Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Book: Isaiah

  • The Death of Death

    The Death of Death

    About this sermon

    Isaiah foresees a feast on the Lord’s mountain, where God will swallow up death forever and wipe away the tears from every face. Paul announces that this glory has already arrived in Christ’s resurrection. Adam failed the test in the garden and brought death on the human race, and God barred the way to the tree of life so that sinners would not live forever unreconciled. Christ has conquered death, so believers grieve with hope and rejoice in the resurrection life that began at the empty tomb.

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    Sermon transcript

    Praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you’ve done marvelous things, things planned long ago. You made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin, the foreigner stronghold a city no more. It will never be rebuilt. Therefore, strong peoples will honor you. Cities of ruthless nations will revere you. You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm, a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm driving against a wall, and like the heat of the desert. You silence the uproar of foreigners as heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud. So the song of the ruthless is stilled. On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples.

    A banquet of aged wine, the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain, he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all people, the sheet that covers all nations. He will swallow up death forever. The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces. He will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The Lord has spoken. In that day, they will say, Surely this is our God. We trusted in him. He saved us. This is the Lord. We trusted in him. Let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation. So far the announcement of the glory that was yet to come. Now Paul’s explanation of what that glory is, it has already happened. 1 Corinthians 15. Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.

    By this gospel, you are saved. if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter and then to the 12. And after that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living. though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all, he appeared to me also as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God.

    But by the grace of God, I am what I am. and His grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was in me. Whether then it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you have believed. But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead, but he did not raise him, if in fact the dead are not raised.

    For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, Your faith is futile. You are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ are also lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are more to be pitied than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, The resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn, Christ the firstfruits. Then when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power.

    For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he has put everything under his feet. Now, when it says that everything has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, Then the son himself will put everything under Christ. I’m sorry, when the son of himself will be made subject to him, will put everything under him so that God may be all in all. Now skipping down to verse 50 and with regret because the intervening paragraphs are glorious. Okay, with regret, skipping down to verse 50, here we are. I declare to you brothers that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

    Listen, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and the mortal I’m sorry, I missed my line here, pardon me. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true, death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, oh death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin. The power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

    Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. I think I just want to stop right there and go home. What more could be said than that glorious, glorious text. And yet I, you do pay me for something. So I think I better, I think I better preach. So what do we have here, but this glorious, glorious truth that is the most precious of all. And it comes at a time when we are in sorrow. What better time? And if I had not known of news of sorrow here, I would have preached the same text. But perhaps it shall come all the more sweetly then. Key verse, verse 21, for by a man came death.

    By a man also came the resurrection of the dead. When I was 13 and still a pagan, and a lover of Charles Darwin, not a lover of Jesus, I read a book called, Death Be Not Proud, written by John Gunther, who once was a best-selling author back in the 40s, 50s, 60s. John Gunther’s son, Johnny Gunther, age 17, had died of a brain tumor. And the book, Death Be Not Proud, is the record of his father’s grief for his son, Johnny. They were agnostics and atheists, the Gunther family. And yet the title of the book, Death Be Not Proud, comes from one of the greatest of all Christian sonnets by one of the greatest of all Christian poets, John Donne. And so in the book, the poem is quoted. It was my first exposure to the greatest, perhaps the greatest of all Christian devotional poets, John Donne, contemporary of William Shakespeare, And in some ways, the teacher and model for one of the other greatest of all Christian devotional poets, George Herbert, who actually is my favorite.

    Maybe we’ll hear more of him later on. But here’s the poem. Death be not proud. Though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. Those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow, die not for death, nor canst thou yet kill thee. from rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be much pleasure, how much more from thee must flow. And soonest our best men with thee to go, rest of their bones and souls’ delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men. and dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, and pompier charms can make us sleep as well or better than thy stroke. Why swellest thou then? One short sleep past we wake eternally, and death shall be no more. Death, thou shalt die. That is one of the greatest of all Christian poems, I think.

    Death, thou shalt die. The last line of the sonnet. Few men have wrestled with death in print so much as John Donne. You know, he’s the author of those famous words, no man is an island, ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. Death’s duel is one of his famous meditations. And the temptation that Dunn rejected, but to which we often fall prey is the kind of, to spiritualize away the awful threat, to treat it as if that reality can’t hurt us, to ignore its sting. In the Bible, death is real and death has a sting and death is a curse, but it is not a curse from which there is no recovery. We are yes doomed to die, but there is a greater something beyond it. In John Gunther’s death, be not proud 1949.

    The book includes as an appendix, the unbeliever’s prayer written by his son, the year before the son died. There they were struggling with that brain tumor, incurable in 1940s health, maybe perhaps, perhaps curable today, we do not know. But at age 13, what impressed me with that book was the honesty in facing the disaster of death. If not faith, at least young Johnny Gunther had courage. But I was much perplexed by the book. Okay, I was no Christian. But at least I knew a little bit about Christianity. And I knew that in Christianity, there was a promise of everlasting life. My mother believed it, I didn’t. But how could Johnny Gunther and how could his father John Gunther write such a book? And how could there be the agnostics prayer, the unbelievers prayer in that book?

    The Bible helps us cope with that reality. far better than any other medicine in all the history of the universe. Because the Bible takes it as real. Death is real. Death is a disaster. All right. But beyond that disaster is something far greater. That brings the disaster to blessedness. and to everlasting life. And in fact, to the very conquest of death in glory and resurrection. Not all allegedly Christian writers recognize those truths. Novelist Taylor Caldwell, who professed to be a Christian, has a story, one of her gospel-based novels, Jesus Raises Jairus’s Daughter. You know, the gospel scene, right? The little 12-year-old girl. Talitha Qummi, for you Aramaic speakers in the room, okay, little girl arise. But when the little girl does arise, at least in the novel, not in the Bible, but in the novel, Jesus actually apologizes to her for bringing her back from heaven.

    He apologizes. I think the Bible doesn’t go that way. Rather, he tells her mama to, you know, give her something to eat. And the family rejoices because death in this instance has been overcome. by the mercy of Jesus, who in his cross and resurrection will cancel it out for all believers. The Bible never expresses that old pagan idea that the body is just a prison house for the soul to be cast away into the cosmic ash pit. That’s not it. Body is part of our self. It is where and how the image of God is embodied, is expressed within the world. It is us. There’s more to us, yes, but it is us. And so in John 11, which Charles referred to earlier, Jesus comes to the tomb of Lazarus, having delayed four days after hearing that his dear, dear friend was deathly ill.

    And Jesus comes to the tomb, verse 33 tells us, John chapter 11, deeply moved in spirit and troubled. And then we have that shortest verse in the English, in the King James version, verse 35, Jesus wept. Jesus wept. Verse 38, Jesus once more deeply moved. And then Jesus raises Lazarus from the tomb. There’s no hint of apology or regret that Lazarus has to come back. All the regret is that Lazarus has died in the first place. After all, people were never made to die in the first place. In that first place, we’ll call it Eden, we were made for life in fellowship with God. And there was a test of the tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And if you pass the test, So reformed theology and good exegesis tells us, if they pass the test, there would be admission into a permanent state of unbreakable fellowship with God, a promotion to a new order of immortality in life.

    And so also we have the presence of another tree in the garden, the tree of life. pass the test of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, be admitted to the blessedness of the tree of life. Both are as it were sacraments in unfallen Eden. Our parents, by the abuse of their own will, as reformed theology teaches, failed the test. And so, expelled from the garden, we have that great unfinished sentence of Genesis 3.22 in the King James Version. Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. And the King James translators, following their Hebrew sense, did not finish the sentence. The Hebrew hangs there. unfinished because the contemplation that they might eat and live forever on reconciled is horrible beyond imagination.

    The almighty does not speak the end of the sentence. And so when the sentence of death does come, okay, it’s real. And the Bible does not shrink from declaring it so. But if death is a disaster, it is not a disaster from which there is no recovery. By man came death. 1 Corinthians 15, 21. That’s only half the sentence. By man came death. By man came also the resurrection of the dead. Where did Easter happen? In a cemetery. And in the midst of deepest grief, the greatest joy springs forth in the life of our Lord. By a man came death, but by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. And as Paul goes on to say, yet each in his own order, Christ the first fruits, then those who belong to Christ at his coming, then comes the end.

    And so Jesus’ resurrection is not the only resurrection taught in the Holy Scriptures. In Isaiah 25, he will destroy that shroud that covers all peoples. What is the shroud? It’s the burial cloth. It’s the funeral shroud that covers us all. And so the Lord on that mountain will prepare that finest feast of the greatest meats, the finest wines, and invite all to partake of that banquet of resurrected life. Jesus overcomes his own death. I lay down my life by my own will, he tells us. I take it up again. And so we have the great, great, great truth. That death for Jesus is not the end. That he has not really been defeated. That ironically he has reversed matters and by death has killed death. And so in that glory of the cross, we find the beginning of a whole new order of life.

    And in that tomb, we find not merely the resuscitation of a corpse, like some sort of Frankenstein monster. Oh no. We find not merely the healing of someone who has been cruelly murdered. Oh no. We find a transfiguration to a whole new order of life and blessedness beyond our understanding. And so we find in those Easter stories, as the gospel continues to tell us, not just an empty tomb, but Jesus building a fire on the shore of Galilee and cooking breakfast of fish and inviting his disciples, come have breakfast, breakfast on the beach with Jesus. Who built the fire? Who caught the fish? I doubt he did it by miracle. And on that night, when the doors are locked, And the disciples shaking in their abodes for fear of their own crucifixions. Jesus suddenly appears alive.

    He walks through walls. The laws of physics don’t quite pertain anymore to him. Yes, apparently so. And yet he says that Thomas on that second Sunday of Easter, which would be tonight on our gospels calendars, he invites that doubting fellow to touch him. Put your hand in my side. See my hands, no more doubt, but believe. As George Ladd says, great New Testament theologian, quote, the resurrected body of Jesus had new and amazing powers. It belonged to a new and different order of reality. What’s the reality? The age to come, which has already arrived. The Lord’s dead. All right, the Christian Lord’s Day. Every Lord’s Day is the celebration of that wondrous reality that there is a new order of life and blessedness at work in the world since 30-ish AD, whatever year it was.

    And so Jesus says it this way, the reason the father loves me is that I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. This command I’ve received from my father, John chapter 10, verse 17, 18. And so Jesus overcomes his own death by a man came death. by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. But if Jesus overcomes his own death, he also overcomes our death. Death, be not proud, says the Christian poet. Though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. Those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow, die not, poor death, nor canst thou yet kill me, says the Christian poet.

    In the ancient Near East, one of the horrible deities that people feared was the death monster called Mot. For you Hebrew scholars in the room, okay, Mot, Mavet, okay. Put it in Ugaritic, Mot, instead of Mavet. And Mot, okay, the death monster, huge jaws in the depictions of the monster Mot. Huge jaws to devour the bodies of the dead. Notice how Isaiah 25 does it and how that’s quoted by St. Paul. Those huge jaws swallow its victims. That’s the grave. But what does Isaiah say? Death itself is swallowed in victory. Death itself is swallowed up in victory, says St. Paul. Quoting Isaiah, the victory of Christ’s resurrection, that death monster is no monster at all, he’s been slain. The ancient Latin poets and pagans spoke of death as one everlasting night. Nox una oba unda.

    Sounds beautiful and terrible in Latin. Nox una oba unda. One everlasting night. John Donne quotes that in his meditations. But for the Christian, that night breaks forth in the dawn of resurrection. The pagan says farewell to their beloved without hope of reunion. The Christian says farewell to their beloved knowing that there is a reunion yet to come in perfection of spirit and even of body yet to come. Hebrews 12 tells us that that heavenly Zion is populated by, quote, the spirits of righteous persons made perfect. Okay, righteous in this life by faith in Jesus, perfected at death. in the heavenly kingdom. But that’s only half the story. Although glorious it is. The resurrection. By man came death. By man came also the resurrection of the dead. And so Paul tells us, listen, I will tell you a mystery.

    What’s the mystery? We will not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In the church I used to pastor in North Carolina, that verse was on the door of the nursery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed. In a moment, in a twinkling of the eye. It won’t really happen that way in nurseries, okay? I don’t think it happens in a twinkling of an eye. All right, but there, okay, there’s a bit of the joy of the truth of the resurrection. Even put it on a nursery door as a lovely joke to Christians who know that we will not all sleep the sleep of death. Christ will return to some generation of our, of our own mortal world. And at the return of Christ, death itself is reversed and life and blessedness.

    Okay. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the order of sin and death, the order of fallenness reversed. and something far more glorious beyond all of our imagination. It is buried, okay, perishable. It is raised imperishable, says St. Paul. Not long after my ordination, my wife’s dear and godly grandfather passed away. And his funeral was the first funeral at which I’d ever officiated as an ordained minister of the gospel. And I had the privilege of pronouncing the words of committal, committing the body to the ground. Here are the words, at least in the PCA, in my denomination, the PCA’s Book of Order, quote, For as much as it has pleased Almighty God and is wise provident to take out of this world the soul of our deceased, we therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

    If we were unbelievers, that’s where the line should end. That’s not where it ends. Awaiting The hour when all who were in their graves shall hear the voice of the son of God and shall come forth. Those are the words of Jesus. All in their graves shall hear the voice of the son of God and shall come forth. Death then is not one everlasting night. Death itself is already canceled by Jesus in his resurrection. And so in Romans one, we find this glorious statement that Jesus Christ, our Lord declared with power to be the son of God by his resurrection from the dead. And Jesus himself saying to Mary, grieving at that tomb in John 11, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.

    Do you believe this? End of quotation. And so Paul tells us, I tell you a mystery. It is a mystery, isn’t it? We stand by the graveside of a loved one. All right, it’s a mystery. But here is the mystery. I tell you a mystery, we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. at the last trumpet for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised. And here’s the last word of the sentence. Imperishable. Imperishable. Unable to die. Imperishable. The point is that all that we are, we will once again be, yet without sin, without weakness, without illness, with no blight or blot or blemish perfected. I suspect our scars and the scars of the martyrs will not be erased, but will be glorified and made beautiful. And the martyrs will glory in their scars because they will shine with glory. and the healing of the martyrs will be immense.

    And we ourselves heal. Where did Easter happen? In a cemetery. That’s great hope. You may find it odd, but on my honeymoon 40 years ago nearly, We’re just two months shy of it. Okay, but 39 years, 10 months, okay. 40 years ago on our honeymoon, we were in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and we went to Lewis, Delaware, which has one of the oldest English language cemeteries on the East Coast. Gravestones going back to the 17th century. And we spent at least an hour and a half in the cemetery looking at old gravestones and reading the inscriptions. And it was beautiful. So many of those stones inscribed with testimonies of Christian faith, asleep in Jesus. That was frequent. Awaiting the resurrection. And there was even one long low flat stone with six feet of biography. of that fellow with a focus on God’s grace in his life and Christian hope in death.

    I wanted to take the time and copy down the entire inscription, but we were getting hungry. We’ve been there for a while. It was time for dinner. So off we went. And I still wonder what it’s, I still can’t remember what’s on that stone, but we left that Christian cemetery in Lewis, Delaware feeling fine because the stones testified. to the glory of the resurrection that is yet to come. John Donne died in 1616, year after Shakespeare. By the way, Shakespeare died today, 1615, I think. Born today too, April 23rd, Shakespeare’s birthday, Shakespeare’s death day. So I’ve got to do sonnets, right? All right, so John Donne passes away 1616. A generation later, his friend, Isaac Walton, more famous for a book about fishing, wrote a biography of Dunn. The last lines of the biography say this, quote, that body which was once a temple of the Holy Ghost is now become a small quantity of Christian dust.

    But I shall see it reanimated. What a fine way to end the biography of a Christian. That body which was once a temple of the Holy Ghost has now become a small quantity of Christian dust. But I shall see it reanimated. Where did Easter happen? In a cemetery. I’ll ask the question again and you can answer. Where did Easter happen? Where did Easter happen? Where did Easter happen? And so the saying is written comes true. Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory? Where O death is thy sting? For by a man came death. By a man also came the resurrection of the dead. So thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Shall we pray? Lord Jesus, we bow before you with deepest gratitude.

    With deepest gratitude. And in the midst of grief, recent grief and today’s grief. We also receive and grasp that offer of joy. knowing that you have a destiny for us beyond all dust and beyond all ashes. In a glorious renewal, beyond our every hope or dream, in the order of resurrected life, which has already begun in that tomb in Jerusalem so long ago, and which now reigns over our lives now, an order of life that cannot perish. and an order of resurrection that can never be annulled. So bless us then this day with that great and imperishable hope, the hope of everlasting life, a life reconciled to God, a life of abounding love and virtue from God and for God and for all that God has made. Bless us then this day with that great confidence and help us then to rejoice in the rest of this day, knowing that the gospel is true.

    In Jesus we pray it. Amen. The hymn is number 207. Christ Jesus lay in death strong bands.

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  • A Shoot from the Stump of Jesse

    A Shoot from the Stump of Jesse

    About this sermon

    Isaiah 10 and 11 promise that a remnant will return and that a shoot will come from the stump of Jesse, a branch from his roots on whom the Spirit of the Lord will rest. Matthew’s genealogy passes through Jesse and David, the shepherd boy anointed king. The Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation rested on Jesus at his conception and his baptism for the work of new creation. He will stand as a banner for the nations, and like the serpent Moses lifted up, he was lifted up on the cross to draw all people to himself.

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    Sermon transcript

    Firstly, Isaiah chapter 10, starting at verse 20. Give ear, this is the word of God. Now in that day, the remnant of Israel and those of the house of Jacob who have escaped will never again rely on the one who struck them, but will truly rely on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel. A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob to the mighty God. For though your people, O Israel, may be like the sand of the sea, only a remnant within them will return. A destruction is determined, overflowing with righteousness.

    For a complete destruction, one that is decreed, the Lord God of hosts will execute in the midst of the holy of the whole land. Therefore, thus says the Lord God of hosts, O my people who dwell in Zion, do not fear the Assyrian who strikes you with the rod and lifts up his staff against you the way Egypt did. For in a very little while, my indignation against you will be spent and my anger will be directed to their destruction. Lord of Hosts will arouse a scourge against him like the slaughter of Midian at the Rock of Oreb, and his staff will be over the sea, and he will lift it up the way he did in Egypt. So it will be in that day that his burden will be removed from your shoulders and his yoke from your neck, and the yoke will be broken because of fatness.

    He has come against Ayath. He has passed through Migran. At Mikmash, he deposited his baggage. They have gone through the pass, saying, Geba will be our lodging place. Ramah is terrified, and Gilead of Saul has fled away. Cry aloud with your voice, O daughter of Galim. Pay attention, Laishah. and wretched Anathoth. Madmanah has fled, the inhabitants of Gebim have sought refuge, but today he will halt at Nob. He shakes his fist at the mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.

    Behold, the Lord, the God of hosts, will lop off the bows with a terrible crash. Those also who are tall in stature will be cut down and those who are lofty will be abased. He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an iron ax and Lebanon will fall by the mighty one.

    Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse. and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And he will delight in the fear of the Lord, and he will not judge by what his eyes see, nor make a decision by what his ears hear. But with righteousness he will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth. And he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.

    His righteousness will be like the belt about his loins. and faithfulness the belt about his waist. And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little boy will lead them. Also the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den.

    They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Then in that day the nations will resort to the root of Jesse, who will stand as a signal for the peoples, and his resting place will be glorious. Then it will happen on that day that the Lord will again regard will again recover the second time the will again recover the second time with his hand the remnant of his people who will remain from Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath and from the islands of the sea and he will lift up a standard for the nations and assemble the banished ones of Israel and will gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth Then the jealousy of Ephraim will depart, and those who harass Judah will be cut off. Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah, and Judah will not harass Ephraim.

    They will swoop down on the slopes of the Philistines on the west. Together they will plunder the sons of the east. They will possess Edom and Moab, and the sons of Ammon will be subject to them. And the Lord will utterly destroy the tongue of the sea of Egypt. And he will wave his hand over the river with his scorching wind, and he will strike it into seven streams and make men walk over dry shod. And there will be a highway from Assyria for the remnant of his people who will be left, just as there was for Israel in the day that they came up out of the land of Egypt.

    Let’s turn to Matthew chapter 1 as we read briefly. Matthew chapter 1, the record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.

    Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. Perez was the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram. Ram was the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nashon, and Nashon the father of Salmon. Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab. Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse. Jesse was the father of David the king. David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba, who had been the wife of Uriah. So ends the reading of God’s holy, inspired, inerrant word. May it be a blessing to all of us today. Let us pray for that.

    Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this word that you have given. We thank you for the promise that you have made that where your spirit is, where your word is read, those two will come together. We sense your spirit here even as we read this word. We ask that your Holy Spirit would be upon all of us as we listen and as the word is preached. May it reach down to the very depths of our hearts and our souls and our minds. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

    Today we continue our study of Matthew’s genealogy, the genealogy of Jesus, which is found in Matthew. It’s been a few weeks, but I might refresh us where we have been in weeks past. We have talked about what it means for Jesus to be the son of Abraham. We’ve talked about what it means for Jesus to be the son of David. But now we come to discuss what it must mean for Jesus to be born of Jesse. Jesse is the father of David.

    As we examine this, as we look this first chapter of Matthew, we must have in our minds what the first century Hebrew reader would have in his mind. One who is well aware of his Old Testament, has read it, has known it from his earliest years. What does it mean? that Jesus would be born the son of Jesse. Who is Jesse, after all? We should look at first things first. As I said, Jesse is the father of King David, but David was not born a king. Jesse was the father of David in a small, obscure town called Bethlehem. We would not have known much about Bethlehem had not major things happened there much later.

    But there Jesse is, just your average man, your humble man, humble by the biblical reckoning, humble in fortune, humble in societal standing. There comes a day when the Lord was angry at Saul and at his house, and no longer would the Lord have David, no longer rather would the Lord have Saul to be king over Israel. And it came time for a new king Samuel the prophet, Samuel the judge, goes looking for that king. And the Lord, by the Spirit, brings him to Bethlehem and to the house of Jesse, this obscure and average man who has many sons. And one by one, the sons of Jesse come before Samuel. And the Lord tells Samuel, you must not judge by appearance. The Lord doesn’t judge that way. I will reveal to you the one who is the son, who is to be the king. And so the first son goes before Samuel. And that first son is Eliab.

    This is not the one. The second son goes by. His name is Abinadab. This is not the one. Do not judge by appearance. Judge by the heart. It’s said multiple times. Another son comes by, Shammah. That is not the one. Samuel asks, do you have more sons? Where are they? Well, we have one. He’s the youngest. We wouldn’t have thought it would be him that you would be asking for.

    He’s out keeping sheep. So they say, bring him in. And Samuel lays eyes on David. And the Lord says, this is the one. This is the one who is to be king. Anoint him. And so Samuel takes that horn of oil and he pours it over King David. And then he flees. Then he leaves.

    David is to be king. David later rose to great prominence in the nation. First of all, simply just playing music for King Saul to calm his nerves. But eventually there came the day when he would be king. And he had a glorious reign. A tumultuous reign at times. A reign that at times seems to hang by just a thread. But at other times is secure.

    But really at all times it is secure because he stood upon the rock which was his god. Generations later, we come to our text, which is Isaiah chapter 10 and 11. What’s the context of Isaiah chapter 10 and 11? There’s still a son of David who is reigning upon the throne, but his name is Ahaz, and he is not a righteous man. The glory has faded from that kingdom. And there is terror in this king. He is afraid of other nations coming in.

    So the Lord sends Isaiah to come and minister to him. Isaiah prophesied by the Spirit of the Lord. Some of those prophecies are some of the most well-known in the entire Bible. You hear them in December, in late December at the time that many people call Christmas time, where we have the prophecy of the virgin birth. Isaiah prophesies that to Ahaz. He talks about one who is going to come and God’s spirit is going to rest on him.

    His name is Emmanuel, which is God with us. Isaiah prophesies to Ahaz. that one is going to come whose kingdom is so glorious and so great that its government will never decrease. David’s kingdom is decreasing with Ahaz on the throne. But this kingdom is going to expand and expand and expand forever.

    We also read I should say we read in chapter 10 about the Assyrians who are coming. The Assyrians are the instrument of God to punish Israel because they have been unfaithful to the covenant as a national body. And we even read in there that they have been trusting in their enemy. They’ve been trusting in Assyria. You see, at times they are trusting in Egypt, and other times they’re trusting in Assyria. But Assyria is becoming the most powerful one.

    The Lord reveals that He is going to punish the Assyrians. In fact, He is going to punish the Assyrians for what they do to God’s people. In Isaiah chapter 10, 15, we are told that Assyria is an axe, an arrogant, boastful axe that is going to come and lop off the trees.

    That is, lop off the branches and make Israel into a forest, a former forest, now just a field of stumps. Rest assured, Ahaz, it’s not always going to be like that, because when I punish Assyria in my sovereignty, I will do the same, and I will make them as a forest of stumps, or a former forest, for they will all be cut down, trees chopped, the trees felled. And that’s how chapter 10 ends. But then, we have a glorious picture. The tone changes in Isaiah chapter 11, does it not?

    Have you ever gone into someone’s house, or maybe you have one of these, a picture frame. A picture frame for a child. And it has a picture of the child in the middle. But all around it are other pictures of that child. Maybe some of you have that. I don’t know what the name is for such a frame. You go over to your neighbor’s house and they have children who have all moved out of the house. And you look at this frame. Well, who’s this?

    Well, that’s my son, Timmy. He’s all grown up now. And you look at the first picture and you say, well, what’s this? Well, this is the time we brought him home from the hospital. This is the first picture. Well, what’s the second picture? Well, the second picture is his first day of kindergarten. Well, what’s the next one? Oh, that’s first grade. What about the next one? Well, that’s his piano recital. What’s the next one? It’s the time he was a quarterback and he threw a winning touchdown, his Eagle Scout.

    Each one of these pictures tells the story of this child. This is what Isaiah is giving to us. He is giving a picture. He’s giving a frame with many pictures that we can look at all at once in Isaiah chapter 11. Picture after picture after picture of the one who is to come. But this is a very different picture. What would you say of someone who brings his child home from the hospital and he has already one of those frames. It’s already set up.

    And he says, this is what my son is going to be like. This is when he’s going to earn his Eagle Scout. And this is when he’s going to be a quarterback and win the championship. This is his first day of kindergarten and first grade and second grade and on.

    You would think that person was a bit strange and rightfully so. But whereas we as people would look back, our God, he gives the picture beforehand and gives us the opportunity to identify him on this frame and look into the future and see what this one is going to be like. Well, what is this one going to be like? Well, we see in the first verse that he is as a shoot that sprouts up. Now, remember what we have said.

    A former forest, I think we can’t call it a forest anymore if it’s just a field full of stumps. But out of one of those stumps, a sprout comes up. What stump must that be? It must be the stump of Jesse, of the line of David. This stump grows up. It begins, it sprouts. Rather, the shoot grows. But we must understand that this shoot is greater than all of the formerly towering trees that came before. For this little shoot is our Lord Jesus Christ, and he is beginning to sprout and to come up, that he might eventually become the wonderful tree that gives fruit unto the earth.

    That is how you’ll identify him. He is a glorious shoot that comes from Jesse’s line. How else will you recognize him? Verse 2, this is the man of the Spirit. The Spirit of God will rest upon him such that the Spirit of the Lord will rest giving him wisdom and understanding and counsel and strength and knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. We remember the second verse of the Bible. God’s Holy Spirit hovering over the water, creating the world. That same Spirit is going to rest on this man, and you’ll see Him if you’re able to identify Him. But that Spirit who once brought about creation will be upon this one for the purposes of recreation.

    The Spirit was upon the Lord Jesus at His birth, For he was born, he was conceived of by the Holy Spirit, by Mary. When Jesus was baptized, when he was about to begin his ministry, what do we read? Nothing more than we read in Matthew. 316 that when Jesus was baptized immediately he went up from the water and behold the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest upon him. This is the man of the Spirit.

    That is the picture that Isaiah gives, that God gives through Isaiah. At his resurrection The Spirit is upon Him as well. The Spirit is upon Him in such a way that He brings Jesus back to life. It is the revivifying Spirit of God that has rested upon Him His whole life and especially comes upon Him in His death. That creating Spirit that hovered over the waters in Genesis 1-2, hovers over the Lord Jesus Christ at His resurrection. And Jesus is raised life-giving Spirit.

    And that is what He does. He gives life. For after He was raised, He receives the Holy Spirit. as a gift from His Father, as a gift for His obedience, so that He might dispense that Spirit to us. If we have trusted, if we have known the Lord Jesus Christ, if we have trusted alone in His resurrection and in His cross. And truly, He has given life to us. And He has given us the knowledge, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of understanding. And He causes the people of God to reverence that Son.

    We move on to the next picture that we see beforehand, not looking back but before, that this one is going to be a judge. We see this in verses three through five. And he is going to judge rightly. What do we read about? As I said earlier, first Samuel 16, at the anointing of David, Samuel’s cautioned, don’t judge by appearance.

    That is because the man of the spirit, the shoot who is going to come out of your Jesse’s stump, is one who will not judge by appearance. He is going to have the type of, the ability to look inside the mind of all people and know their thoughts. He is going to be one who has the ability to look into the heart of a man. There is nothing that can be hidden from this man of the spirit. and He will judge the poor, He will know the poor, and He will show graciousness to them, especially to those who are poor in spirit, that is, those who know that they are lost without the grace of God.

    And he will judge between the hypocritical, self-righteous Pharisee, whose religion is only external, whose fruit is only fruit that is, as it were, stapled onto a tree. He will judge between that one, and he will judge between the one who is trusting in God, and whose fruit comes from God alone.

    We move on to the next picture, that is verses 6 and 9, the next picture on the frame. And this is one who is going to bring peace. Peace of an unbelievable sort. In metaphorical language, Isaiah talks about animals that are ordinarily at odds with one another. One seeks to prey upon the other. Wolves and lambs will be at peace with one another. Leopards and young goats. Lions and fattened calves. Fattened calves. Cows and bears. All of these will be at peace.

    Well, if it was only peace between animals, it wouldn’t be such a great thing. It’s really just a picture of something far greater. This one will bring peace between man and man. This one will cause people to lay down their weapons, their war, and say, no more war. You are my brother. You are trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ as well. This one will bring so much peace that he will bring peace between Jew and Gentile. This is something that would have been unfathomable at the time. But he brings it. But if he brought peace between man and man, as impressive as that would be, The peace that He truly brings is peace between God and man.

    Do you realize that if you don’t know the Lord Jesus Christ, you are at war with Him and He is your enemy? You do not want God as your enemy. So the Lord Jesus Christ sees this war and He comes in to intercede that He might be fully man and fully God, so that He might atone and make peace. God must bring wrath upon man for sin. God brings wrath upon the Lord Jesus Christ for us. Indeed, He became sin. That is, the one who knew no sin became sin, that we who are sinners might be set free. How else will you identify Him?

    Verse 10. This is one who will set up a banner, a signal, a flag, a sign or an end sign. Who would do that? Well, I want to make it very clear to you that the banner that is set up is not a banner, it’s not a big blue banner that says for Christ’s crown and covenant. It is not that.

    This is nothing other than Christ’s cross The agony that He endured upon the cross is something that all people are to look to and to be saved. In the same way that Moses placed a serpent up high so that those who had been bitten would look to it and be saved, equally so, the Lord Jesus Christ’s cross is set up that it draws men and women and children to it. That is how you will know this one. Jesus says in John 3, verse 14, that even as that snake was raised up even so, I, the Son of Man, will be raised up to draw all people to myself.

    There is something significant about a cross. Our country was just a group of colonies until they came together, fought a war, and then had a flag so that everyone who would look at that flag would say, that’s a sign of our country. When the United States first went to the moon, what did they do? They put a flag in it to say, we were the first ones, so that all would see that we won the race. Equally, in fact, far greater, Jesus Christ raises the flag, or the end sign, and that is his torturous cross. Do you hear Him groaning upon that cross to atone for your sins, for yours and mine?

    We see in 11 through 16 that this is one who is going to be a gatherer. He is going to gather. From all of the nations, his people, his elect, he’s going to draw in the people that he loves, the ones he has set his love upon. And there will eventually be a highway so that his people can come from what were once enemy lands. the Assyrians, the Egyptians, those lands will have a highway so that God’s people will go straight to Jerusalem and to Zion. but this is not an earthly Jerusalem. Christ is the one who builds the highway so that we might reach Jerusalem ourselves, the heavenly Jerusalem, the Zion which is above and which is free, that Zion which is our mother according to Galatians chapter 4.

    Paul, rather, even understands it this way when he quotes this passage. Listen to Romans 15, 12. It should sound familiar to you. And again, Isaiah says, the root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles. In him will the Gentiles hope. We have no hope other than the Lord Jesus Christ. But if you were paying extra close attention, you might have noticed something a bit strange. In verse 10. I’ll read it to you. Then in that day, the nations will resort to the root of Jesse. The root of Jesse.

    Well, didn’t we start talking about the shoot? Is Jesus the root? Or is he the shoot? Which could it be? I think what Isaiah is saying here, subtly, he’s not displaying his lack of understanding of botany. This is not a scribal error or anything like that. this one who is that shoot that springs up out of that stump is a root as well or has a deep root you might ask yourself though why of all the biblical figures did isaiah use jesse jesse’s not as well known he’s a bit obscure he has such a minor role. Why did he not say the shoot that comes out of David? I think very clearly the reason is because Isaiah, the Holy Spirit through Isaiah, does not want to speak of Jesse. He wants to speak about someone who is with roots deeper than Jesse, one who also comes from Bethlehem.

    And that is the Lord Jesus Christ. For the Lord Jesus Christ is the King, but He is the Creator of all things. He is the Son of David, But, at the same time, he is David’s Lord. He is the son of Jesse. But he is the creator of Jesse. Jesse came from Jesus. And Jesus came from Jesse.

    And this one, with root it that deep, died upon a cross. And here we have this picture of this One who was to come and now has come. And we can look back with clearer eyes upon this passage and see the glory of this shoot, the One in whom we have life. The One who is the radiance of the Father’s glory, shining brightly Yet dying upon the cross while the sky grows dark around him. Dying for our sins. This is what it means to be born of Jesse. And this message must get through. to the first century Hebrew, and it must get through to us as well. He is the shoot, the man of the spirit, the one who is the judge who brings peace, the one who points us all to His sign, which is the cross.

    Praise be His name for eternal life that comes 100% by grace and not by works. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, help us not to see Jesus on the surface as He was seen, but help us to understand how deep His roots go, in fact, they grow. In fact, they go into eternity past. For He was with you in the beginning. He is the one with no beginning. Praise to His name. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

    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.

  • Call the Sabbath a Delight

    Call the Sabbath a Delight

    About this sermon

    Isaiah 58 promises that those who call the Sabbath a delight, turning from their own pleasure on the Lord’s holy day, will take delight in the Lord. God rested on the seventh day and blessed it after finishing a creation that was very good. The Sabbath is more than a day off; it is a gift in which God’s people lay aside what is theirs and take up what is his, to taste that the Lord is good. In that communion with their Savior, believers grow in assurance of his love and forgiveness.

    More sermons from Isaiah · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    First of all, to Genesis chapter 1. And there’s a series of readings here. They’re short, but they will save us from having to make other than allusions to them. during the message, we don’t have to go and read them again, and also remind us of these things. Our text will be Isaiah 58 verses 13 and 14, but we begin reading in Genesis chapter one, verse one, through chapter two, verse three, But actually, I’m going to shorten that a bit and begin with verse 28 after the creation of man in chapter one and read through two, three. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them.

    And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heaven, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth. And every tree with seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food, and it was so.

    And God saw everything that he’d made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

    And then Exodus 20, Verses 8 through 11, which of course is the Sabbath command itself, Exodus chapter 20 and verses 8 through 11. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. In six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.

    For in six days The Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. And then Exodus 31, verses 12 through 17, Exodus 31, verses 12 through 17. And the Lord said to Moses, you are to speak to the people of Israel and say, above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths. For this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you.

    Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of solemn rest. Holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.

    Therefore, the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath. observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth. And on the seventh day, he rested and was refreshed. And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written with the finger of God. And then our text, which is Isaiah 58 verses 13 and 14.

    If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it, not going your own way, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly, then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth, I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. I’d like to set before you this morning a hallmark blessing of Presbyterian and Reformed piety. And that is the blessing that accrues to those who keep the Sabbath day holy. It’s described here in our text.

    The words before us are verses 13 and 14 of Isaiah chapter 58. And by way of introduction, let us just remember what we read with regards to the importance of the Sabbath day as it is in the Old Testament but really coming from where we are here in the book of Isaiah projecting forward and looking towards the new covenant where for instance in just a chapter previous to this in Isaiah he reminds them that their day is coming a day of restoration beyond judgment And even the eunuchs and others who were excluded from the worship of the temple will be included once again because they keep the Sabbath day holy. In Isaiah 66, it talks of the new covenant and the day of restoration that was to come and speaks of the Sabbath. So that, as Isaiah looks forward and anticipates the new covenant, he sees the Sabbath extending into that day and that day of restoration, even being a hallmark of it.

    And in this setting here in Isaiah 58, of course, looking back on the commandment, looking back on the creation ordinance that we have in the Sabbath day, he says that there is going to be an exquisite delight that results from keeping the Sabbath day. an exquisite delight. If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath and from doing your pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it not going your own ways or seeking your own pleasure or talking idly, then you shall take delight in the Lord.

    The word is exquisite delight, a beautiful delight, a delicate delight, an intricate, pure, complicated delight. You know there are cuisines that present us with delicacies and this word is sort of like that. It has a connotation, delicacy, a dainty, a delight. The idea of complication is there, well, intricacy.

    You know, sometimes if you have a delightful dainty, it has multi-layers of flavor. There are various flavors that it presents to us. You know, not everything is just potatoes, you know, with maybe a little bit of salt on it. There are other things out there. there might be multi layers of flavor. It’s that kind of idea that’s being presented. There’s an exquisite, delicate, composite delight that there is to be had in the Sabbath.

    James reminds us that the blessing is not in simply knowing that there is such a thing as a Sabbath command, but he says, you know, we’re to be not just simply hearers of the word, but doers also, and that the blessing is in the doing. And we are reminded, for instance, by an old directory of worship from the Presbyterian Church before the Orthodox Presbyterian Church existed, chapter 15. the directory for secret and family worship that reflects this understanding of Christian experience. It’s a phrase that directly applied only to secret worship in the directory, but I believe it’s true of a number of things in the practice of true religion. And those That phrase is put this way, the many advantages arising from a conscientious discharge of these duties are best known to those who are found in the faithful discharge of them. a helpful idea in Bible reading and in the daily devotions. Those who do it know best what the advantages are as they experience it, is what the phrase is saying. The many advantages arising from a conscientious discharge of these duties. are best known to those who are found in the faithful discharge of them. Well, I believe that applies to the Sabbath as well. The Sabbath has fallen on hard times in our day, not because really people are convinced that theologically we ought not to keep the Sabbath day holy.

    After all, it’s one of the Ten Commandments. It would be a little asymmetrical if we had to have nine commandments. Ten Commandments works out quite nicely just the way they are. And which ones would we lose anyway? I mean, so the fourth commandment is often one that said, well, you know, that was the old covenant and so on and so forth.

    But our fathers in the faith understood that the Sabbath day was something that was not replaced or done away with but that the moral law still stands and by a positive command we have established one day in seven for the worship of the Lord and that in the Old Testament it was from creation until Christ the seventh day and from the resurrection of Christ onward it’s Then, the first day of the week, the day that Christ is risen from the dead, he appears to the apostles, and when the apostles gathered for worship in the early church, and by their example, we realize that the day has been changed, and that there is a Sabbath practice that’s the continue in the church of Jesus Christ, and by it, we remember creation, that God is our creator, and we owe him everything.

    Do you believe that God created the heavens and the earth? So what is it that would cause us to worship him and acknowledge him as the almighty and that he is the one alone who deserves worship, honor, and praise, but that he is the original, he is the first, he is the God who made heaven. and earth and we owe him everything and that is not just in theory or it’s not just as we go whistling on our way but God who said let there be light also said that this was the day that belonged to him and that it was holy and we were to always commemorate the fact that he is the creator of God and we are to worship him as such Christ is risen from the dead. Do you believe it? Do you believe that Jesus is alive from the dead?

    That we, united to him, are thereby saved. His righteousness is our righteousness. And by faith, when we’re joined to him, his life is our life. And we are in communion with Jesus Christ. How might we express that communion with Jesus Christ? How might we enjoy that communion with Jesus Christ?

    Well, there is a time and a place for these things. The modern family has fallen on hard times. And when will we have family worship? When will we gather together for meals? And so on and so forth. These things have fallen apart. How do we change them? Where do we begin? Well, I would suggest we begin where the Bible begins. We begin with the Sabbath day. If you want to fix your week and you want to fix your days, you begin by finding out how it is that God has given us to find him, to enjoy him, to commune with him, and he’s given us a day for that.

    You know, if your boss gave you a day off, wouldn’t you take it? You mean I get tomorrow off? Oh yeah, that’s fine. You can take tomorrow off, the boss says. Oh, that’s good. Do I get paid for it? Sure. You’d take it, wouldn’t you? If the union gave you a day off, you’d take it. God says, here’s a day off. When we look at our text, it’s more than just a day off. You see, and that’s part of the problem.

    People look at the Sabbath day and they say, well, I can’t work, I can’t do this, I can’t do that. And then we look in catechism questions, and we see the kind of things that’s said in the catechism, and we go, whoa, that’s a little, that’s a little pressed hard. I mean, are they pressing logic beyond where we ought to go? You can take, for instance, the catechism question that deals with the Sabbath day. It says we’re to not have our own thoughts and actions and words. We’re not to go out and play sports and these kinds of things. And then we go, whoa, where’d they get that from? Well, they got it from our text, actually. They got it from our text.

    If you turn your back, if you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy day of the Lord honorable, and if you honor it, not doing your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly, the charge of keeping the Sabbath day is more specially directed to governors of families, it says in question 118. of the larger catechism, and other superiors, because they are bound not only to keep it themselves, but to see that it’s observed by all those that are under their charge, and because they are prone, oftentimes, to hinder. Well, we’re not to do any work, and the fathers are supposed to see to it.

    That would begin to reconstruct an entire approach to the family, wouldn’t it? Say, when can we have time for family worship? When do we have time for catechism? When do we have time for memorizing scripture? Well, if you all get up in the morning, on Monday morning, and have to go your different ways, and you say hello to each other before you go to bed Monday night, and that’s the way the week goes, there is no time for that, is there?

    There’s work, there’s school, there’s sports. There’s TV, there’s texting. But what does our text say? Call the Sabbath a delight, holy day of the Lord honorable. If you honor it not going your own ways or seeking your own pleasure or talking idly, then you shall take delight in the Lord.

    If you can begin there and put everything aside, you see, then you’ve begun somewhere, haven’t you? The first step needs to be taken. If you’re going on a long journey, there’s always that first step, right? How do you begin a long journey? One step. How do you begin?

    Having family worship, eating together, having the father be the head of the household. It started on the Sabbath day. You get together and you gather together around the word of God. You pray for the service. This is the way the directories of worship that accompanied the Westminster Confession of Faith, Larger and Shorter Catechisms read. They said the father’s to get the family together in the morning on the Sabbath day. They’re to pray for the service. They’re to pray for the pastor and for the ordinances. They’re to get together and to read the word of God and have personal and private worship.

    And then the father is to see that they all get out to public worship. And the family was the key. The father was the key to the family. And the Sabbath worship was something that the family was there to support. And then, you see, you go to the ordinance, you’re all together there in the public worship, and you’re praying, and you’re singing the Psalms, and you’re hearing the word of God preached, and you come home, and you have a hearty meal or whatever else may be prepared. And then you have time in the afternoon because everything else has been set aside. Father’s not going to work. Mother’s not going to work. The kids aren’t going out with the friends. They’re not texting. They’re not, well, they didn’t have texting in the 1600s. But when did that come? In the 1700s, wasn’t it?

    And so then they would get together, maybe the pastor would come over to catechize, but maybe just the dad would gather everybody around. They would have a review of the sermon. What did the pastor say? And what was the message? What were the points? And they could go over those. They could pray about those. How would that work out here in the family? Then they would have holy conference. They talked about holy conference. And that holy conference, you see, was a beginning of discipline.

    Why do we do this? Why do we not do that? Why are these rules? And that begins the kind of discussion that has to carry through the week that results in understanding discipline that happens in the home. And then there’s evening worship. Well, before you know it, the day’s over. And we pray and we go to bed. Precious time. Heaven on earth, exquisite delight.

    What is the result of these things? You see, when they wrote question 119, what are the sins forbidden in the fourth commandment? The sins forbidden in the fourth commandment are all omissions of the duties required, all careless, negligent, and unprofitable performing of them and being weary of them, all profaning the day by idleness, and doing that which is in itself sinful, and by all needless works, words, and thoughts about our worldly employments and recreations, they weren’t taking something to its logical conclusion and saying, how can we make this the most miserable experience that a teenager could possibly imagine? They were merely saying, what Isaiah 58 says.

    How can we enter into the exquisite delight of the Lord? And that’s why we read from the creation account. And in Exodus 31, God refreshed himself. God rested. Now we know that the Lord doesn’t grow weary. The Bible says that explicitly. The Lord does not grow weary. He doesn’t grow tired. He refreshes us. He doesn’t need us to refresh Him. On that day, it says, God rested from all the making which He made.

    He looked at what He made and He pronounced it good. And He blessed the Sabbath day and He hallowed it. That’s God. pronouncing a blessing and making something that it wasn’t before. God saying, when God says, let there be light, there was light, you see. When God said to Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply, he blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply. That’s something that conveys the blessing that’s described. And God blessed the Sabbath day. Something happened that was a special note.

    I’ve often thought, for one thing, it’s the first recording of history. God makes a commemorative event, and we are to commemorate every week something that happened and acknowledge that it happened. God made the heavens and the earth, and then that making ended, and he sustains all things by his care. And who is he to us? Who is God to us? Well, the Sabbath day tells us who he is. He’s the one who loves us, who made us, who cares for us, from whom all things come. He’s the father of light from above, from whom flows every good and perfect.

    So, you see, we have this whole sense of things that is entirely different. We don’t seek our own pleasure. We don’t talk idly. We don’t seek our own ways. We have stuff to do. We have the duty of praise. God created the heavens and the earth. He rested. He set the Sabbath day apart. And now it’s to be observed as a holy convocation, it says in the Old Testament, as a day of rest and worship. Now, we won’t get into the worship today so much as what we’ve already mentioned. But it’s a day of holy rest in the sense that we lay aside everything that’s ours to take up everything that’s His, so that we can know and taste that the Lord is good. Now what is that delight that He takes in that day?

    That joy. You see, He made it. It was good. And God said it was good. It was very good. And now He wants us to appreciate it. That he’s good. What he does is good. And it’s good for us. It’s good to praise the Lord. And so he invites us into that special day. All the other stuff aside. Something of the lesson of the manna, you see. It’s not just that you have a day of worship. That’s very important. The Holy Convocation when we’re all together. the private worship on that day, the family worship on that day, the catechizing, the praying, the meditating. I mean, when will you discover yourself? When will you examine yourself? When will you have time alone with the Lord and know who you are?

    You’re not gonna do it while you’re texting. All right? You lay all that aside, but you see, it’s not just the memorizing of scripture it’s not just the praying it’s not just the getting together for worship of course when else would you have time for it when would you have any other season and those things are so important and there’s so little time for them else when else would you have time for them but on the Sabbath day but it’s not just that it’s also that you deny yourself you lay aside these things to simply delight in the Lord, to know Him and to know His benefits, to enter in communion with Him so that it’s not your thoughts, it’s not your concerns, it’s not your worries, it’s the lesson of the manna, you see.

    Man doesn’t live by bread alone. Deuteronomy 8, we’re reminded. What was it that Moses was teaching? And what was it God was teaching through Moses? It’s not by bread that man lives. It’s not alone. It’s not the only thing by which man lives, is bread.

    But by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. The Lord provides. And there were two things there. Here, I feed you where the life, the word of God is life. I feed you myself, I tell you the truth. But the other is, and I care for you in everything.

    Six days they were to go out and gather the manna. Of course that was their thing, and it was what the Lord provided, but their thing was hunger and food. We need to eat, that’s our stuff, you know. What about the mortgage, what about the roof, what about the job every day.

    How are we going to get, you know, I need clothes, I need shoes, I need, you know, who’s going to take care of my health care? Oh, well, maybe that’s taken care of now. But, who’s going to take care of me? You see, that’s the first question. Who’s going to take care of me?

    And you need to know that so deeply in your soul that there’s no question about it. And you can’t do that when you do your own stuff. That question isn’t answered for you in paying the bills and working hard and going to the restaurant or eating a big meal at home. What am I going to eat? What am I going to drink? Who’s going to take care of me?

    The world’s worried about these things, Jesus said. Don’t take thought for tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself. It has enough trouble of its own. How do we get there from here, you see? Well, six days you go out and collect the manna. But the seventh day, there won’t be any manna. Don’t go out.

    On the sixth day, you collect twice as much. Now, if they collected twice as much on Tuesday, it rotted and it stank and it was full of filth on Wednesday. But if they collect twice as much on Friday night or Friday in the morning, And they prepare what they need for the next day. It was perfectly good on the next day, but those who went out to collect on the Sabbath day, the seventh day, there was no manner. What’s the lesson in the manner?

    Man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from it. They were to learn by the word of God that it was God who was providing. It was God who sustained them. It was God that took care of them. What they needed was God and they needed God himself. They needed to know the Lord, to trust in the Lord. They needed to give themselves entirely to Him. And there was a day when they had to trust that if the provision wasn’t there, that God had still made provision. He was still caring for them. It was the Lord who took care of them. It wasn’t how much they gathered or didn’t gather. It wasn’t by their own labor. It wasn’t by their own effort. They didn’t make their own way out of Egypt.

    God saved them. God delivered. And He would keep them. We need to learn that lesson, that our soul is in the hand of God. God to give, God to receive. Our life is in His hands. And of course, the Sabbath day that we celebrate, the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day, is the day that the Lord is risen from the dead. It’s the day that we recognize Jesus is alive. And he holds us and he keeps us and nothing can remove us from his hand. It’s not about who provides our health care. It’s not about what the economy is. It’s not about our work. It’s not about what the doctor can do for us. It’s about our Lord Jesus Christ and faith in him. And we gather together and we say, here is my rest. Here is my trust. Here is my life.

    And I’m secure in him. you see these are part of the benefits that we derive then you will take delight in the Lord and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father for the mouth of the Lord is spoken here’s a promise that God makes he signs the bottom line and he says I’m going to give you everything that’s promised in the covenant you’re going to have it in full you’re going to enjoy it here you’re going to taste of it if you Put your stuff aside. If you deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me, and in particular on the Sabbath day, commune with me, then you’re going to take delight in the Lord, that exquisite delight you’re going to taste.

    Now you think of the benefits of the covenant that are ours. And among them, besides justification, adoption, and sanctification, are a number of other benefits. And those benefits are things that we really experience and taste and enjoy. They’re benefits that we don’t want to forget. The benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification Our assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace and perseverance there into the end. Do I know that I’m saved? Do I know that the Lord loves me? Do I know that my life is in his hands? Are my sins forgiven?

    These are things that when one knows these things there is a depth and a richness and an intricacy and a complication that is beautiful. And those who keep the Sabbath day and lay everything else aside and just commune with their Savior begin to know and understand these things. That’s why our Puritan forefathers who wrote our standards, wrote the way they did, emphasized the Sabbath the way they did, because they experienced it. They experienced that Sabbath.

    You know, you learn the will of God by doing the will of God. You read it in his word, you say, yes, this is what it says I ought to do. But then you put it into practice. And you learn what it means, what the benefits are, and how those things work in your life. And the Sabbath is especially like that. And your life then becomes a going from Sabbath to Sabbath, from joy to joy, from blessing to blessing, from rest to rest. A little taste of heaven here, you see.

    Self-denial is a fundamental element of true Christian piety. How do we learn it? It’s essential to an expression of faith. It’s essential to our sanctification. It’s essential to our assurance. It’s essential to real worship. It’s essential to fundamental humility and therefore dealing with others in love. It’s essential to being able to benefit others and to count others more highly than we count ourselves and to treat people that way. How do we learn that?

    Well, we might say, I could work really hard at it. I could Well, I could give up stuff. Or if somebody needs my help, but I have a dentist appointment, I won’t go to the dentist appointment. I’ll help them instead. Now that may prolong your toothache. And then you can pat yourself on the back and say, look, I practice self-denial. Maybe, maybe not, you see.

    But sanctification is indirect. Very often the things in which we struggle the most find themselves losing their power over us. The sins that so easily beset us and tangle us and cause us to trip up. Lose their power by things that are done that aren’t addressed to them. It’s an indirect sort of thing. And the Sabbath is just that way. those pleasures, those benefits, those delights that you’ll be able to enjoy.

    You’ll learn self-denial by laying everything else that is you and yours and your concerns aside and just giving yourself to the Lord. And in so doing, you’ll learn to love others. You’ll learn to love the Savior better. You’ll commune with your Savior. You’ll know the forgiveness of your sins, the assurance of grace and pardon. You’ll have a sense of perseverance. You’ll realize that the Lord is sustaining you. And this is where my care comes from. And you’ll become the long-distance runner that you need to be in the Christian faith.

    It’s the Sabbath day and the practice of the Sabbath day that inculcates these things. It was the heart. of the piety that is set before us in our system of doctrine that’s contained in the scriptures and set out in the Westminster Confession of Faith and larger, shorter catechism. And the rich experience of the grace of God supplying us in all its intricacy and beauty and delight, having God and knowing him and experiencing him was a hallmark, a hallmark blessing of Presbyterian and Reformed piety in keeping the Sabbath day holy.

    Let us pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we pray that we would learn to set aside our own things and realize the blessing, that exquisite delight in the Lord that you supply as you supply yourself in salvation. We ask that you would forgive us for our sins and that you would enable us to turn away from our own things, the things that mean so much to us in our daily work, things that in and of themselves aren’t sin, and that we may then just rest entirely in you this day. we might have time for the duties of praise, yes, but that we may also leave so much of ourself and so much of our thinking about ourself and things that are unimportant to the side, that we might be with you and that we may know the exquisite delight of your fellowship and communion. We ask these things in Jesus’ name, amen. Hymn number 321. Let’s stand to sing.

    ♪ Our God is almost right ♪ ♪ On thee the high and lowly ♪ ♪ Of angels join him too ♪ ♪ Sing holy, holy, holy to the God of Israel ♪ On thee and thy creation, on earth as it were, on thee for our salvation. And God shall make most glorious the dreadful rite of death, the final work of heaven. ♪ Intersect them with streams of paradise ♪ ♪ A garden cooling from head ♪ ♪ In life’s draught, here we stand ♪ ♪ From the unripe meadows round them ♪ ♪ We view our promised land ♪ ♪ To day of myriad nations ♪ ♪ The heavenly banner falls ♪ ♪ To holy convocations ♪ ♪ The silver trumpet calls ♪ ♪ Where God’s full light is glowing ♪ ♪ With your array of dreams ♪ ♪ And living water flowing ♪ ♪ With so refreshing streams ♪ ♪ New ways it’s ever leading ♪ ♪ From this our new beginning ♪ to the spirits of the blessed, to Holy Ghost be praises, to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

    Hail to the U.S.A. and God. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

    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.

  • By His Stripes We Are Healed

    By His Stripes We Are Healed

    About this sermon

    Isaiah’s servant is high and lifted up, yet his appearance is marred beyond human likeness. He was despised and rejected, he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, and he was pierced for our transgressions; by his stripes we are healed. Sin brings guilt and also a corruption that sickens the whole person, and in his miracles of healing Jesus showed that he came to remove sin’s misery as well as its guilt. Faith receives that healing, and the forgiven live with a clear conscience before God.

    More sermons from Isaiah · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    It’s going? There we go. Thank you. It’s a pleasure for me to be here with you today to preach the Word of God. to be with you as a congregation. I know many of you do enjoy the hospitality of the hardest East today to see my good friends, Pam and Dan, and see the progress that Dan is making.

    As the Lord supplies him with the healing that he has metered out for him, And today we’re looking at, for our Bible reading, Isaiah 52, verses 13 and following through chapter 53, verse 12. We do it in that manner because the end of Isaiah 52 really belongs to Isaiah 53. And we wouldn’t be able to understand or have the full passage before us if we didn’t begin at the end of Isaiah 52. So, Isaiah 52, verse 13.

    Let us hear the word of God with reverence. Behold, my servant shall act wisely he shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance. And his form beyond that of the children of mankind, so shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him. For that which has not been told to them, they shall see. And that which they have not heard, they shall understand who has believed what he has heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed. For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground.

    He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not.

    Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we were healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned to every one. to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

    He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. And as for his generation who considered that he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people, and they made his grave with the wicked and with the rich man in his death, although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief.

    When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one my servant make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors.

    May God add his blessing to this, the reading of his holy word. Isaiah 53 5 Isaiah 53 5 reads, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his stripes we are healed. With his stripes we are healed. Why healed? Why is that word used? That’s part of what we want to consider together this morning. Why is that word healed there? And what does this verse teach us?

    Now, this verse occurs in one of the most important passages in the Old Testament. Certainly, we recognize, don’t we, as Bible readers, as Christians, that some passages seem significant, And some passages seem greatly more important than others. Now, all the Bible is the word of God, inspired by the word of God, infallible, inerrant, and so on, and it’s important. Every jot and tittle is important.

    But what would we do without Isaiah 53? There’s a wonderful reciprocity between a passage like Isaiah 53 and the New Testament. In fact, if we had only the New Testament and we didn’t have Isaiah 53, would you know how to interpret the death of our Lord Jesus Christ? You see, it has a major impact on our thinking, does it not? Isaiah 53.

    It represents the Lord Jesus Christ and his suffering as a sacrifice for sins, one man for all of the nations, a substitutionary atonement, a reconciling sacrifice received by the Father, offered by the Son, that’s required according to the justice of God.

    And there, what was due to us for our sins, due to us and for our salvation was laid upon him. Now there’s a great many uses that are made of this great passage. I think we look at it almost now as if it were a portion of the New Testament. It is so redolent with New Testament truth.

    So obviously, speaking of our Savior, the Ethiopian eunuch he’s going along and Philip comes along beside and this is the portion of God’s Word that the Ethiopian eunuch is reading and he’s able to speak of the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Ethiopian eunuch is converted. How many times has that been repeated in the history of the church? How many times have those who belong as according to Abraham, according to the flesh, and they’ve heard this and believed and been saved. How it doesn’t confirm, does it not confirm our faith and our understanding in what Jesus did for us so that we can sing it with real with a real sense of coming before the Lord in sacrifice, coming before the Lord and singing rightly, I lay my sins on Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God.

    He bears them all and frees us from the accursed load. Now the words here in verses four and five of Isaiah 53 speak in terms of disease and in terms of healing. And this passage has been used on many occasions, and I’m sure you’ve heard the argument. You remember it goes something like this. Here, if Jesus has borne your sins, in his body on the tree, if he’s made atonement. for you than the healing of which, verse five speaks, belongs to you. It’s your right, and so you need to claim it by faith. You’ve heard these claims.

    They’re widely made throughout evangelicalism, and our brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ hear these things in various assemblies throughout our country and all around the world. And then there’s a counter-argument. that is often made. And our brothers and sisters in the Lord make this counter-argument with some force for the purpose of doing good.

    The good they hope to do is to say, now look, every Christian should not expect that in everything that they suffer, they will be healed. And that if they don’t have enough faith or if they’re hiding some sin, then of course they’re not going to be healed. And if they’re not healed, then of course it’s because they didn’t have faith. And if they’re not healed, it’s because they have some hidden sin that we ought to seek out and find what it is. So with good purpose, they say, that’s not helpful.

    What is the passage actually saying? And then they look at the passage and say, this is only dealing with the guilt of sin. And in fact, the guilt of sin is dealt with in this passage. And not for a moment do I want to turn from that and say, sin is not dealt with here as sin. Quite the contrary. However, both arguments and counter-arguments, MIPS represent the full import of this simple but rather comprehensive passage. Why do we say this? Well, because the language forces us to recognize the comprehensiveness of the work of this great sufferer.

    You see in verse four it says, surely he has borne our griefs, that word could be translated diseases, and carried our sorrows. Of course griefs are inner things that we bear. And he’s carried our sorrows, our inner conflicts and griefs. And we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. He’s not suffering for his own sins, he’s suffering for our sins.

    And that’s what verse five says. It is the answer to verse four. We reckoned that it is so, you see, that he is struck down by God, He is smitten by God and humiliated, afflicted. For what purpose? Well, he is done so by God. These things that are done to him, this is by God. This is how we’ve reckoned it. Why so? And verse five answers to that. He was wounded for our transgressions. Transgression, of course, is stepping over the boundary in English. He was crushed for our iniquities. We’re talking about breaking of the law. We’re talking about actions that violate the righteousness of God.

    And upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, peace with God. forgiveness for sins that can be declared on the basis that a sacrifice has been offered for sin. So I don’t want for a moment to say that there is no such element here as the forgiveness of sins on the basis of the sin bearer having borne for us our sins. In fact, when We have this quoted in the New Testament.

    In 1 Peter 2.24, Peter reminds us, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his work you have been healed. It is by what he has done.

    Now, with that in mind, We might say, well then how is this not a helpful argument? It’s not a helpful argument that he bore our sins in his body on the tree and that’s all that’s being referred to here. That’s not a helpful argument because of the comprehensiveness of the passage.

    And with his stripes, we are healed. And in that, the great problem of sin is dealt with in its fullest sense. Yes, we need to be forgiven for our sins, but we need to be healed as well from our sins. We’re reminded of that in the way our own theology and our own standards treat the whole matter of sin.

    You see, there’s sin and the guilt of sin, and there’s the dominion of sin, which is the consequence of sin, and there is the misery of sin, including death itself. So when we ask the question in Catechism question 17, into what estate did the fall bring mankind? The answer is the fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery. wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate wherein to man fell. And the sinfulness of that estate wherein to man fell, we’re told in the answer to question 18, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin, together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.

    In other words, There’s not just simply the guilt of Adam’s first sin. There’s not just the guilt of our actual transgressions. There’s something wrong with us. And that something wrong with us is a part of the curse of God against sin. That when Adam sinned, he not only was guilty of that first sin and guilty of that first sin for all of us, for an Adam all sin, just as an Adam all die, but he also plunged us into the corruption of the whole man. We are totally depraved. We are totally unable to do any good before God.

    There’s an illness, and it’s that disease, if you will, In the New Testament, we see Jesus healing the lepers. Why? Because they were unclean. They were disqualified from the worship of God. It wasn’t just that they were bacterially unclean or virally unclean.

    But to be unclean in the Old Testament is to be excluded from the temple. It’s to be excluded from the sacrifice. It’s to be excluded from the people of God. It’s to be excluded from the covenants. You’re excluded. You’re outside. You’re disqualified. How will one know forgiveness? How will one know the blessing of God? You’re disqualified. You see, you’re unclean.

    There’s something wrong with you. and Jesus touches the leper and he heals him. You see, that teaches us that when Jesus comes and he atones on the cross, he does far more than simply bear the guilt of Adam’s first transgression, far more than just the guilt of our actual transgressions. but he deals with the depth of our sinfulness, which is our own disqualification before God and our own sinful nature. The flesh is the term often used in the New Testament for that. You see, he bore all our sin in his body on the tree, that we might be those who through what he has done raised up to newness of life in Christ, forgiven our sins, and we should walk in newness of life.

    It’s a wonderful passage in 1 Peter 2.24, and it’s those kinds of verses that it seems to me we ought to be memorizing, we ought to be considering and meditating upon. It comes in a passage that reminds us how we are to deal with those who use us improperly.

    He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep. but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

    Now the import of that, when we look at verse five in Isaiah 53, is far greater than just the guilt of our sin. It goes now to breaking the dominion of sin, Romans six. you remember, says we are no longer under the dominion of sin. We’ve died with Christ, we’ve been crucified with him, we’ve been raised up together with Christ, and now we are to live unto righteousness. As we read in Romans six, verse five and six, we know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

    Now, you see, there’s the comprehensiveness of this passage. And with his stripes, you were healed. You see, we die unto sin, we live unto righteousness. By his wounds, you’ve been healed. His atonement has procured for you a redemption in its entirety. from beginning to end. And it rescues you and purchases for you all that life and healing and gifts and graces that God would have for you as his own dear children, purchased and received and reconciled to him. by his wounds. Peter says, quoting this, you have been healed.

    Because you see upon him was the punishment that reconciled us. Now that indeed gets us the forgiveness of sins. We go to God confessing our sins because he’s faithful and just, John tells us, to forgive us. all our sins to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But he goes on in chapter two of first John to tell us that’s on the basis of the propitiation that was made in his blood by the Lord Jesus Christ. So we are then brought to newness of life.

    But then there are the miseries. that belong to this present life. It’s a condition which, and a status, which we may say we have a status of guilty before God, but we have a condition which is one of sin and misery, and he also delivered us from our misery. What is the misery of that estate wherein two men fell? All mankind by their fall lost communion with God are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever. Question 19 of the Shorter Catechism.

    So yes. There is forgiveness. You have a healing from the guilt of sin. You have a healing from the dominion of sin. It should no longer. And what does Paul say in Romans six, therefore, on that basis, you offer yourself and the members of your body, all that you are, your mind, your heart, your hands, your feet, your intentions, your love. your hopes for the future, you give them all to God. You surrender them to him. And you do that as instruments of righteousness.

    You are no longer a servant to sin, you’re no longer a slave to sin, but now you are rendering your members as instruments of righteousness, and you are slaves of God. that was purchased for you by Christ on the cross. And as that cross is applied to you and you receive the gospel by faith, then your sins are forgiven and you’ve been healed of the guilt of your sin. You’re healed of the dominion of your sin, but you’re also healed of the misery of your sin. the misery that belongs to sin, the wages of sin is death.

    But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Death is replaced by life. You’ve passed, the Bible says, from death to life. Now, setting these great facts before you doesn’t change the fact that we live in this world. and in this world of sin and death. And we may sit here and ponder, how is this helpful? What does this do for us? Because if we have passed from death to life, I just put my father in nursing care. He’s 92 years old. But he’s at the end of his life. We all die. you know, till Jesus comes. This is a world of sin and death. We all die.

    But that is not just something which is an end point, it’s a process. The misery that belongs to sin is something from which Jesus has purchased us. We have been purchased to a healing that cannot fail. And it’s just here in the comprehensiveness of what Jesus has done for us that the answer lies to those who say, we ought to be healed now. We ought to be healed in this way. And we ought to be healed in such a way that I’m well and comfortable and healthy now.

    Now, I don’t know if that’s immediately apparent to you, the form of that argument, but that’s the same argument that Mary and Martha were making. Jesus, your timing is off. Have you noticed? Jesus, your timing is off. If you had been here, Lazarus would not have died. Imagine saying that to the Savior. And well, we might have. Were we in their place? You see. And are we not often in their place?

    And what ifs of life? Have you ever asked, what if, or why not? Why didn’t these things happen this way or that way? I prayed and I asked God to help and to heal and to change and to renew. And it didn’t happen that way. Or it didn’t happen all the way. And it didn’t happen now when I needed it. If you had been here, Lord, when we needed you, now that there’s nothing you can do about it, you show up. Can you imagine speaking to Jesus that way? But that’s sometimes why we don’t pray in the way that we ought, because Maybe this sounds like too strong a word. Do you think so? Because we think we’re angry with God. Why God didn’t you do it?

    This isn’t life disappointing. I don’t know if you’ve checked. There were no road signs getting here that pointed to heaven. This isn’t heaven, but it’s coming. Not on your schedule. There’s a new heavens and a new earth and it’s coming and it’s not on your schedule.

    There’s an entire healing that you are to receive that’s already been purchased for you. But it’s not today, unless Jesus comes while I’m preaching and that would be wonderful. I have always longed for the fact that someday I could get up and be interrupted in my sermon by the coming of the Lord. Wouldn’t that be a conclusion? Here’s Jesus. Wouldn’t that be something? But you see, that’s really what we try to do every time we get in the pulpit, is to say, here’s Jesus.

    Now Mary and Martha were confronted with Jesus too late. You’ve heard the expression, you know, A day late and a dollar short? Well, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. It was purposed that it should be that way. They hadn’t understood the comprehensiveness of the healing to which they were being called and how it’s invested in a person and the purchase that he was about to make. Jesus came to die. Jesus came to purchase their healing. Jesus came to free them from what had just taken Lazarus. And they thought perhaps he had not gotten there in time.

    He had failed Lazarus. in some way. They didn’t understand our full redemption and what it all means and how it’s invested in that person. Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. Yes, there’s a resurrection day someday, but we’re not invested in that day. We don’t happen to know what it is. Now, some people are very good mathematically. Some stay home, some go camping. I know that just went over somebody’s head. Harold Camping said there was going to, oh, he just got it. We don’t know the day. We don’t know the hour when Jesus is coming again.

    But we know that he is the resurrection and the life. And our healing is as we are in connection with Him. He bore our chastisement. He bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might live unto righteousness, that we might die unto sin, live unto righteousness by His wounds. His wounds, we’ve been healed.

    We need to be connected to Jesus. We need to be joined to him. And that happens by faith. When we invest ourself by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, he’s the one who’s purchased our healing. When we come and lay hold of him, like the lady with the issue of blood, just touch the hem of his garment. We need to touch, reach out and touch. But Jesus has promised all who call upon will be saved. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. So we need to lay hold of him by faith. And faith doesn’t just receive an idea.

    It receives a person. So that when we lay hold of Jesus by faith, as he lays hold of us by his sovereign word and spirit, saving us, enlightening us, renewing us, and enabling us to believe in him. What was purchased for us is ours. It’s his that he’s gotten for us. And when he has us, we have all that he has for us. And so the comprehensive healing is also involved in dealing with death, death. Where is your sting? It’s gone. Power of sin has been broken. It was the power of death is broken. The sting of death is removed. It was sin.

    And now we’ll be raised up incorruptible with him. The healing in you now. that’s begun is the healing that will remarkably be demonstrated then. This is part of the promise that we have, for instance, in Romans 8, 16, and 17. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him, in order that we may also be glorified with him. And in verse 11, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. Let’s put it in parens after that. Now, the spirit that gives you faith, the spirit that connects you to Jesus, that you experience by faith is that spirit that will raise you from the dead.

    Now, when you look at that comprehensive healing, what disease remains? What sorrow will continue? What misery is not outflanked and destroyed? When you’re in glory and you look back, just like Mary and Martha at the tomb of Lazarus, after he was raised, are you going to look back and say, it wasn’t healed? It’s ridiculous to think of it that way, isn’t it? And that’s the answer.

    Is there healing? Is there healing in the gospel? Is there a healing that belongs to you now? Yes, there’s a far deeper, greater, fuller, and all complete healing, and it’s already begun. And you need to call on the name of the Lord and pursue that healing. It begins by recognizing who and what you are. I’m a sinner. And I need to be cleansed of my sin. That’s a healing. I don’t just need to be forgiven. I need to be cleansed.

    I need to be cleansed within so that my desires, my thoughts, my actions that arise out of those things are interrupted by the word of God, by the spirit of God, by the power that’s at work in me. And Paul prays that you would know what power is at work in you. That same power that raised Jesus from the dead is not something that shall raise you from the dead, perhaps someday, but it is the power of God that’s at work in you now. Do you believe?

    Whether it’s anxiety, fear, grief, temptations, disappointments, lack of hope, discontent, the things that oppose us in life, persecutions, difficulties, all these things. We deal with them. They’re a part of our life. We either deal with them well, or we deal with them sinfully. If we deal with them sinfully, the miseries are increased. If we deal with them well. You see, we suffer and then can there be joy in suffering? There’s trials and temptations. Can there be joy in these things? We read that in the scripture. Is it hyperbole? Is it fantasy? If it’s not part of your experience, then what are you missing? If everything that I’ve said today is true. What are you missing?

    And so often the case is that we have missed going to God to receive all that he has for us. Our faith is not hypothetical. Our faith is just not technical or in a technicality. Our faith is entering into all that God has for us. in the change of life, in the renewal from above. It’s a healing from guilt and the dominion of sin and the misery of sin. And therefore, it’s walking with a sense of being right with God. And what does that produce? What does a clear conscience do for you?

    Look at the beautiful day coming down. We passed all these beautiful trees that are going green. We passed the deer in the field. We looked around and we said, look how clear, look how bright, look how wonderful. That’s what a clear conscience feels like. You see?

    Don’t you want to live in the sunshine of God’s grace? What is being free from the misery and the dominion of sin? I’m not a slave anymore. I’m free. What does freedom feel like? Do you feel free? Or do you feel constrained on every side and from within? We go and we repent and we turn to all that God has for us and we lay hold of Jesus and we are free. That belongs to your healing. And then we’re free from the misery, not just the dominion and the guilt. We’re free from the misery, which includes death. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had it. I’m not going to die. I gave up on that. I’m not going to do that. You say, what’s wrong with you? You crazy?

    Besides that, Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. That starts today. That’s every day with Jesus. I am not gonna die. Stop thinking of yourself as those enslaved to sin, guilty before God, and the walking dead. You are not the walking dead. You are living You are alive in Jesus.

    You are free to serve him, and you ought to be walking in the sunshine of his face. By his wounds, the whole package, by his wounds, you have been healed. It may not be this afternoon. It may not be that this body is going to be immediately rejuvenated, right here and now, that some physician’s pill, Lord, please heal me, that’s gonna happen. That isn’t the way God is meeting out your salvation to you, but the whole of it is yours. The whole of it is yours today. And you need to go in the sunshine. of the grace of God, free in Him, in the freedom of the sons of God, and alive never to die. Let us pray.

    Lord, we live in an age that mocks us and scoffs at the things of the gospel. And it offers to us many different forms of healing. And for some of these, we are deeply grateful. But they mock at the healing that our Savior can give. And they say that it’s silly and it’s too little too late. How little they know of the power that is available to us, that same power which raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

    And we ask, Father, that you might give us faith in him, faith that is resilient, faith that perseveres, faith that lays hold of Jesus as he truly is, doesn’t look for quick and easy solutions, that forgets. our full position in him and how comprehensive the salvation, so that we may walk in that freedom and in the sunlight of the smile of your face as you forgive us all our sins, as we go reconciled to you, right with you, with a clear conscience, knowing that as the outer man decays, the inner man is being renewed day by day, and we shall never die, but we shall see him face to face.

    For those who are older, comfort and strengthen. Help them to look forward to the unending hope and future that is before them. For those who are younger, help them to remember their creator in the days of their youth. and not to live dissipate lives and to be carried away by the world. And for those who are struggling with disease or impairment or difficulties, Lord, help us to remember that we will soon be well of these things.

    And help us to persevere by faith, rejoicing in our Savior, awaiting our deliverance. And we give you thanks. that though the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Help us to walk in that eternal life now, we ask in Jesus’ name, amen. Hymn number 192, hymn number 192. Let’s stand to sing 192. See Him dying on the tree.

    Is the Christ I have rejected? Yes, my soul, it is He. ♪ His Son yet made the Lord ♪ ♪ By His Son God now hath spoken ♪ ♪ His love’s true and faithful word ♪ ♪ Tell me you here in roaming ♪ ♪ What’s there ever great like this ♪ Friends who hear it, watch it slowly, watch it slowly, it’s distress.

    Many hands were raised to hold him, not willing to pose to save. But the deed that the stroke had pierced him was the stroke that justice gave. Sin but lightning, nor supposedly evil rain. Here may beauty, nature rightly, here in still may, just in may. of the world.

    Tis the word of the Lord God Almighty, Son of man and Son of God. Here we have our foundation, here the refuge Christ the Lord, our salvation, in the name of which he goes. Sacrificing canceled guilt. None shall ever be confounded. Who on hell you there won’t have built. Ah. Receive then God’s blessing. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

    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.

  • The Vineyard of God

    The Vineyard of God

    About this sermon

    Isaiah’s song of the vineyard tells how the Lord cleared the ground, planted choice vines, and built a watchtower, yet the vineyard yielded wild grapes, bloodshed instead of justice and an outcry instead of righteousness. So he will remove its hedge and leave it to waste. Israel had every advantage and still sinned greatly. God preserves his elect, and the Spirit works their perseverance, but the passage calls his people to examine themselves and to love the Lord with all their heart.

    More sermons from Isaiah · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    I want to speak to you today from a text found in Isaiah chapter 5 and read in your hearing the first seven verses. Isaiah chapter 5 verses 1 to 7. 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, 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 look 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.

    He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed for righteousness, but behold, an outcry. Now the text before us, shows us a beautiful love song that Isaiah sings to God. And we are struck with the richness of imagery and the beauty of the language. Concerning this song, the commentator Dalich writes, the winged rhythm, the euphonic music, the sweet assonances of this appeal cannot be reproduced. Indeed, the song is most remarkable in that it proceeds from the lofty praise of God to lamentation and soon gives way to denunciation. The prophet sings his love song to Yahweh concerning his vineyard, which we learn shortly is the house of Israel and the men of Judah.

    Now, surely the one beloved by the prophet who is mentioned here, the one beloved by this prophet, Isaiah, is Jesus the Messiah. Who else could be the object of such love? He alone is lovely. And the Hebrew word that is used is yadid, and it connotes Loveliness, Jesus is loveliness itself. And we ought therefore to love him with all of our heart and all of our soul and all of our mind.

    The delightful relationship our Lord has with his people is seen in this image of a vineyard which he has planted on a fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. protected it by a watchtower. And there was nothing more he could have done for the benefit of his vineyard that he blessed with every spiritual blessing from the heavenly places. To use the words of Paul in Ephesians chapter one and verse three, there was nothing more he could have done for the benefit of his vineyard that he blessed with every spiritual blessing from the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And though his vineyard brings forth sour grapes or stinking things, translated literally, he has purchased his people with a price.

    He hedged us about, he set us apart, planted and cultivated us. And all within us that brings forth good fruit is of his creating, his tending, and his preserving. All that comes from any of us by nature is stinking things, fit for destruction. If there is any good fruit from any of us, it derives from our beloved master’s sovereign power.

    We must belong to Jesus Christ in order to bear fruit. We must be his vineyard. We must pray that every part of us belongs to Christ, along that all we have and all we are and all that we do. We must be in the vineyard of our beloved Lord. As the vineyard of Jesus, we have every advantage. and privilege and opportunity to bring forth much fruit, for he plants us on a very fertile hill.

    It is to our great shame that we bear so little fruit for our Lord. We all need to search our hearts and to rid our lives of that which is not fruit fit for our beloved Lord. And the terms used by the prophet comport with one who is vitally connected to Christ, the vine. This is a song of love from one whose heart has been changed by the spirit of God. But the song reflects some very disappointing behavior.

    Instead of good grapes, his vineyard produces wild grapes or stinking things. Instead of justice, his vineyard produces bloodshed. Instead of righteousness, his vineyard produces outcries of distress. At the first reading, we perhaps see little of God’s preserving mercy in this love song. And though he has planted his vineyard on a fertile hill and cultivated and protected it, he now says that he will remove its hedge and break down its protective wall so that it will be destroyed and laid waste. Is the force of the passage to the effect that we can lose our salvation? Here is a vineyard that God himself has planted, but with all its advantages, it becomes unfruitful. Is God not powerful to save and to preserve his people?

    Peter writes in the first chapter, verses three to five. This is the first chapter of 1 Peter. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time. And you remember that great passage in Romans chapter 8.

    Paul writes, who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for your sake, we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors to him who loved us.

    For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

    And speaking of his people, Jesus himself said, I give them eternal life and they will never perish. and no one will snatch them out of my hand. Nothing can be more clear than this, that God preserves his people through all their tribulation and distress until they are with him forever in heaven.

    He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. The Westminster Confession of Faith sums it up like this. They whom God has accepted in his beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere there into the end and be eternally saved. And the second paragraph, this perseverance of the saints depends not on their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Christ Jesus. the abiding of the spirit and the seed of God within them and the nature of the covenant of grace from all which arises also the certainty and infallibility thereof.

    That his people for whom Christ died will certainly be preserved for heaven follows from the doctrines of grace. His people are foreknown unto salvation. They are predestined, called, justified, and glorified so that no one can condemn God’s elect. It is almighty Yahweh God who saves us and the living Jesus Christ at the right hand of God who preserves us. But we must persevere, and we will most certainly persevere, because God the Spirit works within us to turn us more and more away from sin unto the righteousness of Christ. Therefore, Isaiah chapter five does not teach that God’s elect people will lose their salvation. The Bible clearly teaches that God’s elect are most certainly and surely saved.

    God’s people sin and are judged, but they are still saved. And the Holy Spirit continues his work of sanctification in them. Again, as the confession puts it, God’s people may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalence of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins and for a time continue therein. whereby they incur God’s displeasure and grieve his Holy Spirit, come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened and their consciences wounded, hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves. God may indeed cast away his people for their sins, but, but a remnant will remain true to the Lord.

    In the next chapter, Isaiah writes, And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? And then I said, here am I, 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. And then I said, how long, O Lord?

    And he said, until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is 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. And so we have here the remnant principle. Paul brings all this into the proper perspective when he writes, in Romans chapter nine and verse six, but it is not as though the word of God has failed.

    For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. And not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring. But through Isaac shall your offspring be named. And this means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise who are counted as offspring.

    Now there are those who are true people of God, and they are in various stages of spiritual growth. Mingled in with them are those who are not the people of God, but are tares within the wheat. Together, they are tried, chastened, and judged. Did you hear that? they are tried, chastened, and judged. In the end, those who are not the people of God are separated out and cast into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. But those who are God’s elect people will inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.

    Well, what then does Isaiah chapter five teach? We must understand that God demands holiness of his people, and that he orders all things to the end that his people abide in Christ and bear much fruit. Think of what he says in John chapter 15. Indeed, God chooses those who are his vineyard, and in that sense, his vineyard is exclusive. The vineyard exists because God planted it and God cared for it and fenced it in. Israel was separated out from the surrounding nations and they alone, Israel alone, received the precepts of God. And it was on them alone that God set his saving love. You notice from the text that the vineyard is well cared for. It is fenced in, and its stones are removed. It is cultivated and protected. God commands the clouds to rain on it.

    He provides all that is necessary for its existence and continued growth and fullness. Indeed, God brings each one of his elect into existence. He foreknows them unto salvation. He predestines them, calls, justifies, and glorifies them. Christ and the Holy Spirit intercede for us. We are chastened by God like a father chastens his children. And we therefore are sons of God and not illegitimates. God reveals himself to us in the Bible and opens our hearts to believe his word. He’s placed us on the earth that so eloquently declares his glory. And there is absolutely no reason from God’s perspective for the production of wild grapes or stinking things in view of his gracious provision.

    There is a well-known physics experiment that illustrates this truth. A series of steel balls are suspended horizontally with each ball in contact with the ball next to it, except for the balls on either end of the string of the series. And if one end ball is pulled back and allowed to swing into the line of hanging balls, one ball will swing away from the other end. If two balls at one end are allowed to swing against the line, two balls at the other end will swing away. And so this experiment proves the conservation of momentum.

    Well, this is a picture of the way God expects to receive back from his vineyard what he has put it into it. but people are inherently wicked and evil. As Jeremiah puts it, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

    So we all need to examine ourselves and determine what kind of fruit we bear for the Lord. We need to see to its quality. That’s the lesson we need to learn from Isaiah chapter 5, we need to see to the quality of our fruit because God demands holiness from us. He demands holiness from those who are his vineyard. And that God demands holiness from his people is implicit in the judgment meted out to Israel. Look again at verses five and six of the text.

    And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge. It shall be devoured. I will break down its wall. 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.

    God is not casting away his people because they can repent. He calls upon them to wash themselves. In the first chapter of Isaiah, he calls upon his people to reason together and to know that though their sins be scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. If they repent, they will eat the good of the land. And he advises people to walk in the light of the Lord.

    Indeed, the righteous branch, Jesus the Messiah, will be sent away to take their sins and whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. We must observe that the judgment is brought upon sin even in God’s own vineyard. God overlooks no one’s sin.

    To punish disobedience, the land of milk and honey is taken away. The dispersion occurs and his people are humbled. We note here that the remnant, those who remain true to the Lord, were also included in the dispersion. They went into captivity also. Think of Daniel. They lose fellowship, but there is a way back. There is a way back.

    God never removes the path to repentance, and he is patient with those whom he has called to himself. Remember the parable that Jesus told in Luke chapter 13, a man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and to find none. Cut it down. Why should I use up the ground? And he answered him, sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around it and put on manure. if it should bear fruit next year, well and good. But if not, you can cut it down.

    God judges his people for their sins, but always with mercy, always with mercy. He endures with much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. Think of Romans nine. In order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory. The Lord teaches us in John 15 to abide in Christ or be burned. But branches that are vitally connected to the vine do abide, even though they must be chastened and tried in order to rid them of the dross of their sin.

    There are two sides to eternal security. Preservation and perseverance. When you think of the word tulip, the acronym tulip, the P stands for two words, preservation and perseverance. Preservation and perseverance. God preserves his people, but he exhorts them to persevere and to be holy.

    Now, what was the particular sin of Israel? We read of that in the same chapter as our text, but verse 24. Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down into the flame, so their root will be as rottenness, and their blossom go up like dust. Four, they have rejected the law of the Lord, the law of Yahweh Tzavot, the law of the Lord of hosts, and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

    Are we capable of doing that? Are we capable of rejecting the law of the Lord of hosts, of despising the word of the Holy One of Israel? Are we capable of doing that? Is this not the very sin of the modern Church of Christ? All sin amounts to a rejection of the law of God and a despising of the lawgiver, the Holy One of Israel. As we read through Chapter 5 of Isaiah, we see the greed of Israel. We see her drunkenness, her love for sin, her false teachers, her conceit, and all of this is despising the law. If Israel could sin in this way, given that she was planted by God as his peculiar vineyard with every advantage and benefit from God, how much more can we and do we sin against our great God and Savior?

    The purity of our own church and our denomination depends on our personal holiness. God has the right to demand holiness of us. He has revealed much to us, as he says, what more could I do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? Although he reveals to us, he reveals himself to us in his word and his creation, we still turn to idols and abominations. This is our tendency. Even though we have been converted, the old man still abides. and we must be continually exhorted to be holy.

    Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am Yahweh your God. I am Yahweh Eloheinu. The angels and saints about the throne of God do not sing, wise and just is God, Of course, he is wise and just, but they sing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh, God of hosts.

    The whole earth is full of his glory, and that is to say God himself is sinless and righteous, not despising his own law. He is perfect in all his ways. He is not at all like an earthly king, who delights to force his people to keep his laws while he is free to break them as he chooses. It is biblical to exhort God’s people to persevere.

    That’s what your pastor ought to do. And I know that your pastor does that. Like Paul says in Ephesians 6 and verse 18, praying at all times in the spirit with prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.

    1 Corinthians 15, 58, therefore my beloved brothers, be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. And in Galatians chapter five and verse one, for freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Second Peter 317, you therefore beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.

    Matthew 10, 22, you will be hated for all for my name’s sake, but the one who endures to the end will be saved. Then there’s Hebrews chapter 12 and verse one, therefore seeing or since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. So the proposition that I put before you is this.

    God demands holiness of his people and he orders all things to the end that his people abide in Christ and bear much fruit. Let us all see to ourselves and strive to be holy, even as our Lord is holy. Our Heavenly Father, again, we thank you for your tender mercies to your people, for the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for the sins of his people, for the work of your Spirit in sanctifying us for the great prayers of the Holy Spirit before the throne of grace and of our Lord Jesus Christ himself, interceding for us with words and groanings too deep for words. Oh, Father, how we thank you for all of these things. But indeed, help each and every one of us to examine ourselves continually to see to it that we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind as we should. And we pray this in his name, amen.

    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.

  • Come, Come, Come

    Come, Come, Come

    About this sermon

    Isaiah 55 calls everyone who thirsts to come to the waters and buy wine and milk without money and without price. The price has been paid by Christ, who on the last day of the feast stood and cried, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” Water gives life, milk gives growth, and wine gladdens the heart, and all are gifts given in Christ. The everlasting covenant promised to David is fulfilled in him, and the nations run to him, gathered into the church, the Jerusalem that is above.

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    Sermon transcript

    As you are being seated, let us open in God’s inspired word. Let us open to John, chapter 7. And if you like, put a thumb or a finger in Isaiah 55. Looking at John 7, 32 to 39, we’re going to hear what Jesus says. He calls people to do something. It’s been a theme through a number of the songs that we’ve talked about, having to do with drinking. Let us read from John 7, just a couple of verses, starting at 32. Let me just start at 31.

    So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed him, if you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. Pardon me, I see what the problem is. I’m thinking, that’s chapter eight. Okay, much better,

    32. The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things about him, and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to seize him. Therefore Jesus said, for a little while longer I am with you. Then I go to him who sent me.

    You will seek me and will not find me, and where I am you cannot come. The Jews then said to one another, where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? He is not intending to go to the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks, is he? What is this statement that he said? You will seek me and will not find me. And where I am, you cannot come.

    Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture said, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. But this he spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive. For the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. And then please do turn to Isaiah 55 if you have not, do not have it yet.

    So here, while you’re turning, I’ll just explain what we have is Jesus was going to go into Jerusalem with his disciples to take part in a feast, and there was danger for him. What he did is he says, I’m not going to go. And he wasn’t going to go at that time. He sends his disciples on ahead. He was being hidden, he was hiding himself at that time. But his hiding himself was not to stay that way, it was not to remain.

    Because he actually does go to the feast on the last day, that’s what he says, come unto me if you thirst and drink, he says. Wonderful words. Well, we’ve heard Jesus saying that in the New Testament. Let us go to the Old Testament, where we read similar words. Here, Jesus crying out in Isaiah 55, saying, Oh, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk, without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to me.

    Listen that you may live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you. according to the faithful mercies shown to David. Behold, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. Behold, you will call a nation you do not know, and a nation which knows you not will run to you because of the Lord your God, even the Holy One of Israel, for He has glorified you. Amen.

    That ends the reading of God’s Holy Inspired Inerrant Word. May it be a blessing to us. Let us just briefly pray that God would work in us. Let us pray. Most gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this word. that comes from John. We thank you for this word that comes from Isaiah. But ultimately, this word is the word of the triune God. We acknowledge that.

    We ask that you would bless us through this. We ask that you would give the preacher unction of the Holy Spirit. And we ask that the congregation would have a listening sort of unction as well, that they would be blessed. In Jesus’ name, amen. Come, come, come unto me. Come, God says through Christ. Come unto me. If you are thirsty, come to me. He calls once, And the people don’t come. And God in His grace, through Christ, calls again. And yet, again, they still don’t come. He calls a third time. He calls a fourth time.

    We see that in our passage here, our sermon text being Isaiah 55. A word we find repeated, come, come to me, come to me. unto me all who are thirsty. He is gracious not to bring wrath upon us for not coming the first time. He is gracious in bringing us to himself at the time that he has prescribed. It is all for his grace.

    But I would ask you, are you thirsty this morning? Are you thirsty for the things of God? Is your mouth parched because of thirst? Is it parched as one who is walking through a desert? You know that if you have ever been really thirsty, your mouth can become so dry that you cannot muster up enough fluid in your mouth to even swallow, and it becomes extremely painful. That is the plight of sinners who do not come to Jesus Christ when he says, come to me. You who are thirsty, come, buy. Without money, buy, he says.

    The passage may very much harken back to a previous time in redemptive history. Think about Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, and Jesus Christ is very much all over our Old Testament. Jesus Christ is the rock that followed around Moses and the Hebrew people during their wilderness wanderings. And there was a time when Moses was commanded to strike the rock and water came out.

    Jesus is that water that they needed at that time. Shown to us that ultimately Jesus is the water that we need. And that water that comes, the water which is really Christ through the Spirit, that is given to us freely. You would notice that Moses did not at that time begin to sell the water to the highest bidder. He didn’t do anything like that, no. In His grace, He just gave this water freely. And the same is true of us. God gives it to us freely.

    We are looking now first at the coming to Christ. coming to Christ. Just to make things simpler for us, I’ll just tell you our outline. Our first point, coming to Christ, verses 1 and 2. Second, the covenant of Christ, verses 3 and 4. And then verse 5, the calling of a country. For anyone who might be writing that down, let me just say those once again. Coming to Christ, verses 1 and 2. verses three and four, the covenant of the Christ. And then thirdly, the fifth verse, the calling of a country. God gives it to us free, his grace and his mercy to those who are thirsting.

    Have you ever gone out driving on the road and seen a mirage? Do you know what I mean by a mirage? I would especially ask young people. I remember going on vacation when I was young. We’d be driving down the road and it would be hot. And you would look into the distance and it would look like there was water covering the whole road. If someone were very, very thirsty, they would probably run to that or drive to that as soon as they can.

    But what happens with a mirage is that it just disappears. And the closer you get to it, it fully disappears. But what happens is there’s another mirage, and it’s a mirage of water. It looks like a big lake is right in front of you. and you keep going and you keep going and you never ever get there.

    That is an image of non-believers who are thirsting, thirsting for the things of this world, thirsting for something that will satisfy them, but unable to have it. They go after all kinds of things, breaking all of the commandments. filling up their lust, wanting things that would be, they think would be satisfied, and once they finally get them, those things are not satisfying at all. That is mirage, it’s just, it’s all of sin, if it seems as though it will satisfy you. Know that it is just a mirage. Any pleasure will just be a passing pleasure before it goes away and you’ll be thirsty again.

    Sin has left you high and dry if you are outside of Christ. But Jesus Christ calls you out of a desert, calls you out of a wilderness, wandering where you are left. high and dry. Jesus calls you out of desert wilderness of sin, and he says to buy water for your thirst, buy milk, buy wine, buy all you want. You may have it all, but what Christ sells you is free. He gives you free water to quench your thirst and save you from death by sin.

    It has to be bought, but it costs nothing. Isn’t this incredible to read, this passage in the Old Testament, that in one line says, buy, and another part says, You who have no money, buy. There are those who would be glad to try to find a contradiction in any part of God’s word, but we would say that God is certainly not contradictory, and therefore his word can’t be contradictory, but what we have here is in poetic form something that is really impossible to buy something. You need to have something to trade, whether that be money or other things. But why is it that we are called to buy when we don’t have money for it?

    It’s a picture of Christ for us. Because we come and we buy the living water, which is Jesus Christ. It has already been paid for by Him, not by us. But why does it also talk about buying milk and buying wine? Same things. Same things. Things that will quench our thirst. Water gives us life. And milk gives us growth, especially in our youth. That’s why children especially drink milk. And also, wine, as Psalm 104, 15 says, that makes the heart of man merry. Look at these, the glories of Jesus Christ given to us, shown forth to us in an experiential way.

    Have you ever been really, really thirsty? And you were almost unable to swallow. Your mouth is so dry. And it’s that one moment when you finally have water on your lips. What a relief it is. What a picture of what it is to be in Christ. To be so dry because of sin that there is no life in us. But God, by His grace, pours out the water of life, and He refreshes us, and He gives us milk that we might grow in grace, and He also gives us wine that we might take joy in Christ, and that we might see a picture of what we truly drink, which is His blood, the blood in which we are washed. ours is to be as the people who read Peter’s letter for the first time.

    First Peter 2.2, Peter says, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up to salvation. We are growing in grace because we are drinking of the milk that has been given to us by God’s grace that we buy, but not with anything that we have. It is Jesus that gives it to us. Why? Because he is bringing us into a land that is flowing with milk and with honey. We praise God for that.

    But look at those all around you. Look at those at the grocery store buying bottles of water, buying milk, buying wine, buying all types of fluids and things to drink, but you know that they will be back again to buy them again. And we are to buy those things as well, but we must understand that what God gives in Christ spiritually is far greater than all of those things.

    Because the milk, the water, the wine that Jesus gives to us, which really is a picture of the Spirit, these are things that last forever. Christ gives the water that satisfies. Would you be willing to die of dehydration of dehydration while there are fountains all around you, a fount of every blessing, and living waters, would you be willing to sit back and say, no, I’d rather die of thirst?

    The people of God, the children of our Heavenly Father are those who drink of that spiritual rock, which is Christ by the Spirit. We, through drinking of Christ, drinking the water that gives life, we are justified. We are adopted into the family of God. We are made holy in Him.

    That is what it is to come to Christ, to go from thirst, dying of thirst, to being rescued and to being refreshed in Christ alone. May you find refreshment only in Jesus Christ ultimately. But also, we would move to our second point, which is 3 and 4. Covenant of the Christ. Covenant of the Christ. We’ve seen the way of the coming to Christ takes place. But now we move to the covenant of Christ. To those who come to Christ to drink of His waters, God includes them in His eternal covenant. God includes you who drink of Christ as a part of the eternal covenant that He made with the Father in times past.

    Isaiah writes to a people in his original context who are down and out. They are not a happy people. They are a very sad people. His original audience, or especially much later than when he wrote, the people to whom these words apply were a very sad people. They were Those who, you could say, were longed for the good old days. Do you remember the good old days when such and such used to be the case?

    You see, specific mention is made of David. He says, “…incline your ear and come to me, listen that you may live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you according to the faithful mercies shown to David.” references made to David. Now, let’s just situate where we are in redemptive history at this time. The people who this especially applies to would be an exiled people, people who have heard of the stories of David. about how great of a king he was, how wonderful of a leader. And they have sung his songs, they have heard the stories, they have read the scriptures, they know who David is. But David has been dead for years, generations even, at this time. Both at Isaiah’s writing, he’s been gone a long time. But God is, by His grace, referring to that.

    Maybe you can sympathize with them. Maybe you think about, remember how things used to be. Maybe you think about a president in the past that you preferred. Or you’ve heard stories of past leaders and you say, oh, how great to bring those days back. Wouldn’t it be nice to live in those days once again? Well that is in one sense what we are seeing here.

    God is saying that he is going to bless the people of God at Isaiah’s time with the blessings that were given to them at the time of David. The blessings that are given through him. And these are really given from David. to you through Christ. God promises his old covenant people something like that, but much better. God hearkens back to David and says to his broken hearted people that God will do for them what he did for David. The Lord will exalt his people who answer the call to drink at his well. He will make you, his people, into a people after God’s own heart.

    David is the model, the Old Testament model of Christ that we see. And these people are promised the Messiah. You are promised the Messiah as well. We are promised the mercies of being united to Christ in His death and in His resurrection. David was coming for these people.

    This is a before the time of Jesus Christ. He was yet to come. And in one sense, Jesus is yet to come for us. He has come for us already, but Jesus is coming and he is going to bring us into the glorious kingdom, which we’re already in, but yet not in the fullness that it will have.

    Verse 4 says God made Christ a witness to the peoples. Jesus is the King who reigns forevermore. He witnesses of His glory by His Holy Spirit. Jesus was enthroned as a King on the cross and enthroned at His ascension after His resurrection. Christ witnesses to all peoples and all the earth. by preachers, by His Spirit, proclaiming the benefits of being in Christ, and proclaiming the benefits of being in union with Christ. Jesus is made the leader and commander for all peoples. David was a great man who ruled over one nation, but Jesus Christ is He who rules over all nations, and He blesses them all.

    He blesses us by causing us to drink of the things that are His in Christ. If you are so inclined, do turn to Genesis 49, where we see a picture of what we’re finding in Isaiah 55. We see a picture of that before. Reading briefly, Genesis 49, what we have is Jacob is blessing all of his sons, and he comes to Judah, and he says something that is very interesting that pertains to our passage.

    He says, the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the rulers staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him. And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples, binding his foal to the vine, and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine. He has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine and his teeth whiter than milk.

    This idea, these ideas, these themes that we’re reading about in Isaiah 55 are not ones that appear for the first time there, but they’re hearkening back to Genesis 49. We’re told to come and drink of Christ. We’re told to drink of the water, the milk, and of the blood. wine. Why is that? What is going on that this ancestor of Judah is going on here?

    Well, you notice that he has teeth whiter than milk. The understanding is, some commentators, and I tend to agree with them, that His teeth are whiter than milk because of the abundance of milk in the kingdom in which he is taking the spiritual people. And we are entering in as a pilgrim people into the new land that Christ is taking us into. And there is there an abundance of milk, so much of an abundance that his teeth are white as milk or even whiter than milk. But the kingdom that Christ has brought us into, and also continues to bring us into, is also a kingdom where there is abundance of wine. Not simply to make the heart of man merry, but even to do far more, because this wine causes the forgiveness of sins.

    Have you ever seen someone who has been intoxicated with alcoholic beverages? Or maybe, by grace, you have been and God has called you out of that. Well, children need to understand that When people drink too much alcohol, you can see it in their eyes. It’s present there. And that serves as a warning, well not only to children, but also to adults, but I specifically reference the children, because they may not know exactly what I’m talking about. But you all know what goes on when someone is too intoxicated, you can see it.

    Well, this king seems to be intoxicated with wine because of the abundance of wine in this kingdom. But what are we to think about this? That Jesus Christ was drunk? Not at all, not intoxicated. But we would see in Genesis 49 and in Isaiah 55 is that, but especially in Genesis 49, that this one has eyes that are red, red from the wine, red from the grapes. Why is that?

    Because Jesus Christ drank the wine of the cup of God’s wrath. And Jesus Christ did not simply drink and just take a sip. Jesus Christ, as we would understand, drank it to the dregs. He drank every little bit of it. Jesus Christ drank to the very bottom of the wrath of God.

    His eyes are darker than wine, it says. Why? Because he has endured the wrath of God. And that wine to Jesus is wrath, but for us it is blessings. Jesus Christ, we could say, is the king of this spiritual realm in which there is abundance of these things Jesus drank. And you are to drink of Jesus, not to drink wrath, but to drink blessing.

    And lastly, we have the calling of a country. The calling of a country. It says at the very end, Behold, you will call a nation you do not know, and a nation which knows you not will run to you, because of the Lord your God, even the Holy One of Israel, for He has glorified you. Imagine what this must have what they must have thought. An exiled people reading this, hearing this, having this expounded to them, because I believe Isaiah was already written down long before the people were exiled into Babylon. What do you think it would mean to a people who don’t have a land? to be told, listen, a nation is going to come to you. They might think, what are you talking about? How can a nation come to us?

    We aren’t even a nation anymore. We don’t have our own land. We don’t have our own kingship. We don’t have anything. How is that? It’s like an orphan. It’s like someone in an orphanage, the headmaster of an orphanage saying, that you are going to have a very large house with many good things. And I’m thinking, what do you mean? I don’t even have a family. Well, you don’t, but you’re going to have a family soon, and you’re going to have a house to live in. What must that have seemed like to those people to say, how can we have people come to us as a nation when we are slaves in a nation ourselves?

    The promise that we find in verse 5, the calling of a nation is not really fulfilled literally in the Hebrew people. It’s fulfilled in the church. You are a holy nation, a people of priests, a kingdom of priests, 1 Peter 2 tells us. You are a nation yourselves. Not a nation like Mexico, Canada, the United States, but a spiritual nation if you have been united to Christ.

    It is the spiritual nation of the church that Moses spoke about in Deuteronomy 4, 6 through 8, when he said, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding nation. For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us? Whenever we call upon him, and what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you. What we see in Deuteronomy chapter four is a promise to the Hebrew people, but ultimately a promise to the church that there is going to come a time when all of the nations will come to God’s holy nation.

    The holy nation is going to call them and they’re going to come in. This is not found with a geopolitical, geographical place in the Middle East. This is the church. This is the Jerusalem that is above, that is free, that we are talking about. The other nations used to worship rocks and stones who bowed down to the sun and moon and stars. Those nations who worshipped all those statues, and even some still continue to worship dolls and statues and totem poles and all kinds of things, are coming to Christ. All of the nations, the promise said, will come to that people.

    But we are not to understand our Bible as if in the era in which we live that we ought to understand that there are the people of God who are Hebrew Israelites, and then there are the people of God who are the Gentile Church. For those two have been made one. In Ephesians 2, we are told that the dividing wall of separation between Jew and Gentile has been brought down. And in Christ, in the church, there is just one people of God.

    And all the nations are going out, are being called in to the nation of Jesus Christ, to the spiritual nation of which you are a part of. God tells us at the very end of the book of Acts that the gospel is going out to the Gentiles and they will listen. Glorious words, glorious promises from the church, from God to the church that they are going to be used and call not just one nation but all nations to themselves. If God rejoices at the conversion of one sinner, how much does he do so when whole nations come to him? We are all coming to the spiritual Jewish nation, the Christian church, because of the glory of the Savior.

    All of us who were at one time outside of Christ, in one sense, we have looked to the Christian church and said, they have a God who speaks to them. My gods and our gods, they don’t speak to us. Ours are statues. Ours are relatives who have died off in the past. But we worship a God who speaks to us. That was the promise of those people. We are calling a people to ourselves. Let us call people to the church, calling them in to the covenant community, even seeing this come to pass even more. We are to call people out of the desert of sin, preachers especially, but anyone can mention, hey, come to church with us. Come, you must come. It is necessary because you will go to a Christless eternity and there you will thirst and thirst and never be satisfied.

    But for those who are in Christ now, in Christ for today, we will drink of Christ by the Spirit in all of His graces and we will be internally satisfied because the blood of Christ has not only satisfied the wrath of God for us, but it has also satisfied us that we have been rescued from the dry desert and from dry mouth that we might have wet mouths so that we might proclaim the good news and we might praise God because we have drunk of the good things that God has given us.

    Let us understand that we come to Christ and He satisfies us. with all these good things. Let us understand that we are under the covenant of David, but it’s really the covenant of Christ. And Christ is our covenantal head, our Lord and our King. And let us understand that God uses us and is using us to continue to call a people to ourselves.

    Not an ethnic people, but a spiritual people who are in Christ. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. God is compassionate to you by calling you into his nation, ruling over you, and supplying your spiritual needs. And the greatest spiritual need is the satisfaction of God’s wrath. And also, He continues to bless us that we might drink of Christ, that we might partake of Him. Let us drink deeply of the well of Christ today. Let us pray.

    Most gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you that you paint such wonderful pictures for us of the salvation that we have in Christ. We understand that Christ was for us crucified and that he bore your wrath and that he also rose from the dead, that he was resurrected, that he was raised Help us to continue to be partakers of the grace that you give to us. Help us as we struggle with sin, as we continue to go after things that are drawing to us, help us to understand that Christ and His fellowship is all that we need, all that we ultimately desire. And we long for the next world in which all things will especially be about Christ and His glory and His beauty His wonder and His power. Help our lives be so here as we struggle with sin. Help us to long for the day when we will see Him and we will ultimately and truly and fully be satisfied in Jesus Christ without sin. In Jesus’ name, amen.

    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.

  • The Impossible Sign

    The Impossible Sign

    About this sermon

    Threatened by Syria and Israel, King Ahaz shakes like trees in the wind. Isaiah tells him not to fear and invites him to ask any sign, as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven, but Ahaz refuses under a pretense of piety. The Lord gives a sign anyway: the virgin will conceive and bear a son and call him Immanuel. The promise reaches beyond Ahaz to the child born of Mary, the great light for the people walking in darkness, God with us, who saves his people from their sins.

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    Sermon transcript

    This time, it is an honor to bring George Cipioni, unknown to many of us. Let us hear Jesus from the lips of our servant tonight. I’ll be reading from the ESV. And the scripture is Isaiah chapter 7. Isaiah chapter 7. verses 1 through 17. I suggest very strongly, before you go to bed tonight, that you read chapter 7, 8, and chapter 9 together up to verse 7 of chapter 9. It all goes together in terms of this prophecy. Here then, God recording for you his truth.

    In the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezan, the king of Syria, and Pekah, 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 the people shook as trees in the forest shake before the wind. And Jehovah said to Isaiah, go out to meet Ahaz. you and your son just at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the washer’s field. 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 Rezan 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 let us split it open and take it for ourselves and set up the son of Tabal as the king in the midst of it.

    Thus says the Lord, your 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 resin. Parenthetically, within 65 years, Ephraim will be broken to pieces so that it will no longer be a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you all are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.

    Again, Jehovah spoke to Ahaz. Ask a sign of Jehovah your God. Let it be as deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask and will not put the Lord to the test. And Isaiah said, hear then, O house of David, is it too little for you to weary men that you weary my God as well?

    Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse 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. Jehovah 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.

    Let’s pray before we look at this passage in detail. Father in heaven, we come to you. And Lord, it is a privilege, as our brothers prayed, to be in your house twice. But Lord, we are weary. Lord, we have a long week past. You are refreshing us today. We have a week before us.

    Would you please, by your spirit, Lord, make us attentive, help us to be able to focus, and above all, help me to preach, Lord, this accurately. And Holy Spirit, would you walk in our midst and apply this to our hearts so that, Lord, we might understand how you work in time and space history. For we pray this in your son’s name. Amen.

    You may know people, I do, I won’t make true confessions at this point, but you know people who when they want to know God’s will, they ask for a sign. And it’s understandable because they know God is a living God, and I won’t try to go off on a rabbit’s trail, but I believe that’s why a lot of people are involved in the charismatic movement. And I think it’s a proper desire. They want to see the hand of God. I think they misunderstand things, but it’s clear that if God is God, and he is, that God is alive. He’s in control of the whole universe. And he can do things that are beyond our imagination.

    So people want to ask for signs. That’s not the way to see God’s will today. Again, as I say, that’s a sermon for another time. But at least once, at least once in history, we have a case where God said, you ask for a sign. And God picks something that no one would have picked.

    We’ve read Isaiah 7. Open, if you will, and keep there. And look at this. Now, I want to give you some background, because if you don’t understand, I mean, Ahaz, I mean, some of you know Ahaz. You’ve read the Bible. You’ve looked it up. Write this down as well.

    You can skip this, but if you want to read this as well as, what are the three chapters? Isaiah 7, 8, and 9, up to verse 7. Okay, I want you to read that tonight, because it all goes together. I won’t take the time to do it, because I want to get you out of here in time for your week. But 2 Kings, look that up. 2 Kings chapter 16, verses 1 through 20. Not now, but write it down. That and 2 Chronicles 28, verses 1 through 27. So I’m going to give you the shortened version of it, summary.

    Ahaz. Do you know anything about Ahaz? Was he a good king or a bad king? I should make you vote to see how you know your history, okay? Our elder had a little bit of history. This was way before 1560, okay? He was a bad king. You know, how bad was he? I mean, he is so bad. Let me give you a summary of how bad he was. I should build up to it.

    He was so bad that when he died, they would not bury him with the kings of Judah. Now, they buried him in Jerusalem. They didn’t throw him in a garbage heap, but they did not put him in the tombs. That’s significant. They wouldn’t put him with the kings. That’s how bad he was.

    Now here’s a few sample things. We have a baby. The baby’s gone. I don’t know how to preach now. The baby’s not here, but you know. He took his infant children and sacrificed them. I’m not talking about dedication. Killed them. Killed them and now he’s sacrificing. If you can believe that. Yeah, we have people that do that today for their own convenience. They kill their children in the womb after they come out of the womb. But this was deliberate. Here’s a baby sacrificed. He did that. That’s pretty bad. And God did not like that. And God punished Judah and Ahaz. How did he do that? Syria came and beat up on them militarily. Many times took many prisoners and carried away much plunder. He also had the Northern Kingdom. Remember, it’s split now. The Northern Kingdom, Israel comes down. And one day, one day, think of this.

    They killed 120,000 troops of Judah. That’s a phenomenal amount of people in one day. And they captured 200,000 civilians. took them up to Samaria, and then there was a prophet up there and said, look, God’s angry enough as it is, you better send these people back. Don’t make them slaves. So they did. But God kept punishing them.

    Now, that’s the north, right? Syria, Israel coming down, beating them from the north. On the east, they have what? Edom. Edom was making raids, picking at them, taking people and stuff. On the west, there was the Philistines. Do you get the picture? And in the south, they didn’t come up yet, but there was Egypt.

    So Judah is getting squeezed like a bad lemon. God is squeezing them because of this man being an evil, evil king. And this guy is spiritually brain dead. Or we would say, really, he’s heart dead. He gets defeated by Syria, so what does he do? As he goes up for diplomatic relations up to the capital, Damascus of Syria, he sees what he thinks is a really neat altar. He goes, here’s his reasoning.

    They beat us, so there must be something to their gods. I like that altar. So he makes a sketch, sends it back down to Jerusalem and says to the high priest, make an altar according to these specs. and put it where the altar of sacrifice is and move that over, and I’ll use that for inquiring of God in an occult way. Certainly not the regular principle of worship. And this guy is really, really, really bad. And so you can see why when he dies. At how old? How many of you are 35 or older? He didn’t get there. At 35, God took him out. They wouldn’t bury him with the kings. So you get a little bit of a picture?

    Ahaz, evil king. So in our text, what’s happening is, once again, Syria’s coming down. Oh no, here it goes again. Syria and Israel, now they’re teaming up together to beat up on us. What are we going to do? And he gets, this is probably one of the, if not the worst thing he did, at least politically.

    He says, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to get the big boy on the block, Assyria. I’m going to hire Assyria. I’m going to send them some gold from the temple and everything else. I’m going to take this stuff, send it up to Syria and say, will you do me a favor?

    Go beat up on Syria and Israel. And that’s why our verse 17 ends with this, God saying, you haven’t seen anything yet. When you pull the dike, And the tsunami of Assyria starts going. It’s not going to stop at Syria. It’s not going to stop at Israel. It’s going to come what? It’s going to come sweeping down over Judah.

    So everything he did turned bitter. Now, in the midst of all of this, we have this, I think, this intriguing passage. Now, every bit of it’s true. And I know I don’t have to convince you all here that this is historically true and it happened as it’s recorded.

    In the midst of all of this, God says, you go out, Isaiah, you take your son, whose name is a really long one in Hebrew and it means the prey is swift and the booty is coming. And he says, you go stand there and you say to Ahaz, this wicked king. Now, this is the whole point of the sermon.

    You do not need to be afraid as God’s people. Why? You do not need to be afraid. You never need to doubt God’s word. You need to trust and obey. It’s that simple. No matter how bad the circumstances are, God tells you, stand your ground. Do not become afraid. Trust me and obey. And that’s what he says. Now, he goes out and says, look, you just don’t get it.

    You, and God’s really sarcastic here if you don’t get it. And as I’ve said before from this pulpit, God has a sense of humor, but it’s usually sarcastic. And when God’s being sarcastic, you better duck, okay? Psalm 2, he who sits in the heaven, he goes, he laughs.

    He says, really, you and what army? You and what army is going to defeat my purposes and try to take Messiah off the throne? It can’t be done. And here he’s saying, look, you don’t get it. Ahaz, in 65 years, Israel’s not even going to be a nation. And you remember, God kept his word, right? They went into Assyria, took them, and they were gone and never reconstituted.

    And everybody wonders where they are. My best guess is they’re the Koreans. I tease my Koreans. I believe in Korean-Israelism. They’re the lost tribes. It used to be British-Israelism. I have no idea where the 10 tribes go, but they’re dispersed and never to be seen again.

    That’s going to happen in 65 years. And he’s going, they’re smoking fire. What are you worrying about? I’m telling you, it won’t happen. Ehaz still doesn’t believe. And it could be possible that someone’s here tonight that doesn’t believe the gospel. And God says, OK, ask for a sign. And look at the text. What’s the response of Ahab? It’s kind of really intriguing, isn’t it? He goes pious on us. He does.

    He goes, I will not put the Lord to the test, which is theologically correct, right? I mean, you’re not supposed to be asking God for signs and wonders. But when God tells you to ask, guess what? It’s very impolite for you to say, excuse me, I won’t ask.

    And that’s Ahaz. This occult-seeking guy, God says, you make it tough. Make it as tough as you can. Make it as deep as hell or Sheol, and you make it as high as heaven. You just make it as tough as it can, and I’ll show you that I am going to keep my word.

    I don’t know who’s coming out, but that’s OK. And he says, I won’t ask. And then Isaiah, as God spoke and says, that’s it. Look, it’s enough for you to weary, you know, to, to provoke. It’s enough to provoke people, but are you going to provoke God? God says, ask for a sign and you won’t ask. So guess what? He is going to give you a sign. And that’s why I’ve entitled this the impossible sign. And the point is you never need another sign except Jesus. Jesus is God’s guarantee, because look what he says.

    The virgin shall conceive. Okay. Without getting into details, we know that virgins don’t conceive, right? They don’t give birth. Now, I won’t take time to read it, but go back into Luke, remember? The angel comes and says, Mary, you’re favored by God. And she goes, uh-oh, what does this mean? It’s not every day in my life that angels come and talk to me. And he says, you are going to have a child. And she goes, I don’t get it. Obviously, her parents had taught her about where children can come from, and she understood. I haven’t known a man. I haven’t had sexual relations. I’m engaged to Joseph, but we haven’t come together. How can this be?

    And he says, the Holy Spirit will overshadow you, and this will be the Son of God born in you. That’s the promise. Now again, I’ll say as an aside, you can read this also later. There’s a lot of arguments in liberal scholars and Muslims as well that this is not predicting a virgin birth, that Alma in Hebrew simply means a young girl. Well, you can get E.J. Young’s commentary. It’s probably the best commentary on this. He argues it through and shows that Alma really is, does mean, a virgin.

    And if it didn’t even, if it did mean just a mere young girl, the Holy Spirit didn’t go brain dead when he inspired Luke and Matthew to record that Mary and Joseph had no sexual relations. And you remember the Matthew passage, right? Matt, Matt, Matt. Joseph is a righteous man.

    And he goes, well, it’s obvious that, it’s obvious that, it’s okay, I don’t preach well if they don’t cry, so let her cry. Look, I don’t want to put Mary up to public shame, but obviously she’s done something because she’s pregnant. And it wasn’t me. And so God had to convince him through a dream.

    He says, Joseph, This is miraculous, this is from the Holy Spirit. And just in case anybody comes from a Roman Catholic background, you can understand Mary doesn’t stay a perpetual virgin because it says, you know, he didn’t have relations until after Jesus was born. There’s no way, shape, or form that that could be Joseph’s child. So the Holy Spirit.

    So even if it was just Alma meant young girl, it’s pretty clear from the New Testament that those guys are saying this is a virgin birth, but young nails it here. So isn’t that amazing? God says, ask for something. OK, I’m going to tell you what. This is better than Sarah and Abraham. You remember that?

    Can you imagine Sarah, 90 years old, pregnant? That’s very hard for us to imagine. I’m sure it was hard for her to imagine. She’s pregnant at 90. Now, they probably were a lot healthier and lived longer than now, but 90’s still up there. And that’s amazing. No one can do that. Medical science can’t do that today. Can’t take a barren woman who’s never had kids and at 90. It’s better than Elizabeth and Zacharias.

    Remember that? That’s right before the passage of time. The only difference, I always wondered about this, the difference between Zachariah and Mary. Both of them go, how can this be? So they must have known Zachariah’s heart, because he gets, you know, he can’t speak until John’s born. And Mary’s okay, because she concludes, let it be done to your servant, as the Lord said.

    So we know that this is the historical reality. Now isn’t that intriguing? God says the virgin will conceive, but that’s, friends, that’s not even scratching the surface. Because who comes in the womb of Mary? Emmanuel, God with us. Now, I don’t know about you, perhaps we’ve been Christians too long not to kind of go, how can that be? God with us. It offends Jews, we know that. It offends Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, communists, seculary. Who doesn’t it offend? I know people who were born and raised in the covenant who it offends today.

    They just, how could God become a man? And in a sense, I wish we could stop. Take our shoes off our feet. This is incredible. This is bigger than the burning bush because it’s the God in the burning bush who what? Comes in the womb of Mary. That’s the sign, don’t you see? God said, you won’t ask for one? I’ll give it to you. God will be born of a virgin and he will take care of my people’s sins.

    That’s amazing. And I think we forget it. We’re sort of getting so upset with all the tinsel and all the commercialism and everything else that we forget that there’s a bigger battle going on. People go to hell if it’s not for the incarnation of the Son of God.

    No cross, right? No fulfilling the law. I haven’t come to abrogate the law. I’ve come to fulfill it. Everything in the law and prophets I fulfill so that you who couldn’t fulfill it, it’ll be fulfilled for you. And I will go to the cross and take your punishment that you deserve because you could not bear your own sins.

    And as it were, if I can say it respectfully, Philippians 2, right? He who was the eternal Son of God, as it were, dives into the womb of Mary, not forced by the Father, voluntarily, out of what? Love. Read John 17. I’ll give you so many passages to read, you won’t be able to go to bed tonight. Read John 17, the high priestly pair of Jesus. Everyone you gave me, I’ve not lost one. And I present them to you. He came to die for his people. So that’s the application of this as well. How do you respond to this? How do you respond to this great sign? Are you kind of piddling along?

    I often think we’re reformed, and we love the reformed faith, and we don’t like the way people have twisted the Bible and made it man-centered instead of God-centered. And that’s really the whole issue of Calvinism versus other things. But brothers and sisters, I really believe in my own heart, and I don’t want to be accusatory to you, but in all of our hearts, there’s the same tendency, isn’t it? We really like God when he blesses us.

    But if he gives us a Jobian day, it’s a little harder, isn’t it? And, you know, are we really satisfied when we come up to a difficult situation and we don’t know which way to turn to simply say, guide me, O thou great Jehovah. and believe that God who loves you and gave his own son for you will never leave you nor forsake you. You see, or do you piously push away? See, that impulse to ask a sign isn’t wrong, but you gotta ask for the sign that God gives you, which is what? Paul says it this way. If he would slay his own son in your place, how could he possibly keep from giving you everything you need.

    How will we raise the kids? Will they turn out well? Will they turn against the Lord? Will my husband stay faithful to me? Or you’ve been single for a long time. Will someone ever ask me? Or will I ever find someone? Or will this hard heart ever continue to melt before the grace of God? Or will I always just sort of struggle along in my Christian walk?

    Emmanuel, God, with us. And you know what he said when he was here? I will never leave you, nor forsake you. And some of you, especially maybe you young people, say, well, I never saw Jesus. He says, it’s better that I go, because then the Holy Spirit will come. And the Holy Spirit, if I can say it, is not bound in tents of The incarnation, he’s everywhere, so he can minister the grace of Christ to each one of you. Here, in your home, our brothers and sisters in Eritrea, when they’re being persecuted, people in Vietnam, across the world, the Holy Spirit ministers Emmanuel, the presence of God, with you. He says, when I go, I’ll ask the Father to send another what?

    Paracletos, comforter, counselor, however you want to translate that. And he will continue the work, the work of convicting the world of sin and of righteousness and judgment, and of one of the most wonderful things, assuring us who still continue to sin, even after we’ve been adopted, I still love you. If you confess your sins, faith will adjust to forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. You see, we can’t be offended at this.

    And this is really, you know, we say these little sayings, Jesus is the reason for the season, isn’t he? He is the season. I never could understand how people get gifts on somebody else’s birthday, but you can always explain that to me. He’s given the gift of the Holy Spirit. He’s given you The gift that I hear, I almost wept when I heard that you all stood up and applauded when Dan came in last week. He gives you pastors. He gives you evangelists. He gives you the Bible.

    You guys are rich. You understand that? Now, I’m not talking about — Jim can tell you that, right? We’re incredibly rich here, as opposed to the villages. But that’s material. But we are more incredibly rich than the people in Uganda. You know why? I’ll just say it bluntly. You have the whole Bible in your language. You have Calvin’s Institutes. You have a commentary on any book of the Bible you can pick up. You can get multiple translations. You have people that teach you. Van Til, we have a rich tradition.

    J. Gretchen Machen, our forefather, I almost say patron saint, but you know what I mean. Almost, if there’s anything close to that, it’s close on Machen.

    But he writes the book, not only Christianity and liberalism, he writes the book, what, The Virgin Birth. to show that this virgin birth is actually historically accurate. And that’s the way to understand it. And anybody that rips the virgin birth out of Christianity, I’ll just blunt and say it, that’s not Christianity anymore. And though it offends your Jewish friends, and your Muslim friends, and your Hindu friends, and Buddhist friends, and everybody else under the sun, OK? And yes, all our commercial friends, too.

    This is a story that C.J. Williams just told me. He’s the Old Testament professor, and he took his Hebrew, he did his PhD, he’s finished it up, he’s waiting for the degree to be granted. Finished up, and they used to tell him, jokingly, you know, down there at Baltimore Hebrew University, which is now part of Towson University, they used to say, yeah, our favorite song around Christmas, he says, is we all stand around the crash registers and say, what a friend we have in Jesus. It’s their joking way of saying, thank you, Jesus, for the season. But you see, commercial people don’t understand. Christ is the gift. He doesn’t enrich you with money. He enriches you with the fruit of the spirit and salvation. Now, let me tie this up. Do you bow before this king? Do you love this king? Now, real quickly, go back to Isaiah and look at just a few verses in chapter eight.

    This is why I wanted you to read it. I won’t read the whole thing. After this happens, he says to Isaiah, Isaiah, I want you to be real careful. Don’t you get afraid of what these people are afraid of. But make me, Jehovah, your sanctuary. Listen to chapter 8. And I want to read this, not only because of the context here, but how it’s picked up in the New Testament. Listen to this. for Jehovah spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me and warned me not to walk in the way of the people saying do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy and do not fear what they fear nor be in dread but Jehovah of hosts Him you shall regard as holy. Let him be your fear. Let him be your dread.

    And he will become a sanctuary on the one hand, and a stone of offense in Iraq when stumbling to both houses of Israel on the other hand, 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. Maybe you listen to too many conservative talk show hosts. And you become fearful of what’s going to happen politically. And it is serious. It is no doubt serious.

    But listen to what the Apostle Peter, the Holy Spirit, picks this up and tells Peter to write this. And you hear echoes of this in 1 Peter, chapter 2. Remember, Peter is saying, how do you live under persecution and come out looking like Jesus? Which I think is sweet irony. Here’s the guy lopping off ears in the garden, and God uses him to write the book on persecution and how to handle it like Jesus Christ. That’s grace. Chapter 2, verse 80 says this. But you are a, okay, well, let me back up to verse six.

    For it stands in scripture, quote, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. Now, you know that that’s Jesus, and he quotes that of himself to the Pharisees. So he goes on and says, so the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, quote, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Again, Jesus quotes that to the Pharisees.

    And finally, one, he says, and quote, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. That’s the Isaiah passage. See, God says, don’t let Jesus be an offense to you, but what? Run in and hide. And Isaiah, you make Jehovah God your sanctuary. Obviously indirect proof that Peter thought Jesus was God. Quoting of Jehovah to Jesus Christ. Sanctify the Lord in your heart. So he goes on in chapter three with the same theme in verses 13 through 15.

    Listen to this. Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them. There’s the theme again. Nor be troubled. But in your hearts regard what? Christ the Lord as holy. Jesus Christ, Jehovah God.

    As holy, 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. It’s better for you to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. You see how Peter takes that up?

    Who do you run into and hide? Jesus Christ. He’s your sanctuary. There is a cleft in the rock. You run in to hide into him for justification, sanctification, for adoption. That’s your hiding place. But everyone else what? Stumbles over what is your sanctuary. Don’t you be afraid of what all the people are being afraid. Why? And we end up with this. Listen to the words of Isaiah 9.

    Remember, it ends up in the end of this chapter, he says, look, to the law and the testimony. Why should people go to occult wizards and stuff? Go to the law and the testimony. And if they don’t go to the law and testimony, what is going to happen? Under pressure, even people who claim to be God’s people are going to look up and curse God. Sounds like the book of Revelation, doesn’t it? They’re going to become angry at God. Why are you doing this? How could you do this? and darkness and gloom, and then it goes into chapter nine, very well known, picked up again in Matthew chapter four.

    But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish in the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But in the latter time, he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walked in darkness have seen what? a great light. Jesus is the light of the world. Those who dwell on a land of deep darkness, on them has light shine. You have multiplied the nation. You have increased its joy. They rejoice before you as with joy of the harvest or glad when they divide the spoil.

    For the yoke of his burden is broken and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken it as on the day of Midian. Looking back to that time when he defeated the Midianites through Barak and through Jael. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.

    Now why? Why in the midst of literal war can you have peace? For to us a child is born. And I hope for you, you hear that song in the Messiah. Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. The government shall be upon his shoulder. His name shall be called what? Wonderful Counselor. The awe-provoking Counselor. The mighty God. Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace. 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 to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. Daniel, the rock not cut out by human hands does what? A rolling stone gathers no moss, but it sure busts up the kingdoms when the rock is Jesus Christ.

    Babylon goes. Medo-Persian go. Greece goes. Roman Empire goes. Holy Roman Empire that killed so many people in Europe, where’s that now? It’s all gone. And our nation will be gone as well if it doesn’t repent. The shame of what our Senate just did last night, saying the gays could serve in the military openly because there’s no shame to it. Woe to them who call evil good and good evil. There may be the day when this young man who’s coming here to minister may be in jail if he ever preaches through Romans to the wrong crowd. But the government of King Jesus, we’re told in Ephesians 1, he sits on the throne, he rules over the nation, not with a sword, but the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

    You see? Yes, Jesus is the reason for the season. He’s the reason you’re alive tonight. Not only for Pastor Dan, carrying him through that, carrying Jim through the surgery, us through the week on the roads, we’re flying. Our times are pointed in his hands, and we don’t need to be afraid.

    I’ll remember this. Howell Jones, many of you don’t know Howell, but he was an editor for Banner of Truth. He’s a Welshman, one of the most godly men I know, a wonderful preacher. He taught at Westminster, California when I was there. Privilege of serving with him. His son was in Pakistan as a missionary.

    You might remember, I forget, 10 years ago or so, there was an incident where some Muslims came in and threw grenades and shot people up and killed people in a church service. He was preaching that day. And his wife and daughters were up front because he was preaching. And they weren’t in back where they normally sit, where they possibly would have been killed. And the shrapnel hit the pulpit. I’ll never forget what Howell said over the destiny. George, we’re invincible till God calls us home. We’re invincible till God calls us home.

    Why? He who was rich became poor so that we who are poor might become rich. Jesus Christ has come. And we all have partaken of his grace. I trust tonight that that’s your joy. And through the rest of your life, whatever small or large, you won’t be running around looking for signs because you go, God has given me the most impossible sign that could possibly ever be asked for. A virgin gave birth to the eternal son of God. And what does that mean? God has given you this impossible sign.

    Therefore, beloved, never worry or fear. Call a conspiracy what they do. Make Christ your sanctuary. Trust him and obey, and knowing you are invincible until God calls you home. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your mercy and grace I don’t, Lord, understand why you would give a human being the privilege of preaching this good news, but you have. And good news it is. Lord, whether it’s ancient Judah or the United States or just our personal lives, we have a choice of whether we are going to submit and live, whether we’re going to listen to you speaking to Isaiah, you challenging Ahaz, and we’re going to put our confidence in your sign. Lord, forgive me, forgive us who have been Christians for a while, who have sort of become a little jaded and so used to this idea of the incarnation that, Lord, its wonder and its awe just seems to miss us. But, Lord God, we thank you for it, and we put all our trust in Him for our justification, for our adoption, for our sanctification, and for our being caught up to you in the intermediate state, and eventually our resurrection body in the new heavens and new earth. Lord, we’re rich indeed.

    Thank you, Jesus, that though you were rich, became poor, that through your poverty we might become rich. Help us to really believe that we are invincible till you call us home, and thereby, in the words of Peter, always to be ready to have a reason for the hope that is in us.

    Help us not to be mute and dumb during this season. Lord, we know that this is probably not the time of year that Jesus was born. But Lord, since the culture thinks that, help us to use it, Lord, whether it’s on the plane or buses, in a truck stop, whatever place, to reflect the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And especially, Lord, as we’ll have the opportunity to speak with Relatives that don’t believe or relatives who have rebelled against the covenant, help us once again to simply say, the Virgin has conceived and given birth to Emmanuel, whose name is Yeshua, Joshua, Jehovah’s salvation, because he will save his people from their sins. Oh, how glad we are tonight. Lord, we are glad that Jim is not just bringing medicine to Karamoja, but the good news that Jesus Christ saves. For we ask it in his name. Amen.

    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.

  • The Peaceable Kingdom

    The Peaceable Kingdom

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Isaiah’s Christmas Children” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 17, 1999.

    About this sermon

    The prophets use time in a way that looks anachronistic to modern readers, and 10:28-32 and 36:2 show the difficulty. Isaiah 11:1-10 describes the kingdom of the Branch, where the wolf dwells with the lamb. Many stumble over Jesus’s own prophecies about Jerusalem and the end of the world for the same reason.

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    Sermon transcript

    Tonight we are reading from Isaiah 10. We are beginning our reading at verse 28. This is the word of God. Isaiah 10, verse 28. He has passed through Migron, at Michmash. He deposited his baggage. They have gone through the pass, saying, Giba will be our lodging place. Rema is terrified, and Gibeah of Saul has fled away. Cry aloud with your voice, O daughter of Galim. Pay attention, Laisha, and Richard, Amethyst. Mabnena has fled. The inhabitants of Gabin have sought refuge, yet today he will halt at Nab. He shakes his fist at the mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. Behold, the Lord, the God of hosts, will lop off the bowels with a terrible crash.

    Those also who are tall in stature will be cut down, and those who are lofty will be He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an iron axe, and Lebanon will fall by the mighty one. Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. and he will delight in the fear of the Lord, and he will not judge by what his eyes see, nor make a decision by what his ears hear. But with righteousness he will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth, and he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he will sway the wicked. Also, righteousness will be the belt about his loins, and faithfulness the belt about his waist.

    And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little boy will lead them. Also the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. and they will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountains, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Then in that day the nations will resort to the Ruth of Jephthah, who will stand as a signal for the peoples, and his resting place will be glory.”

    Let’s pray together. So there is much, O God, in your prophets that would seem to confuse us. We ask, O God, that we might have Father, may we be granted understanding, even in keeping with the promise of your kingdom, even though confusion continues to reign for the world. Father, may the light of your word then be a grace to us as we make our way through this wilderness, that with that light, O God, We would be confident of your leaving, and that we shall arrive at the desired destination. This we pray through Jesus Christ, who has gone before us. Amen.

    My messages on Isaiah’s Christmas children had ended, but I realized that those messages demanded a post-lude. And after that, not so much to extend my comments about the children themselves, but in order to provide something of a wrap for the prophetic perspective about which I have had much to say over the course of the previous six messages.

    You may recall, in the last couple of messages at least, I made much of the inherent difficulties in hearing and reading the prophets. So formidable are these difficulties that some simply, as a general rule and with the exception of a few golden passages, avoid the prophets altogether. You’re not long into any of the prophets before you are face-to-face with complexities, problematic constructions of language and images. that seemingly defy penetration.

    Obscure names oblique historical and geographical references. But even more perplexing than these can be the inexplicable, breathtaking changes in mood and emotional direction. One moment the Prophet is declaring disaster, and the next, without as much as a bat of And in some cases, within the same sentence, he is announcing the startling intrusion of divine grace. Not that the note of grace isn’t welcomed.

    Its startling appearance, however, often leaves us somewhat baffled. We also commented at length on another prophetic feature what seems to be the most disconcerting shifts in audience where we can’t make out who the Prophet’s talking about. For instance, we’re rolling along comfortably talking about the judgment that’s sure to come upon the Assyrians, and without any indication or warning whatsoever in the text, we suddenly find ourselves in the middle of the verse talking about Judah’s demise. Now, we have found examples of all these unsettling features in Isaiah 7-12, the so-called Book of Emmanuel, in Isaiah’s prophecy, that section in which the figure of the child figures so prominently. We have endeavored to explain these disturbing features in our previous messages. We didn’t spend much time explaining the first feature, the meaning of the obscure and oblique references.

    But the meaning for these obscure and oblique references may be found in the deliberately hidden character of the Prophet’s message, a sort of ministerial extension of what the Lord says to Isaiah. in directing him to tell the people of Judah, keep on listening, but do not perceive. Keep on looking, but do not understand. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull and their eyes dim. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed.” speak in parables. The prophets deliberately speak in obscurities, and that’s by design. We spent much more time on the other features that we’ve mentioned this evening.

    The meaning of the inexplicable changes in mood from wrath to grace. we locate it in the inexplicable and totally disarming nature of grace itself. God’s grace comes unexpectedly and undeservedly into this world and upon his chosen vessels, and that’s how it intrudes into the Prophet’s message. The meaning of the disconcerting shifts in audience where a word about Israel’s enemies suddenly slips into a word about Israel herself, we locate it in the settled but profound message that not just the Gentiles, the Jews’ enemies, but the Jews themselves are gathered under condemnation in order, finally, that the gospel of salvation through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ might come to Jew and Gentile alike. This, in keeping with the message that we finally hear in passages like Romans 3, where Paul makes it clear that all the world, Jew and Gentile together, is guilty before God, verse 19, and that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, verse 23.

    All of these things, all of these devices, all of these features, then, conspiring to to prepare us for the presentation of the gospel, the gospel itself laid within the features themselves. So far, this message has been a summary and a review, and it hardly seems fair for me to get you out on a cold winter’s night merely to tell you what you’ve already heard. Actually, there is another prophetic feature, abundantly evident in Isaiah 7-12, about which we have said nothing thus far.

    I have in mind the Prophet’s presentation of time, the Prophet’s presentation of history. and the apparent anachronistic character of the Prophet’s message. You know what anachronism is. Anachronism means to be out of place historically, time-wise. As if someone were to say, Julius Caesar lived in the seventeenth century in the Battle of Waterloo, Appendix today. Their treatment of time and their apparent anachronisms can be as startling and befuddling as their unexpected mood swings and their sudden shifts in audience.

    In fact, it is this feature in the Prophet’s message, the whole matter of their treatment of time and history, that invariably causes so much excitement. about the prophets for so many. While their treatment of time may seem perplexing to us, it is all too clear to a great many people. But for the prophets, you see, events, if we read them properly, events appear to have the ability to reach out far beyond their historical setting, touching even the distant reaches of human history and the furthest extent of the plan of God. As the prophets speak, as they preach, as they declare their message, The events about which they speak seem to have the ability to reach far beyond their historical setting, touching even the distant reaches of human history and the far reaches of the plan of God.

    We have a sweeping example of this in Isaiah 10 and 11, picking up at verse 28, where we began our reading in that tenth chapter. We find a passage that has not only thrown commentators, but in actual fact does the service of opening up for us the prophetic line as far as the historical development of the prophetic vision is concerned.

    Verses 28 through 32 of that tenth chapter, as we have seen before, belong to a section speaking about the Assyrian threat. speaking about the Assyrian threat, a yet future threat for Judah. Assyria is mentioned explicitly in this chapter previously in verses 5, 12, and 24. You can check that out. When we come to verses 28-32, we would think that we have before us the incremental itinerary of the invading Assyrian army, the listing of all of the sites to which the army comes as it makes progression through the land. We have listed here, then, cities and villages to which the advancing Assyrian army comes as it makes its way toward Jerusalem. And with verse 32, Jerusalem is well imbued. But we have a problem. We have a problem if we move with this cat along this line.

    For these cities mentioned all belong to the northern and eastern approach to the city of Jerusalem. the cities that lie along the route as you make your way south through Benjaminite territory. You’re coming down from the north through the territory of Benjamin toward Jerusalem in order to make your assault upon Jerusalem which is in the territory of Judah. You get the picture. A sudden course for the assault is in view in the mentioning of these cities as the army makes its way towards Jerusalem.

    But when the Assyrians finally do make their assault, remember this is a prophecy concerning a future assault by the Assyrians, when the Assyrians finally do make their assault, And, as Isaiah 36 verse 2 tells us, they actually make that assault from the southwest. Not from the north, but from the southwest and from the city of Lachish, near the boundary of the territory of Philistia. The text in speaking about the Assyrians charts a southern course through the territory of Benjamin for Jerusalem. But the actual Assyrian assault comes from the southwest, and from the city of Lachish.

    Well, what do you make of this? Well, in chapter 10, prior to the Assyrian invasion, Isaiah naturally thought, an Assyrian invasion will come from the north. So he wrote it up that way. When the actual invasion did occur, it seems that the Assyrians tripped up even Isaiah. How silly of them.

    So much for prophetic and even biblical infallibility. Some might not be overly upset by this apparent discrepancy, and would say, Nor for Saul, who cares, it doesn’t make any difference. The main thing was that the invasion occurred and the Assyrians did in fact make an invasion, and Isaiah at least had that much right. After all, neither the Bible nor prophecy is an exact science. The tragedy is that people who talk like this hardly know how destructive they are. The balance is not only biblical authority and the Bible’s infallibility, but the squandering of a golden opportunity to grasp hold of an important feature of the Prophet’s revelation.

    You see, what Isaiah is actually describing in the listing of all of these cities, is the advance of the combined army of the Israelites to the north under Pekah and the Syrians under Rezan. We read about their advance in chapters 7-9. Setting the tone for this section of Isaiah’s message is what we read in chapter 7, verse in the days of Ahaz, king of Judah, when Rezan, the king of Syria, and Pippa, the son of Ramallah, king of Israel, went up to wage war against Jerusalem, but could not conquer it.” Chapter 7, verse 1. The progression of this combined army of the Israelites and the Syrians is marked by the city-by-city march chronicled for us in chapter 10, 28 through 32. But what, we might ask, is the advance of this combined army doing in a section talking about the advance of the Assyrian army?

    One of the devices of the prophets is to describe one event, it may be present or past, in such a way so as to anticipate a future event. Even in such a way so as to see laid within that event the most future and ultimate of events, the consummation of all things. It’s as if, in reading an event, the prophets are able to see in those events the coming judgment that is sure to come upon all of the world. Future events laid within present events, and even the most future event of all, the end of all things.

    Therefore, Isaiah sees in the current events of the Assyrians and the Israelites, the future invasion of the Assyrians. When he speaks about the Assyrians in this passage, whose invasion is guaranteed, Isaiah says, by Judah’s reliance upon the Assyrians in her struggle against the northern alliance. But of course, you will note, and this drawing out our considerations concerning the Prophet’s estimation of time and history, this is not all that Isaiah is privileged to see. In verses 33 and 34, as the tenth chapter ends, he sees a devastation from which Judah herself cannot and will not be excluded. A devastation that comes to Judah to be sure in the Assyrian invasion, but an invasion in which Isaiah in turn sees the nation of Judah so fully laid low that the tree of Jesse is reduced to a bare stump.

    And it will be many, many years in the future, and many, many more invasions still, before that shoot and branch will miraculously sprout. You see, in the event current with the Prophet, he sees the events that he visions in front of him in terms of those things that are future and yet to be realized. It will be many, many years still, and many, many invasions yet, before the shoot and branch from Jesse will miraculously sprout.

    Verses 1 through 5 in that 11th chapter in Isaiah. And many, many years further still, when the perfections of his reign will manifest themselves in an environment reminiscent of Eden, verses 6-9. But a reign that will finally transcend Eden itself, as the root of Jesse is gloriously exalted and made sublime in his final resting place. which is nowhere else but glory itself.” The Prophet’s message here, as it deals with time, as it deals with history, lends an immediacy to all these events that are circumscribed. Truly then, the Prophet’s vocabulary presents many instances along this very line.

    Jesus himself, the Prophet, preaches the end of the world in his predictions concerning the A.D. 70 destruction of Jerusalem. That is why the prophecies of Jesus concerning the coming destruction of Jerusalem are so hard for us to decipher and understand. He is speaking in those prophecies in prophetic form. He is looking at a near event, and he is seeing a yet future event superimposed on that near event, so that when he gives the declaration concerning it, it becomes very hard to sort out what is pertaining to the destruction of Jerusalem and what belongs to the end of the world. And how many exegetes had stumbled over his proclamation at that very point? How many churches have stumbled over Jesus’ proclamation of the coming destruction of Jerusalem and what it means concerning the end of all things?

    And John the Apostle, writing the Revelation, will do the same thing as he speaks about judgments that come upon the Church and the world, judgments pertaining to the period in its extensiveness between the first and second coming of Christ. This is the Bible’s method. This is the Bible’s way of bringing us right up against the ultimate issues and the most conclusive considerations, oppressing upon us the urgency of God’s purpose and His call. The Prophet’s method of communication by the Lord’s design brings near the future distant blessings, but also the coming certain destruction of this world.

    And it effectively sets before us the question, am I, in appropriating the salvation of which the prophets speak, ready for the judgment they announce? Am I, in appropriating the salvation of which the prophets speak, ready for the judgment they announce?” Are you ready?

    Our Father, we pray that we would not be among those who run away from your prophets and even the difficulties that are encountered when we confront the prophets. Instead, O God, for the good of our souls, we pray that we might rush toward the prophets, that we might be busy considering the prophets’ message. May we take to heart, O God, all of the methods they use, as these are by divine design. and intended to help us with regard to the nature of our faith, character of our life, and the importance of the salvation and the judgment which the prophets present. Father, bless us, then, your children, that we would take to heart all that your word says, the law and the prophets, even as they bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in all of this, O God, may we be prepared for the day which the prophets saw, and know that our souls are secure in Christ, and that we are ready to meet our Lord.

    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.

  • A Rod from the Stem of Jesse

    A Rod from the Stem of Jesse

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Isaiah’s Christmas Children” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 10, 1999.

    About this sermon

    Dispensationalists misuse the prophets, and Isaiah 10-11 shows how. Readers debate whether 10:33-34 addresses Assyria or Judah. From the cut-down stump of Jesse a rod comes forth in 11:1, and Romans 3 shows the righteousness it brings.

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    We begin our scripture reading this morning in Isaiah chapter 10, and we are reading from verse 24 into the 11th chapter. This is Isaiah 10, verse 24. Give your attention to God’s word. Therefore, thus says the Lord God of hosts, O my people who dwell in Zion, do not fear the Assyrian who strikes you with the rod and lifts up his staff against you the way Egypt did, for in a very little while my indignation against you will be spent and my anger will be directed toward their destruction. The Lord of hosts will arouse a scourge against him like the slaughter of Midian at the Rock of Oreb. and his staff will be over the sea, and he will lift it up the way he did in Egypt. So it will be in that day that his burden will be removed from your shoulders and his yoke from your neck, and the yoke will be broken because of fatness.

    He has come against Aeth. He has passed through Migrom. At Mikmash he deposited his baggage. They have gone through the pass. saying, Giba will be our lodging place. Rhema is terrified, and Gibeah of Saul has fled away. Cry aloud with your voice, O daughter of Galene! Pay attention, Laëtia and wretched Anaphoth! Madmenna has fled, the inhabitants of Gabin have sought refuge, yet today he will halt at Nob. He shakes his fist at the mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.

    Behold, the Lord, the God of hosts, will lop off the bowels with a terrible crash. Those also who are tall in stature will be cut down, and those who are lofty will be abased. He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an iron axe, and Lebanon will fall by the mighty one. Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.

    The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. and he will delight in the fear of the Lord, and he will not judge by what his eyes see, nor make a decision by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he will judge the poor and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth, and he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Also, righteousness will be the belt about his loins, and faithfulness the belt about his waist. will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child will lead them. Also, the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, the nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. then they will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

    Now, we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God, because by the works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. even the righteousness of God through faith of Jesus Christ for all those who believe, for there is no distinction. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed. For the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ.

    Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith, is one. Do we then nullify the law through faith? May it never be. On the contrary, we establish the law.

    Be with us, O God, in our prayers, that we, Lord, in our prayers, would give ourselves away for the sake of your people in the world. Surely, Jesus Christ, by his priestly administration, does this very thing. He gives himself away as sacrifice He extends himself even at your right hand at his intercessions for his own. We pray, Lord, that you will bless your people in the world, and particularly, O God, may you give them good instruction. O Father, would you raise up for yourself men who are capable in the gathering of the harvest and in the instruction of your flock? And Lord, may it be pleasing to you to hear our prayer, even as your church is strengthened through the preaching of the word. For we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

    Many in the Church throughout the centuries have found the prophets hard plowing. Very difficult indeed. And as a result, some have tended to avoid the prophets, to avoid them altogether. In the last century, a number of godly people, committed to the word of God, well-intentioned in themselves, because of this phenomenon of avoiding the prophets, were attracted to dispensationalism.

    Because of dispensationalism’s claim that it would make the prophets intelligible once more, easily accessible. This claim by the dispensationalists continues to have great impact upon our present century, that we of the Reformed faith, that we here at Grace Church, have maintained that the prophets are, in fact, penetrable apart from the schemes of the dispensationalists. apart from those schemes which essentially, and in the most superficial manner, separate the Old Testament from the New Testament, the law from the gospel, and when it comes to the prophets specifically, ethnic and territorial Israel from the Church. At base, the dispensationalist refuses to allow the prophets’ promises to ethnic and territorial Israel to be fulfilled in the Church. And thus the Dispensationalist contends that all such promises in the Prophets must have in view a future literal fulfillment for the Jews in the geographical land of Palestine. It is for this reason that Dispensationalists show great interest in the events in the Middle and in Israeli politics, and why they tend to be apocalyptic alarmists and pretty much preoccupied with Zionist theology.

    The Reformed faith historically has not been impressed by these things, and at its best it has insisted upon the essential unity of God’s covenant As God’s revelation moves from the older administration into the newer administration, the Reformed faith has insisted that the law and the prophets, as a whole, intentionally serve the gospel. with the implication, again made explicit by the New Testament, that Israel finds her destiny in the Church of Jesus Christ, not apart from it. And that without us, without the Church, Israel is not made perfect. To paraphrase, words from the Epistle to the Hebrews. But having said this doesn’t make our reading or our hearing of the prophets particularly any easier.

    The prophets are truly full of complexities, difficult construction and images, oblique historical and geographical references, rapid changes in mood and emotional direction. One moment the Prophet is speaking about the most severe gloom, and in the bat of an eye, the next breath, he’s speaking in the most startling fashion about the appearance and the importance of grace. But beyond these matters, the prophets are also full of what seems to be, at times, the most baffling audience shits. The most baffling shits in audience, so that We are not always clear about whom the prophet is speaking.

    For example, in what we read this morning, is it clear to you who is in view in Isaiah 10 verses 33 and 34, the last verses of that tenth chapter? Who are the boughs the Lord will lop off, the tall and lofty cut down in a baste? Who is the thicket of the forest wasted by the axe? Who is this Lebanon felled by the Mighty One?”

    Some, like E. J. Young and Derek Kidner, building upon exegetes like J. A. Alexander, find hear in these verses clear reference to, unambiguous reference to, the Assyrians. But others, like the British critical scholar A.S. Hebert, believe these verses refer to the Jews. He is uncertain as to whether they refer to the ten northern tribes or to the two southern tribes. but he appears to be convinced that they refer to the Jews. Who is right? Is E.J. Young right, or is A.S. Hebert right?

    Our immediate inspiration is to side, of course, with Young, Kidner, and Alexander. After all, these individuals are Reformed in their orientation. They are conservative and evangelical men, and many of us have come to trust them in their exegesis. Our theological prejudice is enough to move us to their side of the argument.

    The discussion is over, and the case is closed. Isaiah 10, at least verses 16 through 34 of that chapter, as nothing less than a collection of independent oracles brought together artificially from various sources and backgrounds, although not without some internal logical cohesion. Heber is obviously a theological and exegetical liberal. So why would we even bother with it? Well, because on the narrow issue of who is being addressed, Hebert may very well be right. Or at least, he may be, shall we say, more right than our stalwart conservative and reformed friend.

    By this I mean that Hebert may be preserving something in these verses, in verses 33 and 34 of Isaiah 10, that is completely lost from view in the exegesis of our tried and true friends. Admittedly, things do not look good for Hebert at first glance. In addition to the things already mentioned, in addition to his liberal bias, Hebert seems to miss the obvious connection between verses 33 and 34, and verses previous in the chapter, verses 15 through 19.

    These earlier verses, 15 through 19, without question refer exclusively to Assyria. In fact, Assyria is specifically mentioned in verse 5, verse 12. You note that Assyria is again mentioned in verse 24. In these earlier verses, specifically in verses 15 through 19, you will also note that we find mention made of an axe, verse 15, of thorns and briars, verse 17. of the forest and the trees of the forest, verses 18 and 19.

    All of these elements, all of these aspects, in their own way, mentioned again in verses 33 and 34. The conclusion being, if verses 15 through 19 are about the Assyrians, then verses 33 and 34 are about the Assyrians also. both sets of passages, both sets of verses, using the same language and the same images.

    Things are not looking good for Mr. Ebert. But secondly, influencing us against Ebert, we find the flow of verses 25 through 32 in this chapter 10 also deciding against him, it would seem. These verses begin with a call upon Zion not to fear the threat of Assyria, verses 25-27.

    And then, in the most dramatic way, these verses conclude with a description of the progress of the invading army as it makes its way city by city, village by village, that’s the meaning of the listing of all the names. through the territory of Benjamin. There are all Benjamite cities and villages en route to Jerusalem, which is now in view, in sight, of the invading army when you come to verse 32. The natural reading, therefore, is that as you progress through the chapter, the natural reading of verses 33 and 34 is that the invading army is now pictured as the locked-off bowels, the proud and vain, cut down to size, verse 33, the thicket cleared by the axe, the Lebanon felled by the tree, verse 34. And that the invading army is, as we would conclude, logically it would seem from verse 5, 12, and 24, explicitly stated there, the Assyrians. Again, the discussion is over the case in flow.

    However, as Hebert effectively points out, these last verses of Chapter 10 provide a masterful introduction to the opening of Chapter 11. The image of the wasted forest and the devastated land in those last verses of chapter 10 provide then the perfect setting for the appearance of the stem or the stump of Jesse out of which the shoot and branch springs. The picture is of the scorched earth. The picture is of the scorched earth in which Jesse’s wine is now but one of the felled trees. And from that stem, from that root, from that stump, That stump of a destroyed and dead tree comes miraculously a living sprig and a vital branch.

    David’s true and long-expected son, the final presentation of the child figure in this section of Isaiah’s prophecy. But had we not said, in keeping with the Reformed and conservative exegesis of those last verses of chapter 10, that the forest and growth laid waste by the Lord in those verses are the Assyrians, how then the picture of Judah, as you begin chapter 11, as laid waste, as a broken and dead tree out of which a living sprig sprouts?

    In answer to this question, we discover that Heber, after all, does have something to tell us. Not because we would follow him in all of his liberal reasoning, not that we would embrace him in his attitudes about the construction of the text, but because he’s laying hold of something here that is even more important than he knows. In fact, if we investigate the figure of the scorched earth, the wasted forest, and the solitary tree trunk in the previous chapters of Isaiah, The results are very, very interesting.

    For instance, in Chapter 2, the language in verses 5-11 of that second chapter, directed against the Jews for their arrogance and vanity, easily slips into language about universal indictment in verses 12-22. A day of reckoning is coming, says the Lord, not just for Israel, but for the world as a whole. All who are lifted up and proud, verse 12. All the cedars of Lebanon, all the oaths of bation, verse 13 of that second chapter. The language of trees, the language of the forest. Anticipating the language we read later on in chapters 10 and 11.

    What we ought to see in the judgment of Israel, according to chapter 2, is the judgment of the whole world. Look at Israel and the judgment that comes upon it. And no, the judgment is coming upon the whole world. That Israel herself is to be seen along these lines is reinforced by what we find in chapter 6 verse 13. Here, in the context of Isaiah’s call, grandly described, and the Lord’s relentless hostility expressed against Judah, not against the world, but against Judah.

    The Lord promises the preservation of a tenth portion in that thirteenth verse. Saved through burning, the language is beginning to sound the same, like an oak felled whose stump remains the holy seed being the salvaged stump. Sound familiar? And what do we make of Isaiah 9, verses 18-21?

    Here, the ten northern tribes of Israel, capital Samaria, are spoken about in language anticipating our passage, the later chapters. The wickedness of the ten northern tribes brings about burning, we are told. These times are like the thicket of the forest set ablaze, verse 18. The Lord’s fury consumes the land, the people themselves are fuel for the fire, verse 19. The language is compounding, it is mounting as you move through these early chapters of Isaiah. We return then to Isaiah 10 and 11, and the Prophet’s prior language achieves its end as we are led to these chapters by what has preceded.

    Yes, to be sure now, Assyria will be laid waste, but such judgment is not irrespective of the devastation that is coming upon God’s own people, a devastation that comes upon Israel and Samaria to the north, and then upon Judah and Jerusalem to the south.

    The fluidity of the Prophet’s words here ultimately plays off of a universal judgment, not one in which Israel is destroyed but Judah is spared, not one in which Jews are laid waste but their enemies and the nation’s escape untouched. No, the prophet’s baffling audience shift moves from the tirade against Assyria in the opening verses of that tenth chapter imperceptibly into a general condemnation that includes Judah by the concluding verses, verses 33-34. And why? Why is this the movement for the prophets? Because such a baffling shift of audience, like the rapid-fire mood shifts from wrath to mercy in the prophets, in the final analysis, preach the gospel. and Isaiah, like all of the prophets and the law as well, serves the gospel.

    Carried along by description of God’s coming judgment against Assyria, we are tripped by words from which we cannot exclude Judah. Carried along by description of God’s judgment against Assyria, we are tripped up by words from which we cannot exclude Judah. Do you think that you are immune? that it is only those wicked Assyrians that will get their due. What then is the impact such a baffling shift in audience intends to have upon succeeding audiences?

    Precisely what is later put on paper by the Apostle Paul to be inspiration of the same spirit who inspired Isaiah That every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God Romans 3 19 for all have sinned, Jews and Assyrians alike, and come short of the glory of God.”

    How difficult it was for the Jews of Isaiah’s day to hear it, to understand it, to grasp it. How difficult it was in the days of Jesus Christ for those who were even in his presence to grasp it. How difficult it remains for the Church of Jesus Christ, even into the present time, to grasp it.

    For Paul, in preaching the gospel of sovereign grace, is confronted by those who would deny that grace and preach something else altogether. A message that would leave some in a privileged position, as if they had a righteousness all built up in themselves by their works and an inherent merit. Isaiah, 700 years before the coming of Christ, was preaching the gospel. And as you consider those statements by the Apostle Paul, if you look at them in isolation, they are in fact quite devastating, are they not? Yet every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

    But Paul, as you know, in the same context, he being proof of the gospel that he has embraced, does not leave us without hope, even in light of universal condemnation. for he preaches the gospel and speaks to us about being justified freely by God’s grace. How can it be otherwise if the Jews themselves are condemned?

    How can it be otherwise through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Romans 3.24, the Savior of not only the Jews but the Gentiles as well as Romans 3.29 implies? But you know, this one whom Paul identifies as Christ Jesus, the very one who met him on the Damascus road, is the one Isaiah calls the rod out of Jesse’s stem, the branch growing out of Jesse’s root. Verse 11, and he it is who brings the universal reign of righteousness and peace, he alone and by him all the earth is made full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

    The messages about Isaiah’s Christmas children are at an end. The rod and branch of Jesse being the last of the child figures in this glorious section of Isaiah’s Each presentation of the child, be it Shir Jeshub, a remnant shall return in chapter 7, verse 3, or Immanuel, God with us in chapter 7, verse 14, or Meher, Shalal, Hashbaz, swift as the booties, easy as the prey in chapter 8, verse 3, or the glory child of chapter 9, verse 6, or the branch now of Jesse in 11, verse 1, each presentation of the child has conveyed its own message about the severity of God’s wrath and the inexplicable wonder of His grace. Each presentation of the child figure deliberately insults human pretensions and pride, while exalting the God who perfects His power through weakness. Each presentation of the child figure then preaches the gospel, making each child portrait a Christmas portrait. as laid within the series of child figures, is the message that God himself is coming through the line of David in the interest of a universal reign of righteousness and peace, into which enter those who, embracing the Lord’s very own manner of coming to them, become themselves little children in a manifest demonstration of their own weakness and need.

    I said the child of chapter 11 verse 1 is the last child. That isn’t exactly correct. The last child appears in verse 6 of the 11th chapter. And a little child shall lead them. the nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. We children all are brought into the kingdom. We children all in manifest demonstration of our own weakness and need and utter dependence. Are you among the children?

    Our Father, we do thank you for the subtleties of your Word, and do challenge us, O God, that we might press on, that we might see what is laid within your Word, that we might look at your word intently and dig out of it its riches. But may we know, O God, that in the final analysis all that you have said serves the gospel, which means our undoing, that we might be remade after the image of your Son. And to this end, O God, the figure of the child is so beautifully instructive. For in the child we are confronted with the fact that you perfect your strength in weakness. The figure of the child, not one that you abhor, but one that you embrace, becoming a child yourself. that you might lead us in our childlikeness into your kingdom.

    Bless us then, O God, with the cherished rebirth of which your scriptures speak. And may we perceive that message of rebirth as it is declared by the prophets and the as surely as we know it to be on the surface of things in what Jesus declares and what his apostles tell us. Lord, may we be a people of the gospel, that meaning that we are not proud and haughty, we are not like lofty boughs of the forest, but rather we are those who take the light in a dead stump, and in a miraculous way, living branch. To your glory. Amen.

    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.

  • The Child Born to a Nation

    The Child Born to a Nation

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Isaiah’s Christmas Children” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 3, 1999.

    About this sermon

    Prophetic literature poses three difficulties for its readers. God gives the glory child of Isaiah 9:6 to the whole nation, apart from any human parents. ‘For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.’

    More sermons from Isaiah · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    This morning we begin our scripture reading in Isaiah’s prophecy, the eighth chapter. We are beginning with verse 16. This is Isaiah chapter 8, beginning with verse 16. Give your attention to God’s word. Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. And I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him. Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth in Mount Zion.

    And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and that mutter, should not a people seek unto their God? the living to the dead. To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. And they shall pass through it hardly bested and hungry, and it shall come to pass that when they shall be hungry they shall fret themselves and curse their king and their God and look upward. And they shall look unto the earth and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be driven to darkness. Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he likely afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations.

    The people that walk in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation and not increased the joy. They joy before thee according to the joy in the harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.

    But thou hast broken the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise and diamonds rolled in blood, but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.

    For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end. upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it and establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.”

    It is our hope, O God, borne by your word and by your spirit, that we, in hearing your word, would be like your people throughout the world, who today receive your word gladly. O Father, May it be a joy to us to be in worship, not only for ourselves, but for all of your people, as we are gathered as if we were one man, there presented before you that we might receive from you those things that you would teach us. Do teach us, O God. We, being taught, may we obey, and that from the depths of our hearts, and in that obedience, O God, may it be evident to you and to the world that the humility and meekness of our Savior has been a garment in which we have been dressed. And Father, may we be so glad to be so close We ask now that you would encourage us as we listen to your word proclaimed to a people throughout the world as well, that we with them would give our full concentration to that word, and help us, O God, that we might be a help ourselves to others about us, that we would be an encouragement to their concentration as well. We pray this in Jesus’ name.

    Now, it may very well be, if you were to tell the truth, if you were to be honest, that you are put off by readings from the prophets. You would much rather be somewhere else than in the prophets. There are, of course, those golden passages, those texts that rise right off the page, that seem to be self-contained units in themselves, cogent all by themselves, intelligible, at least you think they are. There are those passages like what you find in Isaiah 9, verse 6, the familiar text, For unto us the child is born, unto us the son is given. And you even rehearse verses like these, and you use them. You might even emboss your greeting cards with them. But while you are familiar with the words, at the same time, you have to admit, if you are honest with yourself, The prophetic literature is not your favorite scriptural literature. You would rather be somewhere else.

    The clarity of Isaiah 9.6, notwithstanding, for you have noticed as you have worked through the passage that we have read this morning, that you have these opaque, not quite translucent statements appearing in the latter part of chapter 8. Comments about binding up the testimony, verse 16 in that 8th chapter.

    Remarks about familiar spirits and peeping and muttering lizards, verse 19. soldiering refugees, wandering about, as the King James puts it, hardly bested and hungry. As if the prophets weren’t difficult in their own right. We have to heap on top of that the obscurity of 17th century King James English. Hardly bested What does that mean? Well, I won’t leave you in the dark. It means painfully situated. You didn’t know that.

    Things don’t get much better as you move into the ninth chapter versus immediately preceding our so-called golden passage. Verse six in that ninth chapter. What do you make, for instance, of the day of Vivian mentioned in verse 4. What is that all about? What do you make of the boots and garments, gold and blood, and destined for the incinerator in verse 5?

    But if the difficulty of these words and the images evoked by them aren’t enough, we also have in the prophets those sudden and profound changes in direction, and seemingly without warning. you’re moving along in one direction and suddenly you’re caught off guard.

    It seems as if there’s a complete reversal within the space of a sentence. In an earlier message we noticed one of those profound reversals of direction as we move from verse 8 and chapter 8 into the 9th verse. The 8th verse speaks unmistakably about the impending judgment that’s coming upon Judah. however, speaks about the promise of justice that’s going to be meted out upon the nations, the thought of which, by the time we reach the end of the thought in verse 10, is expressing itself in the greatest confidence concerning God’s covenantal presence with His people. Verse 8, God’s judgment upon Judah, by the time we reach the end of verse 10, God’s blessing upon these same people. What is going on here?

    But further, we’re going to make it darker still, if I were to add one more unsettling feature from the Prophets, beyond the obscure words and images, beyond the radical redirections, midline it seems. You might consider verse 3 there in chapter 9 for a radical reversal, midline. If I were to add one more unsettling feature from the Prophets, another feature equally liable to put you off with regard to prophetic literature, I would call your attention to the frequent confusion, seemingly, within the Prophets concerning not simply of what is being said, but to whom it is being said, or about whom it is being said. you can’t keep all of the characters straight. As you move through the prophets, you don’t know nearly what, you’re not nearly in the dark about what he’s talking about, you’re in the dark about who he’s talking about, and who he’s talking about. Prophets become like one of those massive Roman I’m sorry, Russian novels, where you have a list of characters with all sorts of different names, and you’re in the middle of the novel and you have no idea who the author is talking about.

    Looking once more, particularly along these lines of our passage this morning, we may conclude that the latter verses in chapter 8 are especially focused upon Judah, but chapter 9 While apparently picking up on the theme at the end of chapter 8, note the trouble, darkness, dimness, and anguish of verse 22 in that 8th chapter. This ninth chapter, however, appears to be addressed to the ten northern tribes. Chapter nine makes mention in verse one of Zebulon and Naphtali. Northern tribe, we move from Judah back to the ten northern tribes.

    We even move beyond the Jordan territory that is not within the province of Judah at all, and we make mention of Galilee of the Gentiles at the end of that first verse. not then simply the radical redirection of the message from judgment to deliverance, but the radical disjunction of those addressed as we move from section to section. These are reasons why the prophets, except for those golden passages, may not be our favorite portions of Scripture.

    But having said this, it is not to say that God himself is unaware of our predicament. It is not to say that God himself is without his reasons for making the prophetic revelation what it is, even making it as difficult as it is. those quick, sudden redirections, those abrupt, surprising shifts from wrath to grace, from wrath to mercy, are as startling as God’s grace itself. There it is. The message of these redirections is not meant in any way to lull Israel to sleep in a vain confidence that regardless of how bad things are, or even how bad Israel herself might be, she can always count on God’s love, because there is that intrusion of mercy even in these passages about wrath. Now, that message, the message of these radical redirections, is that against the background of God’s just judgment, His grace, His mercy, is always surprising and inexplicable. In other words, given the deplorable state of His people, The appearance of grace is not the natural thing. It is not the expected thing. It is not even the logical thing. For the natural, expected, and logical thing is the Lord’s just judgment.

    Therefore, as utterly gracious as His mercy is as utterly unmerited as his deliverance for his people is so completely disarming and befuddling, and sudden are the prophet’s announcements of salvation even in the context of statements about judgment to an unworthy people. you might well work off of the profits in this regard concerning your own estate. For the temptation may be for you to think that God’s mercy and grace to you is the natural thing, it is the thing to be expected, it is the logical thing. You may even, in a flattering way, point to aspects of your own personality and character that make this such a natural thing, such an expected thing, such a logical thing.

    Well, I am actually a very good person. And God knows that, so the logical thing, of course, is that He will show me mercy. That is very close to the theology of Islam. I don’t know whether you know that or not, but it’s very close to the theology of Islam. It is not the theology of the Bible.

    With regard to these radical redirections as you move suddenly from a message about judgment to mercy, as utterly gracious as God’s mercy is, as utterly unmerited as his deliverance for his people, so completely disarming and befuddling is the prophet’s announcement of salvation to an unworthy people.

    It is this mercy, it is this grace, which is further served by the Prophet’s movement from audience to audience within his message. The redirection from wrath to grace, the confusion as to who he’s talking about anyway. Grace central to the one, grace central to the other as well. It is this mercy, it is this grace, which is further served by the Prophet’s movement from audience to audience in his message.

    As we have already noted, Isaiah’s words at the end of chapter 8, beginning with verse 16, find their context in the Prophet’s address to Judah. But even moving on from Judah more particularly, their immediate address is to the small band of disciples that have gathered around the prophet himself in Jerusalem. It would seem that God’s grace, as we watch the movement from audience to audience, it would seem that God’s grace has receded now from the ten northern tribes, but also from the two southern tribes, and is now residing with a little group of Isaiah’s followers. But before we can blink, we move into the ninth chapter of Isaiah and its message about the great light to shine upon a people in darkness.

    And who are these people? They are not Isaiah’s disciples, living within territorial Judah and within Jerusalem, who might well expect to receive the light, since they are eminently worthy, nor are they Judah itself, who has claim, in their own estimation, to David’s throne and proximity to the temple.

    Instead, the light is promised to the most unlikely candidate of all, the ten lost northern tribes. which in the course of time, and because of their dispersion, were placed, humanly speaking, in an impossible situation beyond all retrieval. That’s the power of the language. They walk in darkness as a perpetual state. They live under the shadow of death as a perpetual state. The point isn’t the possibility of rescue, the point is the impossibility of rescue. But it is these people, described here, who could not be any further removed from hope It is these people who become the recipients of what is most precious from God.

    And that in order that Judeans, proximate to that throne of David and the temple, so that even Isaiah and his disciples might know and be absolutely certain that the Lord’s radiant favor is all of grace. and his work of redemption is by his power and by his power alone.

    And nothing less than this is the lesson of Isaiah’s glory child in Isaiah 9 verse 6. The glory child of Isaiah 9, verse 6, is the fourth child in a list of five child figures belonging to this section of Isaiah’s prophecy, Isaiah 7-12, the so-called Book of Emanuel. Two of the previous children were Isaiah’s own, Shir Yashub of chapter 7, verse 3, and Meher Shalau Hashbaz in chapter 8, verse 3.

    The other child amongst those three was the mysterious child of chapter 7, verse 14, the child given the name Immanuel. If, with the presentation of these three previous children, there had been a systematic and ingenious dismantling of human pride, an undoing for the nation of Judah, like the undoing of the prophet himself in the description of his call in Isaiah 6, then this fourth child is the crowning touch. I say this to you not simply because of the way the child is described and the titles that are heaped upon him by the end of that sixth verse, but because of the way in which the verse begins, the way in which his birth is presented. Whatever there was of the supernatural involved in the previous three children, is now outdone in the fourth. I say this fully aware of how much has been said about Immanuel in connection with the supernatural, for even a virginally conceived Immanuel, if that is how we are to understand the child of chapter 7 verse 14, is outdone by the glory child of Isaiah 9. You see, the glory child of Isaiah 9 is shrouded in more mystery still.

    To begin with, his birth is described as a collective birth for all Israel, as if the whole of the nation were pregnant and delivering the child. For unto us a child is born, or as the New American Standard version has it, a child will be born to us. as if we are the ones giving birth to the child.

    This fanciful way of presenting the child is set before us not in order to relegate the child or the birth to the world of myth or fantasy, rather it is meant to highlight The unity of the people in the interests of their true hope. All Israel, as it were, gathered for the purpose of giving birth to the substance of her hope. And that, you see, against the background of the judgment that’s just been read out over all of Israel. The nation is dispersed, the nation is judged, the nation is gone. But now, the nation is described as gathered, and as if that nation were one person, as if that nation were one woman giving birth to the child. Of course, this is a poetical way of speaking, and only in the theological sense of it does it have its full and proper meaning, since obviously, in the literal sense, no nation gives birth to a child.

    But now, having seen this point, we are alert to the fact that in the literal sense, no parent, no individual parent, is identified with regard to this child. No parent, no individual parent is identified with regard to this child, and in this regard, the glory child of Isaiah 9 is the only child among all the children mentioned in Isaiah 7-12 so identified. No parent.

    The intended impact of this description is to heighten the sense of the supernatural, even carrying you beyond what you may have perceived of the supernatural in the description of the Immanuel child of Isaiah 7 verse 14. The intended impact, then, of this description is to heighten the sense of the supernatural and to suggest to you that the true parentage of this child is none other than God himself. And the very next phrase in the verse fills out this interpretation. Unto us, not only is a child born, unto us a son is given.” Once more, the collective sense of it in the reception of the child, as if the whole nation were receiving the child as one. But likewise, once more, no identifiable parent. The implication being that God is the parent, and that it is he who is giving the child to the people. The child is his gift to them. But you remember how we led into this section in the sermon.

    It has been made clear that God’s people are not worthy to receive God’s gift, are they? Neither are they, in their own strength, capable of procuring the child or generating the child. Therefore, laid within the glory child of Isaiah 9 is the message that God’s deliverance of his people will be through a child he uniquely begets. One who will be the pure embodiment of his own absolute grace and his absolute power.

    The manifest demonstration of both. And what a child this is. The rest of the verse, if you please. What a child this is. According to one reading, his name shall be called, as a counselor, wonderful. In might, like a god. For eternity, a father. In the realm of peace, a prince.

    But such a description of this child is not quite adequate. It doesn’t quite capture the sense and magnitude of this child. who has forgiven.” Looking at the supernatural and divinely gracious character of the child himself, such a reading, as has been suggested, will never do. For, in truth, this child is the most wonderful of counselors, exceeding all No godlike hero is he, a champion for the people, but rather the mighty God himself.

    He is indeed a father. He is a father, the father of eternity. That is, he is the progenitor of eternity and of those who belong to eternity. And he is a sovereign with his own domain. that domain be in peace. He, a sovereign who both owns that domain and in his very person is identified with it. He is not only the prince over peace, he is the prince that is peace. So the child, the glory child, has come and has been acknowledged to be all of this. Has he not? Even by you. But even before there was the statements read out by the Apostle Paul that he, this child, would be received by all Israel, that is, all Israel that is Israel, and not only by Israel but by the nations flung far and wide.

    To those to whom this child has truly come there is no question about his identity, nor is there any question about whether their goodness or their works produced him. brought about his birth. You see how the Protestant message of salvation by grace alone must be proclaimed with the Christmas message. You see, no work by Israel by a Jew, no inherent value rising from them, no inherent goodness, no work on their part laid in righteousness could bring forth the birth of the child. The child was a gift, and as the child is the gift, so is the salvation that is to be found in him. There is no other way, and there can be no other message than this. It is those people who are receiving this child on God’s terms, who know that the gift is all of grace, and that it is all of God.

    Praise His name. Don’t you? Father, the strain is always there. It was in Isaiah’s day. It was manifest in Paul’s day. He, Lord, having lived in an earlier time, would have been the sworn enemy of Isaiah, but yet, according to your mercy in that latter day, became the proclaimer of the gospel that was laid within the message that Isaiah proclaimed himself, the message of sovereign grace, of the absolute power of God to save those who are unworthy and unfit.

    Lord, where would we be? If you had not caused the light to shine upon us, if you had not delivered us from death, if you had not delivered us from our sins, where would we be, O God, if you had not given to us a child, if you had not given to us a son? Lord, as you have given the child, so also you have given salvation with him. And we now, your people, extol you and praise your glorious name. For, Lord, we cannot look to ourselves, we can only look to you. Our hope. Amen.

    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.