Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Book: Isaiah

To the Teaching!

About this sermon

The Lord tells Isaiah to bind up the testimony and seal the teaching among his disciples while he waits for the Lord. When people say, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” God’s people must answer: should not a people inquire of their God? “To the teaching and to the testimony!” Deuteronomy 18 forbids divination, sorcery, and consulting the dead. Those who reject God’s word have no dawn; they wander hungry and enraged, looking up and down and seeing only darkness. God’s word is unchanging and clear, and it alone gives light.

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Sermon transcript

We return to the book of the prophet Isaiah and my sermon text today is Isaiah chapter 8 verses 16 through 22. Isaiah chapter 8 verses 16 through 22. You’ll find that on page 680 in your Pew Bible. To fill out the context a bit, I will begin reading at verse 11 and read to the end of the chapter. But again, our focus will be on verses 16 through 22. This is the word of God. Let’s hear it with reverence and awe. For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy.

Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense, and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble on it, they shall fall and be broken, they shall be snared and taken. Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts who dwells on Mount Zion. And when they say to you, inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God?

Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony, if they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. They will pass through the land greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their God, and turn their faces upward. And they will look to the earth, but behold, and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and they will be thrust into thick darkness. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of his word. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you that you have given to us these God-breathed scriptures, that you have given to us your word, that you have clearly communicated to us.

But we recognize, Lord, our need for the illumination of your Spirit, that we might understand your word and how it applies to us. And so we would ask, O Lord, that by your Spirit, you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word. And we pray that by the sovereign work of your gracious Spirit, you would cause your word to find a lodging place in our souls. And Lord, we ask that you would set a guard over my lips, that I might speak only that which is faithful to your word. We ask, Lord, that you would use me, your unworthy servant, to declare your word. And we would pray, Heavenly Father, that we might receive your word, embrace it, assimilate it, and live out the implications of it in our daily lives.

We pray these things in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people’s said. Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this morning is, To the Teaching. And if you have your sermon outline, you’ll notice, and I suggest that children can listen for some or all of these words in my sermon today. The key words for my sermon are the words, trustworthiness, superstition, revelation, darkness, and light. Well, my dear friends, life is confusing today, isn’t it? Dear ones, we find ourselves living today in a deeply confused, and indeed a deeply confusing age. Every day, for example, through various means such as social media, every day we find ourselves confronted with a multitude of conflicting and often contradictory voices, a multitude of conflicting ideas and ideologies, all of which seek to grab our attention, all of which seek to gain our interest, and ultimately to win our allegiance.

So much so that it can sometimes feel like we’re drowning in an ocean of conflicting information and contradictory truth claims. Just to give you an example, perhaps you felt this way during the recent presidential election season, which mercifully has finally come and gone. It wasn’t too long ago, however, you’ll remember, that you and I had to endure a barrage of political information and political ads being crammed down our throats on a daily basis, ads and information in your mailbox, ads and information in your email inbox, ads and information conveyed on the radio, on your television screen, in your social media, on your favorite podcasts, on your favorite news websites and newspapers, and so on and so forth. I mean, it was ubiquitous, it was everywhere, and it was hard to avoid even if you wanted to avoid it.

It was an exhausting and confusing experience as political candidates and their campaigns confronted us with their endless and conflicting claims and counterclaims, claims and counterclaims which, of course, were usually laced with a toxic combination of ad hominem personal attacks and nasty juvenile innuendo, all designed to denigrate and demonize their political opponents in the hopes of winning your vote. I mean, what would American politics be without nastiness, personal attacks, and appeals to rage? Well, friends, it’s in a world filled with so many different and contradictory ideas, so many different and conflicting worldviews, philosophies, ideologies, and religions. Where can we turn to get the actual, real truth? Where shall we go to ground and to center ourselves in reality, not just the reality that we see in the media, but the reality that we see on an earthly plane, but the reality that serves as the bedrock and foundation, the ultimate foundation of all reality, namely, ultimate transcendent reality?

Where do we find a firm and solid rock foundation upon which to build our faith, our lives, our families, and our future? Well, as the Holy Spirit through the prophet, Isaiah, and his disciples tells us in our passage for this Lord’s Day morning in verse 20, to the teaching and to the testimony, if they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. Now, friends, remember the historical setting of our passage. King Ahaz, the Judean king, and the people of Judea, and the people of Judea, and the people of Judea, and the people of our passage. King Ahaz, the Judean king, and the people of Judea as a whole, had sadly, tragically, rejected the word of Yahweh, their God, which had come to them through the prophet, Isaiah. The evidence of this rejection of the Lord and of his word was their lack of trust in the Lord’s promise to deliver them from the military threat from their neighbors to the north, namely, the northern kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Aram, or Syria.

Instead of trusting in the Lord’s promise of deliverance, King Ahaz and his people had turned to the king of Assyria for help against this military threat. Instead of trusting in Yahweh, the Lord, the true and living God, they trusted in the military might of a pagan king and a pagan people who worshiped lifeless idols. Do you see the contrast there? They turned away from trusting the living God and his absolutely trustworthy promises, and they turned instead to worshipers of lifeless idols, false and deceptive deities. Now, in response to this rejection from Ahaz and his people, the wording of our passage for today has often been interpreted as suggesting that at this particular point, Isaiah withdrew from his public ministry for a time in order to focus his attention on teaching and instructing and ministering to the faithful remnant among the people of Israel, who are described here in this passage as Yahweh’s disciples.

And that brings us to our passage for today. And let us turn our attention first of all to verses 16 through 18, and let us consider the unchanging trustworthiness of God’s word, the unchanging trustworthiness of God’s word. It says in verse 16, bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts who dwells on Mount Sinai. Now, in verse 16, Isaiah uses the words, the terms testimony and teaching. To what are these terms referring? Are they referring, for example, to the testimony that was spoken of back in verses 1 and 2 of chapter 8?

Let’s go back to those verses. We read in those verses the following. Then the Lord said to me, take a large tablet and write on it in common characters belonging to Meher Shalal Hashbaz. Now, what does that mean? That’s one of Isaiah’s sons. Meher Shalal Hashbaz means, it means speed the spoil, hasten the booty. It is a symbolic name that the Lord instructed Isaiah to give his son as a testimony to the people that indeed judgment and exile was coming, and also that the Lord would deliver the people from the military threat from Syria and Israel. And I will get reliable witnesses, verse 2, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberrikayah to attest for me. Is this the testimony and the teaching that was to be sealed up until what the word of the Lord said would be fulfilled?

Or are these terms testimony and teaching, are they referring to the words and signs that the Lord had delivered to the people through Isaiah? Well, in the context of our passage for today, this latter interpretation makes the most sense, contextually speaking. God’s word as revealed to the people through the prophet Isaiah is particularly in view here, especially as that word predicted the Lord’s deliverance of Judah from the military threats from Israel and Syria, and also the predictions of judgment that the Lord had threatened against those who rejected him and rejected his word. But friends, in a broader sense, in a broader sense, this refers to God’s word as a whole. These terms can refer together to the entirety of the word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, and not merely to the Lord’s word given through the prophet Isaiah.

Now, these two terms are, of course, synonymous terms, and they’re closely connected, although they are referring to the word of God through a slightly different angle, from a slightly different angle. But, of course, God’s word is rich and multifaceted, so the Scriptures use different terms to describe themselves. The Bible is referred to, and we see that, for example, in Psalm 119, where God’s word is referred to as law, as precepts, as testimonies, and so forth. As Matthew Henry suggests in his commentary, as a testimony, it, the word of God, directs our faith. As a law, it directs our practice, in other words, how we live our lives as followers of the Lord, and we ought both to subscribe to the truths of it and to submit to the precepts of it. Isaiah’s description here of God’s word as both testimony and teaching, or it could be translated as law, the Hebrew term is Torah.

Isaiah’s description of the word of God as testimony and Torah, or teaching, law, reminds me of the answer of Shorter Catechism question three. The question is, what do the Scriptures principally teach? And I know some of you know the answer to that question. The Bible-based answer is that the Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. In other words, dear ones, Scripture reveals both testimony and teaching, or law. It reveals doctrine and duty. It reveals theology and ethics. It tells us what we are to believe about God and also how we are to live faithfully for God. And so that is what is in view here when we read of, in verse 16, of the testimony and the teaching. And what is Isaiah to do with this testimony and teaching?

The Lord instructs him, bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples. Now, some understand this language to mean that Isaiah’s students or disciples were actually to bind up or seal a scroll of Isaiah’s prophecies until the predictions of Isaiah’s words about the defeat of Israel and Syria by the kingdom of Assyria came to pass. And that would come to pass in relatively short order. Now, this would clearly show Isaiah that Isaiah was indeed a true prophet of God. For one of the criteria of being a true prophet of God is that if you made a prediction about the future, that prediction would come to pass if you were a true prophet. If you made a prediction and it didn’t come to pass, well, that would show you to be a false prophet. I don’t know about you folks, but I remember back in the last election, back in 2020, that there were some alleged or professing contemporary prophets who predicted that Donald Trump would win the election in 2020.

And, of course, he didn’t. And so those individuals and then those prophets and prophetesses would sort of tweak their predictions or what have you. But the very fact that they made a prediction that didn’t come to pass shows that they were in fact and are in fact false prophets or prophetesses. And so, friends, Isaiah had made a prediction. The Lord would deliver Judah from the military threat given by Israel and Syria. And he was to seal up the testimony until that time, bind it up, seal it up. And the very fact that this came to pass testifies to the truth that Isaiah was indeed a true prophet of God, that the word of the Lord truly came through Isaiah the prophet. But this binding and sealing up of the testimony would also demonstrate that God’s word is unalterable.

It’s unalterable. It’s unchanging. If it’s bound up, it cannot be altered. It cannot be changed. As one commentator says, this written record was literally sealed, possibly in the presence of witnesses, so that it could not be altered. In any case, friends, this language points to the fact that God’s revealed word, his God-breathed, inspired, infallible, authoritative word, his word is unalterable, his word is unchanging, and thus it is entirely trustworthy. That’s why the Scriptures repeatedly warn us as God’s people, neither to add to nor take away from God’s word. We have some very stern warnings. For example, if you turn to Deuteronomy chapter 12, verse 32, we read the following words in Deuteronomy 12, verse 32. The Lord through Moses the prophet says, everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do, you shall not add to it or take from it.

Or think of the very last chapter of the New Testament in Revelation, chapter 22, verses 18 and 19, as the Bible closes with this warning. Revelation 22, verses 18 and 19, I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. A very solemn and somber warning not to add to or take away from the word of God. And so the law and the testimony, the word of God given through the prophet Isaiah is to be bound up and sealed. And bound up and sealed where or to whom?

Well, bind up the testimony and seal the teaching among my disciples. Now, one of the keys to good Bible interpretation is to ask good questions. What’s the question that should come to our minds as we read these words? Well, the question that should come to our minds is among whose disciples? Whose disciples are being referred to? Is Isaiah referring to his disciples, his pupils? Or is he referring to the Lord’s, to Yahweh’s disciples? Well, probably the latter, at least in the ultimate sense. Although in the proximate immediate sense, this may be referring to Isaiah’s students and followers. But Isaiah’s students and followers were among the faithful remnants. And so ultimately they were disciples, followers of Yahweh the Lord. And then it goes on to say in verses 17 and 18 the following. I will wait for the Lord who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.

Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts who dwells on Mount Sinai. Again, what’s the question that we should ask? The question is, who is the I here? Is Isaiah referring to himself or is this, is Isaiah conveying to us the words of the promised Messiah? Well, Pastor, where do you get that? Where do you get this Messianic interpretation? Well, we get it by comparing Scripture with Scripture. See, when we compare Scripture with Scripture, the Messianic interpretation of this passage clearly seems to be the correct one. Dear ones, we must remember that the Spirit of Christ, in other words, the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of the Messiah, the Spirit of Christ spoke through the Old Testament prophets. We learned this.

This is implied, for example, in passages like 1 Peter, chapter one, verses 10 and 11. Let me just read that to you real quickly. In 1 Peter, chapter one, verses 10 and 11, it says, as Peter is speaking about the salvation that the Lord Jesus has won for us as his disciples, it says, concerning this salvation, the prophets, he’s speaking here, I believe, about the Old Testament prophets, concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours, searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. You see, my friends, all of Scripture, including the Old Testament, is ultimately from Jesus Christ. Christ is the subject of all of Scripture, ultimately, and Christ is also the source of Scripture.

It is His Word. The Spirit of Christ spoke through the Old Covenant prophets, even as He spoke through the New Testament apostles. And as we go back to verse 18 of our passage for today, we notice these words, Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts. Now, certainly, Isaiah himself, as a prophet of the Lord, was a sign of both mercy and judgment to the people of God, and the Lord had instructed Isaiah to give symbolic names to his children. We already considered one of those names, Meher Shalal Hashbaz, Speed the Spoil, Hasten the Booty, but there was also his other son, Shear Jashub, and what does that mean? That means a remnant shall return, and it points to the promise that God would ultimately preserve and return a remnant to Israel.

But nevertheless, the author of Hebrews interprets verse 18 not as a reference to Isaiah and Isaiah’s physical children, Shear Jashub and Meher Shalal Hashbaz, but no, the author of Hebrews interprets this passage as a reference to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Turn with me, if you would, to Hebrews 2 and look at verses 11 through 13. Hebrews chapter 2, verses 11 through 13. It says this. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers. Jesus Christ is our elder brother. We are brothers and sisters in union with Christ, saying, I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation. I will sing your praise. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, these words should be familiar.

Behold, I and the children God has given me. That’s a quotation from Isaiah chapter 8, verse 18. You say, well, what’s the connection? How is it that Isaiah, under the inspiration of the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, how is it that he is speaking on behalf of the Messiah here in Isaiah 8, verse 18? What’s the connection? Well, think about it, friends, just as Isaiah and his children with their symbolic names were signs and portents to their contemporaries. So Jesus, the Messiah, and his children, which includes you and me, are signs and portents of judgment and mercy to the world today. We, brothers and sisters, we are signs of judgment and mercy. We have tasted that the Lord is good. The Lord has been merciful to us. And we have opportunity to confess Christ to others.

And as we do, we speak of the Lord’s judgment against sin. We also speak of his mercy in Christ to sinners. We are signs and portents in that sense. So what are some of the takeaways? What are some of the lessons that we can glean from this first point, from what we have considered thus far in our passage for this morning? Well, first of all, friends, let us remember that God’s word is unalterable. And so we are to receive it as it is, neither adding to it nor taking from it, for it is entirely trustworthy. It cannot be changed. So you can base your life on it. You can build your life upon it as a solid rock foundation of truth and grace. Many religions and cults and false philosophies either add to or take away from the word of God.

The Jewish religion takes away from the word of God by rejecting the New Testament Scriptures, rejecting Jesus as the Messiah and the New Testament Scriptures. They accept the Old Testament, which they call the Hebrew Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, but they reject the New Testament. On the other hand, you have religions like Islam and Mormonism, which add to the word of God. We’re told in Hebrews chapter one that in Jesus Christ, God’s final word has come. Christ and his inspired spokesman, his apostles, that’s the final revelation of God. And we have the final revelation in the New Testament Scriptures. So we are not to expect an additional word of God. We’re not to accept the Book of Mormon as it claims to be another testament of Jesus Christ. It isn’t. It is a forgery. It is a falsehood.

Same thing with the Koran, written hundreds of years after the New Testament was penned. In Christ, God’s final word has come to us, and his word is unalterable. It is reliable. You can bank on it. Another lesson that we learn from our passage. You know, some look to the Bible merely as a textbook or a resource of doctrine and theology. And certainly there’s much doctrine, much theology in the Bible. But this book is not a systematic theology textbook. It gives us truth and revelation that we use to build a biblical systematic theology from. But the Bible is not merely a textbook of theology. Others look to the Bible as a book of moral guidance and ethics. Sort of like a divinely inspired Aesop’s Fables or what have you. But friends, it’s not one or the other.

It’s actually both. It is both testimony and law or teaching, Torah. It is doctrine and ethics. It is gospel and law. It’s not one or the other. It’s not either or. It’s both and. And so let us search the scriptures to learn both what we are to believe about God and his amazing plan of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. But let us also search the scriptures to learn how we are to live as followers of Jesus Christ out of gratitude for God’s gift of salvation to us in Jesus. So let us remember the Bible teaches what we are to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. It teaches testimony and teaching. Another lesson here is that as the Spirit of Christ spoke through the Old Testament prophets like Isaiah, let us remember that Christ is at the heart and center of all of Holy Scripture.

Christ is revealed in all of scriptures. In some places he’s revealed more clearly and directly than others, but all of the Bible ultimately points to and is fulfilled in and has as its content the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so let us always be sure to read and study the scriptures in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ. That includes the Old Testament scriptures. As it has been said, the Old Testament prepared the world for Christ. The Old Testament points forward to Christ and prepares the world for the coming of Christ. The New Testament reveals him in his fullness. And so children, I know I’ve said this before, but what that means is that when you read the Bible, especially when you read the Old Testament, you need to read it with your Jesus glasses on.

You need to ask what is this teaching me about Jesus? How is this preparing the world for Jesus? How is this pointing to Jesus our Savior? Now that brings me to my next point. We’ve been talking about the unalterable trustworthiness of the Word of God. But Isaiah’s contemporaries had a problem, many of them, in that instead of turning to their God and His Word, they turned to pagan gibberish and superstition. And so as we look at verses 19 and 20, consider next the gibberish of pagan superstition versus the clarity of divine revelation. The gibberish of pagan superstition versus the clarity of divine revelation. It says in verse 19, And when they say to you, Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter, Should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?

To the teaching and to the testimony. If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. You see, friends, instead of seeking the light and clarity of divine revelation as revealed in God’s Word and through the prophets like Isaiah, many of Isaiah’s contemporaries were seeking guidance from other sources, namely from the occult. In particular, from pagan mediums and necromancers who sought to communicate with the dead. Now does the Bible look with smiles upon such practices? Of course not. The Bible sternly forbids and prohibits God’s people from such superstitious pagan practices. In fact, the Bible describes, the Torah describes such practices as an abomination. Turn with me if you would to Deuteronomy 18 and let me just read verses 9 through 12 of Deuteronomy chapter 18. And here the Holy Spirit through Moses addresses us as the people of God.

And it says this beginning at verse 9. The Lord instructs his people, when you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. And then he gives some examples. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering. The practice, the horrible barbaric practice of child sacrifice was very common in the ancient Near East and among Israel’s neighbors. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or daughter as an offering. Anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or a sorcerer or look at verse 11. Or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead. It’s pretty clear there, God doesn’t want his people doing that.

For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God and so forth. So instead, think about it friends, instead of seeking truth and guidance from the true and living God, they were seeking guidance and urging Isaiah and his followers to seek guidance from necromancers and mediums who chirp and mutter. This may be a reference to the kind of hushed tones that mediums and necromancers used in supposedly conveying a message from the spirits of the dead. In any case, instead of seeking truth and guidance from the spirits of the dead, should not God’s people seek guidance from God himself, the true and living God and from his word? And the answer of course is yes, as Isaiah says in verse 20, to the teaching and to the testimony.

He doesn’t say to the necromancers and to the mediums, but no, to the teaching and to the testimony. And then he says, if they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. To the word of God, not to the supposed words of the spirits of the dead. And those who speak according to the spirits of the dead, they have no dawn. In other words, they have no light of divine revelation, or it could possibly mean they have no light of salvation. Oh, Church of God, consider what an immense privilege it is to have what Matthew Henry calls the invaluable treasure of divine revelation. Beloved, we are not left in this sin-cursed world with the spiritual resources of mere human speculations or vain superstitions or mere guesswork. Instead, our amazing, gracious God has spoken.

He has blessed us by entrusting to us his divine oracles, the priceless treasure of divine revelation. And so, with Isaiah, we say to the teaching and to the testimony, to the word of God. Dear listener, do you treasure the Scriptures? Has the Spirit of God sealed the word and truth of God in your soul? And so, dear ones, first of all, let us treasure the word of God, for it is indeed a treasure worth more than mountains of gold. And, dear ones, let us internalize the word. We do so by reading and meditating upon it and by attending upon the faithful preaching and teaching of it as you are seeking to do today. Let us also guard the word of God from corruption by being devoted to maintaining sound doctrine and by neither adding to nor taking away from it.

And also, let us propagate the word of God. We do so through covenant nurture by raising our covenant children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord as we teach them the word of God and we catechize them. We raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We also propagate the word to those outside of the covenant community through missions and evangelism. So let us treasure the word of God, let us internalize the word of God, let us guard the word of God, and let us propagate the word of God. But sadly, not everyone who hears the word believes it. Many reject it. And so, as we wrap up our time in the Scriptures today, I would present to you as my final point based on verses 21 and 22. Let us consider the gloomy darkness of those who reject the Lord and the light of his word.

The gloomy darkness of those who reject the Lord and the light of his word. It says in verse 21, They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their God and turn their faces upward. And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and they will be thrust into thick darkness. Isaiah here under the Spirit’s inspiration describes the darkness that would engulf his contemporaries who had rejected Yahweh and rejected his word of deliverance. You know, it’s interesting that those who persistently harden their hearts against the Gospel, against the word of God, those who persistently harden themselves against it and reject the Lord and his word will often rage against the Lord when they begin to feel within themselves and to experience the effects of his judgment.

But they have no one to blame but themselves. Dear listener, have you received and accepted the word of God? Do you accept the word, the message of the Gospel? Or are you yet walking in spiritual darkness, rejecting the word of the Lord, rejecting the Gospel of Jesus Christ, hardening your heart against it? Oh, be warned, be warned lest you end up being thrust into thick darkness, the darkness of God’s judgment. Run from the darkness to the light of Jesus Christ and his Gospel word. Jesus is the light of the world and he promises light, forgiveness, salvation to all who turn to him in faith and repentance. Turn to Christ who was crucified to pay the penalty for sin and raised from the dead so that whoever, whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life.

Run from the darkness, run into the light of Christ who himself is the light of the world. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we do indeed praise you and thank you, O God, for the light of your word. We thank you, Lord, for the testimony and the teaching. And we pray, O Lord, that in this age that tempts us to turn to other sources for upon which to build our lives, help us to remember that it is on Christ the solid rock we stand, that we are to build our lives upon the rock of Christ and his word. Give us the grace, O Lord, always to return to the law and to the testimony. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, Amen. As Isaiah’s contemporaries, we’re told to look forward to the promised Messiah.

So in this season, let us look forward to celebrating the birth and coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus. Let’s rise and we’ll sing as our closing hymn, number 300, Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus, 300.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

December 1, 2024
A Sanctuary, or a Snare?

About this sermon

God warns Isaiah not to walk in the way of the people, nor to call conspiracy what they call conspiracy, nor to fear what they fear. Instead he is to honor the Lord of hosts as holy and fear him. The Lord becomes a sanctuary for those who trust him, but a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, and many will fall on that stone and break. Peter applies these words to Christ: he is a refuge to those who believe and a stumbling stone to those who reject him.

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Sermon transcript

Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word as we continue our consideration of various passages in the book of the prophet Isaiah. This morning we come to Isaiah chapter 8, and I’ll be focusing on verses 11 through 15 of Isaiah chapter 8. You’ll find that passage on page 680 in your Pew Bible. I’m going to begin reading at verse 1 and read through verse 15 to fill out the context. But friends, this is the Word of God. Let us hear it with reverence and awe. Isaiah chapter 8 verses 1 through 15. Then the Lord said to me, Take a large tablet and write on it in common characters belonging to Maher Shalal Hashbaz. And I will get reliable witnesses, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeber Rekayah, to attest for me. And I went to the prophetess, and she conceived in Borosan.

Then the Lord said to me, Call his name, Maher Shalal Hashbaz. For before the boy knows how to cry my father or my mother, the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria. The Lord spoke to me again, Because this people has refused the waters of Shalua that flow gently and rejoice over Rezin and the son of Remaliah, therefore, behold, the Lord is bringing up against them the waters of the river, mighty and many, the king of Assyria and all his glory. And it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks. And it will sweep on into Judah. It will overflow and pass on, reaching even to the neck. And its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Emmanuel.

Be broken, you peoples, and be shattered. Give ear, all you far countries. Strap on your armor and be shattered. Strap on your armor and be shattered. Take counsel together, but it will come to nothing. Speak a word, but it will not stand, for God is with us. For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken. They shall be snared and taken. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of his word. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you that you have spoken to us and that you have given us in the Holy Scriptures, your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. You have given to us guidance and you have given to us a sure and certain word that we can build our lives and eternity upon. We would ask, O Lord, that you would give us grace and wisdom and insight as we consider this portion of Holy Scripture. We pray that you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word.

And we ask that you would set a guard over my lips that I might speak only that which is faithful in your sight, Lord God. We ask these things, Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people’s said. Amen. You may be seated. Dear friends, the title of my sermon this morning is A Sanctuary or a Snare. And if you’re following along in your sermon outline, I’d encourage the young people to listen for these following words. The words walk, fear, rock, refuge, offense, and faith. Well, dear friends, as a Bible-believing church, one of the important principles that we emphasize here at Grace Church is the importance of reading and interpreting passages of the Bible within their broader literary and historical context. You see, friends, understanding and interpreting Bible passages within their own context instead of yanking verses out of their context is essential when it comes to rightly handling the Word of God and learning sound Bible doctrine.

You see, sound Bible doctrine requires careful contextual Bible reading and study. One of the characteristics of unsound Bible teachers such as, for example, cult leaders is that they will often quote verses of the Bible completely out of context and use out-of-context quotes from Scripture to support their false doctrines or their erroneous teachings. But when it comes to sound Bible interpretation, as the saying goes, and I’m sure some of you have heard this before. It might sound trivial, but it’s not. The saying is a text without a context is what? A pretext. I know you’ve heard it before. You may be thinking, well, pastor, what are you talking about? And how does this relate to the passage we’re considering this morning? Well, let me just offer you a few examples of what I mean about quoting passages out of context and misusing the Scriptures.

Let’s say that I’m ministering to someone who’s been diagnosed with a terminal disease. And so I pay this individual a pastoral visit in the hospital. And let’s say that in seeking to encourage and comfort this individual, I decide to quote some Scripture to them. And let’s say I quote from Genesis 3 verse 4. That verse, part of that verse says this, you will not surely die. Now, what if I came to this individual that I’m visiting and I say, look, hear what the Word of God says. The Bible says in Genesis 3 verse 4, you will not surely die. And I use that as a means of trying to comfort this individual. Is there any problem with that? I mean, after all, that’s part of the Word of God, isn’t it? God’s inerrant, infallible Word.

Well, the problem with that particular quote is that it is quoted out of context. The problem is that Genesis 3 verse 4 is a passage that records the words that Satan spoke to Eve in order to tempt her to eat of the forbidden fruit. In other words, it is a divinely inspired inerrant record of a satanic lie. The words themselves are a lie, but they are recorded faithfully in the Scriptures for our instruction. Yanking that statement out of its context and using it to try to bring pastoral comfort would be a total misuse and a gross misapplication of God’s Holy Word. Or to give a more extreme example, and some of you may have heard this before, and I’m not sure if this is a true story or if it’s apocryphal, probably the latter, but let’s say that there’s a young man who has to make a really important decision, but he wants to make sure that he’s being led by God in his decision.

So he says, Lord, I want you to show me from Scripture what I’m supposed to do. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to close my eyes and drop my Bible on the table and put my finger on the Bible, on a Bible verse, and then open my eyes, and that’ll be your guidance to me. And so the man does that. He takes his Bible. He prays for the Lord to show him what he is supposed to do. He lets his Bible drop on the table. He puts his finger with his eyes closed on a verse of the Bible, and he opens his eyes, and lo and behold, what does he see? He sees the verse that says, Judas went and hanged himself. Let’s say he says, okay, maybe, Lord, I didn’t get this right, so let’s try it again.

So again, he prays. He closes his eyes. He drops his Bible on the table. He puts his finger on a verse of the Bible without looking, then he opens his eyes. And what verse does he put his finger on? Go and do likewise. So we see there, friends, the reason, beloved, that I belabor this here at the front end of my sermon is to make the point that when we are studying challenging parts of the Bible, such as the prophetic books, like the book of the prophet Isaiah, it’s especially important to read passages carefully and within their historical and their textual context. And when we read books like Isaiah, if the modern Bible reader, the typical Christian Bible reader today, will often struggle understanding passages from books like the book of Isaiah because the book of Isaiah assumes that you have a knowledge of the historical circumstances that Isaiah, that the Holy Spirit through Isaiah is addressing.

And so that’s one of the reasons why sometimes in some of these passages I’ve been taking some time and boring you perhaps with some historical background information. But the reason I’m doing that is because I want to rightly handle the word of God and want to make sure that you understand what this passage is saying within its appropriate context. So what was the historical context that Isaiah was addressing here or that the Lord through Isaiah is addressing here in chapter eight? Well, remember, friends, that the date was around 735 BC. At that particular time, King Ahaz was on the throne of the kingdom of Judah. King Ahaz was one of King David’s descendants. He was a Davidic king. But sadly, he was a wicked king. Now, the great kingdom of Assyria to the northeast was seeking to expand its territory.

So all of the smaller kingdoms of that region, including the northern kingdom of Israel, also called Ephraim, and this other kingdom known as the ancient kingdom of Syria or Aram, and the kingdom of Judah, all of these kingdoms were under threat from the kingdom of Assyria. So how were these kingdoms seeking to deal with this threat? Well, Israel and Syria, Judah’s neighbors, sought to meet this threat by entering into a military alliance against the kingdom of Assyria. But King Ahaz and Judah had refused to enter into their military alliance. So Syria and Israel had threatened to attack Judah, depose King Ahaz, and put a puppet king in his place who would bring Judah into their military alliance against the kingdom of Assyria. Now, the Lord through the prophet Isaiah had come to King Ahaz and had called upon Ahaz not to fear this military threat from their neighbors, the kingdoms of Assyria and the northern kingdom of Israel.

However, instead of trusting in the Lord, and instead of trusting in the Lord’s promise of deliverance from Syria and Israel, instead of trusting the Lord, what does King Ahaz do? He turns away from the Lord of Hosts, the divine king of Israel, he turns away from the Lord, and he turns to the pagan king of Assyria for help against neighboring Syria and Israel. Now, the Lord had, as we saw in previous weeks, the Lord had begun to address this situation back in chapter seven, and here in chapter eight, he continues to address this situation, and that’s where we find ourselves in our passage for today. And the first thing I want to draw your attention to in verse 11, beloved, is a warning against a faithless walk. What we have here, first of all, and this is the first point on your sermon outline, notice a warning against a faithless walk.

The Lord here warns the prophet Isaiah. It says this, For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me and warned me not to walk in the way of this people. The Lord spoke thus. I don’t know the exact number of times this kind of language is used. I think it’s somewhere around 600 times in the Old Testament alone, we read the words, thus saith the Lord, or the Lord says this, and this is one of those times. God’s signature is found throughout the Holy Scriptures. The Bible claims to be God’s word. The Bible shows itself, evidences itself to be the word of God. It is self-authenticating, and what we have here is another passage of Scripture that reinforces the truth that this is prophetic revelation. This is not stuff that Isaiah made up in his own brain.

This is a message that he has received from the Lord, and again, notice that the term Lord is in all capital letters. What does that indicate? Well, I know many of you know that this indicates. This is the way the English translators indicate that the word for God here, the name for God used here is the name Yahweh, and Yahweh is the Lord’s covenantal name. It has in view God as the gracious covenant-making, covenant-keeping redeemer and savior of his people. The Lord spoke thus to me, but not only did Isaiah receive another message from the Lord that he’s conveying to the people through his writings. He goes on to say, The Lord spoke thus to me with what? With his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people.

Now, focus in on that phrase, with his strong hand upon me. The language here, my friends, speaks of a special divine constraint. Dr. E.J. Young explains it as follows. He says, When this hand of God comes upon a man, that man is completely subject to God’s power. This is not ordinary prophetic inspiration, but a power of God to constrain Isaiah. The seizure was in order to instruct Isaiah so that he would not walk in the way of the people of Judah and bring condemnation upon himself. Another way of saying this is that through this divine constraint, God preserves Isaiah, enabling Isaiah to persevere in the faith and not be like many of his contemporaries who had abandoned their trust in the Lord. And not only that, it says this, that he was warned not to do what?

Well, this strong hand upon Isaiah warned him not to walk in the way of this people. Not to walk in the way of this people. Now, what’s he talking about? What is this language of walking? We often read this kind of language in the scriptures. Well, here the term walk is referring to a way of life. And the Christian life is sometimes described as walking with the Lord. We walk with the Lord. The Christian life is a life of discipleship. It’s a journey of following Jesus throughout our lives, day in and day out. And so when he says, do not walk in the way of this people, he is saying, avoid their way of life. Again, when the scriptures speak of our walk, they usually are not referring to walking in the literal sense. It’s not talking about how you walk, the sense of your gait, such as whether you amble or swagger when you walk or what have you.

No, instead, the image of walking is often used by the biblical authors to describe our manner or way of life. And here the Lord, Yahweh, the faithful covenant-making, covenant-keeping God of Israel is urging Isaiah not to walk. In other words, not to live or to behave or to conduct himself in the manner of his contemporaries. And how had Isaiah’s contemporaries, his fellow Judahites, how had they been walking? Well, the answer given in scripture is most of them, except for a faithful remnant, most of them had been walking, had been living faithlessly. They had been living in impenitence and unbelief. They had been living in violation of God’s covenant. Instead of trusting in and fearing the gracious covenant Lord who had promised deliverance from the military alliance of Syria and Israel, instead of trusting in the Lord to keep his promise of deliverance, they, like Ahaz their king, had turned away from the Lord.

And they trusted in and feared man instead of trusting in and fearing the Lord. Now, what are some of the takeaways? What are some of the lessons that we can learn from our passage so far? Well, I want to address us as a church corporate. I think we as a church can learn much from passages like this. Brothers and sisters, may we as a church walk, watch our walk. May we watch our walk as a church. Remember, we are a local expression of the body of Christ. We should walk like it. We should behave in the way that we professed to be. We should seek to, in the words of the hymn writer, trust and obey when it comes to our body life together as a church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that has many, many implications.

But one of the implications for us as a church is that we ought not to rely on worldly gimmicks or worldly methods or worldly fads to do the work of the Lord. We ought not to zealously follow what all of the, what the church planting experts and church growth experts are saying. Now, I’m not saying we can’t learn some practical wisdom from some of those experts. But we must not set our agenda based on worldly ideas or business practices or what have you. We need to instead rely upon the Lord and upon his ordinary, unadorned means of grace. The word, the sacraments, prayer. These are the means that though they are simple and unadorned when they are blessed by the Holy Spirit, they are powerful to accomplish that which God intends for them to accomplish.

So let us as a church watch our walk. But also this speaks to us as individual believers in Christ. As individual believers, let us, beloved, seek to, again to quote from the hymn writer, let us seek to walk with the Lord in the light of his word. Dear listener, let me ask you, do you have a gospel walk? Is your life characterized by a gospel walk? What do you mean, pastor? What is a gospel walk? Well, is your manner of life rooted in and grounded in the good news of Jesus Christ, your Savior? Is your life rooted in your trust in him as your very own Lord and Savior? We are, if you are a believer, if Christ is your Lord and Savior, then you are, as the Scriptures describe it, you are in Christ.

You’ve been identified with him. You are united with him in his death and resurrection. And because of your union with him in his death and resurrection, which is signified and sealed to you in your baptism, you are called upon to die daily unto sin and walk after a new obedience. That means live a new life, a life of discipleship as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Is that your life, dear listener? Do you trust and obey? If you’re not sure, the Lord Jesus in his word calls you to repent and believe in the good news. Jesus Christ, the God man, was crucified to pay the penalty for sin, and he was raised from the dead so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. So repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ for your salvation, and the word of God says that you will be saved.

And having trusted him for your salvation, begin to live a life of grateful obedience. He has saved you, believer. He has brought you into union with himself. He has promised you that you are safe and secure in him. Out of gratitude for his gift of salvation, seek to live a life that is well-pleasing to him, a life of obedience. But that life of obedience requires that life of faith-filled, gospel-fueled obedience is made possible by the grace of God, and it is only possible in those who exhibit godly fear. And that brings me to my next point as we consider verses 12 and 13. I want us next to consider godly fear or ungodly fear. Godly fear or ungodly fear. Look at verse 12. Again, remember the historical circumstances, and he goes on to say, the Lord goes on to say to Isaiah and through Isaiah, do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear nor be in dread.

So this is an example of the Lord saying, avoid ungodly fear, the kind of fear that was exhibited by Isaiah’s unbelieving contemporaries. But who then should we fear? Is there a good sense of fearing? Well, verse 13 answers that in the positive. It says, but the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy, let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. Now, verse 12 mentions a conspiracy, and the Lord instructs Isaiah, do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy. What is the meaning of this conspiracy? What conspiracy is being referred to here? Well, there are different interpretations of that and how to answer that question, even among sound of faithful Bible commentators. Some say that it refers to Isaiah’s counsel to King Ahaz. Remember Isaiah had been counseling King Ahaz to trust in the Lord and not to trust in the King of Assyria.

And that counsel was likely viewed by Ahaz and his court, his royal court as treacherous conspiracy. After all, it had become state policy, royal policy to appeal to the King of Assyria and to oppose that or counsel against that would have been viewed as treacherous. Would have been viewed as a treacherous conspiracy. But others say that in this verse, the conspiracy refers to the alliance between Syria and Israel’s military, that military conspiracy that was being brought against Judah. And I think here, brothers and sisters, that again, remembering the importance of the context, I think in light of the context here, that this latter view is likely the correct one. King Ahaz and the people of Judah, what were they doing? They were fearing and they were dreading the military threat from Syria and Israel instead of trusting in and fearing Yahweh, their God.

They were not believing God’s promise of deliverance brought to them through the prophet Isaiah. They doubted God’s word, they denied God’s word and instead, they feared. They feared with a godless fear. And then verse 13, though, says that there is a good kind of fear. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. You shall set him apart as holy in your hearts, if you will. The Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear and let him be your dread. Now notice how the Lord is spoken of here in verse 13. He is referred to as Yahweh of hosts. And though it is not politically correct to say this today, the Bible often refers to the Lord using military language. When it says Yahweh of hosts, the Lord of hosts, who are those hosts?

Sometimes the hosts refer to the hosts of God’s people, the people of God in their military capacity, but oftentimes it refers to the angelic hosts. And certainly the Lord of hosts, he is the divine warrior who is the captain of the angelic hosts. And if the divine warrior who rules and governs and reigns over the angelic hosts has promised deliverance, you can count on his deliverance. And because he is the divine warrior who fights our battles for us, who fights for his people, he alone is to be feared. He alone is to be dreaded. Now it’s interesting that the language here in this particular passage is echoed by the apostle Peter in 1 Peter chapter 3 verses 14 and 15, where Peter, under the Spirit’s inspiration, applies this to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Let’s just briefly look there at 1 Peter chapter 3, and let me read verses 14 and 15. We read the following here. But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them. Have no fear of those who would persecute you for righteousness’ sake. Nor be troubled, just like the ancient Israelites, the ancient Judahites, rather, were troubled by the threats from Syria and Israel. They feared with a godless fear. We are instructed not to fear those who threaten us with persecution, nor be troubled. But instead, what are we to do? Verse 15 of 1 Peter 3. But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy. You see the similar language. Peter is echoing and reflecting upon this passage from Isaiah chapter 8 here. He’s saying, in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.

Set him apart in your hearts, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame, and so forth. Well, friends, we see in this passage, in passages like this, that sometimes the Bible speaks of fear in a positive sense, and sometimes the Bible speaks of fear in a negative sense. We see in passages like this one that there is a good, godly kind of fear on the one hand, but there is also a bad, ungodly kind of fear on the other hand. And what’s the difference? What makes the difference between the fear that is good, the godly fear, on the one hand, and the fear that is bad, ungodly fear?

Well, friends, when we study the scriptures carefully and compare scripture with scripture, we see that the difference is that ungodly fear is a fear that is rooted in unbelief and rebellion against the Lord, whereas a godly fear is a fear that is rooted in faith and trust and reverence for the Lord. Ungodly fear is that unbelieving dread and terror that drives us sinners away from the Lord. An example of that kind of fear is the kind of fear that Adam and Eve experienced when they had eaten the forbidden fruit. They hid themselves, and when they realized what they had done, what did they do? They ran away from the Lord. They sowed, you know, they tried to cover themselves in fig leaves. The work of their own hands they tried to cover themselves with, their own works.

And they hid when they heard the Lord coming in the cool or the spirit of the day to confront them. They hid from the Lord. They ran away from the Lord. When they fell and sinned, they didn’t go back to the Lord and say, Father, we messed up, have mercy on us. They ran away from the Lord because they were they were possessed at that time of an ungodly fear that drove them away from the Lord. But godly fear is that sense of holy reverence and awe, that sense of reverence and awe that trembles with joy before the Lord, that trusts in his promises, that rejoices in his truth, and that dreads above all things, displeasing our loving Heavenly Father. If you are characterized by a godly fear, beloved, then your worst fear, your worst dread would be the fear of displeasing and bringing shame and dishonor upon the name of your loving, gracious Heavenly Father, that Father in heaven who sent his Son Jesus Christ to die for your sins and to rise again to give you the gift of eternal life.

Oh dear listener, let me ask you, do you fear the Lord? And if so, what kind of fear is yours? A godly fear, a fear that reverences and trusts in and delights in the Lord and dreads displeasing your loving Heavenly Father, or an ungodly fear that simply is terrified by the prospect of God’s holy wrath and judgment? We’re told in the Scriptures that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and obviously that speaks to a godly fear, a fear that is rooted in faith. But remember what our Lord Jesus said in Matthew chapter 10 verse 28. As he speaks and puts this in its broader perspective, he says this, Jesus says, and do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul, rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Praise God, if we are resting upon Christ as our Savior from sin, we need not fear his judgment, for as the Scriptures tell us, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. To be in Christ Jesus is to know Christ as your rock, the rock of your salvation. And that brings me to my final point as we consider verses 14 and 15. We have here the Lord presented either as a rock of refuge or a stone of offense. This is the final point in your sermon outline, a rock of refuge or a stone of offense. We’re told this, and he will become, he, the Lord of hosts, Yahweh of hosts, he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel.

Again, remember in the historical setting here, God’s people had been divided. This was the period of the divided kingdom, so we had the northern tribes, the kingdom of Israel in the north, and then the southern tribe of Judah to the south, obviously. But here they are spoken of as both houses of Israel, as if they are meant to be united. But anyways, it goes on to say, he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, again, that’s the holy city, that’s the capital city of the theocracy, that’s the city where the temple of God was, where God, the symbol of God’s gracious dwelling among his people, that’s where that was located. And it goes on to say in verse 15, and many shall stumble on it, they shall fall and be broken, they shall be snared and taken.

Now, verse 14, which mentions that the Lord will become to some, at least, a sanctuary, this implies the theology of the remnant, that there will be a faithful remnant that God preserves even in the midst of an unfaithful generation. But though a faithful remnant in Isaiah’s time would honor the Lord of hosts as holy with a godly fear, as we’re told in verse 13, many others, such as the apostate King Ahaz, trusted in the scheming of man for deliverance rather than the promises of their faithful covenant Lord. For the former, for the faithful remnant, those who trusted the Lord, those who feared the Lord, for the former, the Lord Yahweh would be a sanctuary, a place of safety and refuge. But for the latter group, those who persisted in their impenitence and unbelief, the Lord would be to them a stone of a fence and a rock of stumbling.

The Lord would be a rock that they would stumble over and fall. But not only that, another image is used here in this passage, the Lord would be to such unbelievers, such wicked ones among the covenant community, he would be to them a trap and a snare. Not only would the ungodly stumble over Yahweh their God, in their case the Lord would be a divine hunter, a hunter who would trap and snare them in his holy judgment against him. Again, the apostle Peter, under the Spirit’s inspiration, picks up and echoes the language here, quotes even partially from this passage in 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 4 through 8, which I read earlier in the service. And let me just read some of these verses again. 1 Peter chapter 2 beginning at verse 4, we read this, as you come to him, he’s speaking of Jesus, as you believers come to Jesus, who is described how?

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. That’s good news. He goes on to say, so the honor is for you who believe, but what about those who do not believe? He goes on to say, for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected, and of course that’s the stone, that living stone is Jesus himself, the rock of our salvation, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.

Does that sound familiar? That’s taken from our passage for this morning, and he goes on to say, they stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. My friends, what do we learn here from this passage? Again, there’s many things we can learn, many takeaways, but let me just mention a few here. We learn here, beloved, that the Lord will be to us either a rock of refuge if by sovereign grace we trust him for our salvation, or he will be to us a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling in the case of those who reject him and remain in unbelief and impenitence. He will be either a sanctuary or a snare. May he be to us, brothers and sisters, may he be to us our rock of refuge, our sanctuary, or to quote the hymn writer, our shelter in the time of storm.

But how do we again know that we have taken refuge in him? I would leave us with the words of our Lord as recorded at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Let’s turn to Matthew 7, and let me just read verses 24 through 27 of Matthew chapter 7. Jesus says, Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

Oh, dear listener, may you build your life upon Jesus Christ and his word as the rock of your salvation, lest he become to you a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. Believe with your heart, beloved, as we sing together with our lips in just a minute. We’ll sing that wonderful hymn, On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. May he be our rock of refuge and not our stone of offense. May we build our lives and indeed our eternal life. May we rest in the rock of our salvation, Jesus Christ, for forgiveness, grace, and eternal life. And if you build your eternity upon the rock of Christ, you will not be ashamed. You will not be disappointed. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we ask that by the power of your Spirit you would enable us to take our refuge in Christ and Christ alone and not in human works, human wisdom, human scheming.

We thank you, oh Lord, that Jesus is indeed the rock of our salvation. May he be to us a sanctuary and not a snare. We pray these things in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said, Amen. Let’s close our time together by rising and we’ll sing as our closing hymn of commitment, hymn 459, My Hope is Built on Nothing Less, 459.

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November 24, 2024
The Sign of the Virgin Born Immanuel

About this sermon

When Ahaz refuses to ask a sign, the Lord gives one anyway: “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” The Hebrew word almah and the Septuagint’s parthenos point to a virgin, and Matthew applies the prophecy to Jesus’ birth. The sign speaks of the Messiah’s supernatural origin and of God with us. It also sets out two kingdoms and two destinies: Ahaz trusts Assyria and brings judgment on Judah, while those who trust the promised Immanuel find salvation in him.

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Sermon transcript

Friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. We continue our study of the book of the prophet Isaiah and we find ourselves once again in Isaiah chapter 7. We’ll focus on verses 10 through 17. We began investigating and studying this passage on the last Lord’s Day and mostly focused on verses 10 through 14. Today we especially consider verses 14 through 17, but I’m going to read verses 10 through 25 of Isaiah chapter 7. You’ll find that on page 679 in your pew Bible. Dear friends, this is the Word of God. Let us hear it with reverence and awe. Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz. Ask a sign of the Lord your God. Let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test.

And he said, Hear then, O house of David, is it too little for you to weary men that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. The Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah, the king of Assyria. In that day the Lord will whistle for the fly that is at the end of the streams of Egypt and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.

And they will all come and settle in the steep ravines and in the clefts of the rocks and on all the thorn bushes and on all the pastures. In that day the Lord will shave with the razor that is hired beyond the river with the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the feet, and it will sweep away the beard also. In that day a man will keep alive a young cow and two sheep and because of the abundance of milk that they give he will eat curds for everyone who is left in the land will eat curds and honey. In that day every place where there used to be a thousand vines worth a thousand shekels of silver will become briars and thorns. With bow and arrows a man will come there for all the land will be briars and thorns and as for all the hills that used to be hoed with a hoe you will not come there for fear of briars and thorns but they will become a place where cattle are let loose and where sheep tread.

Dear friends the grass withers and the flower fades but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the proclamation of his word. Oh Lord and Father in heaven you are the true and living God and you are a God who has revealed yourself to us. We thank you and praise you Lord that not only have you revealed yourself in your mighty works of creation and providence but that you have revealed yourself in a special and saving way through the mighty works of redemption that you have accomplished and as those works of redemption are recorded for us in your holy word the Bible. We pray that by your spirit as we consider this portion of your word this morning that we would hear the word with reverence and awe that indeed may our listening to the preaching of your word be an act of worship and we pray that by your spirit you would feed our souls through the word today and edify us and build us up in our most holy faith that we might go from this place refreshed and strengthened and equipped to serve you in our daily callings and vocations.

We pray these things Heavenly Father in Jesus name and all of God’s people said Amen. Your congregation you may be seated. Well the title of my sermon this morning is the sign of the Virgin born in Emmanuel and if you’re following along in your sermon outline I’d encourage the children to listen for these five words the words Messiah, King, Birth, Emmanuel, and Faith. Well dear ones I want to talk for a few moments in introducing this sermon about theological liberalism. Theological liberalism is one of the greatest theological and spiritual cancers that has afflicted the church in the last century century and a half or so. Friends the basic stance of so-called theological liberalism also known as modernism or sometimes known as progressive Christianity the basic stance of that position can be summed up by the statement Christianity is a life not a doctrine.

A more updated way of expressing this perspective is the saying deeds not creeds. Now friends it is true that biblical Christianity is indeed a way of life. Biblical Christianity is not merely going to church on Sunday it’s not merely believing certain propositions as important as those acts. Our true biblical Christianity results in a life of discipleship a life of following Jesus as Lord and Savior but it is not a way of life that is somehow opposed to or divorced from biblical doctrines and Bible based creeds. No my friends true biblical historic Christianity is a way of life that is based upon and rooted in the divinely revealed doctrines and truths that are contained in the Word of God the Holy Scriptures the Bible. As followers of Jesus Christ we confess a creed a creed that is based upon God’s Word and by the grace of God we seek however imperfectly we seek to live out the implications of that creed in our day-to-day lives by living lives of faithful discipleship to the lordship of Jesus Christ our Savior.

In other words friends true historic Christianity is not merely a system of morality and ethics cloaked in a veneer of religious ceremonialism and pious talk which is what it would be if theological liberalism were true. No dear ones genuine Christianity as revealed in the Word of God is a redemptive supernatural religion a religion that is founded upon the saving work of the supernatural divine Son of God our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is a life that is grounded upon the doctrines revealed in the Word of God and rooted in our spiritual and saving union with the resurrected and reigning Lord Jesus Christ. My dear listeners this is why consistent theological liberalism is simply not the same thing as Christianity though liberalism disingenuously and falsely claims the name of Christian for itself. As the late Dr.

J. Gressom Machin pointed out in his timely book Christianity and Liberalism and I quote from Dr. Machin he writes Christians stand in a religious relation to Jesus liberals do not stand in a religious relation to Jesus again he’s talking about theological liberals here modernists as we would call them and in talking about the difference between Christianity and liberalism Dr. Machin asks what difference could be more profound than that and he goes on to explain he says the modern liberal preacher reverences Jesus he has the name of Jesus forever on his lips he speaks of Jesus as the supreme revelation of God he enters or tries to enter into the religious life of Jesus but he does not stand in a religious relation to Jesus Jesus for him is an example for faith not the object of faith did you catch that again for the theological liberal Jesus for him is an example for faith not the object of faith the modern liberal tries to have faith in God like the faith which he supposes Jesus had in God but he does not have faith in Jesus my friends one of the ways that the liberal approach to Jesus manifests itself is in the liberal rejection of the supernatural the liberal rejection of the miraculous as it is revealed in the Bible and that leads liberalism and liberals in general to reject fundamental gospel doctrines doctrines such as the deity of Christ our Lord’s miracles and especially his literal bodily resurrection from the dead for the liberal theologian Jesus may be viewed as having a supreme God consciousness some liberals would say that Jesus was the most God intoxicated man or the most God indwelt man but the liberal does not view Jesus as the God man the typical liberal does not view Jesus as the literal son of God incarnate and so our liberal friends dismiss and sometimes even scoff at biblical miracles and you know one of their favorite miracles one of their favorite targets of attack when it comes to their attack against the miraculous is their attack against the miraculous virgin birth of Christ our Savior however here is where our passage for this Lord’s Day morning is so very relevant our passage for this morning is a strong rebuke against theological liberalism and other false doctrines that would deny the supernatural realities revealed to us in the Word of God for in this clear messianic prophecy the prophet Isaiah writing some five hundred more than five hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ the prophet Isaiah writing under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration predicts that the promised Messiah would indeed be born in a supernatural fashion for as verse 14 of our passage tells us behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel so as we dive into our text for today the first thing I want us to consider brothers and sisters is what we learn here about the supernatural origin and birth of the promised Messiah the supernatural origin and birth of the promised Messiah now let me kind of review verses 10 to 13 in fact let me just read again verses 10 through 14 to give us the context here it says this again the Lord spoke to Ahaz this is King Ahaz who was the king of Judah at that particular time and what does the Lord say to King Ahaz verse 11 he gives him a command he gives him an offer of a sign and a command he says ask a sign of the Lord your God let it be deep as shale or high as heaven now how does Ahaz respond to this offer of a supernatural sign the Lord’s saying ask me anything I’ll show you that you can trust my word I’ll show you that my promise that Syria and Israel’s threat against the land of Judah will come to nothing you can ask me to do anything and I will do it and Ahaz in a pretentious act of hypocritical pseudo piety responds and says I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test which is another way of saying I’m not gonna obey you Lord and I’m gonna pretend that I’m pious but my heart has already gone after the king of Assyria and then it says in verse 13 and he said the Lord responds by saying this in verse 13 here then O house of David the Lord is not merely addressing at this point Ahaz as an individual but he addresses the whole house of David and and the you starting in verse 13 is in the plural he’s not just addressing a has but the whole house of a has the whole royal court and indeed as we will see future generations he said here then O house of David is it too little for you to weary men that you weary my God also the Lord our God is wearied by human unbelief again this is this is a way of saying that that his patience is tried if you will what is the historical setting here of this passage well this prophecy is given by Isaiah during a period of redemptive history of the divided monarchy the northern tribes of Israel had split off from the southern tribe of Judah and the time is around 735 BC when Isaiah delivers this prophecy to King a has at that time you may recall ancient Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel both Judas neighbors had threatened to attack the southern kingdom of Judah because a has the king of Judah had refused to enter into their military alliance against the kingdom of Assyria Assyria was seeking to expand its territory and therefore posed a grave threat to all of the nations that existed at that particular time at that particular region of the world in this passage the Lord is urging a has to trust in him against this threat but regrettably instead of trusting in Yahweh his faithful covenant God to deliver him and to deliver his people from the military threats coming from Syria and Israel a has refuses the Lord’s gracious offer of a sign and instead as other passages of scripture reveal King a has turns away from the Lord the divine King his faithful covenant God he turns away from the Lord and he puts his trust in Tiglath-Pileser the pagan king of Assyria and he calls upon the king of Assyria to deliver him from the threat of Israel and Syria now that leads to the Lord’s response not only in verse 13 where he rebukes a has for his unbelief for his putting the Lord to the test and wearying the Lord if you will but then the Lord goes on to say in these amazing words recorded in verse 14 therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign a has you refuse to ask a sign as the Lord commanded and invited you to do you refuse the Lord but that’s not going to stop the Lord from carrying out his purposes the Lord himself will give you a sign and what is that sign he says behold now that word behold it means pay attention but it also indicates that he’s giving a prophecy of something that is yet to come in the future behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son the Virgin shall conceive how is that possible of course in terms of natural biology that’s not possible but nothing is impossible for the Lord the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name notice by the way the Virgin shall call his name Emmanuel Emmanuel means God with us we’ll talk about that and discuss the significance of that that title soon but this is another evidence that clearly this is speaking of a virgin birth because normally in that time and in that culture the the husband the the man the father would name the son but here the Virgin shall bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel now I want to focus in on the term that is translated here in the English Standard Virgin as virgin but it’s translated in other versions such as the Revised Standard Version as young woman and please bear with me a little bit I need to get a little bit technical but I spoke about theological liberals the beginning of the sermon and how they they attack and deny the supernatural elements of the scripture and I spoke about how one of their favorite doctrines to attack is the doctrine of the virgin birth well one of the reasons that they give for attacking this doctrine is they look at passages like this in Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14 and they say well actually it shouldn’t be translated as virgin it should simply be translated as young woman that’s how it’s translated for example by the translators of the Revised Standard Version and other versions like that now the Hebrew word behind which is translated as young woman or virgin the Hebrew word is the word Alma and some make the case that this word simply refers to a young woman and not necessarily to a virgin I believe many liberal theologians who reject the virgin birth of Christ would make this argument the argument is made that if Isaiah had actually intended in this verse to refer to an actual virgin then there was a much better Hebrew word available for his use the word Bethulah but as many sound scholars like for example dr.

EJ young have pointed out while the word Bethulah may refer to a virgin it is a word like many words that has a semantic range and the semantic range of that word is such that it can also in some contexts refer even to a married woman in which case it would not be referring to a virgin so the word Bethulah is actually not the best word to use if the Lord is trying to convey through Isaiah that a virgin will conceive and bear a son but on the other hand the Hebrew word Alma which is used in this verse refers yes to a young woman to a maiden but a young woman of marriageable age who is chased and therefore one of the characteristics of such a young woman such an Alma in the Hebrew would be virginity and this fact is recognized not only by sound biblical scholars today you’ll also be interested to know that this fact was recognized by the translators the Jewish translators who translated the Hebrew Old Testament into the Greek language giving us the Septuagint now the Septuagint this Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament when was that version translated well it was translated about 200 years before the birth of Christ and in the Greek Septuagint this Hebrew word Alma was translated by these Jewish translators it was translated by the Greek term Parthenos and Parthenos is a specific Greek term for virgin isn’t that amazing several hundred years before Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit born of the Virgin Mary these Jewish translators seeking to translate the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek when they got to Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14 they translated the Hebrew term Alma not as young woman but they translated it as virgin so even the Jewish translators of the Septuagint recognized that in this passage Isaiah was speaking of a miraculous virginal conception and birth of the messianic son Emmanuel God with us so indeed I hope I’ve established with clarity and sorry for the technicalities here hope I haven’t weary worried you too much with these technicalities but this is important because skeptics and liberals will often often use this argument that well it shouldn’t really be translated virgin and I’m trying to give you some apologetic ammunition if you ever find yourself in such a conversation with a liberal a liberally inclined theologian or professed believer but in any case what are some of the takeaways what are some of the lessons that we learn from our passage so far well I think one important lesson that we learned brothers and sisters is that in spite of the sin and unbelief of wicked King Ahaz and King Ahaz was indeed a grievously wicked King but in spite of a has his wickedness in spite of his rejection of the Lord in spite of his apostasy God would still keep his promise to send the Messiah and the supernatural sign of the arrival of the promised Messiah would be an extraordinary miraculous birth again as it says in verse 14 behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel friends among other things this glorious fact shows us that even human unbelief does not destroy God’s plan of grace and salvation I’m reminded of what Paul writes he says if we are faithless he remains faithful and we are faithless aren’t we even those of us who believe we fall short and we are of we are those of little faith sometimes our faith is only as a mustard seed but our faithlessness praise God our faithlessness does in no way nullify the faithfulness of our God nor thwart his promise and his plan of salvation so praise be to God for this glorious fact praise be to God for his amazing glorious grace he keeps his word even though we often do not I think this passage also underscores the truth of God’s providential control of history and a predictive prophecy like this is possible only because God is sovereign over history and is working behind the scenes as it were working out his sovereign plan and decree within human history how is it that the Holy Spirit could inspire the prophet Isaiah to see that God would one day hundreds of years in the future cause the Messiah to come and to be born of a virgin how is that possible it’s possible because God is in control of history he is sovereign over history that truth does not in any way negate human responsibility or human actions or what the theologians call secondary causes all of those things are established by God’s sovereign decree we are indeed responsible moral agents but nevertheless no matter what we do for good or for ill in faith or in unbelief no matter what we do God’s plan stands God’s purposes are going forward nothing thwarts or stops his plan of redemption and remember brothers and sisters we have the immense privilege of being part of God’s great story of redemption through the promised virgin born Messiah for why did God send this virgin born Emmanuel into the world why is he called Jesus Matthew 1 21 says that he is called Jesus why Yeshua the Lord is salvation why because he would save his people from their sins if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ you are part of God’s great story of redemption you and I have a part to play in that the Lord I should say not that we contribute to God’s plan of salvation but that we are the fruits of his grace he has redeemed us he has saved us in spite of our sin in spite of our wickedness in spite of our unbelief he’s brought us to Christ in faith and he’s made us trophies of his grace we brothers and sisters are part of God’s great story of redemption and it’s all made possible because of the promised virgin born Emmanuel but what is the meaning and significance of the virgin that’s what I would have us to consider next as we consider the next section of this passage verses 14 through 16 let’s consider the meaning and significance of the virgin born Emmanuel it will indeed he will indeed come through a supernatural miraculous birth but what will his name be he has given a symbolic name the name Emmanuel verse 14 you shall call his name Emmanuel what does Emmanuel mean it means God with us now isn’t it the case that God has always been with his people is that not the goal and the the end the telos the end of God’s covenant of grace where God says I will be their God they shall be my people and I will dwell in the midst of them what happened in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned they were thrust out from God’s gracious say God’s gracious presence they were thrust out of Eden thrust out into the dangerous world outside of Eden but God’s plan of salvation has been such that he is restoring not only restoring us to his favor but he’s restoring his dwelling place in our midst and that was symbolized in the Old Testament in many ways for example it was symbolized oftentimes through miraculous but temporary theophanies which were supernatural signs and miraculous signs of God’s special presence an example of that would be the burning bush you know the story Moses in the wilderness there tending his sheep and he sees this bush that is burning but it’s not being consumed and he goes over to check it out and what does the Lord say to him he says Moses take off your sandals the ground you are standing on is holy ground set apart in that burning bush was the intersection of heaven and earth Moses was going to have a revelatory encounter with God he was going to see and hear a revelation from God and God is assuring him that he has come to dwell in the midst of him to give him his word we also are reminded of God’s dwelling among his people in the Old Testament by the pillar of cloud by day the pillar of fire by night that attended the children of Israel and led the children of Israel in their wilderness wanderings in that miraculous cloud and fire that hovered over the tabernacle God was reminding his wilderness wandering people that he was with them he dwelt in their midst but my friends God’s dwelling in the burning bush God’s dwelling in the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night is not the ultimate way that God dwells with his people in Jesus Christ in the virgin-born Immanuel God is with us not merely in a theophanic sense not merely in a symbolic sense for the tabernacle and the temple in the Old Testament were symbols of God’s gracious dwelling amongst his people but no in Jesus Christ our Immanuel God is with us not merely theophanically or symbolically he is with us in the ultimate incarnate sense for friends in Jesus Christ our Lord God is with us in the flesh as the God man he is not merely as the liberals say a God intoxicated man a God conscious man a God indwelt man know he is the God man the word made flesh who came to do what to pitch his tent to tabernacle to make his dwelling in our midst my friends God is indeed with us and we know that this virgin-born Immanuel is divine because later on Isaiah tells us that he is divine skip over to Isaiah chapter 9 and let me read these familiar verses verses 6 & 7 where Isaiah is again giving us a messianic prophecy he is predicting the coming of this virgin-born Immanuel this messianic child and what does he say Isaiah 9 verses 6 & 7 the Holy Spirit through Isaiah says for to us a child is born he’s a real child he’s truly human for us a child is born to us a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder so he’s king he is an anointed one a king and his name remember in the Bible your name was a representation of your character of who you actually were his name shall be called what wonderful counselor mighty God everlasting father prince of peace these titles are titles of deity this son this son Immanuel who was to be born was to be God in the flesh and then verse 7 of chapter 9 of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore and you say how is that possible well the Holy Spirit through Isaiah answers that question at the end of verse 7 the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this we have according to the New Testament the fulfillment of the prophecy of our passage for today recorded for us in Matthew’s gospel in Matthew chapter 1 verses 20 to 23 let me just read those verses very briefly to you Matthew chapter 1 verses 20 to 23 here is as Joseph was contemplating putting away Mary because she was with child says this but as he considered these things behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying Joseph son of David do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet and then this should sound very familiar verse 23 behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel which means God with us verse 23 Matthew is quoting of course from our passage for today Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14 but as we move on in this passage some struggle to relate verse 14 to the verses that follow in verse 15 for example we read these words he shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse evil and choose the good what is this referring to this this eating of curds and honey is this is this referring to royal food some interpret it that way that the curds and honey you know God promises his people in the Old Testament that he’s bringing them into a land of flowing with milk and honey and so and and this eating of curds and honey may be a symbol of his his royalty as the Messiah but some have also suggested that it indicates desolation in the land that the only thing left for them to to eat is no longer the crops but the curds and the honey and again there’s differences of interpretation in that so this raises the question how do the verses that follow the Emmanuel prophecy of verse 14 how do they fit in with this messianic prediction well I need to confess to you brothers and sisters this is admittedly a tricky passage to interpret and a surface-level reading may seem to suggest that the virgin birth prophecy of verse 14 was expected to be fulfilled in the time of King Ahazor in that general time period of redemptive history some have suggested that this enigmatic passage should be understood as having a double fulfillment for example there is an immediate according to this view there’s an immediate fulfillment in one of Isaiah’s sons such as Shayar Jashub who is mentioned back in verse 3 when when the Lord tells Isaiah to go and and confront King Ahaz and give his word to King Ahaz the Lord says in verse 3 go out to meet Ahaz you and Shayar Jashub your son Isaiah’s son Shayar Jashub that his son’s name had symbolic significance it means a remnant will return and again we have that remnant theology coming out in that in that passage and so they would suggest that when we get into maybe verse 15 or maybe verse 16 we have a different son being referred to a different boy being referred to than the virgin-born Emmanuel well again how do we navigate this difficult passage well a couple and we could spend a long time looking at the various views offered by the scholars but I’m just going to give you a couple of things to keep in mind as you wrestle with this passage first of all friends remember as I mentioned beginning in verse 13 the Lord through Isaiah addresses not just Ahaz as an individual he addresses the house of David and he turned he goes from the singular tense to the plural tense the singular to the plural and so it would seem that starting in verse 13 the Lord speaks to more than merely King Ahaz he instead addresses the King’s court and the wording here implies that at this point in the passage the passage is addressing not just a has this generation but future generations as well and however we might understand the details of verses 15 through 17 we need to understand the general thrust of what the Lord is promising a has through this passage the thrust of this passage is that the threats the military threats that Judah was facing from Syria and Israel those threats would soon pass away not lasting longer than the time it takes for a boy to reach an age of moral consciousness which was generally believed to be around age 12 or 13 when a child reached the age of moral consciousness subsequent biblical history confirms that this was in fact the case since Syria fell to Assyria in 732 BC just a few years after this prophecy and Israel fell to Assyria in 722 BC what about verse 16 goes on to say for before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted because these two kings the kings of Syria and Israel are united together in their military purpose against Judah they are spoken of as being one land but the Lord assures a has that these threats will not last they will not stand but how are we to understand verse 16 I like what dr.

EJ young has to say he writes we should remember that the language of prophecy is filled with mystery and is sometimes obscure it is not simple history written in advance but his language of profound and beautiful symbolism clothed in an aura of mystery who is the boy or this boy as Matthew Henry would suggest is this boy in verse 16 Emmanuel or someone else such as Isaiah’s son Shayer Jashub whose name which meant a remnant shall return also had symbolic significance well again good scholars will differ but I tend to agree with Matthew Henry that the this boy referred to here in verse 16 is in fact Isaiah’s son Shayer Jashub and so if that is the case Isaiah in verse 14 had lifted his vision and put his focus on a long-term prediction of the virgin born Emmanuel but then the Lord brings him back to addressing the immediate threat the immediate situation in the verses that follow but what is the bottom line in all of this as we consider the meaning and significance of the virgin born Emmanuel well but the bottom line brothers and sisters the bottom line dear listeners is what do you make of Jesus who is he is he do you believe him to be the virgin born Emmanuel prophesied by Isaiah here in this passage or do you have some other view of Jesus our shorter catechism in answer to a question 22 gives us a good Bible based answer to the question of who Jesus is it asks how did Christ being the son of God become man the Bible based answer is Christ the son of God became man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born of her yet without sin but that leads us to the last verse of our passage verse 17 where we read these words the Lord again he’s speaking to Ahaz here the Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah that’s speaking of he’s saying to a has into a has his court days of judgment are coming it will be significant days days such as the day when when the kingdom was divided into the northern kingdom of Ephraim and the southern kingdom of Judah and what will cause this this great change what will set in motion this judgment he mentions at the end of verse 17 the king of Assyria my friends the Lord Yahweh the true and living God had urged King Ahaz to trust in him for deliverance from the threat of Syria and Israel but again tragically Ahaz rejected his God and turned instead in apostasy to the pagan king of Assyria for help he trusted in the hand of man rather than the hand of God ultimately the king of Assyria would prove to be an agent of judgment against Ahaz and against Ahaz’s unfaithful people we have an unfaithful king here but there’s another king coming a king who will bring a different destiny the coming of the king of Assyria would mean a destiny of judgment it would be judgment against an unfaithful covenant-breaking people and their apostate theocratic king it would mean the defeat and the exile of the northern kingdom of Israel and it would set in motion events that would do away with the old order of the Israelite theocracy but though the king of Assyria would mean judgments against Ahaz and his people and though this would set in motion events that would eventually result in the ending of the Israelite theocracy and the exile of God’s people from the promised land the end of the old order of the theocracy was not the end of hope it was going to be an end of an era but not the end of hope in fact it would be the beginning of an eternal hope for even though the pagan king of Assyria would come as an agent of judgment against an unfaithful people there was another king coming the messianic virgin-born king the one who would be Emmanuel God with us he is our hope and now that he has come to this earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth our hope rests firm our hope rests secure dear listener is Jesus Christ your hope is he your peace is he your security your salvation oh may you and I find our hope our peace our security and salvation not in the false kingdoms of this world but may we find our security in the true King the ultimate King the Messiah King the virgin-born Emmanuel who is God with us amen let us pray heavenly Father we praise you and thank you Lord God that you have sent Jesus the virgin-born Emmanuel and that in him not only do we dwell in him but he dwells in us and among us by his spirit Lord we would pray that by your spirit you would take what was proclaimed this day we pray that your word would find a lodging place in our and we pray that we would be blessed with your grace as we go from this place in Jesus name we pray and all of God’s people said amen let’s respond to what we’ve heard from God’s word by rising and we’ll sing together 279 Oh Christ our King creator Lord 279

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November 17, 2024
If you are not Firm in Faith

About this sermon

Syria and Israel come up against Jerusalem, and the hearts of Ahaz and his people shake like trees in the wind. Isaiah is sent to tell Ahaz to be careful, be quiet, and not fear these two smoldering stumps, for their plan will not stand. The Lord had promised David an everlasting dynasty, and Ahaz’s faithlessness could not undo it. The warning follows: “If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.” God’s people stand only by trusting his promises.

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Sermon transcript

As we return to our consideration of the book of the prophet Isaiah, we find ourselves this Lord’s Day morning in Isaiah chapter 7, my sermon text today, Isaiah chapter 7 verses 1 through 9, and that begins on page 678 in your Pew Bible. So dear friends, this is the Word of God. Let us hear it with reverence and awe. In the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria, and Pecca the son of Ramaliah, the king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against it. When the house of David was told, Syria is in league with Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.

And the Lord said to Isaiah, go out to meet Ahaz, you and Sheher Jashub your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the washers field, and say to him, be careful, be quiet, do not fear and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, at the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Ramaliah. Because Syria with Ephraim and the son of Ramaliah has devised evil against you saying, let us go up against Judah and terrify it and let us conquer it for ourselves and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it. Thus says the Lord God, it shall not stand and it shall not come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus and the head of Damascus is Rezin and within 65 years Ephraim will be shattered from being a people and the head of Ephraim is Samaria and the head of Samaria is the son of Ramaliah.

If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades but the word of our God does indeed endure forever. Shall we seek the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word? Let’s pray. Almighty and most merciful God, our gracious Heavenly Father, we praise you, O God, that you have revealed yourself to us. Not only have you revealed yourself to us in your mighty works of creation and providence but you have also and especially revealed yourself to us in your word and through Jesus Christ our Savior. We thank you for your God-breathed, inspired, infallible word. It is a lamp into our feet, a light into our path, a guide to our way and so we would beseech you God to grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit that we might pay careful attention to your word as we consider this passage from Scripture today and we ask that you would make our minds and our hearts open and receptive to that which the Spirit speaks to us in this portion of your holy word.

We ask these things Heavenly Father in Jesus name and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. Well, as you can see, friends, the title of my sermon this morning is If You Are Not Firm in Faith, and there’s four key words that the young people can be listening for in my sermon today, the words covenant, messiah, promise and faith. Well, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, our passage for this Lord’s Day morning is set within a very significant period of redemptive history for the covenant people of God. The date was around 735 BC, which was during a period of Old Testament covenant history when the Israelite Kingdom was divided between the northern tribes of Israel whose kingdom was often called either Israel or Ephraim, and the southern tribe of Judah whose kingdom was typically called by the tribal name of Judah.

Jerusalem, the city that housed the great temple of the Lord that had been built by wise King Solomon, was, of course, the capital city of the southern kingdom of Judah. And the kingship of Judah belonged to the Davidic dynasty, meaning that the kings of Judah were descendants of the great king of the United Monarchy, King David. David being, of course, the sweet psalmist of Israel, the one whom the scriptures describe as a man after God’s own heart. My friends, the Lord, Yahweh, Israel’s faithful covenant God and gracious Redeemer, had made a solemn covenant promise to King David that his dynasty would last forever. On your own time, you can look up that promise and find it in 2 Samuel chapter 7. But I want to have us turn very briefly to a few verses that are found in Psalm 89, a psalm that recounts God’s covenant promises to King David.

Let’s look at, very briefly, Psalm 89 verses 20 and 21. Psalm 89 verses 20 and 21, the psalmist writes this, I have found David my servant, with my holy oil I have anointed him, so that my hand shall be established with him, my arm also shall strengthen him. And then skip down to verse 28. It says, my steadfast love I will keep for him forever, and my covenant will stand firm for him. I will establish his offspring forever, and his throne as the days of the heavens. If his children forsake my law, and do not walk according to my rules, if they violate my statutes, and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. But I will not remove from him my steadfast love, or be false to my faithfulness.

I will not violate my covenant, or alter the word that went forth from my lips. Once for all I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me. Like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies. Now friends, of course, this covenant promise to David is a promise that is ultimately fulfilled in the person of great David’s greater Son, namely the promised Messiah, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Though Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, which highlights our Lord’s divine nature as the Son of God, with respect to our Lord’s human nature, He was a descendant of King David, just as the Scriptures promised that the Messiah would be. Now at this point you may be saying, okay fine pastor, but how does this relate to our passage?

Well friends, the reason why it’s important for us to understand this basic historical information as we consider this passage from Isaiah this morning, is because our passage for today records an international threat that was raised against the Davidic King who was then ruling on the throne of Judah at that time, namely King Ahaz, who as we’re told in verse 1, was the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah. This international threat against the Davidic King, King Ahaz, was also a threat against the Davidic dynasty as such. And as a threat against David’s dynasty, it also by implication threatened to overthrow the very covenant promises of God, especially God’s covenant promise to raise up the Messiah from the house and lineage of King David. And as a threat to God’s messianic promises, it was a threat to the very salvation of God’s people.

We need to understand this as we approach this text of God’s holy word. No wonder the Lord says in verse 7 in response to this international threat, no wonder the Lord says, it shall not stand and it shall not come to pass. As one commentator puts it, the attempt to replace his dynasty, David’s dynasty, with another cannot succeed because God’s promises are at stake. And friends, one of the important truths that we glean from this passage of God’s word is that God is always faithful to keep his covenant promises. And that is the foundation and rock of our faith, knowing that in Christ, God’s promises are yea and amen. Because God’s promises are absolutely sure. The Lord calls upon King Ahaz to stand firm in his faith and not to fear, even in the face of this international threat.

And he also warns King Ahaz against not being firm in his trust in the Lord. As it says in verse 4, the Lord says to Ahaz, excuse me, he says, be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands at the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Romalia. And then at the end of verse 9, the Lord says to him, if you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. As we approach our text from God’s word for today, we note first of all in the first opening verses, the first two verses, we note here a conspiracy against the Lord’s people. And that’s the first point on your sermon outline. We consider today a conspiracy against the Lord’s people.

It says this. Again, Isaiah introducing this new section of his prophecy, his written prophecy with these words, in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria, this is the ancient nation of Syria, which was one of Israel’s neighbors, Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Romalia, the king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against it. And what was the reaction to this news on the part of Ahaz and the house of David, the Davidic dynasty, in other words, and the people of Judah? Well, verse 2 says, when the house of David was told Syria is in league with Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.

What a picturesque way of describing the fear, the sense of terror that overwhelmed Ahaz. Ahaz, who was supposed to be the covenant leader of God’s people as the theocratic king. Now these verses highlight what biblical historians have come to call the Syro-Ephraimite War, which took place around 734 to 733 BC. The ancient kingdom of Syria, which is also called in some of your translations Aram, Syria and Aram refer to the same national entity, this ancient nation of Syria or Aram joined forces with the northern kingdom of Israel or Ephraim in order to attack Judah, the southern kingdom. Now why did they want to do that? Well the reason they wanted to do that is because there was a threat looming in the region. The mighty Assyrian Empire in the east was looking, as many empires look to do, to expand its territory westward.

And that of course threatened to engulf all three of these kingdoms in the region, namely Israel, Syria and Judah itself. Apparently Syria and Israel had hoped that Judah would join with them in a military alliance to defend the region against the threat from Assyria. But King Ahaz of Judah had refused to bring Judah into their military alliance. So in response to this refusal on the part of King Ahaz, Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Ramali, a king of Israel, decided to attack Jerusalem for the purpose of removing Ahaz from the throne of Judah and doing away with the Davidic king on the throne of Jerusalem in order to put a puppet king described in verse 6 as the son of Tabeel in his place on the throne of Judah. A king who would do their bidding and bring Judah into their military alliance against the Assyrian Empire.

So Syria and Israel had come to wage war against Jerusalem, the capital city of Judah, because they wanted to force Judah to join them in their military alliance against this Assyrian threat. Now as I’ve already mentioned, the spiritual implications of this would be disastrous for the people of God if Syria and Israel were allowed to get away with their scheme and to succeed in their conspiracy against King Ahaz and against the kingdom of Judah. Now as we learned a few Lord’s days ago when we considered the history of King Ahaz, as we considered a passage from Second Kings chapter 16, we learned a few Lord’s days ago that sadly King Ahaz turned out to be an evil, godless, idol-worshipping king, a king who failed miserably in his covenantal duties as the theocratic king of God’s people.

However, even though Ahaz was an evil, godless king, Yahweh his God would not allow the covenant promises that he had made to Ahaz’s ancestor, King David, he would not allow those promises to go unfulfilled. You see, the Lord had made a promise and he was going to keep his promise and the faithlessness of King Ahaz would not nullify or thwart the covenant faithfulness of Yahweh, the true and living God, the God of Israel. The Lord had promised David that his dynasty would be an everlasting dynasty and even the faithlessness of King Ahaz would not nullify the messianic promises that God had made to King David. Now a couple points of application I think we can take away from these opening verses. Just as it is the case that Syria and Israel tried to to get Judah to go along with their alliance against Assyria, so likewise throughout the history of God’s church, the unbelieving world has often sought to infiltrate and subvert the church in order to conscript the church to do its bidding or to push godless worldly agendas.

But friends, God’s word calls upon us as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to stand firm against the inroads of a godless worldviews and worldly minded agendas. Instead of being conformed to this world, we must be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Instead of caving into pressure or threats from the world, let us be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. I think another lesson we can glean from this passage, my friends, is that this passage and others like it, what does this passage assume about the Lord? Well, passages like this one underscore the reality of God’s sovereign overruling providence and his sovereign overruling of all of the affairs of the world. See, not only does the Lord govern us in the private chambers of our hearts, though he certainly does do that, not only does his providence extend to our family life and to the life of the church, it certainly does extend to that as well.

But remember, friends, our Lord in his divine providence, he exercises his providential sway even on the national and indeed the international scene. And indeed, throughout all of creation, God is sovereign over all. God was not threatened by the Assyrian threat as Israel and Syria and Judah had felt threatened. No, God was ruling and overruling even in the midst of that threat. So let the people of God trust in him and rest in his providence. Let us, beloved, let us rest in knowing that his providential hand guides all. And thus we need not fear. Now that is not to say that we should not fulfill our responsibilities. We have responsibilities as individual believers. We have responsibilities as husbands and wives. We have responsibilities as employers and employees. We have responsibilities as citizens. Let us be faithful to those responsibilities, but let us not fret when things seem to be going in a way that is not good.

Let us realize that God is sovereign over all and his providential hand guides all. And he is causing all things to work together for the good to those who love him and who are the called according to his purpose. So we see in this passage a conspiracy against the Lord’s people, but here we also see a message to the Lord’s King. The Lord through Isaiah communicates to King Ahaz a message, and that brings me to my next point as we consider verses three through seven. It says this, and this is in response to Ahaz’s terrified response to to Syria and Ephraim coming to attack Jerusalem. And sadly as the leader of God’s people, he was supposed to show them and model for them courage in the Lord, but instead he modeled cowardice. And so it says this in verse three, the Lord said to Isaiah, go out to meet Ahaz, but he didn’t send just Isaiah to meet Ahaz.

He says, you and Shair Jashab your son. And then he tells them where to go meet him. He was to meet Ahaz at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the washers field. We don’t know exactly where that is, but what was likely happening here is that King Ahaz went to check the water supply in the city, which would be a very important thing to know that they were going to have a plentiful supply of water if they happen to be attacked and if there’s a siege on the city of Jerusalem. So that’s where Isaiah is to go, but he’s not to go alone. He’s to take his son Shair Jashab. Now that name, the name of his son Shair Jashab means a remnant shall return. As one commentator puts it, Isaiah’s son was a living portent of judgment and salvation.

For what does Isaiah’s son’s name imply? Well, the name means a remnant shall return. His son’s name is itself a prophecy of that which was to come. There would come a time when the people of Judah, too, would be sent into exile because of God’s judgment against them. And yet, beyond the judgment, there is deliverance. There is hope. There is restoration. There is salvation. For a remnant shall return. And by taking his son with him to confront King Ahaz with the Lord’s message, again, this was a further testimony and witness to King Ahaz. The name Shair Jashab symbolized a promise of salvation to the faithful remnant, which would take place, of course, after the near-term judgment of the wicked. Judah would suffer judgment in the short term, but a faithful remnant would remain and return from the exile.

And then it goes on to say in verse 4, this is the message that Isaiah was, under the Spirit’s inspiration, to convey to Ahaz. And again, this was communicated to Ahaz early in his reign, apparently before he had fallen into the gross wickedness that the other scriptures testify that he fell into. And what was the message to Ahaz? The Lord says to Isaiah to communicate this message to Ahaz, be careful, be quiet, do not fear. His heart had been full of fear, fear that is described as shaking as the trees of the forest shake before the wind. What a picturesque way of describing this fear that he had, that had overcome him. But the Lord says to him, be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands.

He’s talking there about the king of of Syria and the king of Israel, resin and Syria and the son of Romalia, as it says at the end of this verse. He goes on to say in verse 4, because Syria with Ephraim, I’m sorry, verse 5, because Syria with Ephraim and the son of Romalia has devised evil against you, saying let us go up against Judah and terrify it and let us conquer it for ourselves and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it. They want to set up, get rid of Ahaz and set up a puppet king in his place. What does it mean when he describes these two kings as these two smoldering stumps of firebrands? Again as one commentator points out, two kingdoms were about to be destroyed, Damascus which was the capital city of Syria, was destroyed in 732 BC by Tiglath-Paleser III and Samaria, the capital city of Israel.

That in the northern kingdom was destroyed in 722 BC by Sargon II. And so the Lord’s saying to Ahaz, look, these kings who are threatening you, resin and and Pekah, these two kings, they themselves are on their way out. They themselves are about to be destroyed, so do not fear them, Ahaz. Instead be careful, be quiet, do not fear. In other words, trust me, I’ve got this under control, Ahaz. And then he goes on to say in verse 7, thus says the Lord God, it shall not stand and it shall not come to pass. This is the divine promise to King Ahaz. It is a promise that he is to rest in. Again, since God has given his word of promise, let King Ahaz trust in the Lord’s sure word instead of turning to Assyria for help.

You know, one of the things that Isaiah is trying to do here under the Spirit’s inspiration, he’s trying to keep Ahaz from forming a counter alliance with Assyria. Instead of trusting in an alliance with Assyria to defend itself, to defend Judah rather against Syria and Israel’s attack, Ahaz was called upon to trust in his divine king, to trust in Yahweh, the God of Israel. The Lord’s saying through Isaiah, Ahaz, don’t trust in Assyria, don’t make an alliance with Assyria to defend yourself against Syria and Israel who are trying to force you into an alliance with them. Instead, let your alliance, if you will, be with me. Let your trust be in me. However, as other passages of scripture indicate, Ahaz obviously did not heed this call to faith in the Lord. Instead of trusting in the Lord and obeying his word, he turned to human resources by making an alliance with Assyria and he trusted in idols and in the works of his own hands.

We learned that a few Lord’s days ago and we considered 2 Kings chapter 16. Dear ones, we learned from this passage that the Word of God communicates to us both warnings and promises. Warnings of judgment to those who reject the Lord and who reject his word, but promises of grace and salvation to those who repent and trust in the Lord and in his word. Oh, by God’s grace, may we heed the warnings and may we embrace the promises. And so we find finally in this passage in verses 8 and 9, a summons to firm faith in the Lord. That’s the final point on your sermon outline. We find here a summons to firm faith in the Lord. So the Lord goes on, he assures at the end of verse 7, he assures Ahaz that this conspiracy against Judah will not stand.

The Lord will not allow it to stand. And he goes on to say, for the head of Syria is Damascus and the head of Damascus is resin, and within 65 years Ephraim will be shattered from being a people. What does this mean? What is this 65 years that is being referred to? Well, biblical scholars debate how this was precisely fulfilled, but I agree with the following commentator who says this. He says, the Northern Kingdom fell to Assyria in 722 BC. By around 670 BC, the ethnic identity of the former kingdom would have been decisively transformed due to the importation of foreign settlers. And that’s what happened in the Northern Kingdom, for example. And so again, we find here a call to faith, in verse 9, and head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Romalia.

If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. This is an interesting, it’s interesting how this is worded in the Hebrew. Isaiah uses a Hebrew wordplay to drive home the point. It has been suggested that this section of verse 9 could be paraphrased as, hold God in doubt, you’ll not hold out, or unsure equals insecure. This is a call to firmly trust in the Lord and his promises. Friends, what Ahaz needed to understand is that God will not allow his covenant promises to the house of David to fail or be thwarted. God had promised to David an eternal offspring and an eternal kingdom, and therefore Ahaz had no reason to fear the threats from Syria and the Northern Kingdom of Israel, nor should he turn to the king of Assyria, the pagan king of Assyria, for protection.

Instead, as the theocratic king over God’s people, as the Davidic anointed king over God’s people, Ahaz should put his trust in the divine king, Yahweh the Lord. But again, as the biblical history makes clear, tragically King Ahaz did not heed this call to affirm faith. He turned to the pagan king of Assyria for help. He made an alliance with the king of Assyria against Syria and Israel, and instead of trusting and obeying the Lord, he fell into gross, perverse idolatry and extremely wicked behavior, even sacrificing his son, burning his son alive to a pagan deity. Friends, his gross idolatry and wicked behavior and utter failure as the theocratic king over God’s people were all ultimately rooted in an evil heart of unbelief, because he did not believe this word from the Lord that was communicated to him by Isaiah the prophet.

Sadly and tragically, King Ahaz ultimately showed himself to be an unregenerate man, a man who instead of trusting Yahweh and his covenant promises, trusted in man. In his case, he trusted in the pagan king of Assyria, and he trusted in the works of human hands, which explains his idolatry and his modeling of an altar for the temple of the Lord that mimicked the altars that he saw among the Assyrians. He worshiped the works of his own hands. He departed from the Lord. In some, my friends, Ahaz disobeyed because he disbelieved. He had no firmness of faith, so he fell into the folly of idolatry. And those, my friends, are ultimately the two options. You either trust in the Lord and his promises of grace offered freely to you in the gospel, or you reject the Lord and his word.

So how about you? Are you like King Ahaz, or do you firmly trust in the Lord’s promises? The good news of the gospel is that God has made sure and certain and firm promises. Just as God fulfilled his covenant promise to David by raising up Jesus of Nazareth, great David’s greater son, to be the Messiah, the promised Messiah, so the Lord has made firm and certain promises in the gospel to all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. For Jesus Christ, the God-man, the Word made flesh, was crucified for the forgiveness of sins and raised from the dead so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. And the Word of God promises to all who turn to Christ in faith and repentance that they will be fully and freely forgiven.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. That is God’s faithful promise to you and to me. Do you believe that promise? Do you trust that Savior? His arms are open wide to all who would receive him, and so be firm in your faith in Christ. Rest in him. As the prophet Isaiah says to Ahaz, be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint. Do not let your heart be faint as you consider your sinfulness in the presence of an all-holy God. Realize that in Jesus Christ, you have a perfect, all-sufficient Savior, and all of God’s promises are yea and amen in him. So rest in Jesus. May your faith be firm in him. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you that you are sovereign.

We thank you that you are a God of providence. We thank you, Lord, that no matter how the world seems to be spinning out of control, God our Heavenly Father, you our Father in heaven, are still sovereign and Jesus is still Lord. And so help us to rest in your sovereignty and give us grace as sinners to rest in Jesus, our perfect, all-sufficient Savior, and in his precious gospel promises. In his name we pray, and all of God’s people said amen. As we close our service today, let’s rise and sing as our hymn of commitment, number 479, Jesus, I am resting, resting, 479.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

October 13, 2024
How Long, O Lord?

About this sermon

After the Lord cleanses Isaiah and sends him, the Lord gives him a hard word: “Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes,” lest they turn and be healed. Isaiah asks, “How long, O Lord?” and the Lord answers, until the cities lie waste. The hardening does not come from any fault in God’s word; as Calvin noted, it comes from human depravity rejecting it. Yet a holy seed remains in the stump, a promise of restoration fulfilled in Christ and his people.

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Sermon transcript

Well dear friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word as we are continuing our series, Gleanings from Isaiah. We consider today Isaiah chapter 6 verses 8 through 13. You’ll find that on page 678 in your Pew Bible. I’m going to read the entire chapter. It’s a brief chapter to again remind us of the context here. But here we have Isaiah’s call and commissioning to be a prophet of the Lord. And so let us hear once again, dear friends, God’s Holy Word. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings. With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

And one called to another and said, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said, Behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?

Then I said, Here I am, send me. And he said, Go and say to this people, Keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. Then I said, How long, O Lord? And he said, Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the proclamation of his word. O Lord and Father in heaven, we are a people of unclean lips. Lord, cleanse our lips that we might speak the truth of your word, and we would pray especially that you would cleanse my lips this morning, that I might speak forth only that which is faithful and true to your word. And we would pray, O Lord, that you would cause the soil of our hearts to receive the seed of your word. We would pray that by your spirit your word would bear much spiritual fruit in our hearts and lives through the word this day. We ask these things, O God, in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said, Amen.

You may be seated. Dear ones, the title of my sermon today is, How Long, O Lord, and there’s a number of key words that the young people can be listening for today, Holy, Quartz, Harden, Word, Judgment, Hope, and Seed. Well, dear friends, many today treat God’s holiness as a very light, unimportant, or even irrelevant matter. How many folks today in the course of ordinary conversation speak of the holiness of God or take seriously the holiness of God? Dear friends, the word of God assures us that it is no light matter for a sinful person to encounter the holy presence of the infinitely holy God. Now what does the term holy mean? It certainly has moral or ethical connotations to it, but at a fundamental, basic level, the term holy basically means separate. It means set apart.

It means distinct, different. The thrice holy God who is revealed in this passage, this passage which records Isaiah’s commissioning as a prophet of the Lord. This God is a God who is holy like no other being is holy. God is described in this passage as being not merely holy, nor is he even holy, holy. Beyond that, this God that we worship, beloved, is holy, holy, holy. As the seraphim call out to one another in verse 3, and what do they say in the presence of this heavenly holy king? They say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord, is Yahweh of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. Beloved, our sovereign thrice holy triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a God of superlative holiness. And as we considered on the last Lord’s Day morning, Isaiah’s experience of being confronted by this vision of the superlative holiness of the transcendent God of Israel had the effect of deeply troubling him, deeply traumatizing him, perhaps even terrifying him to the very core of his being.

We see that in the way that he responds to this vision. We see that by his woe is me reaction as recorded in verse 5. As Isaiah catching a glimpse in this vision of the Lord whose glory fills the temple, he says what? He says, woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of hosts, the Lord of hosts. But once Isaiah acknowledged his sin before the Lord, the superlatively holy God, whose holiness had terrified the prophets, revealed himself to be the superlatively merciful and gracious God, the God who provided atonement for his sin and who forgave his guilt. And this is what is implied in the imagery of the seraphim with tongs taking a burning coal from the altar and touching Isaiah’s lips with it.

As we read in verses 6 and 7, it says, then one of the seraphim flew to me, and no doubt this seraphim had been sent on behalf of the Lord to bring assurance and absolution to Isaiah. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away, your sin atoned for. Oh, what blessed relief Isaiah must have experienced, knowing that this God who he has seen, this superlatively holy God was not going to destroy him, that he was not going to be consumed by the holy fire of God’s righteous wrath against his sin, but instead he was going to experience the forgiveness. Indeed, he had experienced the mercy and forgiveness of the Lord.

And as a result of Yahweh’s superlative grace toward him, Isaiah goes from the trembling, terrified, traumatized, woe-is-me reaction of verse 5 to the bold, courageous, and eager, perhaps even joyful reaction of here I am, send me, as we read in verse 8. Now once again, beloved, it’s important to remember the context of this powerful passage. This chapter indicates that Isaiah received his call to the office of prophet sometime around the year 740 BC. In other words, as verse 1 tells us, in the year that King Uzziah died, and I spoke a little bit about King Uzziah on the last Lord’s Day morning. This record of Isaiah’s commissioning to be a prophet, you might wonder, well, why does Isaiah wait until this far into the book of Isaiah to record his call to be a prophet?

Jeremiah records his call to the prophetic office at the outset, at the very beginning of his book, but here Isaiah does not record this until chapter 6. Well this record of Isaiah’s commissioning to be a prophet was probably postponed until this point in the book of Isaiah so that it would, in the words of one commentator, serve as a climax to the opening series of oracles and to provide warrant for the shocking announcements of judgment they contain. The people had mocked the Holy One of Israel, as we saw back in chapter 5 verse 19, and now he has commissioned Isaiah to call them to account. Well let’s dive into our passage for this morning, and the first thing I would draw your attention to in verse 8 is we have in this passage a prophet in the heavenly court.

We have here a prophet in the heavenly court. Look at verse 8. Isaiah recounts this vision. He says, And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here I am, send me. Now again, remember the setting here. Isaiah has a vision of the Lord high and lifted up in the temple, meaning the heavenly temple of which the earthly temple was but a copy and a type, a picture, and in this vision he sees the seraphim, these glorious angelic beings flying about. The clear context here, the clear setting is the heavenly council, where the Lord is speaking to these angelic beings. He says this in verse 8. The Lord says, Whom shall I send? The Lord is going to send someone. He’s looking for someone to send, and then it goes on to say, And who will go for me?

No, who will go for us? Who is this us that the Lord is referring to here in verse 8? Some have suggested that he’s addressing this question to the angels, but again, it’s clear from the context of this passage, the angels are not looking to send someone out to proclaim judgment to the people. The Lord is looking to send someone, and so I believe my friends that the us here is probably best understood as one of the numerous Old Testament hints of the doctrine of the Trinity. The fact that there is a plurality of persons in the one being of God. Now the doctrine of the Trinity, the truth of God as a triune being is not fully revealed, of course, until the New Testament scriptures, until after the incarnation of Christ. But nevertheless, there are numerous hints in the Old Testament of this truth of the plurality of persons within the one being of God.

And so this is one of those instances where we have hints at the doctrine of the Trinity. But notice that God, this thrice holy God makes this statement again in the context of a vision of the heavenly council and in the presence of the angelic seraphim. And that’s amazing when you consider it because the fact that Isaiah, Isaiah, a sinful man is allowed to address the Lord in the heavenly council. This has led some biblical scholars to point out that one of the things that distinguishes a true prophet from a false prophet in biblical times was that a true prophet of God not only received a true direct message from God to convey to the people, not only does a true prophet receive the true word of God from the true and living God, but a true prophet of God was also given access to stand in the heavenly council of the Lord.

That was one of the characteristics and one of the qualifications to be a true prophet of the Lord, as some scholars have argued, and I tend to agree with that. We see this reflected also, for example, in the book of Jeremiah. Learn with me if you would to Jeremiah chapter 23. Jeremiah is right after Isaiah. Jeremiah chapter 23. Let me start reading at verse 16 and read through verse 18 to give you the context of that passage. Jeremiah 23, beginning at verse 16. The Lord is giving a word to Jeremiah to speak against the false prophets of his time and it says this, thus says the Lord of hosts, do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds. In other words, they give you a word that is cooked up in their own brains.

They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, it shall be well with you. To everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, no disaster shall come upon you. And notice what he says in verse 18. For who among them, who among these false prophets has done what? Has stood in the counsel of the Lord to see and to hear his word or who has paid attention to his word and listened. And then skip down if you would to verse 22. It says, but if they had stood in my counsel, then they would have proclaimed my words to my people and they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds.

Now getting back to our passage for today, the reason this is significant is because Isaiah is here presented to us as a prophet in the heavenly court. And the amazing thing, my friends, is that in this account, we see a human voice finding acceptance in the heavenly court. You see Isaiah’s lips are no longer unclean. For now his lips being purified by the burning coal from the altar, Isaiah’s lips are now enabled to speak pure words before the Lord. And now as a divinely commissioned prophet, Isaiah’s lips will speak God’s word to the people. As one commentator puts it, from this moment on, Isaiah is a servant in God’s court and proclaims God’s message to kings and people alike. Isaiah is given authority by God greater than the authority of those who are in king’s courts for he serves the heavenly king and he has access to the heavenly court of the Lord.

And of course, when God calls for someone to send, Isaiah eagerly says, here I am, send me. A couple points of application. First of all, friends, and I mentioned this on the last Lord’s Day, but I want to emphasize it once again, consider what an amazing difference God’s grace can make, especially when it comes to our motivation for serving the Lord. I pointed out how Isaiah went from cowering fear, the cowering fear of woe is me, to eagerly volunteering to serve the Lord as a sent one. And it was his experience of God’s forgiving grace as symbolized by that burning coal that touched his lips. It was God’s forgiving grace that had filled him with such an eagerness to serve. Dear listener, has grace made a difference in your life and does grace motivate your service to the Lord?

Sadly, many today, many Christians and even many Christian preachers, I’m sad to say, will often use guilt to motivate God’s people to faithful service. Now don’t misunderstand, there is a place for preaching the law of God. God’s law is holy, it’s righteous, it’s good, it must be proclaimed. Because the law of God shows us the standard, God’s moral standard, it shows us what God requires of us. And so it confronts us with our sin, it shows us our need for Christ, and as believers it directs us into the ways of holiness. The law of God is important. But it is the kindness and mercy of God that motivates grateful service. Why are you here today, brother, sister? Are you here merely out of a sense of duty? Certainly it is our duty to gather together to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together.

But for those of us who have tasted the grace and the goodness of the Lord, our duty should be our delight. We should be here because Jesus is here, his people are here, and we have tasted the goodness of the Lord. We’ve known his forgiving grace, we’ve experienced the amazing grace of God, and we’ve received Christ as our Lord and Savior, and we are overjoyed because he has forgiven us. He’s adopted us as his children, he’s bound us together as a community of brothers and sisters in Christ. That should be our motivation. That gratitude, that gratitude for God’s forgiving mercy is what motivated Isaiah the prophet. May that be what motivates us. Dear listener, do you know this grace of which I speak? This grace of God, this undeserved favor? The good news of the gospel is that though we are sinners and though we, like Isaiah, are people of unclean lips and unclean hearts who deserve to be consumed by the holy wrath of God, nevertheless, out of love for sinners, God sent his son Jesus to die for our sins and to rise from the dead so that we who trust in him alone for salvation might be forgiven and might receive the gift, it’s a gift, of everlasting life.

And that’s really what we celebrate today as we are preparing to partake of the Lord’s Supper together. Thankfully, we don’t have to take to our lips a burning coal, but we are given the emblems of our Savior’s broken body and shed blood, and that assures us that as we trust in him and him alone for our salvation, Jesus says to us in this sacrament, this is my body given not just for all who believe, though that’s true, this is my body given for you and for me. And so may grace motivate us and not guilt and not mere duty. But what about the issue of standing in the counsel of the Lord? There are many today who claim to be prophets or claim to have the gift of prophecy, and I know that an argument can be made that the term prophecy can be used in a more general sense.

In fact, I believe some of the Puritans often referred to preaching as prophesying in a more generic sense. But in this special sense in which Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel were prophets of the Lord, conduits of new and fresh divine revelation from the Lord, in that sense there are no more prophets, for the word of God is complete, the canon of Scripture is closed. So what do you do then the next time you run into someone who claims to be a prophet or have to have the gift of prophecy? I once encountered a woman, I was at an evangelistic seminar put on by Evangelism Explosion, and I remember it was a multi-denominational seminar, and I had mentioned something in the course of conversation, and one of the classes that I had a burden on my heart for a particular family member who didn’t know the Lord, and this woman came up to me after that session and said, you know, I’m a prophetess, and the Lord has told me to tell you not to worry about this individual.

Now I was polite, I didn’t say anything, but I remember thinking, you’re no prophetess, you’re no prophetess. You mean well, but you’re trying to comfort me, but you’re no prophetess. And that particular individual that she mentioned has since passed away, and I do not know whether this individual passed away in the Lord or not. But in any case, what do we say to those who claim to be prophets today? We should ask them, have you stood in the heavenly counsel of the Lord? Do you have access to his heavenly court like Isaiah did? If not, you’re not a true prophet of the Lord. Dear friends, there are many false claims out there, many false prophets, many false teachers. We need to be discerning. Let us be discerning, especially since there are so many false teachers and false prophets out there.

Let us exercise spiritual discernment. Let us be grounded in the word of God. So we see a prophet in the heavenly court, but as we move on in this passage, we see a hardening word of judgment. As we look at verses 9 through 12, we see here in this passage, a hardening, indeed a disturbing word of judgment. Here Isaiah is, he’s enthusiastically accepted the responsibility to be sent by the Lord, to bear the Lord’s message to the people. And then he gets this commission, and it must have sunk his heart to hear this commission, because the Lord says to him, look at verse 9. Let me read verses 9 through 12. He said, go and say to this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.

Then I said, how long, O Lord? And he said, until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste. In other words, this is a prophecy of the exile that the people would experience, being cast out of the promised land. It was the Lord’s land. The people were only there by God’s mercy and grace, but now the Lord’s kicking them out of the land. He’s expelling them from the land. That’s what’s going to happen. And the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. Paradoxically, the prophetic word that Isaiah was called to proclaim to the people, a word that would declare God’s mercy and pardon to those who repent, this word would actually have the effect of further hardening the people in their sin, and this by the sovereign decree of God.

Now our Lord Jesus quoted from this passage in his explanation of the parable of the sower, if you were to read Matthew 13, 13 to 15, for example. The point here, beloved, is that for those who persist in rejecting the Lord and His word, His word does not bring them to repentance, but instead ends up becoming a means of confirming them in their spiritual deafness and their spiritual blindness. God’s word has the effect, as one has said, God’s word has the effect of closing the way of God to those who are hypocritical, arrogant, and rebellious. Now we cannot avoid the fact that this passage does indeed have a strong predestinarian flavor to it. God is decreeing that His word of grace, in the case of some, would bring hardness rather than mercy. We need to keep in mind, at the same time, that God’s sovereign will to use His word to further harden rebellious sinners in their sin is not in any way contrary to the equally biblical truth of man’s responsibility for his sin.

And it is clear, my friends, from the broader context of Isaiah, that this hardening is a judicial hardening on the part of God. The people had heard the prophets proclaim to them over and over and over and over and over again, repent, God will forgive you, return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on you. And they had stiffened their necks, they had dug in their heels, and refused to repent, and the fault was with themselves and themselves alone. And so God basically says, okay, have it your way, and He says, I’m going to actually use this word, proclaimed by Isaiah, to harden you because you’ve already hardened yourself. God as a righteous judge judicially hardens persistently unrepentant sinners, even by the means of the word of God which He uses to soften the hearts of others.

But does that mean that the word of God is, that God doesn’t mean what He says in His word? Is there a problem with the word of the gospel? No. Now the problem here is not the word of God. The problem is the sinner’s rejection of the word of God. John Calvin comments on this blindness and hardness that Isaiah speaks of in this way. Calvin writes, such blinding, says Calvin, and hardening influence does not arise out of the nature of the word, but is accidental and must be ascribed to the depravity of man. And Dr. E.J. Young in his commentary on Isaiah says, the evil effects come not from the word, but from the heart of man, which stands in desperate need of regeneration. But again, Isaiah says, how long, O Lord? In other words, how long will this hardness persist?

How long before God again shows mercy? How long until God’s people are restored to the Lord and restored to the land? The Lord’s answer is again a prophecy of exile from the promised land, but a prophecy that ultimately results in renewed hope. My friends, the gospel of Jesus Christ is an aroma of life to those who are being saved, but it is also an aroma of death to those who are perishing in sin and unbelief. As we are told by the Apostle Paul, let me read briefly 2 Corinthians 2, 14-17, 2 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 14-17. But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.

And then he says, what every faithful preacher should say, who is sufficient for these things? For we are not like so many peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity as commissioned by God in the sight of God, we speak in Christ. Oh, may God grant us the grace to hear and to receive his word with faith and repentance, that the word may bring us life and not death. But finally, the very last verse of this passage, verse 13, gives us a hope for restoration and a holy seed. This verse speaks of a hope for restoration and a holy seed. It says this, and though a tenth remain in it, a tenth, a remnant here, this is Isaiah’s remnant theme, though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again like a tarabinth or an oak whose stump remains when it is felled.

The holy seed is its stump. The point of all this is that God always preserves for himself a chosen faithful remnant. The remnant theme, as I mentioned, is an important theme in the book of Isaiah. Here Isaiah uses the picture of a tree that is cut down to its stump and burned, but still capable of producing new shoots and thus capable of bringing forth new life after the burning. One commentator reminds us that the Middle Eastern tarabinth and oak trees can produce new shoots even when they appear to have been cut or damaged beyond all hope. As Dr. Young writes, just as the fallen tree has life and substance within it, so in the tenth which has again become a burning, there is also substance, and this substance is the holy seed. This seed is holy.

It is the elect, those who are preserved by the mercy of God. A remnant which can be called holy, as earlier in the chapter God himself was designated holy, is one which can survive. Hence it is a spiritual seed, partaking of holiness, and in such a holy seed the promises of salvation are to be realized. Beloved, even though this passage is permeated with a note of judgment, it ends on a note of hope. In the larger plan of God, this historic judgment upon his professed people, this judgment that would occur with their exile from the land, that judgment would ultimately result in a purified, refined, renewed people of God. And we should remember that, especially in the dark days of the church. If you study church history, the history of the church is not all encouraging to read.

There were many dark years, dark centuries even in the history of the church, yet God always preserved a remnant and God always caused his truth to shine forth in the end. So even in the darkest days of the church, let us never lose the light of hope. And the reason that we should not lose the light of hope is again because God always preserves an elect remnant, a holy seed. But we need to remember that this holy seed, the chosen elect, the chosen remnant that God preserves is only a holy seed because of Christ, the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent. Jesus Christ himself is identified by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 3.16 as that seed of the woman. Let me just read that as we close our time in the word today.

Galatians 3.16, we read these words. Now, the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring, it does not say and to offsprings or seeds, referring to many, but referring to one and to your offspring, who is Christ. Christ is the holy seed. And we, brothers and sisters, are a holy seed in union with Christ, the holy seed. So let us take courage and encouragement from God’s preserving, sustaining mercies as declared in passages like this one. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Sovereign and Eternal God, we praise you and thank you for raising up great prophets of old like the prophet Isaiah. We would pray that you would help us, Lord, to take these truths to heart and by your spirit. May these truths bear much spiritual fruit in our hearts and lives this day.

We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. Dear friends, as we prepare to gather around the Lord’s table together, let’s rise and we’ll sing number 200, soul adorn yourself with gladness, 200.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

September 8, 2024
Superlative Holiness, Sobering Commission

About this sermon

In the year King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw the Lord on a throne, high and lifted up, with seraphim crying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” Isaiah cried, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips.” A seraph touched his lips with a burning coal: God took away his guilt and atoned for his sin. Then the Lord asked, “Whom shall I send?” and Isaiah answered, “Here I am! Send me,” receiving a sobering commission to preach to a people who would not hear.

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Sermon transcript

Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word as we continue our consideration of the book of the prophet Isaiah. We are in a very significant turning point in Isaiah’s prophecy, his prophetic book. Isaiah chapter six verses one through 13, the entire chapter. You’ll find that on page 678 in your pew Bible. Isaiah chapter six. Dear ones, this is the word of God. Let us hear it with reverence and awe. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim, each had six wings. With two, he covered his face, and with two, he covered his feet, and with two, he flew. And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called. And the house was filled with smoke. And I said, woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. And one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said, Behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said, here I am, send me.

And he said, go and say to this people, keep on hearing but do not understand, keep on seeing but do not perceive, make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed. Then I said, how long, O Lord? And he said, until cities lie waste without inhabitants and houses without people and the land is a desolate waste and the Lord removes people far away and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a 10th remain in it, it will be burned again like a tarabinth or an oak whose stump remains when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump. Dear ones, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

Let’s seek the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. O Lord and Father in heaven, we would pray that by your spirit that once again, you would help us to behold wondrous things from your word. We would pray that you would open our minds to see the relevance and importance of this portion of your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible word. And we pray that by your spirit, you would once again set a guard over my lips that I, your unworthy servant, might only speak forth that which is faithful and true to the word and for the benefit of your people. We pray these things through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. Title of my sermon this morning is Superlative Holiness Sobering Commission. And there’s a number of key words I’d encourage the young people to listen for today, the words holy or holiness, king, throne, atonement, and commission.

Well, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, here in the West and especially here in the United States of America, we live in a time of what could be described as the age of casual Christianity. You see, popular American Christianity today has a very casual, a very laid back, if you will, attitude towards God. American Christians in general tend to view God in very chummy, informal, familiar terms. I’ve sometimes, and perhaps you’ve heard this as well, but I’ve sometimes heard even professing Christians speak of God as the man upstairs. You ever heard that? I even remember I had a friend in the Christian fellowship I was involved with in college. She once described God, I believe her words were big daddio in the sky or something along those lines. Many Christians today seem to have almost an allergic aversion to any approach to God that seems overly serious in their views.

Any approach to God that is serious minded is often interpreted as, you know, stuffy and overly formalistic and so forth. I mean, after all, we want a relatable deity. We want a God with whom we can, quote, hang out, right? Another way to say this is to say that few of us Christians today approach Almighty God with the deep sense of reverence and awe that he rightly deserves. I would suggest to you, beloved, that one of the reasons for this is that few of us have experienced what could be described as the trauma of holiness, the trauma of holiness. We say, what do you mean, pastor? Well, my friends, when we look to the scriptures and when in the Bible, God reveals His holy presence to sinners, that revelation of the holy presence of God is not usually a comforting or inspiring experience for the one receiving that revelation of God’s holiness.

It is usually deeply traumatizing. In the Bible, encountering a revelation of the holy presence of God is a traumatizing experience to sinners. And our passage for this Lord’s Day morning records Isaiah, the son of Amos’s traumatic encounter with the thrice holy God, as Isaiah here in this chapter recounts for us his call and commissioning to be a prophet of the Lord. Now, it’s interesting that Isaiah does not begin his book, his collection of oracles, with this call account. Jeremiah, for example, begins his book with an account of his call to be a prophet of the Lord, but Isaiah’s call to prophethood does not come until chapter six. Again, the record of Isaiah’s commission was probably postponed until this point in the book so that it would, in the words of one scholar, so that it would serve as a climax to the opening series of oracles and to provide warrant for the shocking announcements of judgment that they contain.

The people had mocked the Holy One of Israel, as we learned back in chapter five, verse 19. And now he has commissioned Isaiah to call them to account. So what do we have in this portion of holy scripture? What do we learn from this portion? What do we see here? Well, what we have here in this passage of scripture is a vision of the divine king on his heavenly throne. That’s the first point in your sermon outline if you’re following along. We have here a vision of the divine king on his heavenly throne. It says in chapter six, verse one, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon the throne and so forth. This language that Isaiah uses, that he sees the Lord, this is the language of vision. He is receiving a supernatural vision from the Lord.

This is a supernatural revelatory vision that the Lord gave to Isaiah, as seen in the words, I saw. Indeed, friends, this is probably, as I’ve mentioned, this is probably Isaiah’s inaugural vision, representing his call to be a prophet of Yahweh, the true and living God, the faithful covenant-making covenant-keeping God of his people Israel. Now, remember that biblical prophets were called to receive new, fresh, divine revelation. Now, there’s a more informal sense in which we can speak of a prophet. There’s a sense in which preachers have a prophetic role in that they are to declare and expound the word of God, but the biblical prophets, in the technical sense, were directly called by God, and they were called to bring new, fresh, divine revelation to the people of God. And usually, this revelation to the people of God was a revelation that exposed the people’s unfaithfulness, their breaking of the covenant.

Sometimes prophets, biblical prophets, were described as engaging in covenant lawsuits against the people of God, declaring their faithlessness, their breaking of the covenant, calling them to renewed repentance, and offering them God’s grace and forgiveness for their trust in the Lord. And so that’s what we have in this passage for today, Isaiah’s vision of the Lord. When did he receive this vision? Well, we’re told in verse 1, and it took place in the year that King Uzziah died. And I have to be careful, because Isaiah and Uzziah kind of sound similar, so I’ll try not to mix up the two. They’re very different individuals. But what do we know about King Uzziah, and what was the year of his death? Well, most scholars agree it was sometime around 740 BC. And what about King Uzziah? Was he a good king?

Was he a bad king? Well, King Uzziah is spoken of in the Old Testament in good terms. He was basically a godly king. And though he presided over a lengthy period of national prosperity, and he did many good things for the nation, the covenant nation of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, you know, he helped to build up their military in the kingdom and so forth. He was used of God in that way, and he presided over a period of great peace and prosperity. He reigned 52 years. He started reigning when he was 16 years old. And yet, if you’re familiar with King Uzziah, the Lord struck him with leprosy when he became proud and presumed to offer incense to the Lord in the temple. That was something, that was a no-no. That was something that only the priests were allowed to do.

And let’s just get some background on him. Turn with me, if you would, to 2 Chronicles, chapter 26. I just want to read, not the whole chapter, but a portion of this chapter. 2 Chronicles, that’s in the Old Testament. 2 Chronicles, chapter 26. Let me read the first five verses. It says this. And all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was 16 years old, and made him king instead of his father, Amaziah. He built Eloth and restored it to Judah, and the king slept with his, after the king slept with his fathers, which means he died. His father had died. Uzziah was 16 years old when he began to reign. And he reigned 52 years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jekaliah of Jerusalem. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.

In other words, he was one of the good kings. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah had done. He set himself to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God. And as long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper, and a very good beginning to his reign. But then let’s skip down to verse 16. The intervening verses describe many of his accomplishments, especially in building up the military in Judah. But it goes on to say this in verse 16. But when he was strong, he grew proud to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the Lord his God, and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. But Azariah the priest went in after him, with 80 priests of the Lord who were men of valor.

And they withstood King Uzziah and said to him, it is not for you Uzziah to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense. Go out of the sanctuary for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor from the Lord, from the Lord God. Then Uzziah was angry. Now he had a censer in his hand to burn incense. And when he became angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead in the presence of the priests in the house of the Lord by the altar of incense. And Azariah the chief priest and all the priests looked at him, and behold he was leprous in his forehead. And they rushed him out quickly, and he himself hurried to go out because the Lord had struck him.

And King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death, and being a leper lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord, and Jotham his son was over the king’s household governing the people of the land. So King, it was in the year that this king, King Uzziah died that Isaiah receives his vision, his call to be a prophet of the Lord. Well, when you think of King Uzziah, what does he represent? Uzziah represents a leprous, unclean, and ultimately dead king. But there is another king that we read of in this passage who is contrasted with King Uzziah, and that king is described by these words, the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. Unlike King Uzziah, who was unclean, who became a leper, having to be excluded from the assembly of the Lord, basically be excommunicated for his unfaithfulness, in contrast to Uzziah, who died, is the holy, living, exalted, divine king.

The Lord, high and lifted up, sitting upon his throne. And the word here for the Lord in the Hebrew, it is the word Adonai. This is a word which means sovereign with a capital S. The language here stresses the Lord’s sovereign kingship. And so it was in the year that King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord, the sovereign, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. And then it goes on to say, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Now this language about the Lord being on a throne, high and lifted up, again, the language here appears to clearly emphasize the Lord’s exalted cosmic sovereignty. And what about the imagery here of the train of his robe filling the temple? What temple is this referring to? Now, many scholars believe that Isaiah received this vision while he was at the temple in Jerusalem.

And that indeed is a possibility. Isaiah may very well have received his vision while he was in the Jerusalem temple. However, in his vision, he sees the Lord sitting on his cosmic, heavenly throne. And so the setting of this vision, beloved, appears to be not the earthly temple in Jerusalem, but ultimately the setting appears to be Yahweh’s heavenly throne room, his heavenly temple, of which the temple in Jerusalem was but a picture, a copy, a type. The imagery here of the train of the Lord, this is his royal robes, the train of his royal robes filling the temple. Again, this is a vision. This is not to be understood overly literalistically as if the Lord literally sits on a literal throne and wears a literal robe and all of that. This is pointing to the glory of the Lord.

And the imagery here of the train of the Lord’s robe filling the temple appears to point to the majesty and the glory of Yahweh’s royal, kingly reign. And what does Isaiah see? As he sees the Lord high and lifted up, sitting on the throne with the train of his robe filling the temple, his heavenly palace, his heavenly throne room, goes on to say in verse two, above him stood the seraphim, each had six wings, with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. Now let’s pause there and consider the language here. We read of these creatures that are known as seraphim. In the Hebrew, it could literally be translated the fiery ones or the burning ones. The seraphim were and are a class of glorious angelic beings who are tasked with praising and extolling the thrice holy God.

And again, how are they described? Well, they’re described as having six wings. What’s the significance of the six wings? Well, this is likely meant to signify their great power. However, notice these are glorious, holy beings. These are beings of burning holiness, and yet before the thrice holy God, even they shield their eyes and cover their feet. They use the wings that signify their power to humble themselves. These glorious, holy beings humbly shield themselves in the presence of the superlatively holy God whom they worship in truth and sincerity. And humility, by the way, is especially suggested by the fact that they covered their feet. Oftentimes when God manifests his holy presence, there’s a call to do something with your feet. What happened to Moses when he encountered the theophany at the burning bush? What did God say to Moses?

He said, take your sandals off. You’re standing on holy ground. But here, these glorious burning angelic beings, these seraphim, these burning ones who are so holy, they cover their feet in the presence of the thrice holy God. Again, indicating they’re humbling themselves, their humility before the presence of the Lord. And what do they cry out to the Lord? Well, we sang that beautiful hymn earlier in the service, holy, holy, holy, and that hymn is based on passages like this one. It says, and one called to another, they were engaged in a heavenly liturgy, an antiphonal call back and forth to one another. They called to one another and said, holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts, the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. This holy, holy, holy is called the Trisagion, or the threefold description of holiness.

And it emphasizes God’s superlative, indeed, his infinite holiness. God is not just holy. He’s not just holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy. This is repeated for emphasis, and many, including many of the early church fathers, viewed this Trisagion, this threefold ascription of holiness to God as an Old Testament hint to the doctrine of the Trinity, and I would tend to agree with that. The doctrine of the Trinity is not fully revealed in the Old Testament. That has to wait for the coming of Christ in the New Testament, but nevertheless, there are hints of the truth of the Trinity, even in the Old Covenant scriptures. And then it goes on to say in verse four, and the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

So there was a shaking, there was like an earthquake in his vision of the heavenly glory temple, and there’s a shaking, and it’s filled with smoke. The house is filled with smoke, just as when Solomon dedicated the temple in Jerusalem, the holy presence of God, the Shekinah glory of God filled the temple. The glory of the Lord filled the temple to such an extent that the priest could not even stand up. And so we have an awesome glorious picture of the holiness of God, and it says the whole earth is full of his glory. The term glory in the Hebrew is kavod. The kavod of God is used of God in his manifestation to his creatures. The essence of deity, God in his divine eternal essence, is inscrutable, we cannot comprehend or know it, but something of his glory can be seen if God is pleased to disclose it, as one commentator rightly points out.

But what we have here in verse four, my friends, we have echoes of Mount Sinai. Let me have you turn to Exodus 19, and let me read verses 16 through 20 of Exodus chapter 19. Now, the scene here in this passage, the people have been rescued from their slavery in Egypt, they’ve been brought through the Red Sea on dry land, and the Lord has brought them to the foot of Mount Sinai, and he is preparing to declare his holy law to them, to reveal the Ten Commandments to them. And this is what we read of that takes place on that occasion. Beginning in verse 16, it says, on the morning of the third day, there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast. This was no ordinary lightning and thunder and thick cloud.

This is a supernatural manifestation, what the theologians call a theophany, a visible manifestation, a visible supernatural manifestation of God’s glorious presence. There’s a trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now, Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him in thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai on the top of the mountain, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. And of course, the people are terrified at the presence of God.

The people experienced the trauma of the holy. But again, what we have in verse four of our passage for today are echoes of that theophany from Mount Sinai as we read of smoke filling the temple and so forth. These are signs and evidences of Yahweh’s presence in his heavenly temple. And how does Isaiah react to all of this? He sees this glorious supernatural vision. Does he say, oh, great to see you, Lord. So glad we could hang out together. No, look at verse five. And I said, woe is me. That term woe could imply a curse. He says, I’m cursed? Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

In declaring a woe upon himself, Isaiah is struck by his utter unworthiness and uncleanness in the presence of the thrice holy God. He is terrified and undone. He feels completely out of place as a sinner in the presence of the thrice holy God, and he encounters the trauma of holiness. He says, I am a man of unclean lips. This vision of the glory and holiness of God draws forth from Isaiah an honest confession of his own sinfulness. You know, we are often so foolish. We sometimes think we can hide our sins from the Lord. How foolish that is. You can’t hide your sins from the omniscient one. He knows us through and through. He knows you and me better than we know ourselves. And so Isaiah, in the presence of this holy God, he acknowledges his sin.

He says, I’m a man of unclean lips. Unlike the pure lips of the seraphim who offer pure, acceptable worship, Isaiah recognizes the impurities of his own words and his own worship. And then he goes on to admit that he lives in the midst of a people of unclean lips. The fact that the people were guilty of unclean lips was seen back in chapter five, verses 18 through 20, which record the blasphemy and the scoffing of the people of God. Let me just read those verses again. If you look back at Isaiah five, verses 18 through 20, it says this, Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes, who say, let him be quick. Let him speed his work that we may see it. Let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and let it come that we may know it.

These are mocking, scoffing words. The Lord says he’s gonna judge us. Well, let him do it. Where’s his judgment? Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. But then he says, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. My eyes have seen the King. My sinful eyes have seen a vision of the thrice holy God. Isn’t it the case that no man can see God and live? How terrified and how out of place this sinful prophet with unclean lips felt in the presence of the superlatively, infinitely holy God and his holy angelic seraphs. Well, dear ones, God is a loving God, a gracious God. And we can indeed have a personal relationship with him.

Praise God for that, a saving relationship with him. But we also need to realize that our God is a consuming fire. He is the holy God. Dear ones, God’s name is to be treated as holy. As we are told in the third commandment, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Taking the Lord’s name in vain means much more than simply using God’s name as a curse word. Although that’s one way to take the Lord’s name in vain, using the word God or Jesus Christ as a swear word, or referring to the attributes of God like holiness and ascribing those attributes to mundane things like holy cow or whatever. Indeed, my friends, at his heart though, the taking of the Lord’s name in vain means treating his name, treating his being, his attributes, his words and his works as holy, or neglecting to treat his name as holy.

That’s what it means to take his name in vain, not treating his name as holy, as set apart and pure. The word holy means set apart in its primary meaning. It also indicates moral purity and righteousness. But God is holy in the superlative sense. He is set apart, he is distinct, he’s transcendent, he’s the creator, we are but creatures. And not only that, he is perfectly righteous and good. And we in Adam are fallen and sinful. We pray in the first petition of the Lord’s prayer, hallowed be thy name. In other words, Lord, may your name be treated as holy, which is the opposite of taking his holy name in vain. But friends, we can only begin to truly hallow God’s name and avoid taking it in vain if we are renewed and born again by the Holy Spirit.

Only those who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God can hallow God’s name as holy. And if you are apart from a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, if you’ve never been born again, from the moment of your conception to this very day, you have never not taken the Lord’s name in vain. Your life is profane. You need to be renewed. You must be born again or you will not even see the kingdom of God. And that is a gift of grace and grace alone. Dear listener, are you born again? Are you indwelt by the Holy Spirit? By God’s grace, do you strive to treat God’s name as holy, as holy, holy, holy? Or do you take his name in vain? Well, how is it that this gift of the new birth is made possible?

It is made possible by the grace of atonement that comes through Jesus Christ. And that brings me to my next point. Notice next, atonement for unclean lips. Atonement for unclean lips. It says in verse six, then one of the seraphim flew to me. After Isaiah is unraveled, after he is distressed by his lostness, his unworthiness in the presence of the thrice holy God, God is merciful to him. It says, then one of the seraphim, one of these glorious holy beings, flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips, your guilt has taken away, and your sin atoned for. The true and living thrice holy triune God is revealed in scripture to be a consuming fire, a God of infinite white hot holiness.

This is represented by the burning coal that is taken from the altar. But while God’s all consuming holiness burns up the sacrifices on the altar, the altar also represents not just God’s consuming wrath against sin, it also represents God’s amazing grace and forgiving mercy in providing atonement for the sins of his people. The holy God provides atonement for his people’s sin, which his wrath burns up on the altar where the atoning sacrifices are offered. And here, the burning coal represents God’s provision of atonement for Isaiah’s sins, especially for his unclean lips. All of this, of course, points forward to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. For God the Father, out of love for us sinners, sent his son to offer himself on the cross as an atonement for sin, to bear the wrath of God as our sin bearer, our substitute.

Christ, the lamb of God, was consumed by the holy wrath of God against our sins on the altar of the cross of Calvary. That’s the final altar, by the way. We don’t need altars today in the new covenant. Jesus did away for the need for altars by dying on the cross as a perfect atoning sacrifice, a propitiation for all of the sins of all of God’s people throughout all of time. And all of this, again, points to Christ. Christ, who bore our sin in his body on the cross. Christ, the lamb of God, as I said, was consumed by God’s holy wrath against our sins on the cross of Calvary, and by the spirit of God. The atoning work of Christ is personally applied to all of those who, through sovereign grace, come to believe upon him, to trust upon him alone for their salvation, just like that burning coal was applied by the seraphim to the lips of the prophet Isaiah, declaring his sins to be forgiven.

So the Holy Spirit, through faith in Christ in his gospel, brings forgiveness and applies that forgiveness to us. Verse seven, it says, again, and he touched my mouth and said, Behold, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for. That is good news for a man who has been traumatized by the holy presence of God, knowing that the sin which he deserves to be punished for has been forgiven, that his guilt has been done away with. This, and the burning coal here in this prophetic vision almost serves as a sacramental sign to Isaiah that in the words of the seraphim, your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. This angelic absolution assures Isaiah that Yahweh has graciously atoned for and cleansed him from his sin. So what do we learn from this section of our passage?

Well, first of all, friends, by his saving work, Christ the Lord has provided full and perfect atonement for the sins of all who trust in him alone for salvation with a penitent faith. Do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to save you from your sins? If you do, that will assure you that you’ve been born again because only by the Spirit can we believe. Come to Christ. His arms are open wide to all who recognize their sin and who are willing by the grace of God to come to him in faith and repentance. And brothers and sisters in Christ, in the gospel word and sacraments, God assures us that our guilt is taken away, that our sin is atoned for. Through such means as the gospel call and the promises of the word, by the sacraments of holy baptism in the Lord’s Supper, which symbolize and seal the word, and also through the assurance and declaration of pardon pronounced by God’s servant in response to our confession of sin.

Through these means, the Lord assures us that we are forgiven and accepted by God. May this assurance of grace and salvation strengthen our resolve to live lives of grateful obedience to our gracious Father in heaven who has loved us with such amazing grace and mercy. And this brings me to my final point. It’ll be a brief point. We’re not gonna have time to cover all of this today. And so I’ll return to the latter part of this passage on the next Lord’s Day. But let’s briefly consider the prophet’s sobering commission, the prophet’s sobering commission. Now in view of Isaiah’s woe is me, which he declares in verse five, this is a very sharp turnabout. Says this in verse eight. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us?

Then I said, here I am, send me. What a change of heart and attitude the assurance of forgiveness brings. Isaiah has gone from the traumatized woe is me to the joyful, here am I, send me. Isaiah goes from a trembling, overwhelming terror in the presence of the Holy One to boldly, courageously, and cheerfully answering the Lord’s call to service. And then it goes on to say in verse nine, and he said, go and say to this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand, keep on seeing, but do not perceive, make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and blind their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and be healed. There’s a lot here in this passage that we don’t have time to get to today.

But what we basically have here, we see Yahweh’s sovereign judicial hardening of an arrogant, rebellious, unbelieving people. The word of God, we learn in this passage, among other things that the word of God ends up hardening those who persist in rejecting that word and refusing its calls to repentance. And this leads Isaiah to cry out in verse 11. He says, then I said, how long, O Lord, how long, O Lord? And he’s given this answer. And he said, until cities lie waste without inhabitant and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste and the Lord removes people far away and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. Isaiah inquires, how long? Now this question would seem to mean either, Lord, how long must I continue preaching judgment and being an instrument in your hands for the hardening of the people?

Or it could mean perhaps, how long before your judgment gives way to mercy? Whichever is the case, this passage, though it is gloomy in the commission and call and sobering in its commission and call to Isaiah, it ends on a note of hope. Look at verse 13. And it says, and though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again like a tarabinth or an oak whose stump remains when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump. This sobering passage ends on a note of hope for the future renewal and restoration of God’s people. Again, in wrath, God remembers mercy. So in closing, my friends, let us be warned against rejecting God’s word and resisting his calls to repentance. Let us not be fools as were many of Isaiah’s contemporaries. But let’s also take to heart how God’s gracious forgiveness in Christ can transform our motives for serving the Lord.

Many try, many preachers sadly try to motivate God’s people to greater devotion, greater obedience by guilting them. Now there is a place for preaching God’s law, of course, especially if I were preaching to a group of folks that included many unbelievers, I would emphasize the law of God, especially if I were preaching to those who were convinced that they were basically good people and didn’t need a savior, they need to hear the law, they need to be crushed by the law. The law exposes our sin and our need for Christ and it needs to be faithfully preached. But God’s people are not motivated to grateful service by being guilted. Gratitude is the greatest motivator. Isaiah expresses that gratitude almost joyfully. We can almost sense joy as the Lord says, whom shall I send? And I can just picture Isaiah jumping up, here am I, send me.

You’ve forgiven me, Lord. You’ve brought me from the trauma of holiness to the joy of forgiveness and I desire to serve and please you. That is what ought to motivate us. What motivates you to serve the Lord? Why are you here this morning? Is it because of a sense of duty? It is our duty to gather as God’s people on the Lord’s day but by grace, our duty becomes a delight. May we be motivated by gratitude for God’s amazing grace and forgiveness given to us in our Savior Jesus Christ, amen. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, Sovereign and Eternal God, we praise you and thank you, Lord, that you have provided atonement for our sins in Christ and we thank you that you have renewed us and caused us to be born again by your Spirit that we would see our sin and would come to confess and trust Christ alone for our salvation.

We pray, Lord, that you would enable us, Lord, to treat your name as holy, to hallow your name and not to take it in vain by living lives of grateful obedience to you, the God, the holy God, the thrice holy God who loved us and gave your Son for our redemption. In his name we pray and all of God’s people said amen. Let’s respond to what we’ve heard by rising and we’ll sing as our hymn of commitment, number 502, All for Jesus, 502. Let’s rise and sing together.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

September 1, 2024
Darkened Values, Godless ‘Wisdom’

About this sermon

Isaiah pronounces woes on those who drag sin along with cords of falsehood and mock, “Let him hurry his work that we may see it,” just as scoffers later asked, “Where is the promise of his coming?” Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light, and woe to those who are wise in their own eyes. Godless wisdom reverses true values and ends in judgment. True wisdom is from above, as James says, and begins with the fear of the Lord.

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Sermon transcript

We continue our consideration of various passages in the book of the prophet Isaiah, and today we’re going to consider Isaiah chapter 5 verses 18 through 21. Isaiah chapter 5 verses 18 through 21, you’ll find that on page 677 in your Pew Bibles. I’m going to read verses 13 through 23 to fill out the context a little bit, but again our focus will be specifically on verses 18 through 21. So let us hear God’s holy word beginning at verse 13 of Isaiah chapter 5. Therefore my people go into exile for lack of knowledge, their honored men go hungry and their multitude is parched with thirst. For Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure, and the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude will go down, her revelers and he who exalts in her.

Man is humbled and each one is brought low, and the eyes of the haughty are brought low. But the Lord of hosts is exalted in justice, and the holy God shows himself holy in righteousness. Then shall the lambs graze as in their pasture, and nomads shall eat among the ruins of the rich. Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes, who say, let him be quick, let him speed his work that we may see it. Let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near, and let it come that we may know it. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight.

Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and valiant men in mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprive the innocent of his right. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God to bless the preaching of his word. O gracious Lord and Father in heaven, once again we thank you that you have not left us without a word. You have given us your holy word. You have spoken to us. You have revealed yourself to us, not merely in the works of creation and providence, not merely in the human conscience, but you have revealed yourself to us especially in your God-breathed and errant infallible word. We pray that by your spirit you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word.

We pray that your word would find a lodging place in our souls and bear much spiritual fruit that brings praise and glory and honor to your holy name. And Lord, we pray that you would manifest your power even in the midst of our weakness. For Lord, I am a weak servant of yours, a weak and sinful servant. And yet Lord, we pray that by your grace you would use me, your unworthy servant, and assist me in declaring your word with clarity and power and faithfulness. We pray these things, Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord and Savior, and all of God’s people said, Amen. May be seated. Well, dear friends, as you can see, the title of my sermon today is Darkened Values, Godless Quote Wisdom. And there’s five words I’d encourage the young people to listen for in my sermon today.

Those words are scoffer, sin, slavery, ethics, and wisdom. Well, dear ones, the online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a moral compass as a set of beliefs or values that help guide ethical decisions, judgments, and behavior, an internal sense of right and wrong. Beloved, based on that definition, I would suggest to you, friends, that our culture and our society today have a broken moral compass. Our society and our culture have rejected God’s moral law as summarized in the Ten Commandments. It’s rejected God’s law as the permanent and universally binding standard of ethics, and as the measure by which we judge between right and wrong, righteousness and wickedness, good and evil. And in its place, in the place of God’s law, it has offered pagan humanistic ideas and ideologies, and it therefore has multiplied burdensome man-made rules and regulations.

It has been said that when you reject the Ten Commandments of God, you end up being burdened with the 10,000 plus commandments of fallen sinful man. Having rejected the Ten Commandments of God’s moral law, because it is supposedly narrow-minded and restrictive, having rejected God’s moral law in the name of freedom and liberty, our society is now burdened with deep confusion, misery, and a deepened bondage to the slave master of sin. Our moral compass as a society is indeed broken, and we have lost our way. We’re very similar to the professed people of God who lived in the days of the prophet Isaiah. This reminds me of the saying in Ecclesiastes that there’s nothing new under the sun. When it comes to man’s rebellion against God and against the standard of God’s moral law, well, man is still rebellious.

There’s nothing new under the sun. God’s people living in Isaiah’s day, they too had lost their way, but they had no excuse for that. You see, God had given them a clear moral compass in his holy word. He had given them his law, and he had blessed them with his prophets who spoke the word of the Lord to the people of the Lord. But they had strayed from his way. They had spurned his covenant. They had rejected his offers of mercy. They had refused his calls to repentance, and they had gone after the ways of their pagan neighbors and adopted the idolatrous practices of the Gentile nations that surrounded them. Instead of receiving instruction from God’s word in true values, and instead of seeking after true godly wisdom, their values were darkened by their unbelief and hardness of heart, and they trusted in their own godless wisdom instead of trusting in the trustworthy word of Almighty God.

Now dear ones, as we turn our attention to our passage for this Lord’s Day morning, our passage for today is found in the midst of a section in the prophet Isaiah that contains six judgment oracles of woe. These woes reveal the sins of the covenant nation which had been described metaphorically as wild grapes or as stinking things in the so-called Song of the Vineyard which had opened this chapter. For example, back in verse 2 we read this as God compares his people to a vineyard. He says, He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it, and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes, or as we learned on the last Lord’s Day it could be translated as rotten grapes or even as stinking things.

And then also if you consider verse 4, what more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? Rotten grapes, stinking things. Well friends, these wild grapes, these sins of the professed people of God included such things as social injustices, as the wealthy would add property to property at the expense of the poor, for example. It also included such things as debauchery and the excessive use of alcohol which often led the leaders among the people of Israel to oppress people and to accept bribes instead of perform justice. And it also included things such as blasphemous and irreverent scoffing and rejection of the Lord and so forth. Friends in this section of Isaiah, Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, threatens his faithless, unrepentant, unbelieving people with exile and death.

Look for example at verses 13 and 14 where it says, Therefore my people go into exile for lack of knowledge. Their honored men go hungry and their multitude is parched with thirst. And then notice the next verse, verse 14. Therefore Sheol, Sheol is the realm of the dead and it is a way of speaking of death. Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure and the nobility of Jerusalem, the nobility being the ones who were guilty of oppressing the people and accepting bribes and so forth, the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude, that would be the masses as well, will go down, her revelers and he who exults in her. So he’s threatening exile and death. Or skip ahead to verses 24 and 25, it says, Therefore as the tongue of fire devours the stubble and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will be as rottenness and their blossom go up like dust.

For they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against His people and He stretched out His hand against them and struck them. And the mountains quaked and their corpses were as refuse in the midst of the streets. For all this His anger is not turned away and His hand, meaning His hand of judgment, ready to act in judgment against His faithless people is stretched out still. Now with all of this in mind, let’s turn our attention to the details of our passage for today and to the particular woes that this passage reveals. And as we consider verses 18 and 19, I want you to notice that we learn in these verses of the burden of sin and the blasphemy of scoffers.

The burden of sin and the blasphemy of scoffers. Look for example at verse 18. This is the first woe we are considering together. Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood. He’s painting a picture. He’s giving us an image in our minds of drawing iniquity with cords of falsehood. And then he repeats himself in typical Hebrew parallelism. He basically says the same thing using slightly different terms. He says who draw sin with cart ropes. We learn in this verse that sin is a self-inflicted burden. Now you may wonder what does that exclamation woe mean? A woe has been defined as an interjection expressing great distress or sorrow. And in the first woe we consider today, we see Isaiah or the Holy Spirit through Isaiah saying woe to those who do what? Who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes.

This vivid imagery pictures sin as a great burden, as a heavy load. And yet it is a load that sinners willfully take upon themselves. It goes on to say, it says woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes. E.J. Young describes the imagery of this verse as a strange sight. A heavy cart is being laboriously drawn not by work animals, but by men, yoked, straining, tugging men. They are yoked like beasts and hitched to a heavy wagon. And just as beasts are wont to do, so these men draw after them the heavy wagon. This wagon is their own iniquity and sin. And so by such a figure we are made to see the close connection between the sin and the one who commits the sin. You can’t disconnect the sin from the sinner.

The two are inextricably intertwined. What a powerful illustration my friends to the truth that the way of the wicked is hard. You know sin often presents itself, the way of sin and the way of the world often presents itself as an easy way, the comfortable way. And it might be comfortable and easy for a short time, but in the end the way of the wicked is hard and sin is a grievous burden to bear. Even though sin brings fleeting temporary pleasures, the scriptures speak of the fleeting pleasures of sin, nevertheless the pleasures of sin are deceitful pleasures. And in the end sin, if it is not atoned for and repented of, ensnares, enslaves, and crushes and destroys those who commit themselves to its ways. I’m reminded of what Solomon writes in Proverbs 5, 22-23, I’d encourage you to turn there to Proverbs 5, verses 22 and 23.

We read these words. The Holy Spirit through the author of Proverbs here says, the iniquities of the wicked ensnare him and he is held fast in the cords of his sin. Does that sound like freedom? Does that sound like liberty? No, that’s bondage. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him. He is held fast in the cords of sin. He dies for lack of discipline and because of his great folly he is led astray. So sin is depicted, sin, iniquity is depicted as a great heavy burden but a burden that is willfully dragged on by those who are committed to the ways of sin. And who are the sinners in particular that Isaiah seems to have in mind here as we read these verses together? The particular sinners that he has in mind are those who scoff at God and at the ways of God.

We notice in verse 19 what is said about scoffers who mock God’s word and God’s prophet. It says this, as he describes those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes, verse 19, who say, let him be quick, let him speed his work that we may see it. These particular scoffers are skeptics and they are skeptical of the words of judgment that the Holy Spirit has inspired Isaiah to proclaim to the people. Isaiah has spoken of judgment to come if the people do not repent and turn back to the Lord and Isaiah has described the Lord as the Holy God, as the Holy One of Israel. And these scoffers adopt that kind of language in their mockery of the prophet Isaiah and ultimately in their mockery of God’s word and they basically say, okay Isaiah, you say that the Lord is going to judge us?

You say judgment is coming? Let him show it. Let him speed it forth. Why is he waiting? They’re almost daring God, Lord, you say you’re going to judge us? Go ahead, go ahead. Show us that you mean business. This is the arrogant blasphemy of those who speak, these scoffers who speak against the word of the Lord. They say, let him be quick. Let him speed his work that we may see it. Let him do it and then we’ll believe in him. Let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel, meaning his counsel of judgment, let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and let it come that we may know it. In other words, Isaiah, we don’t really believe that the Lord is going to judge us. We don’t believe your word is trustworthy.

Again, here Isaiah likely records the words of those scoffers who mocked the predictions of judgment that he had pronounced to the people. This verse, beloved, reveals the arrogant unbelief and the blasphemous mockery of these scoffers. But these types of scoffers did not just exist in Old Testament times. They also existed in New Testament times as well. In fact, the Apostle Peter predicts that there will be such scoffers in these last days. Turn with me if you would to 2 Peter chapter 3. In 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 1, and let me just set the context here briefly in this particular passage, biblical Christianity has always proclaimed that Jesus Christ is going to return at the end of this age. But even in the first century, there were hints of those who were mocking that idea of the return of Christ, and so we read these words.

As Peter writes, I am stirring up, this is the end of verse 1, I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, what’s the particular subject of their scoffing? Well look at verse 4, they will say, where is the promise of his coming? Forever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. You Christians, you say Jesus is going to return? Why hasn’t he returned yet? You say judgment is coming, where is that judgment? Why should we believe you? Why should we believe you?

And of course Peter goes on to explain that God is not slow in his promise, but he is patient towards us and providing opportunities for his people to repent. But in any case, beloved, we see that scoffing at the word of God, and especially the prophecies of the Lord’s judgment, is a very common thing among those who are opposed to God and his kingdom. So what do we learn in this passage, beloved? Well first of all we learn that sin is a harsh task master. It promises liberty, but it delivers bondage. It promises freedom, but it enslaves you. But at the same time, the irony of it, the paradox, is that sinners who have not been born again by the Holy Spirit are willing slaves to this harsh master intent on destroying them. They willingly drag along the burdens and the consequences of their sins, refusing to let it go.

Apart from the sovereign gracious intervention of God Almighty in his sovereign omnipotent grace, apart from that gracious intervention, our relationship to sin is like the relationship of a heroin addict to his heroin. I’m not an expert in illicit drugs, but it’s my understanding that heroin is a very difficult drug to get off of. Heroin enslaves and eventually destroys the drug addict who is under its grip. But the addict craves it, even though the addict knows that this drug is destroying me, and destroying my life, shortening my life. Nevertheless, the drug addict craves the drug, and he can’t get enough of it. And without radical outside intervention, he cannot and will not free himself from its grip. Well friends, sin is like that. Sin enslaves. But the good news of the Gospel is that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, He not only delivers us from the guilt and penalty of sin by His active and passive obedience, by His living for us and dying for our sins and rising again for our justification.

He not only frees us and forgives us from the penalty and the guilt of sin and the pollution of sin. Through His indwelling Spirit, He has the power to deliver us from bondage and slavery to our sin. I’m reminded of that line in that wonderful hymn, oh for a thousand tongues to sing. There’s a line that says this of Jesus. He breaks the power of reigning sin. He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood availed for me. Does the blood of Jesus avail for you, dear listener? Have you trusted in Him as your very own Savior from sin? May God give you the grace to repent and believe in Christ alone for your salvation. And by the grace of God, He will free you from the heavy burden of your sin.

And so friends, again, we see in this passage the burden of sin and the blasphemy of scoffers. But as we move on to the next woe found in verse 20, we see in this woe the reversal of true values, the reversal of true values. It says in verse 20. And again, these woes are interconnected with each other. The one flows into the other because those who scoff at the Lord and draw iniquity as with cords of falsehood and so forth, they are those who are inclined to call evil good and good evil. It says this, verse 20, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. In other words, they completely reverse true values, perverting and twisting the values that God has revealed in His Word, the values by which He governs the universe.

Unbelieving and godless scoffers who mock the Word of God will naturally tend to rely on their own self-constructed, self-referential system of ethics. To put it more simply, they will set themselves up and their own ideas up, their own sinful ideas up, as the moral standard for judging right and wrong, good and evil, righteousness and wickedness. Instead of looking to God’s moral law as the moral standard revealed in His Word, instead of looking to that for their ethical standards, they adopt their own fallen, twisted ideas. And they judge you on the basis of those ideas. And so, for example, just to use an obvious example from our culture today, in certain circles today, if you were to openly affirm what the Bible affirms about homosexuality for example, if you were to say, well, the Bible says that it’s sinful, that it’s described as an abomination, in some circles you would be judged as a bigot.

In other words, you’re a bad person. You don’t measure up to the standard of humanistic ethics because you cling to God’s ethics. So in place of God’s law, they put man’s law, man’s ideas, fallen man’s ideas. Like the people in the days of the Old Testament, judges. They will do what is right in their own eyes instead of in the eyes of the Lord. They will set themselves up as their own standard of right and wrong. That’s basically what happened in the garden, right? Satan came to Adam and Eve and said, are you going to die if you eat from that tree? You shall certainly not die. In other words, don’t believe God. He’s not trustworthy. Believe me instead. Step back and judge by your own neutral reason whether God’s word is true or not.

In other words, that’s the satanic position. Jesus says you’re either for me or against me. You’re either for Christ, pro-Christ, or you’re against Christ, anti-Christ. There’s no in-between, my friends. Beloved, the stance of the godless scoffer will again naturally lead to the perversion and reversal of true values. According to God’s word, the true and living God Himself is the ultimate source of truth and goodness, and His word reveals His moral law as the objective, unchanging standard of ethics, the ultimate standard by which we can discern the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, righteousness and wickedness. But having said that, I don’t want what I’m saying to be misunderstood. Beloved, it’s important to understand, in saying this, I’m not suggesting that keeping God’s law can save us. Of course it can’t. None of us can be saved by the works of the law.

Only Jesus can save us and make us right with God by His grace alone, through faith in Him alone. But God’s moral law does show us the way of aligning our lives with the moral will of God, and in doing so it directs us to the pathway of freedom and flourishing. The law can’t save or sanctify us, but the law does provide direction for the believer. Not only does the law show us our sin and our need for Christ, but having driven us out of ourselves to Christ as He’s offered in the Gospel, the law now shows us the pathway that we are to take as followers of Christ. And it is that way of the Lord, following by faith and trust in Christ, that way of the Lord. That is the way of freedom and flourishing.

Again, to quote from another hymn, trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey. If I can use an illustration. Let me ask you. Again, I’m not an expert on trains, but I think I can make this illustration here. What happens when a train skips its track? I mean, you think about trains. Trains are confined and limited to their tracks. But what happens when a train skips its track? Well, what happens is that you end up with a train wreck. We saw not too long ago with the train wreck in East Palestine what a disaster can be caused by a train that doesn’t stay on its track. Well, dear ones, obviously a train works best when it is limited, when it is restricted, when it is confined to its tracks.

In fact, it is when it is on its tracks that it has the greatest freedom, the greatest liberty. When it sticks to the pathway and restraints that are laid out by the tracks, it can go great distances. But let’s imagine for a moment. Let’s imagine a train that has its own personality. Those of you who are parents may be familiar with Thomas the Tank Engine. That’s not the train I’m talking about this morning. Let’s call this train Ted instead. Ted the train. Ted the train goes all over the country on the tracks that are set before him. He gets to see the whole country and he goes along his tracks and he sees in the distance a great mountain and great hills and he also sees in the distance and other parts of the country where he’s traveling.

He sees great cities and one day he gets the thought, you know what, I’m tired of being restricted to these tracks. I want to go up on that mountain that I see in the distance, that glorious beautiful mountain or I want to explore the inner city here that I’m traveling through. And let’s say that one day Ted the train decides to skip the track and head for the hills. What’s going to happen to Ted the train once he skips the track? Can he get anywhere? No, he’s stuck in a rut. He is completely stuck and has no liberty or freedom at all. Well friends, many folks today seem to think that God’s laws and commandments, that the way of the Lord is stifling, that it is a stifling burdensome limitation on their freedoms and their flourishing.

Now it is true that the law of God does restrain our sin and that’s a good thing. But does the law of God restrain our liberty? No. The law of God shows us the way of true liberty. Of course, that we can only travel that way in union with Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. But friends, the point is, it is only as we seek to walk in the ways of God’s commandments that we will experience the true freedom and flourishing that is set out for us in Christ. Of course, again, we can’t do this by our own power or worthiness or merits. It is only by God’s grace alone through union with Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can even begin to walk in the ways of the Lord.

But as we do so by grace through faith, we experience the joy of the Lord. We experience true freedom. We experience true flourishing. And it is foolishness to reject that way of the Lord. And that brings me to my final point, the final woe we are considering in verse 21. Consider finally the folly of godless, quote, wisdom, the folly of godless wisdom. Says in verse 21, woe to those who are what? Who are wise in their own eyes. In other words, in their own self-estimation. I’m smart. I’m wise. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight. Again, Hebrew parallelism here, Isaiah basically saying the same thing in two different ways in order to lodge it in our brains, in our consciences. This is the folly of godless wisdom.

And a woe is pronounced upon it. This is the opposite of the stance of the true believer. Consider where true wisdom as opposed to godless so-called pseudo wisdom comes from. Proverbs 1 verse 7, it says this, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding, of knowledge, of wisdom. But fools despise wisdom, meaning God’s wisdom, God’s covenantal instruction given in the scriptures. Or consider Proverbs 3 verse 7, again this is obviously, this is called wisdom literature for a reason. It says, be not wise in your own eyes. Now let me pause there. Isaiah says in verse 21 of our passage, woe to those who are wise in what? In their own eyes. But what does Solomon write here in Proverbs 3 verse 7?

Be not wise in your own eyes. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. I’m reminded as well of what James writes in James chapter 3 verses 13 through 18 where he speaks of a fallen demonic wisdom as opposed to true wisdom which is from above. In James chapter 3 beginning at verse 13 we read these words, who is wise in understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason.

In other words it’s teachable, humble, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Dr. Young writes that what we have here in this woe is a general condemnation of reliance upon the supposedly autonomous mind of man. And again that brings me back to the garden. What was at the essence of the serpent’s temptation of Adam and Eve? God had told them, don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the day that you eat thereof you will surely die. Satan comes along and says look, why don’t you put God’s word to the test? Why don’t you take a neutral stance? He denies God’s word, Satan comes along and says you will not surely die. And Eve says when Eve saw that the fruit was good for food, in other words she stopped relying on God’s word and relied upon her own supposedly neutral reason.

That’s satanic. Now we are not opposed to reason or rationality or logic. In fact logic and reason are a great gift of Almighty God. But logic and reason are not to be used autonomously apart from reliance upon God’s revelation. There is a wisdom of common grace out there even among unbelievers when it comes to earthly things, true enough. But true godly wisdom comes from reliance upon the word of God. And you and I do not have the right as mere creatures of God to ever take a position where we sit in judgment over the word of God from a standpoint of supposed neutrality. That’s a rejection of the lordship of Christ. That is an embracing of demonic wisdom, not divine wisdom. Dear ones, in conclusion, the proverb says the fear of the lord is the beginning of knowledge, not the end of knowledge.

It’s not that you find the lord and fear the lord as a result of a long autonomous search based on your own neutral reason, supposedly neutral reason. By the way, there’s no neutrality. That’s a myth. None of us can be neutral in our use of reason. Reason comes from God and must be used in submission to God’s revelation. And so it says the fear of the lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction. And just as eternal salvation is found in Christ and Christ alone and by trusting him alone for your salvation from sin, so in Christ alone are found all of the treasures of wisdom and understanding. Consider what Paul writes in Colossians 2, verses 2 and 3, Colossians chapter 2, which is a marvelous epistle, Colossians chapter 2, verses 2 and 3, where Paul extols the preeminence of Christ and he says this, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance and of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in Christ and part of our spiritual warfare is taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And of course the pinnacle of God’s wisdom in Christ is the gospel message. The message, the good news of salvation through the cross and resurrection of our lord and savior Jesus Christ. Again to quote briefly from Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, beginning at verse 18, Paul writes, for the word of the cross, that’s the message of the gospel, the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. They think it’s ridiculous. The gospel is ridiculous in the eyes of the unconverted and those who are on the way to eternal perdition. But to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Dear listener, like Isaiah’s contemporaries who were wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight, are you, dear listener, wise in your own eyes?

Do you think you’re smarter than God’s Word? Do you trust in your own neutral autonomous wisdom? Or do you look to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Word of God for true wisdom? Are you relying on the folly of godless wisdom? Or have you embraced the true wisdom of the gospel, a wisdom which the unbelieving world looks upon as utter foolishness, but a wisdom which is true wisdom indeed? As C.S. Lewis is purported to have said, I believe in Christ like I believe in the Son, not because I can see it, but by it I can see everything else. May God grant to us the grace to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and understanding. And may we look to the so-called foolishness of the gospel message that we may gain a heart of true wisdom.

Only then will we be delivered from darkened values and godless so-called wisdom. Amen. Let us pray. Father, we thank you that in Christ we have the fullness of wisdom. We thank you for the gospel, which is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those of us who by your grace are being saved, it is the very power of God. O Lord, we ask that you would help us to be willing to be fools in the eyes of the world, that we may gain hearts of true wisdom that come from your Word. We pray these things in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said, amen. Let’s close our time today by rising and we’ll sing as our closing hymn, 156, Christ whose glory fills the sky, 156.

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August 25, 2024
The Song of the Vineyard

About this sermon

Isaiah sings of his beloved’s vineyard: he dug it, cleared it of stones, planted choice vines, and built a watchtower, but it yielded wild grapes. “What more was there to do for my vineyard?” The vineyard is the house of Israel, which the Lord rescued and planted in the land, yet he looked for justice and found bloodshed. So he will remove its hedge, let the beasts trample it, and command the clouds to give no rain, the covenant curses of Deuteronomy. Jesus told the same story against those who rejected him.

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Sermon transcript

We begin today in Isaiah chapter 5, and we will consider verses 1 through 7 of Isaiah chapter 5. You’ll find that on page 676. This is the word of God. My friends hear it with reverence and awe. Let me sing for my beloved, my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fine vineyard. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it, and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it shall be devoured. I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste. It shall not be pruned or hoed, and briars and thorns shall grow up. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. And he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold, an outcry. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of his word. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we pray that you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word, and we ask that you would make us receptive.

We pray that your word would find a lodging place in our souls and bear much spiritual fruit in our lives. And we do ask that you would grant me the grace to express your word well and faithfully. And we ask, Lord, that you would be magnified in the proclamation of your word this day, and that we would be edified and challenged and built up in our most holy faith. We pray these things, Heavenly Father, and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. Dear ones, the title of my sermon today is The Song of the Vineyard. And there are five key words that the young people can be listening for in my sermon today. The words song, judgment, vineyard, fruit, and faith. Well my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, when I was a young person in my teenage years, I used to listen to music all the time, whenever I had a spare moment.

It was one of my favorite activities in my free time. Like many teenagers, I was almost obsessed with my favorite musical groups, and my favorite songs had an almost cathartic effect upon me in helping me to cope with my teenage angst. In fact, when I started to make money as a young person, when I started to save up money, I would typically spend my money on two very important things, at least two high priorities According to my teenage thinking at the time, number one priority, candy bars. Second priority, record albums. I love to buy record albums. See back then, the only way to listen to your favorite music, because we didn’t have cell phones or computers back then, you either turned on the radio, or you went out to what was called a record store, and you bought your favorite vinyl record.

And so that’s what I did with my spare change as a young person. But of course, one of the problems with my love for music was that sometimes a catchy tune would just get stuck on replay in my brain. You ever had that happen to you? You hear a song, a jingle, maybe a song that’s advertising a product. I’m told that the advertisers do this on purpose. They purposefully create these little jingles or these songs. Sometimes they’re a little bit annoying, but they stick with you, and your brain replays it over and over and over again. And there seemed to be no way for me to shut these songs off. You ever had that experience, beloved? And let me tell you, it’s difficult to focus on something like completing an algebra homework assignment when you’ve got a catchy rock tune playing in the back of your brain.

Well, friends, I bring this up to illustrate the point that music is a powerful thing. Even if you are not as obsessed with music as I once was, music still is a very powerful thing. A well-crafted and skillfully performed song has the power to grab our attention, to make a deep emotional impact, to leave a lasting impression, and also to serve as an aid to memorization. I suspect that many of us probably learned the English alphabet as children by being taught, you know it, the ABC song. And I used that principle in seminary. When I was struggling to learn the Hebrew alphabet in seminary, I decided one day to make up a little ditty for reciting it, and once I put it to music, I was able to memorize it rather quickly. Music is powerful, and it aids the memory.

Well, dear ones, in our passage for this Lord’s Day morning, the Holy Spirit inspired the prophet Isaiah to employ this beautifully crafted lyrical masterpiece, typically called the Song of the Vineyard, and he did so in order to grab his audience’s attention and to draw them in as the Lord, through Isaiah, delivers an unforgettable message of judgment against the professed people of God, a people who had absolutely no excuse for their faithlessness to the Lord. Isaiah begins this passage by playing the role of a folk singer who sings a love song, but as the passage progresses, the literary flow goes from love song to lamentation to explanation. If you paid attention, as I read through this passage, it starts off as a love song, it turns into a lamentation, and finally, at the very end in verse 7, the Lord, through Isaiah, explains the significance of this passage and its meaning.

It begins in a seemingly joyful atmosphere of song, but in verse 3, it quickly shifts gears to a courtroom setting, and then it ends in verses 5 through 7 with a pronouncement of divine judgment and a divine interpretation of this song allegory. The lyrical beauty of this song parable or allegory draws the listener in, but the sudden shift in tone and content shocks the listener with a divine pronouncement of judgment that leaves an indelible impression upon the conscience, an impression that is intended to cause the hearers to feel the weight of their guilt, the weight of their wretchedness, and also to cause them to see their desperate need for God’s forgiving and restorative and renewing mercies and grace. Now what is the context of this passage? You’ll recall the last time we were in Isaiah that at the end of chapter 4, we had a messianic prophecy, a messianic prophecy about the branch of the Lord, which is a prophetic title for the promised Messiah.

And one of the things that we’ve observed so far as we’ve made our way up to this point in the prophet Isaiah and his writings is that he alternates between judgment and then oracles of hope and messianic expectation. Well, here in chapter 5, Isaiah returns to the judgment theme. And so let’s dive in to our passage for today. And the first thing I want us to consider from verses 1 and 2, the opening verses of chapter 5, is Yahweh’s meticulous care for his vineyard. Yahweh, by the way, that’s the covenant name for God in the Hebrew. It’s usually the English translators will indicate that they’re using, that they’re translating Yahweh when they put the name Lord in all capital letters. So when I say Yahweh, I’m speaking of God’s covenant name. And that focuses especially on God as the covenant redeemer of his people Israel.

And we notice in this passage, Yahweh’s meticulous care for his vineyard. Again, let me read verses 1 and 2. It starts off on a joyful note. It says, let me sing for my beloved. It’s almost like a romantic song is starting here. Let me sing for my beloved, my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it. And he looked for it to yield grapes. We would expect that such a carefully manicured vineyard would produce much in the way of a harvest of sweet and juicy grapes. But instead it yielded what? Wild grapes or useless grapes. In this story song, the owner of the vineyard would have every reason to expect that his vineyard would produce an abundant harvest of good grapes.

After all, he planted his vineyard in an ideal location that had ideal soil. A very fertile hill is how it’s described in verse 1. In the Hebrew, it’s literally on a hill, the son of oil, again, expressing its ideal location and the good soil of that location. And not only that, it says he dug it and cleared it of stones. Now to the original hearers and listeners of this prophecy, that would have made a great impression because there were many stones in that region where Isaiah prophesied. So given the prevalence of stones in that region where Isaiah ministered, this would have required labor intensive effort, an effort that would demonstrate on the part of the owner a great devotion to its vineyard and to the success and fruitfulness of his vineyard. Not only did he choose the ideal spot with ideal soil, not only did he clear it of anything that might hinder its fruitfulness, it says that he also, it says, what does he do next?

It says he planted it with choice vines. He planted it with choice vines. Good vines, not leftovers, not bad stuff, not questionable stuff. Good vines. Again, we see the owner’s commitment to providing for the success and the fruitfulness of his vineyard. And not only that, we’re told that he built a watchtower, not just a booth. Back in chapter one, verse eight, Isaiah had spoken about a booth in a vineyard. But this owner of the vineyard builds a watchtower, showing the owner’s commitment to the protection and well-being of his vineyard, giving his vineyard every possible advantage to bearing a fruitful yield. And then there is mention also of a wine vat. Again, friends, these pictures and images of the vineyard which Isaiah piles up, these all serve to show the owner’s faithful commitment to his vineyard and his meticulous care for it.

Again, given all of this meticulous care for his vineyard and the protection that he has provided for his vineyard and the digging up of the soil and the clearing out of the stones and the setting up of a watchtower and the planting of choice vines, he would naturally, the owner would naturally expect an abundant harvest. And if there is anything lacking in the harvest, it certainly could not be blamed on the owner. The vineyard, using some personification, the vineyard couldn’t say to the owner, well, you didn’t do enough for me. That’s why I’m not bearing enough fruits, no. Now who was the owner, this owner of the vineyard? Isaiah addresses the owner of the vineyard in verse one as my beloved. But it’s clear as we read on in this passage that the owner of the vineyard represents the Lord himself.

In verse three, there’s a shift from Isaiah addressing the Lord as his beloved to the Lord addressing his people. It says, and now, oh, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. And then, of course, the explanatory verse at the end of this passage, verse seven, makes it clear, for the vineyard of whom? The vineyard of Yahweh of hosts, the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah. So the Lord himself is the owner of the vineyard. And what does the vineyard represent? Again, verse seven makes it abundantly clear. The vineyard represents Israel or Judah. In other words, it represents the professed covenant people of God. And of course, this is not the only place in the scriptures where God’s people are represented as either a vine or a vineyard.

Other prophets pick up on this imagery as well. For example, let’s just look at a few other passages as we compare scripture with scripture. Turn to Jeremiah chapter two, verse 21. Jeremiah’s right after Isaiah. Jeremiah chapter two, verse 21. Here again, the Lord through the prophet Jeremiah says this. Let me start at verse 20 actually. For long ago I broke your yoke and burst your bonds. That’s a reference to the Lord delivering the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt, his redeeming his people from slavery. Long ago I broke your yoke and burst your bonds, but you said, I will not serve. Yes, on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed down like a whore. Yet I planted you a choice vine, holy of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine?

Or consider Ezekiel, Ezekiel chapter 19, verses 10 through 14. Ezekiel again is right after Jeremiah. Ezekiel 19, verses 10 through 14. Another imagery is used. It says this. The Lord says through Ezekiel. Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard, planted by the water, fruitful and full of branches by reason of abundant water. Its strong stems became ruler’s scepters. It towered aloft among the thick boughs. It was seen in its height with the mass of its branches. But the vine was plucked up in fury, cast down to the ground. The east wind dried up its fruit. They were stripped off and withered. As for its strong stem, fire consumed it. Now it is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty land. And fire has gone out from the stem of its shoots, has consumed its fruit, so that there remains in its no strong stem, no scepter for ruling.

This is a lamentation and has become a lamentation. God’s people compared to a fruitless vine. And finally, one more verse, Hosea chapter 10, verse 1, Hosea chapter 10, verse 1. Hosea is right after Daniel. Hosea chapter 10, verse 1. The prophet Hosea writes, Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built, meaning altars to pagan gods. And as his country improved, he improved his pillars, his pillars used in the worship of false gods. And so, our passage for today. The Lord is the owner of the vineyard. The vineyard is God’s visible covenant community, God’s people. And what is the charge? What is the message here at the end of verse 2? It says, and he, the owner, looked for it to yield grapes. Why wouldn’t it yield grapes?

Everything had been done for it that could be done, at least externally. But it yielded wild grapes. Or as some translations translate it, worthless grapes. That’s how the New American Standard Version translates it. It’s interesting, the Hebrew indicates stinking things. Instead of juicy grapes, it’s rotten fruit, it’s stinking fruit. Consider my friends, the special ways that the Lord had cared for His people and had provided for their spiritual fruitfulness. Consider all that God had done for His people. God had redeemed and rescued His people from slavery. They were slaves for years and years and years. They were enslaved under the burdens of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. And the Lord miraculously, supernaturally delivered them. And He brought them out of Egypt. He performed miracles and signs and wonders in their midst, showing His care for them.

He parted the Red Sea, enabling them to go through on dry land. And He closed the Red Sea over the Egyptians who pursued them. Such mighty acts of deliverance. And then He brings them to Mount Sinai, where He gives them through the prophet Moses. He gives them His law, His Word. We are told in Romans chapter 3 that it was to the Jews that God had committed the divine oracles, the Word of God. They’d been given the Scriptures. And not only that, the Lord led them through the wilderness, through the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. This supernatural manifestation that hovered over the tent of meeting. God gave them also His tabernacle and later on His temple when He brought them into the land. And that tabernacle and later on temple, what was that a symbol of?

That was a symbol of God’s gracious royal presence dwelling in the midst of His people. It was a reminder to the people of God that though they were sinful, the Holy God had come to make His dwelling place in their midst. God had rescued them. He had cleared out the stones, if you will, in the promised land. He had cleared out the pagan peoples of the promised land. The wicked Canaanites, the idolatrous Canaanites and Amorites and Girgashites and all the other ites that there were that were cleared out of the land. And He planted His people in the promised land. And then He continued to rule them and guide them. And He raised up for them an anointed king, the Davidic kings. Great David, King David. And the Messiah is going to be the ultimate anointed one, Great David’s greater Son.

Think of all these amazing spiritual privileges that the people of God, the professed people of God had received under the Old Covenant, especially in contrast to the pagan darkness that lay over the surrounding Gentile nations. You would think that the people of God would continue grateful for all that the Lord had done for them, that they would be loyal to the Lord, that they would refuse to follow the pagan ways of the nations that surrounded them, but no. Instead of being a light and witness to the Gentiles around them, instead of pointing the Gentile nations around them to the true and living God in whom alone is salvation, instead of that, they adopted the customs and practices, the pagan customs and practices of the nations. And not only that, they were to be a just and holy society.

They were to be a picture of the justice of heaven, for the promised land was a type and picture of the ultimate promised land of the new heavens and the new earth. And that’s why the Old Covenant people of God was a theocracy. They were to rule and show justice and righteousness in society, the kind of justice that we would expect in heaven, where things would be done on earth as they are done in heaven. But instead, there was bloodshed, there was oppression. The people of God, the professed people of God, did not treat each other with justice. They oppressed each other and were guilty of violence and bloodshed. That’s in particular the sins that Isaiah focuses on in this passage, as we learn at the end of verse 7. They had received so much.

What more in terms of external inducements and encouragements could the Lord have done for them? In spite of all these amazing and miraculous benefits and privileges, very little spiritual fruit was born. Instead, unbelief and idolatry abounded, and only a remnant of the people manifested the fruit of a true and living faith in Yahweh, their covenant God. God always preserves for Himself a faithful remnant, a chosen remnant. But in spite of all that God had done for them, only a small remnant remained faithful. You say, well, this is the new covenant, so what does this have to do with us? Well, friends, with the coming of Jesus Christ and the new covenant, we have received even greater spiritual privileges than our brethren under the old covenant. And therefore, let us pay all the more attention, for with greater privileges come even greater responsibilities.

I’m reminded of what we are told in Hebrews chapter 2, verses 1 through 4. The author of Hebrews says this, and again, Hebrews is written to a group of Jewish Christians who were being tempted because of the pressures of persecution to abandon their Christian faith and to go back to their previous Judaism. The author of Hebrews writes this, Therefore we, we who are believers under the new covenant, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will.

Let us pay all the more attention, for we have been privileged with even greater privileges. And that leads me to my next point as we move on in our passage and consider verses 3 and 4, the bad fruit produced by Yahweh’s vineyard. The bad fruit produced by Yahweh’s vineyard. Here we go from a love song to a courtroom scene as it says this, and now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild or rotten grapes, worthless grapes, stinking things, as the Hebrew indicates? Here again, this allegory shifts from a love song to a courtroom scene, and beginning in verse 3, the direct speaker is no longer the prophet addressing Yahweh as his beloved, but Yahweh Himself, the owner of the vineyard, addressing His people, those described as Jerusalem and the men of Judah, and calling upon them to judge between Himself and His vineyard.

And given that His vineyard is the people of Israel and Judah themselves, He’s calling them to judge yourselves, judge between me and you. Is my charge about your fruitfulness true or not? And then in verse 4, He says, what more was there to do for my vineyard? In other words, what more could have been done in terms of external means and motivations and inducements toward holiness and spiritual fruit in their lives, and also the fruits of true justice and righteousness within the Israelite theocracy at a societal level? After all, He had given them His word. He had given them His oracles, His very word. Brothers and sisters, God has given us His word. We have His word in its fullness now, and yet how many of us allow it to sit and collect dust on the bookshelf?

There are brothers and sisters right now in other parts of the world who don’t have access to the word of God, who would literally give an arm or a leg to have their own copy of the word of God. We have multiple copies of the word, but do we really read the word? Do we meditate on the word day and night as the blessed man of Psalm 1 does? I know that ultimately speaks to Christ, but are we in the word? The people of old, they had been given His word, His Torah, His covenant instruction, His law. Not only that, but God had blessed them with the ordinances for true worship. He had given them the blessings of the priesthood and the sacrifices, all of which preached the gospel in symbol form and pointed them forward to the person and work of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Not only that, He had given them His very own Shekinah glory presence as symbolized by the temple in Jerusalem, and He had given them His gracious royal rule through providing them with the Davidic kingship. What great privileges indeed, and what great inducements to the bearing of spiritual fruits and holy living and a just and righteous social order. But instead, what fruits did they bear? Did they bear the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-contradiction? Did they bear the fruit of humility and allegiance to and trust in and love for the Lord and repentance? No. They bore the fruit of a wandering heart, going after the gods of the nations and seeking to incorporate the pagan practices of their surrounding gentile neighbors into their own worship of God. And not only that, oppressing each other, acts of violence and bloodshed against their fellow Israelites.

It’s interesting, verse 7 speaks of their fruits. It says, For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. And he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed. Now in the Hebrew, the word for justice sounds similar to the word for bloodshed. It’s a Hebrew wordplay, which again is a lyrical way of driving home the point to the consciences of his listeners. And then he goes on to say, I looked for righteousness, but behold an outcry, an outcry due to oppression. Again the words in the Hebrew for righteousness and outcry sound similar. So he’s using a Hebrew wordplay here. But not only is he confronting the people with their social injustices, their injustices toward one another and violence on a social level. Read through the rest of Isaiah and read through the rest of the Old Testament and you will see that the professed people of God, time and time and time again, bore the evil fruits of disloyalty to the Lord through their idolatry and their covenant breaking.

In other words, instead of bearing spiritual fruits, the spiritual fruits of true faith and repentance, they bore the wild grapes of impenitence, unbelief, hardness of heart, stubbornness of will. You say, well, yeah, they were pretty bad people back then, weren’t they? But we’re better today, right? Are we really? Once again, consider how much greater our privileges are today as the church under the new covenant. No longer do we have mere shadows and types and thank God, no longer do we have to bring to our worship assemblies animals to slit the throats of and sacrifice on an altar. Aren’t you glad you don’t have to do that? Because Jesus, the lamb of God, he was sacrificed once and for all and forever and is fully atoned for all of the sins of all who come to believe in him.

Friends, today we know the name of the Messiah, our old covenant brethren didn’t know his name. We know his name, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and we have received the full disclosure of his gospel. And yet how many of God’s professed people today bear wild grapes instead of the good grapes of the fruit of the Spirit and spiritual renewal? Dear ones, it’s important to understand God looks for fruit among his people. Now our fruits can’t save us and by fruits we mean the good works that are produced by true faith. The Lord looks for his people to bear the fruits of repentance and faith, the fruits of new obedience. But it’s important to understand we’re not saved on the basis of those fruits. Those fruits don’t contribute to or add to the finished work of Christ in any way.

After all, the only fruits that can save us are Christ’s fruits, Christ’s obedience and sacrifice, the fruits of his saving work alone. But at the same time, the spiritual fruits that we produce manifest whether our trust is in Christ or in something or someone else. Our Lord Jesus once said in a context where he’s warning against false prophets, he says you will recognize them by their fruits. And in that context, the fruits could be either false doctrine or evil living, or I believe both perhaps. Let me just read quickly Matthew 7, 15 through 20, Matthew chapter 7, verses 15 through 20. The Lord Jesus at the end of his sermon on the mount says this, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits.

Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire, thus you will recognize them by their fruits. Again, this principle applies specifically to the false prophets he’s warning against, but I believe it can be applied in any situation, more broadly speaking. By their fruits you shall know them. And that brings me to my final point, beloved. And that is, let us consider Yahweh’s judgment upon his faithless vineyard, Yahweh’s judgment upon his faithless vineyard. Here the allegory depicts the owner of the vineyard taking great pains to prepare his vineyard for a fruitful harvest, but he is deeply disappointed because it doesn’t yield a good harvest, it yields a rotten harvest.

So what is the owner of the vineyard going to do? So the Lord tells us what he’s going to do to his fruitless vineyard. Verse 5, and now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge. In other words, I’ll remove its protection so that the wild animals come and trample it down. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured. I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste. It shall not be pruned or hoed, and briars and thorns shall grow up, and it shall bear thorns and thistles, in other words. And not only that, he says, I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. If you read the covenant curses recorded in Deuteronomy, one of the curses is that if the people were unfaithful to the Lord, then the Lord would withhold the rain.

So this is a sign of God’s covenant curses upon the people. So in these verses, what do we learn that the Lord is going to do to his fruitless vineyard? Well, God would remove the special protection that he had provided for his people, allowing his vineyard to be trampled down, wasted, and turned into a fruitless wilderness that bears not bountiful fruit, but thorns and thistles, the kinds of thorns and thistles that God had cursed the ground with as a result of man’s fall into sin. Remember the curse back in Genesis 3, verse 18. See the promised land was to be a land flowing with milk and honey, right? God promised his people, I will give you a land of milk and honey. It was to be a fruitful land, a land with bountiful harvests. But the Lord is saying, no, it’s no longer going to bear bountiful harvests.

It’s going to bear briars and thorns. The harvest will be disappointing. Instead of a fruitful vineyard bearing the marks of God’s blessing, it would be turned into a barren wasteland bearing the marks of God’s curse. You say, well, how is this fulfilled? Well, it was fulfilled initially when God in the history of Israel allowed foreign invaders to invade the land of his people, the land of Israel and Judah. But it was also fulfilled in the Babylonian exile where the Babylonians came in and they destroyed Jerusalem. They leveled the temple, they destroyed the temple and they took the people into exile. And then verse 7, we go from the lamentation of verses 5 and 6 to the final declaration and explanation of what this all means. Verse 7, for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting.

And he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed for righteousness and behold an outcry. The song has been sung and the lamentation has been delivered. Now as if to drive the point home with a laser focused pointedness, the vineyard of this song allegory is identified and by implication so is the owner. And what we’ll follow in the remainder of this chapter, chapter 5, is a series of woes that Yahweh pronounces against his faithless fruitless people. So it’s kind of a depressing passage. It starts off on a joyful note or a seemingly joyful note and gets your attention, but then it delivers, it delivers a pointed message and a warning. Dear ones, our God, as I said, our God looks for fruit among his people. But let’s be honest, none of us bears spiritual fruit as we ought to.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and it is loyalty to God and a humble spirit and a repentant heart and a trust in the Lord. How many of us we look at our lives and instead of seeing the fruit of the Spirit we see manifestations of the works of the flesh so very often. All of us naturally produce wild grapes or stinking things in our lives. What hope then is there for us, especially since we are even more responsible, we have even more privileges and we therefore are guilty of even greater neglect of the things of the Lord. What hope then is there for us? Well, our hope is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ for you see, my friends, though this passage seems to be a depressing passage at one level, it’s ultimately a joyful passage because it points us to Christ.

You see, ultimately it is Jesus Christ who fulfills the song of the vineyard. He fulfills it by way of contrast but he fulfills it nonetheless. For unlike God’s people of old, Jesus Christ is the true, faithful, fruitful vine even as he is the true obedient Israel. And by God’s grace we who by faith abide in him bear good fruit, not the fruits of our own works or merits or efforts or attempts at obedience, but the fruit of his grace, the fruit of the Spirit. Are you abiding in Christ? Do you look to the fruit of his obedience and sacrifice alone to make you right with God and to save your soul? As I close, as we close our time in the word, let me leave you by reading from John chapter 15 verses 1 through 17.

And here are these words of our Lord Jesus, the one who is the true vine, John 15, 1 through 17. The Lord Jesus says, I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Maybe you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, in other words trust in me, and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is who bears much fruit for apart from me you can do nothing.

If anyone does not abide in me, if anyone does not trust in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the father has loved me so have I loved you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love just as I kept my father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. And this is my commandment that you love one another.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants for a servant does not know what his master is doing but I have called you friends. For all that I have heard from my father I have made known to you. You did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the father in my name he may give it to you. These things I command you so that you will love one another. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you that Christ is the true and faithful vine and that by your sovereign grace we who are believers trust in him, abide in him and therefore we can be confident that in your time and by your grace we will bear spiritual fruit that demonstrates ourselves to be your disciples.

We thank you for the saving fruits of Jesus our Lord. We pray that we might benefit from those fruits in our lives. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, Amen.

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August 18, 2024
The Beautiful and Glorious Branch of the LORD

About this sermon

Isaiah pronounces judgment on the haughty daughters of Zion, stripping away their finery, and then promises that in that day the branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious. The Lord will wash the survivors in Zion by a spirit of judgment and burning and call them holy, and the Lord will create over Mount Zion a cloud by day and fire by night, as in the exodus, a canopy over his people. The branch is the Messiah, Jesus, beautiful and glorious to those whose eyes the Spirit opens, and his people are the Lord’s dwelling place.

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Sermon transcript

My sermon text this morning as we continue our consideration of the book of the prophet Isaiah is a short passage found in Isaiah chapter 4 verses 2 through 6. Now I’m going to begin reading back in chapter 3 verse 16 and read to the end of chapter 3 and into chapter 4. So let us hear God’s Holy Word. You’ll find this our passage for today in Isaiah 4 verses I’m sorry on page 676 in your pew Bibles but again beginning at chapter 3 verse 16. Let us hear dear friends the Word of our God. The Lord said because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks glancing wantonly with their eyes mincing along as they go tinkling with their feet therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts in that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets the headbands and the crescents the pendants the bracelets and the scarves the headdresses the armlets the sashes the perfume boxes and the amulets the signet rings and nose rings the festal robes the mantles the cloaks and the handbags the mirrors the linen garments the turbans and the veils instead of perfume there will be rottenness and instead of a belt a rope and instead of well-set hair baldness and instead of a rich robe a skirt of sackcloth and branding instead of beauty your men shall fall by the sword and your mighty men in battle and her gates shall lament and mourn empty she shall sit on the ground and seven women shall take hold of one man in that day saying we will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes only let us be called by your name take away our reproach in that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel and he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the blood stains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day and smoke in the shining of a flaming fire by night for over all the glory there will be a canopy there will be a booth for shade by day from the heat and for a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain dear friends the grass withers the flower fades but the word of our God endures forever shall we pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of his word Lord Jesus Christ be present in the preaching of your word this day attend with us by your spirit we beseech you and open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word we thank you Lord God for your God-breathed inerrant infallible authoritative word it is indeed a lamp unto our feet a light unto our path a guide to our way we pray Heavenly Father that the word would be implanted in our souls this day and that by your spirit you would cause that word to bear much spiritual fruit in our lives fruit that brings praise and glory and honor to your holy name be with us now and bless us challenge us encourage us through the word and we pray Lord once again that you would set a guard over my lips that I your unworthy servant may only speak forth that which is clearly in line with your word and faithful to that word we pray these things in Jesus name and all of God’s people said amen you may be seated the title my sermon this morning is the beautiful and glorious branch of the Lord and the key words that the young people can be listening for in my sermon today there’s five of them the words branch fruit remnant Messiah and recreation not recreation but re-creation well dear ones the word of God teaches us that God is sovereign over human history not only is God sovereign over human history the scriptures teach us that he is working out his redemptive plan within human history as I’m fond of saying and you’re probably getting tired of hearing me say this but remember friends history is what his story scripture teaches us beloved that this amazing divine plan of redemption culminates and finds its fulfillment in the promised Messiah the anointed one of God namely Jesus of Nazareth the incarnate Son of the living God our Lord and Savior now friends the phenomenon of Bible prophecy powerfully underscores the truth of God’s sovereignty over human history especially when it comes to predictive prophecy in other words biblical prophecies which predict future events predictive prophecy is proof that God is in sovereign control over history and even over the future for he has planned out the future by his sovereign decree and he is moving history onwards towards its predetermined end goal we are told in in Ephesians for example that that end goal is the summing up the uniting of all things in heaven and on earth in Christ and the ultimate goal of God in all of his works is the glorification of his own glorious triune being friends messianic prophecies in particular in other words Old Testament prophecies which predict the coming Messiah serve to powerfully underscore this truth that God has been sovereignly working out his plan of redemption within history that plan which he carries out through the person and saving work of Jesus the Messiah our wonderful Lord and gracious Savior as I hope to demonstrate today dear friends our passage for this Lord’s spiritually rich and powerful messianic prophecy as it uses old covenant language and imagery and concepts to describe the promised Messiah and to describe the blessings of the messianic new covenant age that would be ushered in with the coming of the promised Messiah the Lord Jesus Christ but not only does this passage have great redemptive historical significance it also has great doctrinal significance this passage as we will see touches upon and alludes to many important Bible doctrines for example as we will see this brief passage of God’s word touches upon doctrines related to Christology Christology being the doctrine of the person of Christ that that branch of theology that studies what the scriptures teach about who Jesus is as the God man the word made flesh our passage also touches upon matters having to do with soteri ology in other words the doctrine of salvation and some of the important doctrines related to salvation that are described in this brief passage have to do with divine election of the remnant theology redemption from sin renewal and new life and so forth and this passage also touches upon matters having to do with ecclesiology in other words the doctrine of the church it’s important for us to understand this passage within its broader context one of the challenges in reading books of the Bible like Isaiah is it’s Isaiah is not the kind of portion of scripture it’s not the kind of book of scripture that you can read in isolated proof text form Isaiah is meant to be read in broader blocks it is it is an ongoing unfolding revelation of God in and through the prophets Isaiah our passage for today is a prophecy of messianic hope and expectation but it’s a prophecy of hope and expectation that serves to bookend a larger section of Isaiah that is primarily a judgment section remember I’ve said in the past that that you read through Isaiah and it kind of goes back and forth between passages prophecies of judgment and gloom and doom on the one hand and then prophecies of messianic hope and joy and expectation on the other hand this larger section that our passage for today represents the final book end to began back in chapter 2 verse 1 and it goes all the way through verse 6 of our passage for today remember friends that back in chapter 2 verses 1 through 4 that passage is the opening book end which is a prophecy of hope predicting the spiritual glories of the messianic latter days but then immediately after that passage follows a lengthy section of doom and judgment which predicts the final judgment day at the end and then kind of telescopes in more narrowly to focus on near-term historical judgments that Yahweh would bring against Judah and Jerusalem as we saw in our consideration of chapter 3 but now friends now after gloomy predictions of judgment against the godless and unbelieving now the spirit leads Isaiah to end this larger section on a note of joyful messianic hope and expectation what do we learn from this larger context and setting that’s important to ask ourselves because we’re meant to read this passage in light of what has preceded it what do we learn then from this larger passage what is its overarching theme or dear ones I would suggest to you that the overarching theme of this section of Isaiah is that the righteous and holy and infinitely just God the God who manifests himself as the just judge of the unrepentant and godless this very same God is also a God who manifests himself as the Savior protector and preserver of his redeemed people another way to put it is to say that in this section of God’s word that we’re considering here from the book of the prophet Isaiah in this section we see that in wrath God remembers mercy so let us turn our attention to the details of our passage for today and the first thing I want to point out to you beloved in verse 2 is the promise of the messianic branch if you’re following along in your sermon outline this is the first point we note here the promise of the messianic branch it says in verse 2 in that day the branch of Yahweh the term Lord there in all capital letters L-O-R-D that indicates that the English translator is translating the Hebrew name Yahweh which is the covenant name for God it’s the name for the Lord that has in view the Lord’s special relationship with his people Israel in that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel and so we have the promise of the messianic branch when will this promise take place well how does Isaiah begin this verse he says in that day in what day this same kind of in that day language is used in the immediately preceding verse in verse 1 to refer to a time of God’s judgment against the daughters of Zion a time when the male population of the land will have been decimated by war because of the judgments of God and therefore the daughters of Zion will will compete have to compete for husbands as verse 1 says and seven women shall take hold of one man in that day saying we will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes only let us be called by your name take away our reproach that’s what the in that day is referring to in verse 1 but obviously in verse 2 this in that day language is referring not to a time of judgment but a time of restoration here in verse 2 it refers to a hopeful time a time of reformation that would arrive with the coming of the Messiah and his kingdom the spiritual blessings of the messianic age in which we now live in this new covenant era were typified and anticipated of course by Old Testament historical events such as the reforms that were carried out under the good King Hezekiah and also the rebuilding of the temple and the renewal of God’s covenant people in the days of the post exilic community when God brought his his exiled people back from their Babylonian exile but all of those things that took place in Old Testament times are not the ultimate fulfillment of this passage the ultimate fulfillment of this passage beloved is found in the coming of the Messiah who again is here described in this interesting botanical and agricultural imagery as the beautiful and glorious branch of the Lord now the first thing I want to do beloved is to establish the messianic identity of the branch because there are some Bible scholars and commentators out there who would who would say that well this is not technically a direct messianic prophecy and they would interpret the branch of the Lord not as the prediction of the coming Messiah but as something else but again I agree with dr.

EJ Young who translates this as sprout instead of branch and dr. Young writes in the present passage the sprout is that shoot which comes from the tree of David which has been cut down and which springs to life from its fallen trunk and brings the tree to more glorious and wondrous heights than before remember friends that the Old Testament predicts that the coming Messiah the promised Messiah would be great David’s greater son he would be a descendant of King David and indeed the Lord Jesus was a descendant of King David the royal the royal line of David but again not all commentators believe this branch refers to the promised Messiah for example some argue that the branch is a collective term for God’s people as a whole however friends I think that when we compare scripture with scripture that it is clearly established that this is a reference to the Messiah and we see and let me just take you to a few passages to support this one of these passages is found here in Isaiah itself if you skip ahead to Isaiah chapter 11 verse 1 Isaiah chapter 11 verse 1 also refers to this branch and this is clearly Isaiah 11 is clearly a messianic prophecy and it says in Isaiah 11 verse 1 there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him and so forth this indeed shows that the branch referred to by Isaiah in chapter 4 is the same branch that is being referred to here in chapter 11 namely the shoot from the stump of Jesse and the branch from the roots that shall bear fruit in other words the promised Messiah but the prophet Jeremiah also uses the same kind of branch language if you turn to Jeremiah chapter 23 and look at verse 5 Jeremiah chapter 23 verse 5 we read these words behold the days are coming declares the Lord when I will raise up for David a righteous what a righteous branch and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land this is clearly referring to a king that comes from the line of David and this king this messianic king is described here by Jeremiah as the righteous a righteous branch and keep your finger in Jeremiah and turn to chapter 33 verse 15 Jeremiah 33 verse 15 we see similar language being used there where Jeremiah prophesies he says in those days and at that time I will cause a what a righteous branch to spring up for David and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land and one more passage from the Old Testament prophets that I want us to look at is Zechariah chapter 3 verse 8 Zechariah chapter 3 verse 8 in that passage we read these words here now oh Joshua the high priest Joshua or Yeshua Jesus being a type of of Christ our great high priest here now oh Joshua the high priest you and your friends who sit before you for they are men who are assigned behold I will bring my servant the branch notice the branch is called my servant and our Lord Jesus Christ is indeed the suffering servant of the Lord and other considerations could be mentioned but I hope that by showing you these other passages in scripture that I have established for you beloved the messianic identity of the branch that we read of in our passage for today and one of the other things that’s very interesting to note about verse 2 is the parallelism between the branch and the fruit of the land what we have here is very typical in in Hebrew prophecy and and it’s parallelism where you say one thing and then you say the same thing in a slightly different way and so it says in that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious and then to recap and reaffirm what he’s just said he uses different language he says and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel see I tend to agree again with Dr.

Young that the Hebrew parallelism here shows that the branch and the fruit of the land are both references to the promised Messiah the Lord Jesus Christ and he goes on to make the case and I agree with him that the branch of the Lord points to our Lord’s divine origin and Godhood after all he is the branch of Yahweh he is from the Lord this underscores his divine nature but he is also the fruit of the land and in that imagery of the fruit of the land this points to our Lord’s human nature as being of the earth this is what I meant by the way when I said earlier that this passage touches upon matters of Christology the doctrine of the person of Christ and so we learn that this promised Messiah is going to be a branch of the Lord and he is going to be both God and man but he is described as the fruit of the land because among other things he will bear much gospel fruit the Bible makes it clear that much gospel fruit will be born in the messianic New Covenant age this age in which we are privileged to live and we are told here that in that day the branch of the Lord shall be what beautiful and glorious think about that language beloved this is saying that Jesus Christ the promised Messiah our glorious Lord and Savior he is beautiful and glorious our Lord Jesus Christ is indeed objectively speaking as the Word made flesh as Emmanuel God with us he is beautiful and he is glorious of course the unbelieving world does not see the beauty of our Savior they don’t recognize his beauty nor his glory nor do they care unless and until the Spirit does a work of grace in their hearts but again while the unbelieving and the impenitent may not perceive the beauty of our Lord Jesus for those of us who know ourselves to be hell-deserving sinners sinners in desperate need of a merciful and all-powerful and pure and all-sufficient Savior for those of us who know our need Jesus Christ our Lord and his gospel are indeed beautiful and glorious to us and it goes on to say that the fruit of the land shall be what the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel the survivors of Israel what we have there as I’ll point out in a few minutes we have the remnant theme we have a focus on divine election in that passage but what does it say about the fruit of the land again Jesus with respect to his humanity he shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel now pride is not a good thing in it you know sinful pride is not a good thing boasting in ourselves is not a good thing but there is a legitimate pride that we can take a legitimate boasting that we can have for our boasting is not in ourselves our boasting is in the Lord as God’s redeemed people we boast not in ourselves not in our works not in our merits or worthiness for we have none apart from grace no friends our boast is in the Lord and I’m reminded of the words of the prophets I’m sorry of the Apostle Paul which he writes in 1st Corinthians chapter 1 verses 26 to 31 let me just read that that passage and he’s speaking to the Corinthian believers reminding them that when they were called when they were savingly called into the kingdom it’s not because they were of great position or power or wisdom he says for consider your calling brothers not many of you were wise according to worldly standards not many were powerful not many were of noble birth but God shows what is foolish in the world to shame the wise God shows what is weak in the world to shame the strong God shows what is low and despised in the world even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God and because of him you are in Christ Jesus not because of you by the way because of him you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that as it is written let the one who boasts boast in whom let the one who boasts boast in the Lord oh dear listener is Jesus the Messiah beautiful and glorious to you do you trust him as your Savior do you boast in yourself in your own worthiness or religiosity your own worth your own merit or do you boast in the Lord but pastor I need to have self-esteem that’s what the world tells you got to have self-esteem now we are all created in the image of God and so we should have a proper view of ourselves you have dignity and worth because of you were created in the image of God but the Bible never tells us to have self esteem our culture constantly bombards us with this message that hey you’re you’ve got it made you’re you’re a good person esteem yourself view yourself view yourself with heightened affirmation seek self-esteem the by the word the world says but the Bible says the opposite Jesus says if any man would come after me what should he do seek self-esteem no he should take up his cross and deny himself stop boasting in yourself stop seeking self-esteem have Christ esteem and by the way the ironic thing is that that as you are focused on Christ on the glory of his person and saving work as you are living your life in union with Christ you will have a proper sense of yourself a proper esteem for who you are as a child of God in Christ it is as you seek but if you follow the way the ways of the world and seek your own happiness and your own worth in yourself you will be miserable because we are to boast not in ourselves but in the Lord the Lord who is the beautiful and glorious branch the promised Messiah we see next in our passage the messianic cleansing and purification of the chosen remnant this is the second point in your sermon outline as we move on to verses three and four consider next the messianic cleansing and purification of the chosen It says this in verse three and four and he who is left in Zion and by the way he who is left is referring to the same folks that were referred to at the end of verse two namely the survivors of Israel and he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem in other words those whom God has spared from his judgment against the wicked and the hypocritical amongst his professed covenant people it says he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the blood stains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning now let’s consider first of all the identity of those whom he who is left of he who is left in Zion as is referred to in verse 3 and he who is left in Zion who is that referring to well again as I pointed out it’s referring to the survivors of Israel mentioned in verse 2 it’s referring as well to those recorded for life in Jerusalem and did you notice what are they recorded for they are recorded for not for death not for judgment they are recorded for life and ultimately this refers to those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life eternal life is what this is pointing to what this is referring to another way to put it is that this these these survivors of these who are left in Zion these who are recorded for life these are the elect remnant the judgment which had been predicted in the previous section would remove the fruitless branches from the vine in other words the godless and hypocrites would be removed from amongst the visible covenant community through through judgments such as the Babylonian exile and so forth only the election of grace only those recorded for life ultimately eternal life only those who are predestined by sovereign grace for eternal life and thus recorded in the Lamb’s book of life will survive and they will be called holy or set apart there are many passages of scripture numerous passages that refer to the people of God being recorded in the book of life and so forth and so for example if you turn to Revelation 20 and let me read verses 12 through 15 of Revelation chapter 20 we read these words and here this is speaking of the final judgment the great white throne judgment and it says and I saw the dead great and small this is Revelation 20 verse 12 and following and I saw the dead great and small standing before the throne and books were opened then another book was opened which is the book of life and the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done and the sea gave up the dead who were in it death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them and they were judged each one of them according to what they had done then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire this is the second death the lake of fire and if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life he was thrown into the lake of fire if your name if by sovereign grace your name has been written in the book of life and the evidence of that will be that you repent of your sin and you trust Christ as your Savior from sin then be assured your salvation is secure praise be to God but if not then there’s only the lake of fire oh be warned and turn from the wrath to come to Jesus Christ and if you do you will be saved and it’s it’s interesting to one more passage to consider in this context Acts 13 verse 48 if you turn to look at verse 48 speaking of this this matter of God’s election unto life we read this and here Paul and Barnabas are preaching the gospel at Antioch and Pisidia and and Paul says that God is sending the gospel to the Gentiles and it says in verse 48 of Acts 13 and when the Gentiles heard this they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed did you catch that it doesn’t say as many as believed were appointed to eternal life it says as many as were appointed to eternal life believed because if you’re dead in your trespasses and sins if you’re not born again by the Spirit you have no desire for life you’re responsible for your sin if you are lost you have no one to blame but yourself but if you’re saved you have no one to credit but the Lord who in sovereign mercy awakened you renewed you raised you from spiritual death to newness of life in Christ and brought you to faith in Christ yes you must believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ if you would be saved but who are the ones who believe those who have been appointed for life eternal and getting back to our passage that would include those whose names that would include everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem and notice how these are described here in verse 3 it says they will be called holy my friends the elect the chosen remnant are chosen not because they are worthy or holy or because God foresees that they will be worthy of his salvation or that they will be holy but rather they are chosen unto holiness by the sovereign grace of God as the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 1 in that wonderful opening doxology in verses 3 and 4 Paul writes blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be what that we should be holy and blameless before him not because he foresaw that we would be holy and blameless but in order that we might be holy and blameless before him but all of this is only possible because of the redemption and cleansing of the remnants that is spoken of in verse 4 of our passage where it says when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleanse the blood stains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning this reference to blood stains the language here seems to indicate blood stains as a result of violent death and there was violence that came upon the unfaithful among the people of God the professed people of God in in the Old Covenant era such as the violence that was visited in judgment upon them with the Babylonian conquest and the exile of the people into Babylon but even then God would cleanse even the filthy daughters of Zion as an act of sovereign grace the daughters of Zion against whom judgments had been pronounced in the previous section even their filth would be cleansed Jesus died for sinners not for people who are worthy or righteous in themselves but for sinners like me and like you the cleansing and purification is only made possible by the messianic atonement that Jesus our Lord offered on the cross of Calvary again to quote from dr. young he says this wondrous act of God was accomplished when the his eternal son the Lord Jesus Christ shed his precious blood upon the cross of Calvary then was washed away all the guilt and power of sin of those for whom he died you know what this reminds me of reminds me of that wonderful hymn of the church what can wash away my sin you know the answer right nothing but the blood of Jesus think about it dear brother sister in Christ Jesus poured out his life blood on the cross to save you and save me the blood represents the life Jesus poured out his life that your life and my life might be spared for he atoned for our sins have you been cleansed dear listener by the blood of Christ the lamb have you given all diligence to make your calling an election sure you say well how do I know again you know by trusting Christ it is by looking to Christ that you see your election in him and by the way as an aside this is not a sermon on the doctrine of election but many Christians are intimidated by that doctrine it’s not a doctrine that is revealed to cause us despair or to make us feel threatened it’s actually presented in scripture as a comforting doctrine because what it means brothers and sisters in Christ is that even before he created the universe God set his saving love upon you even though he knew you would be a fallen sinner he chose you from before the foundation of the world he’s loved you with an everlasting love and that should be a great comfort to you are you resting in his love for you in Christ but finally beloved as we wrap up our time in the word today I would have us turn to verses four and five as we consider and this is the final point in your outline the recreation of the messianic people as Yahweh’s dwelling place the recreation of the messianic people as Yahweh’s dwelling place one of the things that you may have noticed if you’ve tried to read through the Bible in its entirety you ever tried to read through Exodus the book of Exodus a wonderful portion of scripture it recounts God’s rescue his redemption of his people from their slavery in Egypt under Pharaoh it recounts the supernatural plagues that God had poured out upon the Egyptians it recounts how God rescued his people brought them through the Red Sea on dry land and how he gave them his holy law on Mount Sinai but then a large section at the end of Exodus contains some rather detailed instructions about the construction of the tabernacle now why does God do that why does God the Holy Spirit inspire Moses to record so many details about and to take up so much space in in the book of Exodus recording the details of how to construct the Ark or rather the tabernacle including the Ark of the Covenant well because God redeems and rescues his chosen people that he might dwell among his people and this concept is if you don’t understand this that this is a central theme of scripture that God comes to dwell in the midst of sinful man he does so ultimately and supremely in the person of Christ who is the Word made flesh who came to tabernacle to pitch his tent make his dwelling amongst us this is a central theme of Holy Scripture and it’s a theme that comes out in verses five and six where it says then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night for over all the glory there will be a canopy and so forth the word that is here translated as create the word that Isaiah uses here is the same word that is found in Genesis 1 verse 1 where it says in the beginning God Barah he created the heavens and the earth the language that Isaiah uses here makes it absolutely clear that this amazing work of renewing his people of recreating his people would be a gracious work of God and God alone did anyone help God in the beginning to create the universe no he did it all by himself by his sovereign word of creative power he spoke the word and all things came into being and so the point here is that in recreation as well when God recreates us makes us new in Christ it’s God’s work and God’s work alone it’s not that God does his part you do your part no it’s all of God sola gratia grace alone and therefore soli deo gloria to God alone be the glory and it says here the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion Mount Zion was the temple mount where the Lord’s special presence dwelt but it also mentions her assemblies in the plural now I read a passage for you earlier in the service where it talks about how God led the children of Israel in the wilderness through a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night this was not a natural phenomenon this was a supernatural this is what the theologians call a theophany a supernatural visible manifestation or symbol of the presence of God the saving a protective presence of God as he leads and guides and protects his people and that’s the symbolism that is being used here Mount Zion and her assemblies which are referred to in verse 5 ultimately point to the church as it exists in this messianic new covenant age in other words this is speaking to matters of ecclesiology the doctrine of the church and this is speaking to spiritual realities that we experience today brothers and sisters as those who live in this new covenant age in Old Testament times the theophanic shekinah glory of God had been limited at first it was limited to the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that accompanied Israel on their wilderness journeys and then it was confined to the sanctuary remember when Solomon dedicated the the temple the glory of God was so heavy in the temple that the priests could not stand up the shekinah glory of God that same glory that abode in the pillar of cloud in the pillar of fire was now abiding in the temple in the Holy of Holies dwelling above the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant and so the presence of God was there but it was limited and confined his special saving presence his covenantal presence but in the messianic age Isaiah depicts this supernatural manifestation of God’s presence dwelling among his people as being over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies do you see what is being depicted here friends in Old Testament times this supernatural manifestation of the pillar of cloud and fire signified to God’s people that he dwelt among them as their divine protector and guide but now that Christ has come and finished the work of redemption by his death and resurrection we now have access into the heavenly Holy of Holies by faith in Christ what happened when Jesus died on the cross of Calvary what happened in the temple do you remember what the scripture say that temple that the curtain that separated the holy place from the most holy place in the Jerusalem temple what happened to that curtain it was torn into from top to bottom from God to us God opened up the curtain so that now we who are redeemed by Christ and come to him by faith in Christ we come directly and without fear without a craven unbelieving fear we come directly into the presence the holy presence of God and though we do not see the Shekinah glory with the eyes of flesh that glory is among us the glory of God is here in the new covenant messianic assemblies of the people of God that’s the significance of church that’s why you should want to be in church because God is here God’s everywhere of course by virtue of his omnipresence but he is with his people in covenant blessing and grace in protection he is here in a special way by his spirit sometimes you hear people say well what would what would your church do if Jesus showed up well Jesus shows up to Grace Church every Sunday friends he is here by the spirit and his glory is over all of Mount Zion and then it goes on to use this wonderful imagery it says the glory there will be a canopy this term canopy was used to describe the protective canopy that was used for wedding ceremonies God’s protective covering will rest over all of his people and his people we are the bride of Christ and so it sums up in verse 6 there will be a booth for shade by day and from heat and for a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain dr. young writes over all the glory of the new Zion there will be a covering and if you are in Christ you are covered in his righteousness you are clothed in his gracious glory the imagery of course this is figurative imagery but it points to the truth that the Lord is our refuge the Lord is our protector again to quote from one of our hymns the Lord is a shelter in the time of storm God dwells among his people especially when they gather in covenant assembly God is our refuge he is our protector he is our guide may we rest in him may we look to him in his word to guide us amen let us pray Heavenly Father we thank you for Jesus the glorious and beautiful branch of the Lord we pray that we might see in Christ his wonderful beauty and glory and we pray that we might live for your glory take your word now that we’ve heard apply it to our hearts and be with us now as we continue our worship of you and our fellowship with one another in the fellowship meal today in Jesus name we pray and all of God’s people said amen

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August 4, 2024
Defying the LORD’s Glorious Presence

About this sermon

Isaiah warns Jerusalem to stop trusting in man. The Lord will take away bread and water, warriors, judges, prophets, and elders, and leave boys and the oppressive to rule, until no one will accept leadership even when others press it on him. The city stumbles because its words and deeds defy the Lord’s glorious presence. The Lord stands to judge the elders and princes who devoured the vineyard and crushed the poor. Each hearer must ask whether he trusts in Christ alone or in himself.

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Sermon transcript

Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. This morning as we continue our study of the book of the prophet Isaiah, we are in Isaiah chapter 3 verses 1 through 15. That’s my sermon text today. I’m going to begin reading at the very last verse of chapter 2 because that ending of chapter 2 connects with the theme that is taken up in chapter 3. You’ll find this on page 675 in your pew bibles. Dear friends, let us hear God’s holy word. Isaiah 2 verse 22. Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he? For behold, the Lord God of hosts is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah, support and supply, all support of bread, and all support of water. The mighty man and the soldier, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder, the captain of fifty and the man of rank, the counselor and the skillful magician, and the expert in charms.

And I will make boys their princes, and infants shall rule over them. And the people will oppress one another, every one his fellow, and every one his neighbor. The youth will be insolent to the elder, and the despised to the honorable. For a man will take hold of his brother in the house of his father, saying, You have a cloak, you shall be our leader, and this heap of ruins shall be under your rule. On that day he will speak out, saying, I will not be a healer. In my house there is neither bread nor cloak. You shall not make me leader of the people. For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord, defying his glorious presence. For the look on their faces bears witness against them.

They proclaim their sin like Sodom. They do not hide it. Woe to them, for they have brought evil on themselves. Tell the righteous that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds. Woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for what his hands have dealt out shall be done to him. My people, infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, your guides mislead you, and they have swallowed up the course of your paths. The Lord has taken his place to contend. He stands to judge peoples. The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders and princes of his people. It is you who have devoured the vineyard. The spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the faces of the poor, declares the Lord God of hosts.

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let us seek the blessing of the Lord upon the preaching of his word. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you that you have raised up prophets and apostles to reveal your word to your people, and we thank you for the prophet Isaiah and for the book of Isaiah, which is so instructive to us. We thank you for this portion of your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. We would ask, heavenly Father, that as your spirit breathed out this word, that your spirit would indeed use this word to breathe new life, renewed life into our souls, and we pray that you would make us open to the truths that the spirit is revealing to us in this portion of his word.

Be with us now, open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word, and grant unto me, your unworthy servant, the grace to declare your word with clarity and power and faithfulness. We pray these things in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon on this Lord’s Day morning is Defying the Lord’s Glorious Presence. This is based on my sermon title on a section of verse 8. And if you’re following along in your sermon outlines, there’s a number of words that I encourage the children to keep track of. The words judgment, leadership, righteous, faithful, and presence. Well, dear friends, few things are more necessary for the smooth and stable functioning of any organization or organized body than the presence of competent, stable, and ethical leadership within that organization or organized body.

This is true whether we’re talking about a business organization or a charitable organization, a government or governmental organization, or a church. When leadership fails, eventually that failure negatively impacts the entire organization. And when competent, experienced, stable leadership is replaced by incompetent, inexperienced, naively idealistic, and immature leadership, the organization in question will usually begin a downward negative spiral, a destabilizing spiral that if left unchecked will eventually result in the ruin and the destruction of the organization as a whole. And so for example, just to give you an example of this, in recent years we have learned through news reports of the situation in the nation of Haiti, and we’ve learned through news reports about the devastating impact of a weak, destabilized, and to my understanding a profoundly corrupt government in the nation of Haiti, which has led to the almost complete breakdown of that society and has left the Haitian population tragically vulnerable to things like gang violence and other social dangers and deprivations.

According to World Vision, in a report dated just two months ago on May 21, 2024, an estimated 80% of the capital city is under the control of gangs, including the international airport, which remains closed. Looting at Haiti’s main port has depleted critical fuel, water, and food supplies to alarming levels, intensifying an already severe food insecurity crisis. Well, dear ones, the kind of societal breakdown that Haiti is even now experiencing is what tends to happen to a society when strong, competent, and moral leadership is lacking and when corruption abounds. Friends, it is precisely this kind of societal breakdown and devastation that the Lord, Yahweh, Israel’s faithful covenant God, is threatening against His faithless people and against their leaders in this solemn judgment passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah, which we are considering on this Lord’s Day morning.

So as we turn our attention to our passage for today, I would again remind us of the context and setting of this passage. Our passage for this Lord’s Day morning is found within a lengthy judgment oracle section that extends basically from chapter 2 verse 6 all the way through chapter 4 verse 1. In chapter 2, the ultimate reference and fulfillment of the judgment oracle of that chapter is the final day of judgment, as we’ve learned in recent Lord’s Days. And that final day of judgment, of course, will occur when our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, returns in glory at the end of this present new covenant age in redemptive history. But beginning here in chapter 3, the Holy Spirit through the prophet Isaiah narrows the focus of this judgment oracle to the situation that existed among the professed people of God living in Isaiah’s time.

Thus, in chapter 3 verse 1, the focus is on the holy city of Jerusalem, the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah. The focus is on Jerusalem and on the land of Judah. If you look at verse 1, it says, for behold, and children, what does that word behold mean? That word means pay attention. This is important. For behold, the Lord God of hosts, the title for the Lord given here, exalts His sovereignty. He is the Lord God of hosts. And what is He going to do? He is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah support and supply, all support of bread and so forth. And so the focus narrows from God’s universal judgment that is coming at the end of this age on Judgment Day. The focus is narrowed down to Isaiah’s contemporaries and to the generations that would immediately follow that of Isaiah’s time.

Our passage for today is an example of judgment beginning at the household of God, as we read about in 1 Peter 4.17. And therefore, the focus turns from the general final judgment that God will bring upon all humanity at the end of this age to the specific historical judgments that God will bring upon Isaiah’s faithless covenant-breaking contemporaries and upon their descendants in the near-term future. Now in chapter 2, verse 22, the very last verse of the previous chapter, the Lord had urged the people not to trust in man. And here in chapter 3, we see one of the reasons why they are not to trust in man. I mean, back in chapter 2, verse 22, the Lord exhorts His people. He says, stop regarding man. Isaiah’s contemporaries were trusting in man. They were not trusting in the Lord their God.

Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, or of what account is he. Man is mortal. Man is sinful. Man is liable to disappoint you. But in chapter 3, we see one of the reasons why they are not to trust in men. Namely, Yahweh in judgment is planning to remove those men that the people had trusted in to bring stability and order to their society. And instead, the Lord would replace such men with leaders whose inexperience and naivete would make their leadership resemble the leadership of mere children, and whose incompetence and weakness would lead to the utter breakdown of social order and civil society within the Israelite theocracy. In other words, friends, in this judgment passage we are considering today, the God of order, the God who in the beginning brought order out of chaos, this God would threaten to remove order and to bring societal chaos and devastation upon his unrepentant, sinning people.

As we turn our attention to the opening section of this chapter, verses 1 through 7, we notice first of all a description of the deprivations of divine judgment. If you’re following along in your sermon outline, that’s the first main point. Consider, friends, the deprivations of divine judgment. It says in verse 1, for behold, the Lord God of hosts, this depicts the Lord as the God of all creation. He is the Lord of all of the hosts of heaven, and perhaps also this terminology points to God as the divine warrior, the one who fights for his people, or in the case of his covenant-breaking people, who fights against them. He is the Lord over the armies of heaven, all of the angelic armies. And what does he say? Behold, the Lord God of hosts, he is doing something in judgment.

He is what? Taking away from Jerusalem, the holy city, the city where the temple of the Lord dwelt, the temple that was a symbol of God’s gracious, redemptive presence and rule over his people. He is going to bring, he’s going to take away from Jerusalem and from Judah support and supply, and then to be more specific, all support of bread and all support of water. What is the Lord threatening here in this judgment oracle against his sinful people? Well, he is threatening to remove from Judah and Jerusalem even the basic necessities of life, basic necessities like food and water. And they would be removed, thereby threatening the basic survival of the people. And then the Lord also threatens to remove certain leaders that the people had trusted in instead of trusting primarily in the Lord.

And he mentions first of all military leaders. The mighty man and the soldier, apparently the people had trusted in their military might, their military strength instead of trusting in Yahweh, their faithful covenant making, covenant keeping God. The mighty man and the soldier, the judge and the prophet. There would be a dearth not only of military strength, but there would be, the word of the Lord would be rare in that day as well. And then he mentions the diviner and the elder. Apparently against God’s holy law, the people had turned to diviners. They had turned to the occult instead of turning to the word of the Lord. The captain of 50. The 50 was a military unit there. And the man of rank. The counselor and the skillful magician and the expert in charms. Here Isaiah mentions the kinds and categories of leaders, whether legitimate or illegitimate, that the people had come to depend upon for what might be described as their Judean way of life.

They were pretty comfortable with their way of life. But here Yahweh in holy judgment against his unrepentant, unbelieving people would strip away all of these supports that the people had relied upon instead of relying upon their God. Exposing them, making them vulnerable to his holy judgment. And then it goes on to say in verses 4 and 5, and I will make boys their princes. And infants shall rule over them. I don’t believe we necessarily have to understand this in an overly literalistic sense, although some of the kings of Judah had begun their reigns rather early in life. But the point here is that their leadership will be as the leadership of children. It will be leadership based on a lack of experience, a lack of wisdom, a lack of discernment. Remember Solomon’s son Rehoboam rejected the counsel of the elders and he followed the advice of his younger companions to the detriment of the kingdom.

And so that is an example of the kinds of things that are envisioned here. And then it goes on to say in verse 5, and the people will oppress one another. Everyone his fellow and everyone his neighbor. The youth will be insolent to the elder. That’s one sign of the breakdown of any society is when there is a lack of respect for the elderly in that society. The youth will be insolent to the elder and the despised to the honorable. Not only would the Lord Yahweh strip from his faithless people leaders who were competent, stable, and experienced, but in their place he would inflict in judgment upon his people inexperienced, incompetent, and childish leaders. So-called leaders who would afflict and oppress his people instead of leading them into the ways of justice, truth, righteousness, and obedience.

In the words of Dr. E.J. Young, when competent and capable men are removed from positions of authority in government, it is to be expected that incompetent and capricious rulers will take their place. And it is precisely that change which is here pictured. He goes on to say, when men who in experience and ability have the capacity of children take over the reigns of the state, chaos is bound to follow. And then he goes on to say in verses 6 and 7, for a man will take hold of his brother in the house of his father. Here’s the scenario that will work itself out as Isaiah envisions the judgment of God coming upon the people and inflicting them with this chaos and breakdown of society. It will get so bad that the following scenario will play out.

For a man will take hold of his brother in the house of his father saying, you have a cloak. You’re wearing nice clothes, in other words. You have a cloak. You shall be our leader. And this heap of ruins shall be under your rule. In that day he will speak out saying, I will not be a healer. In my house there is neither bread nor cloak. You think I’ve got it together? No, I don’t even have a bread or cloak in my house. In my house there is neither bread nor cloak. You shall not make me the leader of the people. There will be such desperation for sound, competent leadership that even those who look the part, even those who have superficial adornments and the outward appearances of competency will be sought out and conscripted for service.

But here’s the irony. Here’s the twist. They will refuse to serve. See, usually if someone is sought out to fill a high position, a position of great power or authority, of high leadership, usually it’s considered to be an honor. And at least you will consider it, right? If at your workplace the higher-ups approach you and offer you a promotion that would raise you up in your position, that’s usually a good thing. And certainly it’s an honorable thing in the business world to be asked to climb the ladder and get a promotion, and certainly in government as well. But the irony here is that when they’re offered, indeed, when they’re sought out and conscripted to such service, they say, no way, no way, Jose. They will protest, basically saying, look, we don’t want responsibility for this mess.

You’re not able to solve your problems or to fix your mess. Deal with it yourself. That’s the outcome here. Well, friends, I think there’s many lessons that we can learn from this portion of Isaiah’s judgment oracle here in this passage. But let me just mention a few points of application. First of all, brothers and sisters, let us be thankful for the blessing of a social order and for a basically competent, just civil government. Now, I’m not going to get political, don’t worry. But let’s face it, we are in the midst of an election season, and we Americans, if we love to do anything, we love to complain about our government. And certainly there are some things that could be legitimately complained against. But let us remember, brothers and sisters, that civil government is an ordinance of Almighty God.

The Bible reveals that the civil magistrate is actually described in Romans 13 as a minister, a servant of God, minister of God’s wrath against evildoers and so forth. Let us remember that civil government is an ordinance of God, and it is intended to be a great blessing to our fallen, sin-cursed world. To quote again from Dr. Young, good government is one of God’s best gifts to a sinful race. You see, stable governments do such positive things as restraining criminal behavior and protecting its citizens from the threats of foreign adversaries. And all of those actions of a stable, basically just government help to promote a life, a basic civil order and the ability to live in basic peace. As we’ve seen with the breakdown of civil government in places like Haiti, the breakdown of government leads to great dangers and hardships.

But the presence of a basically stable, not a perfect, there is no such thing as a perfect human government in this sight of glory, but the presence of a basically stable government is a great blessing and a great aid to the safety and security of any people. Therefore, brothers and sisters, let us pray for our government leaders. Let us pray for their salvation in the case of those who do not know the Savior, which would include, I believe, many of them. But also let us pray that God in his providence would guide them to govern justly, competently, righteously and ethically for the glory of God and for the common good. But friends, while we should be thankful for the blessing of stable civil government, we should never, ever put our trust in princes. Brothers and sisters, let us never put our ultimate trust in political leaders or in civil institutions or in military might.

These things can be helpful towards promoting justice in society and the common good. But let us not be like the people of Isaiah’s day, who put their ultimate hope and trust in man. Instead, may our ultimate trust be in the sovereign Lord and in him alone. Again, to quote from Isaiah 2.22, stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he? And so we see the deprivations of the people of the Lord in the opening section of chapter 3. But next, let us consider the reasons for such divine judgment. Let us consider the reasons for divine judgment. The Lord through Isaiah lays out the reasons for this severe judgment that he is about to bring upon his faithless people in verses 8-12. In verse 8, it says this, for Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord, defying his glorious presence.

And then in verse 9, for the look on their faces bears witness against them. They proclaim their sin like Sodom. They do not hide it. Woe to them, for they have brought evil on themselves. Now here, Isaiah summarizes the reasons for the Lord’s judgment against his people in these words. Why is he going to judge his people? It says in verse 8, because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord, defying his glorious presence. Or as versions like the New King James Version translate this last phrase, to provoke the eyes of his glory. The focus here is on God’s glorious presence and thus his all-seeing eye, if you will, his special observation and examination of his people. God’s holy presence and therefore his searching gaze were present in a special way among his covenant people, as symbolized by the temple in Jerusalem and by its altars.

God’s glorious presence dwelt in Jerusalem and in Judea in a special way. The temple represented God’s kingly, royal, covenantal, gracious and redemptive presence, dwelling in the midst of his sinful people. That’s the amazing thing about our God, is he redeems us not only to allow us to go to heaven when we die, but he redeems us by his grace so that he might come and make his dwelling in our midst. Jesus promises to be present where two or more are gathered in his name and the spirit, we are told in the scriptures, abides among us. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit and he dwells within us. He dwells in us as his people. His presence is in our midst, brothers and sisters. What’s interesting about the Old Testament, remember God had redeemed the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt.

He brought them out from under the burdens of Pharaoh and the Egyptians by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. He poured out many mighty supernatural plagues upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians and he brought his people out through the Red Sea on dry land. He brought them to Mount Sinai. He spoke his word to them. He gave them his laws. He also gave them very detailed instructions for how they were to make at first a tabernacle, a tent, where he would dwell in their midst by his Shekinah glory presence and ultimately by the temple. God redeems his people so that he might dwell in their midst. His glorious presence attended the children of Israel in their wilderness wanderings, going before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

And now that Solomon had built his glorious temple and there in the Holy of Holies of that temple was the Ark of the Covenant, a symbol of God’s throne. God was there. His glory was there in the temple, dwelling in the midst of his redeemed people. And what do they do? They disregard his glorious presence. They go after other gods. They consult diviners and charmers. They learn the ways of the pagan idol worshipping gentiles that surrounded them instead of being faithful to the Lord. As it says again in our passage in verse 8, their speech and their deeds are against the Lord. Notice in your English translation the term Lord is in all capital letters. That’s an indication to the English reader that the translators are translating the Hebrew term for God Yahweh, the Hebrew name Yahweh or sometimes transliterated as Jehovah.

This is the covenant name for God. This is the name for God in his special covenantal and redemptive relationship with his people Israel. But they had been against the Lord. The Lord in grace had been for them. He had redeemed them. He had brought them to himself. He had given them his word. He had brought them into his holy land. He came and dwelt amongst them. But they disregarded his glorious presence by trusting in man rather than trusting in the Lord. So instead of showing their gratitude to the Lord for his many mercies to them, instead of showing their gratitude through trusting him and seeking to live in obedience to his holy commandments, they defied his glorious presence or they provoked the eyes of his glory as it could be understood. What inexcusable ingratitude they showed.

And so he goes on to say in verses 10 through 12, tell the righteous that it shall be well with them for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds. Now why does Isaiah turn his attention here to the righteous? Well this assures us that even in this time of redemptive history, even in Isaiah’s day where there was so much degeneration, spiritual degeneracy among God’s people, God still had preserved for himself a remnant, a faithful remnant. There were among God’s unfaithful people as a whole, there were still those who sought to be faithful, who were rightly related to the Lord. And so God assures them through Isaiah, tell the righteous that it shall be well with them. They might not have felt that way at the time. They might have looked around them and said, you know, this is a godless environment.

Here we are supposed to be God’s covenant people. We’re living in the Holy Land. The temple is there in Jerusalem and yet look at the people. They’re going after other gods. They’re oppressing one another. They’re consulting diviners instead of consulting the word of the Lord. And God assures the faithful among his people that they shall eat the fruit of their deeds. Be patient in other words. Be patient. It shall be well with you. But then verse 11, woe to the wicked. It shall be ill with him for what his hands have dealt out shall be done to him. Verse 10 assures us that even in the degenerate times during which Isaiah lived, God had preserved a faithful remnant of the righteous. While divine judgment would come upon the covenant nation as a whole, the principles of individual responsibility and individual retribution would still be in operation as they always are in operation.

And therefore, let not the righteous despair, but also let not the wicked entertain false hopes. What are some of the lessons that we can learn from this passage here? Well, first of all, brothers and sisters, the word of God reveals that there are ultimately only two categories of people. Those who are described in scripture as the righteous and the wicked. There’s no other category. You’re either in one category or the other. Another way to describe it is the saved or the lost, the redeemed or the unredeemed. To which category do you belong, dear listener? Are you among the righteous? Now, when the scriptures describe the righteous, they’re not describing people who are righteous by their own works, their own worthiness, their own inherent merit. No, the Bible says that we are sinners. We are fallen.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Righteousness is a gift of God given through faith in Jesus Christ and Christ alone. As you trust Christ alone for your salvation from sin, God imputes Christ’s perfect everlasting righteousness to you, which you receive by grace through faith in Christ alone. And once you receive Christ, the Spirit comes and dwells within you and begins to sanctify you, working in you both to will and to do that, which is his good pleasure. So we are righteous in the sense of rightly related to God, not by our works or our merits or our worthiness, but by God’s grace, his sovereign grace and grace alone. But those who are wicked have only themselves to blame for their wickedness. So are you rightly related to the Lord? Do you look to Christ who was crucified for the forgiveness of sins and raised from the dead so that all who believe in him might not perish but have everlasting life?

Do you trust in Christ and Christ alone or are you trusting in yourself and walking in your own way? God in his word calls upon each and every one of us to repent and believe the good news, to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and Christ alone for our salvation. May you repent and believe today, dear listener. We also learn in this passage that the people in Isaiah’s day had been misguided by their weak and wayward leaders. Look at verse 12. It says, My people, infants are their oppressors and women rule over them. Oh, my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your paths. Not only did they have poor and incompetent leaders, they had immature leaders and they had weak leaders who led them astray. Now I do want to note some look at this passage, verse 12, and they see that Isaiah, the Lord through Isaiah says that women will rule over them and they say, aha, see, the Bible says that it’s wrong or sinful for women to hold positions of civil authority.

And that’s an implication that some draw out of this passage. But friends, I would suggest to you that this reference here to women ruling over the people was probably meant to be an illustrative statement rather than a normative statement. In other words, in that time, in that context, the idea of women in positions of civil authority would connote weakness. And so again, we have to be careful how we apply the scriptures. But however we understand this reference to the women, the point here is that the people would be afflicted with weak and misleading guidance and leadership. They were being misguided by those who should have guided them into the ways of truth. But friends, let us make sure that we are guided by the word of God. May we be guided by a careful study of God’s word and a careful meditation upon that word and also by devoting ourselves to hearing the sound and faithful preaching of God’s word.

That is where we will get sound guidance and direction in our lives and in the church. But finally, as we wrap up our consideration of this passage, we see Yahweh’s contention against faithless leaders. Yahweh’s contention against faithless leaders in verses 13 through 15. Verse 13 says the Lord, Yahweh, has taken his place to do what? To contend. He stands to do what? To judge peoples. This is a courtroom scene, if you will. In this verse, Isaiah depicts a courtroom scene where Yahweh, the supreme judge of all, takes his stand to judge his people. And in verses 14 through 15, the judgment is pronounced. He says the Lord will enter into judgment with the elders and the princes of his people. These are the civil authorities. These are the princes of the people, the royalty and the elders of the people who were supposed to provide godly leadership to the people.

The Lord will enter into judgment first and foremost with them. And by the way, in the exile, the Babylonian exile that was to follow later on, it was the leaders, it was these princes and elders that would go first into exile. Yahweh takes his stand specifically against the leaders of his people and he condemns them. Why? Because of their injustice in oppressing the poor among the people. Instead of defending the most vulnerable in society, instead of treating them with justice and compassion, instead of maintaining their rights, they had instead oppressed and even stolen from the poor of the land. And that’s why it says at the end of verse 14, it is you who have devoured the vineyard. Here Israel is compared to a vineyard. That imagery will come out more fully in chapter 5.

It is you who have devoured the vineyard. The spoil of the poor is in your houses. The spoil of the poor is in your houses. The spoil of the poor is in your houses. And then he says in these chilling words in verse 15, what do you mean by crushing my people? By grinding the face of the poor declares the Lord God of hosts. Again, my friends, they had oppressed. Instead of defending the most vulnerable, they had oppressed them and they had stolen from them. Scripture assures us, my friends, that the Lord hears the cries of the poor, the widows, and the orphans among his people who cry to him in their afflictions. He hears their cries and he will bring justice to bear sooner or later. And so friends, as we wrap up our time in the Word today, in contrast to the evil, incompetent, and oppressive leaders of God’s people in Isaiah’s day, these leaders point to the need for a better leader, a greater leader.

In contrast to these evil, incompetent, oppressive, and childish leaders that were common in Isaiah’s day, Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah, would be the perfect leader and prince of God’s people. In Jesus Christ, the glorious presence of God became incarnate and dwelt among us. By the Holy Spirit, he now dwells in and among us as his church. He is present. His glorious presence is in our midst. His gaze is upon us. Dear friends, let us honor his glorious presence. How do we do that? We do that by entrusting our souls into his sovereign care. We do that by trusting in his merit and sacrifice alone for our eternal salvation. We do that by confessing his lordship and we do that by seeking to hold fast to his word, seeking to walk after a new obedience out of gratitude for God’s amazing gift of salvation.

And we walk after a new obedience out of gratitude for God’s amazing gift of salvation in his son, Jesus Christ. May we not defy his glorious presence. May we, by the sovereign grace of God, honor his glorious presence in faith, repentance, and a walking after a new obedience. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we praise and thank you, Lord God. For Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, we thank you that by your spirit you dwell in us and abide among us. We would ask, Lord, that you would grant us the grace to honor you, to hallow your holy name as a church and in our individual lives as believers. Be with us now, Lord. Cause your word to bear fruit in our lives. And may we go from this place with the sense of your blessing resting upon us.

In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen. Friends, let’s close our time of worship by rising and we’ll sing together. Number 405, I love thy kingdom, Lord. 405.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

July 21, 2024