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Return To Him – Part 3
Isaiah 31-32 (32:9-13)
November 19, 2023

If you have been with us the past few weeks
You know that we are in the middle of a segment
That really can be described as AN INVITATION.

It started in chapter 30 with the ANNOUNCEMENT of God’s displeasure
• Over the fact that when Assyria threatened Judah,
• Instead of turning to God, they ran to Egypt.

Isaiah 30:1-2 “Woe to the rebellious children,” declares the LORD, “Who execute a plan, but not Mine, And make an alliance, but not of My Spirit, In order to add sin to sin; Who proceed down to Egypt Without consulting Me, To take refuge in the safety of Pharaoh And to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt!”

When God confronted them for this sinful decision through Isaiah,
The prophet was immediately told to put a sock in it.

Isaiah 30:10-11 “Who say to the seers, “You must not see visions”; And to the prophets, “You must not prophesy to us what is right, Speak to us pleasant words, Prophesy illusions. “Get out of the way, turn aside from the path, Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.”

Ultimately God announced that because of their rebellion and rejection of His word JUDAH WOULD SUFFER GREATLY at the hands of Assyria.

And yet, despite their rebellion and despite God’s anger,
God has continued to hold out an invitation for His people
To repent and return to Him.

Isaiah 30:18 “Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him.”

It is a remarkable truth about the God of the universe
That He prefers to be gracious and merciful to sinners.

We have likened this account to Luke’s parable of THE PRODIGAL SON
• In which a son abandons his father,
• Runs to a foreign land and falls headfirst into immorality
• And the consequences that come with it.
• However, when he comes to his senses and repents and returns
• His father is there to welcome him back with open arms.

THIS IS THE GOD WE SERVE.

And most recently in Isaiah
We have been reading His invitation to that prodigal son to come home.

In chapters 31-32 that INVITATION CONTINUES.

That is clearly seen in:
Isaiah 31:6 “Return to Him from whom you have deeply defected, O sons of Israel.”

God is calling his wayward people home.

Also coming to light in chapters 31 and 32 is THE SPECIFIC SIN that Judah has committed which has so greatly offended God.

You might say in these two chapters we see specifically
What Judah needed to repent of and return from.

And the answer is: DEFECTION

As we read in verse 6, they have “deeply defected” from God.

WE THEN WONDERED,
• What is defection?
• What does it look like when a person defects?

Certainly an account of full blown apostasy would be considered defection, but it is not always that drastic.

We want to know what God considers to be defection
So we can evaluate our lives
And see if we need to repent and return as well.

LAST SUNDAY MORNING we took our first look at defection.

#1 FAILURE TO TRUST”
Isaiah 31:1-32:8

(1) “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help And rely on horses, And trust in chariots because they are many And in horsemen because they are very strong, But they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the LORD!”

There we learned that the DEFECTION OF JUDAH WAS NOT seen in an abandonment of worship services or even in a stopping of sacrifices.

Judah did all of those things as chapter 1 one makes clear.

The defection of Judah was seen in the fact that
When things got difficult instead of seeking God
They sought worldly deliverers.

They chose to trust Egypt instead of God.
That is a form of defection.

It was a foolish decision on Judah’s part and therefore
God called those prodigals home to Him in repentance.

He even gave them promises
That if they would return to Him then He would send them a righteous King who would
• Remove their idols,
• Rout their enemy,
• Reign in righteousness,
• And restore discernment.

They needed to stop trusting men whom they could see
And start trusting the God they couldn’t see.
Their failure to trust God was a form of deep defection.

This morning we want to look at the second description of their defection.

#2 FAILURE TO TREMBLE
Isaiah 32:9-20

The first description could be seen as an outward defection,
For Israel outwardly approached Egypt instead of God.

This one is seen as an INWARD DEFECTION.

It runs similar to what Isaiah said earlier:
Isaiah 29:13 “Then the Lord said, “Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote,”

• We see here a defection of the heart.
• We see a defection of spirit.

LET’S EXAMINE IT.

A mouthful is said in verse 9:
“Rise up, you women who are at ease, And hear my voice; Give ear to my word, You complacent daughters.”

This sin was certainly not limited just to the women of Judah,
But they became the analogy.

In Isaiah’s day women were not tasked with the decisions of the nation.
• No one was asking their opinion.
• No one was looking to them.

As such, they could be seen almost oblivious to the danger at hand
And just continued on with life as though nothing was happening.

Isaiah is merely using them to describe people
Who are uninformed and unconcerned.

These women represent the entire nation.

And TWO WORDS here in verse 9 tell the tale for us.

1. “Rise up you women who are AT EASE”
2. “Give ear to my word, you COMPLACENT daughters.”

We’re going to learn = about defection as we examine those two words.

First “at ease”
It is the Hebrew word SHA – A – NON
It means “to secure”

• It is sometimes translated “undisturbed” (Isaiah 33:20)
• Or translated “arrogance” (Isaiah 37:29)

It is used in Scripture to describe
• A person who should be concerned,
• Even trembling over what they have done,
• But who has managed to convince themselves not to care.

For example: In the days of Zechariah,
• God’s people were heavily afflicted,
• But none of their surrounding nations seemed to care.

Zechariah 1:12-15 “Then the angel of the LORD said, “O LORD of hosts, how long will You have no compassion for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which You have been indignant these seventy years?” The LORD answered the angel who was speaking with me with gracious words, comforting words. So the angel who was speaking with me said to me, “Proclaim, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, “I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and Zion. “But I am very angry with the nations who are at ease; for while I was only a little angry, they furthered the disaster.”

There you have God speaking about how much He cared for Zion
And how angry He was that none of the other nations did.

His people were being afflicted and everyone was just “at ease” with it.
• Did it not bother them that God was upset?
• Did it not concern them that God was offended?
• And the answer is: NO

Amos speaks of this mindset among the people of his day.
Amos 6:1-7 “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion And to those who feel secure in the mountain of Samaria, The distinguished men of the foremost of nations, To whom the house of Israel comes. Go over to Calneh and look, And go from there to Hamath the great, Then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are they better than these kingdoms, Or is their territory greater than yours? Do you put off the day of calamity, And would you bring near the seat of violence? Those who recline on beds of ivory And sprawl on their couches, And eat lambs from the flock And calves from the midst of the stall, Who improvise to the sound of the harp, And like David have composed songs for themselves, Who drink wine from sacrificial bowls While they anoint themselves with the finest of oils, Yet they have not grieved over the ruin of Joseph. Therefore, they will now go into exile at the head of the exiles, And the sprawlers’ banqueting will pass away.”

• The children of Israel who have greatly offended God.
• God has pronounced judgment,
• And they seem totally unbothered by it.

Job 12:5 “He who is at ease holds calamity in contempt, As prepared for those whose feet slip.”

In Isaiah’s day we have seen this same attitude.

Isaiah 22:12-14 “Therefore in that day the Lord GOD of hosts called you to weeping, to wailing, To shaving the head and to wearing sackcloth. Instead, there is gaiety and gladness, Killing of cattle and slaughtering of sheep, Eating of meat and drinking of wine: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die.” But the LORD of hosts revealed Himself to me, “Surely this iniquity shall not be forgiven you Until you die,” says the Lord GOD of hosts.”

You should have been mourning, but instead you were partying.

Isaiah 28:14-15 “Therefore, hear the word of the LORD, O scoffers, Who rule this people who are in Jerusalem, Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, And with Sheol we have made a pact. The overwhelming scourge will not reach us when it passes by, For we have made falsehood our refuge and we have concealed ourselves with deception.”

People who have confidence that they have a plan
Which will allow them to escape the coming judgment of God.

YOU SEE THEN WHAT THE WORD IMPLIES.
It is people who have offended God by their behavior
Yet aren’t concerned in the least regarding what God might do about it.

• They don’t care that they have offended God.
• They don’t care that God is angry.
• They aren’t disturbed that God might retaliate.
• They are just living their lives “at ease”

AND THIS IS A FORM OF DEFECTION.

WE WOULD SEE IT TODAY in people who willfully do the things which God has forbidden without any care that God might be offended.

WE WOULD SEE IT TODAY in people who give hearty approval to people who do that which God has forbidden without care that God is offended.

Romans 1:32 “and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.”

It is people who continually offend God and it doesn’t even bother them.
• They are “at ease”
• They are undisturbed
• They are arrogant
• This is to defect from God.

THE QUESTION IS:
How can a person say that they are walking in faithfulness to God
When you don’t hate what He hates or love what He loves?

Perhaps it will help you to see AN OPPOSITE EXAMPLE of being “at ease” with sin.

TURN TO: NUMBERS 25:1-13

• That is not a man who is “at ease” with sin.
• That is not a man who takes little concern whether God is offended.
• He was “jealous for his God”

And by the way, God loved him for that!
Psalms 106:28-31 “They joined themselves also to Baal-peor, And ate sacrifices offered to the dead. Thus they provoked Him to anger with their deeds, And the plague broke out among them. Then Phinehas stood up and interposed, And so the plague was stayed. And it was reckoned to him for righteousness, To all generations forever.”

God saved Phinehas for that act of faith!

OR HOW ABOUT THIS STORY?
• Remember when God told Saul to completely annihilate the Amalekites?
• Saul kept some animals alive and king Agag.
• Samuel confronted him for his failure to obey
• Saul argued…

1 Samuel 15:20-23 “Then Saul said to Samuel, “I did obey the voice of the LORD, and went on the mission on which the LORD sent me, and have brought back Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. “But the people took some of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the choicest of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the LORD your God at Gilgal.” Samuel said, “Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices As in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. “For rebellion is as the sin of divination, And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has also rejected you from being king.”

Saul didn’t care about what God cared about.
And he was totally unconcerned that he had disobeyed God.

Samuel then showed Saul what zeal for God looked like:
1 Samuel 15:32-33 “Then Samuel said, “Bring me Agag, the king of the Amalekites.” And Agag came to him cheerfully. And Agag said, “Surely the bitterness of death is past.” But Samuel said, “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.” And Samuel hewed Agag to pieces before the LORD at Gilgal.”

DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE?

WE LIVE IN A DAY WHERE
• Men sin and don’t even tremble about it anymore.
• God’s displeasure is preached a people aren’t even concerned.
• Men live in sin and people in the church give their approval to it.

Where is the fear of God?
Where is the trembling before the Holy One?
How can we be so “at ease” before God?

DO YOU SEE IT?
THAT IS DEFECTION!
It is a horrible apathy before Him.

We depart from His convictions, He is angry and brings judgment,
And we just keep going through life like there’s nothing wrong.

ISAIAH CONFRONTS THAT.
“Rise up you women who are at ease, and hear my voice;”

If they knew what they had done, they wouldn’t be sitting,
they’d be up and running!

But as it is, there is NO TREMBLING before God.

Isaiah is not finished.
“Give ear to my word, you complacent daughters.”

Here we look at the word “complacent”
It translates (BA-TACK) and it means “to trust; to feel safe; even to be careless”

YOU’VE SEEN THIS WORD A LOT.
Some of the most famous:

Psalms 118:9 “It is better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in princes.”

Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding.”

It is used over and over in the Old Testament as it refers to
How we should respond to God.
• We should trust Him.
• We should feel safe in His care.
• We should be careless when we know our Good Shepherd is on the job.

It can be a word of TREMENDOUS ASSURANCE
When it is rightly focused on God.

HOWEVER:
It can also be a word USED OF FALSE ASSURANCE.

Isaiah 47:10 “You felt secure in your wickedness and said, ‘No one sees me,’ Your wisdom and your knowledge, they have deluded you; For you have said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one besides me.’”

Or as we read a moment ago:
Amos 6:1 “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion And to those who feel secure in the mountain of Samaria, The distinguished men of the foremost of nations, To whom the house of Israel comes.”

• We saw “at ease” a moment ago.
• There we also see the word BA-TACK – “feel secure”

And you see then the correlation between the two words.

People who fail to concern themselves with the judgment of God. Therefore, they feel secure, but it is a false assurance.

Proverbs 14:16 “A wise man is cautious and turns away from evil, But a fool is arrogant and careless.”

It can be a word that is used of a person who is most certainly not safe, though they feel like they are.

The King of Assyria warned Hezekiah against it:
2 Kings 18:9-20 “Then Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, “What is this confidence that you have? “You say (but they are only empty words), ‘I have counsel and strength for the war.’ Now on whom do you rely, that you have rebelled against me?”

You understand the problem here in Judah then.
• They had offended God.
• They were living in sin.
• God was angry.
• God had promised to judge them.
• But these people had somehow managed to put their head in the sand.

They didn’t tremble at the fact that they had offended God
And had deceived themselves into thinking that they were secure.

“I just sinned, but God won’t do anything about it.”
THIS IS FALSE ASSURANCE.

How often is false assurance addressed in the New Testament.

Do we remember John the Baptist?
Luke 3:7-9 “So he began saying to the crowds who were going out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? “Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. “Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

• You think you’re fine but you aren’t!
• You are in grave danger before God.
• The axe is at the root of the tree.

But because you are Abraham’s descendants you don’t think you have anything to worry about. Wrong!

Or do you remember this guy?
Luke 18:11-12 “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’”

Jesus specifically said that that man was not justified before God,
But because he was religious he had convinced himself that he was safe.

Listen to Jesus confront this group:
John 8:21-24 “Then He said again to them, “I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.” So the Jews were saying, “Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?” And He was saying to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”

• Jesus emphatically told this group that they would die in their sins.
• That should have horrified them.
• But they didn’t hear a word of it.
• Instead they had a discussion about whether or not Jesus was going to commit suicide.

It never occurred to them that
The place He was going that they couldn’t come would be heaven.

TOTALLY OBLIVIOUS.

Certainly we all remember:
Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”

It’s a little more alarming for this group
Because they are on the other side of judgment.

Their false assurance is seen in how shocked they are at the verdict.

They can’t believe they aren’t acceptable.
They just knew they had done enough to warrant eternal life.

And how many even TODAY live under this same delusion?

• Our nation runs headfirst into sin.
• Our nation celebrates sin.
• We do those things which God has promised will bring His wrath.

But I can’t see that our nation trembles at all.
They are totally at ease in their celebration of immorality.

What is of much greater concern to me is that I can’t see that the church seems too concerned about it either.

• When did sexual immorality quit being an offense to God?
• When did greed and coveting quit being an offense to God?
• When did idolatry quit being an offense to God?

Paul wrote:
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.”

When did God change His mind about that?
HE HASN’T
But it would sure appear that the American church has.

OR CONSIDER:
Colossians 3:5-6 “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience,”

When did that verse become irrelevant?

All throughout Scripture God has promised wrath and judgment
For the very sins we see celebrated in our land.

And now we have reached the point
Where the church isn’t even concerned about it.

Even the church is “at ease”
Even the church is “complacent”

WHERE IS THE TREMBLING?
WHERE IS THE HORROR?

THIS IS DEFECTION FROM THE HEART OF GOD!
• It is defection in spirit
• It is defection in principle

Isaiah 5:20 “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”

Romans 12:9 “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.”

Zechariah 8:16-17 “These are the things which you should do: speak the truth to one another; judge with truth and judgment for peace in your gates. ‘Also let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury; for all these are what I hate,’ declares the LORD.”

You see listed throughout the Bible the things that God hates.
To be at ease or complacent about those things is a defection from God.

Imagine having a child that you raised in your home.
• You taught them principles and values.
• You taught them about integrity and what matters.

And then they go off to college and sit under some liberal professor and the next thing you know they go down a completely different path?
• They no longer believe in your principles.
• They no longer share your values.
• The things you believe are wrong, they believe are right.
• The things you believe are right, they believe are wrong.

Would you consider that a defection?

SO DOES GOD!
God calls His people to love what He loves and hate what He hates.

Listen to David, the man after God’s own heart.

Psalms 119:104 “From Your precepts I get understanding; Therefore I hate every false way.”

Psalms 119:113 “I hate those who are double-minded, But I love Your law.”

Psalms 119:128 “Therefore I esteem right all Your precepts concerning everything, I hate every false way.”

Psalms 119:163 “I hate and despise falsehood, But I love Your law.”

Psalms 139:21-24 “Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.”

SURELY YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE.

To be “at ease” over sin and “complacent” regarding judgment
Is a defection from God and it won’t end well.

Well, Isaiah says that IT MAY NOT CONCERN YOU NOW,
But there is COMING A DAY IN WHICH IT WILL.

(10) “Within a year and a few days You will be troubled, O complacent daughters; For the vintage is ended, And the fruit gathering will not come.”

In a little less over a year, “You will be troubled”

“troubled” translates (RAW-GAZ)
It means “to quake” or “to quiver”

When God showed Habakkuk what was coming, he wrote:
Habakkuk 3:16 “I heard and my inward parts trembled, At the sound my lips quivered. Decay enters my bones, And in my place I tremble. Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress, For the people to arise who will invade us.”

This is what God is promising here to break the apathy of His people.

We read about it earlier.
Isaiah 8:7-8 “Now therefore, behold, the Lord is about to bring on them the strong and abundant waters of the Euphrates, Even the king of Assyria and all his glory; And it will rise up over all its channels and go over all its banks. “Then it will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass through, It will reach even to the neck; And the spread of its wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.”

God is going to send the Assyrians all the way through Judah.
They are going to sack town after town and village after village.
They are going to surround Jerusalem
And threaten the very existence of the people of God.
IT IS THE PUNISHMENT FOR DEFECTION.

AND WE SEE HOW AWFUL DEFECTION FROM GOD IS.
WE SEE HOW SERIOUS GOD TAKES IT.

HOWEVER…
GOD IS STILL MERCIFUL.

IT IS TRUE THAT His people have defected
They are prodigals in every sense of the word.
• They love what He hates…
• They ignore His warnings…
• They look for other saviors…
• And God must bring discipline.

But God still longs to save.
He is a merciful and gracious savior.

We read it again:
Isaiah 30:18 “Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him.”

God is waiting for His people to turn from their sin and long for Him.

EARLIER when we saw that their defection was in their turning to Egypt
WE SAW THE INVITATION.

Isaiah 31:6 “Return to Him from whom you have deeply defected, O sons of Israel.”

Very simply, God told the prodigal to come home.
“Return to Him”

WELL NOW we see the other side of their defection and it is in regard to their sinful apathy toward sin.

So what is the invitation here?

(11-13) “Tremble, you women who are at ease; Be troubled, you complacent daughters; Strip, undress and put sackcloth on your waist, Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine, For the land of my people in which thorns and briars shall come up; Yea, for all the joyful houses and for the jubilant city.”

Do you see the words?
• “Tremble”
• “Be troubled”
• “put on sackcloth”
• “Beat your breasts”

WHAT DO WE CALL THAT?
REPENTANCE

Remember the tax collector in the temple?
Luke 18:13 “But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’”

Remember the king of Nineveh after Jonah’s warning?
Jonah 3:6-9 “When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes. He issued a proclamation and it said, “In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat or drink water. “But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands. “Who knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish.”

This is what Isaiah is talking about.
It is time to repent and return.

It is time to confess your defection to God.
It is time to be motivated by the fear of judgment.

It is time to abandon your phony saviors and once again seek God.
It is time to abandon your sin and seek the mercy of God.

And the promise from God is that He will pardon.
• He will be gracious.
• He will show compassion.
• He will welcome home the prodigal.

BUT REPENTANCE AND RETURNING ARE REQUIRED.

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Return To Him – Part 2
Isaiah 31-32 (31:7-32:8)
November 12, 2023

This morning we started looking at Isaiah 31.
We mentioned that Isaiah is still in the midst of that invitation from the father to his prodigal son.

In chapters 31 and 32 Isaiah reveals
Exactly what the sin of that prodigal is.
It is that he has DEFECTED from his father.

Isaiah 31:6 “Return to Him from whom you have deeply defected, O sons of Israel.”

The sin of Israel is that they had defected from God.
And we begin to ask exactly what that defection looked like.

We saw one element in the first 5 verses.
#1 FAILURE TO TRUST
Isaiah 31:1-32:8

We saw that when Assyria threatened,
Instead of looking to the Holy One and instead of seeking the LORD,
The children of Judah ran to Egypt.
• They saw Egypt as wise.
• They saw Egypt as able.
• They saw Egypt as trustworthy.

So they abandoned God and ran to Egypt.

Isaiah noted both the defection and the foolishness in this.

(3) “Now the Egyptians are men and not God, And their horses are flesh and not spirit; So the LORD will stretch out His hand, And he who helps will stumble And he who is helped will fall, And all of them will come to an end together.”

God doesn’t look kindly upon defection.

We warned ourselves about even those subtle defections in our lives.

While God may certainly use men to bring about deliverance,
We must never seek men instead of Him.

• It offends God
• It harms us since we are rejecting the best plan for a lesser one.

But Judah had not sought that plan.

So the simple request of Isaiah was seen again.
(6) “Return to Him from whom you have deeply defected, O sons of Israel.”

It is that same invitation we’ve seen over and over.

The God whom you have offended is gracious and compassionate
And He bids you to return to Him in spite of your defection.

That is the call.
• Stop neglecting Him and start seeking Him.
• Leave your sin
• And “look to the Holy One of Israel”

Well that is where WE LEFT OFF THIS MORNING.
Simply with Isaiah calling these defectors to come home.

They had failed to trust God; Isaiah wanted them to start.

And if they will,
Isaiah will show them what God has in store.

And that is where we come THIS EVENING.

(31:7-32:8) is again,
Isaiah’s explanation of what a returning prodigal can expect from God.

This segment is what a defecting son can expect when they come back.

AND VERY SIMPLY PUT,
They can expect a Living King whom they can see.

(32:1) “Behold, a king will reign righteously And princes will rule justly.”

God asks us to walk by faith, not by sight.
HOWEVER we are also promised that when we walk by faith,
It will eventually become sight.

Let me read to you again Peter’s parallel sermon to the Jews in his day.
Acts 3:19-21 “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.”

Peter reminded, just as Isaiah has done,
That if Israel would only “repent and return”
THEN GOD WOULD SEND THEM THEIR KING.

I would take a moment here then and explain to you
WHY REPENTANCE is such an important part of this process.

We’ve noted recently that many people
Just prefer God to be gracious without every demanding repentance.

We read:
Isaiah 30:18 “Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him.”

We know God longs to be gracious.
But men wonder why He waits to have compassion.
• Why don’t you just go ahead and do it?
• Why must I repent first?
• Why don’t you just go ahead and show compassion and leave me as I am?

And I would point out to you that
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN GOD DID DO THAT.

There was a time
• When God did just go ahead and show grace even without Israel’s repentance.
• When God just went ahead and sent the King even though Israel had still not sought Him.

It’s what we’ll celebrate here shortly at Christmas.

God sent Jesus to this earth.
And He was the very embodiment of God being gracious.

John 1:16-17 “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.”

God sent Jesus in hope that Israel
Would see their King and then repent and return.

BUT WHAT HAPPENED?
John 1:1-5 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”

John 1:9-11 “There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.”

God sent His Son; God sent His King and the people rejected Him.
Their hearts were still hard.
Their eyes were still blind.
Their ears were still closed.

Jesus even said it.
Matthew 13:14-15 “In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING, BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND; YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING, BUT WILL NOT PERCEIVE; FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL, WITH THEIR EARS THEY SCARCELY HEAR, AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES, OTHERWISE THEY WOULD SEE WITH THEIR EYES, HEAR WITH THEIR EARS, AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN, AND I WOULD HEAL THEM.’”

And again:
Matthew 15:7-9 “You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. ‘BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.’”

Jesus said, “It’s just like Isaiah said.”
• These people don’t want the truth.
• These people hate the Holy One of Israel.

Sending the King before repentance
Did not lead to the salvation of the people.

It certainly wasn’t a mistake for God to send Christ,
For it was their rejection of Christ
That led to the cross and the atonement for our sin.

BUT YOU SEE THE POINT.
REPENTANCE IS NECESSARY.

If they don’t repent before He comes,
They most certainly won’t repent afterward.

So you have Peter,
• After Jesus died, rose, and ascended
• Basically preaching the sermon of Isaiah all over again.

“Repent and return…so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord…”

IN SHORT,
• God is waiting for repentance.
• God is waiting for His people to return to Him.
• BUT WHEN THEY DO, He will send His King
• And you will love the changes His King will make.

You actually see those changes in verses 31:7-32:8.
YOU SEE AGAIN THE BENEFITS OF THE KING.

These are the blessings of the King.

There are 4 of them here.
1) HE WILL REMOVE IDOLS (7)

“For in that day every man will cast away his silver idols and his gold idols, which your sinful hands have made for you as a sin.”

“in that day…”
• It is the day Israel returns.
• It is the day Israel repents.
• It is the day God sends His King.

And on that day there will no longer be the need nor desire for idols.

FOR ONE,
When the glorious King arrives,
Men will be too terrified to cling to their faulty idols.

Isaiah 2:17-21 “The pride of man will be humbled And the loftiness of men will be abased; And the LORD alone will be exalted in that day, But the idols will completely vanish. Men will go into caves of the rocks And into holes of the ground Before the terror of the LORD And the splendor of His majesty, When He arises to make the earth tremble. In that day men will cast away to the moles and the bats Their idols of silver and their idols of gold, Which they made for themselves to worship, In order to go into the caverns of the rocks and the clefts of the cliffs Before the terror of the LORD and the splendor of His majesty, When He arises to make the earth tremble.”

It won’t be considered a trivial thing
In that day to keep an idol around.

We read in Zechariah about the day Israel returns to the LORD and how the mindset towards idols completely changes.

Zechariah 13:2-6 “It will come about in that day,” declares the LORD of hosts, “that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered; and I will also remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land. “And if anyone still prophesies, then his father and mother who gave birth to him will say to him, ‘You shall not live, for you have spoken falsely in the name of the LORD’; and his father and mother who gave birth to him will pierce him through when he prophesies. “Also it will come about in that day that the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies, and they will not put on a hairy robe in order to deceive; but he will say, ‘I am not a prophet; I am a tiller of the ground, for a man sold me as a slave in my youth.’ “And one will say to him, ‘What are these wounds between your arms?’ Then he will say, ‘Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.’”

• You have there men who formerly prophesied falsely, even by their idols, and if
they try to do it in that day even their own parents will kill them.

• And every former pagan prophet is going to be utterly ashamed that he ever
tried to lead the people astray.

• There will be a wholesale abandonment of the office of prophet and when
people ask about their pagan scars and their pagan tattoos which were in
accordance with their idols they will deny it totally.

You will see men run from idols as fast as they can.

It was “sin” and it was made by “sinful hands”.

Men did that in rebellion against God.
They were men with sinful hands who sought to do sinful things.

But on the day of the King such practices will be over.

But that’s NOT THE ONLY REASON men will abandon them.
They’ll also be gone because they will have been totally exposed.

What use will your idol be on the day when it is proven to be a fraud?

When this King comes all competition will be removed.
THERE WILL BE A GREAT CLEANSING OF THE LAND.

And incidentally, this is what CHRIST COMES TO DO IN YOUR LIFE
When you return to Him.

When you repent of your sin and you return to Him,
He will enter your life and work that same cleansing in you.

It is an interesting passage in the book of Ephesians.

Ephesians 3:14-19 “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”

Paul is praying for the Ephesians believers.
• He prays that God would grant that they would “be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;”

THAT IS AN INTERESTING STATEMENT.

Often times modern day evangelistic lingo speaks of salvation as,
“Jesus coming into your heart.”

So when Paul is praying that God’s Spirit would work on the inner man of the Ephesians so that Christ would dwell in their hearts, is he saying that he is praying that they’ll be saved?

Is he saying, “I’m praying for the Spirit to work on you so that you’ll let Jesus come into your heart”?

NO
If you’ve read Ephesians 1,
You know he is talking to believers, not non-believers.

So what does he mean?
• The key is in the word “dwell”
• It is KAT-OY-KAY-O

And it means “to dwell”, but it means ultimately “to settle down”
• KATA = down
• OYKAYO = to settle
• It can even mean “to govern”.

When someone enters our house we would tell them,
“Have a seat” or “Take a load off” or “Make yourself at home”.

SO WHAT IS PAUL SAYING?
That upon salvation the Holy Spirit moves into your life
And begins do His sanctifying work so that Christ
May settle down in you; so that Christ may be at home in you.

• He is talking about removing your idols.
• He is talking about cleansing your sin.
• He is talking about making you the type of temple Christ can comfortably dwell in.

This is what the King does when He comes.
He cleans house.
He removes the competition.

He does it in our lives upon salvation
And Isaiah says that when He returns to rule in Israel
He will do it in their land.

He will make that land a place where He can settle-down and govern.

He will remove idols.
2) HE WILL ROUT ENEMIES (8-9)

(8-9) “And the Assyrian will fall by a sword not of man, And a sword not of man will devour him. So he will not escape the sword, And his young men will become forced laborers. “His rock will pass away because of panic, And his princes will be terrified at the standard,” Declares the LORD, whose fire is in Zion and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.”

This is what we discussed last Sunday night.
• That when this King returns not only will He cleanse your life,
• But He will eradicate those who have afflicted you.

We saw how God would trample them and terrify them
And ultimately cast them into “Topheth”
“Where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched”.

And Isaiah reminds them of that yet again.

Israel is running to Egypt because they want deliverance from Assyria,
But Isaiah reminds that the true deliverer
Comes in the form of the King they have neglected.

When He comes, “the Assyrian will fall by the sword not of man, And a sword not of man will devour him. So he will not escape the sword, And his young men will become forced laborers.”

Now this is a prophetic picture.

• For on one hand we know that God did come and deal with the Assyria of their day.

2 Kings 19:35 “Then it happened that night that the angel of the LORD went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men rose early in the morning, behold, all of them were dead.”

• That scene was a picture of what Isaiah was talking about.

But that scene was also a foreshadow
Of the second coming when Israel’s King returns.

What He did to 185,000 Assyrians in that day,
He will do to all of Israel’s enemies on the day He returns.

Isaiah speaks of it later:
Isaiah 63:1-6 “Who is this who comes from Edom, With garments of glowing colors from Bozrah, This One who is majestic in His apparel, Marching in the greatness of His strength? “It is I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” Why is Your apparel red, And Your garments like the one who treads in the wine press? “I have trodden the wine trough alone, And from the peoples there was no man with Me. I also trod them in My anger And trampled them in My wrath; And their lifeblood is sprinkled on My garments, And I stained all My raiment. “For the day of vengeance was in My heart, And My year of redemption has come. “I looked, and there was no one to help, And I was astonished and there was no one to uphold; So My own arm brought salvation to Me, And My wrath upheld Me. “I trod down the peoples in My anger And made them drunk in My wrath, And I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.”

We read:
Revelation 19:11-16 “And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”

Judah wanted deliverance from Assyria so they ran to Egypt.
Isaiah reveals that if they had just run to Him,
He would send His King who would deliver them from everyone.

It is what Israel today does not understand.
• Right now the nation of Israel is at war.
• They have been attacked by the terrorist regime known as Hamas
• We heard that Lebanon fired missiles into Israel as well.
• And Israel is fighting back and at the same time soliciting allies.

What they don’t understand is that
They have the greatest Ally of all times waiting in the wings.

If they would just repent and return to Jesus Christ
He would come and totally deliver them.

When He comes, He comes to save.

Does He not do that for us when we come to Him?

Does He not deliver us from our sin and from the powers of Satan?
Does He not promise us security of soul to dwell with Him forever?

When this King comes He will rout their enemies.
That Assyrian battle in the days of Hezekiah, was but a foretaste of that.

3) HE WILL REIGN RIGHTEOUSLY (1-2)

(1-2) “Behold, a king will reign righteously And princes will rule justly. Each will be like a refuge from the wind And a shelter from the storm, Like streams of water in a dry country, Like the shade of a huge rock in a parched land.”

We saw this mentioned already too.

Isaiah 11:3-5 “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.”

And Isaiah reminds of it again.

The most obvious question to be asked here to the Jews of Isaiah’s day would be: Do you really think Pharaoh is going to reign righteously?

But the King whom God will send will.
There won’t be an ounce of corruption in Him.

And incidentally that is true for HIS ENTIRE ADMINISTRATION.
HIS “princes will rule justly.”

Who is that?
Matthew 19:27-28 “Then Peter said to Him, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You; what then will there be for us?” And Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

And the wording used for their type of rule is extremely comforting.

Words like:
• “refuge”
• “shelter”
• “shade”
• Also compared to “streams of water in a dry country”

Everything mentioned there is relief and protection and blessing.

Gone will be the days of a King who will exploit and use his subjects.
• This King will protect them.
• This King will rule them righteously.
• This King will rule them justly.

They want lament His reign, they will love it.

And again, while we wait for the total fulfillment of this promise at the return of Christ, is this not how Christ has come to reign in your heart?

• Has He not come to subdue your rebel will?
• Has He not come to lead you into righteousness?
• Has He not come to free you from the one who exploited you?

Christ never does that.
Christ never takes advantage.
Christ never uses or exploits.

Matthew 12:17-21 “This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: “BEHOLD, MY SERVANT WHOM I HAVE CHOSEN; MY BELOVED IN WHOM MY SOUL is WELL-PLEASED; I WILL PUT MY SPIRIT UPON HIM, AND HE SHALL PROCLAIM JUSTICE TO THE GENTILES. “HE WILL NOT QUARREL, NOR CRY OUT; NOR WILL ANYONE HEAR HIS VOICE IN THE STREETS. “A BATTERED REED HE WILL NOT BREAK OFF, AND A SMOLDERING WICK HE WILL NOT PUT OUT, UNTIL HE LEADS JUSTICE TO VICTORY. “AND IN HIS NAME THE GENTILES WILL HOPE.”

He comes to save and protect and deliver.
He comes to lead in righteousness.

He is a righteous King for all those who will repent and return to Him.

There is such a benefit in returning to Him.

One more thing He will do.
4) HE WILL RESTORE DISCERNMENT (3-8)

This is one of the major themes that gets repeated over and over in Isaiah.
• Isaiah loves to talk about the word “Woe”
• Isaiah loves the phrase “the Holy One of Israel”
• Certainly both of those coming from his temple encounter.

And Isaiah also loves to reference the blindness and deafness of God’s people, which he also learned that day in the temple.

Isaiah 6:9-10 “He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘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, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And return and be healed.”

And ever since that day in the temple, Isaiah has found that to be true.
• When Isaiah preached they mocked him as though he were speaking to a baby in the nursery.
• When Isaiah prophesied they told him to speak no more about the Holy One of Israel.

They have proven themselves to be exactly what God said there were.

But on the day they repent and the King comes
The ignorance of Israel will be removed.

(3-5) “Then the eyes of those who see will not be blinded, And the ears of those who hear will listen. The mind of the hasty will discern the truth, And the tongue of the stammerers will hasten to speak clearly. No longer will the fool be called noble, Or the rogue be spoken of as generous.”

Paul tells us in the New Testament that right now a veil remains over Israel and they are prevented from seeing the glories of Christ.

2 Corinthians 3:14-16 “But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.”

Romans 11:8 “just as it is written, “GOD GAVE THEM A SPIRIT OF STUPOR, EYES TO SEE NOT AND EARS TO HEAR NOT, DOWN TO THIS VERY DAY.”

We heard Isaiah tell them how God would speak to them
“Through stammering lips and a foreign tongue”
As a punishment for their refusal to listen.

AND THAT CONFUSION REMAINS.

But on the day that they come to their senses and return to the Lord,
• Not only will He come and remove their idols.
• Not only will He come and rout their enemies.
• Not only will He come and reign righteously.
• He will come and restore their discernment.

He will open their eyes.

Remember what Jesus did for the disciples in the upper room?
Luke 24:45 “Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,”

That is what He will do for Israel.
• They will finally understand.
• They will finally get it.
• Christ will open their eyes.

Is this not what happens to us when Christ moves in?

Paul says
1 Corinthians 2:12-16 “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.”

What more could be said about our salvation
Than the fact that God opened our eyes?
He opened our ears.
He softened our hearts.

OUR KING DID THIS FOR US
And He will certainly do it for them when they return to Him.

In Isaiah’s day and on into our day
• You have men who are fools but they are considered wise.
• You have men who are fools who are considered to be noble.

Remember this was part of their curse.
Isaiah 3:4-5 “And I will make mere lads their princes, And capricious children will rule over them, And the people will be oppressed, Each one by another, and each one by his neighbor; The youth will storm against the elder And the inferior against the honorable.”

They suffer under foolish leaders.
God did that as a punishment for their refusal to trust in Him.

And the consequences of foolish leaders is easy to understand.
(6-8) “For a fool speaks nonsense, And his heart inclines toward wickedness: To practice ungodliness and to speak error against the LORD, To keep the hungry person unsatisfied And to withhold drink from the thirsty. As for a rogue, his weapons are evil; He devises wicked schemes To destroy the afflicted with slander, Even though the needy one speaks what is right. But the noble man devises noble plans; And by noble plans he stands.”

It is a horrible thing to live in a land with foolish leaders.
• They speak “nonsense”
• They love “wickedness”
• They “speak error against the LORD”
• They oppress the poor
• They “devise…wicked schemes”
• They “destroy…with slander”

It is a horrible thing to live in such a land.

But the ironic thing is that we have foolish leaders
Because that is what the people want.

• People vote for them!
• People elect them!
• People will get on social media and fight for them!

Foolish people elect foolish leaders.
It is all a consequence of rejecting Christ.

But on the day they return to Christ, (5) “No longer will the fool be called noble, or the rogue be spoken of as generous.”

God will open their eyes and they will reject what is evil
And Christ will come and rule in righteousness.

• He will open their eyes and they will know fully.
• The mysteries of His kingdom will become clear.
• They will delight in the knowledge of God.

And the obvious point to all of this information is to ask:
CAN EGYPT DO ANY OF THAT?

Then why in the world would you ignore God to run to Egypt?
• Why would you look for a human savior?
• Why would you trust in a human deliverer?
• Why would you lean upon a human helper?

WHY ARE YOU DEFECTING FROM GOD?

That is a foolish decision.

But what glorious benefits will be gained when you return to the LORD!
How He will swoop in in an instant and change your fortunes.
He will be everything that you were missing.

That was true for Isaiah’s congregation.
That was true for Peter’s congregation.
It is true for this congregation.

You were never intended to trust in anyone else
Other than the God who created you.

If you do, then you have defected from Him.
Return to Him and find the joys of the king when He approaches your life.

download here

Return To Him – Part 1
Isaiah 31-32 (31:1-6)
November 12, 2023

As you know we are studying the book of Isaiah and most recently
Isaiah has been addressing an issue that was real and urgent in their day.

• Assyria was invading.
• It was only about 20 years prior that Assyria destroyed the Northern Kingdoml.
• Now they had set their sights on Judah.

The immediate response of the people of Judah was to run to Egypt.

Isaiah 30:1-2 “Woe to the rebellious children,” declares the LORD, “Who execute a plan, but not Mine, And make an alliance, but not of My Spirit, In order to add sin to sin; Who proceed down to Egypt Without consulting Me, To take refuge in the safety of Pharaoh And to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt!”

God was not pleased with this decision
And He had sent Isaiah to confront them for it.

The problem was that
The people were not interested in what God had to say on the subject.

Isaiah 30:9-11 “For this is a rebellious people, false sons, Sons who refuse to listen To the instruction of the LORD; Who say to the seers, “You must not see visions”; And to the prophets, “You must not prophesy to us what is right, Speak to us pleasant words, Prophesy illusions. “Get out of the way, turn aside from the path, Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.”

• They had made up their mind.
• They weren’t interested in God’s plan.
• They weren’t interested in God’s requirements.
• They wanted to go to Egypt for help and they wanted to be left alone to do it.

In response
God announced that it would only end up to their shame.

Isaiah 30:3-5 “Therefore the safety of Pharaoh will be your shame And the shelter in the shadow of Egypt, your humiliation. “For their princes are at Zoan And their ambassadors arrive at Hanes. “Everyone will be ashamed because of a people who cannot profit them, Who are not for help or profit, but for shame and also for reproach.”

• Egypt would not be able to save.
• The people of Judah would travel a long way and pay a lot of money
• Only to be disappointed if they continued down that path.

And it was at this point that Isaiah intervened again
To give a great invitation to the people of Judah.

Isaiah 30:18 “Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him.”

It is one of the greatest verses in the entire book of Isaiah.

• Despite their rebellion.
• Despite their idolatry.
• Despite their rejection of Him as their savior.

God still longed to be gracious.
God still desired to be compassionate.
(It is remarkable patience and grace on the part of God)

And then Isaiah began to lay out for them the benefits of returning to God.
We saw those benefits last Sunday morning and Sunday night.

GUARANTEED GRACE
• You’ll weep no longer
• He will answer you
• He will guide you

PROMISED PROVISION
• God will send rain and bless your crops

HOPE AND HEALING
• God will bind up your wounds and restore your hope.

DESTRUCTION TO YOUR ENEMY
• God will overrun him like a torrent
• God will terrify him with judgment
• God will throw him in Topheth (hell)

We saw God as that gracious father who willingly and eagerly
Accepted his prodigal son on the day he returned.

God has been calling his prodigal son home.

AND THAT INVITATION CONTINUES STILL.

Chapters 31 and 32 are STILL part of that great INVITATION.
• They are God STILL calling those “false sons” back to Him.
• It is STILL a message for prodigals.

In fact, you see it again in verse 6 of chapter 31
(31:6) “Return to Him from whom you have deeply defected, O sons of Israel.”

The fact that God even continues to offer a return as an option
Is remarkable grace.

• If we had been God…
• If we had been that father of the prodigal…
• If we had been so insulted and rejected…

We would have been tempted to say, “Fine, take your inheritance, but don’t come back here when things get tough.”

BUT NOT GOD.
He endures reproach and insult and rejection and rebellion
And yet still offers the sinner the option of coming home.

The OLDER BROTHER of that prodigal couldn’t believe it.
He couldn’t believe that the father would welcome home such a foul sinner.

But praise God He does.

He NOT ONLY WELCOMES sinners home,
But as we have been studying in Isaiah recently,
He PLEADS with them to come home.

What a gracious Father!

So what about chapters 31 and 32 is new information?
How do they differ from the message of chapter 30?

Here God begins to get MORE SPECIFIC
ABOUT THE SIN that Judah has committed.

We just read in verse 6 that Judah had “deeply defected”.

• They haven’t only “defected”, but they have done so “deeply”.
• They haven’t only abandoned the LORD, but have greatly abandoned Him.
• It’s not just apostasy, it is intense apostasy.

That makes God’s call for them to return even more remarkable.

How far does one have to go before God will no longer welcome them home?
• I guess farther than this.

But what we learn in Isaiah 31 & 32
Is what deeply defecting looks like.

All my years growing up, no one used the word “defection” it was more likely that the word “back sliding” would be used.

Here are going to see what it looks like.
I think this is an important study for us even as the church today.
For it may be more subtle than you think.

The New Testament warns continually about apostasy or falling away or defection from the Lord.

We even read of a sin of apostasy of such a variety
That man cannot be saved from it.

• It is akin to the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.
• It is when a person is given full revelation of the truth but willfully rejects it and falls away.

That sin of apostasy cannot be forgiven
Because it is bound up in a rejection of the savior.

Hebrews 3:12-14 “Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end,”

Hebrews 6:4-6 “For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.”

Hebrews 10:36-39 “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. FOR YET IN A VERY LITTLE WHILE, HE WHO IS COMING WILL COME, AND WILL NOT DELAY. BUT MY RIGHTEOUS ONE SHALL LIVE BY FAITH; AND IF HE SHRINKS BACK, MY SOUL HAS NO PLEASURE IN HIM. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.”

But we are also confronted with a type of defection in the New Testament that is clearly redeemable.

• It is heinous.
• It is terrible.
• It brings disciplinary consequences.
But one can still repent and come home.

The prodigal son clearly falls in this category.
• He did a horrible thing in insulting and rejecting his father,
• But he did come to his sense and return.
• He was welcomed back by his father.

It would be like that we read of in the lives of the disciples.
Mark 14:27-30 “And Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, because it is written, ‘I WILL STRIKE DOWN THE SHEPHERD, AND THE SHEEP SHALL BE SCATTERED.’ “But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” But Peter said to Him, “Even though all may fall away, yet I will not.” And Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, that this very night, before a rooster crows twice, you yourself will deny Me three times.”

We think of John the Baptist doubting Jesus.
Matthew 11:6 “And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me.”

There is a defection from which one cannot be saved
And there is a defection from which one can be saved.

How would you know which is which?
Whether or not the sinner comes back.

• If the sinner does not repent and return then clearly their defection was of the variety from which one cannot be saved.
• If the sinner comes to their senses and repents and returns then it was the defection from which they can be saved.

The only difference between the two
Is whether or not the sinner repents and returns.

And hence you see why God is pleading so diligently
With the sons of Judah to repent and return.

But there is a different issue we want to begin to address this morning, and that is: WHAT DOES DEFECTION LOOK LIKE?

• How would I know if I have defected?
• How would I know if I am in need of repentance and a returning to God?
• What are the characteristics of a son who has deeply defected?

That is what Isaiah is about to show us
Over the course of the next 2 chapters.

Now that is NOT ALL he’ll show us.
• We’ll also see again invitations to return
• And we’ll see again promises of blessing if you do.
• But before that he will give Judah a direct description of their defection.

So let’s look at them.
• What does defection from God look like?
• What does a prodigal type sin look like?
• What does it look like when a person begins to fall away from God?

#1 FAILURE TO TRUST
Isaiah 31:1-32:8

That’s a long segment, but we want to start by looking at
The direct confrontation of their sin and that is found in verses 1-5

(READ 31:1-5)

Isaiah starts again with that weighted word, “Woe”

It is no small word to Isaiah
Since he was once a man who called down this very “Woe” upon himself.

• He knows what it is to be a defector.
• He knows what it is to be one who has fallen away.
• He knows what it is to be one who is under the wrath of God.
• And he knows what it is to repent, return, and be forgiven.

The word “Woe” is serious to him.

Here that woe is used to describe the defecting sin of Judah.

“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help And rely on horses, And trust in chariots because they are many And in horsemen because they are very strong…”

Now THE PUZZLE is starting to fill in even more pieces
And become even CLEARER to us.

Perhaps you remember
When Isaiah called the people to repent and return to God, but the people said, “No”.

If you’ll remember they said no because they had a plan.
Isaiah 30:15-17 “For thus the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, has said, “In repentance and rest you will be saved, In quietness and trust is your strength.” But you were not willing, And you said, “No, for we will flee on horses,” Therefore you shall flee! “And we will ride on swift horses,” Therefore those who pursue you shall be swift. One thousand will flee at the threat of one man; You will flee at the threat of five, Until you are left as a flag on a mountain top And as a signal on a hill.”

They wouldn’t repent, instead they would flee on horses.

Well now we are beginning to see why they wanted Egypt.
• Egypt would be their supplier of horses.
• Egypt would be their supplier of chariots.
• They were banking on Egypt the whole time.

This was sinful even on a surface level.
Deuteronomy 17:16 “Moreover, he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, since the LORD has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way.’”

Israel was never to look to Egypt as their salvation again,
Though they regularly did.

But that is only part of the problem.

The REAL PROBLEM is seen in the last line of verse 1.
“But they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the LORD!”

It wasn’t just their propensity to seek Egypt that was the problem
It was that they never sought God.

They didn’t want the instruction of the LORD.
• They didn’t want the seers to see visions.
• They didn’t want the prophets to prophesy.
• They didn’t want to hear about the Holy One of Israel.

They weren’t interested in what God had to say.
• They saw Egypt as reliable.
• They saw God as unreliable.

• They saw Egypt as strong.
• They saw God as weak.

• They saw Egypt as helpful.
• They saw God as unhelpful.

Their decision to ignore God and seek Egypt proved that.

THAT IS WHAT WE CALL DEFECTION.

It is when you seek other things
For your deliverance or satisfaction other than God.

Isn’t that what the prodigal son did?
His father couldn’t satisfy, and he sought satisfaction in the world.

Here with Israel it isn’t so much satisfaction as it is deliverance and that is also defection.
• When danger arises…
• When finances dwindle…
• When sickness invades…
• When tragedy threatens…

WHERE DO YOU TURN?

WHAT WE SEE MOST OF THE TIME IN OUR WORLD IS THAT
Men give lip service to God but they very rarely seek Him
Until every other savior proves ineffective.

THAT IS DEFECTION.

BUT I UNDERSTAND IT.
• Judah was being threatened by a real world flesh and blood enemy.
• Sennacherib was a real king of a real nation with a real army with real weapons.
• He was really invading and he would really kill them.

And in such real-life scenarios there are some who find it much easier
To trust what you can see over what you can’t see.

Judah couldn’t see God, but they could see Egypt.
In their crisis they opted to walk by sight instead of faith.

THAT IS A DEFECTION FROM FAITH.

Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

If you want to put a label on what they specifically did wrong, we would say:
THEY DIDN’T DISCERN GOD’S PRESENCE.

• God has promised that He will never leave us nor forsake us.
• God has promised that His is with us always.
• God had told Israel that He was God in their midst.

While God could not be physically seen,
They still should have recognized His presence.

When Jesus spoke of God at work, He compared it to WIND.

John 3:8 “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

That is how God often works.

A great example of this would be the book of Esther.
• God’s name is not mentioned one single time in the entire book of Esther.
• There is no written proof of God’s presence in that entire story.
• And yet, His fingerprints are everywhere.

Only the hardest of skeptics could read the story of Esther
And not see God’s presence actively at work.

And we are called to trust the God we can’t see.

But this is the problem with Israel. – they wouldn’t trust a God they couldn’t see.
When their problems arose “they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the LORD!”

Instead they “go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, and trust in chariots because they are many and in horseman because they are very strong,”

THEY DEFECTED FROM GOD AND RAN TO EGYPT.
THEY DIDN’T DISCERN GOD’S PRESENCE

To that Isaiah responds with an OBVIOUS CORRECTION.
(2a) “Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract His words”

It is obvious that these are the very benefits that Judah was seeking to receive from Egypt.
• Judah thought the Egyptians were wise
• That they could bring disaster to Assyria
• That they would do what they said.

Judah had attributed that to Egypt,
But had not attributed such attributes to God.

Isaiah says, “Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract His words”

Isaiah reminds us of some very important truths about the nature of God.

THE WISDOM OF GOD
“Yet He also is wise”

Paul wrote:
1 Corinthians 1:25 “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

After contemplating the mysteries of God’s sovereignty in salvation, Paul wrote:
Romans 11:33-36 “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR? Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”

David spoke of God’s omniscience and said that it was mind-blowing!
Psalms 139:1-6 “O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O LORD, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.”

• Who else knows the number of hairs on your head?
• Who else can ordain all your days before you?
• Who else can providentially sustain the entire earth?

And really this is a never-ending subject.

The simple question I suppose is:
• Is there anything that God does not know?
• Is there any problem that He cannot solve?
• Does anything confuse Him?

Then why in the world would you fail to seek God and run to Egypt?
Why would you look to a worldly savior instead of a heavenly one?

Isaiah also reminds them of:
THE POWER OF GOD
“and will bring disaster”

Which is another way of saying that God will defend you
And He will thoroughly and competently deal with your enemy.

• Which enemy has ever thwarted God?
• Which nation rose up to afflict Israel that God couldn’t deal with?

When God told Abraham that Sarah would have a son she laughed in the tent and God asked her, “Is anything too difficult for the LORD?”
(And the answer is of course, no.)

And the reality of Israel’s day is this:
• Perhaps Egypt would be able to defeat Assyria…
• But God definitely can.

SO WHY WOULD YOU IGNORE GOD AND RUN TO EGYPT?

Isaiah also reminds them of:
THE INTEGRITY OF GOD
“And does not retract His words”

• Where do you find God not keeping His word?
• Where do you find God breaking His covenant?
• Where do you find God unable or unwilling to follow through with a promise?

The overwhelming testimony of Scripture is
God being faithful though all men are liars.

Can that always be said of Egypt?
• Will Egypt be found faithful with every promise?

So why would you ignore God in order to run to Egypt?

When Assyria approached you had the option of two saviors,
One was God and the other was Egypt and you chose Egypt.

To put it plainly again:
THEY DIDN’T DISCERN GOD’S PREEMINENCE

They treated God like a sub on the bench
And treated Egypt like the all-star.

How foolish!
• Do you not know who your God is?
• Do you not know His power or wisdom or might or integrity?

“Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract His words”

God can do everything Egypt can do, in fact:
God (2b) “will arise against the house of evildoers and against the help of the workers of iniquity.”

Because you snubbed the wise, powerful, God of integrity
He is about to show you exactly what you are missing.

• He is about to rise up against you, “the house of evildoers”
• And He is about to rise up against Egypt, “the help of the workers of
iniquity.”

God is not willing to be slighted.
You don’t get to ignore His power and glory and might
And then attribute it to some lesser savior.

You may defect from Him for a lesser savior, but far be it from Him
To let that savior succeed and steal His glory.

It is just foolish to neglect God.
It is foolish to fail to discern His preeminence.

GOD WILL NOT LET YOUR FALSE SAVIOR SUCCEED
(3) “Now the Egyptians are men and not God, And their horses are flesh and not spirit; So the LORD will stretch our His hand, And he who helps will stumble And he who is helped will fall, And all of them will come to an end together.”

That about sums it up doesn’t it.
• When your tragedy struck…
• When your trial started…

You had the option of seeking the all-knowing, all-powerful, fully trustworthy God.

Instead you defected from Him In order that you might put your trust in a man.
• That which is “men and not God”
• That which is “flesh and not spirit”

Does that not strike you as foolish?

Because of this, the LORD will rise up
• And cause “he who helps” (Egypt) to “stumble”.
• And cause “who is helped” (Israel) to “fall”.

“And all of them will come to an end together.”

They should have discerned God’s presence.
They should have discerned God’s preeminence.

And they should have
DISCERNED GOD’S PLAN

Had they chosen to seek God, Isaiah reveals
What God had planned on their behalf.

(4-5) “For thus says the LORD to me, “As the lion or the young lion growls over his prey, Against which a band of shepherds is called out, And he will not be terrified at their voice nor disturbed at their noise, So will the LORD of hosts come down to wage war on Mount Zion and on its hill.” Like flying birds so the LORD of hosts will protect Jerusalem. He will protect and deliver it; He will pass over and rescue it.”

Isaiah says, “This is what God told me He was prepared to do.”

He was going to be like a lion.
• Like when a lion kills a sheep and sits down to eat and a band of shepherds run out and start hollering, that lion isn’t fazed one bit.

He was going to be like flying birds.
• Quickly coming out of nowhere to swoop in and bring deliverance.

• God was going to “wage war on Mount Zion and on its hill.”
• His plan is to “protect and deliver it”
• His plan is to “pass over and rescue it”

Now tell me, what was Egypt’s plan?

WHY THEN WOULD YOU IGNORE GOD?
Jeremiah 17:5-8 “Thus says the LORD, “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind And makes flesh his strength, And whose heart turns away from the LORD. “For he will be like a bush in the desert And will not see when prosperity comes, But will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, A land of salt without inhabitant. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD And whose trust is the LORD. “For he will be like a tree planted by the water, That extends its roots by a stream And will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, And it will not be anxious in a year of drought Nor cease to yield fruit.”

That is exactly what Israel was doing here,
And that is what defection looks like.

SEE, SOMETIMES WE THINK OF DEFECTING FROM GOD
As some definitive line in the sand where we wake up one morning and say, “That’s it, I no longer believe in God.”

That certainly is to defect, but what you must learn from Isaiah here
Is that defection starts long before something that drastic.

Defecting from God is any time we fail to trust Him
And instead place our trust in some other savior.
(Either for deliverance or satisfaction)

IT CAN BE A DOCTOR.

Remember King Asa?
2 Chronicles 16:12 “In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa became diseased in his feet. His disease was severe, yet even in his disease he did not seek the LORD, but the physicians.”

IT CAN BE A POLITICIAN.

Remember the children of Israel under Samuel?
1 Samuel 8:4-7 “Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah; and they said to him, “Behold, you have grown old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint a king for us to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing was displeasing in the sight of Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the LORD. The LORD said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them.”

And it could be any number of other would-be saviors:
• A judge.
• A family member.
• A friend.
• An ally.
• A military.

If you do that but “do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the LORD” then you have defected from God.

DO YOU SEE WHAT DEFECTION IS?
It can be much more subtle than perhaps we have realized.

BUT IT IS ALWAYS REGRETTABLE.
• For no one loves you like God loves you.
• No one cares for His people like God cares for His people.
• Certainly Egypt did not.

And there again comes from Isaiah THE SOLUTION
(6) “Return to Him from whom you have deeply defected, O sons of Israel.”

It is God’s call once again to those prodigals to come home.
And don’t you love the fact that God has now abandoned the label of “false sons”?

God is now back to calling them “sons of Israel.”
• They certainly don’t look like it.
• They have certainly rebelled.
• But once a son, always a son.
• And God is calling them home.

It is true, they have “deeply defected”
• They haven’t trusted God in a really long time.
• They haven’t listened to God in a really long time.
• They haven’t sought God in a really long time.

There life is a documentary
On how to insult, ignore, and rebel against God.

And yet, despite their deep defection the invitation remains:
“Return to Him”

Isaiah 30:18 “Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him.”

Isaiah 44:21-22 “Remember these things, O Jacob, And Israel, for you are My servant; I have formed you, you are My servant, O Israel, you will not be forgotten by Me. “I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud And your sins like a heavy mist. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.”

Isaiah 55:6-7 “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.”

1 Peter 5:6-7 “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”

Acts 3:19 “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord;”

The invitation remains, and it is a good one for us this morning too.

ARE YOU TRUSTING GOD?

Certainly you must trust Christ for your salvation.
• Certainly you must put your hope in Christ’s righteousness.
• Certainly you must put your hope in Christ’s sacrifice.

If you are looking to some man to save you, you’re sunk.
“he who helps will stumble and he who is helped will fall, And all of them will come to an end together.”

If you are looking to our own works or abilities to save you, you are sunk.
You are “men and not God”, you are “flesh and not spirit”

You must trust Christ fully for your salvation.

BUT BEYOND THAT.
WHAT ABOUT FOR YOUR PROVISION?

WHAT ABOUT FOR YOUR HEALTH?

WHAT ABOUT FOR YOUR SECURITY?

WHAT ABOUT FOR YOUR FAMILY?

WHAT ABOUT YOUR SATISFACTION?

DO YOU SEE THE POINT?

Israel had deeply defected from God and that defection was seen
In a failure to trust God or find satisfaction in Him.

And in any area in which we have done that,
We must repent and return to Him.

THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT He has already promised that He will be gracious to us and He “does not retract His words”.

THIS MORNING DETERMINE TO TRUST HIM.
Just because you can’t see God does not mean He is not present.

• Do not fail to discern His presence.
• Do not fail to discern His preeminence.
• Do not fail to discern His plan.

Look to Him.

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A Glimpse Of Redemption
Isaiah 30:18-26
November 5, 2023

We started this chapter LAST SUNDAY MORNING
Where we talked about the reality that many in Jerusalem
Were being considered by God as “false sons”.

Isaiah 30:9-11 “For this is a rebellious people, false sons, Sons who refuse to listen To the instruction of the LORD; Who say to the seers, “You must not see visions”; And to the prophets, “You must not prophesy to us what is right, Speak to us pleasant words, Prophesy illusions. “Get out of the way, turn aside from the path, Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.”

To put it plainly they were a people
Who had no interest in hearing any direction from God.

Jesus Himself taught us:
Luke 8: 21 “But He answered and said to them, “My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it.”

But here we have just the opposite.
People who claim to be the people of God
But who have no interest in anything God would have to say.

• They prefer “pleasant words”
• They prefer “illusions”
• But they are done with the messages about “the Holy One of Israel”.

This animosity toward God had most recently shown itself
In their refusal to seek Him in the midst of the Assyrian crisis.

God had raised up Assyria to discipline His people.
The plan was to use Assyria to drive Israel back to God in repentance.

But, when Assyria attacked, instead of running to God, they ran to Egypt.

• God called it (1) “a plan, but not Mine”
• He called it (1) “an alliance, but not of My Spirit”

They were sinning in this decision and they would certainly regret it.

THEY WERE ACTING AS “FALSE SONS”.

And we discussed some of the attitudes of what a false son looks like.
1) They want shelter without submission.
2) They want happiness without holiness.
3) They want refuge without repentance.
4) They want salvation without seeking

In short, they want all the benefits that God can offer
Without having to submit to or seek or trust God at all.

That is a false son and God is certainly RIGHTFULLY ANGRY about it.

However, after God outlined His displeasure for their rebellion
We then came across verse 18
Which we would like to revisit to begin our study this morning.

(18) “Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him.”

Hopefully you remember that verse from last week.
• In spite of Israel’s rebellion.
• In spite of Israel’s obstinance.
• God still “longs to be gracious”.

That is His ultimate desire.
• He takes “no pleasure in the death of the wicked”.
• We heard previously as Isaiah referred to judgment as God’s “unusual task.”

God is a gracious and merciful Savior
And He “longs to be gracious to you”.

HOWEVER, even though grace is the preferred response of God
We also read in that verse that “He waits on high to have compassion on you.”

We see that God desires compassion,
But Isaiah also noted that God is not currently showing it.

GOD IS WAITING to demonstrate His compassion and grace.

WHY?
“For the LORD is a God of justice”
• He does delight in grace.
• He does desire to show compassion.
• But He will not do it apart from repentance.

“justice” is also very important to Him.

He does not, and He cannot simply overlook sin.
Justice forbids that.

So God waits for repentance before He shows compassion.

We finished by looking at the parable of the prodigal son in Luke’s gospel

• This boy who was also a false son.
• This one who wanted the inheritance from the father but who had no interest in loving or serving or seeking the father at all.
• And once the father gave him the inheritance he immediately departed and squandered it.

The boy found himself in hard times, just as Israel currently did with Assyria.
But like Israel, instead of immediately seeking his father
This boy tried to FIX THE PROBLEM HIMSELF and he hired himself out.

That was a bad decision and like seeking Egypt, it led only to shame.
He found himself feeding pigs and starving to death.

And this is when he came to his senses.
• He knew that returning to his father would require leaving his sin, repenting, and submitting himself to his father,
• But that is what he did.
• He left his sin, he sought his father, he repented, and he humbled himself.

And we saw that the Father responded just as Isaiah said.
• He was immediately gracious.
• He was immediately compassionate.

Leaving his sin, confessing his failure, and returning to his father
Was the smartest decision he ever made.

ISAIAH WOULD SAY THE SAME THING.
In fact, in verses 19-26 we have a wonderful passage of Scripture.

You could almost read it:
• Like a letter from the father to that prodigal son in the distant land.
• As though the father was reaching out to that lost boy and seeking to assure
him that if he would just leave his sin and come home it would certainly be
worth it.

For these verses outline for Israel
The effect that repentance would have on their lives.

IT IS IN FACT GOD SHOWING HIS HAND.
If they would repent and return to Him, they could be absolutely sure of how God would respond.

• They can come home with no confusion.
• They can come home with no doubt.
• If they will just repent and return God has already said what they can expect.

In fact God describes that day by 2 OVERARCHING REALITIES.
And these are important to see.

(25) “On every lofty mountain and on every high hill there will be streams of running water ON THE DAY of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.”

(26) “The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days, ON THE DAY the LORD binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise He has inflicted.”

So you have this day of reconciliation described by two major realities.

“on the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.”
• When Israel repents and returns like that prodigal did to his father it will be a “day of great slaughter”.
• It will be the day when God will turn His anger away from Israel and turn it toward their enemies.

We also read:
“on the day the LORD binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise He has inflicted.”
• When Israel repents and returns like that prodigal did to his father it will be a day when “the LORD binds up the fracture…and heals the bruise He has inflicted.”
• It will also be a day of healing for Israel.

So at the very least, on the day Israel returns to God
It will be a day in which God heals them and judges their enemies.

Certainly that is true for their current dilemma with Assyria.
That is a promise for their present day.

But there are also millennial realities in play here as well
For the future when Israel turns to God after having crucified the Messiah.

Peter said that:
Acts 3:17-21 “And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also. “But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.”

Peter told them the same thing.
If you will repent and return then Christ will return to you and usher in that time of great refreshing.

Now the reason I show you that
Is not just so we get a better understanding of the end times.

I show you that because I want you to understand that
God has not changed, nor has His plan for redemption.

• Isaiah preached this message about 2700 years ago.
• Peter preached his message about 2000 years ago.
• And that message is still true today.

If prodigals (false sons) will repent of their sin
And return to the Father and submit themselves to Him
Then He had already revealed how He will respond to them.

If you repent and return to God we already know how He will respond.
It hasn’t changed in 2700 years and it won’t change until Christ returns.

And this is what we want to look at this morning.
We want to get a glimpse of this promise of redemption.

We want to see what sort of things
God has promised to false sons if they will repent and return to Him.

And in our text this morning we see 3 realities that God will fulfill.
#1 GUARANTEED GRACE
Isaiah 30:19-22

Those 4 verses contain several wonderful promises that we will examine,
BUT AT THE HEART of them all is the statement in
verse 19, “He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry;”

That’s the real question isn’t it?
• If I have offended God.
• If I have been a false son.
• If I have taken all the blessings He has given me and thus far spent them on my own selfish pursuits.
• If I am now reaping the just benefits of my decisions and actions.

Can I really expect to get anything but an “I told you so” from God?
Can I really expect that God would give me the time of day?

WE STRUGGLE THERE BECAUSE WE KNOW OURSELVES.
Let’s just reverse the roles for a second.

Have you ever encountered someone who needed your help?
• And then they needed it again.
• And again.
• And again.

Then you find out
• That they make terrible life decisions
• And helping them is not a good financial investment.

Then you find out
• That they ignore all the advice you give them.

Then you find out
• That they don’t even like you they just use you to keep bailing them out.

And eventually you tell them, “No more help.”
But after a few months they find themselves in a terrible condition
And decide to humble themselves and return to you again.

How do you feel about it?
Do you think they expect to get help again?

I just point that out because I want you to understand
How costly it is to extend grace to someone.

Grace is easy when we measure someone to be deserving.

But when the person is absolutely and totally unworthy
We have a very difficult time offering it.
(and that is why we doubt God’s grace toward us when we return)

FORTUNATELY GOD IS NOT LIKE US.
• Even though they wanted nothing to do with His word.
• Even though they thought Egypt to be a better savior than Him.
• Even though they crucified His Son and blasphemed His name.
• Even though they reject to this day His messengers who preach the gospel.

EVEN THEN, when they cry out to Him He says, “He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry;”

That is a phenomenal promise!
• He won’t ignore you.
• He won’t reject you.
• He won’t flog you.
• “He will surely be gracious to you”

Let’s take a look at what THE SPECIFICS of this grace are.
What exactly does it mean that He will be gracious?

(19) “O people in Zion, inhabitant in Jerusalem, you will weep no longer.”

We are certainly familiar with the promises associated with our being with Christ, namely that He will wipe our tears from our eyes.

But this is NOT about when
The redeemed are released from their suffering.

This passage IS when the guilty are granted pardon for their sin.
• This is the man on death row about to be executed.
• He fears for his life and he faces the gallows.
• And he breaks into tears over the coming punishment.

But when he cries for deliverance, pardon is granted
And his reason for weeping is no more.

The fugitive has been forgiven.
The death sentence has been lifted.
It is the full reality of forgiveness.

For “He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry;”

Beyond that we read, “when He hears it, He will answer you.”

This is also remarkable!

In that story of the prodigal,
• We see that boy broken and returning to his father.
• Jesus told us that the father spotted him when he was still a long way off.

Would anyone have been surprised if the father had gone and hidden himself and instructed a servant to run that boy off his property?

That certainly would have been just.
That is certainly what the older brother would have done.

IT WAS A MIRACLE OF GRACE
That the father was even willing to hear the boy let alone answer him.

But do you understand that God so delights in being gracious
That His ear is always open to the penitent cry of his children?

• You DON’T have to make an appointment to cry out to God.
• You DON’T have to get level 3 security clearance to ask Him a question.
• You DON’T have to be the 9th caller on the radio to get to speak to Him.

If you come poor in spirit and with a broken heart and you cry out to God He will hear and “He will answer”.

(20) “Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher.”

While it is true that in your sin God determined to afflict you.
He is also quite ready to reconcile with you upon your repentance.

We think of Jesus’ offer:
Matthew 11:28-29 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.”

We hear the promise:
Romans 10:13 “for “WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.”

And that is the promise here.
• He’ll hear you.
• He’ll see you.
• He’ll answer you.
• He’ll be gracious to you.

(21) “Your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever your turn to the right or to the left.”

In short, He’ll guide you.
• When we come to God in humility and repentance,
• We come with the understanding that I will now submit to God’s will in my life.
• And when we come, we DON’T find a bitter God who has now decided to withhold His wisdom.

No, He takes us instantly as one of His sheep, and just as He has always done, “He guides us in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.”

• When He sees us misstep, He corrects.
• When He knows the better way, He guides.
• He keeps us from straying and holds us on the way.

He is committed to never again allowing us to accidentally wonder
Into that foreign land that nearly killed us the last time.

“Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be! Let Thy grace, Lord, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee: Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.”

AND HE DOES!

All of that is but a picture of this grace that He promises.

In short, the grace of God here can be explained with this phrase.

WHEN WE CRY OUT TO GOD FOR SALVATION,
THEN HE WILL BE A SAVIOR TO US.

• Not only will He forgive.
• Not only will He accept.
• But He will guide and lead and protect.
• He will deliver and care for us.

HE SAVES US!

And I can promise you this, if you are NOT HIS CHILD,
You’ve NEVER EXPERIENCED A SALVATION LIKE THIS anywhere else.

And THAT IS WHY we see the reality of verse 22.
(22) “And you will defile your graven images overlaid with silver, and your molten images plated with gold. You will scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, “Be gone!”

At that moment you realize
Just what awful saviors your old idols actually were.

• It is Jews now telling Egypt, “No thanks! I have a real savior now.”
• It is Muslims telling Muhammad to “Beat it!”
• It is Hindus telling all their gods, “Be gone!”
• It is Americans throwing off their unsatisfying sins.

THOSE THINGS BECOME SO USELESS AND SO UNFULFILLING.
They couldn’t save.
They couldn’t satisfy.

When you get one taste of a true Savior
You’ll never again feel the need to return to them.
HIS GRACE IS THAT SUFFICIENT!

This is what God has already promised to those who repent and return.
• You don’t have to wonder how God will respond to you.
• There is no need for anxiety.
• God has already guaranteed to be gracious to any and every sinner who repents of their sin and returns to Him.

• It is “grace greater than all our sin”
• It is “marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt”

It is as Paul said:
Romans 5:20 “… where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,”

It is those famous “But God…” verses of Scripture.

We once were dead in sin and desired only the lusts of the flesh.
Ephesians 2:4-5 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),”

Romans 5:7-8 “For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

It is God doing what we do not deserve.

Titus 3:3-7 “For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

It is just the marvelous grace of God.
And He has guaranteed to give it
To any sinner who will repent and return.

• He promised to Jerusalem through Isaiah as Assyria attacked.
• He promised to Jerusalem through Peter even after they had killed Jesus.
• He promises it to us if we will repent of our sin and call on His name.

GUARANTEED GRACE

#2 PROMISED PROVISION
Isaiah 30:23-25

It’s almost like Isaiah looks at the congregation and says,
“But wait, there’s more!”

This is one of the remarkable realities of grace.
When you receive grace
Then something else is guaranteed to come with it.

When Paul spoke of our justification he used Abraham as an example.
• Abraham was justified by faith.

And the reason God chose to justify Abraham by faith
Is so that God could save him by grace.
(If Abraham is justified by works then grace cannot be used)

And the reason God wanted to save Abraham by grace
Is because only when we are saved by grace
Can there be any guarantee of the promises.

Romans 4:16 “For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all,”

WHEN GRACE IS INVOLVED
You never have to worry about losing the promise.
(If it wasn’t achieved by merit then it’s not maintained by merit.)

AND THAT IS WHAT WE SEE HERE.
God’s guaranteed grace spills over into guaranteed promises.

Verses 19-22 spoke almost exclusively about the pardon of past sins and a return to favor from where we have fallen.

But God’s grace goes beyond just forgiving us in the past,
It also extends into our present.

(23-25) “Then He will give you rain for the seed which you will sow in the ground, and bread from the yield of the ground, and it will be rich and plenteous; on that day your livestock will graze in a roomy pasture. Also the oxen and the donkeys which work the ground will eat salted fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. On every lofty mountain and on every high hill there will be streams running with water on the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.”

Here we see God’s goodness expressed in the most obvious of ways – RAIN!

• Everyone here, especially those in the agricultural industry understand the necessity of rain and that is only God who can give it.

• Often times when God wanted to express His displeasure with Israel one of the first ways He did that was with drought.

RAIN WAS A PICTURE OF BLESSING.

• You’ve read Deuteronomy 28 and the outline of the blessings and the curses which God promises to bring upon His people depending on how well they obey the covenant.

Part of the blessing is found here:
Deuteronomy 28:11-12 “The LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your beast and in the produce of your ground, in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. “The LORD will open for you His good storehouse, the heavens, to give rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hand; and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.”

Just as drought is a picture of the curse so rain is a picture of blessing.

So now, not only is God acting merciful to the repentant sinner,
But He is going far above and beyond by promising to bless him.

• Rain which leads to crops which leads to bread.
• Rain for livestock to graze.
• So much rain and so many crops that you’ll actually feed “salted fodder” to your oxen and donkeys.

God will bless you.

We must also point out that this blessing is NOT UNIVERSAL,
But that it is ONLY FOR those whom God has redeemed.

For as we noted at the beginning.
(25) “On every lofty mountain and on every high hill there will be streams running with water on the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.”

• When Israel returns to God He will destroy their enemies.
• He will do it to Assyria in Isaiah’s day.
• He has promised it again in the future when Isaiah repents and returns.

God is not just going to bless the world indiscriminately,
But He will bless those who repent and return to Him.

These promises are for those prodigals who come home.
The prodigals who stay away will suffer only wrath and judgment.

BUT HOW WE LOVE THE ONGOING GRACE OF GOD!

Paul stated it plainly in Ephesians 1:
Ephesians 1:3 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,”

• Paul said, “every spiritual blessing”
• There is nothing that God has withheld from His people.

AND THEN PAUL ELABORATES.

Let’s talk about PAST blessings.

Ephesians 1:4-6 “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”

• It speaks of God foreknowing us.
• It speaks of God choosing us.
• It speaks of God predestining us.
• It speaks of God sending Christ for us.

Tremendous blessings of grace that our ours.

Let’s talk about PRESENT blessing that we enjoy today.

Ephesians 1:7-10 “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.”

• Current blessings like redemption
• Blessings like forgiveness
• Blessings like wisdom and insight
• God didn’t just forgive us and leave us, He blesses us today.

And then let’s talk about FUTURE blessings.

Ephesians 1:11-14 “In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.”

• Here we learn about the blessing of an inheritance.
• We see the blessing of security.
• We see the blessing of future glory.

The simple point is that God promises blessing for those whom He saves.

And again we think about that prodigal.
He humbled himself and repented and returned to his father.

• His father received him
• His father listened to him
• His father answered him
• His father forgave him

But his father also clothed him in garments of sonship
And threw a great banquet to celebrate the presence of his son.

That is what God does for those who repent and return to Him.

Guaranteed Grace Promised Provision
#3 HOPE AND HEALING
Isaiah 30:26

We know that when Christ returns there will be no need of the sun or the moon as Christ Himself will illumine the world.

In youth we like to sing that song, “On that day, we will see You, shining brighter than the sun…”

But here the announcement is NOT
About how Christ will outshine the sun.

Rather Isaiah speaks of a moon which shines like the sun
And a sun that shines 7 times brighter.

“like the light of seven days”

And we wonder what the point of that could be?

And I think the simple explanation is
A total eradication of darkness.

Ephesians 5:8 “for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light”

1 Thessalonians 5:5 “for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness;”

1 Peter 2:9 “But you are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;”

We are talking about the darkness of deception and hopelessness
BEING TOTALLY ERADICATED FOREVER.

When God saves His children He saves them into a life of hope.

You might say
• It is a hope seven times greater than anything the world has.
• It is a hope so strong that even the dark times are filled with it.

It is after all the day in which “the LORD binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise He has inflicted.”

• It is the day when God takes away our darkness.
• It is the day when God takes away our sin.
• It is the day when God mends our brokenness.
• It is the day when God heals our wicked souls.

It is a day of hope for the future.

• Jeremiah called it “a future and a hope”
• Matthew saw Jesus and called Him “A Great Light” to those sitting in darkness.

And it is promised by God to all who will repent and return to Him.

It is an invitation extended to sinners
• Who have grown weary of trusting in faulty shepherds.
• Who are tired of slopping the pigs in their life of bad choices.
• Who feel the disdain of their heavenly Father and want to be reconciled.
• Who suffer the curses of drought in their life.
• Who dwell in the darkness of hopelessness and long for something better.

Our God, in effect, sends out a letter to prodigals
And tells them to come home
And He will forgive them and bless them and give them hope.

IN FACT HE PROMISES TO DO IT.

AND THAT BRINGS US HERE TODAY.

• Are you tired of rebellion?
• Are you tired of the effects of not listening to God?
• Are you tired of trying to fix it all on your own?

Then you need to come to your senses as the prodigal did.
• You need to see that it is your sin that has landed you in this mess.

• You need to see that God gave you life and breathe and talent and abilities and income and many other things and thus far you have used them only for yourself and your fleshly enjoyment.

• You need to return to God and ask Him to forgive you for such sin.
• You need to submit to Him and tell Him that from now on you’ll listen.
• You need to trust Him to be your savior and your guide.

In the New Testament this is further clarified
Because now we know that it is Jesus that we must come to.

Jesus is actually the father in that prodigal story.
It is Jesus who accepted those tax collectors and sinners.

• If you will trust that Jesus is God made flesh, the only Savior.
• If you will trust that He lived the righteous life God demands for you.
• If you will trust that He died the atoning death God demands for you.
• If you will submit to Him and trust in His work.

Then this same promise of grace and provision and hope
Will be yours as well.

And take it from those in this room who have already done that.
Everyone will tell you it is so much better
Than the sinful life they once pursued.

Grace is greater than sin every day of the week.

So if you’ve never surrendered your life to Christ
I’m asking you to do that this morning.

Acts 3:19 “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord;”

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A Glimpse of Wrath
Isaiah 30:27-33
November 5, 2023

This morning we took a moment
To look at a tremendous invitation from God to His people.

The people of Judah can be easily compared to that rogue son
We refer to as the prodigal in the New Testament.

• They were an ungrateful, rebellious people.
• God referred to them as “false sons”
• Because they didn’t want to listen to God and they preferred other saviors.

But despite their rebellion we saw the grace of God on full display
As He bid them return with promises of grace and compassion.

Isaiah 30:19 “O people in Zion, inhabitant in Jerusalem, you will weep no longer. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you.”

It is a wonderfully reassuring promise to sinners
That if they will repent and return then He will hear and forgive.

THAT IS TRUE OF GOD EVEN TODAY.
For even we wait for the day that Peter spoke of when Israel will finally repent and return to God and Christ will return to set up His earthly kingdom.

Acts 3:19-21 “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.”

Peter preaches in Jerusalem to the Jews that if they would simply
“Repent and return” then “times of refreshing” would come.

• Those “times of refreshing” are the millennial kingdom.
• They occur when Jesus returns for “the period of restoration of all things”
• It is the time period which Peter says, “God spoke by the mouth of His holy
prophets from ancient time.”

And certainly Isaiah is one of those prophets.

So point to be made is that
There is grace for those who repent and return
And judgment for those who will not.

And just as this morning we took a glimpse of redemption,
TONIGHT WE TAKE A GLIMPSE OF WRATH.

This is STILL part of the INVITATION God is giving to His people Israel.
It is the promise of what God will do to all those who afflict His people.

Zechariah perhaps said it the plainest:
Zechariah 2:8 “For thus says the LORD of hosts, “After glory He has sent Me against the nations which plunder you, for he who touches you, touches the apple of His eye.”

I had someone in my office recently who was asking about the current Israeli conflict with Hamas.

This person’s take was that
• Israel was an extreme violator of human rights.
• Israel is a corrupt nation.
• Israel is getting what she deserves.

Now listen WE DON’T, and God doesn’t give Israel some pass to do whatever she wants under promise of total protection from punishment.

If we’ve learned anything from Scripture it is that
No one has disciplined Israel throughout the years more than God.

Currently as a people they stand in rebellion against God
As a people who have rejected His Son and failed to repent and return.

And God has routinely raised up foreign nations to afflict Israel.
Just go read the book of Judges.

However, what we also learn throughout Scripture is that
Despite their moments of rebellion and despite the just discipline of the LORD, Israel remains God’s chosen people.

He has made promises to them that He will not forsake.

And therefore we also learn throughout Scripture
• That any nation whom God raises up to discipline Israel
• Had be extremely careful how they do it,
• For if they move an inch to far they invite severe judgment upon themselves.

We have already seen this regarding the enemy of Isaiah’s day,
Namely Assyria.

Isaiah 10:5-7 “Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger And the staff in whose hands is My indignation, I send it against a godless nation And commission it against the people of My fury To capture booty and to seize plunder, And to trample them down like mud in the streets. Yet it does not so intend, Nor does it plan so in its heart, But rather it is its purpose to destroy And to cut off many nations.”

Assyria went too far and earned annihilation from God as a result.

Isaiah 10:16-19 “Therefore the Lord, the GOD of hosts, will send a wasting disease among his stout warriors; And under his glory a fire will be kindled like a burning flame. And the light of Israel will become a fire and his Holy One a flame, And it will burn and devour his thorns and his briars in a single day. And He will destroy the glory of his forest and of his fruitful garden, both soul and body, And it will be as when a sick man wastes away. And the rest of the trees of his forest will be so small in number That a child could write them down.”

Seeking the destruction of the people of God
Is a fast track to experiencing God’s wrath.

Consider even what Paul promised the church at Thessalonica as he spoke of the coming day of the Lord.

2 Thessalonians 1:6-10 “For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed—for our testimony to you was believed.”

It is this wrath that we examine here in the final segment of Isaiah 30.
It is God’s wrath which will be poured upon those who afflict His people.

Isaiah uses it STILL AS AN INVITATION to his people
Of God’s great affection for them
And as a call for them to return to the only One who truly cares for them.

We learn the same.
• We see in Isaiah 30 a God who is a great avenger of His people.
• We see a God who will rise up to defend His own.
• We see a God who will repay with vengeance those who persecute His sons and daughters.

So as we study,
IF YOU ARE A CHILD OF GOD, let this segment encourage you that God will not forever let His people be trampled.

IF YOU ARE NOT A CHILD OF GOD, let this segment encourage you to return to your Father who will never fail to defend His own.

Tonight as we look at it, I just want to give you 5 words.
5 words that sort of depict and describe the type of wrath that is coming on those who afflict God’s people.

#1 TORRENT
Isaiah 30:27-28a

“Behold, the name of the LORD comes from a remote place; Burning is His anger and dense is His smoke; His lips are filled with indignation And His tongue is like a consuming fire; His breath is like an overflowing torrent, Which reaches to the neck…”

Clearly you see that God’s wrath is compared to “an overflowing torrent”

A “torrent” is defined as a “a strong and fast-moving stream of water”
It becomes an analogy for any kind of “sudden and violent outpouring”

The picture here is one of absolute sudden violence and terror.

Isaiah begins with the word “Behold” which is a sort of startling word.

IT IS BEST TO PICTURE THE SCENE
Of a someone like a bully afflicting one of God’s children.

• He thinks no one sees him, he thinks he is perfectly safe in what he is doing.
• But he looks up and out of nowhere
• Here comes God running at him with fury and fire and burning anger
• And God just obliterates the bully.

You see God was always watching.
• God knew exactly what was going on.
• And on the day when God is finished disciplining His people
• He will charge and run right over the bully who has thrown the punches.

It is a violent expression of instant revenge.

And the wording couldn’t be more descriptive.
• “Burning…anger”
• “Dense…smoke”
• “lips…filled with indignation”
• “tongue…a consuming fire”
• “breath…an overflowing torrent”

He’s NOT coming to investigate.
He’s NOT coming to break up the fight.
He’s NOT coming to simply stop the bully.

He is coming in full fury and revenge like a Father
Who has seen His Son be struck one too many times
And is coming to totally and violently destroy his oppressor.

There is No mercy here.
There is No restraint here.
There is No understanding.

God has come to annihilate the one who has attacked His bride.

IT REMINDS ME OF THE STORY
When the Amalekite reported to David that Saul had been slain.

• He reported how he found Saul leaning on his spear and couldn’t recover
• And says that Saul asked him to kill him and so the man did.
• He then brought Saul’s crown and bracelet to David.

David responded:
2 Samuel 1:13-15 “David said to the young man who told him, “Where are you from?” And he answered, “I am the son of an alien, an Amalekite.” Then David said to him, “How is it you were not afraid to stretch out your hand to destroy the LORD’S anointed?” And David called one of the young men and said, “Go, cut him down.” So he struck him and he died.”

And the point is that there is wrath and anger and vengeance and fury from God against those who afflict His people,
Even if His people deserve it.

I’ve told you (I think even recently)
That to me perhaps the most terrifying seal that is opened in the book of the Revelation is the 5th seal which reveals the martyrs below the altar who are crying out for vengeance.

That is the scariest because it calls into action this God of vengeance.
It motivates the opening of the 6th seal.

Revelation 6:12-17 “I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

When God rises up to defend His own He comes in a torrent.
It is fast and filled with fury.

Even in Isaiah’s day God went out in one night and struck down 185,000 Assyrians.

No one defends God’s people like God does.

Take heart church, the God who has redeemed you
And adopted you as His own feels the same way about you.

Torrent
#2 TARGET
Isaiah 30:28b-29

“…To shake the nations back and forth in a sieve, And to put in the jaws of the peoples the bridle which leads to ruin. You will have songs as in the night when you keep the festival, And gladness of heart as when one marches to the sound of the flute, To go to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel.”

The simple point to be discussed here is TO ANSWER THE QUESTION:
• When God’s wrath comes, who will feel it?
• Who is He angry at?
• Who is it focused on?

And we find that God’s wrath is not universal.
When He comes in fury He is NOT coming to destroy His people,
He is coming to destroy the nations who afflicted them.

He is coming “to shake the nations back and forth in a sieve”
• That is a testing process.
• That is a separating process.

And those who are found to have afflicted His people He will “put in the jaws of the peoples the bridle which leads to ruin.”
• That is to say, for all those who have been found to have been enemies of His people, they will have no choice but to go to judgment.
• We found out in Psalms 32 that the bridal is used to make the horse and mule go where they would not willingly go on their own.

And that is precisely what God will do here.
Those nations who afflicted His people, after God runs over them
He will then lead them to destruction.

It just resonates again that
There will be NO MERCY for those who attack His people.

And then we are shown THE RESPONSE OF HIS PEOPLE to His action.

Now we turn from the bully whom God has absolutely pummeled
And we turn to the child who has just been delivered from the bully.

(29) “You will have songs as in the night when you keep the festival, And gladness of heart as when one marches to the sound of the flute, to go to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel.”

You clearly see that God’s wrath does not fall on everyone.
It falls on the nations, but not on His people.

We know this:
Romans 8:1 “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

We know what Paul promised to the Thessalonians.
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 “Now as to the times and the epochs, brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with Him. Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing.”

Just as God’s salvation is only for those who repent,
So His wrath is only for those who do not.

HIS TARGET IS SINNERS, NOT SONS.

The day of God’s vengeance will NOT BE A SAD DAY for His people.

It will be a day of the most wonderful celebrating,
Singing, dancing, and enjoyment.

Isaiah compares it to
• A festival where people have gathered and sing songs late into the night.
• A people who are eager to arrive in Jerusalem to attend a feast and enter dancing.
• It is picturesque of David dancing before the LORD as they brought Ark of the Covenant into the city.

You’re going to be happy!
You’re going to celebrate!
It’s going to be a party!

• The bully has been crushed!
• The enemy has been eliminated!
• And you’re going to love it!

What a reminder to the people of God.
WHAT AN INVITATION TO THEM!

Would Egypt promise them such deliverance?
Would Egypt guarantee such a celebration?

Of course not!
But God will.

They should most certainly repent and return to their Father.

Torrent, Target
#3 TERROR
Isaiah 30:30-31

And just when you thought that God showing up and pummeling your enemy was all it entailed, now you realize it is not.

For AFTER God shows up and destroys your enemy,
• He will then consign that enemy to “the flame of a consuming fire”
• And will continue to beat him for all eternity.

The statement is remarkable.
“And the LORD will cause His voice of authority to be heard, And the descending of His arm to be seen in fierce anger…”

See that bully had no problem afflicting God’s people
Because He had NEVER HEARD God’s voice;
He had NEVER SEEN God’s wrath in action.

He just afflicted God’s people with no fear of any repercussion.
To him God was nothing but a fairytale that need not be feared at all.

AND THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN GOD SHOWED UP!
And God was no fairytale at all.

God was speaking to him!
God was beating him!

• HE HEARD the voice of His indignation.
• HE SAW God rare back His arm and thrust it into his face.
• HE FELT God pick him up and toss him into the flame.

And the result now of seeing and hearing God?
TERROR

“For at the voice of the LORD Assyria will be terrified, when He strikes with the rod.”

Have you ever been in an experience where you felt genuine terror?
Try it for all eternity.

We are talking about a constant and unrelenting experience
Of absolute fear and dread that will never let up.

Hebrews 10:31 “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Jonathan Edwards once spoke of the sheer glory of the sun
• And how man cannot gaze upon it,
• And yet man thinks that he will nonchalantly approach its maker?

The sun is 93 million miles away and you can’t look at for even a second.
We read in Scripture than in the new kingdom there will be no need of the sun for the Lamb will illumine the world.

If you are not covered in the righteousness of His Son,
It will be the most terrifying thing you can imagine.

Israel, has anyone else every offered to avenge you in such fashion?

Torrent, Target, Terror
#4 TAMBOURINES
Isaiah 30:32a

“And every blow of the rod of punishment, Which the LORD will lay on him, Will be with the music of tambourines and lyres;”

That statement almost seems out of place,
But it is again a reminder that the thrust of this chapter
Is on THE BENEFITS OF GOD’S SALVATION.

He is calling to the children of Israel
To remind them of His great deliverance.

Right now you trust in Egypt who cannot save.
• Egypt will not deliver you.
• Egypt will not stop your bully.
• Egypt will not terrify him.
• Egypt will not allow you to celebrate your deliverance.

But that is exactly what God will allow you to do.

Isaiah actually says that the tambourine players in Israel
Will keep beat with the blows God will lay upon their enemies.

They’ll set the beating to music.

I know that seems so bizarre for us to think about,
But this is hardly the only time we see such a reality in Scripture.

The very end of Isaiah says:
Isaiah 66:22-24 “For just as the new heavens and the new earth Which I make will endure before Me,” declares the LORD, “So your offspring and your name will endure. “And it shall be from new moon to new moon And from sabbath to sabbath, All mankind will come to bow down before Me,” says the LORD. “Then they will go forth and look On the corpses of the men Who have transgressed against Me. For their worm will not die And their fire will not be quenched; And they will be an abhorrence to all mankind.”

There Isaiah speaks of the new heavens and new earth
And all the celebrating and worship that will occur in that place.

But did you catch the field trip they’ll all be taking?
“Then they will go forth and look on the corpses of men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched; And they will be an abhorrence to all mankind.”

They’re going to go and look at the slain and will abhor them.
• It is a celebration of sorts.
• It is a glaring gaze of justice upon the enemies of God.

We’ve certainly seen the reality in the book of the Revelation.
Revelation 19:1-6 “After these things I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God; BECAUSE HIS JUDGMENTS ARE TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS; for He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and HE HAS AVENGED THE BLOOD OF HIS BOND-SERVANTS ON HER.” And a second time they said, “Hallelujah! HER SMOKE RISES UP FOREVER AND EVER.” And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sits on the throne saying, “Amen. Hallelujah!” And a voice came from the throne, saying, “Give praise to our God, all you His bond-servants, you who fear Him, the small and the great.” Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.”

It is a song taking place during the aftermath of the judgment of God.

And certainly it is a celebration that God has now begun to reign,
But it is also a celebration that the wicked are destroyed.

How else do you describe the first Hallelujah?
“for He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality”

How else do you describe the second Hallelujah?
“Her smoke rises up forever and ever”

That is exactly what Isaiah is speaking of.

God will not only rush in with fury to deliver you,
But God will totally remove that bully, terrify him in hell,
And you will rejoice as God afflicts him.

What is being spoken of is a total deliverance and vindication.
• Can Egypt promise that?
• Can any would-be deliverer that you know of promise that today?

Only God does that.
It is a solemn call for Israel to repent and return to Him.

What He has in store for them
Is far better than anything they have ever imagined before.

Torrent, Target, Terror, Tambourines
#5 TOPHETH
Isaiah 30:32b-33

“And in battles, brandishing weapons, He will fight them. For Topheth has long been ready, Indeed, it has been prepared for the king. He has made it deep and large, A pyre of fire with plenty of wood; The breath of the LORD, like a torrent of brimstone, sets it afire.”

That is an interesting word for sure, but one you will quickly understand.

Isaiah says that “Topheth has long been ready,”

What is this “Topheth”?

You’ve seen it other places in Scripture.
Jeremiah 7:31-32 “They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, and it did not come into My mind. “Therefore, behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when it will no longer be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of the Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth because there is no other place.”

• Jeremiah speaks of “Topeth” as a place located “in the valley of the son of Hinnom” where high places were built.
• He says in “Topheth” they used “to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire”
• And God says because of this sin God would quit calling this place “Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the place of Slaughter”

In fact God says that they will “bury in Topheth”

You see it again later in Jeremiah:
Jeremiah 19:6 “therefore, behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of Ben-hinnom, but rather the valley of Slaughter.”

There you see it again
“Topheth or the valley of Ben-hinnom”

The word “Topheth” literally means “place of fire”
It was also referred to as “the valley of Ben-hinnom”

In Jeremiah’s day it was the local dump.
It was outside the city and it is where refuse and animal carcasses
And everything else detestable was taken and burned.

It was repulsive to God because Israel used to
Actually burn their children there as sacrifices to Molech.

And God said that He would forsake that place, but that ultimately sinners would be buried there.

Now, take those words.
“Topheth” or “Ben-hinnom”

And we come to the New Testament.
Matthew 5:22 “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”

The word there that Jesus uses for “the fiery hell” is:
GHEH-EN-NAH
(sounds like Ben-hinnom doesn’t it?)

Jesus used that dump that was just south of Jerusalem
As a modern day example of the hell that awaited.

That place of burning, that place of disgrace, that place of filth…

Jesus picked the worst imaginable place on earth
And compared it to hell.

In fact later, He was even more specific:
Mark 9:42-48 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea. “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, where THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE, AND THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED. “If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than, having your two feet, to be cast into hell, where THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE, AND THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED. “If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell, where THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE, AND THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED.”

• That dump was the place of magots because of all the animal carcasses and the fire was always burning.

And that is the place Isaiah speaks of here
Which God has prepared for the enemies of His people.

“For Topheth has long been ready, Indeed, it has been prepared for the king. He has made it deep and large, A pyre of fire with plenty of wood; The breath of the LORD, like a torrent of brimstone, sets it afire.”

It is “ready”

Many a believer has taken much comfort in the reading of the first 3 verses of John 14.

John 14:1-3 “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”

• That is a tremendous promise of comfort
• As the believer is allowed to contemplate and envision
• The home that is being prepared for them.

Well, Isaiah 30:33 is the opposite equivalent for the non-believer.
They have a home being prepared for them as well.

Matthew 25:41 “Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;”

This home was originally prepared for the devil and his demonic army,
But it is ready and large enough for sinners too.

It is a place of fire and burning.
Just read Revelation 9 when the pit is opened and read about how so much smoke comes out that for a time it blots out the sun.

It is a place of burning and fire and there is plenty of it.

But then look at the remarkable statement.
“the breath of the LORD, like a torrent of brimstone, sets it afire.”

God is compared there almost to a dragon of sorts.

Do you see that it is NOT Satan who is in charge.
It is NOT Satan who lights the fire.
It is not Satan who holds captive men in their judgment.

It is God!
• He is the One who captures.
• He is the One who condemns.
• He is the One who torments.
• He is the One who lights the fire.

Revelation 14:9-11 “Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. “And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.”

Their suffering is “in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.”

HE IS THE PUNISHER.

So what we read of here is a total deliverance from the enemy
And a total and perpetual punishment of that enemy.

Can anyone else deliver you so thoroughly?
Can anyone else give you such relief?
NO.

Israel, repent and return back to God.
• He alone is your Savior!
• He alone is your deliverer!
• He alone can handle your foe!

And of course that is true for the church today as well.
• Why would you trust in any other Savior?
• Why would you call on him who can’t save?

Run to Christ!
• Trust in Him!
• He is the great deliverer of His people!
• He is the great avenger of His people!