Go Forth From Babylon – Part 2
Isaiah 48:1-22 (3-22)
April 28, 2024
We began this chapter this morning.
It is God addressing the people of Israel who are living in Babylon,
Whom He is rescuing, but we have hit a snag.
They don’t want to leave Babylon.
Now we looked at those first 2 verses this morning
Because I thought it to be an important reminder to the church.
#1 HYPOCRISY EXPOSED
Isaiah 48:1-2
We only looked here
Because it gave us a chance at some really good self-evaluation.
Here we had people who talked a good game,
• But when the “rubber met the road” they proved themselves to be nothing but shallow hypocrites.
“they call themselves after the holy city And lean on the God of Israel”
That is to say
• They embrace the name “Jew” after the city Jerusalem.
• And they love to talk about their faith in God.
But on the day when God called them to exercise that faith,
Leave Babylon and return to the city they claimed to love, they balked.
It is apparent that their boast was an empty one.
God said they “swear by the name of the LORD And invoke the God of Israel, but not in truth nor in righteousness.”
The equivalent today would be
• Those who claim to be citizens of heaven and who profess to know Christ,
• But when the rubber meets the road they refuse to leave the world.
• They won’t forsake their possessions or comforts.
• They won’t forsake their earthly inheritance.
The reality is that they love this world and they want to keep it.
That is exactly who these Jews were
And God exposed them right off the bat.
WE FOCUSED ON THAT THIS MORNING
Because it is a reality we must deal with.
• It is a danger we must protect ourselves from.
• It is a sin we must repent of.
• It is something that sinful men need to be saved from.
We understand that.
WELL TONIGHT, we move forward in the text.
And based on the hypocrisy we saw in the first 2 verses,
The next point is not surprising.
#2 FRUSTRATION EXPRESSED
Isaiah 48:3-8
The frustration here is obviously God’s frustration.
And who can blame Him?
• He shows up to save His people with His mighty right arm
• And when He gets there He finds that they don’t really want to be saved.
• They love their sin and they want to keep it.
• They love the darkness and reject the light.
You’re obviously seeing a parallel here with the coming of Christ.
John 1:11 “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.”
They wanted a Messiah to come and reign,
But they didn’t want one who required them to let go of the world.
We saw the frustration of Christ in His earthly ministry
And we see that same frustration from God here in Isaiah 48.
He is dealing with a people, whom He came to save,
Who don’t want to be saved.
And here God’s frustration comes pouring out.
And the point of Isaiah here is this:
GOD IS NOT SURPRISED BY YOUR HYPOCRISY,
IN FACT HE PLANNED FOR IT.
What do you mean?
God is going to talk about two ways He has worked on Israel’s behalf.
• The first is through PROPHECY
• The second is through MYSTERY
And He did both because of the sinful hypocrisy of Israel.
Let me show you.
FIRST we recognize that God worked through prophecy.
(3) “I declared the former things long ago And they went forth from My mouth, and I proclaimed them. Suddenly I acted, and they came to pass.”
Let’s think about the Babylonian captivity for a moment.
• Did God speak about this long ago?
• Did God proclaim them in former days?
Listen to what God said through Moses:
Leviticus 26:27-31 “Yet if in spite of this you do not obey Me, but act with hostility against Me, then I will act with wrathful hostility against you, and I, even I, will punish you seven times for your sins. ‘Further, you will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters you will eat. ‘I then will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and heap your remains on the remains of your idols, for My soul shall abhor you. ‘I will lay waste your cities as well and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your soothing aromas.”
God said if you don’t obey Me then I will bring judgment on your cities and make your sanctuaries desolate.
Or how about this?
Deuteronomy 28:49-50 “The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young.”
God absolutely prophesied that He would send His people into exile.
Jeremiah spoke of it specifically in the days in which it occurred.
But God also prophesied that He would bring them back from the land of their oppression.
Leviticus 26:44-45 “‘Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God. ‘But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the LORD.’”
Deuteronomy 30:4 “If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back.”
So this whole Babylonian exile thing is nothing new.
And of course we could read more passages from Moses
Or read several prophecies from Jeremiah where we see these things promised.
AND THE POINT IS THAT the exile and return
Where spoken by God in prophetic fashion long before it happened.
And the immediate question we have now is:
WHY DID GOD DO THAT?
• Why did He prophesy it ahead of time?
(4) “Because I know that you are obstinate, And your neck is an iron sinew And your forehead bronze.”
I told you ahead of time because you are stubborn and hard-headed.
God told Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 3:4-8 “Then He said to me, “Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with My words to them. “For you are not being sent to a people of unintelligible speech or difficult language, but to the house of Israel, nor to many peoples of unintelligible speech or difficult language, whose words you cannot understand. But I have sent you to them who should listen to you; yet the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, since they are not willing to listen to Me. Surely the whole house of Israel is stubborn and obstinate. “Behold, I have made your face as hard as their faces and your forehead as hard as their foreheads.”
You are a stubborn people.
What does them being stubborn have to do with God telling them ahead of time?
(5) “Therefore I declared them to you long ago, Before they took place I proclaimed them to you, So that you would not say, ‘My idol has done them, And my graven image and my molten image have commanded them.”
God says, “I knew how stubborn and hard-headed you were. I knew that if I just delivered you, then you give credit to your idol instead of Me. So, I told you ahead of time so as to leave no doubt that it was Me who did it.”
And then God says,
NOW, WILL YOU NOT ACKNOWLEDGE IT?
(6a) “You have heard; look at all this. And you, will you not declare it?”
Will you not now admit that I am the One doing it and will you not tell everyone that this is Me!
I’m not surprised that you don’t want to leave Babylon,
You’ve always been a stubborn and hard-headed people.
I’ve known that from the beginning
That is even why I have to spell everything out to you before I do it
So that you will believe it.
You can feel God’s frustration there can’t you?
Do you wonder why God has told us so many things ahead of time?
SAME REASON.
Because as sinful human beings we are prone to credit the wrong things for what God is clearly doing.
But prophecy is not the only way God has worked with His people.
God has also employed MYSTERY.
(6b-7a) “I proclaim to you new things from this time, Even hidden things which you have not known. They are created now and not long ago; And before today you have not heard them,”
Now God is referring to the specifics of His plan;
• Namely the exaltation and commissioning of Cyrus to conquer Babylon.
God spoke long ago that He would send His people into a foreign nation and then deliver them from it.
But until recently the people did not know that
The nation was Babylon and the deliverer was Cyrus.
And as is common with God, while He does make promises for the future,
He doesn’t give us all the details ahead of time.
Here God reveals why He didn’t tell them everything until recently.
(7b) “So that you will not say, ‘Behold, I knew them.’”
This is NOT just like that “know it all teenager” response where you tell them something and they say, “I already knew that.”
This speaks more of a person
Who disdains and mocks the truth that is given.
The Hebrew word there is YADA
Ever hear the phrase “yada, yada, yada”
What God speaks of here is when He does reveal His plan
And then He has to listen to all the debate and disagreement
And pundits sit and tear that plan apart.
God says, “That’s why I don’t tell you everything early, you just argue with it.”
(8) “You have not heard, you have not known. Even from long ago your ear has not been open, Because I knew that you would deal treacherously; And you have been called a rebel from birth.”
That is to say, “If I tell you too much about My plan and you have time to think about it, then you assume you know everything and refuse My plans.”
So we have God here who knows exactly what it is like
To deal with stubborn, obstinate and treacherous people.
You tell them part of the plan ahead of time Or they won’t believe you did it,
But you can’t tell them too much of the plan because they’ll reject it.
God knows what it’s like
To deal with stubborn and treacherous people.
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,”
So, when He does finally reveal His plan
To save them from Babylon and send them home through Cyrus,
He is not surprised to find that they have rejected it.
“you have been called a rebel from birth.”
God knows what it is to deal with sinful and stubborn people.
Furthermore, God knows how to save sinful and stubborn people.
This, incidentally, is what makes things like
Unconditional Election and Effective Call so important.
It’s the only way rebels will ever be saved.
So we understand the setting.
• God has sent Cyrus to save.
• Israel doesn’t want to be saved.
• God exposes their hypocrisy,
• But in frustration admits that He is not surprised by it.
And if we were God,
We might just grant their wishes and leave them in Babylon.
• You want Babylon, fine stay in Babylon.
• I’ll just judge and destroy you along with the Babylonians.
• That would certainly be just.
But it is not God.
#3 RESTRAINT EXPLAINED
Isaiah 48:9-11
God should just go ahead and judge them, but He won’t.
WHY?
(9) “For the sake of My name I delay My wrath, And for My praise I restrain it for you, In order not to cut you off.”
You certainly deserve to be left in Babylon, but I won’t.
And I won’t because My glory is at stake.
God has promised to save these people.
• God has made a covenant with them that He will not break.
• They deserve judgment, but He gave His word to their forefathers.
• God will not defile His reputation.
We remember it in Ezekiel 36 when He outlined the new covenant.
Ezekiel 36:22-23 “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. “I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight.”
Ezekiel 36:32 “I am not doing this for your sake,” declares the Lord GOD, “let it be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel!”
It is like when God told Moses
After the incident of the golden calf that He was going to destroy them.
• Moses interceded that God spare them for the sake of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
• And God spared the people.
It was for His reputation, not their merit.
God has never saved sinners because they deserve it.
God saves sinners for the glory of His name.
AND HERE IT IS TO DEFEND HIS NAME.
Instead of sending them to Babylon, God should have destroyed them,
But He made promises to them.
(10) “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver…”
• To refine silver you pass it completely through the fire and burn it until all that is impure is gone.
God says, “I haven’t done that to you, or else none would have survived.”
“I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.”
You deserved destruction, you received sanctification.
I should have cut you off, but I made promises to your forefathers
We are continually blown away by God’s sovereign election.
Look at it here:
• I have come to save you!
• We don’t want to be saved!
• Well I’m saving you, but not because you deserve it.
• I’m saving you because I said I would, and I am no liar!
We see the same with Israel even today.
Romans 11:28-29 “From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”
Today we see a new rise in Anti-semitism.
The past few weeks has seen numerous college campuses embarking on segregation of Jewish students and faculty.
I’ve even seen multiple evangelicals insist that we should not stand with Israel because they are an immoral and corrupt people.
• They mention the homosexuality that runs rampant through Israel.
• They mention the hostility toward Christ that is in the nation.
• They mention their secularism and corruption.
• And they say, “Israel is pagan they are corrupt and we should not side with
them, they are not God’s people.”
And my answer would be:
WHAT ELSE IS NEW?
That’s not just who they are, that’s who they’ve always been.
And yet God made promises that He will not break.
Salvation has never been by merit.
• You proving to me that Israel is corrupt does not convince me that God won’t save them,
• It only enforces what I have always believed; namely that God will save them by pure grace.
He made promises and He will keep them.
For the glory of His name.
So you may not want to leave Babylon.
But you’re leaving.
And I for one am so thankful for this sovereign willingness of God.
I am so thankful for His effectual call.
People love to defend this so-called “Free Will of Man”.
They say things like,
• “God will never violate our free will.”
• “The Holy Spirit is a gentleman, He’ll never make you decide.”
• “Jesus is knocking, oh won’t you let Him come in.”
But Jesus said, “All that Father has given Me will come to Me.”
I am thankful He is faithful to the glory of His name.
He said He would save His people
So He will not let them stay in Babylon, but He will save them.
#4 INVITATION EXTENDED
Isaiah 48:12-16
3 times in this segment we see the command to “Listen” (12, 14, 16)
God is speaking to this stubborn people
Whom He has already determined to save
And He calls them to pay attention to what He has to say.
All three of these commands to listen revolve around:
GOD’S EFFECTUAL CALL
You see in verse 12, “Listen to Me, O Jacob, even Israel whom I called”
• You are Mine because I called you to be.
You see in verse 13, “Surely My hand founded the earth, And My right hand spread out the heavens; When I call to them, they stand together.”
• The heaven and earth exist because I called them to be.
You see in verse 15, “I, even I, have spoken; indeed I have called him”
• Cyrus is coming because I called him to come.
The commands here to listen
Are NOT God giving His people the option to respond or not.
This invitation is for them to get it through their heads
That He is doing this by His sovereign decree.
So you realize that you are Israel because I called you.
And you realize that creation exists because I called it.
So we see that first call to listen:
(12-13) “Listen to Me, O Jacob, even Israel whom I called; I am He, I am the first, I am also the last. Surely My hand founded the earth, And My right hand spread out the heavens; When I call to them, they stand together.”
LISTEN: My call in the past was perfectly fulfilled.
• Creation happened
• You are My people Israel.
No one could stop it.
Pay attention to what I’m saying!
Then we see that second call to listen:
(14-15) ““Assemble, all of you, and listen! Who among them has declared these things? The LORD loves him; he will carry out His good pleasure on Babylon, And His arm will be against the Chaldeans. “I, even I, have spoken; indeed I have called him, I have brought him, and He will make his ways successful.”
This is His current calling and it too will be fulfilled.
I know if you read the MacArthur study Bible
The notes say that this cannot be Cyrus, and it must be Jesus.
I’m going to disagree here.
• I’m not going to remove from this chapter the immediate application for the
people it was written to.
God is talking about Cyrus here.
Is it peculiar that God says He loves him? Yes.
• But it is peculiar that God would call him a messiah too.
God is here reiterating that, like it or not, Cyrus is the plan.
Just like creation, and just like with Israel;
God says (15) “indeed I have called him”
HE IS COMING.
• I raised him up.
• I am going to use him.
• He will carry out My plan.
• He is going to deliver you.
• He is going to send you home.
• He is going to rebuild My temple.
This is going to happen.
You need to get that through your head.
I AM NOT LETTING YOU STAY IN BABYLON.
Then we see that third call to listen:
(16) “Come near to Me, listen to this: From the first I have not spoken in secret, From the time it took place, I was there. And now the Lord GOD has sent Me, and His Spirit.”
This is the future call that is also coming.
• Here is the prophetic part.
• Here is the presence of Christ.
Verse 16 introduces us to a 3rd speaker.
“now the Lord GOD has sent Me, and His Spirit”
Some believe it is just Isaiah interjecting
That He has been sent by God to deliver this message.
The translators of the NASB obviously believe it to be a reference to Christ and that is why they capitalized the word “Me” in the verse.
And I think they’ve got it right there.
From the beginning God has not tried to hide at all that
Cyrus is a prophetic type.
This is why God called him “My anointed” back in chapter 45.
All the while we have sensed that
The message is more than just a message for those refugees in Babylon.
THIS IS MESSAGE FOR ISRAEL TO LISTEN.
Not just about what God did in choosing them.
Not just about what God is doing in sending Cyrus.
But also to what God will do in sending them Jesus Christ.
“From the time it took place, I was there. And now the Lord GOD has sent Me, and His Spirit.”
Christ is interjecting here to Israel.
Christ is joining the call for Israel to listen.
“You can’t stay in Babylon and you can’t keep the world.”
IT’S LIKE CYRUS IS A TEST
“You must learn to follow Cyrus out of Babylon because soon you’re going to heave to follow Me out of the world.”
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE INVITATION HERE?
1. We have people who call themselves Jews but who have no interest in returning to Jerusalem.
2. They frustrate God, but He is not surprised, they’ve been this way from the beginning.
3. They actually deserve to be destroyed, but He has determined to save them for the glory of His name.
And now He approaches them and tells them to “Listen…listen…listen”
Quit being stubborn and listen.
Quit arguing and listen.
Quit rebelling and listen.
STAYING IN BABYLON IS NOT AN OPTION.
And you’d better learn to figure this out now
Because the real Savior is coming later
And refusing Him is not an option either.
#5 SUBMISSION EXPECTED
Isaiah 48:17-22
God starts out with a reminder
Of where a lack of submission has gotten them in the past.
(17-19) “Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, “I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, Who leads you in the way you should go. “If only you had paid attention to My commandments! Then your well-being would have been like a river, And your righteousness like the waves of the sea. “Your descendants would have been like the sand, And your offspring like its grains; Their name would never be cut off or destroyed from My presence.”
It was not a good idea, obviously.
God speaks of the reality that caused the Babylonian Exile to begin with.
• Had Israel simply obeyed Him and honored their half of the covenant then God would have blessed them.
• Instead, they landed themselves in this mess by being stubborn and rebellious.
THAT IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA.
And now we come to the present.
Now the rubber meets the road again.
(20-22) “Go forth from Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans! Declare with the sound of joyful shouting, proclaim this, Send it out to the end of the earth; Say, “The LORD has redeemed His servant Jacob.” They did not thirst when He led them through the deserts. He made the water flow out of the rock for them; He split the rock and the water gushed forth. “There is no peace for the wicked,” says the LORD.”
You can either
Submit to My plan and follow My deliverer and be at peace and enjoy My sustenance.
Or you can
Try to reject me and stay in Babylon, but there will be “no peace” with that decision.
SO CHURCH, ARE YOU UNDERSTANDING THE POINT?
Surely we understand it for them.
• They would have been crazy to resist the salvation of Cyrus in favor of destruction in Babylon.
But they were a crazy people.
• They didn’t like to trust God.
• They liked to evaluate and debate everything.
• They were slow to submit.
• They were stubborn and obstinate and treacherous and rebellious.
And such a mindset will not work.
Church, we live in Babylon.
We live in a pagan and evil world system.
We are citizens of heaven and we are waiting for a Savior
To deliver us from this place and take us home.
He is coming because God said He was coming.
Do not fall so in love with this world that you reject Him when He calls.
STAYING IN BABYLON IS NOT AN OPTION.
God is saving His people.
• Be among His people.
God is pulling His people out of the world.
• Be one of those people.
God is crucifying His people to the world and the world to them.
• Let Him!
Christ is calling people to deny themselves and follow Him, do it.
Christ is calling men to love Him more than
• Father and mother,
• Brother and sister,
• Son and daughter,
• Houses and farms and lands
• Even more than your own life.
DO IT!
He is saving you.
• Don’t question it.
• Don’t debate it.
• Don’t argue with it.
• Don’t rebel against it.
Submit to Him.
God knows what He is doing and He is doing it for His glory.
Submit to Him so that you do not find yourself destroyed
Along with the rest of Babylon.
