When I was a kid, I had a favorite color. Did you have a favorite color? Every kid has a favorite color. Maybe I was sort of pushed into this box of being a boy. My favorite color was blue, right? It's very typical. But adults can have favorite colors too, right? Or maybe some of us are just still children at heart. My favorite color as an adult seems to change. It was orange for a long time, and even when I play my Nintendo Wii, which I still have, my shirt is orange on that. We're going to change this up. This one has not been so good. It gave us trouble in the first service, too. Okay. Hello. We'll try it again. Anyhow, colors, right? So then we went with dark orange, and I liked brown for a while, and you know, start painting walls certain colors and things. And then I really took a turn to the dark side, and my favorite color's been black for a while. Right? I know what you're thinking. Black isn't a color. It's the absence of color. It's actually the opposite is true. Black is an amalgam. It's a blending of all colors. It's the super color. But perhaps that's a little dark. I'm lightening up. I've kind of been into gray lately. I don't know, different year, different color. I don't know if you have a favorite color or if you even think that it matters. But you know, it does matter. What every good Christian has is a favorite Bible verse. And I have a favorite Bible verse. And because Dana called me at the last minute, I can do whatever I want. I'm going to preach on my favorite Bible verse today. It just so happens that my favorite Bible verse also has colors in it. That's how this all ties in. All right? So we're going to look at Isaiah 118 today. Isaiah 118, a verse of colors and imagery. And we have it up there on the screen as well. You know what would be really cool is if we read it out loud together. You're going to hear me talk for a while. So let's all talk right now. Let's all read the Word of God. The Word of God has power. Let's read this out loud with me. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. Okay, so here is the code, the cipher. I'm going to decode it for you. You can go home and figure out the message for yourself. Red is bad. And white is what? Good. If you got that, you're doing pretty good today. The title of today's message is Red to White. And I've constructed a very loose outline. It's three points, three sections, from three words. We're going to start with red, and then two, and then white. Okay? So red is bad, remember? Start with the bad news, and then we will end with the good news, I promise. I promise you we will. So if red is the color of things that are soiled, that are destroyed, it's the color of blood, the color of war, it's the color of guilt. If your bank account is in the red, you in trouble. You do not want to be in the red financially. It's a bad thing. White is pure, new, perfect, and clean. Just think of a blank sheet of paper. What color does she wear? White, yeah. It's this color of purity, it's a newness, right? Wedding has white all over when you go to weddings. Now I know what words stood out to you when we read Isaiah 118. I know, because I'm a Rochesterian too, right? We are very familiar with snow, are we not? But in Israel, that was not the case. Snow is not a very common occurrence in Israel. It's a Mediterranean country. And if you want to see snow in Israel, you've got to climb the highest peaks, the highest mountains. It's kind of interesting. I looked in the Bible. Snow is mentioned several times throughout the Bible. It's kind of surprising when they don't know what they're talking about. I'm the color of a blood. This idea of war was very common, especially in Isaiah's day. Nations were warring against nations all the time. These guys were very familiar with bloodshed. It was common. And evil is common, isn't it? It's rampant. It's everywhere. So that's kind of a little description of our colors. But let's talk about snow for a little bit. Snow is something we're familiar with. Every year, now pretend it's not February. I know in February you're starting to get a little annoyed by the cold weather and you just want the snow to go away. I know, I know. But just, I want you to imagine that it's November or December. Every year, this happens to me every year. I'm still a kid. The first snowfall. I get so excited. I find the nearest person. I'm like, look, look, look, first snowfall. I'll call my wife if I'm not with her. I'll take a picture. I'll put it on social media. Yay, first snowfall. I'm so excited. Right? Are you like that? Yeah, some of you are like, no, I'm out of here. This is awful. It's beautiful, the fresh snowfall. In fact, there's a picture I want to show you. It's of a road near where I live. This is Browncroft Boulevard, and the trees are all evenly spaced, and the branches form a canopy over the road. ever seen this type before as you're driving down the road and it kind of feels like you're in a tunnel? Well, it has a fresh snowfall on the trees and all those branches are coated in that fresh snow. It's just beautiful, isn't it? The contrast between the branch and the snow. And this is when you take pictures, when the snow is fresh. But as we know, again, we're familiar with snow. If you mix snow with something else, what happens? changes color, right? We all know how brown snow works. It's mushy and disgusting and all over our garages, right? Falls off the cars. We know about yellow snow. That's kind of, we don't talk about that. You know, Buddy the Elf was warned not to eat the yellow snow, but he assures Frosty the Snowman when he goes to New York City, he will not eat the yellow snow, but it is a reality that it exists. But, you know, once the snow gets tainted a different color, it doesn't go back to white. It kind of destroys that purity is gone, right? And that's this concept of fresh snow that's in this passage. So I shared with you my favorite color and my favorite Bible verse. I'll share with you another favorite that I have. Before it was cool, before all of America was into this, I was a superhero fan. And I watched every movie. I used to wait like three years for the next movie to come out. Now I have superhero fatigue. I gotta watch like 10 movies a year. It's kind of crazy. But I've watched every movie multiple times. I'm a big fan. Americanized is popular. This phenomenon is widespread. But I want to ask you a couple trivia questions to see if you're up with pop culture, okay? Shout it out back at me. How many movies, to date, how many movies has Marvel Studios produced? Not yet. A lot less than 80. Somebody else? 30? That's closer, but still less. Okay, you guys really, you feel like... 25 is still less. Less. 23! Okay, going once, going twice. Yeah, 23 movies since 2008. The 24th movie is coming out May 1st, just a little over a couple months away. We saw a spot at the Super Bowl. What is the 24th movie? Black Widow is right, yeah. So we're going to take a look at this character today, this character of Black Widow. You can put her picture up on the screen. She's been developed. She's been in a lot of the 23 movies, not all of them, but most of them. And we've seen this character develop over time. But this is the first time she gets her solo movie. So we're going to talk about her today. It'll be interesting what happens in this movie coming up. But she has a conversation with Loki in the first Avengers movie. Way, way, way back. And she says these words, I've got red in my ledger and I'd like to wipe it out. And this character's drive is that of extreme guilt. It's the reason she's a superhero or heroine. She wants to beat all the bad guys and save the world because she's done bad things. And if she does enough good things, that will cancel out the bad, right? And so she does a lot of good things, movie after movie after movie. And I'm gonna give you a little spoiler for Avengers Endgame. If you haven't seen it already, you probably don't care. It's fine. It's spoilers. We're removed. That was a long time ago. So it's the end of her life in Avengers Endgame. She makes the ultimate sacrifice for the team. And even after this whole hero thing that she's been doing, she still is carrying all this guilt around, and she thinks she should be the one to give her life because she's just not a good person. Right? How sad is that? You carry so much guilt around. And yet, how true is it of all of us that we carry this guilt around? Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the conversation with Loki. Just listen to this. Listen to what Loki says to her. I went back and watched it last night and wrote down what he said. Okay, Loki's the bad guy in case you don't care about any of this stuff. This is what the bad guy says to her. She said, I've read in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out. He says this, can you wipe out that much red? He starts to list the things you've done. I know who you are. You're Dreykoff's daughter. I know about the fire. I know all these things that she's done. And then he said, your ledger is dripping. It's gushing red. And he starts to get agitated. This is the basis of sentimentality. This is a child at prayer. He starts to list more stuff. You kill and you lie and all these things, he said, and they will never go away. And he's all ramped up. He uses the basis of these bad things he does. He says he's going to take her life. It's justice for the bad guy to kill her, the good guy. And this scene often gets overshadowed by all the action in the movie, but he sounds just like Satan, doesn't he? Right? He's a mythological god of mischief or god of chaos, but in this, he's the accuser. He's accusing her of all these things she's done. And the thing is, he's actually 100% accurate. She's done all these things. She has red in her ledger. And it's pretty bad, right? And so it's a very powerful, very moving scene. And, you know, when we look at scripture, it actually kind of lines up that we are all a little bit like Black Widow. We all do have a ledger of red. And it's pretty bad. So look at Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. How many people have sinned? According to scripture, all, right? And anybody hear the full glory of God today? Did anybody wake up and say, I'm the full glory of God, right? Raise your hand. No. Okay. So what are we? A room full of sinners, are we not? Yeah, every single one of us has red in our ledger. We'd probably like to wipe it out. Is it going to work, though, for us to do all those good deeds? You could become a superhero with superpowers and do super things. Would that wipe out your red ledger? Yeah, as Christians, we know that that's not going to work. You see, sin is more than just something that's common. You see, sin runs rampant, does it not? It runs rampant. We all sin a lot, all the time. and it's really, really bad. Don't you love talking about it? No, you don't. Okay, I understand. Well, you know, the desire of every preacher and every pastor is that after church is over, you'd go home and remember the stuff that we talked about. So Jesus used object lessons, and I want to be more like Jesus, so we're going old school today. I brought a visual aid. It's under this beautiful black tablecloth and the towel. And looking in the passage, there's a few other words we haven't talked about yet. We have that of wool, or fine linen, depending on your translation. And they would have heard this prophecy from Isaiah, and they would have thought about something that was very common in those days, and still happens today, is you have the wool right off the back of the sheep, you have fresh linen, or in my case, an old undershirt. And this represents purity, whiteness. This represents Adam and Eve before the fall, how God created us innocent. And then what happens is it gets dyed. This is the picture we see in Isaiah 118. The fabric is being dyed. And just like the snow that we talked about, once it becomes red, you can't get it white again. It's a permanent thing. and they would dye their fabric crimson. Crimson is that really deep red, right? Or scarlet, I'm sorry. Crimson was the blood. Scarlet was kind of the same thing. This sort of scarlet-colored fabric. So this is a little bit of an interesting chemical concoction. It's part beet juice, and beets are not my favorite, so it kind of smells up here. You can thank me later. It's worth it for the analogy, right? And this is the second T-shirt I've ruined today. So here we are. This is us. We're stained blood red, are we not? Each one of us are like this undershirt. We once maybe had a chance at innocence, but that chance has now been lost. And once something is red, it's impossible for it to be turned white. It's impossible. This is a deep need that we all have. It's a big problem, right? Every person, like we talked about, has this problem. It seems permanent. It's not gonna come out. We need a miracle. We need something supernatural to happen. And only through Jesus can the impossible be possible. Just think of the power of these words in Isaiah 118. What is red will become white again. We are talking about something miraculous. We are talking about something supernatural. What we're talking about is Jesus. You see, no matter how hard we try, no matter how hard Black Widow tries, our good can never outweigh the bad. Can never outweigh the bad. We know this. I think we all know this, whether we're Christians or not. We know that the good will never outweigh the bad. Only through Jesus can the miraculous happen. Can we turn what has been permanently stained red into white. This is the concept of substitutionary atonement. You see, Jesus, who's God, he was white and he became red. when he gave up his life on the cross, so that we who are red could be made white. Substitutionary atonement is the doctrinal term we use. I like to share with you Romans 5.8, one of the verses we can look at for that. God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. I'm going to talk more about Jesus when we get to the end. We talk about why to go back to Isaiah for just a little bit. I've been attending this church long enough to know that you all are really good Bible students. Some of you are outstanding Bible students, and you know that you can't just read one verse and understand what's going on. That's true. We're going to look at some context. For time's sake, we're just going to look at a few verses that happen in Isaiah chapter 1 that precede these verses. Isaiah is a book of 66 chapters. It's pretty long, one of the longest ones out there. Chapter 1 really is like the thesis statement. It's a summary statement of the entire book. So when we study chapter 1, it's like we're kind of getting the whole thing. But just listen to some of Israel's ledger. Judah, technically, speaking of Judah, but it sort of applies to both. Here we go, Isaiah chapter 1, verses 4 and 5. Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly. They have forsaken the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel and are utterly estranged. See right there, we see what happens when we sin. It separates us from God. They are estranged from God. Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick. The whole heart faint. It's like that sin, it infects our whole body, doesn't it? The whole thing. The whole thing's messed up. Jumping down to verse 13, bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations, I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen, for your hands are full of blood. Well, that sounds a lot like the Black Widow situation, doesn't it? Your hands are full of blood, dripping with blood. That's that red. Yeah. Put in other words, Houston, we have a problem. We have a problem. Israel was guilty. Judah was guilty. This sort of dates back a little bit. It's sort of a big concept in the Old Testament, but God had called Israel as a nation coming out of Egypt, out of Exodus, into the promised land of Canaan. They were supposed to displace the evil nations when they took over the land, and they did a little bit. You know the story of Joshua, and you can study it, but they didn't fully They left some of those foreign nations there. And you know what happens, it's still true today, if you hang out with bad people long enough and bad people who do bad things, what are you going to do? bad things. So what did they do? We call this syncretism. They blended the pagan religion with what God had intended for them to carry out as religious practices. That's the idea of Sabbaths. God commanded Sabbath. That's a good thing. But then they have these new moon festivals, these pagan festivals, and they're doing both. They're intermixing religions. And God says, I don't want any of that. That disgusts me. Right? And so even today, we can sort of relate to this. They still did church. They still went to temple. They still offered the sacrifices. God doesn't want their sacrifice. He doesn't want their religion. Their hearts are far from God. Scripture says they're estranged. They don't really want anything to do with God. They just want to go through the motions and kind of cover up their sin by pretending to be good followers, right? We do the same thing today. We can go to church. We can sing the songs. listen to the sermon, and we can smile and pretend like we're a fine, upstanding citizen, and we cannot be a follower of Jesus Christ at all, right? And even those of us who do believe in Jesus Christ, there's still always that temptation of just going through the motions, not really meaning it with our heart, not really truly seeking after God, not being reconciled to Him. And that's sort of the challenge here, that Isaiah is calling them to a nationwide repentance. He's looking at disobedience on a national level. So the sin here is kind of three-dimensional. It's nationwide. Everybody is sinning. The whole nation is being called to repentance. The sin is inherited. Did you catch that? You children of iniquity, I think he calls them. Our sin is inherited too. Inherited to us from our parents, ultimately from Adam and Eve. So we deal with that type of sin as well. Inherited sin. And they sin by doing specific bad things. They sin by volition, by their will. So sin is, like I said, it runs rampant. Isaiah called them to repentance. He used colorful pictures, beautiful illustrations, lots of colors. I like Isaiah. It's pretty cool. Very creative. Isaiah, his name means, the Lord saves. That's a main message of his book, and that's why there's so many, well, it comes from the same root as another name you know very well, Yeshua, which we know as what? as Jesus, God saves. The Lord saves. This is a big message in Isaiah. So much of Isaiah is forward-looking to the coming Messiah. God saves, God will save, God will send his Messiah to save you. You got a problem, Judah. You got some big problems. Only solution is for God to send his chosen one, his Messiah, to come. The Lord saves. So we talked about the red. Next, we're going to talk about the two. How is God going to deal with this? So then we come back to verse 18. Come, let us reason together. Gives this long list of things. Come, let us reason together. Interesting. And that's part of the reason I really like this verse. I was born in 1980. And that puts me right at the end of Gen Xers. And Gen Xers, we have some interesting characteristics about my generation. And one of them is that we just can't seem to find love. We're searching for love, and we can never really be satisfied, never really find love. We want true, authentic. We appreciate authentic love. And all of us have tried it. We've tried finding friends. We've tried romantic love. But what happens with that, right? People let us down. Eventually, every person will let you down. So I like to think we're the generation of broken hearts, really. It's this endless pursuit of love. The year after I was born, 1981, Freddie Mercury wrote these words, Can Anybody Find Me Somebody to Love? Very popular song. Anybody find me, somebody find me somebody to love. I got nobody. Everything failed. I didn't listen to Queen. I was a good Christian boy. I listened to Michael W. Smith. Kind of embarrassing for me. Maybe you like him, whatever. It's all good. Somebody love me. Come and carry me away. Somebody love me. Love me. Somebody love me. That was this big hit on the radio, right? On the secular radio. Everybody wants somebody to love. We're always searching and never finding. And too often we find that people let us down, but I'll tell you something today, you can count on it. God will never let you down. He will always be faithful. He is the source of perfect and true love. And that is the only way we can ever find that, you know? Yeah. So too many people, I have found, have a wrong view of God. They view God as mean or judgmental, distant, a superior being. He only cares about power and dominance. He created the world in violence. How could a good God send people to hell? How mean he is. I can't believe in a God like that. He's a meanie, he's distant, he doesn't care. That's not the God that I worship. That's not the God I believe in. And that's not the God we see here in this verse. Let's go all the way back. Let me tell you a little bit about this relational nature of God. I guess this point we should probably put up. God, He always works relationally. Let me tell you about the God that I know. He's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We call that what? The Trinity. How many people? How many persons? We have this picture, before anything was created, only that existed was Father, Son, Holy Spirit, those three persons. God perpetually existed in community, in eternity past, and they loved each other. It's this perfect community. The Father loves the Son, loves the Spirit, loves the Father, and they're constantly serving each other with perfect agape love. And one day, God says to himself, This is how it works, right? Let's share this love with somebody. He starts to create this whole universe, speaks things into being, and then he creates man and woman in his image for the purpose of walking with God. Adam walked with God in the garden. It's this beautiful sharing of relationship. This is what God intended. This was the white that we talked about, right? But what happened next? Adam and Eve chose poorly, right? They rebelled against God. They chose sin. And then separation happened. And God's plan seems to have fallen astray. But he knew all this was going to happen. That's not the end of the story. He predestined before he created all this for Jesus to come down to the earth, for Jesus, who was white, to become red so that we who were red could become white. He shed his blood on the cross, taking our place. Right? And now we can be reconciled to God. Now we can be white. And then Jesus rose from the grave. Rose from the grave. And that resurrection, we will follow him in that resurrection. We will be resurrected as well. And one day, all that is red in the universe, everything that's bad, will be made new, will be made white again. That is the whole story. We have to know the story. We call that the grand metanarrative of history. It's your story. It's my story. Let's not lose sight of the story, the beauty of the story. It's encapsulated in my favorite verse. Now you see why it's my favorite. But let's not get lost in other substitutes for love, other substitutes for God. Let's put God first. first. When our lives intersect with Jesus, it's transformational. He transforms us from red into white. It's not some distant, cold business transaction. It's not He waves His magic wand and all of a sudden everything is great. No, God interacts relationally. He interacts relationally. And He just asks us to do one thing. Did you catch this? He does all the work. What does He ask of us? Come. Come. That's the verb, come. Let us reason together. Come. This is the essence of repentance, okay? We look at faith, we look at repentance. Too often, we think of repentance means I have to clean my life up. That's not what repentance means. Repentance means to turn away. Turn away from all that stuff in your ledger, all that stuff that Israel's guilty, and just come to God. Turn to Him. That's it, it's a turning. It's a new start. This is the idea of repentance. Right here with Israel's being called to it, we need to experience repentance. Both initially when we put our faith in Christ and really ongoing repentance, right? We turn away from sinfulness. We turn towards God. He does all the work. That's the story of Christianity. So now we get to do the white, part three. This passage is all about Jesus, and Jesus offers us new life. It is a really good deal. His grace is utterly free, and he covers us with grace. Covers us with grace. Thinking again to the cross, he's taking on our corruption. His blood is running down the cross. On Good Friday, that's when we think about the crucifixion, right? I think of the color of Good Friday as what? Red. Then on the third day, on Easter Sunday, he rose again to new life. He's wearing white robes. There's sort of this new life, this resurrection. The color of Easter is what? white. So even in this red and white juxtaposition, we see Good Friday and Easter. Really, really cool parallel there. So we are saved from sin. We are saved from the red. That's half of the gospel. The other half is this. We are saved for new life. We are saved from death. for new life. Remember both the from and the for. They're both very important. So we have sort of this tension that we live in now. And you might be wanting to ask this question, well, am I white right now? Today, February, what is it, 24th? Yeah, okay, I know. Am I today, am I white? Or am I gonna be white later? I kind of feel red. I kind of feel like I still struggle with some of these things. Yes. is the theological answer. Yes, we believe salvation is both a point and a process. You see, the moment you put your faith in Jesus Christ, He declares that you are white. He declares that you are righteous. But yet we still kind of struggle in this life a little bit with sin, right? We still wrestle with it. And so He's continually transforming us and making us white every day. Today is a great day to become white. And yet we still look forward with anticipation for the life to come. You see, after this life is over, we will experience that resurrection. Jesus was resurrected, and we will be resurrected. And then we will be made perfectly white. There will be no more red anywhere. We will enter into that beautiful, glorified state. Think of the marriage supper of the Lamb, all right? We get to show up in white robes in all of our glory. And so that is our hope. That is our Christian hope. And so I encourage you today, Christians, be joyful in your hope. Be patient with your expectation. Wait upon the Lord. Wait upon the Lord as he turns us from red into white. I want to leave you today with five encouragements. But first, you know, I talked about sin, OK? I get it. Nobody likes to talk about sin. I saw the looks on all your faces when I appeared. Because I know what you're thinking. Because I'm thinking the same thing. What about that one sin that I struggle with? I've given it my best shot, I've wrestled with it, and I've fallen. And I'm just so weak and I'm so frustrated. My whole life I've struggled with this one sin. How do I deal with it? Don't even bring it up. Please don't talk about sin. It makes me uncomfortable. I know what you're thinking. You know, and here's the thing I want to leave you. When you are weak, He is strong. When you feel weak and powerless, that is the best feeling you can have, because now you can turn to Jesus for help. You see, today is a great day to trust in Him. Today is a great day to remember His complete work at the cross and at the empty tomb. Today's a good day to remember Jesus. It could be the first time you've ever heard this before. I doubt it, because we talk about Jesus a lot at this church. This might be the millionth time you've heard it before. It's still a good thing to hear, isn't it? It's still a powerful, powerful message. Five encouragements today. They all start with F. That came to me this morning, because Dana didn't give me a lot of time. But I still got five F's for you. Here we go. Embrace forgiveness. Don't be like Black Widow. I need to stop trying to earn favor with God. You need to stop trying to earn favor with God. Nothing we can do can earn favor with God. Instead, embrace forgiveness. Stop carrying around red in our ledgers. Let Jesus forgive you. Let him wash you. A blank page. A fresh start. Embrace freedom. Freedom. We are free from guilt. We are free from bondage of that red ledger. We don't have to be like Black Widow, right? She's not free. She's tied down to her guilt. Don't be like that. Embrace freedom. We find freedom in Jesus. Embrace faith and follow Jesus. And maybe as I'm speaking today, God's tugging on your heart. Maybe your eyes are being opened to spiritual realities in ways that you've never thought of them before. You're thinking about this idea of, wow, I'm red. I want to be made white. And maybe you need to make a faith commitment today. And a faith commitment, it's more than just belief. It results in action of following Jesus. If you need to make an important faith decision today, I encourage you to share that with somebody. You certainly can find me after service. I love to pray with you and walk together with you. Many other people you can talk to. This is a good church. This is a good place to make faith commitments. Number four, embrace fullness of life. I don't think there's anybody here today that's busy. Is there anybody here that's busy? What happens when you get busy? You get distracted. and fullness of life, that's this relationship with Jesus. He has poured out His love, according to His grace, poured out His love upon you and me. He loves us with this everlasting love, and we talked about this already today, we love Him back, you know, pressed and prayed. We're trying to pay Him back, we can't do that, but we still, we want to respond in love. This loving relationship, that's what He made us for, right? And yet, too often, we don't spend time with God, we don't think upon Him, because we're so busy. Do those things really matter? that we're so busy. Maybe we need to set some of those things aside. I know it's hard to do. Just think about it. Embrace the fullness of life we find in Jesus Christ. And lastly, embrace forever a loving and growing relationship with God for all of eternity. So today, I need to remember that God is pursuing me. God is pursuing me, and embrace forever.