Music Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Forgiveness is not earned, but freely given. Our God offers it freely.
But it was not free. Our sin requires an accounting, a payment. That payment was exacted from the Son of God, who gave Himself up for us. And for those who repent and entrust themselves to the Lord Jesus, that deep and costly forgiveness changes everything. Let's take a deeper dive into the forgiveness of God from Isaiah 52. And now once again if you would take your copy of the scriptures and open with me to the 52nd chapter of Isaiah's prophecy. Isaiah chapter 52 for the exposition from God's Word today. We continue in the series, Behold your God. It is very important for us to know God in the way that He has revealed Himself to us.
If we do not know God in the way that He has revealed Himself to us, then our knowledge of Him is inaccurate at best and damning at worst. Would you stand with me in honor of the Lord and His Word as we seek His help to hear and heed His Word today? Father, thank you for your goodness to us. Thank you that you are a good and faithful God. And Father, as we look at Isaiah's prophecy today and the words that were inscribed thousands of years ago under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God. Father, I pray that you would open our hearts and our minds and give us understanding. Help us, Father, to recognize and to appreciate, to grasp the depth and the profundity of your forgiveness for us, O God. Father, I pray that you would guide us by your Spirit through your Word, for we recognize that your Word is given to us not just for knowledge, it's not just for our information, not just to pack our minds with truth, but Father, so that that truth can indeed transform us in the day today. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
Please be seated. Isaiah chapter 52, we are going to be looking at the forgiveness of God, the forgiveness of God. Psalm 99 verse 8 says, You were to them God who forgives. So we're looking at today the forgiveness of God, specifically looking at verse 3.
Look what it says there. For thus says the Lord, You have sold yourselves for nothing and you shall be redeemed without money. You have sold yourselves for nothing. Let's remember, let's step back here for a moment and remember the context in which the prophet speaks. Now, the prophet is speaking the words of God. This is indeed God speaking to his people and God who is omniscient, who is infinite, who is not bound by space and time, the God who sees and knows everything right here, right now, there is no past, present and future with him.
He is speaking to them and he says, You are going to be taken captive and you're going to be in captivity for 70 years and then I am going to bring you back into your land, the land that I promised you, the land that I promised your fathers. Because all of this is a part of redemptive history where God is showing that he indeed redeems his people, that he is a loving God, he is a forgiving God. And he is showing us that he alone is our source. He alone is our sustenance.
He alone is our satisfaction. And so he is telling the people, You are going to be sold into slavery and you have in essence sold yourselves and you've done so for nothing. And he's looking at it now from the perspective of now they're in slavery, they're in captivity and God is going to bring them back out of that bondage.
Now, what he's referring to here are historical historic events and yet Israel was a picture of the whole of mankind because we as a people, as a race have sold ourselves for nothing. When it says you have sold yourselves for nothing, what he is saying here is that you have become someone else's slave. You belong now to someone else. You've become someone else's slave. God says, I made you and I made you for myself so that you can enjoy me.
I am the best thing for you. The very purpose of your existence is for you to fellowship and walk with me forever in the bounty and the joy and the delight that all of that means. And yet you have sold yourselves for nothing.
You've become the property of someone else. The apostle Paul said this in Romans chapter 7 verse 14. He said, I am carnal, sold under sin. Listen, when it comes to faith in Christ, when it comes to knowing God, this is one of the first realizations that you have to make. The first one is that God is God and you're not him and God is a holy God.
And the second thing that you need to realize is this very statement right here. I am sold under sin. I am sold under sin. Peter T. Forsyth was correct when he said the first duty of every man is to find not his freedom, but his master. You need to understand this. Someone is your master.
Unless you can show me that you are an absolutely self-existent being and that you are responsible for your existence and you can keep yourself alive forever. You need to recognize that you have some master. And this Scottish minister said the first duty of every man is to find not his freedom, but his master. To whom do you belong? And you might say, well I belong to myself. And that may be true. And what you are confessing is that you are enslaved to yourself.
It is indeed a bondage. We were born, every one of us, created in God's image. We were born with a capacity to relate to God.
That's what it means to be created in his image. But because of the fallenness of creation, because of the rebellion of man, the first man, our first father, human father. We were also born with a natural bent, meaning we are in Adam. We are born with a natural bent to find satisfaction apart from God. That's our natural bent. We were born with a capacity to relate to God, but with a natural bent to find satisfaction apart from him.
And so in this way, Israel, the nation of Israel, pictures us in very tangible ways, in very real ways. And he says, you have sold yourselves for nothing. And when he says for nothing, he means nothing in return. You have been sold for nothing in return.
And that can have two senses to it. When he says you were sold for nothing, God says you are not sold for my gain. I didn't, you know, you were not sold into slavery so that I could gain from it. No, you were sold for your learning. What kind of learning is that?
Some call it the school of hard knocks. When the branch severs itself from the tree, the branch recognizes that it cannot survive on its own. When the branch cuts itself off from the tree, the branch recognizes that it cannot live and be productive according to its design and purpose. And God said, in essence, he said, have it your way. If that's what you want, then have it your way. I'm going to let you try it for a while and see how it works for you. Go ahead, cut yourself off from me and see how well you can survive as the branch severed off from the tree.
How good does that work? It doesn't. And we might look alive for a while, but we're not. We are slowly dying a death. And that's what Paul says once again in Romans chapter six. He says, what fruit? He says, when you were slaves of sin, what fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.
You have sold yourselves for nothing. For example, once again in Proverbs chapter 23 verses 29 and 30, the Lord tells us that the alcoholic has wounds without a cause. And that's not picking on the alcoholics. Now, that's there is something in every one of our lives. We all have besetting sins that drag us down, that bind us, that are bondage, that are our slavery as we are slaves to ourselves, to our appetites. The alcoholic has wounds without a cause. And that without a cause is the same meaning as for nothing.
You have sold yourselves for nothing. Consider all the damage that an alcoholic does to himself because he just continues to feed his own appetites and to find his satisfaction apart from the one who alone can be his satisfaction. This is what God is communicating. And you see how those who live for themselves, those who have severed themselves from the God who is their source, their creator and their satisfaction.
The branch severs itself from the tree. The oppression that that leads to. The dissatisfaction that that ends up being. And God says, I'm going to let you have it your way and see how that works for you.
C.S. Lewis said this, God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in him. The one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.
