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January 22, 2025 - Isaiah 29:9,10 - What is it to be Lost?

Writer's picture: Pastor Ken WimerPastor Ken Wimer

Isaiah 29:9,10

"Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the LORD hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered."


People get offended when you ask, "Have you ever been lost?" It’s similar to the Pharisees in Christ's day who questioned Him as to whether He was calling them lost. They said, "Are we blind also?" (John 9:40). In this world, preachers like to suggest what people already believe in their hearts: that they are good by nature. This is the mindset of unconverted, natural-minded sinners—assuming that there is some inherent good in them that will be enough for God to show them love, kindness, and mercy. But the Bible says, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).


What does it mean to be lost? Have you thought about it? If the Lord has taught you, you know what it is to be lost. If He hasn’t, you won’t. It’s not something you can easily define or explain to someone who has never been shown their lost estate, which only the Spirit of God can do. When the Spirit of God draws a sinner to the Lord Jesus, that sinner will confess, "I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments" (Psalm 119:176). A lost sheep cannot find its way back and would certainly perish if left alone. That’s what the word "lost" means here. It means "to perish, to die, to be exterminated." The psalmist is confessing that had the Lord not sought him, he couldn’t have found his way back.


"For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost" (Matthew 18:11). That’s the only kind of sinner Jesus saves—the lost. Whether in Hebrew or Greek, the word means "to be entirely out of the way, in danger of destruction." We are born into this world lost because of Adam's fall. It takes the Spirit of God to open our eyes and draw us to Christ (John 6:44). Christ came for the lost sheep of Israel. He did not come to save the entire nation, but only His sheep who were of the household of Israel. "Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called" (Romans 9:6-7). What is clear is that God was pleased to save the sheep through Christ’s work, He cannot lose any for whom Christ paid the debt.


But others are just as lost. Yet, it pleased God to leave them in that state of blindness and condemnation. Is He unjust in doing so? No! "And for this cause, God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie" (2 Thessalonians 2:11). If God causes a person to believe a lie, do you think they’ll ever know the truth? Never! He gives them over to their depraved thoughts and false worship, and no amount of instruction or warning can change their minds. They’ll live and die in false profession with false hope. The world is divided into either lost sheep or those given over to a reprobate mind.


What are the characteristics of the lost? They don’t perceive their condition. They are compared to drunkards: "They are drunken, but not with wine" (Isaiah 29:9). This isn’t about physical drunkenness; it’s about deeper spiritual drunkenness that causes men to stagger in their minds. "For the LORD hath poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep" (Isaiah 29:10). God has given them a senseless mind. When you’re in a deep sleep, you don’t perceive anything around you. This is spiritual blindness. If God gives someone over to their reprobate mind, how great is that darkness? No matter how brightly the Gospel shines, they won’t see it. "But if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not" (2 Corinthians 4:3-4). Many translations use "god" as if Satan is the god of this world blinding the minds. But the Sovereign God of this world has no rivals. The word for God is θεός (Theos), and therefore refers to God as Creator and Sustainer of all His creatures, translated in the Hebrew language as "Elohim" (Genesis 1:1). Therefore, it is God who judicially blinds those He wills, and does so in just condemnation for their sin. As Paul asks, "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" (Romans 9:20-21).


The same God who blinds is the same God who must give light. "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). If you have come to Christ and He has caused you to see your condemnation apart from His work, and then seen God's glory in His face (the countenance of Grace and Mercy), there is only one reason: God caused that light to shine in your heart. There is no greater Gift than HIM!




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