In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the message of repentance and the existence of a kingdom that surpasses our imagination. He highlights the curse of emptiness that hangs over nations and individuals and the need to replace it with fullness. The preacher shares his experience of moving from a vibrant church atmosphere to a place where the spiritual fervor seemed to have died down. He then describes a vision where he sees the enemy standing on top of a fortress, symbolizing the spiritual battle that needs to be fought. The preacher concludes by sharing a personal anecdote about witnessing the transformation of dark storm clouds into beautiful shapes and forms when touched by the dying sun's glory.

Thank you. I don't think there's that much difference in the accent. If there is, it's his fault, not mine. He speaks bad. Okay, I'd like to read a verse in Isaiah chapter 45. Isaiah 45 verse 18. I was asked this morning if I'd share from the word and also share a little bit about what we're doing in South America. And I don't know about anybody else, but it's hard for me to combine two things. But I think we can with this text this morning. Because we're talking about a situation. We're talking about a promise. We're talking about a world condition. We're talking about a purpose. Purpose of God. Verse 18 in Isaiah 45 says, Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, got himself that formed the earth, and made it. He hath established it. He created it, not in vain. He formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I have not spoken in secret in a dark place of the earth. I said not unto the seed of Jacob, seek ye me in vain. I, the Lord, speak righteousness. I declare things that are right. This little phrase, not in vain, sticks in my mind. We live in a world destroyed. Literally, this verse means, or the word vain here, in vain, means to lay waste. May it be more clear if we said to be a desert place. It says God, and the purpose of God, the world was created not to lay waste, not to be a desert. The thing that impacted me, the God of creation is coherence in all his works. That which is true of the whole is true of every single part. There is no life created in vain. There's no day in any life created in vain. There's no event in vain, or put it in New Testament language, all things work together. There's nothing which flies off at a tangent. There's nothing which works against other things. As we come into God, as faith takes hold of life, somehow everything is polarized. You know what it is to look through a polarized glass, and there are certain things you can't see. If you ever take two polarized glasses and put them together and twist them, that which you can't see here and that which you can't see here combine, and you've got a black spot in front of your eyes. And I believe somehow God brings his own, if they're obedient, if they're following him, to a place where they see that all things are somehow polarized. They're going the same direction. There's nothing, once again, flying off at a tangent. There's nothing which is not working. There's nothing which is neutral. And we could speak a long time about this. You know, we call some things good and other things bad. And the good is to be desired, and the bad if we can get out of it, or cop out of it sometimes. If we can avoid it, so much the better. And yet in God there is no good and bad. I know in one sense there is, in moral things, but in life itself, health and sickness, for God they're both alike. Riches and poverty. The apostle talks about, I've learned how to abound, I've learned how not to abound, I've learned how to have, I've learned how not to have. I've got beyond all of those things. All things work together. He says they work together for one purpose, and what is that purpose? They work together for good. For good. Read about the wise men coming, giving their gifts to Jesus. You know, they gave gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold speaks about the nature of God, that which God has given us of himself. Frankincense about the communion, the fellowship with God, and myrrh. Myrrh is a sweet smelling spice, but it's a very bitter, very bitter spice to the taste. All those negative things, all those hurts, if I can only bring them to God, it's not only legitimate, but it's a pleasing offering. It's right up there with the gold and the frankincense. You know, it's not that that third person, well, what can I do? I don't have any more. I got this little bit of myrrh. Maybe he'll accept it. No. It's a threefold thing. We could maybe go into that and talk about body, soul, and spirit, but we won't. Let's get back to our text. So God created the earth, once again, with one purpose that includes everything and every part. He created it not in vain, once again, not to be a desert. What is a desert? It's a place where life will not grow. And physically, around this world there are many desert places. It wasn't that way in the beginning. It's this way now since the curse of this creation. There are places like the Sahara, deserts down there in South America, deserts here in the United States, where nothing will grow, where life cannot be sustained, where the seeds which are planted die, where the person who enters must leave or else they'll die. And spiritually, there are deserts. Maybe I can bring in Paraguay here. There are lands, there are countries, and it's hard for me to communicate. You've got to live there. You've got to be there. You've got to absorb that atmosphere day after day and week after week until it becomes real, until you can sense and know and participate of the death that there is in those countries. But what I want to say is that even today, almost 2,000 years after Jesus came, there are countries, and many countries, around the face of the earth, which are deserts. There are places where the gospel is bloomed, and there are other countries where missionaries labor for years and they count their converts on their fingers, after 20, 30, 40 years of faithful service. Why? Because these places are desert places. I remember years ago when we first went to Paraguay. We'd been in Argentina. We'd been in a church where there was a tremendous moving of the Spirit of God, tremendous renovation, beautiful atmosphere. The church was full practically all the time. We moved over to Paraguay. We came right out of this atmosphere, this heat of almost revival. We'd sing the choruses that we'd learned back in Argentina. We'd pray with the same fervor. We'd preach with the same urgency. It was like stepping out of a heated room into the Antarctic. We'd sing, and the songs would just kind of float out there and drop to the floor. We'd pray, and the prayers would seem to die. One day I was in a meeting. And in that meeting, it wasn't a vision, but it came with an impact of reality. We were singing, and as we were singing, all of a sudden it dawned on me. I saw it, the situation of a country. It was as though I could see the enemy standing on top of a tremendous fortress, like those old medieval castles, reaching up into the skies. And he was way up there on the top, and as it were, I could see it from the top looking down. There was the enemy on top, and he was saying to the church, you shall not enter in. And at that moment, it seemed that there was a fortress made up out of every evil thing that had happened in that country ever. As though in the invisible world, every immaterial thing, every hurt, every tear, every broken home, every destroyed life, every act of violence. Paraguay is a tremendously violent country. Tremendously violent country. All the hurt, all the wrong, all the children who didn't have parents, all the drunkenness, all the immorality, all the twisted things, somehow in the invisible world, they became material. And over the generations, the enemy took those things, the things which each life supplied of wrong, took them and built, as the building blocks on his fortress, built up with them walls, built up towers, built up bulwarks to heaven. You remember the verse where Jesus said, the enemy cometh and he hath nothing in me? Let me just stick this in parenthesis, and then we get back to the fortress. You know, this is the other side of the coin. I think many times when the enemy comes, we go into despondency, we go into defeat, we go into despair, we go into unbelief, because he has something in us. You know, we can rebuke him, and we can do everything, but there's something in us that belongs to him. And you say, you've always kept, for instance, you've always kept for yourself a little place to feel sorry for yourself. You know, and I can see that he's coming, and, excuse me, I'll use this brother here, he's coming walking over to me, and I'm saying, no, no, no, and I'm saying, in Jesus' name, no, and he's saying, this is mine, this is mine, this is mine. He takes me, gets hold of me, and I can't get out of it. You know, we talk about, quote, deliverance. We talk a lot, we bat around a lot of phrases. There's a lot more to it than what we really realize, I believe. The enemy builds, and I believe not only over a country, but over a life, heritages of wrong, fortresses in families. And I don't want to get into this, because we all get kind of psyched out. There's no need to, but it is true. There are families where certain sins run down through the generations. There are places where there are certain fears that rule and destroy. There are families which can never, what can I say, get off the ground, either in life, or in business, or in their own personal relationships. Think of one missionary down there in Paraguay, Argentina, down in the southern part of Argentina. As he got married, there's a tremendous fear in his heart. My family has fallen apart in their marriages, and God, are you going to hold me as I step into marriage? There's a real fear there, and it's a real battle to get out, and know that God has said, child, you're free. And I'm not talking about a mental thing, because that's not good enough. Mental conviction can't take away ground that belongs to the enemy. I can't argue the enemy out. You know, I can't go to the negotiating table and say, well, listen, enemy, you know, let's talk this over. He's saying, this is mine, and that's the way it is in the spiritual world. There are only two worlds, either God or the enemy. We're in one, or we're in the other. Here it says, once again, not in vain. We got countries which, as I said, are desert places. They're in vain. In vain. I believe the challenge to the church, the challenge to whoever has got ears to hear, has yet to see with all those countries around the world, God's calling people to those countries. He's calling people that will rise up and say, God, you've said this earth, and it doesn't matter what country. It doesn't matter whether it's Paraguay or Iran or even the European countries like Germany and France, which are so far away, it doesn't matter who they are, but that somebody hear the voice of God, somebody hear the word of God and go there and say, God, it's not going to be in vain in this country, and it's going to take my life. I've got to lay down my life, and it's not just words, and it's not just a feeling. It's not just something we hear in a meeting. It's reality, day after day, week after week, year after year, and an insisting. You know, it's not just a matter of seeing something and possessing it. We hear a lot about, you know, confess and possess. I believe there's a way of prayer. God gives us a vision. We want to possess this thing out here, and we're back here, and this is the measure of our lives, and this is the measure of the thing that God wants us to possess, and we have to agonize. We have to strive. We have to be purified, and our faith has to be tried, and our lives have to come under the pressure. We have to keep through it all that same cry, God, give me to possess that which you've put before me, and as we go, little by little, our lives are enlarged, and as we keep on going, they're enlarged, and we're not yet possessing until the day comes when we reach that place, and at that time, as we reach the place, then our life is able to take the measure of that which God would desire to give us. Once again, I repeat, it's very different than confessing a thing, confessing and possessing. It's true. We confess, and we possess, but how many times do we have to confess? How many times did Abram have to confess? And how many times did Abram fall down on the way? You know, we think, if I got to keep that, as though faith were something mine. The just, it says, shall fall how many times? Seven times. Means any number of times. It's not necessarily seven, a perfect number of times. He'll fall till he knows he can't walk. You with me? He'll fall till he knows he can't walk, till he knows, as Paul says, there's nothing in me. But then somehow, through it all, through the falling and the rising again, his eyes get filled with a vision of who God is. This is the thing I want to try to transmit today. This phrase, not in vain, God's bringing us back to see who He is. The God who fills eternities, the God whose purposes do rule among the sons of men and over the face of the earth. Not in vain. You remember there, let me look at it a second here. The end of Proverbs, talking about knowing God. Chapter 30, it says, the words of Agur, the son of Jacob. Jacob. Even the prophecy, the man spake unto Ithiel, and to Ithiel and Ucho, says, Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom, nor have knowledge of the holy. Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? Who hath gathered the wind in his fists? Who hath bound the waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is his name? What is his son's name, if thou canst tell? He's saying, I don't know a thing. I don't understand how it works. I don't understand how things operate. I don't understand who puts them together. But God, show me who it is. Because if I know who it is, then I know and I'll find my way out. If I can see Him, if I can only see Him, and it's, once again, it's not a mental knowledge. It's not going to a seminar about the purposes of God, and it's not reading a book about it. It's a life process, and there's got to be that cry. You know, God likes to put His finger right on the spot. Right on the spot. Remember when Paul fell down there on the Damascus road? What did the Lord say to him? Saul? Why? All his life, all his purposes, that persecution, the Lord puts a why there. Why? I think many times, if we only had ears to hear, there's a why that's echoing from heaven over our lives. The Lord's saying to me, Paul, why? Why do you do what you do? Why are your priorities what they are? Why do you live the way you live? Why is your life ordered the way it's ordered? Why? There's a tremendous sense of urgency. God wants us to see things. We tend to be so negatively oriented. We tend to be negatively oriented in the sense that we're always trying to escape the negative. And I think maybe part of it's due to a wrong emphasis, a wrong slant that the teaching's taken in the church. We think of Jesus' first message. He came and He said, Repent. You know, we can preach repentance all we want, but we've got to keep it in balance. Repent. We say, you know, the word repent means to think again. We go back and we say, this is the word that the Roman officials there in the army used of the soldiers. They said, Repent, and it meant about face and go back the other way. They said, that's what we got to do. We got to leave our sin. We got to repent because we're sinners. That's true. But I believe the positive has always got to be greater than negative. And Jesus did not say, Repent because you're sinners. They were sinners. They needed to repent of their sin. But He says, Repent. Why? Because there's a kingdom that's come to this earth. Because the old things have passed away, all the history, all the promises, from the time that Adam fell and his heart was broken by his sin when he saw everything he'd lost, on down through the generations, the prophetic word and the prophetic messengers, looking out into the future and seeing the glory of God, and one after another, prophesying it until we come to the end and we see Simeon there. He received Jesus in his hand. I don't know how many times that man had had to rebuke death, say, Death, go away. Not yet. I've not yet seen it. Death, you can't touch me yet. But there came a time, He said, Now, Lord, let your servant, the word means your slave, Lord, let your slave depart in peace for my eyes have seen. Mine eyes have seen the glory. Mine eyes have seen your salvation. And Jesus came. What's His message? This is His message, Repent. Why? Because there's a kingdom that you've not even imagined. There's a kingdom where your life is not in vain. You know, I believe this curse of emptiness hangs over the nations, hangs over the individuals. It's a tremendous thing to re-emplace emptiness with fullness. I was supposed to be talking about Paraguay and we forgot it back there, but that's our task in Paraguay. A life where there's been generations of disobedience, generations of immorality, generations of violence. You know what? It's relatively easy there and here to get people to respond on a superficial level. I said last night, we can respond through negative things to get out of hell and judgment. We can respond for a positive reward that God would give me something. But to respond to the mercy of God, to come into the full purposes of God, to see it and to turn from everything else, repent, because there's a kingdom. Once again, a kingdom we haven't even imagined. I think the trouble with Christianity is that it's turned stale. It's turned stale. We're trying to pass things on. I talked to a missionary earlier this year, I guess it was. He'd been down in Argentina for many years. The Lord had used him in revival down there. He's up now in the States and he was talking about the children of God. I mean, those that are born again. I'm not talking about the children of God in the sense it used to be used. He's talking about those that know God and he said, you know, the real people, the real children of God, those that are God's own, he says, they're very few. He said there's three here and there's five there and there's maybe 15 here. You know, we have big churches, but we don't have very many people that live through the communion, through the flow, through the intercourse with the life of God. Something we listen in church and we think, wow, that's great, that's neat. You know, how do I put that to use? And it all becomes me trying to take it and me trying to work it out and me trying to do it. Whereas God wants us to get beyond that, to transcend those things, that our spirits be freed, that our life come into a different basis. We need the basis of faith, a real faith. Who is he? Ager Christ. Who is he? Because if I knew, if I knew, then faith would spring forth. If I knew, there is a God that loves, there is a God that's powerful, there's a God that has a perfect purpose in my life. We always think of how much we've got to give up. Maybe God will want my money, maybe God will want my life, maybe God will want to send me to the mission field, maybe God, you know, that's so poor. That's, that's tremendously small, all our reasoning when we're thinking that way. I had a friend, came up from the mission field after many years, met up with some people he'd known years before. And they was getting on in years and this person said, you know, you've had a very full life. And apparently it made an impact on him because he, they started looking back, they saw all the times they'd had nothing. One time they came up from, all the way from Argentina to the States. I was going to say on foot, not really on foot, but they started overland because they didn't have any money. Ended up on a tiny little boat, just a tiny little boat. They said they went to the pier, they heard there was a boat leaving. They were up in Ecuador, I think. There was a boat leaving for Panama. And they said they went to the pier and there was no boat, but there was a little mast sticking over the top of the pier. And they went and they looked down and there was their boat. And another missionary was going to send his daughter with them and he saw the boat and he said, no, she's not going. But they had to go. They had no alternative. If they were going on, they had to go on that boat. Anyway, a very full life. He'd seen revival. He'd paid a price. He'd fought the enemy tooth and nail for years. He'd suffered. He'd been hurt. A very full life it was. Because life is not the external. We can have it all if it's empty inside. If it's empty inside, it's lying waste. If it's empty inside, it hurts. And we can pile more and more and more on the outside and it'll hurt worse. There's, you know, emptiness is not a vacuum. It's a throbbing pain. The state of this world is frustration. Not a passive frustration, an active frustration. I'm frustrated. You know, many times if we were realistic, we'd have to say, God, why am I here? What am I doing? God, is this all there is? Is this all there is? You know, even if we have a good church, even if we're in the best place in the world, if it's not inside, God, I go and it's beautiful in church and I see the pastor and I hear the music and oh, it's great. And then I come out and God, it's empty. You know, there's only one way into this. Since He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited. He formed it to be possessed. I said yesterday, one of the most beautiful things in life to me is to see the older servants of God that have gone on with God throughout the years, come nearing the end of their life and they're free and they're above it all. They're transformed. They're living in a measure, the eternal kingdom down here on earth. Their earth is inhabited. There are no empty places. There are no places that are crying out frustration. There are no places where they cannot bring life and they know they cannot bring life and they know it's empty and they know there's nothing they can do about it. Somehow, through the years, they've gone beyond it all. They've come into God. They've come into a possession. He formed it not in vain. He formed it to be inhabited. He formed it to be filled. He formed it to be possessed. He formed it to be taken, every part of it. Taken in Him, taken for Him, taken by Him, by His Spirit, in our lives. He says here, I said not unto the seed of Jacob, seeking me in vain. Remember the words of the apostle there in the New Testament? Brethren, know that your labor is not in vain. This is that which is written over the things of God and over the things of the enemy is written in vain. In vain, no matter what it is, no matter how beautiful it is, no matter how permanent it seems, time is going to come when it's all going to be permanent. There's not going to be nothing left. It's going to be ashes. Said yesterday, I believe somehow the history of the world, the history of the universe, is repeated in each generation. Just as Jesus said that His crucifixion, His rejection, and the sins of the generations would all come upon this generation, so the cursings and so the blessings of history apply to each generation. The purposes of God. Watchman Nee in one of his books talks about the corn of wheat falling into the ground and dying, and we use it to mean surrender and leave our own life and step into God. But he talks about it in a different way, and he said that every work of God only endures a lifetime. The next generation has to once again find the seed and find it for itself, come into a fresh and real experience. Because otherwise we're trying to sure up. I remember in Paraguay some years ago, we never had storm sewers in the streets, and when it would rain, we'd have rivers. They decided to put in storm sewers. One place they did it, and they got too close to the houses, and you know they had to prop those houses up because they were falling over. I think that happens with our house sometimes, our spiritual house. We have to prop it up because the foundation isn't sure. It's being taken away. The substance isn't there. The reality isn't there. Yet God says, I said, seek me not in vain. You know, we don't know how to seek the Lord. The Bible really doesn't tell us how to seek the Lord except in a very general way. It says, seek him in praises. Seek him, but it never says, you know, do this and do that and do that. The five steps to seeking God, it talks about sincerity, it talks about fasting, it talks about prayer, it talks about intensity, but it never actually lays down one, two, three, the way to seek God. I believe it doesn't matter. Seeking comes from the heart. Seeking is more desire than anything else. It's not the words that I say. There's a verse that says, while you're seeking me, I will be found. It's like a little child crying out for its mother. The child will never find the mother because she's upstairs. The little child's all over and bumping into things and banging on the table and crying and bawling and getting confused. But while he's seeking, the mother hears and she comes to him. You know, and if God would say, do this and do that, we'd think we'd done it. We tell people how to do it, and you can't do that. It doesn't work. That's one of the reasons there's so much frustration around. We try to get our act together. We try to form a spiritual life. You can't form a spiritual life. The only thing is desire. The only thing is crying without words and crying without a cry and praying without a prayer. But when that's there, even though, once again, the simplest things, we read a little verse like this, not in vain, you say, oh God, God, let my life be not in vain. Oh God, I don't understand it. I don't understand the purposes that you would bring into my life. I don't understand how you're going to work it out. But God, don't let it be in vain. It must be an awful thing to step over the threshold into eternity. After having lived a life in vain, all of a sudden get your eyes opened. It must be a tremendous anguish, intensified by, in the transformation that eternity brings, tremendous anguish. God, I was back there and I never knew what it was all about. But it was all in vain. I was so proud of myself and my strength and trying to keep things under and trying to keep things organized and doing things and being something and myself as a person and the value that I have as a person and all of this stuff. I was so involved with that that I never saw that there's something far beyond anything that I could ever hope to be. And on the other hand, I believe it must be something tremendous. I said yesterday, step into eternity and find that it's not new. Say, God, now I can possess it, but I've seen it for a long time. And Lord, I see those things, they're so much greater and so much clearer and so much more beautiful here, but I had a little bit of that on earth. Lord, the freedom here, there's no devil, there's no sin, but on earth there was no condemnation. Lord, I'm here in your presence, but on earth there was no separation. You look at that list there in Romans 8, if we had time we'd go into that. Nothing shall separate it. A list of 17 things, 7 things first, 10 things later, the whole thing has a significance if you go into the numbers. External things, internal things, spiritual things, natural things, the anguish, the persecution, that which destroys from within, that which destroys from without, all, it goes into all the spheres, all the facets of human personality, and beyond it all, the love of God. Yeah, but in the middle of it all, you remember that little verse in the middle of it all that I didn't used to like, and I used to say, Lord, what's this doing in here? As it is written, for thy sakes we're free and victorious and shouting and dancing all the day long. You remember that little verse? No. As it is written, for thy sakes we are killed. We're what? We're what? Don't say that, that's a negative confession. We're what? We're killed all the day long, we're slain all the day long. It's as though the Christian has to step into death to find it's not there. I lay it all down, and then I see there's no separation. There can be no separation, nothing can be taken away. He formed it. You know, it's not the enemy. If I might just say one little thing here, I think a lot of us are frustrated about ourselves as people, our personalities. You know, if I just had more capacity, if I was just like pastor, if I was just like our brother here, if I could just sing like the other, if I could just play the piano, if I just wasn't so, you know, of so few words, if I could just explain things, if I just had this, if I just had the other, if I just had the money that somebody else has, if I just had the opportunity that somebody else has, if God would just treat me like He treats that one. What did Jesus say when He came to earth? Father, a body hast thou given me. All things work together for good. God has made each one of us exactly, exactly the way He wants us to be. And if there are areas where there are lack, and if there are areas that are hard for me, it's because God somehow has got a measure of grace, He's got a measure of revelation, He's got a measure of His own power, a measure of His own life to glorify that thing. I remember one time, some years ago, going from Argentina to the north, from Paraguay down to the north of Argentina, and as we were driving down, the sun was setting out there in the west, and there were storm clouds out there, dark, black clouds. And we were going to a meeting, we were driving along, and I was thinking and meditating, about to arrive in an hour, two hours at the place of the meeting. And I looked out at that sunset, and all those clouds, as the sun was dying, caught the glory of the sun. And all that darkness was transformed, beautiful shapes, beautiful forms, and it was all glowing. It was all different colors of red and rose. It spoke to me. You know, we say, Lord, take the clouds away. Lord, take the problems away. Lord, if my life was just free and open, there was nothing, none of those things. You know, there's something beyond. Lord, let the sun shine through my clouds. There's a beauty in those sunsets. There's not much beauty when the sun just falls down, you know. And even if there is, yesterday we were coming, and it was kind of a nice sunset. You know why it is? Because there's a lot of dust in the air. And where the sky gets red, it gets redder in the areas where there's a lot of dust in the air. You get some place, probably in the way up north, where there's a lot of green grass, and you don't get, as the sun goes down, it doesn't light up the sky the same way. So it's either the clouds or the dust, and we say, Lord, take the dust away. Lord, take the clouds away. Lord, these are so black, and they're all over my head, and they're covering my horizon from one end to the other. And the Lord says, child, I got something else. I got something better. Why does God have us on this earth anyway? If he'd take all those negative influences away, it'd be just like heaven. You know, if he'd take me all away, I'd be here alone. It'd be great. You know what I mean. Hmm? It'd be just like heaven if he'd take all those negative things. But he doesn't. He says, child, if you see me in these, you're going to see a glory that you'd never see if they weren't here. You'd never see it if they weren't here. He's got a purpose. He's got a beautiful purpose. You know, I think, go back to repentance and all those things, we're afraid of paying a price in so many areas because we never have really seen the tremendous dimension of the positive. Somebody talked about revival, and they said, you know, you talk about revival, but it's terrible. And that's true. You know, in the little movings of God we've been in South America, it's terrible when God comes and moves and takes your life, you know, and he saws it apart, and that's you. And yet, beyond it all, it's glorious. Because even if this is dying, there's something else that's coming to birth. It's beautiful. And there's a whole new vision. There's a whole new world. It's a world where the capacities are far beyond this, where the peace has no measure, where the love is infinite, where the grace and the faith and the confidence and the security mean that everything else is not needed. He formed it. God formed it. He's forming a people. He's forming a world. I believe he's reaching out, reaching out to the nations. He's going to have a world inhabited. I like that word. A world possessed. A world filled.