Filthy Rags

So, you can see here Isaiah, directed by the Spirit of God, writing some very sorrowful things pertaining to the people and pertaining to the state of their sin for which God brought Israel into judgment, took them away into a foreign land. I believe this is prophetic historically looking forward to that time when Babylon would come and devastate the land and that the Temple would be destroyed of which he spoke there in verse 11. It’s spoken as if it had already taken place, although Isaiah wrote this several hundred years before it was accomplished. But it’s given here for one reason and this is the reason: to show any of us that are reading this our own desperate need before the Lord as sinners. We can read this just purely from an historic perspective and walk out of here just as dead as what we walked in.

I’m not here to give us a history lesson, although this is rooted in history but prayerfully for each of us here reading this portion together, to consider our own state before the Lord and to see that it is no better than even the best that men would consider the best. You can see here in verse 6, it doesn’t say in all our sins are as filthy rags, does it? Take the best righteousnesses, plural, and put them all in a heap before the Lord. You hear people talking about standing before the Lord one day and presenting their good works to him and hopefully, as they think and say, the good will outweigh the bad. Well, you’re already in trouble because the Scriptures declare that the best that men could consider before God is nothing but filthy rags.

But Bob read it for us in Romans 3, in the reading just before I came up here to speak, that “there is none righteous, no not one.” Until the Lord is pleased to show us that in our lost depraved mind, we’re going to continue to think that there is something in us that can commend us to God. And so, that is my prayer that if that is your thought, even now, that the Lord by his Spirit would cause you to see that there is nothing good in you, nothing good in me and that even my best righteousnesses are but filthy rags.

Watch, listen, read or download the full message by Ken Wimer here.