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Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word, my sermon text this morning, as we return finally
to our consideration of the book of the prophet Isaiah, we’re going to consider Isaiah 9,
verse 8 through chapter 10, verse 4.
And you’ll find that beginning on page 681 in your Pew Bibles.
Dear friends, let us hear God’s Holy Word, Isaiah chapter 9 beginning at verse 8.
The Lord has sent a word against Jacob, and it will fall on Israel.
And all the people will know, Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, who say in pride
and in arrogance of heart, the bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones.
The Sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.
But the Lord raises the adversaries of resin against him and stirs up his enemies.
The Syrians on the east and the Philistines on the west devour Israel with open mouth.
For all this, his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still.
The people did not turn to him who struck them, nor inquire of the Lord of hosts.
So the Lord cut off from Israel head and tail, palm branch and reed in one day.
The elders and the honored man is the head, and the prophet who teaches lies is the tail.
For those who guide this people have been leading them astray, and those who are guided
by them are swallowed up.
Therefore the Lord does not rejoice over their young men, and has no compassion on
their fatherless and widows.
For everyone is godless and an evildoer, and every mouth speaks folly.
For all this, his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still.
For wickedness burns like a fire, it consumes briars and thorns, it kindles the thickets
of the forest, and they roll upward in a column of smoke.
Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts, the land is scorched, and the people are like
fuel for the fire.
No one spares another.
They slice meat on the right, but are still hungry, and they devour on the left, but are
not satisfied.
Each devours the flesh of his own arm.
Manasseh devours Ephraim, and Ephraim devours Manasseh.
Together they are against Judah.
For all this, his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still.
Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression,
to turn aside the needy from justice, and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey.
What will you do on the day of punishment, in the ruin that will come from afar?
To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth?
Nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners, or fall among the slain.
For all this, his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still.
The grass withers, and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Let us pray.
Our Lord and Father in heaven, we pray that by your Spirit, the Spirit who has breathed
out this portion of your Word as He has breathed out all of the Scriptures, we pray that by
your Spirit you would illuminate us, open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous
things from your Word, help us to be attentive, help us to feed upon your Word, and may your
Word by the Spirit be implanted in our souls and bear much spiritual fruit in our lives,
fruit that brings glory to your name and comfort to us, your people.
We pray these things, Heavenly Father, through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said,
Amen.
You may be seated.
The title of my sermon this morning is, His Hand is Stretched Out Still.
And there are sermon outlines available, and if you have an outline, you’ll notice that
there are six key words that I’d encourage you to listen for in my sermon today, especially
the children.
The words are judgment, wickedness, injustice, wrath, righteousness, and mercy.
Well, dear ones, it was many years ago, I think it was when I was a seminary student,
and I happened to be thumbing through a Christian magazine, I believe it was probably Christianity
today, and towards the front of the magazine was a little cartoon which depicted a judgment
day scene.
And this cartoon featured stick figures representing people standing before God.
Now that’s something that is at my level of artistic competence.
But in any case, in this cartoon, there were three platforms pictured with these stick
figures standing on them.
One of the platforms was labeled the saved or the righteous, and it had a few stick figures
standing on it.
Another platform was labeled the unsaved or the wicked.
And again, that platform had a few stick figures depicted on it.
But the third and largest platform, which was overrun, just jam-packed full of these
stick figures, was labeled the victims.
At the top of the cartoon, in large letters, God was depicted as letting out a great big
sigh with an exclamation point.
Now it seems that the point of this cartoon, beloved, was to illustrate the fact that many
of our contemporaries in our world today seem to view victimhood as a way of excusing themselves
from moral accountability for their sins against their creator, and therefore as a way of avoiding
God’s judgment.
You want to justify your sin and avoid God’s righteous judgment?
Well, then according to the thinking of many today, according to our contemporary victimology,
simply claim victim status of one sort or another, and you’re good to go.
Well, my friends, there are many biblical truths that our secular contemporaries have
trouble accepting.
But if there are two biblical truths that many contemporary people in the secular West
have particular difficulty accepting, they are number one, the truth of their own moral
accountability to their creator, and number two, the reality of God’s holy and righteous
wrath and anger against sin, and not just his anger against sin as an abstract principle,
but his anger against sinners.
As the scriptures tell us, God is angry with the wicked every day.
It doesn’t say God is angry with wickedness as an abstract concept, but God is angry with
the wicked every day.
There is a personal anger, a holy anger that the Lord has against those who persist unrepentant
in their wickedness.
Now in terms of moral accountability, it seems that many today are almost allergic to personal
responsibility.
No one wants to take personal accountability for their actions or their attitudes.
This is seen when society or social pressures are blamed for sins.
It is also seen when personal psychological struggles are used as an excuse for bad attitudes
and for misbehavior.
Now I don’t want to be misunderstood, beloved.
The Bible certainly does not deny the power of social pressure to influence our attitudes
and our behaviors.
In fact, I can think of a number of reasons in the scriptures why the scriptures affirm
that indeed social pressure, what is sometimes called peer pressure, can indeed be a powerful
influence upon our actions and our attitudes.
Nor do I believe the scriptures dismiss the realities or the maladies of professionally
diagnosed mental illnesses.
But at the same time, friends, the word of God does not allow us to appeal to social
pressures or to psychological struggles as excuses for our sin and rebellion against
God and against His holy law, or as a free pass to avoid His divine scrutiny and judgment.
My friends, our passage for this Lord’s Day morning is just one of many evidences and
reminders in God’s Word that our infinitely holy God is deeply offended by sin and wickedness,
that sin and wickedness result in terrible and destructive consequences, and that our
God is a God of holy wrath and righteous anger against sin and against sinners, even as He
is also a God of amazing grace and mercy to repentant sinners in Christ.
Now as we turn our attention to our passage from Isaiah for this Lord’s Day morning,
this passage is of course an oracle of judgment against the northern kingdom of Israel and
sometimes the northern kingdom of Israel is called Ephraim, and it is also an oracle
of judgment against Ephraim’s capital city, Samaria.
It is possible that Isaiah publicly delivered this oracle shortly before the Syro-Ephraimite
war, and this passage anticipates God’s decisive historical judgment against the northern kingdom
in the destruction and exile that was visited upon Samaria and upon the northern kingdom
of Israel by the Assyrian Empire, and that destruction and exile took place around 722
B.C.
So that kind of gives you the historical setting for our passage for today.
The fact that this terrifying judgment passage is placed immediately after the beautiful
and familiar Messianic prophecy of chapter 9, verses 1 through 7, which speaks of a childhood
who would be born, a son who would be given, upon whose shoulders the government would
be given, and so forth.
The fact that this judgment oracle happens immediately after or is recorded immediately
after that beautiful and familiar Messianic prophecy underscores the truth that the Messianic
era, which would usher in the gracious rule of Jesus Christ, the Messianic King, who would
reign on the throne of David, that this era would first be preceded by a national judgment
against an unfaithful, covenant-breaking people.
So that brings us to our passage for today, and let’s consider the first section of our
passage, verses 8 through 17, as we notice here that Yahweh’s righteous judgment is against
his faithless people.
We notice here Yahweh, the Lord’s righteous judgment against his faithless people.
It says in verse 8, the Lord has sent, what has he sent?
He sent something.
He has sent a word against Jacob, and it will fall on Israel.
The Lord has sent a word against Jacob.
What power is there in a word?
There is great power in the word of God.
This word that God sends against Jacob is obviously a prophetic word of judgment as
opposed to a word of grace.
And notice the language.
Isaiah, under the Spirit’s inspiration, describes this word as falling on Israel.
The language here makes it clear that this is no empty or powerless threat.
God’s word is an effective word, a word that most certainly will accomplish that which
God ordains for it to accomplish, whether we are talking about God’s word of grace coming
in the Gospel or God’s word of judgment.
It is an effective word.
It’s not like the words of many politicians.
Politicians will sometimes make promises or issue threats, but there’s no teeth to their
promises or to their threats.
So their words are powerless to change anything.
But not so the word of the heavenly king.
His word is against Jacob, against a people who had rejected the Lord, who had redeemed
them as a people.
These had rejected him.
They had gone after other gods.
They had broken the covenant, and they were also guilty of multiple social injustices
against their fellow Israelites.
And what will be the effect of this word falling upon Israel?
Look at verse 9.
It says, and all the people will know, not just know on an intellectual level, but they
will know on a personal level.
All the people will know, Ephraim, and then he explains who these people are that he’s
addressing this judgment oracle against, Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria.
This is the northern kingdom and its capital city.
And what does he charge these folks of being guilty of?
He says that these say in pride and in arrogance of heart.
Verse 10, the bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones.
The sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.
We’re able.
We’re powerful.
We’re righteous.
In other words, all the people will know.
They will personally experience what God’s word of judgment pronounces against them.
They will not be able to avoid or to evade personal responsibility for their covenant
breaking, their wickedness, their social injustices.
And in verses 9 and 10, we see that instead of being characterized by humility, instead
of being characterized by the reverent fear of the Lord, Yahweh, northern Israel at this
time, the northern kingdom of Israel was characterized by pride and arrogance of heart, a pride and
an arrogance that were demonstrated by an arrogant self-confidence in their own ability
to rebuild that which Yahweh their God had torn down in his judgment and chastisement.
And then it goes on to say in verses 11 and 12, but the Lord raises up the adversaries
of resin against him.
Now who is this resin?
Well, you may recall that resin was then the king of Syria, not us Syria, but the king
of Syria at this time.
We saw that back in chapter 7 verse 1.
And so the adversaries of resin would refer ultimately to the Assyrians who were threatening
all of the nations in that region at that particular time of redemptive history.
Not just, not only were they threatening the Syrians, but also they were threatening the
northern tribe of Israel and they were threatening the southern tribe, the southern kingdom of
Judah.
In any case, we see here that the Lord stirs up Israel’s pagan neighbors as his instruments
of judgment against his faithless covenant-breaking people.
And that’s something, that’s an important thing to take to heart friends.
God is able to use even the wicked to accomplish his good and holy sovereign purposes.
He is able to rule and overrule even the wicked for his ultimate purposes and plans.
And so we’re told the Lord raises up the adversaries of resin against him and stirs up his enemies
and then notice the language of being swallowed up.
Verse 12, the Syrians on the east and the Philistines, they were the coastal peoples
on the west, the Syrians and the Philistines devour Israel with open mouth.
God is going to use these neighbors, these Syrians and he’s going to use the Philistines,
these pagan peoples to devour, to swallow up his unbelieving covenant-breaking people
Israel.
And then we see the first time this refrain shows up, it shows up four times in this passage
And that is at the end of verse 12, it says, for all this, his anger has not turned away
and his hand is stretched out still.
Even though this judgment, this national judgment is coming against northern Israel, that’s
not going to exhaust the Lord’s anger against the sin and wickedness of his professed people.
For his anger, his anger has not turned away.
His hand is stretched out still.
Now let’s think about this imagery of God’s hand being stretched out.
Now we know, don’t we children, if you know the children’s catechism, that God is a spirit
and he has not a body like man.
We know that the Lord Jesus Christ with respect to his human nature has hands, but in his
divine nature, in the divine essence, there is no physical body.
And so God is a spirit.
He doesn’t have literal eyes or ears or hands or feet.
So when the Bible uses the image of God’s hand, God’s hand stands for his power, his
inherent omnipotent power.
But notice that his hand is said to be, in verse 12, his hand is stretched out.
His hand is stretched out.
What does that bring to mind?
What does that represent?
Well this represents the Lord’s power.
And when Yahweh’s hand is said to be stretched out, this depicts the Lord’s power in action.
And in this case, the action is an action of judgment.
God is actively judging his unrepentant people.
This refrain again is repeated four times in our passage.
It’s repeated in verse 12, 17, 21, and also chapter 10, verse 4.
So there is a progression in the literary progression and intensification of this note
of judgment against the wicked.
And this progression and this repetition has the effect of emphasizing the seriousness
of the people’s sin and the severity and persistence of the Lord’s anger against sin.
Because it has always been the case that mankind has not taken his sin seriously enough.
But that is especially true today.
We live in a time of laxity, of moral laxity and licentiousness.
We live in a time when sin is not taken seriously.
Oh, yeah, nobody’s perfect.
Yeah, I’m a sinner, I’m not perfect, but hey, the Lord’s merciful, right?
So no worries, right?
The problem is that in the Bible, sin is a shaking of your puny fist in mind against
the creator, the one who gave us life, who gives us breath.
Every beat of your heart, every breath that you draw in is ultimately a gift from your
creator God.
And yet you live your life as if this God does not matter.
You live, you and I are in our natural fallen state.
We live our lives with a godless perspective and worldview, whether it’s a conscious worldview
or not.
We live as we learned this morning in our morning instruction class.
We live as if we were autonomous, as if we were a law to ourself, as if we were independent.
When in fact, we are dependent creatures, we are not autonomous, we are not the final
standard our creator is.
We were created in his image, but we were reflected, we were created to reflect his
image, to think God’s thoughts after him and to walk in his ways.
And apart from God’s saving grace, we don’t do that.
We instead live autonomously.
We live as a law unto ourselves.
And that, my friends, is deeply, deeply offensive to our infinitely holy creator.
And so this language here, again, emphasizes the severity and seriousness of human sin
and also the severity and persistence of Yahweh’s anger, his holy, righteous, just anger against
sin.
And to add to that, as we go on to the next verse, verse 13, the Holy Spirit through Isaiah
charges the people with obtuseness, with unteachableness.
He says in verse 13, the people did not turn to him who struck them, nor inquire of the
Lord of hosts.
You know, sometimes God in his good and kind providence will bring difficulties and struggles
into sinners’ lives as a way of waking them up and turning them to the Lord.
Perhaps some of you have experienced that in your own walk with the Lord, in your own
conversion.
Maybe the Lord used a sickness or a broken relationship or losing a job or what have
to wake you up and to cause you to consider where you stand before your maker.
Struggles and chastisements, providential chastisements from the Lord can be a blessing
if they are improved, if they are taken to heart.
But in the case of the northern kingdom of Israel at this time, the people had experienced
the Lord’s chastisements and the Lord had raised up prophets to speak the word of the
Lord to them, to call them to repentance and renewed faith in the Lord.
But instead, how did they respond?
It says the people did not turn to him who struck them, nor inquire of Yahweh of hosts,
of the Lord of hosts.
In other words, instead of responding to Yahweh’s chastisement with renewed repentance and
faith, the people dug in their heels, they stiffened their necks, they hardened their
hearts and persisted in their wicked rebellion.
And then the Lord goes on through Isaiah to give the judgment against them.
It says in verse 14, so the Lord cut off from Israel head and tail, palm branch and reed
in one day.
This language of one day implies the suddenness of God’s judgment against the people.
And who are represented by the head and the tail, by the palm branch and the reed?
Well, Isaiah explains in the very next verse, verse 15, the elder and honored man are the
head and the prophet who teaches lies, that would be the false prophet.
That was a big problem among the Old Testament people of God, false prophets.
The prophet who teaches lies is the tail.
And then he explains in verse 16, for those who guide this people have been leading them
astray and those who are guided by them are swallowed up.
It is a thing that brings culpability and guilt to any soul to walk astray from the
Lord.
But those who lead people astray from the ways of the Lord are particularly grievously
guilty before the Lord and will receive, apart from the intervention of God’s grace and their
own repentance, will receive the greater condemnation.
So here in verses 14 through 16, Yahweh, the covenant Lord of Israel, judges the leaders,
he judges the elders and the false prophets who had led his people astray.
But then verse 17 is almost shocking.
In verse 17, we learn that not only would the faithless leaders of Israel be judged,
but all of the people, the people as a whole, including even youths, including even the
most vulnerable in society, such as the fatherless and the widows, even they would be judged
as well.
It says, therefore, the Lord does not rejoice over their young men.
The young men represent the flower of youth in all of its strength and vigor, but even
they would fall under the judgment of God.
The Lord does not rejoice over their young men or have and has no compassion on their
fatherless and widows.
If you know the scriptures, you know that oftentimes we see in the Word of God a special
place in God’s heart for the most vulnerable in society, the fatherless, the widow and
so forth.
But here, we’re told that the Lord will not have compassion on these fatherless and widow.
Why is that the case?
Well, as it goes on to explain in verse 17, everyone is godless and an evildoer, not just
the leaders, not just the ordinary folk, even those who are most vulnerable in society,
even they, too.
Even they are godless and an evildoer, and every mouth speaks folly, as it says.
Well, what are some of the lessons we can learn from this section of our passage for
today?
A couple things.
First of all, God’s Word is powerful and effective.
It seems weak to the secular man or woman.
It seems ineffective to those who are outside of the faith.
But God’s Word, though it is simple, though it is humble, it is powerful.
It is effective.
It accomplishes that which the Lord ordains for it to accomplish.
And here in this passage, we have an effectual word of judgment.
But praise God, brothers and sisters, that in the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ,
God speaks a word not of judgment, but he speaks a word of grace and forgiveness.
For Christ has taken our judgment upon himself.
He has absorbed the righteous judgment of God against our sin.
He has absorbed that into himself when he paid the penalty for our sin on the cross
of Calvary.
Praise God for the good news of Jesus, for his effectual word of grace and forgiveness
to those who by sovereign grace come to believe that word.
We also learn in this passage that God in his providence will sometimes choose to use
the wicked to judge the wicked, as he used the Syrians and the Philistines, and ultimately
the Assyrians to judge Israel, as we’re told back in, again, verses 11 and 12, where it
says, but the Lord raises the adversaries of resin against him and stirs up his enemies.
God is in control of the international scene.
He is sovereign over all of the nations, and it says in verse 12, the Syrians on the east
and the Philistines on the west devour Israel with open mouth.
Israel had forsaken their Lord.
They had broken his covenant.
They had gone after other gods.
They had committed wickedness, and they had committed social injustices.
And God had called them to repentance, but they had refused.
So what does God do against his wicked, unbelieving people?
He raises up wicked pagans to judge them.
God sometimes does that.
God in his sovereign overarching providence can and often does raise up the wicked in
order to accomplish his ultimately good purposes, purposes of both mercy and, as in this particular
case, purposes of judgment as well.
But one of the most important lessons that we learn from this passage and indeed from
the entirety of this passage is that God’s righteous wrath persists against the unrepentant.
For those who refuse to repent and turn to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, God’s wrath
abides.
And so make sure, dear listener, that the wrath of God does not abide on you.
Make sure that you have fled for salvation to Jesus.
Make sure that you, by the grace of God, have received and rested upon Christ and Christ
alone as your Lord and Savior.
Now as we move on in our passage, the next important thing I would have us to notice
found in verses 18 through 21, we learn here of the destructive power of wickedness.
The destructive power of wickedness.
Let me read these verses once again.
It says for wickedness burns like a fire.
It consumes briars and thorns.
It kindles the thickets of the forest and they roll upward in a column of smoke.
You get the picture?
Burning destruction here.
Recently we’ve heard much about the destructive power of fire as we’ve seen multiple news
reports of the devastating and the extensive destruction that has resulted from the widespread
wildfires in the Los Angeles area in California.
Since fire is so obviously destructive, how appropriate that Isaiah compares the destructive
power of wickedness to a fire.
But this is not just the power of wickedness.
The Lord’s righteous anger is also described as a fire.
In fact in the Bible, God is described himself as a consuming fire, a God whose holy wrath
consumes sin and wickedness.
And so it goes on to say in verse 19, through the wrath of the Lord of hosts, the land is
scorched.
Again, notice the burning imagery.
Not just through wickedness, but through the wrath of the Lord of hosts, the land is scorched.
And the people are like fuel for the fire.
No one spares another and so forth.
Not only would faithless Israel be threatened by outside enemies such as the Syrians and
the Philistines and ultimately by the Assyrians who would conquer them and drag them into
exile.
Not only would there be external enemies that God brought to them to judge them.
Internal strife and division and conflict and disunity within the nation would also
be a means of God’s judgment against his covenant breaking people.
You know all of this reminds me of what the apostle Paul wrote in Galatians to the churches
of Galatia in Galatians 5 verses 14 and 15 where he warns the church against the biting
and devouring that can occur when the church is disunified.
Notice again, let me read this Galatians chapter 5 verses 14 and 15.
Galatians says, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor
as yourself.
But then it goes on to say, he warns here, but if you bite and devour one another, watch
out that you are not consumed by one another.
Beloved, wickedness and godlessness have a self-destructive quality about them.
Wickedness tears down, wickedness burns up, wickedness consumes, wickedness destroys.
Whereas righteousness builds up, righteousness ennobles, righteousness establishes, righteousness
confirms.
Oh, by the grace of God, may we repent of wickedness and through faith in Jesus Christ
out of gratitude for his amazing grace and gift of salvation, may we pursue righteousness
and holiness for the glory of God and for our own comfort and good.
But you’ve probably noticed and it’s very clear that one of the major themes that permeates
this entire passage is the theme of God’s wrath.
And when folks think of God’s wrath today, and this is probably true even among some
They tend to think of God’s wrath as an irrational or an uncontrollable thing.
But we need to understand, beloved, that in the Bible, God’s wrath is not a divine temper
tantrum.
God’s wrath is not an out of control volcanic eruption of uncontrolled anger where God blows
his stack.
That’s often how anger expresses itself among sinful fallen human beings.
When we get angry, it’s often a sinful anger and we lose control of our emotions, but not
so with the Lord.
On the contrary, in the Bible, God’s wrath is his settled, self-controlled, just and
righteous opposition to all that which is unrighteous, all that which is opposed to
and contrary to his holiness, and all that which goes against the flourishing of his
image-bearers, mankind.
Praise God that he has satisfied the demands of his own holy wrath by sending his son,
Jesus Christ, to absorb that wrath into himself in the place of all of those who have trusted
in him for their salvation.
Praise God for that.
We also notice, as we close up our time in the Word today, we notice Yahweh’s opposition
to injustice, Yahweh’s opposition to injustice.
And remember, Yahweh is the covenant name for God.
It’s represented in English translations when the word Lord is put in all capital letters.
We see here, Yahweh’s opposition to injustice.
Look at verse 1, woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees.
When the Scriptures pronounce a woe, that is a curse pronouncement.
That is an indication of judgment and curse.
Woe to those who do what?
Who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression.
To turn aside the needy from justice, and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey.
What are these iniquitous decrees?
Well in context here, these would be laws or legal decrees which promote or enshrine
oppression and injustice, even against the most vulnerable in society.
And the most vulnerable in society back then were often represented by the poor, the widows,
and the fatherless.
And remember, in the ancient world, there wasn’t much of a social safety net.
There wasn’t a welfare system.
There wasn’t social security.
There wasn’t any of that.
So if you were a widow in the ancient world, you were in a really bad way.
You were very vulnerable.
And same thing if you were fatherless, same thing if you were among the poor.
But Isaiah’s pronouncement here indicates that in the northern kingdom of Israel, apparently,
there were laws that had been enacted which were iniquitous decrees, laws which had the
effect of oppressing even the most vulnerable in society.
God takes notice of that, and he is not pleased with that at all.
These iniquitous decrees would include legal decrees which were contrary to God’s Torah,
which he had revealed through Moses to his people, his law and his covenant instruction.
And so a woe is pronounced on those who have enacted and sought to enforce such legal decrees.
And then Isaiah brings his thought full circle.
He says in verse 3, what will you do on the day of punishment if you’ve been guilty of
enacting and enforcing these iniquitous decrees, these oppressive decrees, and you have not
repented of that, you have not turned from your wicked ways back to the Lord.
What is left for you?
He asks a very reasonable question.
What will you do on the day of punishment in the ruin that will come from afar?
That ruin which will come from afar probably is a reference to the invasion of the Assyrian
Empire.
In the context again, this appears to be referring to the Assyrian invasion.
But we need to remember, brothers and sisters, that this historical judgment against the
kingdom of northern Israel was but a type and picture of ultimate judgment.
It is a type and picture of the final judgment which will come when the Lord Jesus Christ
returns in glory at the end of this age.
And he asks the question, to whom will you flee for help?
That is a really pressing question that all of us need to answer in our hearts.
To whom will you flee for help?
For those who have trusted Christ as Lord and Savior, to those who have turned from
sin to Christ and received him as Savior, we know the answer to that question.
The Lord is our helper.
The Lord is the one who cleanses us from our sins and clothes us in his perfect everlasting
righteousness by grace alone, through faith alone, apart from works, praise be to God.
But for those who have rejected the Lord and his word, for those who have heard the gospel
but rejected Christ and continue to rely on self, for them there will be no escape from
God’s righteous judgment.
That is what is implied here.
And then it goes on to say in verse 4, nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners
or fall among the slain.
And then it ends up with these familiar words of this refrain, for all this, his anger is
not turned away and his hand is stretched out still.
These are sober words.
These are powerful words, my friends.
Imprisonment and enslavement, which the imprisonment would no doubt entail, or death itself, will
be the only prospects for those who refuse to repent.
For as it says at the end of verse 4 in chapter 10, his hand is stretched out still.
Think of the implications of that.
Even the death of the unrepentant wicked will not end the holy wrath of the Lord.
There is an implication here.
It’s not explicitly taught, but it’s implied that the Lord’s wrath will continue even after
the death of these unrepentant wicked.
So there are hints here, I believe, of eternal punishment.
For all this, his anger is not turned away and his hand is stretched out still.
Even the death of the unrepentant wicked will not end the holy wrath of the Lord, for that
wrath remains and his hand is stretched out still.
But thanks be to God that there is hope of escape for those who through sovereign grace
repent.
Escape from the Lord’s stretched out hand of judgment.
You may say, how do I escape from the Lord’s stretched out hand of judgment against me
for my sins?
Jesus Christ, escape from the Lord’s stretched out hand of judgment, is found in the hands
of the merciful Savior who stretched out his hands upon the hard wood of the cross in order
to pay the penalty for sin and to offer free and full forgiveness and mercy to all who
receive him by faith as Savior and Lord.
Dear listener, have you found refuge from the holy wrath of God against your sin by
running into the merciful arms of the Lord Jesus Christ, whose arms are stretched out
to receive all who turn to him in faith and repentance?
Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
Receive and rest upon him alone and you can be assured that his hand is not stretched
out against you in wrath, but his hand is stretched out in blessing and mercy and grace.
Amen.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord God, for you are holy and righteous and just.
Lord, we recognize that because of your infinite holiness and righteousness and justice, we
as sinners deserve your holy wrath.
We deserve to have your hand stretched out still against us in wrath and judgment, and
yet you have given your Son.
You demonstrated your love for us, Father, in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us.
Out of love for us sinners, you sent your Son, Jesus Christ, to satisfy the demands
of your own holy justice.
And so we look to Jesus, to his stretched out hands.
We look to him for mercy and we thank you that in him we are forgiven.
Lord, we pray that we would take these truths to heart and that we would bear faithful witness
to them in our lives for your glory and for our comfort.
In Jesus’ name we pray and all of God’s people said, Amen.
Let’s close our time today by rising and we’ll sing together hymns 262, one there is above
all others, 262.