I'm not saying shame on you, you should have researched.
I'm not at all saying that. I am just pointing out how much work is involved in digging into scripture and then what do you do with it. Well, one of the things I think that happens to the Christian when they scrutinize God's word is they learn to properly be scrutinized by God's word. And that's where work gets done. They learn to be both without straining the muscle, without working that muscle.
And that's the same for the brain. By faith, you shall receive power. To do what? To be witnesses of Jesus Christ. And we read about that in the book of Acts. Anyway, verse 4, listen to me, my people, and give ear to me, O my nation.
For law will proceed from me, and I will make my justice rest as a light on the peoples. What did the non-fundamental Jews do with such verses as this? All of these superlative verses from the prophets that were their verses to us in those days, just the prophecies, what did they do with them? Well, I'm going to take the witness of Amos, Micah, and Zechariah. They tell us what the non-fundamental Jews did. When I say non-fundamental, the ones that did not hold to their scripture.
A fundamental Christian is one that adheres to the Bible. How else would you know how to be a Christian and what a Christian is without the word of God? Well, Amos says this about their behavior. You gave the Nazarites wine to drink and commanded the prophets saying, do not prophesy. So you stumbled those who were trying to dedicate themselves to God, and you told the preachers to shut up. That's how they handled such verses. They hated Amos. He's from the south, and he was ministering in the north, and they wanted him to go back to the south.
Micah rings in. He tells us, and both Amos and Micah ministered with contemporaries of Isaiah at some point. He says, her heads judge for a bribe. Her priests teach for pay. Her prophets divine for money. Yet, they lean on Yahweh and say, is not Yahweh among us?
No harm can come to us. They're delusional. They think because they own a Bible and they're God's people that, okay, I could just do what I want to do. I can disrespect God to his face. I don't care.
It's not going to harm me. That's why God dealt with this. Because an unbelieving world would be watching and say, man, if God lets them get away with this stuff, then I guess anything goes.
But he doesn't. He's a holy and righteous God, and that's why the prophets warned of doom. The final one on giving us a view of how God's word was handled by the people is much later, after Amos and Micah, then Zechariah comes along some 400 years later almost. But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear. The faithless have inoculated themselves against the voice of God. They've set up all sorts of fancy barriers so God's word can't get to them. They become delusional, spiritual sociopaths. They function in God's creation, and yet they can never touch the heart of God.
This happens. There are people that are like this today. Facts mean nothing to them.
The only thing that means something to them is whatever they want. He says by his presence, when he comes to establish his kingdom, that his justice will rest as a light of the people. So once the Jews are restored and comforted, Zion will be full of worship and song, as I mentioned earlier. This in contrast to Isaiah 50 verse 11, where it was the sparks of man's generated wisdom and intelligence. Compared to God's light, man without God, his light are like sparks. You don't get much light from a spark.
Even with a pneumatic grinder, you're not going to get enough light to do much. Anyway, verse 5, my righteousness is near. My salvation has gone forth. My arms will judge the peoples. The coastlands will wait upon me, and on my arm they will trust.
Now we've covered the coastlands before. Not waste, but not take time to repeat that and move on here. In verse 5, here is God's grace, doing for his people what they don't deserve. That's the fact of all of God's people. What they could not do for themselves is make themselves right with God.
They could only receive the solution. That's what a believer is. The divine pronoun, me, shows up four times in verses 4 and 5. The divine first person possessive adjective shows up seven times. So whenever that happens, God is emphasizing something, and in this case it's his presence.
It's him. My righteousness, my salvation, my arms. We're in verse 4, my people, my justice, my nation.
Oh Lord, we get it and we love it. Verse 6, lift up your eyes to the heavens and look on the earth beneath, for the heavens will vanish away like smoke, the earth will grow old like a garment, and those who dwell in it will die in like manner. But my salvation will be forever and my righteousness will not be abolished.
Well, that's last Wednesday's message again. Revelation 21, 1 and 2 Peter 3, 10 are other places. There are more, but what we covered last week covers that verse. Verse 7, listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people in whose heart is my law, do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults. So now again, he's addressing those who the word is in their heart, versus someone who just is in their head and hands maybe, but it ain't in their heart.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength. The heart really covers all of it. When the Jews and even the Greeks, when they spoke of the heart, it meant, usually in context, the entire person. Of course, it's a physical heart, but we're using it in the context of spiritual application, and when the Old Testament and New Testament speak of the heart, usually it's the entirety of the person. The person's mind, their thinking, their feelings, and their will.
What do they do with their feelings and their intelligence? That's the will, the heart. So, here in verse 7, they're faced with opposition, and they are called to faith-built courage. You can build courage on other things.
You can use drugs, you can use alcohol, you can use a coat of, you know, Bushido or something. You can use other things to get courage. There are unbelievers who have a lot of courage, but God wants His people to have courage based on a relationship with Him, and He's going to start stressing that in a minute. Psalm 56, verse 11, In God I have put my trust, I will not be afraid.
What can man do to me? Well, who wrote that? King David. King David is the one that, when he took out Goliath, what was the righteous indignation that spelled the doom of the Philistine? Here's Goliath struts out, blaspheming Yahweh, and the wrong guy heard it on the wrong day for Goliath. And David, probably 16, 17 years old, who is this uncircumcised Philistine that so blasphemes the Lord?
Where's my sling? And what happens five smooth stones later? The last thing that went through Goliath's mind was that rock from David. Anyway, verse 8, make no mistake, those Philistines, they were evil people.
God itemizes what they were doing and why they were being judged for their behavior. And today, there are no Philistines, the Palestinians are not Philistines, no connection. They're Arabs.
They're Muslim Arabs, and that's about it. And they come from a combination of Esau, Ishmael, and Malachites, and whoever else lives in that area. But they're trying to say, we're the Philistines. Well, even if you were, the Philistines only had a small portion of the Promised Land.
They have it all. There are other people living in that land, too. But we know, we know how it goes.
As Benjamin Netanyahu said a few years back, Israel is guilty until proven guilty. And we know evil is in this world. Verse 8, for the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool, but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation from generation to generation. God is always telling his people, live like you're going to be in eternity. Stop clinging to this life.
I've built you to cling to it to some degree, but don't overdo it. Second Thessalonians. The Thessalonian church was made from persecuted leaders. Paul and Barnabas showed up, beaten at Philippi.
They end up in, their next stop was Thessalonica. They made converts there, and those converts became persecuted, even once Paul and Silas were chased out. And Paul writes to them, the first letter he writes to them about persecution and things like that, and the second letter he deals with the end times. But anyway, he writes this to them, that second Thessalonian letter, the first chapter, verse 9, talking about those persecuting the Thessalonian Christians. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. And he gets a little bit more intense in that section.
I just wanted to take that part of it. But he's saying, yeah, there's consequence to behavior. There's permanent salvation for the friends of Christ. There's permanent doom for the enemies of God, the enemies of Christ. When Jesus, quoting this scripture, applying it to those who refuse to correct their behavior, he says this three times in this one sermon, right in back of each other, where their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched. He's talking about hell, the spiritual abode of the wicked, the eternal spiritual abode. Isaiah, his last chapter of this prophecy, chapter 66, the last verse, he closes his book with a threat to the wicked. He said, and they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me, for their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched, they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. So God is saying, you know, Satan's not goofing around, neither am I. Moths and worms, they do their work inconspicuously, but they destroy efficiently nonetheless. Here's an old black and white British movie, Mrs. Nineveh. I really like the movie. There's a part two and there's one scene where the husband is dancing with her at a ball or something, and he says, well, the moths didn't get to my suit. And then the camera shows his back and these holes. And if you've ever, you know, had moth damage, it's infuriating.
You can't sue them, or you can, but you're not going to get anything. It's, you know, anyway, I can't stand when you get a nice wool jacket out, it's got a big hole. Well, imagine in the days of Christ, you know, everything was susceptible without the cedar. Anyway, coming back to this, I feel like an old man up here rambling on. Anyway, verse nine, awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Yahweh. Awake as in the ancient days, in the generation of old.
Are you not the arm that cut Rahab apart and wounded the serpent? Well, he starts out awake, awake, ringing the alarm, you know, sounding the alarm. Faith calls out to God. In times of adversity, that's what the Christians do. Well, what Isaiah is doing, he's calling out and he's citing God's past deliverance.
He says, hey, you've helped before, you encouraged us to come to you and I'm coming to you on behalf of the people. Five times we get awake in this chapter, in verse nine and seventeen. Well, obviously, it's anthropomorphic. It is not, God doesn't sleep. He's not really trying to wake him up. As Elijah on Mount Carmel, maybe your God is sleeping, you know, maybe he's on a trip.
He's just mocking them. But here, it's, as I mentioned, anthropomorphic. It's assigning to God human characteristics so that we can get an idea of what's happening. And here, he's trying to convey the urgency to get God to work on behalf of the righteousness.
So, though it is not to be taken literally awake, awake, because he's not sleeping, it is not to be taken casually either. The prophet is making his point. Now, when he mentions Rahab, we have the second one tonight of context and text, context, pretext.
You've got to keep the text in context or you'll end up misunderstanding. Rahab is not the woman of Joshua 2. It's a different Hebrew word. Phonetically, in the English, it's Rahab, but it's not the same, it's not her. He used it in chapter 30 as a nickname for Egypt. The psalmist will use it in Psalm 87 and 89, and it speaks symbolically of any evil power overcome by God.
This Rahab, this Hebrew word. Now, you wouldn't learn that unless you did your research. I'm not saying, oh, shame on you, you should have researched.
I'm not at all saying that. I am just pointing out how much work is involved in digging into Scripture. And then what do you do with it? Well, one of the things I think that happens to the Christian when they scrutinize God's word is they learn to properly be scrutinized by God's word. And that's where work gets done. You cannot have muscle growth without straining the muscle, without working that muscle. And that's the same for the brain.
Although some people, I think, have a muscle for a brain. Verse 10, are you not the one, now this is Isaiah still appealing, calling out to the Lord and publishing this. He says, are you not the one who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, that made the depths of the sea a road for the redeemed to cross over?
Well, we know that's the Red Sea, or Yam Suph, the Sea of Reeds, likely, where they crossed over. He's referring to the Jews escaping the army of Pharaoh when they came out of Egypt. And so he reminds the Lord about these things. He will use the arm, he will mention the arm of Yahweh three times in this chapter.
And whenever it's repeated like that, there's an emphasis there, to be had. Verse 11, so the ransomed of Yahweh shall return and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads, they shall obtain joy and gladness, sorrow and singing shall flee away. And so here he is, sort of giving us an overview of, awake Lord, come to the help of your righteous, and then eventually the Lord will help and we will be singing in heaven. But of course he's passing by thousands of years and millions of apostates, but he's got his eyes focused on the end result for those who are submitted in their hearts to God.
You know, the flesh won't submit, but the heart will, and the heart will bring much of the flesh into submission. Coming back to verse 11, the consolation of Messiah, sorrow and sighing shall flee away. That alone makes heaven worth it.
And it's going to be so much more than that. Heaven is really given to us not by what is there, so much as what is not there. That is what the Bible teaches, really teaches a lot about heaven. The coming consolation of Messiah. And so in verses 1 through 8 we have the call to be courageous because of faith. In verses 9 through 11 we have the call to God by faith. In verses 12 through 16, which we're just going to open up in a minute, we're going to get the comfort of God to the faithful. So faith is the dominant thought. Faithfulness over faithlessness.
Very time consuming for us, a lot of work goes into that. Why does our gratitude please God? Why does praise please God? Is he just, you know, I need attention?
Not at all. It's because it shows that we have the right perspective of what's going on in creation. It tells us that, yeah, there's not a lot to praise in this life. There is some, but the big praise is coming in heaven. The Jewish feast, the final of their seven feasts in a year, festival, I'll use that word, because they're not feasts like they sit down to this sumptuous meal. It was a festival, a recognition, the big one, the Feast of Tabernacles, was just a seven day food feast of joy.
You know, they passed the Day of Atonement and they, you know, they moved past all of the holidays, the Passover celebration, and they get to the Feast of Feast. And it speaks of heaven, that when we're just going to be out of here and at the Lord's table, and we're going to do other things too. You probably, I don't know, probably draw portraits of me when you get to heaven.
What else are you going to do with your free time? Anyway, the absurd really does help us sometimes understand what's not going to happen. Coming back to the, now we come to verse 12, I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you should be afraid of a man who will die, and the son of man who will be made like grass? Now we have the third context, and this one is the son of man. Well, if you're an Ezekiel, most of the time he's talking about Messiah.
And Christ himself takes the title upon himself. But here the context is clear. He's saying, who are, why are you afraid of people that have come from people? That's a very loose translation. Now verse 13, this is connected to verse 12.
And you forget Yahweh your maker who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. You have feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor when he has prepared to destroy. And where is the fury of the oppressor? So this is, remember Isaiah his whole life under the threat of a Syrian invasion.
And I believe that's what he's talking about. But he says here in verse 13 connected to verse 12, fear can cause one to abandon God. He just says it right out, and you forget the Lord your maker. Well, we love 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 7.
God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of sound mind. Well, that doesn't always come easily when you're under pressure. You've got to fight for it. The narrow gate that Christ talked about entering in implies squeeze. You're going to have to squeeze through that one. So don't be surprised when things don't come easily as a Christian, things of faith. You've got to fight for it.
It's worth it. The alternatives make it necessary because they're unacceptable. So God gives perspective here. For Moses it was Pharaoh's Egypt.
For Isaiah and his generation it was Sennacherib's Assyrian kingdom. And then for us it is the world. And that world includes those who try to get the Nazarite to drink.
The Nazarites were supposed to abstain from drinking, alcohol. And yet people were trying to stumble them. Well, today pornography is everywhere.
Sometimes it's stark, sometimes it's subtle. It's everywhere. The world is against us. It's this weight pushing on faith. Bad enough we've got to deal with our own flesh and Satan, then we've got this gang coming our way. Well, most of us were once part of the world, part of that gang that made life more difficult for those who love the Lord. Verse 14, the captive exile hastens that he may be loosed, that he should not die in the pit, and that his bread should not fail. This guy's trying to survive. Well, he's contrasting the faithful with the faithless. Exiled Jews scrambled to comply in order to survive. Well, wait a minute. Well, before I get to what captives we're talking about, the pits were usually empty water cisterns.
Because cisterns hold water and when they either crack or leak, they become jails to hold prisoners. You find that in Zechariah 9, verse 11, where he says it right out. Apparently, Isaiah has the northern kingdom, or Judah, in mind under the Assyrian invasions.
The northern kingdom was wiped out in his lifetime. Because we don't know when he penned all of this, if he's looking back or forward, but we knew it happened in his lifetime. Certainly, the Judah suffering, Jerusalem didn't fall, but all the rest of Judah was invaded by the Assyrians. Well, God's people are not supposed to be exiles.
This is part of the point the prophet is making. We're not supposed to be exiles. We have the promised land, but they became exiles because they departed from the Lord.
Why? Well, we went to that in kings. They were afraid of men and they sent to Egypt and they did this, but they wouldn't call on Yahweh. And when Jeremiah comes along over a hundred years later, they're going to think he's a traitor for telling them to trust God and stop resisting Nebuchadnezzar.
And he gets thrown into a cistern and almost dies there. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.
You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new editions of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick right here on Cross Reference Radio.
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