which they were hewn. To consider it should lead us to humble thoughts about ourselves and lofty thoughts about divine grace; and that is where we ought to place ourselves.

6. Why do we not receive and multiply what God has for us? We ought to be that far in knowledge and in well-being, and we are here, in lament, because we do not know what is to come.

B. The battle is not yours (2 Chronicles 20).

1. Your part is to know and understand what your future is: what God has for your life.

2. On what have you wasted your time, that you come to church and can hear a little of the message, and the rest you cannot hear because you cannot accept it? That way you will never prepare your future.

3. The sad thing is that we do not raise up our own future, nor do we raise up the future of our own people. If to this day you have not dared to rise, rise.

4. If you know the future God has for you, you will not let the enemy rob it and take it from you. Every battle belongs to God; but God must know whether you are fighting and whether you are willing.

5. He who hears what is to come makes himself ready, stands firm, knows where he is going, and knows what he must fight for. He who says "I do not know what to do" has already made himself a useless person.

C. What comes out of a man, that defiles the man (Mark 7:14-15).

1. The Lord made the revolutionary pronouncement that it is not what enters the mouth that defiles, but what comes out of the man.

2. In a careless moment, in a moment of fury, or in a pleasure of the flesh, is when what is inside a person cries out; and someone will see it, and it will be our swift shame.

3. We must awaken. When we could have our hands full of miracles and of all the good of God, in cowardice and in the absence of seeking Him we do not see what is to come.

4. Perhaps you have plans, but I assure you they are all for your flesh; and your flesh will be the one to bring shame and pain. Let us leave laziness behind and begin to hear His voice. Amen.