The Gathering of Souls

Please turn in the Word of God this evening to Isaiah 49. Isaiah 49.

Thank you, Mr. Lee. Appreciate that. There’s a witness there. I don’t have any personal first-hand experience of the challenges in Korea. However, I’m trying to remember the years—around 2007, 2008, or 2008, 2009, maybe. Around there, my sister, after she graduated, went to Korea. A friend of hers had gone there to teach English, and she decided that she would like to go to Korea and do the same, experience the culture of the land for a couple of years before seeking a job in the United Kingdom.

Some of the conversation that I heard from her gave me some insight. I remember she was asking some questions. I’m not going to bring up the vague memories that I have, but I just remember her saying, “What about this? I had someone say this.” And bizarre heresies and weird ideas that exist.

And though many of the churches are Presbyterian, they’re more functionally Pentecostal, charismatic. There really isn’t a lot of deep Bible knowledge. There’s a cultural aspect to the Christianity that is there, of which we would know in the South as well, though it’s a little different.

So there’s a need. There’s always a need for a remnant, for those who will stand faithful, stay true, a place where people can find the purity of God’s Word and His gospel. And pray for Mr. Lee. Pray for the work there, that what God has established in these past ten years or so, He will strengthen and further, and the blessing of God would be upon the work.

Now, after Thursday, upon thinking that our brother may be here, I started wondering what to preach. And here we are in Isaiah 49. Isaiah 49.

So I want to read the opening verses of Isaiah 49, reading from verse 1.

“Listen, O Isles, unto me, and hearken ye people from far. The Lord hath called me from the womb. From the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.

“He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword. In the shadow of his hand hath he hid me. It made me a polished shaft, in his quiver hath he hid me,

“And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.

“Then I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for naught, and in vain, yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God.

“And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb, to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength.

“And he said, it is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel. I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.

“Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, kings, shall see and arise. Princes also shall worship because of the Lord that is faithful and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee.

“Thus saith the Lord, in an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee, and I will preserve thee and give thee for a covenant of the people to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages.

“Thou mayest say to the prisoners, go forth. To them that are in darkness, show yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places.

“They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor sun smite them, for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them.

“I will make all my mountains away, and my highways shall be exalted.

“Behold, these shall come from far, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Sinim.

“Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth, and break forth into singing, O mountains, The Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted.

“But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.

“Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.

“Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands, Thy walls are continually before me.

“Thy children shall make haste. Thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee.”

Amen.

We’ll end the reading at verse 17. This, beloved, is the Word of the eternal God, which you are to receive, believe, and obey. And the people of God said, Amen.

Let’s pray.

Lord, we are encouraged by the blessing of seeing in our lifetime the extension of Thy kingdom and the ways in which we have been able to witness it, even in our own small cluster of denominations—what we have in the United Kingdom, what we have here in North America, and what we have in Nepal. And the spread, the work that’s going on, the souls being reached, the churches being planted, the help being offered, the servants being raised up—these things are encouraging.

And though we be impatient at times, we’re thankful, Lord, that our brother is able to be here tonight and say that, having started from nothing, the Lord has raised a witness. We’re thankful for the stability of the work in Korea.

We pray for its growth. We pray for more strength. We ask that Thou would raise up men in the church to labor with our brother, young families who will stand and labor with him also. We pray that the work will go from strength to strength.

Encourage us tonight from Thy Word. Let it be a wind in our sails. Let the truth of Thy Word guide us, not what our eyes merely see.

So give the Holy Spirit now. Bless our time together. May Christ be praised, for we pray in His precious name. Amen.

Most of you will know that there are seasons in which what we see with our eyes really governs what we believe is going on, that what we see is reality.

You can see that Zion had come to that point in verse 14. Amidst all that’s going on, and, as said, much encouragement in this very chapter, Zion said, “The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.” That’s how it felt. As they looked, as they lived through their present circumstances, that’s the assessment, that’s the feeling.

And many of us have known those times, the temptation to feel in a similar way. Parents wondering about their lost children. It feels as if all their prayers are to no avail, and God has, in a certain fashion, forsaken me and forgotten me.

And those in God’s work may go through such seasons as well—times of barrenness, times of difficulty. Some of you are involved in ministry, Sabbath school teachers, those involved in evangelism, those of you who have a particular concern for certain individuals and you are attempting to reach them, people in your place of employment, others that you bring before God in prayer every day, and you have pushed and you have tried and you have endeavored to try and win them, and it just seems that there is this season of barrenness. There is no harvest. There is no encouragement. And no indication that the answer is ever going to come.

And so all that you see brings you to this conclusion: “The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.”

But in the context of such a lament, in which the Lord is all too well aware of the feeling of His people, He gives encouragement. And oh, what encouragement there is.

The focus of our attention this evening will be upon verse 12:

“Behold, these shall come from far, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Sinim.”

Isaiah 49 is telling us not just about a return from Babylon, an encouragement to that generation that soon the Lord would bring them back, but it’s looking further. You can see that from even what is given to us in verse 6.

“It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up.” Here, Christ has indicated that He will raise up the tribes of Jacob. He will restore the preserved of Israel. “I will also,” in addition to that, in addition to the burden that you have concerning your own people, as it were, concerning those who are of the seed of Abraham, in addition to them, “I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.”

If you wanted encouragement with regard to the scope of God’s purpose, it’s hard to go beyond that. To the end of the earth My purpose will be fulfilled. To the end of the earth. It’s encouraging.

So this Servant of Jehovah, this One appointed, this Christ who would come in the fullness of time, the obedient Son, the true Israel, is given not just to raise up the tribes of Jacob, but to gather in the Gentiles.

How far away might these Gentiles be?

Well, that’s why we’re focusing on verse 12.

“These shall come from far, and, lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Sinim.”

I want us to consider tonight The Gathering of Souls That Cannot Fail. The gathering of souls that cannot fail.

And I preach this—and I’ll be blunt—it’s to the encouragement not just of this congregation, but to our brother, both our brothers here tonight, of God’s purpose with regard to this whole plan as it touches upon every nation of the earth.

Note, in the first place with me, the certainty of the gathering. The certainty of the gathering.

“Behold, these shall come.” Behold.

God arrests the attention, doesn’t He? He bids us look here rather than what you’re looking at presently. And what they saw in that present time was indication of God forsaking and God forgetting. But their attention is drawn then to look, look, look, and see what I am going to do.

“These shall come.”

It is certain. Nothing’s going to stop it. Nothing will hinder it.

As we consider the certainty of this gathering, in the first place, it is announced by God. It is announced by God.

God is announcing this. He is saying, “These shall come.” “Behold, these shall come.” He is saying that it’s going to happen.

And it’s not depending on human wisdom. It’s not depending on human ingenuity. It’s not depending on all the machinery that man can muster. It is depending upon God. It doesn’t depend upon our organizational ability. It doesn’t depend upon all that we can pull together. No. God is going to do this. He’s going to accomplish this, and nothing will prevent Him.

In a number of places in this prophecy, God causes His people to look at Him and remember who He is, to be encouraged that His Word will not fail.

One such is given just a few chapters back in Isaiah 46. Go to Isaiah 46, verse 9. Isaiah 46, verse 9:

“Remember the former things of old. For I am God, and there is none else. I am God, and there is none like me.”

Echoes of Isaiah 40, isn’t there?

Verse 10:

“Declaring the end from the beginning, from ancient times, the things that are not yet done,” things that are not yet done, “saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.”

“My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.”

Well, it’s that God, this God, who says, “Behold, these shall come.” He sees it. It’s going to happen. Nothing will prevent it. He has decreed it. He is now declaring it. And it is inevitable there will be this gathering.

There are times in which it feels as if it’s not going to happen. And that spirit of verse 4 may descend upon us:

“Then I said, I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for naught and in vain.”

And you can feel that way about what you’re endeavoring to do. It seems as if nothing is going to transpire. And yet we come back and say, what has God said?

Don’t look at what we have done and what has happened and what we perceive, but what God has said He is going to do. It rests upon this, that He has declared, “These shall come.”

It’s not only announced by God, it’s accomplished by Christ. The context of the chapter shows the work of the Messiah, what He is going to accomplish.

And so this One who is set apart and designated, repeatedly referred to throughout this chapter, this One who’s going to raise up the tribes of Jacob and be a light to the Gentiles and so on, this One, the One chosen, the One elected, the One appointed, this is the One who’s going to bring it to pass.

Look at verse 8 and following. Read again what it said:

“Thus saith the Lord, in an acceptable time have I heard thee and in a day of salvation have I helped thee and I will preserve thee and give thee for a covenant of the people to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages.”

“That thou mayest say to the prisoners”—here’s the thing—He’s sending the Messiah. He is going, that He may say with confidence, “Go forth.” To them that are in darkness, “Show yourselves.”

“They shall feed in the ways, and their pastors shall be in all high places. They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor the sun smite them. For he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them.

“I will make all my mountains away, and my highways shall be exalted.”

He’s saying this will happen. This is going to occur. Christ is going to fulfill His mission, which, just to focus on it—and we’ll come back to it a little later—but just to focus on the fact that there are these prisoners. Say to the prisoners, “Go forth.” Say to those enslaved, you’re released. Christ is going to have that privilege of setting them free.

We’re going to see the work that He is accomplishing, not only in His ministry, but in the days that follow through the church. The Lord Jesus has a people, and He is going to gather them all in, and nothing is going to stop Him.

And He was confident about this. It’s encouraging, actually, to look at the Lord Jesus and see His language in His ministry and consider how confident He was in the fulfillment of the Father’s purpose.

Many of you will know the language of John 10. For example, verse 16. There’s no doubt. He’s not entertaining even the possibility that this will not happen. It is a dead cert. I have other sheep. I will bring them in. They will hear My voice. And there’ll be one people gathered together under one Shepherd.

The confidence of that, that our Lord Jesus had, is for our encouragement, something we can draw from. This is what Christ believed. This is how He lived. It’s how He ministered. Yea, it’s how He continues to minister, how He continues to pray in the absolute confidence of His work being applied and being successful.

“Them also I must bring.”

It’s going to happen. A sense of certainty.

This, of course, is what the Father had appointed Him to do. So all the encouragement of the prophet, our Lord Jesus imbibes, and He goes into His ministry and He knows, He knows, John 6:37, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me.”

Every single one. All that the Father giveth to Me, everything the Father said, here, this is Yours.

That includes the tribes of Jacob, the preserved of Israel, and the Gentiles. All of them. Among them all, there’s a number given to Christ. They will never perish. They will come.

So whenever the prophet says, “These shall come,” it is in the knowledge that this is being stated by God the Father, it is being brought about by the work of Christ the Son, and, of course, it is secured by the work of the Spirit.

The Spirit is about the business of applying the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, of moving powerfully in the lives of the prisoners. The prisoners are going to be set free by an act of God. They’re going to have their bands loosened, chains broken, and the prison house in which they find themselves is going to burst forth by an act of God, and they will come forth.

“Thou mayest say to the prisoners, go forth.”

The Spirit of God brings this about. You see, it’s the Spirit that is applying the work of Jesus Christ.

Again, you know the prophecy of Ezekiel 36, verses 26 and 27:

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes.”

But we see that the Spirit is very much at work here, bringing to pass, producing the fruit of Christ’s work.

In the second place, note with me the breadth of the gathering. Not just the certainty of it, but the breadth of it.

If you go back to Isaiah 49, verse 12:

“Behold, these shall come from far,” and we are told, “from the north, from the west, and the east from the land of Sinim.”

The breadth of it. So it’s not just a certain promise, it’s a vast promise. Vast.

Part of the reason why I turned to this text is because there’s been much debate over the years with regard to the land of Sinim. Where is the land of Sinim?

And if you read the Septuagint, you will find there that they translate it as Persia. If you read some of the modern translations, you will find that they will translate it as, or see it as, part of Southern Egypt. And yet, historically, if you read the older commentators, you will find many of them making reference to China. So as far east as China, there will be the fulfillment of this.

Now, for the most part, modern scholars have kind of gotten away from China. But there’s just a recent study by a Jewish gentleman a couple of years ago who writes on this subject and argues again that the old view, that Sinim refers to that region of China or around there, has merit.

Now, I don’t know. I’m not a scholar on where Sinim is. And since there are those who have given years of their life and study to trying to figure it out and don’t all agree, I’m not about to say definitively where it is. But you can get the sense of the text. It really doesn’t matter, knowing exactly where it is.

But “these shall come from far, and lo, these from the north.” And from the west, of course. You can go—you’re wondering, what about east and south? And so that’s where the debate is. Is it east? Is it Persia? Is it China? Is it south? Is it somewhere in Southern Egypt? Whatever. But you see the extent of it. The idea is extent of vastness. That’s the point.

The world has become relatively small for the modern era. You can book a ticket, you can go and get a ticket, and tomorrow you could be flying out of here, headed to the farthest place on the planet. You could go to New Zealand—GSP, LAX, LAX probably to Australia somewhere, Australia and New Zealand. And you could do that. You could start that journey tomorrow. You won’t maybe arrive in New Zealand tomorrow, but it’s amazing. The world has become relatively small.

But in the context of this time and the vast majority of human history, the idea of ever seeing such lands or knowing anything about such lands was beyond what anyone could fathom, living in their villages, never straying much further than maybe five or ten miles beyond the very place where they were born.

And so we don’t maybe feel the power of a text like this the way they would have when originally spoken. Spoken to a people who wouldn’t travel very far, being told that the vastness of this promise is to the ends of the earth, to the farthest areas, north, south, east, west. And the thought that there would be truth in all these lands, that there would be pockets of believers, that there would be those who love the Lord’s name, those given to His Word, those disciples of His truth, those worshipping the Son, seems beyond all probability.

But God says it shall be so. And we are living in it. We are living in it.

If those from such a time, if those living at the time of the prophet or even the time of the first century, if you could tell them of churches being planted, whether it be China or Korea, the Americas, Ireland—if you could tell them that there are churches planted, that the truth has gone to these places, and in some has taken root powerfully and profoundly, changing the very fabric of the society, like Korea—it would be hard for them to believe it.

And so as we live in it, we take much of it for granted. And we do what we do with other things. We focus in on the shortcomings. We focus in on the faults. We focus in on the smallness. Some of these lands, the works are small. They’re fighting to survive. They’re struggling to exist.

But if you come back, if you step back to when the promise is declared, what was difficult to believe is that there would ever be any existence of a people there, regardless of the scale. That the truth will be there. That the people of God would be there. That God would have sent His truth. It seems so improbable.

But God says it shall happen. And the vastness of it is encapsulated in the language:

“These shall come from far. And lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Sinim.”

Well, there’s no limitation. The breadth of it puts His arms around the world.

So, two ways of thinking about this, this breadth.

No land beyond His promise. That’s the first thing. There’s no land beyond His promise. This sense of verse 12 is saying, wherever—go in any direction—and this promise will be fulfilled.

If you go to, again, 800 years before our Lord Jesus came into the world, before the incarnation, and you’re living in Isaiah’s time, and the thought that the truth would spread in such a way and there’d be people who’d be faithful to the Lord just seemed hard to believe, that happening in any significant way at all. But that’s what the Bible is filled with. It’s filled with the fact that Abraham is going to have people across the world. He will have a seed across the nations.

In Psalm 22, that psalm that is so well known for the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ and His cry, that psalm takes us from the suffering of the Lord Jesus, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” and takes us all the way through the suffering and the mockery of the cross and the death of Christ into the resurrection. As you read through the psalm, you get to the resurrection, and then it moves from the resurrection out toward the world.

Psalm 22, verse 27:

“All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.”

In Malachi, the prophet says, Malachi 1:11:

“From the rising of the sun, even to the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles.”

You’re going to see it. From the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun.

And I wish we could have the mentality of those living in Israel and living at the time in which they lived, them trying to come to grips with the fact that there would be a people gathered in from all these nations. And yet we are living in it.

There’s no land, then, that is beyond this promise. In Acts 13:47:

“For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.”

Encouraging the Lord’s servants to come in and fulfill that messianic purpose, them taking Christ to the nations, carrying the Messiah to the nations, so that through the gospel light, the Gentiles come in and submit themselves to the Son.

So this is the intention. The Lord is going to gather a people.

There’s no land beyond His promise. If you said, I feel called to such and such a land, there’s no land you could mention in which it could be said that the gospel has no business being there. It has every business being there.

There’s also no life beyond His reach. Not only no land beyond His promise, but no life beyond His reach.

He doesn’t just speak of territories. There’s a sense of focus upon the people themselves. “These shall come from far. These from the north. These from the land of Sinim.” These, these individuals.

It doesn’t matter what you find. It doesn’t matter who they are. It doesn’t matter what language they speak. It doesn’t matter how they appear. It doesn’t matter how dark and entrenched in paganism they are. None of that matters.

These. These. Wherever you go, the individuals there, these from far, these from the north and west and so on, these from the land of Sinim—these.

So you can go and you can find the worst and preach the gospel. You can go into the prisons of the most godless societies on the planet and preach the gospel. You can go amidst all their false religion and preach the gospel. No matter where you go, anywhere you go, the gospel has the power to reach them.

There’s no life beyond His reach.

There’s a sense in which those of us here tonight, we are living in the far, just the way Brother Lee is living in the far. He’s in the east. We’re in the west. From where these words were spoken, we’re both these from far. And whether you are in Seoul, Korea, or Greenville, South Carolina, or wherever you might be, the gospel is relevant.

So when you think about your loved ones and your neighbors and those you care about that you work with, and they seem so far from the Lord, take encouragement. God has not sent His gospel into far lands for there to be individuals too far away from Him in those lands. His gospel goes far and will reach those who are far from Him.

This is what Paul tells the Ephesians. He tells them that they were brought nigh. They were once far, but they were brought nigh by the blood of Christ. They’re brought near. They’re brought into this company. They’re brought into this group, blessed with salvation, pardoned of all their sin.

In Ezekiel 34:11, the prophet records:

“Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep and seek them out.”

Search My sheep and seek them out. Wherever they’re found, He will search His sheep and seek them out. Those that are distant, those that are difficult. And we are to be His hands and feet.

That person you work with, that neighbor in your community, maybe has no Christian influence except for you. Christ searches and seeks out His sheep, and He does so through the instrumentality of His people.

Don’t downplay your purpose. Here you are in a faraway place. And there are people here who need the gospel. And the Lord has saved you and preserved you that you might be a witness for Him.

Keep preaching, beloved. Keep preaching. Keep giving out the literature. Keep encouraging souls to seek the Lord. Keep praying for them. Keep telling them that you are praying for them. Tell them enough that they say, “Would you stop praying for me?” And you say, “No, I’m going to keep praying for you.”

Frustrate them by your persistence. Not in a way that’s obnoxious, but in a way that’s persistent. Let them know that you won’t easily give up. Let them know that you won’t let the matter go easily. That the issue is too important. That the salvation of their souls is too critical for you to easily give up when they say, “I am not interested.”

You’re to imbibe Christ. And Christ, so often we find Him persisting, pursuing, continuing. Yes, “I will both search my sheep and seek them out.”

Finally, the triumph of the gathering. The triumph of the gathering.

We’ve seen the certainty of it and the breadth of it. Now the triumph of it. There’s great triumph here. Some of it we’ve already touched on.

In the first place, prisoners are freed. Prisoners are freed.

Verse 9:

“That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth.”

They’re free.

“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

He liberates souls, sets them free. Oh, what blessed salvation this is. Full salvation. It’s a wonderful thing.

It sets you free when you’re enslaved by the fear of man, and Christ sets you free. When you’re enslaved by the guilt of your sin, and Christ sets you free. And you’re in bondage to your past and the shame of it, and Christ sets you free. Where you’re strangled by a sense of purposelessness, and Christ sets you free.

Say unto the prisoners, “Go forth.”

It’s great language, isn’t it? It’s like you have a future. To prisoners who are imprisoned, to say to them, not just, “You’re released.” It’s not just that you’re released. It’s “Go forth.” Go. Go and make something of your life. Go and do something for the glory of God. Go. There’s a path to follow. There’s a Master who will lead. There’s work to be done. Go forth. Go forth.

Oh, happy day whenever Christ came to you and me and said, “Go forth.” Happy day indeed. Go forth.

Some of us, we didn’t know what we were doing with our lives, didn’t know what direction to go, didn’t know what. Just aimlessly wasting our time, giving ourselves to frivolous things. Our whole lives revolving around the hours of the weekend.

And then He came to the prisoner and He said, “Go forth.”

Happy day indeed.

Don’t you forget that. Don’t you forget. He has called you, Christian, to go forth. Are you going forth?

He didn’t just release you. He didn’t just say you were once guilty and condemned and now you’re free in that sense. There’s no guilt and no shame. The blood of Christ has washed away your guilt and shame. All of that is glorious, don’t get me wrong. But it is not just that we may live in the blessing of pardon. The pardon leads into purpose, leads to a going forth.

What’s He called you to? Give yourself to it.

Oh, think upon it right now. Think about just a meandering, aimless life, and say, Lord, I don’t want to live that way and I don’t want to die that way. Please, Lord, even tonight, I commit myself afresh. You’ve called me. You released me. I was a prisoner, and You set me free, and You call me now to go forth. Oh, give me Your Spirit to go forth. Give me the infilling of Your Spirit to go forth. Not just to languish in the life of indifference, but to go forth.

Oh, Christian, rise up. Go forth. Don’t underestimate what the Lord might do with you. Some of us don’t have a whole lot of confidence in our own abilities. That’s okay. Give what you are, give what you have to Him, and ask for that fullness of the Spirit, and see what He might do.

The prisoners are freed. What a happy thing this is.

And the wanderers are guided. Because it tells us in verse 10:

“He that hath mercy on them shall lead them. He shall lead them. Even by the springs of water shall he guide them.”

It has echoes of Psalm 23, doesn’t it? He shall lead them.

So you see then how prisoners are set free, told to go forth. But in the going forth, He doesn’t say, now go, you’re on your own. I hope it all goes well. Right? That’s not how it works.

He bursts the prison open. He sets you free from your guilt and your shame. And He says, “Go forth.” But He goes forth with you. He leads you in that going forth. He guides you.

And it’s a good job, because in that going forth, we are prone. Someone some time ago—it was last year—someone in the church here sent me a little video of someone dragging a sheep out of a ditch and pulling it out and letting it go, and it boing, boing, boing out about four or five steps and went straight into the ditch about ten yards further up and right back in there.

And what an illustration of the people of God, even the Lord’s people. And so He doesn’t just release us and say, go forth. He leads. He leads. And so He brings us out of the prison house, and He leads us through life. Yes, in green pastures, beside still waters, restoring our soul, and even through the valley of the shadow of death, His rod and His staff comfort. He’s there.

The prisoners are freed. The wanderers are guided. Zion is comforted.

Verse 13:

“Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth, and break forth into singing, O mountains, for the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted.”

Brings comfort to them.

So He does this. He sets us free. He leads us through life, and we have these prickly, difficult moments in life, and He comes with words of consolation, comes with messages of encouragement, because He has not forgotten, and He has not forsaken, as verse 14 is the perspective of the people of God sometimes. He’s forsaken. He’s forgotten. No, it’s not true. He comforts. And that’s what He’s doing right here, this very chapter.

It’s coming as a word of comfort. And heaven and earth then rejoice. That’s the other triumph, isn’t it? It’s worth singing about. And that’s what verse 13 tells us.

“Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth, and break forth into singing, O mountains.”

What the Lord has done is worth singing about. It’s worth singing about. Oh, it’s worth singing about.

I love singing, right? I do.

I’m not big into listening to music. Between one Lord’s Day and the other, seldom do I listen to much music. I just, I don’t. Not really any kind. Too busy. And other things—listen to Scripture at times, sometimes listen to sermons, and just being left with my own thoughts. I really don’t listen to much music.

I’m not saying that makes me better or anything. I’m just saying I don’t.

But the lack of that, the absence of that, would be an error to think I don’t enjoy singing. Because when I come, I tell you, I double down when I come to the Lord’s house. And I try to bring myself into the joy and into the message of what’s being sung, and try to really sense.

And there’s sometimes, sometimes, beloved, as we are singing and I’m standing there, I’ll tell you, I feel like I’m transported.

And it’s because of what the Lord has done. Because if there’s no gospel, there’d be none of that. It’s all based on this foundation, based upon this fact: that there’s going to be a gathering. Souls from everywhere are brought in and united to Christ. And they’re given a name. And they’re blessed with forgiveness. And they’re called to be children. And they’re glorified in due course. And there’s no people like God’s people.

And I get to be a part of that. Because there was a time when a young man, far away, the gospel reached him. Christ became precious to him.

The same is true for every one of you here saved tonight. You can give your own testimony. He reached me. The gospel reached me. It found me.

So whether we’re here or Korea or wherever we find ourselves, the gathering of souls cannot fail.

“These shall come from far.”

I’m in that number. Are you? Are you?

Boys and girls, are you? Young people, are you in this number? Each one of you, do you know yourself to be here, gathered in, gathered in, and brought to this joyous celebration that the very heavens and the earth are to break forth into singing, even the mountains, because of what the Lord has accomplished?

Oh, there’s nothing like being a Christian. Nothing like being a prisoner set free. Nothing like passing from death to life. Nothing like knowing you’re a child of God.

If you’re not saved, if you’re not in Christ, if you’re not under the blood, if you have rejected the cross work of the Lord Jesus, tonight come, believe on Him, seek Him.

Because He has sent His gospel thousands of miles from where this was uttered. At this moment, this hour, this day, you might hear the invitation once more.

Respond. Believe. And be saved.

Let’s bow together in prayer.

Let me just say that though the gospel has gone to many regions of the world, the need is great. And it may even be someone here tonight is wrestling with the will of God, the call of God, that maybe you would be one who would carry this gospel to some other land or some other place.

May you explore that matter before God. May you be willing to go wherever He sends, because souls are perishing. How shall they hear without a preacher?

Lord, bless Thy Word.

We’re thankful for the certainty of the success of Christ’s work. We’re thankful that in our Lord Jesus Christ, we see exemplified such confidence that the other sheep I have, them also I must bring. We’re glad to be found among the other sheep, gathered into that one fold and one Shepherd.

We pray, God, that Thou’lt be pleased to raise up more laborers, to bless those who are in the labor of preaching the gospel, to empower every church and all who are members of the church with the fullness of the Holy Ghost, that even multitudes yet may be gathered in.

Have mercy on America. Have mercy on Korea. Have mercy upon all lands distant and near. Be pleased to advance the cause of Christ in a marvelous way. May eyes be brought to look upon the Lamb. May souls be saved by the thousands. May Christ receive all the praise, for He is worthy.

Bless us tonight. Encourage us in gospel endeavor. Help us this week to seek out souls that we might share the gospel with. Give us the joy of talking with them and sharing the good news. Encourage us here. Advance Thy cause through us.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of all the people of God, now and evermore.

Amen.