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Amen.
Well, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word.
We return this morning to our consideration of the book of the prophet Isaiah, and today
we are in the shortest chapter in the book of Isaiah.
Isaiah chapter 12, it’s just six verses long, and I will read the entire chapter.
Isaiah chapter 12, verses 1 through 6, you’ll find that on page 684 in your pew Bible.
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Let us hear the word of God.
You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry
with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me.
Behold, God is my salvation.
I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and He
has become my salvation.
With joy you will draw waters from the wells of salvation, and you will say in that day,
give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the peoples, proclaim
that His name is exalted.
Sing praises to the Lord, for He has done gloriously.
Let this be made known in all the earth.
Shout and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion.
For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
May God add His blessing to this reading of His holy word.
Let’s pray.
Our Lord and Father in heaven, once again, we thank you that you have spoken.
You have spoken clearly in your word, but Lord, we are often obtuse and dense and not
open to what you have to say.
And so we pray that this day that your Spirit would give us tender, teachable hearts, open
our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word.
And we would ask that your word would find a lodging place in our souls.
We pray that by your Spirit the seed of your word would take deep root and bear much spiritual
fruit in our lives, fruit that brings praise and glory and honor to your holy name, fruit
that brings joy and comfort to our souls.
Be with us now and bless me, your unworthy servant, with the grace to declare and speak
forth your word with clarity and power.
We pray these things through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said, Amen, you may
be seated.
There’s quite a number of words that the young people can be listening for in my sermon this
day, which are printed out in your sermon outline.
And those words are thanksgiving, comfort, salvation, proclamation, praise and presence.
The title of my sermon is Behold, God is my salvation.
Well, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in the journey of life, it is often the case
that we experience the highest of joys after we have gone through the deepest of struggles
and sorrows, challenges and difficulties.
Just to give you some examples, consider the world of sports.
Isn’t it often the case in a sporting event between two competing teams that the greatest
exhilaration over a victory for the winning team occurs after there’s been an intense
struggle, an intense competition and a close game?
In the realm of academics, isn’t it the case that the greatest satisfaction among students
who are taking a difficult class, a class that requires hours of intensive study and
research, isn’t it the case that such students experience the greatest sense of satisfaction
after they’ve put in their time and effort to that class and finally they get their report
card and not only have they just passed the class, but they’ve actually attained an A?
Or consider the joy of a mother in welcoming her child into the world after the pain of
a long and difficult labor.
Well, dear ones, the joy that the prophet Isaiah expresses in this brief passage of
God’s word is a similar kind of joy.
Now, of course, there are differences.
You see, the joy that Isaiah speaks of is not a joy that God’s people have in any way
worked for or earned or deserved after intense personal labors or personal efforts.
Rather, it is a joy that is given to an undeserving people as a sheer gift of God’s grace and
God’s grace alone.
It is the joy of salvation, the joy of salvation and deliverance that God’s people would experience
following his judgment against them as a covenant nation for their unfaithfulness.
That is the context of our passage for today.
Friends, as I mentioned, Chapter 12 is the shortest chapter in this long book, the Book
of Isaiah.
And it’s a chapter that contains two short but interconnected songs of praise which serve
as a fitting conclusion to the first section of Isaiah, a section, you will recall, that
largely consisted of judgment oracles against Judah and its capital city of Jerusalem.
There’s been a lot of depressing passages that we’ve considered up to this point in
the first section of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah because this section is dominated in
many ways by judgment oracles where the Lord promises and threatens his judgment against
his people for their wickedness in forsaking Yahweh their God and breaking his holy covenant
through their blatant idolatries and also through their societal injustices.
The Holy Spirit through the Prophet Isaiah had predicted that severe judgment would indeed
come against the Lord’s vineyard, that is to say against his professed covenant people.
But the final chapter in the story of God’s covenant people would not end on a note of
judgment and ruin and exile, though indeed judgment and ruin and exile would come.
But instead we are assured in passages like this one that Yahweh our God would once again
show himself to be faithful to his gracious covenant and merciful to his people, merciful
to his people in spite of their faithlessness.
While Isaiah had predicted judgment, ruin, and exile, he also predicts that God graciously
would preserve a remnant of his people, a remnant chosen not because they deserve to
be chosen, not because of their faithfulness, a remnant chosen by sovereign grace and grace
alone.
Following God’s judgment against the covenant nation, a remnant of the exiles would return.
Not only that, the promised Messiah, the Immanuel that we read of in chapter 9, the branch of
the Lord that we read of in chapter 11, this promised Messiah would finally arrive on the
scene of human history.
God’s righteous anger against his sinning people would indeed be turned away.
And he would turn once again in mercy to his people.
He would turn to his people once again not to judge and destroy them, but to comfort
them, to restore them, to save them.
And as our passage for today drives home, our joy as God’s people is being able to say
both as individual believers and together collectively as the church of Jesus Christ
to be able to say, behold, God is my salvation.
So as we turn our attention to our passage for this Lord’s Day morning, we first consider
a thanksgiving for God’s comfort and salvation.
This is the first point on your sermon outline.
We notice a thanksgiving for God’s comfort and salvation.
Let me once again read the first two verses.
You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry
with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me.
Behold, God is my salvation.
I will trust and will not be afraid for the Lord God is my strength and my song and he
has become my salvation.
This is the first song of praise in chapter 12.
The second song of praise begins in verse four and leads to the end of the chapter.
But in this first song of praise, how does Isaiah begin?
He begins by saying, you will say in that day.
You will say in that day.
Now in that day, that should raise the question.
If you’re a sensitive and careful Bible reader, one of the qualifications for being a good
Bible reader is to ask good questions.
And so what questions should you be asking when you read in that day?
You should be asking the question, what day is Isaiah speaking about?
Is he speaking about the day of Israel’s restoration to the land following the Babylonian exile?
Well certainly that would be at least a partial fulfillment of this passage.
Or is he speaking of the day of the coming Messiah and the introduction of the new covenant
era?
Well again, this is an eschatological passage.
This passage uses eschatological language.
And so the day that is being spoken of here is an eschatological day, which means that
it is a day that has to do with the unfolding of God’s plan and purpose within human history.
This language, this eschatological language echoes chapter 11 verse 10 where we also read
those words in that day.
And as we saw when we considered that particular passage, the day spoken of there is the age
of the Messiah.
In other words, the new covenant era of redemptive history.
In other words, friends, this passage ultimately points to the messianic new covenant age in
which we Christians are privileged to live.
This is talking about today, this period of time that we live in, this period of time
between our Lord’s first coming and his future glorious second advent at the end of this
age.
Now notice the first word that begins in this translation, the ESV here of chapter 12 and
verse 1.
You will say in that day.
It’s interesting that the you here is in the singular.
But the you in verse 4 is in the plural.
What’s the significance of that?
Well, in this first song of praise in verses 1 through 3, what we see here, it appears,
we see that God’s people are depicted as speaking this song of thanksgiving unitedly as if they
were one man, as if they were one individual.
This kind of corporate singular, if you will, is used throughout the scriptures in various
places.
For example, the apostle Paul speaks of our united praise in the Church of Jesus Christ,
our united praise to the Lord in passages like Romans 15, verses 5 and 6.
And in that passage, Paul is standing in awe of the fact that through the gospel, both
Jews who believe in Jesus and Gentiles who believe in Jesus are brought together into
one body and unitedly they give praise to God.
As it says in those verses, Romans 15, 5 and 6, may the God of endurance and encouragement
grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together
you may, plural, you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Friends, in this new covenant messianic age, whether we be Jew or Gentile, whether we be
male or female, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, cultured or common, because of
our spiritual and saving union and communion with Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah,
we, as God’s people, lift up our hearts and our voices together in unity and with one
accord in praise and thanksgiving to our Savior God, the God who has done so much for us,
the God who has restored us, who has saved us, the God who in Christ and by His Spirit
comforts us.
And so, again, the covenant nation is depicted as one man praising God and saying what?
In verse 1, I will give thanks to you, oh Yahweh, the Lord, the faithful covenant-making
covenant-keeping God of Israel.
I will give thanks to you.
Here, friends, is a song of thanksgiving to Yahweh in view of gracious benefits received.
We should praise God, of course, for who He is.
The infinite, almighty, transcendent, creator, sustainer, and sovereign Lord over heaven
and earth, the God who is infinite, eternal, and unchanging in His being, wisdom, power,
holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
He deserves to be praised simply for who He is.
But here, we are also encouraged to praise Him for what He has done for us.
And what has He done?
He’s done something amazing.
He’s done something amazing.
It says this, for though you were angry with me, God was angry with His covenant nation,
rightly so, because the covenant nation had broken His covenant.
They had stiffened their necks.
They had hardened their hearts.
They had rebelled against the Lord.
They had continued on in impenitence and idolatry, immorality, and injustice.
And yet, God has mercy upon them.
And they are pictured as standing in awe.
For though you were angry with me, rightly angry.
This is a righteous anger that God had with them.
Nevertheless, notice what it says.
Your anger turned away, that you might comfort me.
You know, only God can turn away God’s anger.
How has God done this?
How has the holy, righteous, just God, who is angry with the wicked, rightly so, every day,
we’re told in the Scriptures, God is angry with the wicked every day.
And His wrath is continuously being revealed from heaven against the unrighteousness and godlessness
of men who, as Paul tells us in Romans 1, suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
You read the Bible, and you read how God’s people, and indeed the nations of humanity,
continually and consistently rebel against the Lord.
And we realize, wow, God is so amazingly patient, forbearing, long-suffering with humanity,
that He’s rightly angry with us.
But how does God turn away His own righteous, just anger?
He does so through the promised Messiah.
You see, in Christ our Lord, God’s righteous anger has been decisively turned away.
And as a result, we receive not only salvation, restoration, we receive eternal comfort.
Your anger has turned away that you might comfort me.
And then verse 2 naturally flows out of this opening praise in verse 1,
as Isaiah, speaking as a psalmist would, says, Behold, God is my salvation.
God is my salvation.
Children, what does the word behold mean?
The term behold is basically a term, you know, if you’re in class and you’re kind of,
your mind is wandering or you’re doodling on your writing pad, you’re not paying attention,
your teacher might say, listen up, or pay attention.
That’s what the term behold means.
That means we really need to, I mean, we need to pay attention to God’s Word,
whatever you’re reading in God’s Word.
But here, God is saying through the prophet Isaiah, this is really important.
Pay attention, for a great truth is about to be announced.
And what is that great truth?
It is a great truth that goes against the grain of our proud, fallen, self-righteous nature.
It is the truth that you can’t save yourself.
You can’t contribute to your salvation.
You can’t lift a finger to save yourself.
Behold, God is my salvation.
He is the salvation of His people.
In what sense is God our salvation?
Well, I like what Dr. E.J. Young writes about this in his commentary on Isaiah.
He states it well.
He says that when Isaiah writes, God is my salvation, he says, quote,
it means that God is the author, the cause, the agent, the accomplisher of that salvation.
Let me read that again.
God is our salvation.
The term salvation can be a more general term, meaning deliverance.
But I think that we are to understand it in its deepest sense, salvation from sin.
In what sense is God our salvation?
Again, as Young says, God is the author, the cause, the agent, the accomplisher of that salvation.
And then it goes on to say, I will trust and will not be afraid.
If God in grace turns away His righteous anger from you, dear sinner, what do you have to fear?
I will trust and will not be afraid.
You need not be afraid of God’s wrath anymore if you are in Christ.
If Christ is your Savior, for God has turned away His anger from you, the Lord is your salvation.
And then it goes on to say, for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.
You know, the language here in verse 2 echoes the song of Moses.
Let’s turn back to Exodus chapter 15 and look at verse 2, Exodus chapter 15, verse 2.
And as you’re turning there, let me once again read verse 2 of our passage, Isaiah 12, verse 2.
Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my song,
and He has become my salvation.
With those words in mind, turn to the song of Moses, Exodus 15, and notice verse 2, notice the wording.
The Lord is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.
Do those words sound familiar?
They ought to because Isaiah is basically quoting from that in verse 2 of chapter 12.
It goes on to say, this is my God, and I will praise Him, my Father’s God, and I will exalt Him.
The fact that Isaiah is here referencing or quoting from the song of Moses serves to underscore the theme of a second or new Exodus.
This is a theme throughout the book of Isaiah, that something greater than the first Exodus is coming.
The new or second Exodus will be a great act of deliverance that will far surpass God’s amazing deliverance of His people,
Israel, from Egyptian slavery under Pharaoh.
And that was amazing in and of itself, wasn’t it?
How God poured out His plagues upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians, how He parted the sea so that the people went through on dry land,
how He rescued His people and caused the waters of the sea to return over the Egyptians who pursued them.
Amazing, an amazing deliverance from physical slavery and political oppression.
But the new Exodus, the Exodus of the Messianic age, will be much greater than that.
This new or second Exodus, of course, was accomplished by Jesus Christ and His mighty works of salvation,
such as His obedient life, His atoning sacrificial death,
whereby He fully satisfied for all of the sins of all of those who trust Him as Lord and Savior,
and His resurrection, His physical bodily resurrection from the dead.
These mighty acts of salvation, this second Exodus, is much greater than what was accomplished through Moses.
Christ accomplished a much greater deliverance, a much greater Exodus, than had been accomplished under the ministry of Moses.
So again, we can say, the Lord God is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.
I want to make a couple points of application from this first point.
First of all, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us remember and give thanks for the comforts of our salvation in Christ.
Many Christians who love the Lord, who trust the Lord, do not experience the comfort of their salvation.
God desires, brothers and sisters, that we experience the comforts of our salvation.
What are those comforts?
Well, how about I read a wonderful Bible-based summary of those comforts in the Heidelberg Catechism, question one.
You’re welcome to turn there.
So on page 872 in the back of your Psalter hymnal, page 872, the Heidelberg Catechism opens with this question, question one.
What is your only comfort in life and in death?
The Bible-based answer is this. Listen to these words.
Brother, sister, and Christ, if you do not find these words, these good news words to be of great comfort to your soul,
then I don’t know what to say.
What could be more comforting to know that you belong to a faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who has given you the gift of eternal life,
forgiven you all your sins, who dwells in you by His Spirit, and who is keeping you and preserving you unto life eternal?
Dear listener, do you know not only the salvation of Christ, do you know the comforts of Christ?
Have you embraced the saving comfort offered to you in the Gospel?
Is God your salvation?
God in the Gospel offers Jesus Christ, crucified for the forgiveness of sins, raised from the dead,
so that whoever believes in Him, whoever trusts in Him, might not perish but have everlasting life.
Do you repent and believe in Christ?
God calls you, He calls all people through the Gospel to repent and believe the good news,
believe that Christ was crucified for the forgiveness of sins and that His death is sufficient for you,
believe that He rose from the dead to bring newness of life to all who turn to Him,
turn to Christ, trust in Him, and He will cleanse you from your sin and clothe you in His perfect everlasting righteousness,
causing you to be justified once and for all and forever.
He’s going to begin sanctifying you and fitting you and preparing you for your glorification.
These are the comforts of knowing that God is our salvation.
But wait, there’s more as we move on.
Let’s consider next as we move on to verses 3 through 5,
the inexhaustible wells of salvation and the universal proclamation of God’s mighty deeds.
The inexhaustible, limitless wells of salvation and the universal proclamation of God’s mighty deeds.
The two key words in that main point are salvation and proclamation.
Look at verse 3, with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
What a picture, what a picture. With joy you will draw waters.
You ever been so thirsty that you feel like you’re about to faint?
You want water. You need refreshment to enliven you, to strengthen you.
At a spiritual level we need the waters of salvation, and the waters of salvation bring us joy.
Did you know, believer, that God’s goal for us in Christ is not only that we would glorify Him,
that’s His highest goal, obviously, for God’s chief end is to glorify God,
but God’s goal for us also in Christ is our joy in Him.
And here we are told in verse 3, with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
Now this reminds us of Israel’s wilderness wanderings.
There were times while Israel, having been delivered from their slavery in Egypt,
they’re wandering through this desert wilderness.
And there were times when they were thirsty and there was not enough water.
And God supernaturally provided them with water in the wilderness in order to quench their physical thirst.
You know, in the New Testament the Apostle Paul connects this provision of God for his people with Christ.
Let’s turn briefly to 1 Corinthians 10, verses 1 through 4.
And I want to especially focus on what he says in verse 4 of chapter 10.
Now obviously this is a different context here, but in 1 Corinthians 10
he’s using the wilderness generation as a warning and an example to the Corinthians
that they might avoid the kind of idolatry and immorality that the wilderness generation was guilty of.
But notice what he says.
He says, for I do not want you to be unaware, brothers,
that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea,
and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,
and all ate the same spiritual food, that would be the manna.
And notice, all drank the same spiritual drink,
for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them,
and the rock was Christ.
Christ was with them in the wilderness.
And the provision of physical water to quench their physical thirst
points forward to Christ, the living waters, who quenches our spiritual thirst.
You see, unlike the physical waters that God provided his people in the wilderness,
the spiritual waters of salvation that are provided to us believers in the Lord Jesus Christ
are limitless, inexhaustible wells of salvation that will never run dry
or cease to provide us with life-giving, life-sustaining, life-strengthening refreshment.
You know, water was important in the ancient Near Eastern context,
and making sure that you had access to a well that wasn’t dry to water
was, you know, it’s not like the people back then could just turn on their tap
and water flowed from it, like we are privileged to enjoy today.
And so there was always the danger that a well would dry out.
But the well that Jesus the Messiah provides us with is not just a well,
it’s wells of salvation, pointing to the limitless, inexhaustible resources
of sovereign grace available to God’s people.
Again, all of this imagery is ultimately fulfilled in the promised Messiah,
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And I just want to quote a couple passages from the New Testament that confirms this truth.
Consider, for example, Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well
in John 4, verses 13 and 14, where it says this,
Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water,
in other words, the physical water that came from the well
that Jesus was conversing with her beside,
Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.
The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water,
springing up to eternal life.
Or consider Revelation, the scene in Revelation chapter 7, verse 17,
which is a verse from a passage that depicts the gathering of the great multitude
of the redeemed before the throne of God and of the Lamb.
And it says this,
for the Lamb, that’s Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away our sins,
for the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
who will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Jesus Christ is the living water.
He’s the only one who can refresh and satisfy and sustain your soul.
And then verse 4 begins the second song of praise.
And you will say in that day, you plural this time, will say in that day,
give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name,
make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted.
This is a call to thanksgiving and praise,
but it’s also a call to make known among the nations the mighty deeds of the Lord.
Here we have another glimpse of the eschatological day and another call to thanksgiving.
And what are we to proclaim? His deeds.
What deeds of God are in view?
By the way, God has done many mighty deeds.
His mighty works of creation where he spoke the universe into existence
out of nothing by his sovereign word of power.
The mighty deed of creating man, male and female in his image,
taking them from the dust of the ground, breathing life into them.
What an amazing miracle that was.
And his mighty deeds of providence where he governs all of creation.
But probably in Isaiah’s mind here when he speaks of these mighty deeds,
probably the Lord’s mighty deeds of salvation and deliverance are in view.
Mighty deeds such as the Exodus,
the anticipated return of God’s people from their exile,
and ultimately the coming of the Messiah and his saving work.
And it says, proclaim that his name is exalted.
Now children, what does God’s name indicate?
You know, sometimes when we use names, to us they’re just labels.
And sometimes parents will name their children, give their children a particular name
because, well, this sounds like a nifty name, so let’s give this name to our child.
But more often than not, and most parents are a little more careful than that,
they will say, well, no, we’re going to name our child with this name because it means this.
My parents, I remember them telling me that they named me Jeffrey.
I’m a G off Jeffrey, Jeffrey with a G.
They said to me, well, it means God’s peace.
That’s one of the reasons they chose that name for me.
Now I can’t, don’t quote me on that.
I’m just taking my parents at their word,
assuming that they were being accurate when they said that.
But the point is, in the Bible, God’s name represents his character.
And biblical names had significance.
You would name a child according to characteristics or attributes that you see in that child
or that you hope that child will attain to.
God reveals his character, his attributes through his name.
But God makes his name, his character and attributes known through what he does.
Notice the close connection between the deeds of the Lord and the name of the Lord.
Make known his deeds, what he has done among his people.
And then as a parallel, it says, proclaim that his name, his character, his attributes, his name is exalted.
What is the ultimate revelation of God’s name?
The Lord Jesus Christ.
You want to know what God is like?
Look to Jesus.
Look to all of his word, of course, but look especially to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thanksgiving and worship here, we learn, fuels evangelism and proclamation.
For we are told, make known his deeds, proclaim that his name is exalted.
This is confirmed in the very next verse, verse five, where it says,
Let us sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously.
Let this be made known in all the earth, in all the earth.
Worship and testify.
This is, in some, this is the remission of the church of Jesus Christ in this Messianic age.
We are to worship God in spirit and in truth and proclaim his mighty deeds.
Worship and testify. Praise and proclaim.
We can certainly distinguish worship and mission, but we dare not separate the two
because they are inextricably interconnected.
Well friends, a couple applications here.
First of all, notice that the subject of missionary preaching is not the felt needs of man,
but the mighty deeds of the Lord.
There are many schools of evangelism and evangelistic and church planting experts out there today
who would say that, well, if you want to grow your church, what you need to do is scratch people where they itch.
You need to find out what their felt needs are and relate Jesus to their felt needs.
Now, again, there’s a certain amount of legitimacy to that.
The Bible does speak to us in our context.
But our greatest need, whether we feel it or not, is the need for our sins to be forgiven
and to be reconciled to a God who is apart from Christ angry with us.
And so we need to remember that the subject of missionary preaching is the Lord, who he is,
what he has done, his mighty deeds, especially his mighty deeds in the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so let us as a church seek to be faithful in our worship and in our mission as well.
But finally, as we close off this brief passage in verse six, this is my final point.
We notice here the praise of God’s people for his presence in their midst.
We learn in this closing verse of this wonderful song of praise.
We see the praise of God’s people for his presence in their midst.
It says this, and this is a joyful verse, shout and sing for joy, oh, inhabitant of Zion.
You know, some folks say Old Testament worshiping was really boring and joyless.
No, read Isaiah 12, read the Psalms.
The Bible is pulsating with the joy of the Lord as experienced by the redeemed of the Lord.
Shout and sing for joy, oh, inhabitant of Zion.
Are you an inhabitant of Zion?
We may not live in the region that was in biblical times called Zion.
We don’t live in that region, but we are, brothers and sisters, inhabitants of Zion.
We are part of the people of God, the covenant people of God in Christ.
Remember, this is a messianic song of praise.
Shout and sing for joy, oh, inhabitant of Zion. Why?
For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel, the Holy One of Israel.
Holy, he is set apart, he is transcendent, he is above time, space, and matter.
And yet, and he’s infinitely holy, and yet he comes to dwell in the midst of a sinful yet redeemed people.
That’s the amazing thing about what Jesus has done.
You see, friends, from Genesis to Revelation, the Scriptures testify
that the ultimate goal and blessing of our salvation is not just that we get to go to heaven when we die.
Praise God, that’s part of the Gospel.
But the ultimate goal of our salvation is that God would dwell in the midst of His people.
God dwelt in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, who were able to commune and fellowship with Him freely
and without shame, naked and unashamed before the Lord until they rebelled against the Lord.
And then what’s the Lord do? He kicks them out of His garden temple.
He kicks them out of His presence.
Now, God is present everywhere, but in terms of His special saving, loving presence,
He has removed mankind from His comfortable presence.
He has cast them out of Eden.
But ever since Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden,
God has been about the business of reestablishing His dwelling place among His people.
We see that in the tabernacle, in the temple.
We see that ultimately in our Lord’s incarnation where Christ, the eternal Son of God,
took upon Himself our humanity and the Word became flesh and tabernacled, made His dwelling in our midst.
And we see that in the church, which is described in the Scriptures as a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Again, what is our highest incentive as inhabitants of Zion to shout and sing for joy?
What is our highest incentive for worship?
The answer is clear, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
In closing, as our catechism states, man’s chief end is to glorify God.
But what’s the rest of that say?
And to enjoy Him forever.
And think about that word enjoy.
There’s two parts of that word.
What’s the latter part of that word?
Joy. Joy.
God is at work, brother, sister, for your ultimate joy, even as He is at work for His ultimate glory.
You know, one aspect of our salvation that doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves
is the truth that God in Christ delivers us from the misery of our sin and wretchedness,
not only because it brings Him glory, which of course it does, but also so that we might know His joy,
joy which is expressed in Scripture as a joy inexpressible and filled with glory.
It is a joy that sustains you through trials.
It is a joy that buoys you up, holds you up in the midst of persecution and opposition.
You know, what could be greater joy than knowing that your Creator loves you with an everlasting love,
that in Christ all of your sins, past, present, and future, have been nailed to the cross,
knowing that in Christ God accepts you as righteous.
Because we are in Christ, brothers and sisters, we can say, in a sense at least,
that the Father loves us just as much as He loves His Son, because we are in His Son.
So what greater comfort to know?
You are loved. You are forgiven.
You are righteous, not in yourself, but because of Christ’s righteousness.
You are an adopted child of God. His Spirit abides with you.
And He’s working all things together for your good, even the bad stuff.
He’s working together for your good, fitting you, preparing you for glory.
And one day He’s going to come and take you to be with Himself forever.
What greater comfort than knowing that?
I think it was John Piper, and I know Piper has some theological, we have some theological issues with him,
but he is once, I believe he was once quoted as saying,
God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
As you find your joy in the Lord, He will be glorified in your joy.
And He is at work, brothers and sisters, for our eternal joy.
And so let us rise up and shout together, Behold, God is my salvation.
I will trust and not be afraid. Amen. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, Sovereign and Eternal God, we thank You for the joy of the Lord,
that the joy of the Lord is our strength, and we thank You for the good news of Jesus, our Savior.
We pray that by Your Spirit, You would take this word that has been proclaimed today,
and may it find a lodging place in our souls.
We ask, Heavenly Father, all of these things in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said, Amen.
As we close our time together in worship, let’s rise and we’ll sing,
Hymn 437, how marvelous, how wise, how great.