If everyone could turn to Isaiah 55, I am going to read the whole chapter, beginning in verse 1. Isaiah 55:1-13 says:
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of Jehovah thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee. Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto Jehovah, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to Jehovah for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
I will stop reading there. That is the end of Isaiah 55.
Today, I thought we could look at a couple of verses in Isaiah 55, beginning in verse 8, where God says:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts...
Now that is kind of obvious, is it not? It is pretty obvious that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, man’s thoughts. Actually, though, God has to distinguish this. He finds it necessary to let us know this. He is telling us that we are not the same. There is a difference between God and us. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts.
Actually, remember in the Psalms, in Psalm 50, this is one of the reasons why God makes this kind of a statement. In Psalm 50:20-21, it says:
Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself...
You see, this is how man is. Man, naturally, tends to put his thoughts in the place of God’s thoughts and to think that they are one and the same. But they are not; they are different. They are much different.
God’s thoughts are God’s thoughts. They come from the Mind of God. Our thoughts belong to us. We are the creature and He is the Creator, and there is a vast difference in what God thinks and in what we think, as man.
You know, I think that this is one of the many problems that people have when they come to the Bible, because man comes to the Bible, and man—amongst men, some are intelligent, even men with brilliant minds, and they can think things out pretty well here on earth. They come to the Bible, and they have mastered other subjects in the world, so when they come to the Word of God, the Scriptures, they try to analyze it. They try to reason it through and figure it out and to develop a theology based on their understanding of what they are reading in the Bible.
This is why we have all kinds of wrong doctrines, all kinds of wrong teachings, all kinds of wrong gospels. In every case, it goes back to man has substituted his thought for the thought of God. He has exchanged them. He has thought that his thinking was God’s thinking, on a particular verse or passage in the Bible.
So we have teachings today that cover the whole spectrum of what the Scriptures teach, like women teaching. The Bible does not allow that, but man allows that. Or when we had God’s blessing upon the churches, we had single men teaching, as deacons and elders and pastors. And the Bible, very clearly, says no, that a man had to be married and have children. A single man was not to be a deacon. He was not to be an elder. He was not to be a pastor.
God’s thoughts? God’s thoughts—very plainly, we actually can find verses that say that—than man’s thoughts. But, “No, let us analyze this a little bit more. Let us think this through some more.” And they developed a doctrine that is pleasing to them, pleasing to those in the congregation, but it is not pleasing to God. It is not pleasing to God at all, and so this is a very constant problem.
Let us go to Isaiah 65. In Isaiah 65:1-2:
I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name. I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts;
That is basically how you can summarize all the idolatry that is out there in the world, especially that which is in the churches, all the idols of men, all the doctrines, like accepting Christ, walking down the aisle, saying the sinner’s prayer. It all comes under the thoughts of men. It is all falling under that heading, and God says it is rebellion.
They are walking in a way that is not good. It is not good; it is not pleasing to God—no matter how good it sounds, no matter how dramatic it might be, no matter how exciting it might be to have a whole stadium full of people emotionally ready to fall down and to accept Christ and to give their lives to Jesus. Wow! That is real excitement. And then you have a fiery preacher up there who is going to stir up people’s emotions to convince them to take that step, and the tears are flowing.
Wonderful! To men. To people. It really passes the Sunday morning hour. But to God, it is nothing but evil and wicked, and it is anything but good. It is rebellion. It is flat out rebellion against the Word of God, and God is not pleased with man’s substitution, with man putting his word in place of God’s Word.
Let us also go to Jeremiah 18, and it says in Jeremiah 18:11-12:
Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith Jehovah; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good. And they said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices...
And that is the same word as “thoughts,” and that is translated as “devices” in the Old Testament.
...we will walk after our own thoughts, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.
Now that is kind of blunt. That is a statement that is true of many, but it is more undercover with most. It is more deceitful, and people are being deceived by it. Normally, man, when he is trying to substitute his thoughts for God’s thoughts, does not come flat out and state it like that. But this is actually what is going on down underneath all of the doctrines that are false and all of the teachings that are out of man’s mind rather than God’s mind.
This is why God finds it essential to say:
...my thoughts are not your thoughts...
“My thoughts are not your thoughts.” What do we know about man’s thoughts? A couple of verses normally jump into your mind when you think about that. How about Genesis 6? In Genesis 6:5:
And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
That is our thinking, because we are all people. Before salvation, that is the heart of everyone. We had our ideas. We had our plans. We had our understanding of the world, of life, of religion, of philosophy. We had all of these things, and all the imaginations of the heart, not most—it was not that we had 90% good thoughts and 10% bad, or like some people like to say, “I have done some bad things, but I am mostly good”—no, all the thoughts of the heart were “only evil continually.”
So God is making this distinction. He is showing the difference. He wants us to understand that there is a big difference with man’s thinking and God’s thinking.
Or how about Isaiah 59:7:
Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.
Again, man’s sinful mind, man’s deep-down within thoughts are nothing but “iniquity.”
Also, in the New Testament, in the Gospel of Matthew, in chapter 15, I think some of us are familiar with this. I will start reading from verse 3. Matthew 15:3-6:
But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; and honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God...
That is the Word of God. It is God’s thought.
...the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.
That is the word of men, and it is man’s thinking. As they develop traditions and try to connect them to God somehow, they try to make it tie in to the Bible. It gives it a sense of authority and legitimacy, and yet it is just as wicked as any other religion that is out there in the world that has no basis in truth.
Then it goes on to say in Matthew 15:7-9:
Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
It is sad, but that is what is out there. That is what is out there in the churches and congregations of the world. It is “doctrines...of men.” And now, at this time, it has completely taken over the church, because what is God’s doctrine? What is God’s teaching today in our time of the Great Tribulation? Number one: “Come out of her, My people.” “Come out of her, My people.” That is, leave the churches and congregations.
Well, that is God’s Word that comes from His mind. Man looks at these verses, like Revelation 18:4, or Matthew 24 where it says, “Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains,” and they say, “No. You cannot develop any kind of doctrine based on statements like that. You need a clear and obvious theological statement to build any kind of doctrine on it.”
Well, you see, man just spins it. Man turns it, with his own ideas and his own reasoning and his own thoughts, not understanding that when God gives a Scripture, yes, it can have some basic, direct elements to it. There can be commands, “Thou shalt not kill.” We are certainly not to kill. Or, “Thou shalt not steal” or swear. We are not to do those things. But actually, there is a deeper spiritual meaning that is just as important as the surface meaning, if not more important.
We use this example all the time. In Luke 17, when there were ten lepers, they came to Jesus and Jesus told them, “Go show yourselves unto the priests.” So they went and “as they went, they were cleansed.” All ten—all ten were cleansed. And Jesus told them that because there is a Law in the book of Leviticus, in chapter 14, that says, “This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought unto the priest,” and then the priest would make a sacrifice for him.
So Christ is referring to that Law, and he tells these ten men, “Go show yourselves unto the priests.” They would have gone to Jerusalem in obedience to what Christ said—a very direct statement, a very literal statement—“Go show yourselves unto the priests,” and they went. But one, on his way—all ten were cleansed of their leprosy—one, after being cleansed, ran back to Jesus. Remember, in Luke 17? He ran back and “glorified God.” He threw himself down, he was so happy. He was so thrilled that his leprosy was gone.
What did Jesus say? “Did I not tell you to go show yourself to a priest? You should not be here. You should be with the other nine!”
He did not say that. He said, “Where are the nine?” “Where are the nine?”
Why would He ask that? Why would Christ ask that? He told them directly, pointblank, “Go show yourselves unto the priests,” and that is where they were going, because that is the literal Word of God. And yet, Jesus said, “Where are the nine?”
Let me finish reading it, because I cannot remember the exact statement. In Luke 17:18-19:
There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.
The one, “disobedient” one, receives the commendation of the Lord. He glorified God. The other nine, the implication is, did not. They did not glorify God.
Now think about it. Think about it. What is more important? The plain statement of the Bible? That has some weight. That is important. Okay. They were doing the obvious and they were obeying the plain statement of Jesus, and they failed to glorify God.
So when God says, “Come out of her, My people,” and He is talking about Babylon, “Well, I do not have to obey that. I do not have to listen to that.” Yes you do, and so do I, and so does everyone. It is a command of God, and if you do not obey it, if you do not “flee to the mountains” out of Judaea, if you do not go to God Himself at this time, you are rebellious. You are disobedient and you fail to give glory to God, just like these lepers.
You see, this is why we have to be very careful when we are coming to the Bible and we are saying, “This is what it says. This is what it means.” Does it? Is it our thought or is it God’s thought? We need to be very diligent. We need to be putting extra time into study at this time, because we want to make sure that we are glorifying God, that God is getting the glory and not man.
So man’s way of thinking is “evil continually,” and there are many other statements in the Bible. Man’s thoughts are “vain.”
Man’s thoughts, by the way, do not pack-a-punch, to use an expression. Man’s thinking does not have any power. It does not have any ability to do things, to accomplish things.
Well, yes, we can do certain things. We can think about what clothes we want to wear and our jobs and things like that. Yes, but remember what God says in the Bible. Remember what He says?
First of all, can anybody here create? Can we create something, through our thoughts or through our word? Can we make a declaration and have something come into being? No, we cannot.
So we cannot create the universe. Our thinking cannot do that. We cannot make a world. We cannot build mountains. We cannot make oceans or seas or put the sand on the seashore. We cannot do any of these great and mighty things. Only God can do that.
That is one reason why God is saying, “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” because His thoughts—we will look at later—they have a lot more punch. They have a lot more impact.
But we cannot do that, so how about something little? How about something little? How about we just add an inch to our height? Let us add an inch to our height. Think about it really hard. Go ahead. Try it. Put all your energy into it. I do not want to be this height anymore. I do not want to be this height. I want to grow! Nobody can do it.
How about the color of our hair? Can we change the color of our hair? Well, today? And the eyes? But they are not really changing anything, are they? It is not really changing anything when we use dyes or people put blue contact lenses in their eyes when they want a different eye color. That is not really changing anything. You still have the color of eyes that you have. You still have the color of hair that you have. I know some ladies who would prove it—take a look and look at the roots. But we cannot change anything like that. We do not have the power. We do not have the ability.
Let us go to Matthew 6. In Matthew 6, Jesus is speaking directly here. In Matthew 6:25-34, it says:
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
You can see how God lays it out. Do not think about, or “take no thought,” which actually is an expression meaning, “Do not worry. Do not be anxious. Do not be concerned. Do not spend your time constantly thinking about these things.” “Take no thought” for food, for drink, for clothes. “Take no thought” for your height. We can gather in all of these statements that God is saying, “Do not worry about it. Do not spend your time, wasting your time, taking thought for all of these things in the world.”
Why not? Because you cannot change it. You cannot change it. You cannot make any difference. You cannot! It is a huge waste of time. It is an enormous waste of time to have a problem and to sit down and think of it one way and then the other way, in circles. You are thinking and thinking and thinking, and yet, there is no power behind the thoughts. There is no ability in the thinking to change it. You just can not do it.
God tells us in other places, “Be careful (anxious) for nothing.” Remember that in Philippians? “But in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
But what does it say right after that? Right after that in Philippians 4, when God says “Be careful (anxious) for nothing,” and that is, do not spend needless time thinking about things that you cannot change.
It says in Philippians 4:8:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report...think on these things.
That is what God wants us to do, “Think on these things.” And when we work through that whole list, there is only one person who is qualified, and that is Christ, as being “pure” and “good” and “honest” and “of good report.” It is only Jesus and Jesus is the Word of God, so think on the Bible, think on the Scripture. Think on what God wants us to think, because all else is vain; it is empty; it is useless—it is useless. “Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you,” is what God tells us.
So this is all related to the idea, “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” You see, God’s thoughts, they are powerful and they pack-a-punch.
So let us go to Psalm 33:6-11. It says:
By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses. Let all the earth fear Jehovah: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. Jehovah bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people...
And that is the word “thoughts.”
...he maketh the thoughts of the people of none effect. The counsel of Jehovah standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.
You see, God has given us the Word, the Bible, and the Bible comes from the Mind of God. It reveals His thoughts. Right? Right? It reveals the Mind of God. This is the thinking of God, as we read the Bible.
Actually, the Bible tells us that. In 1 Corinthians 2, let me begin reading here in verse 10. 1 Corinthians 2:10-11:
But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
That ties right in with the whole mess that is in the Christian corporate body, in the churches and congregations. Nobody can know another person.
I do not know what is going on in anybody’s inner being, in their thoughts, and nobody here knows what is going on within another person. Even in a marriage, even in a close relationship, we can not really know what is going on deep-down within our wife or our husband or with our children, because only the individual can know, only the person themselves can know. And even there, we do not know completely because there are things working subconsciously that we are not really aware of. We do not know ourselves absolutely. God knows us. But still, we know ourselves better than anybody else knows us, and that is what God is saying about His Spirit.
Now if this is the Mind of God, the Bible—and it is—can we understand that Mind? Can we interpret that Mind? No. We can not even understand another human being’s mind. We cannot comprehend what is going on in another fellow creature. And this is the Creator who is giving us His Word, which is revealing His Mind.
So God is saying that only the spirit of man can understand what is going on within. And likewise, only the Spirit of God can understand the Bible. Only the Spirit of God can understand what the Mind of God is.
So that is one reason why a lot of people come to the Bible and get confused and they develop wrong teachings and doctrines, because they do not have the Spirit of God within them—number one—and they do not have the Spirit of God leading them, guiding them, directing them to truth, and so they are in big trouble.
1 Corinthians 2:12-13 goes on to say:
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
That is the methodology God has established for coming to truth. He is giving us a way of doing it in order to be more sure that what we are finding in the Bible is true to what the Bible says.
Then in 1 Corinthians 2:14-16:
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
“We have the Mind of Christ,” and that is the Bible. We have the Scriptures that are the Mind of God Himself. And you can see why there is a problem, because God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts.
Let us go back to Isaiah 55:8-9:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
That is a good picture, is it not, “as the heavens are higher than the earth”? Has anybody ever had a conversation with an animal? Yes, I have.
Now, today, or since salvation, believers, they know that there is a God. So if they are lonely or if they are isolated, they talk to God.
But I remember in the past, before I knew God, I remember talking to my dog or my cat, because there was nobody around. You talk to the dog, and you can release and you can express yourself because you know that a dog is a dog—you do not care about anything. So you are talking to the dog. But then at some point, you really want a mutual communication. You want somebody to talk back to you. So you say to the dog, “What do you think?” Or, “Say something. Say something. Say something!” Or it could be a fish or a turtle, or whatever, whatever kind of animal.
You see, we have a lot in common with animals. Right? They are creatures; we are creatures. Is that not true? Like the cat? The cat has eyes. The cat has ears. The cat can meow. Well, we have ears. We have eyes. We can talk.
So we are talking to the cat. But at some point, you know, we get a little disgusted with that. “What do you know? You are just a dumb animal! You are just a stupid animal. You do not know what I am feeling. You do not know what I am thinking. You have no way of understanding.”
Now what is the gap between the cat or dog or fish, or whatever it is, and us? What is the gap? How much higher are we than that stupid animal? We are higher. We are on the top rung of the creation order.
Well, maybe they are too stupid, so let us find a dolphin. They are supposed to be the most intelligent animals. Well, go ahead. Go find a dolphin and try to communicate with a dolphin. Speak to a dolphin. Pour out your heart to a dolphin. A dolphin is cute and everything, but it does not know a thing that you are talking about. There is no ability there.
There is no way for a man to talk with an animal. Well, yes, they can learn a few basic things, like when it is time to eat and stuff like that. But you can not talk to an animal. There is a total inability, an impossibility, of communication between us and the animal on any kind of deep level, or on any kind of even marginally intelligent level. It just is not there.
Well, God says that His thoughts are not our thoughts, and that His thoughts are higher—what does it say:
...as the heavens are higher than the earth.
And that is a long way. That is a long way. We have not even gotten to the end of the universe, the end of the heavens. You can go millions upon millions upon millions of miles into this galaxy that God spoke and created in a moment of time, and God is saying, “Go as far as you can possibly go and then look back to the earth. That is My mind. This is My mind and that is your mind.”
You see, the huge problem people have when they are coming to the Bible and they are going to use their 150+ I.Q. or 200—you can get the most brilliant of men—they are going to use their minds to interpret the Word of God, to tell you and others and themselves, “This is what God says.” And it is a tragedy. It is very sad, and it explains why the church is in the situation that it is, because we need the Mind of God. We need the Holy Spirit to teach us, to guide us into all truth, to lead us to understand the ways of God and the thoughts of God that we find in the Bible.
Actually, let us back up here in Isaiah 55. In Isaiah 55, back up to verse 7. Isaiah 55:7:
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto Jehovah...
You see, God is saying, “Here are your thoughts. At best, they are puny. They are tiny, from a finite little creature—you know, as miniscule as you can get. Go ahead. Get a microscope. And as tiny as you can get, that is man’s thoughts. But My thoughts are glorious and holy and brilliant and beyond knowing. Unless I cause you to know, unless I open your understanding, unless I give you truth and lead you into truth, you are not going to know anything.”
So God is saying:
Let the wicked...
And that is everybody before salvation.
...forsake his way (thoughts)...
Forsake them. I am not going to go by my way of thinking anymore. “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.”
I am not going to give any credence to anything I thought I knew or what I thought was truth or right, and I am going to go to God, “Teach me, O LORD. Teach me. Guide me into truth and help me to follow Your methodology—comparing Scripture with Scripture and making sure all conclusions harmonize and fit together, and then double checking that, and studying to show ourselves approved unto God.” This is what we need to do and only can do by God’s grace, if He will bestow it upon us.
Alright, let us stop here and close with a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You, that You are condescending, that You do come down to our level, as the Lord Jesus became man and entered into the human race, and You not only do that but even today, You know that we are but dust, that we have feet of clay, that we have very limited abilities, even the best of us, and yet, Father, you take the time to bring us Your Word and to teach us Your Word and to guide us. We are so thankful that we do not have to do it ourselves, that we do not have to follow our minds, which could never lead us to the Kingdom of Heaven, but that we can follow Yours. Father, we pray that you be with us the rest of this day, and we ask for your blessing and for your favor. Not because we deserve it or have earned it, we do not and we cannot, but because You have decided to bless Your Word. Your Word will go forth and prosper and not return void, and we ask that you will bless it now. In Christ’s Name we pray. Amen.
(No questions were asked for this study.)