Scott Brown discusses in this video the topic of salvation. The Gospel is the single most important issue. He addresses issues such as assurance of salvation. The Gospel is a message that touches all areas of life. In fact, nothing is more important or valuable than the Gospel.

Ephesians 2:8-9 (NKJV) - "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches presents, Salvation, a message given by Scott Brown at the Power of the Gospel Conference. Conference. Well I would like for you to open your Bibles to Isaiah, to Isaiah chapter 12. Isaiah chapter 12 shows two particular fruits of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are many fruits of the gospel of Christ.

There are many results. And I pray that as we're walking around this conference and talking to people that this scripture would be fulfilled among us. That Isaiah 12 would be felt, it would be seen, It would be understood in a whole new way that this particular power of the Gospel would be demonstrated among us. I've designed to begin this first message of the conference on a fruit of salvation, actually two results of salvation. So if you would please stand for the reading of the word of God in Isaiah chapter 12.

Isaiah chapter 12 verse one. And in that day you will say, Oh Lord, I will praise you. Though you are angry with me, Your anger is turned away and you comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid.

For Yah, the Lord, is my strength and song. He also has become my salvation. Therefore with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And in that day you will say, praise the Lord, call upon his name, declare his deeds among the peoples, make mention that his name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for he has done excellent things.

This is known in all the earth. Cry out and shout, O inhabitant of Zion, for great is the holy one of Israel in your midst. Let's pray. Oh Lord, would you favor this congregation tonight with the preaching of your son Jesus Christ, that He would be such the prominent preacher here tonight. That your children would hear your voice, that sinners lost would hear your voice.

It would be your voice from your preaching tonight. Amen. Please be seated. So Isaiah 12 takes us into the regions of the joyful praises of God's people for their salvation. The anger of God has been propitiated through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and people are joyfully drawing water from the wells of salvation.

And I'd like to just mention something about the context here. Isaiah chapter 12 is at the end of the very first section of Isaiah. And in this final chapter, in this first section of Isaiah, I believe it's kind of a crescendo of what has come before, which really began in chapter 9 verse 6, which says, For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will rest on his shoulders. This whole section from chapters 1 through 12 speaks about the judgment that is coming upon Judah. And in Isaiah's presentation of his prophecy, he begins with the judgment against the people of God, because judgment begins in the house of the Lord.

And then in chapter 13, he speaks about God's judgment against the nations, and then after that, his judgment against the whole world. So there's a logical flow that Isaiah is engaged here. And in these first chapters, he tells a story of a people who are wounded and they are sick from head to toe. And the society is in a state of collapse. Manhood is gone.

The protectors and the leaders of the nation have gone AWOL. Womanhood is dead. And you've got Judah filled with vain and frustrated and irrelevant and self-absorbed women. It's a tragedy much like the tragedies that we see today in our own society. So what Isaiah is doing, he's contrasting the hardships of life under the superintending power of the devil, with the life under the superintending power of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the power of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so now at the end of this first section, Isaiah is speaking of a remnant, people who have been drawn near to God, and now they are drawing water from the wells of salvation. And you see right at the beginning here of the timing of this. He uses these words, in that day. And this refers to the day of salvation. Many times in Isaiah, in that day refers to a judgment.

And he is speaking here of a time frame. And it's very clear that he is speaking of the time of the gospel. It's that day that he speaks of where the Messiah has come and he's broken the power of sin and death and he's reigning in the hearts of people. And you can see that in the previous chapter. If you will look at verse 10 with me, you'll see the continuity of his message.

He uses the word and in that day in verse 10 in chapter 11. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse who shall stand as a banner to the people, for the Gentiles shall seek Him, and His resting place is glorious." So He is speaking of that day when Jesus Christ comes and He pours out His Spirit and He rescues his people and he preaches his gospel to the most despicable of the earth, the Gentiles. And they come into the kingdom of heaven. And what we learn here from Isaiah is that when that happens, something very profound changes in your life. What is it that changes?

It is that you start talking differently. You talk to yourself differently, and you also talk to others in a way that you never spoke before. And it is a fruit of the power of the Lord Jesus Christ in your life. And so he's speaking of what happens to individuals, first of all, in the first three verses, and then what happens to churches, to people who are in churches, in the final verses. And the interpretive key of this, I think, is found in verse 6.

It tells you why this has happened. How is it that a person's whole way of talking changes. Verse 6 tells you, there's this word for, for great is the Holy One of Israel in your midst. When the Holy One of Israel is in your midst, everything changes. This is a passage of scripture of the nearness of God to the individual and to the members of his church.

Now the health of any church, the health of any family, the health of any individual rests upon what it thinks is great. What you think is great makes all the difference in the world. And when He is great in your midst, praise is glorious. People feel differently. They talk differently to themselves and to one another.

They spur one another on to love and good deeds because their hearts have been changed and it has changed one of the most fundamental defining organs of their body, their tongue. And so that's what we find here. Now, that means that we should ask ourselves, what is it that diminishes His greatness among us? Is there anything that diminishes His greatness? Because everything rests upon His greatness.

And we're all here, sitting here, looking so fine, but all of us engage in things that diminish the greatness of God. I pray that God would use this time to sanctify His people, to identify anything that is diminishing the greatness of God in your heart, in your family, and in your church. It's such a critical question. We should ask these questions about the diminishing of the greatness of God among us. Let's talk also about the literary structure of this passage of scripture.

It's critical that We understand that this is a song that is composed in two stanzas. And each has six lines. The first stanza has six lines, and the second stanza has seven. And the lines are about at the same length, they're symmetrical in many ways. But there's something about the literary structure that we need to grasp if we're going to understand what Isaiah is saying about this power of the gospel.

Now, the first two verses are written in the second person singular. Verse 3 is in the second person plural. And verses 4 through 6 are in the second person plural, imperative. And that matters in how we interpret this passage of scripture. These are the things that happen to the heart when Jesus Christ is great among you.

So here is the basic outline, maybe stated in a little clearer form. Verses 1 through 3 speak about what you say to yourself when Jesus Christ has invaded your soul. And verses four through six, identify what you say to others when Jesus Christ is great among you. And then verse six at the very end of it explains why it happened. So that's the basic structure of this.

So you see these two scenes. Isaiah is brilliant in the way that he lays before the mind's eye these scenes. He first of all shows you a person who is actually talking to himself. Have you ever done that? Well, we do that all day long.

We're always talking to ourselves. And then he transitions to a scene where the people of God are actually talking to one another. These are two very precious and sacred things. How we speak to ourselves and how we speak to one another. And the way that we do that are signs that the kingdom of heaven has come down.

And so we're really answering the question, what happens when God is in your midst? What you will say to yourself? And what we find here is that there are many things that happen. And the first thing that you say to yourself when Jesus Christ is your Lord, is you say, oh Lord, I will praise you. This is self-talk that he's speaking about, and that's why he says, and in that day, you will say, oh Lord, I will praise you.

And Isaiah here is identifying this ground of true joy, this pardon for sin and the peace that endureth that changes your whole disposition about everything. And he's speaking, as I said, in the first person. He's speaking of a people who have a personal story to tell. This is the utterance of an individual. Yes, we know that salvation is corporate and that God gathers his people as a body, but it's not just a corporate salvation that he brings to his people.

It's individual and it tells us that every individual has a story to tell. And he tells that story to himself. That's why Jesus Christ said, He calls his own sheep by name, and when they hear his voice, they say, oh Lord, I will praise you. He saves them personally, so that people like the Apostle Paul could say with certainty, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. And every person must have this experience or they are not saved. It's the preaching of the gospel to yourself. It's the waking up in the morning and saying Oh Lord I will praise you saying that in the knowledge of your own great imperfections. And so the Gospel changes the whole way that you speak.

When God is great among you, you say, oh Lord, I will praise you. And the second thing that you say is, your Anger is turned away. He says, though you were angry with me, your anger is turned away. Now Isaiah is transporting the person who is reading this prophecy into a moment in his life where he's awakened to remember something. And it comes to his mind that God was angry with him.

And flooding back into his thinking were the remembrances of the days when God was angry. It's something that is in the past. Thankfully, it is in the past. And you remember what the fever heat of summer, the hard pressing of the anger of God was upon you. The Bible makes it clear that that anger is actually constant, that God is angry with the wicked every day.

David said that in Psalm 7, verse 11. How oppressive it is as John 3, 36 makes it very clear that he who believes in the Son has everlasting life and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abides on him. It's oppressive. It's also inescapable as Paul declared in Romans 1 verse 18 when He said, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men. It's from heaven.

You can never escape it. You're walking in the world and you can never go anywhere where the wrath of God will not destroy you. The wrath of God is upon you unless, unless you can say your anger is turned away. We also know that the wrath of God is very specific and personal as Paul declares in Ephesians 5.6, the wrath of God will come on the sons of disobedience. It is very individualized as well.

And it's very harmful. Deuteronomy speaks of it in chapter 28 where Moses speaks of how harmful and horrifying it is to receive the wrath of God, the curses of God against His broken law where he says the Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart, and you shall grope at noonday as a blind man gropes in darkness. You shall not prosper in your ways. You shall only be oppressed and plundered continually, and no one shall save you." You know, I was so aware of that in the days before I was saved. I looked around and I saw the great punishments upon those who had not turned to Jesus Christ and I was one of them.

I felt the wrath of God upon me. But Isaiah, speaking of that time, when you have a remembrance of the wrath of God, and in that we recognize that our greatest problem is not our society, it's not ourselves. It's the anger of God. God is angry with sinners and that is your greatest problem if you are an unrepentant sinner. And yet this is a picture of God's wrath that has gone away.

How in the world can the wrath of God be withdrawn from a sinner. In 1st John chapter 4 verse 10 we read of how this happens where John says in this is love not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins. This really is one of the most wonderful words in the Bible, propitiation. It's kind of a difficult word to say very fast, but it is a wonderful word to contemplate very slowly because it speaks of the wrath of God that was pacified. His anger was stilled.

It was soothed because of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ in his sacrifice on the cross. And this is why the Apostle Paul speaks of this very same thing in Romans chapter 3 verse 25 where he says that God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ. And what Isaiah is speaking of is this very thing where a person remembers that day or that season when they knew the wrath of God had been satisfied by Jesus Christ and the curses of the law have been removed. And so as a result of that, you think back and you say, your anger is turned away. Is that your self-talk?

Do you know that? Do you know that the blood of Jesus Christ alone And faith in His blood pacifies the anger of God, which sets a person free to undergo the great renovations that the Holy Spirit makes from that time on. And so when God is great among you, you say, your anger is turned away. And then you don't stop talking. You keep talking.

And you also say, you comfort me. This is God's love for sinners. He desires their comfort. And While there are so many different kinds of comforts that Jesus Christ gives to His children, this kind of comfort is a very specific kind of comfort. It's that comfort when you know that the anger of God has been lifted from your head.

And there's such comfort there for those who mourn for their sins and have turned to Jesus Christ. That's why Jesus Christ said, happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. This is the same kind of comfort that Isaiah speaks of in Isaiah 40, verse one, where He says, comfort, yes, comfort my people, says your God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, For she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. And so you will say, you comfort me, O Lord.

I pray that there would be such a resounding talk in the heart of every individual here, they would say, you comfort me. And if you cannot say that, recognize what that means. And then there's a fourth thing that you say. You say, Behold, God is my salvation. You say, Behold, This expresses the wonder.

There's really only one response. When you realize that God's anger has been withdrawn, you must say, behold. Behold really is a term that really is saying, can you believe this is happening to me? Can you believe that happened to me? That his anger was taken away from me because you know who you are and You cannot believe that God would save a sinner like you and that his love would continue to rest upon you even with the great imperfections that still exist.

And so you're awestruck and you say, behold, and you say, God is my salvation. Here, we learned that it is God who is your salvation. God himself is your salvation. There's a brilliant book that John Piper wrote a few years ago called, God is the Gospel. It's a very profound and accurate way of speaking of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Because here we read this very same thing. God is my salvation. And of course, Isaiah is quoting Exodus 15. And he's quoting the very first song that we have recorded in the Bible. It's the song of Moses.

And the song of Moses was sung when the children of Israel were being set free from the bondage of Pharaoh, such a terrible taskmaster, giving them no rest, more bricks, less straw. This is what the devil always does to his children. And I pray that you understand how abusive the devil is to all those who have not turned to Jesus Christ. And here he hearkens back to this iconic moment of salvation in the history of Israel. Because the Exodus is a type of salvation.

And if you've read your Bible through and through, you know that the Exodus is referred to over and over again to be a type of salvation. It's a picture of salvation. It's a picture of the bondage and the disappointment, the harmful treatment of old Pharaoh in your life. And someone comes and says, let my people go. And out of the forces of the power of God, they are let go.

And they are rescued from the bondage of the devil and the captives are set free. And so, in the Song of Moses, we read these very words, The Lord is my strength and song, He has become my salvation, He is my God, and I will praise Him. And that is the one reason that you can trust and not be afraid because God is your salvation. And this means that your assurance for salvation is from God, and it is not dependent upon the works of man. I have so loved what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6, verses 9 through 11, where he speaks of the defilements of the world and how God is so kind to rescue the defiled of this world who have been abused by old Pharaoh for many, many years.

And he says this, do you not know that the unrighteous will not enter the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God.

It was God who is your salvation. It is He and He alone who washed and sanctified and justified. You know we're going to sing that marvelous song sometime later on in this conference where the line is, why was I made to hear your voice and enter while there's room, while thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come. These lyrics can be sung because God is your salvation. And so when God is great among you, this is what you say.

God is my salvation. But there's more. You also say I will trust and will not be afraid. Here salvation and fearlessness go hand in hand. They're the marks of true belief.

Deliverance from fear is a prominent theme in Isaiah. Isaiah shows the people just shaking with fear. And there's fear on every side. And God says to Judah, he says, do not be afraid of the Assyrian. He is another type of the devil who abuses his people.

Do not be afraid of the Assyrians. The Assyrians were the biggest, baddest saber-rattlers in the region. And they were threatening the people of God. But God says, no, you will say, I will trust and will not be afraid. But you keep talking.

There's more that you say to yourself. All of the self-talk is so life-giving and it's so consistent with the power of the gospel. And you say, Yah, the Lord, is my strength and my song. He also has become my salvation. Now, now Yah is the short form of Hallelujah.

It's from Jehovah, the name of God, which declares his eternality and his unchangeableness. And this is the solid foundation upon which salvation rests, that you stand on Him. And your salvation is immovable because it's the Lord who is your strength and your song. He also brings forth this marvelous truth of scripture of the beauty of singing in the hearts of people, that God becomes your song. God is the one that is the center of your songs.

You know, when God is not the center of your songs, you should ask yourself, why is it that you would have anything but God as the center of your songs? But here, the Lord is your strength and your song. Interestingly enough, and I'm not sure how to explain this, but not only is God your salvation, that God is your song. Maybe someone else can explain that better than I, but it's a beautiful thing to consider. And so when God is great among you, you say many things.

You say, I will praise you. You say, your anger is turned away. You say, you comfort me. You say, Behold, God is my salvation. You say, I will trust and not be afraid.

You say, For Yah, the Lord, is my strength and my song. And So up to now Isaiah has been speaking in the singular, indicating the experience of the individual. What the individual is saying with his own mouth. But now as we arrive at verse 3, there's a change And he shifts from the singular to the plural. So verse 3 is in the plural, and this is a transitional verse in Isaiah 12, where Isaiah shifts from the experience and the self-talk of the individual to the corporate lives of the people of God.

And he says, therefore, with joy, you corporately will draw water from the wells of salvation. Now he turns to a picture of the people of God drawing water from the wells of salvation. And so there are only two kinds of people in the world. There are the dry and the shriveling and there are those who are hydrated, who are drawing water from the wells of salvation being replenished by the refreshing waters of Zion. And of course, this is the name from which we've derived this conference, these messages that we will be delivering, we pray will draw us to these wells of salvation that God has given to his people.

And I pray as you go from one session to another, get out your bucket, fill it up. Don't take a two gallon bucket. Don't take a 10 gallon bucket. Take a 55 gallon drum. Because The truth is, you're pretty much filled up by what you are open to be filled up.

Open yourselves up to be filled by these waters of salvation that are flowing from the preaching that will be taking place here. Isaiah uses this marvelous imagery of water to speak of the beauty of the gospel of God's grace. Water is the most important thing. It's the indispensable thing. Nothing on earth can live without it.

And so what water does for the soil, salvation does for the soul. That's why David says in Psalm 143, he says, I spread out my hands to you, my soul longs for you like a thirsty land. It's a picture of a soul who wants more water. If you are not satisfied with your current state of your spiritual life and you want more. Brothers and sisters, that's a sign.

It's such a sweet sign. And the manner of drawing it, it is drawn with joy. You have a picture of a delighted bride here. Speaking of what the Lord Jesus Christ indicated when He said that they might have joy in themselves. He said, I came and I spoke these words that you might have joy in yourselves." And notice the place from which you draw from the wells of salvation.

Isaiah, I don't believe, is necessarily speaking of a deep well, because the word that he uses is often referring to springs. It's visualizing fountains and it comes from a root that means the headwater. So there are these flowing, maybe rivers or fountains, and the translators here use the word wells, but there are many wells of salvation. I would just like to submit that every meditation on the Word of God is a well of salvation. Every thought of God, every prayer, every sermon, every brother or sister speaking the truth in love is a well of salvation.

And these are infinite stores of water. They are never failing stores. And they never run dry for the believer. And so with this change in verse 3, then there's another slight change in verse 4. And Isaiah shifts to what you will say to one another.

He's been talking about what you say to yourself, your self-talk. And then he speaks of what you will say to one another. And here he takes on the second person, plural, imperative. These verbs here exist for a purpose. And he's speaking here of the way that you talk to each other.

How the church speaks to itself. Now, there are no age qualifiers here, there are no station qualifiers here, there are no positions, it's not just the preachers, It's all those who have been drinking of the wells of salvation. And so he says, and in that day, you will say, you see that phrase again, and in that day, It's the same day that was spoken of in verse 1. It's the same day that chapter 11 verse 10 speaks about. It's that day of the power of the gospel unleashed in your life.

And so there are six imperatives. Now these are six things that we call people to do. In other words, he's telling us that his church is going to issue commands to one another. So it's the believer commanding the believer. This is what happens to you.

You begin to speak to your brother. You actually have a role in his life to command him to do certain things. Isn't it remarkable that God gives his people such a role? It's a role of a kind of authority. And when the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 5, submit to one another, this is one of the ways that the Church submits to one another.

When the Church speaks to itself about holy and beautiful things, when one brother or sister commands another brother to do a good and holy thing, he ought to submit to it. It's one of the blessings of being in the church. And so these six imperatives are commands that we make to one another. They are the marvelous marks of biblical counseling in the church. And the first command that we issue to one another is praise the Lord.

This is a church where people are calling one another to praise the Lord. They're encouraging one another. It is true that the people of God are to be commanding one another to praise God. How else would you break the pity party of that dear saint who's lost their hope, who's endured some terrible tragedy, who's really feeling the weight of his background and the disappointments, the way that he learned to think his whole life long, the anger, the angst, the bitterness that gripped his life, his whole life long, and now he has a brother or a sister standing before him, and he is saying, brother, praise the Lord. Spend your life praising the Lord.

You can lament all these things that have happened, but no, don't be so self-absorbed. Stop the unthankful life. Praise God. You know, I am so thankful for my own dear wife who does this for me. Such a sweet saint looking at me in the eyes with those beautiful eyes that I love to look into.

And when I have lost hope, she says to me, praise the Lord. You Scott, praise the Lord. God has designed praise to heal the broken hearted and to bless those who have fallen into a time of despondency. And he actually calls us to command one another to praise the Lord. Do you do that?

Do you do that with your brother or your sister? You know it's so easy when someone has fallen out of sorts, is just to sort of cultivate all that disappointment. Tell me your story. Well, the story may be important, but what's more important is that we recognize that we have a responsibility with one another to command one another to praise the Lord. I pray that God would give us such submissive hearts to our brothers and sisters as they speak to us these things.

David said that praise is beautiful. Well, there's another command that the people of God deliver to one another, not just praise the Lord, but there's another command. Call upon His name. Have you ever had anybody do that for you? You're saying something, Perhaps you're obsessed with some great difficulty that has fallen upon you.

Your brow has fallen. Despondency is there and your brother says, no call upon his name. Stop drinking in the songs of despondency, and drink in the songs of deliverance, and sing those songs. Call upon His name. He's really, I think, issuing a command for us to urge our brothers to pray, To pray in His name.

He says, call upon His name. And His name is known by many words. His name is wonderful. And every one of his names can be called upon in your time of trouble. And one of the beautiful fruits of salvation is that you speak to your brother this way and you encourage your brother by saying call upon His name.

But not only that, you also are to speak to one another in this way, declare His deeds among the peoples. And this is that we would encourage one another to open our mouths with the praises of God that we would explain the goodness of God everywhere we go. This is a work of evangelism. This is a work that springs from love in your heart for the person who's being damaged by the devil who is headed for hell, to open up your mouth, and that the church does that for one another. I am so grateful for the evangelists in our church.

I praise God that he puts in churches true evangelists, and they're always on your case. They're always saying, you know, we need to go out more. We need to be preaching the gospel more. It's such a wonderful thing to have people like that in your church. Here's what you should do.

Take good care of your evangelists. And help the people, not despise them, because they're pretty much always on your case, because that's their gift. And God has given them to the church to urge us on, that we would exercise this divinely appointed responsibility to urge one another to declare his deeds among the peoples. But that's not the only thing we say to each other. We also say this to one another, make mention that his name is exalted.

And here again we have this picture of a brother or a sister together, and one is commanding the other. And one is saying, you need to make mention that his name is exalted in other words that you you speak of the majesty of God that you speak of the greatness of his name, that your mind is caught up in all of his divine attributes, that as you're walking in the world, that you are exalting him and that you're encouraging your brothers and sisters to exalt Him rather than to lament your own self and your own life and your own condition. How hard it is in a church when everyone is gazing at their own navel, When their eyes are not lifted up to heaven, but their eyes are always on themselves. I may have told this story one time before, but I'll tell it again. There was one day a few years ago, I walked in our kitchen and I was discouraged about a couple of things that were happening.

And I walked in the kitchen and my wife said to me, where have you been? I said, well, she said, where have you been? She said, you've gone back to Scotland, haven't you? All you're thinking about is Scott. You're living in Scotland.

And there's nothing more freeing for Scott than to get out of Scotland. And here, this is the whole idea, that we command one another to exalt His name, not to be wallowing in the issues and the failures that we might even have. And that's not all. We also command one another in verse five. To sing to the Lord, for he has done excellent things.

Rather than to just be walking around, obsessing about our own things, we are singing. Singing the songs of deliverance. David said, you always fill my heart with songs of deliverance whenever I'm afraid. I will trust in you. What a blessed thing it is to have a brother who turns your mind to excellent things.

Blessed are they who know the joyful sound, the sound of singing of the excellent things of God. I would venture to say that perhaps one of the great problems that some of you may be having is that you are not meditating on excellent things. And here you have a brother standing before you now and he's saying, sing to the Lord for he has done excellent things. I hereby command you on the authority of Almighty God to sing to the Lord and dwell upon His Excellency. I am commanding you in the name of Almighty God for your joy and for the glory of Jesus Christ that the happiness of His great Kingdom would be seen in your life.

And then, not only that, you command one another to cry out and shout. Here the boldness seems to increase. Everyone is not comfortable with crying out and shouting. Some are quieter and more demure and conservative and, you know, genteel and things like that. But here, actually, There's a command that you would sort of come out of yourself and that you would maybe be a little bit more demonstrative than you are naturally.

Did you think God saved you to leave you as you are? No? God would call us to cry out and shout. You know, there's a man here who pastors a church up in Chesapeake, Virginia. And I'm telling you, they love to shout in that church.

I love to preach in that church. Because they cry out and shout. It is so wonderful. And then, you know, he comes to a place like this. Everybody just kind of stand there like that.

But, you know, hey, could we just cry out and shout a little bit more? I know my brother would like to see a little bit more. But here we know that God wants more of that. You know, Some people might cry out and shout too much. They might think they only worshiped because they hooped and hollered, to quote one of my friends.

But some people think they only worshiped because they just stood there and had some kind of thought. Conservatively. But here God is desiring His people to be crying out and shouting. I pray that God would give us that as we're together. We would shout with all of our hearts as we sing together in this place.

So what do you say? What do you command one another? You command one another to praise the Lord, to call upon His name, to declare His deeds among the peoples, to make mention that his name is exalted, to sing to the Lord for he's done excellent things, to cry out and shout. Do you see how kind God is? How he's brought you into a family, such a beneficial family, such a family that would help you to be happy in what God has done, that you would have a friend who would look at you and command you to praise the Lord.

What a blessing it is to be in the family of God and to have brothers and sisters who have responsibilities toward us. And I pray that We all would have a keener sense of our responsibility to encourage our brethren. And why would this happen? How could this possibly happen? And we have the answer in verse 6.

You will know why this happened. For great is the Holy One of Israel among you. This is how this happens. Notice the emphasis in the word in your midst. He's speaking of the inward parts, the internal center of thought and emotion.

Literally, in some places in the Bible, the entrails. He is in your midst. Okay, I want to give you some applications. Are you ready? Here are some applications.

First of all, have you noticed the kind intentions of the will of God? Have you seen the kindness of God's heart toward you, how his intentions for you are that you would know his comfort, that he would be your deliverer from all of your fears, and that He wants you to be hydrated, drawing water from the wells of salvation. Yes, He does want to bless you. He does want to please your soul through the waters of salvation, because of his great love with which he loves you. Is God like that for you?

Is that your God who is so kind or Does He seem hard to you? Does He seem to be too demanding of you? Recognize what that might mean. Secondly, With these kinds of things, I think we should examine our hearts to see if our outward lives spring from the delights of God's love within us. For example, when you come together in your church for worship, do you come just because you come or because he is great in your midst?

When you practice hospitality, are you doing that because He is great in your midst? When you pray, is it because He is great in your midst? Or do you conduct your family worship Because you're just kind of on the treadmill? Or is it because in your heart He is great in your midst? Do you recognize how pivotal it is whether you are seeing Him as great or not?

When you give your treasures is it because He is great in your midst? When you go to the abortion clinic, is it because He is great in your midst, or are you just trying to prove something by all the wonderful things that you do with all of these wonderful people, recognize that this can happen. You can go through the motions and Him not being great in your midst. We should consider this, lest we be deceived into thinking that we are justified by our deeds, because we cannot be. And then a question.

Can you sing the first part of the song? Do you sing, Oh Lord, I will praise you? And then are you singing the second part of the song? If you're a father, do you sing this song to your children? Do you sing it to your wife or your wife?

Do you sing it to your husband? Do you sing it to your brothers and sisters? Do you sing this wonderful life-giving song to your brothers and your sisters to be of such value to Him on this pilgrimage? It sometimes can be a hard pilgrimage with so many disappointments, and yet God has raised up His church so that they would encourage one another in their heavenly journey that the sorrows and the hardships that they encounter would be softened by their brothers and sisters who have a distinct responsibility and they take it to speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in their hearts to the Lord, making such a happy community, such a happy church. You know, if you don't have a happy church, you should ask whether you have a true church.

Because this is what a church does. The church works for the happiness of itself. Now if you cannot sing the first part, you will not be able to sing the second part in sincerity and in truth. All of this happens because the Holy One of Israel is in your midst. Okay, why in the world would this be my text for the beginning of this conference?

Well, first of all, it shows the happiness of the kingdom of heaven and what a superior and beautiful kingdom it is. How there's so much love there and brothers and sisters actually care for one another and how they're doing and how they're feeling and how it changes your heart. It puts praises in your mouth. It's so good. Jesus Christ is such a kind shepherd.

God is such a good Father. And He has done everything for life and godliness for His people. And He so desires His happiness to exist in His church and happiness is one of the chief fruits of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But there's more than that. There's more than that for the reason to preach out of Isaiah 12 at this first message.

And it is this. I wanted to remind us of something. That we are together in this conference. And God has put us together in this place by his sovereign grace. And he has given us a work to bear fruit in this world and that we would be diligently engaged in fruit bearing.

And so at this conference, we are also involved in work. I know, I pray that your time here will be so refreshing, but not exactly maybe like a vacation, something better than a vacation, something where the fruit is being born as a result of the power of the Gospel. And Isaiah 12 shows two of these particular results of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now we know salvation is by faith apart from works of our own. We are declared righteous on the basis of the righteousness of Christ and as a result God regards us as obedient to the law in the same way that Jesus Christ was.

And this happens at the moment of faith. But justification immediately turns to sanctification, where the Christian begins to be conformed to the image of Christ and this leads to his glorification. Now concerning our own labor, our own energies to bear fruit in our time as we're together. Now our works have no contribution to the first element of salvation, our justification. Or in the last element of the gospel, in our glorification.

But in the middle, we continue to work out our salvation. We work for sanctification while the Spirit of God works mightily to bring it about. But there is effort in sanctification. We work out our salvation in fear and trembling. So here's my admonition to us.

As we're together in these times, Let's bear fruit like this. And I pray that while you're walking these halls and you're walking to meet your friend, you see him from afar, you're saying, oh Lord I will praise you Though you are angry with me, your anger is turned away and you comfort me and you move in all of the comfort and the goodness and the happiness of Jesus Christ as you speak to your friend. And then when you speak to your friend, you recognize that Almighty God has appointed you to be a blessing to your brother. And that you would speak to him in songs and hymns and spiritual songs and that you would even command Him to glorify God. So I pray that there would be a marvelous outpouring of the Holy Spirit here, that the works of salvation would first of all be felt in your heart, and then as you recognize that you have been refreshed, that you would refresh others with the beauty of the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Deal? Deal? Let's pray. To you, O Lord, who washes, who sanctifies, who purifies, who calls, who justifies, who glorifies, it's to you, O Lord, that we lift up our eyes. And now that you would give us such favor here in this place, that you would convict the unconverted, that you would comfort those who've loved you and are called according to your purpose and that you would use your people to do your work to bear fruit for righteousness in this place.

Oh Lord that you would bring it about. We beg you that you would bring it about. Amen. And for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website, ncfic.org.