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Most of you know that I design and maintain the church website. For those of you who don't know, our church website -- www.mvcw.org -- is available any time with directions to the church, information about us, service schedules, pictures, and a daily scripture that updates automatically. Eventually, the vast majority of my sermons and Bible studies find their way onto the webpage and people from all over the country know about it and use it. I get emails or phone calls all the time from preachers that use the sermon thoughts that are brought to you across this pulpit.

One of the neat things about doing the website myself is that I have instant access to a zillion stats regarding the website and I can instantly see little charts and graphs that tell me stuff like in May 2006 we had 8,013 hits on our website and that the most people visit the site on Thursday and at the 3 to 4 p.m. hour. I can also see the IP address of every visitor that logs on to our website. Another neat statistic is that my server keeps track of what the most popular pages and documents are and I check these things every few months to see what area of the website is being most heavily used. By far, the biggest visitor numbers are to the sermon's section of the website. And by far, the most viewed sermon on the site is a sermon that I preached two and a half years ago entitled "God's Tattoo." I noticed this about a year ago, and to my surprise, the number of visits has only increased. Most likely, the number of hits is provoked by the title and people want to find out what in the world "God's Tattoo" is talking about. They are probably expecting a heart or anchor design and pics or something. Whatever the reason, it is the most revisited sermon that I've ever put online.

Some of you may remember when I preached it here thirty months ago, and some may not even have been here that long ago. Either way, I felt in prayer that it was time to revisit "God's Tattoo" not just online but in our church. Consider this the sequel.

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Tattoos didn't start out as an individualistic expression of art as they have become today. Tattoos of old were a pagan practice which identified the person as a worshipper of a particular idol or pagan god or goddess. The tattoo which-- in those days before laser surgery -- was irremovable and indelibly permanent, signified the life-long commitment of the person to the idol. The pagans of old also used scars in much the same way and by slicing their bodies with knives in certain patterns, left scar tissue that would heal up in that design and forever identify them with that particular worship. They also would sometimes cut themselves as a lasting memorial of grief for their diseased loved ones. It is for these reasons that we find the Bible in the Old Testament times forbidding such practices, as in Leviticus:

While tattoos are not specifically mentioned in the New Testament, there is a principle of coming out of the world and being separate unto God and not following the fashions of the world. I do not think that those who come to God with tattoos need to have their tattoos removed in order to be saved, but I do think that a child of God having received the seal or mark of the Holy Spirit and the cutting away of their sinful past by the circumcision of water baptism in Jesus' name has all the marks and cuttings upon their life that they ever need! Why a child of God would want a new marking identifying them with this world, I don't understand, and even secular statistics say that about 95% of people who get tattoos end regret that decision eventually. Too often, too, tattoos identify people with a certain lifestyle of this world that is far from godly and so for that reason alone, I don't recommend Christians getting tattoos. Unless your tattoos are of such a nature that they bother you, I would say leave your existing marks as they are and from this point on let the Holy Ghost and the blood of Jesus be the primary identifying marks of your life. After you have been born again, put down the ink needle and the knife and take up the Spirit and the Blood of Jesus!

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Now that my disclaimer has been made, we come back to our text in the book of Isaiah. It is a time of judgment in Israel and because of their repeated idolatry, God has allowed foreign kingdoms to come in and drag Israel off into captivities. By the time we get to the 49th chapter of Isaiah, the city of Jerusalem has been destroyed and the temple has been dismantled and looted and the walls of the precious city have been laid flat by enemy armies. To make matters worse the exile has begun to happen with King Nebuchadnezzar coming in and taking large groups of the Jews from the Promised Land and into distant Babylon. Crop raising and shepherding and the peaceful lives in the blessings of God with trips to sacrifice at the temple are over for a while because of the people's continued dabbling in idolatry and pagan practices. God would give the land a rest for 70 years.

As He often does, God does something improbable and in the midst of this desolation and destruction and negative scene sends a man of God with a message of coming hope and happiness if the people will turn back to Him. They will go in exile, God will not change that, but it will not last forever if the people will listen to His ways and Word again. By the way, His plan worked, and after the Babylonian exile, Israel never again returned to idolatry. And some of the greatest Messianic prophecies ever given were by the prophet Isaiah during this sad, and depressing time. It is a sermon in itself that when we feel like things are down and out and the worst that they could be, God is up to His finest work! That's a lesson worth remembering!

And so in our text, God sends the prophet to speak to the few people that remain that are grieving at the destruction of Jerusalem and weeping about the loss of their great capital city and who are not believing the prophet when he tells them that one day the city would be rebuilt even greater than it ever had been before. It is human nature to in the midst of something extreme to fatalistically view your life in terms of such calamities and believe the worst that things will always be that way. But God sent the prophet to speak to these people to shake them out of their doldrums and God said:

God used the shocking example of just how a mother remember her children, that even more so He still remembered His people, and then comes the extremely shocking part: God uses the symbolism of a tattoo to pull their attention from their grieving and listen to what He is saying through Isaiah. He tells them, speaking about the city of Jerusalem, "I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me." The word "engraved" there means "to indelibly print upon." It refers to the process of tattooing. God was saying basically, "You may be shocked to know that I have a tattoo!"

Now I understand that God was using " divine anthropomorphism" which is when God is spoken about in terms of humanity so that us frail humans can understand. When you get to heaven, the only cuttings or marks that you will notice in the physical hands of God will be nail scars from the commitment that He made on a cross! But it is important to realize the lesson that God is teaching here: Jerusalem is destroyed and the walls are flat and the city is full of rubble because of Israel's sin and mistakes in going against the Word of God. And yet God is telling them "I have not forgotten you and my plans for you have not changed, because I have the blueprints of this city and people tattooed in the palms of my hands. You see the walls as they currently are, but I see them as my plans say that they will be. You see your situation as being good or bad depending upon the level of destruction that you see, but I see your situation as positive because if you would just come back to me and place yourselves back into my hands, you would find that there still can be great things happen in your life!

What a powerful message, and realize fully the implications of it: God had a plan for Jerusalem from a long ago. He said that it was tattooed to His hands because that was the easiest way for them to realize that He was saying His plans for the city had not changed. They had sinned, judgment had come, they were in a bad situation and yet the plans were the same as they always were. Their lives were broken, torn apart by foolish decisions that they had made and they were fully reaping the consequences, and yet in God's hands and in God's eyes, the tattoos of the blueprints of their life still indelibly remained the same. God's tattoos still remained what they had always been!

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Now let me preach to you that here in Medina Valley Christian Worship. It is a very scriptural and accurate jump to use such verses about the city of Jerusalem and apply them to you personally. First of all, God was using the city as a metaphor to speak about His people and you who are born again of the water and of the Spirit are now also God's people. Second of all, you and the city of Jerusalem have more in common than you think. Let me give you some facts about the city of Jerusalem and I want you to notice how that the same things apply to you who are born again:

It was 1 Kings 8:29 that stated that God would place his name in the city and in the temple built there. Really the city has no value except the value given by what God has done there but the turmoil over the city exists today and in fact prophecy tells us that it will be the last city besieged on earth because the devil desires to have it, all because God placed His name within the city!

Such is true with you and I, when you were baptized in the name of Jesus, you became a place where "God put His name" and the battle for your soul really began! Like the city, your spiritual value is derived from what God has done in you and not in your own merit!

It was Jerusalem where the presence of God descended into the temple of Solomon and filled the house and Jerusalem became the place where God dwelt on earth. Such are you who have received the Holy Ghost, "what know ye not that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost?" We, like Jerusalem, have become the place where God dwells on earth!

This is true twice. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that the city is the very place that Abraham raised the knife to obediently kill his only son, Isaac, only to have God stop him and provide a ram to sacrifice instead. Later when Israel was experiencing a plague because of David's sin, God commanded him to go to the threshing floor of Aruanah and offer a sacrifice to stay the plague and when Aruanah offered to give the floor and the oxen and the wood to David, the king replied "I will not offer God something that did not cost me something. The spot that became the blood-soaked point of mercy for David, would become the exact spot where the temple would be built within the city that would become known as Jerusalem! You and I also are a spot of mercy purchases from the judgment of sin and God by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ which -- by the way -- was offered at the city of Jerusalem, just outside the walls!

This being one of the primary reasons that King David chose Jerusalem as the capital city, and "Judah" means "praise." We who have been purchased by the blood of Calvary should be a people finding their identity with praise!

And thus very prominent, which is the exact imagery that Jesus referred to when He said:

We have not time to go on and on, but -- since wer'e here -- I'll just give you a few more facts about Jerusalem that correspond to the Spirit-filled believer:

It was defenseless without its walls.

Once the walls were removed, it was an easy thing for the enemy to go plunder and steal the treasures of the house of God and the sacred and valuable things there. So it is with Christians, without walls of separation and division and protection and some lines being drawn, the precious things of God are easy prey to the enemy of our soul and do not last!

King Uzziah set it up this way, making Jerusalem's source of water inside itself. So are the Spirit-filled Christians -- and by the way, "Uzziah" means "strength of the Lord -- when you get the Holy Ghost, the strength of the Lord causes a well to flow up within you as Jesus said:

And just two other small similarities between us and Jerusalem:

Such is your state, oh Spirit-filled Christian, nothing can destroy you or consume you unless you choose to reject Jesus Christ's work and ministry in your life. Only then, will utter destruction come. And so we come to this final fact:

They wanted others to look and say "look at how strong and great it was, and yet the Romans destroyed it!" And so it is with Christians who choose to go back on the promises of God, often a little bit of their anointing and giftings are left standing and God does this as a reminder of what they left behind when they left Him. The devil doesn't mind them because it stands as a testament to what a strong and mighty Christian that he managed to get to fall. Such is the importance of a made up mind daily to serve God and not reject Christ in your life because you don't want the ruins of your life to be a testimony to the destructive power of Satan. Rather, I want my life to be a testimony of the keeping power of God!

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Here's the point: if the similarities between you and Jerusalem match exactly then what God said about Jerusalem still applies to you and I today also. And we find this supported by other scriptures. Observe four things that we can learn from God's tattoo:

God had preordained that Jerusalem would be the place that He would visit in flesh. There was much prophecy given by God along these lines. The Bible says that Jesus is a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek who way back in the time of Abraham was the priest of "Salem" -- as in the city that came to be known as JeruSALEM. What I'm getting at is that it was in the mind and plan of God for all of this to happen in Jerusalem before there even was a Jerusalem.

So it with you and I, the Bible teaches that God has a plan for your life before you even come into physical existence. God told the young prophet Jeremiah:

Before Jeremiah was ever formed inside of his mother, God already had in place a plan and a blueprint for his life. If that is true for Jeremiah, then the God who is no respecter of persons, must also have a blueprint and a plan for you and I even before we are born -- no matter whether we are talking about your physical or spiritual birth. You may have only recently come to the realization of it, but God has had a plan for your life from the beginning of time. That's why we stand as a church against abortion because with every aborted baby is the abortion of a plan of God that He had for that person.

When I quoted the scriptures earlier where God forbade the children of Israel to tattoo themselves, they also forbid the cutting of flesh. It used to be that the preacher never had to mention that but, today, a recent trend is that many teens are cutting themselves. I know from my friends that are pastors and youth pastors in larger cities that especially girls are on this "fad" of cutting their wrists and bleeding to the point of death. They say that it makes them "feel alive" and as if they have some purpose in life after all. While everybody may not go to such extremes as cutting themselves, many people today young and old have such feelings. It is a lie of sin that they begin to think of themselves as invaluable and insignificant. But it is just the voice of Satan trying to keep them from having faith and to cause them to self-destruct. Satan doesn't like me preaching what I'm preaching, but our generation needs to hear it: before you ever breathed your first breath, and even before you ever developed the first heart beat, God had a plan for you and something for you to do and a reason for you to exist. You are not the accident of a moment of fate, but rather the carefully designed purpose of God. You may not know it, but like Jerusalem, there is prophecy all over your life! And yet you will only realize everything that God has planned for you if Christ comes into it! Somebody get the revelation today: I am important to God and was so before I ever breathed my first breath!

God said through the prophet, Jeremiah, "your walls are continually before me." In actuality the walls were leveled and non-existent, but when God thought of Jerusalem, He always viewed and spoke of her as His plans said that they could be. It is the same with you and I, God speaks of us as what His plans for us state that we should become. The scripture states that He "calls things that shall be as though they are." God speaks in terms of how things will be if the person or city in question will surrender to His will and place themselves within His hands. He speaks in terms of what will happen if you totally surrender yourself to the purpose etched into His palms before you were even born!

That is good news because it means that God determines your worth not by your present state when you come to Him, but rather by what you will be if you stay in His hands! That's why He thought you worth dying for, because He viewed you through the eyes of His plan for you and all that you can be in Him, rather than your actual circumstances!

Sometimes when we question God on His decisions, we do so with our finished product and our blueprint in mind and not His, but God always deals with us according to the finished product. Only the Master Potter knows what He is making and He shapes the clay accordingly. Even the clay doesn't always know and it is not the job of the clay to know such things, but rather only to surrender and stay moldable!

In our other text, Jesus said:

I've heard people try to use this passage as "proof" of "once saved; always saved" but you've got to take it in context. Jesus said "my sheep hear my voice and follow me" such people "no one will snatch them out of my hand." We know from other scriptures that it is possible to backslide and go back on God and all of us at one time have done it or at least faltered or stumbled. The point is that if you follow Him, nothing or nobody can take you out of God's hand, which means as long as you follow Him, the plan engraved upon His palms will come to pass.

God informs us that the blueprint is there, but He does not show all of it to us at one time. That's why it is so important that we "follow Him" and "hear His voice." Chances are that you do not right now fully know all that God desires for you to be and He will not tell you all of it in one fell swoop because that would take the element of faith out of it! The only way to discover the perfect plan of God is "do what you know to do" and "whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might." The only way to know fully God's master plan is to get in His hand by following Him and obeying Him and see what He makes of your life!

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And now we come to the final and main point of our text in Isaiah:

That was the main gist of the words of God through Isaiah and the main point that we forget in our own lives. Jerusalem was a city of people who had had the prophets and the Word and presence of God mightily proclaimed. They were a people who had also gone completely back on that God who had blessed them. They backslid and rebelled in every possible way from God's Word and reaped the judgment for it, and yet here God is still saying "the plans are indelibly printed on my hands." In other words, "despite your actions and your rebellion and your shortcomings, my plans have not changed one iota."

What we tend to believe about our own lives is one of two lies from the pits of hell. The first lie is that of if I not a good person before I come to God and have done bad things before I find God that somehow that past limits or 'knocks down' my potential in the kingdom of God. We believe that somehow our past keeps us from being able to do all that God has for us and be all that God has for us to be!

What a lie! The truth is that before you were ever born, God had a plan for your life and that plan is indelibly printed within His hands. Your life of sin cannot change it one bit! God still plans for you to be what He intended for you to be! And if you would place yourself back in His hands and let Him mold you, you would be able to realize everything that God designed you to accomplish. Remember the blood of Jesus that covered you at baptism? Remember the prayer of repentance? God is not phony and He really means what He says. He forgives you and does not deal with you according to your past trespasses, but rather according to your future in Him! And that future has not changed!

And remember this: God's blueprints for our lives is not just for this earth and this time frame but for a new heaven and a new earth and a new eternity. We are not sure what exactly we will be doing for forever, but remember this life on earth is but a small part of your existence as a child of God. You can live for the devil for 90 years of your life and yet if through the mercy and grace of God you place yourself in His hands, still accomplish what He designed you to be. This is only the warmup! This is only the first leg in the race! Don't believe the lie of Satan, there is eternity to lose and eternity to gain! There is still a purpose to your living for God today! Because you are not so old or so far removed that God's design for your existence has changed!

And the second lie is this: if I don't live perfectly after I have become a child of God, then I become unable to be everything that God wanted me to be and have to settle for 'plan B' or ' plan C.' This is the lie that I have come to confront the hardest tonight. It is foolish to compare degrees of sins amongst people, but think of it: Jerusalem burned their children as human sacrifices to the idol, Molech. They participated in drunken festivities and committed all sorts of abominations. When they turned from God, they regularly indulged in sexual immorality at the groves of Asherah. And yet God said "the plans are indelibly printed in my hands." The plans that God had for them did not diminish one bit.

I'm not preaching that you should go out and live like you want and it doesn't matter. It does matter. Because you will reap what you sow, and the only way that you will begin reaping good things is to stop sowing in sin. We must live separate. We must be different. We must be holy as He is holy -- understand my disclaimer here.

But what I am preaching to you is that sin -- even the biggest mistake committed after the Spirit of God is inside of you and after you have become a place where He has put His name -- doesn't change His will for your life. As long as the sin remains in your life, then it hinders and keeps the will of God for your life from happening and so we must come out of sin. But at the same time, I hear people all the time that have messed up and made a bad decision since they began following Christ that are convinced that they can never have the ministry that they once could have had or achieve all that God wanted them to do, now that they had made that mistake. And yet I must remind you of God's tattoo for your life! The blueprint is permanent and has not changed. Don't believe the lie from the pits of hell!

From the time that I first preached this message to now as I preach the sequel, there are some of you who have made some tremendously bad decisions. There are some of you who have fallen a few times in your endeavor to serve God. And there may even be some of you who have walked away and returned since then. God sent me to tell you tonight that "God's tattoos still remain." His will for your life is still what is was before your mistake. Sure, you have reaped judgment and wrath and bad things. And because of that, things may be different in your life or your attitude or whatever. But remember His hands are still here reaching out to you and imprinted is the same blueprint that was written about you before you ever drew a first breath or committed the first sin. And those blueprints are still the same as they were before you fell the last time. They are still found in the hands of God. If you would get up, stop beating yourself up, leave sin, and return to living within His palms, then you would find that God still has a purpose for you life and it is not diminished one bit. But like Isaiah and Jerusalem, He has sent a man of God to remind you of it. God's tattoos still remain, and they remain the same. He still believes in you; still has a purpose for your life; still has the means to make it happen. If you will follow Him and place yourself back within His hands!