Doug McMasters: And if you don't have a Bible or you would like to use the Pew Bible that's in front of you, you can turn to page 636.
Doug McMasters: 636.
Doug McMasters: In the mid-1730s, john Wesley made his way across the Atlantic Ocean over to what was then the colony of Georgia.
Doug McMasters: It was a very deep, informative and painful couple years for him, but God used the failure of his trip over to Georgia in order to prepare him for something grand and glorious.
Doug McMasters: Wesley arrived full of spunk and vigor and determination, with a high hopes that he'd be able to evangelize the indigenous people that lived in that area and also to bring some spiritual revitalization to the English settlers who were there.
Doug McMasters: The colony of Georgia was set up in order to populate, or to repatriate or patriate, I should say people who had been recently released from prison, and so the colony of Georgia was 70% male and the majority of which had a criminal record.
Doug McMasters: Wesley was driven by an idea of trying to bring the church back to its primitive roots, to return to what he saw as the purity and discipline of that early days in which the church was in the world world.
Doug McMasters: But his somewhat proud and very, very determined and even judgmental idealism ran smack up against reality.
Doug McMasters: He struggled to connect with the indigenous populations and he did not find very much favor among the people that were there who were from England, and one of the most infamous episodes revolved around a lady that he was courting by the name of Sophia Hopke.
Doug McMasters: He and Sophia met each other often and even had thoughts about marriage, but after Sophia married, another man came to church.
Doug McMasters: Wesley sought to excommunicate her, and this obviously sparked a public outrage and even was filed in court.
Doug McMasters: They wanted to imprison him for this, and because of this scandal, wesley turned tail and fled from the colony of Georgia and made his way onto a ship to head back to England, and he later wrote in his journal I came to America to convert the Indians, but oh, oh, who is going to convert me?
Doug McMasters: That's a pretty raw confession, but it shows some of the spiritual crisis that he was in.
Doug McMasters: And yet this failure was the soil for God's grace.
Doug McMasters: After he returned to England, he made his way to London in a place called Aldersgate, which you can visit now it's the Museum of London, and there's a large statuary there of Wesley's journal that talks about the moment where he and a small group were in an upper room reading the introduction to Luther's commentary on the book of Galatians, and he found the saving grace of Jesus Christ flooding his heart with hope.
Doug McMasters: This failure brought him to the Savior.
Doug McMasters: This crushing defeat and this panic-stricken flee from prison at his lowest point in life brought him to the place where he saw, for the first time in his life, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Maybe you're here this morning and you might sense a little bit of something of what Wesley had gone through.
Doug McMasters: Maybe you feel like your life has been a failure.
Doug McMasters: Maybe there's something in your past, some weight, that still carries along with you in your mind.
Doug McMasters: Or perhaps you're sensing some rejection from people that have been very important to you, whether they're in your family or at work.
Doug McMasters: Maybe it's not even a dramatic something like Wesley's desire to excommunicate his old girlfriend.
Doug McMasters: Maybe you're just feeling lost in the midst of a slow drain of weariness, feeling that your passion and your purpose has left you long ago as you have succumbed to the daily grind and demands of real life.
Doug McMasters: Or maybe you've just been one of those ones who look at yourself and just say I really have never been in a place where I could serve, and I'm not sure I'm even capable of ever being a part of God's kingdom in any kind of contributive way.
Doug McMasters: Well, the people of Israel and we're going to look at them in chapter 41 in just a moment would have felt exactly like all of that.
Doug McMasters: 41 in just a moment would have felt exactly like all of that.
Doug McMasters: Here they are, exiles in Babylon, hundreds of miles away from their home, and the towers of Babylon are looming over them, showing them that they're really nothing but captives of this conquering nation.
Doug McMasters: Their temple lies in ruins, their covenant promises are long gone, laying in the dust, and their story seems to be over.
Doug McMasters: And their exile raises a haunting question, one that sometimes reverberates in our hearts has God moved on?
Doug McMasters: Has God left me behind?
Doug McMasters: Is he finished with me, with us?
Doug McMasters: Certainly, these were the kind of questions that they were asking themselves.
Doug McMasters: But in Isaiah, chapter 41, god speaks into that question, and he does so with thunder and tenderness.
Doug McMasters: At the same time, he'll say to them in verse 9, and we'll look at it.
Doug McMasters: You are my servant, I've chosen you and not cast you off.
Doug McMasters: Fear not, for I'm with you.
Doug McMasters: I will strengthen you.
Doug McMasters: And, as we'll see, god is telling them in this chapter, and we're going to look at the first 20 verses today, that God isn't finished with them, not even close.
Doug McMasters: He's going to transform their defeat into a renewed calling and he's going to take their situation, where they're nothing but full of weakness, into one in which they can find a reversal of grace and an empowerment to be able to accomplish God's good purposes.
Doug McMasters: Now the full answer will come in chapter 42, where he points them to where that reversal is coming.
Doug McMasters: Behold, my servant, the hope of Israel, is humming in chapter 41.
Doug McMasters: Now I have to say something about chapter 41.
Doug McMasters: It whispers more than it yells.
Doug McMasters: There are themes in chapter 41 that are simply alluded to that get introduced more clearly in further chapters.
Doug McMasters: As we look at this song of 40 to 55.
Doug McMasters: And as they get introduced in later chapters, they get developed and they build and they move to a wondrous crescendo.
Doug McMasters: So by the time we get to chapter 55, all of us will have just a great display of the symphony of God's mercies and grace.
Doug McMasters: But in chapter 41, there's just little notes that get played as the symphony is moving along, just sort of giving us an introduction to some notations of God's grace that we're going to hear in clear and more vibrant and even louder ways as the chapters go.
Doug McMasters: And one of the great motifs that gets introduced here, that gets whispered, is God's glorious plan of reversal, that the exiles are going to return, that they're going to be forgiven, and that the weak are going to be strengthened and the broken are going to be made whole again and the forgotten are going to be given God's purposes.
Doug McMasters: All because the servant of the Lord is coming, the servant of the Lord who is spirit-filled and gentle and just and unstoppable in his mercy.
Doug McMasters: The Gospels will reveal that servant as Jesus very, very clearly.
Doug McMasters: But the book of Acts also tells us that what Jesus does as God's servant is now transferred to his people as part of the body of Christ, and that we take up even the roles and the responsibilities and the actions of the servant in our life here.
Doug McMasters: But I'm getting way ahead of myself.
Doug McMasters: That's more the crescendo of this glorious, glorious song.
Doug McMasters: But let me say once again, what gets whispered here will be shouted soon.
Doug McMasters: God is not finished yet, he just is not.
Doug McMasters: And perhaps you felt too weak, too wounded, too weary, maybe even too wayward, for God to ever look upon your life and put you into a place of usefulness in his kingdom.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah, chapter 41, is a great place for us to go.
Doug McMasters: It was written for us in those exact moments and as we go through these 20 verses together, I want you to pick up how God brings these words of encouragement into the hearts of the people who are in exile.
Doug McMasters: And the first thing I want us to notice in verse four verses is that God is not finished with his plan.
Doug McMasters: He has not abandoned his plan for his people.
Doug McMasters: Here and the chapter opens up like in a courtroom drama.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse one, chapter 41.
Doug McMasters: Be silent before me, coast and islands.
Doug McMasters: Here the nations are summoned into silence and, unlike the usual pattern that we've seen in Isaiah, it's not Israel who's brought into the courtroom, it's the nations.
Doug McMasters: And in this court case, god and the idols are put up one against the other for the purpose of determining who is really God, who is really in control of everything.
Doug McMasters: And God calls these nations to listen to him as he compares himself to the idols and calls them to witness not only his sovereignty but also his purposes.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 2 and 4.
Doug McMasters: He asks some questions here.
Doug McMasters: Who has stirred up someone from the east In righteousness?
Doug McMasters: He calls him to serve.
Doug McMasters: The Lord hands nations over to him and he subdues kings.
Doug McMasters: He makes them like dust with his sword, like wind-driven stubble with his bow.
Doug McMasters: He pursues them, going on safely, hardly touching the path with his feet.
Doug McMasters: And then another question who has performed and done this?
Doug McMasters: Calling the generations from the beginning?
Doug McMasters: These are rhetorical questions, questions with an obvious answer who is the one who controls people and nations?
Doug McMasters: Who is the one that knows the end from the beginning?
Doug McMasters: Only God, only Yahweh.
Doug McMasters: And in verse four he makes that very clear I am the Lord, the first and with the last, I am he.
Doug McMasters: You see, yahweh is not a God who reacts, he's a God who initiates.
Doug McMasters: You see, yahweh is not a God who reacts, he's a God who initiates, and he is not given to the whims and wishes of the nations.
Doug McMasters: He's driving the purposes of this world according to his own design.
Doug McMasters: He is raising up kings, he is toppling nations, he is reordering the peoples according to his own purposes.
Doug McMasters: And he mentions one man in verse 2, who has stirred up someone from the east.
Doug McMasters: And then he goes on to describe this person who's going to have the nations handed over to him and who's going to subdue other kings like dust and stubble Again.
Doug McMasters: Another one of those themes that the rest of this section of Isaiah is going to expand and develop.
Doug McMasters: The symphony is just playing a little note or two.
Doug McMasters: Who is this one?
Doug McMasters: Well, in chapter 45, we find out.
Doug McMasters: His name is Cyrus, whose right hand I've grasped.
Doug McMasters: To subdue nations before him and disarm kings, it says in verse 1 of chapter 45, to open doors before him, and even city gates shall not be shut.
Doug McMasters: The Lord has a plan, and here he's just whispering what that is that he's going to call a Persian king to topple the kingdom of Babylon.
Doug McMasters: You see, this God, who knows all things, who holds the beginning and the end together in his wisdom and sovereign will, is not just part of the process, like the pagan gods are.
Doug McMasters: He's the one who stands outside of time, who put the clock a ticking and who commands and directs its path and brings all time to an end.
Doug McMasters: I am he, he says.
Doug McMasters: And there he's making himself as the self-existent one.
Doug McMasters: He's reflecting that statement in Exodus, chapter 6, in verse 3.
Doug McMasters: He is the one who is the great I am.
Doug McMasters: You see, every other form is derivative of God, but he's the one who's had no beginning and no end.
Doug McMasters: He simply is.
Doug McMasters: Now, why does this matter?
Doug McMasters: What is this point?
Doug McMasters: Well, if God can reign over Cyrus and direct his path, if God can bring Cyrus to the place of conquering the Babylonians, then certainly, as you deduce through this argument the exiles are to hear this reverberating word he hasn't forgotten you either.
Doug McMasters: You're not outside of his control.
Doug McMasters: God here is appealing to his unique activity in history as an evidence that he alone is God, but he alone is God for purposes that include these people who are now in exile.
Doug McMasters: And so, if he can move empires, he can certainly renew hearts, and if he can command history, he can sustain hope in these that are hopeless at this moment.
Doug McMasters: And if he can stir up Cyrus, well, he can stir up any one of us.
Doug McMasters: Actually and this is a note that we shouldn't miss, because we live in this world where it just feels like sometimes, history has taken a left turn and veered completely off course, where none of the things that we'd hoped for and thought were going to happen 10, 20 years ago are ever going to be met again, or perhaps where our own personal story has gone adrift and we find ourselves older, weaker, in positions of life where we never expected ourselves to be.
Doug McMasters: But God hasn't abandoned us.
Doug McMasters: He hasn't abandoned his plan and he's telling them here.
Doug McMasters: He still can do these mighty things.
Doug McMasters: Now, we may not always grasp what he's about, but one thing we can always trust is that he has a plan and we can trust him because he's not finished.
Doug McMasters: He's not finished with human history.
Doug McMasters: He's not finished with these people in exile and he's not finished.
Doug McMasters: He's not finished with human history.
Doug McMasters: He's not finished with these people in exile and he's not finished with us.
Doug McMasters: Let's move forward, because he's going to expand this a bit more In the next three verses verses 5 to 7, not only does God show that he still has a plan, but he also gives strength, and here we see him compared to the idols who need nails.
Doug McMasters: Verses 5 to 7, we see the nations in response to this glorious statement that Cyrus is going to be raised up in order to bring the Babylonians to the dust.
Doug McMasters: The coast and the island see and are afraid.
Doug McMasters: The whole earth trembles.
Doug McMasters: They approach and arrive.
Doug McMasters: What is the response of the people, these nations, when they hear that God is going to raise up a conqueror?
Doug McMasters: They tremble and they quake and they shake at this terrifying news.
Doug McMasters: But what can they do?
Doug McMasters: They don't know a God who controls history because of righteousness.
Doug McMasters: So what can they do?
Doug McMasters: The only thing they know how to do, and that is to make a better God.
Doug McMasters: That's what they do.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at the verse.
Doug McMasters: Each one helps the other and says take courage.
Doug McMasters: The craftsman encourages the metal worker.
Doug McMasters: The one who flattens with a hammer encourages the one who strikes the anvil, saying to the soldering it is good, and he fastens it with nails so that it will not fall over.
Doug McMasters: And here Isaiah is talking about the complexity of the process, referring to four different kinds of craftsmen here that are needed to make gods.
Doug McMasters: And so they build statues and they fortify their gods with nails so they don't topple over.
Doug McMasters: It's pretty hard to make your maker, I guess.
Doug McMasters: But this is the great reversal of idolatry Is that they're serving something they hoped would save them, but they're propping up their deities in the hope that these deities would prop them up.
Doug McMasters: But that's not how God works.
Doug McMasters: The true and living God doesn't need us putting nails in him to hold him up.
Doug McMasters: And notice what they say to one another in verse 7.
Doug McMasters: Saying of the soldering it is good?
Doug McMasters: Is that word it is good?
Doug McMasters: Looking at the handiwork that you've just completed, sounds somewhat familiar.
Doug McMasters: Genesis, chapter 1, right, god said let there be, and there was.
Doug McMasters: And when he looked on the creation on several of the days, he behold what had been made.
Doug McMasters: And what would he say it is good.
Doug McMasters: And now it's not the creator who's speaking over his work.
Doug McMasters: These are humans echoing divine language when they're looking at the gods they've nailed down, and isaiah is using this taunting irony and sarcasm in order to tell them, tell the exiles, who God really is and who these things are Nothing but propped up pieces of wood and stone and metal.
Doug McMasters: What a tragic place these nations are at.
Doug McMasters: What a humiliation of humanity to have a rejection of the God who's made us in order to prop up a God that we could hold up for ourselves and perhaps might be able to do something for us.
Doug McMasters: And this is that tragic comedy of sin that the false gods need to be helped and they can't help anyone.
Doug McMasters: The Lord here is calling them and us to the recognition that he doesn't need reinforcements, that when God comes into your life and you begin to unpackage who God is, you're never going to find in the bottom of the box, may need some further construction.
Doug McMasters: Right, you're never going to find that, with God, might require some assembly.
Doug McMasters: God is all and all and complete.
Doug McMasters: The idols need to be nailed down Today.
Doug McMasters: Our idols don't come in wood and stone and metal.
Doug McMasters: They show up every morning when we look in the mirror.
Doug McMasters: We see ourselves and we try to prop up this idol that we're worshiping.
Doug McMasters: We see ourselves and we try to prop up this idol that we're worshiping with achievement, with image projection, with control of people or surroundings around us, with a yearning and longing for approval.
Doug McMasters: And so we build our brands, we craft our social personas.
Doug McMasters: We all do something in an effort to make who we are a little more solid.
Doug McMasters: And maybe, if people thought we were solid, we would be solid.
Doug McMasters: Then maybe we could be in a position of strength and not the weakness that we feel deep within us.
Doug McMasters: But when life quakes, idols fall.
Doug McMasters: Things that you prop up, they deconstruct.
Doug McMasters: There's a better foundation for life and it is in God who has come.
Doug McMasters: It is in Jesus Christ, who called himself our rock, and he doesn't ask us to nail him down and to prop him up.
Doug McMasters: He's actually come and even willingly took nails himself so that we might be freed.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't need our efforts.
Doug McMasters: He's coming to minister to us with mercy and grace and he invites us not to build up something that be worthy of him, but to come as we are.
Doug McMasters: To come weak and worn and weary and even wayward, especially when we recognize we are and to rest in him Because he's telling us here he has a plan and he gives strength.
Doug McMasters: He is not finished.
Doug McMasters: And this comes into a beautiful, beautiful direct statement in verses 8 to 10, where he says to them you are not cast off.
Doug McMasters: And God reaffirms his covenant love.
Doug McMasters: Not only does he has not he abandoned his plan.
Doug McMasters: Not only does he provide strength, but he also reaffirms his covenant love.
Doug McMasters: Look at verses 8 to 10.
Doug McMasters: But you, israel, my servant Jacob, whom I've chosen, descended of Abraham, my friend.
Doug McMasters: I brought you from the ends of the earth and called you from its farthest corners.
Doug McMasters: I've said to you you are my servant, I have chosen you.
Doug McMasters: I haven't rejected you.
Doug McMasters: Do not fear, for I'm with you.
Doug McMasters: Do not be afraid, for I'm your God.
Doug McMasters: I will strengthen you.
Doug McMasters: I will rejected you, do not fear, for I'm with you.
Doug McMasters: Do not be afraid, for I'm your God.
Doug McMasters: I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will hold on to you with my righteous right hand.
Doug McMasters: If there was ever any verse you wanted to put on your wall in your house, I think that should be one of them, because grace is breaking through here like the morning light does at the dawn, and he's speaking this glorious word to who Defeated?
Doug McMasters: People scattered into Babylon from their home, with their temple left as nothing but rubble on the ground.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because of their covenant infidelity, their disobedience to God over generations.
Doug McMasters: God had every right to say well, you feel like your story's finished?
Doug McMasters: It is, but he isn't saying that you are my servant.
Doug McMasters: I have chosen you.
Doug McMasters: I have not cast you off.
Doug McMasters: This isn't just mere sentimentality, this is covenant language.
Doug McMasters: And God is not telling them look, I'll give you another chance.
Doug McMasters: He's calling them into a remembrance of who he is.
Doug McMasters: I chose you.
Doug McMasters: Now.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah is speaking this in a time frame in which these people are still looking forward, where nations will rise and Babylon will conquer and they'll be captives.
Doug McMasters: He's telling this to people who are still quaking under the hand of Assyria, not yet under the control of Babylon, and he's telling them even when they see the destruction of Assyria, not yet under the control of Babylon.
Doug McMasters: And he's telling them, even when they see the destruction of it all, even when they see their temple rubble, even when they see themselves put in chains and captured and drug away from their home, even when they see themselves surrounded by the false gods in the high towers and walls of Babylon, that they should remember something God has not forgotten them, and he's not calling them to be strong, he's calling them simply to remember who he is.
Doug McMasters: I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you.
Doug McMasters: This is the gospel in prophetic form, isn't it?
Doug McMasters: This is God not issuing a summons to humanity to try harder to be better.
Doug McMasters: He's issuing a statement of invitation to trust him.
Doug McMasters: And he's not commanding them to prove themselves, but rather to show to us how glorious his promises are.
Doug McMasters: And so, with covenant voice, he binds his name to these people.
Doug McMasters: You are my servant as a reminder that he hasn't erased his purposes for them, and he's going to continue to speak to them like this after they've long forgotten it.
Doug McMasters: What a wonder this is, that this message of grace is meant to speak louder than their failure.
Doug McMasters: And perhaps you're in a place right now where you've thought silence must mean abandonment.
Doug McMasters: I feel adrift because I've been cut loose.
Doug McMasters: But you're not cast off.
Doug McMasters: These people weren't cast off.
Doug McMasters: God was not finished with them.
Doug McMasters: He was still going to form them, he was still going to use them, he was still going to be writing their story into his redemptive plan.
Doug McMasters: And he can say that to any human today, anyone.
Doug McMasters: Let's go to the next few verses 11 to 16.
Doug McMasters: Not only has God not abandoned his plan, he upholds it.
Doug McMasters: Not only does he give strength and not only does he reaffirm his covenant commitment, but he also turns worms into weapons.
Doug McMasters: I love the picturesque phraseology in this section.
Doug McMasters: Verse 14,.
Doug McMasters: The reality of who Jacob is at this moment is spoken.
Doug McMasters: You, worm Jacob.
Doug McMasters: Next time you wake up in the morning and you look in the mirror, just go.
Doug McMasters: You worm Jacob.
Doug McMasters: But what does he say to the worm?
Doug McMasters: Be sure that all who are enraged against you verse 11, will be ashamed and disgraced.
Doug McMasters: All who contend with you will become as nothing and will perish.
Doug McMasters: You'll look for those who contend with you, but you will not find them.
Doug McMasters: Those who war against you will become absolutely nothing.
Doug McMasters: Wow, god is promising deliverance.
Doug McMasters: Not because Israel is strong, not because they've triumphed, but because he's with them.
Doug McMasters: And this image becomes very, very tender and sweet in verse 13.
Doug McMasters: I am the lord, your god, who holds your right hand, who says to you do not fear, I will help you, I.
Doug McMasters: I do trust and hope that you've been in a place of weakness and frailty and temerousness of heart and you've had someone who's taken your hand and held it for you and said don't worry.
Doug McMasters: And what an encouragement that is, that tender touch, that personal assurance that speaks past your ears into the depth of your heart.
Doug McMasters: Here is the God who moves nations, who spoke the stars and the universe with a word into existence.
Doug McMasters: And yet he says I'm going to be right next to you and I'm going to hold your hand.
Doug McMasters: And he wants to steady that trembling, trembling fear that we might have, because he speaks to us with intimacy here.
Doug McMasters: He says in verse 14, do not fear worm Jacob, I'm the one who helps you.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 15, he talks about him threshing on the mountains.
Doug McMasters: And he uses warrior language here just to show the dramatic change this worm becomes a weapon in God's hand.
Doug McMasters: Not because a worm is sharp in and of itself Obviously it isn't but because God takes it up.
Doug McMasters: And here's the shape of God's grace.
Doug McMasters: He's not just comforting the weak, he's issuing a recommission that they're being put into his active plan and determination to do his purposes, that they're going to be instruments, not just held by his hand but used by his mighty arm.
Doug McMasters: He's going to turn these trembling fingers into tools of deliverance.
Doug McMasters: And when he calls him Worm Jacob, it's not simply to bring him to shame, but to show him just how dramatic God's transformation can be.
Doug McMasters: Shame, but to show them just how dramatic God's transformation can be.
Doug McMasters: Yes, they must have thought themselves diminished, disqualified, left desolate.
Doug McMasters: God says I have something better here for you.
Doug McMasters: I'm going to take you, I'm going to forgive you, I'm going to restore you.
Doug McMasters: And I'm going to take you.
Doug McMasters: I'm going to forgive you, I'm going to restore you and I'm going to use you.
Doug McMasters: This is again the good news that God doesn't call us to self-improvement.
Doug McMasters: He calls us as we are weak.
Doug McMasters: He fills us as we are, are helpless, with his power.
Doug McMasters: And then he takes us and sends us to do something that would be beyond us and impossible.
Doug McMasters: Just had a talk yesterday with Kevin Cooney and I thought this beautiful, beautiful passage in light of that, here is a guy running around Garden City terrorizing the neighborhood.
Doug McMasters: You know, a party animal.
Doug McMasters: God captures him with grace and turns him into a servant of the gospel in a place halfway around the world where he looks like a monster in comparison to them.
Doug McMasters: He looks like a monster in comparison to any of us too, but anyway, over there it's really, really apparent.
Doug McMasters: And yet this guy, who could lift up boat engines with his arms and carry them off of the beach into the shed, is speaking with such grace and tenderness and softness of soul to talk about a savior that's forgiven him of his sins and can forgive them of theirs.
Doug McMasters: And all of this is whisperings of a time when we'll see someone who does all of this, that servant in chapter 42 and other songs as we go to the end of chapter 55.
Doug McMasters: This one that the gospels talk about is Jesus, who's come into this world not to conquer Rome with mighty weapons of human ability, but to crush sin.
Doug McMasters: And he didn't come atop mountains to stake a claim that he owned the territory.
Doug McMasters: He went to a cross so that he might be Lord of all the nations.
Doug McMasters: You see, god's not finished.
Doug McMasters: God's got a plan, and Isaiah is pushing these people forward, beyond themselves, to understand that that plan is there and that he has strength that none of the idols around them could ever know, and that he has covenant love that he's committed to and that he can take a worm and make it a weapon.
Doug McMasters: This brings us to our last point, verses 17 to 20.
Doug McMasters: The Lord has intentions beyond anyone's dreams.
Doug McMasters: This is where it gets very clear.
Doug McMasters: We've only been building up to this passage, but now we've reached the crescendo of God's mercy.
Doug McMasters: He's speaking remind ourselves of this that he's speaking to people who are exiled in captives in a foreign land, imprisoned by a conquering people, because of their own covenant abandonment, because they were a people who had walked away from God.
Doug McMasters: And they're now wondering if God is going to walk away from them.
Doug McMasters: And he comes in these verses with promises so lush, so lavish.
Doug McMasters: It sounds like Eden is breaking back into the world.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 17.
Doug McMasters: The poor and the needy seek water, but there's none.
Doug McMasters: Their tongues are parched with thirst.
Doug McMasters: I will answer them.
Doug McMasters: I am the God.
Doug McMasters: I am the Lord, the God of Israel.
Doug McMasters: I will not abandon them.
Doug McMasters: I will open rivers on the barren heights and springs in the middle of the plains.
Doug McMasters: I will turn the desert into a pool and dry land into springs.
Doug McMasters: I will plant cedar, acacia, myrtle and olive trees in the wilderness.
Doug McMasters: I will put juniper, elm and cypress trees together in the desert.
Doug McMasters: This isn't just rescue, this isn't just let you back in the land.
Doug McMasters: This is reversal of the curse, where the dry ground becomes a garden, where the arid wilderness becomes a witness of God's glorious growth, where the forsaken become fountains of life.
Doug McMasters: And here God borrows the brush strokes of Genesis and paints a promise of a new creation.
Doug McMasters: Where there was desolation, there's now abundance, and it's not just mere survival, it's joy and renewal and life.
Doug McMasters: Why, why would he do this?
Doug McMasters: Why would God, who is holy as he is, as holy other than everything that he's created, who is sovereign over the nations, would speak to these little people, who had been so disobedient to him, with such wondrous words of promise, to where the only thing he can bring into their minds that would help them connect is to give them a remembrance of the glories of a time when sin had not invaded the world and speaks of Eden restored?
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 20.
Doug McMasters: So that all may see and know and consider and understand that the hand of the Lord has done this.
Doug McMasters: The Holy One of Israel has created it, and so the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Medes and the Persians and the Seleucids and the Greeks and the Romans and every other mighty power on earth might know that God has taken a frail, disobedient worm and preserved its existence.
Doug McMasters: Nations have come and gone during the multitude of years, the generations of the Old Testament, but the people of Israel were still there.
Doug McMasters: You see, this restoration is not just for relief.
Doug McMasters: It's revelation to the world, designed to say something, to show, by the preservation of these people, that God has a plan, that he's going to keep, that he's got strength to enact it and to make it happen, and that he's going to speak to the undeserving words of great comfort, because the day was going to come when the whole earth would hear a message of grace through one Messiah of these people, jesus Christ, who's going to make all things new.
Doug McMasters: And so this is where that rush of hope turns into a song that causes them to rise to and to stand up for and to open their hearts and their voices and their lungs and bellow with gladness.
Doug McMasters: This is not just a change of address for these people Babylon back to Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: This is a new creation that God is offering, that he's going to make, and he uses these images of trees in the wilderness not just to assure them that they'll return, but a signpost of a glorious future.
Doug McMasters: This garden in the desert, you see again, chapter 41 is only plunking off a few notes of a symphony of grace that's building, and here he's just showing the beginning of it all.
Doug McMasters: It will move and grow and develop and rise in glorious, glorious concert as we learn more about the servant and more of what he'll bring and do in this world, that God's promises will take root and bloom and flourish.
Doug McMasters: That servant will come, and we'll see in chapter 42, he won't come as a mighty conqueror, but as a gentle redeemer.
Doug McMasters: He won't break the breezed root, he won't snuff out the smoldering wick and he's going to bring justice, gently and in the fullness of time.
Doug McMasters: He'll be revealed.
Doug McMasters: He's going to talk about a day when he will not only bring water to the desert, he'll be the water of life.
Doug McMasters: That he will not only restore the land, he'll make all things new.
Doug McMasters: That he'll not only end the land, he'll make all things new.
Doug McMasters: That he'll not only end the exile, he'll call people home.
Doug McMasters: And so here we are, to any of us who might feel forgotten today, any of us who look at our life and see only the expanse of a wasteland and wonder if God can still write beauty on our broken years.
Doug McMasters: God is speaking to those same kind of people, because God's not finished.
Doug McMasters: He moves in history and he holds the hands of the wounded.
Doug McMasters: He raises up kings, yes, he levels mountains, yes, he renews deserts, but he also offers mercy to the undeserving.
Doug McMasters: You see, he's not finished.
Doug McMasters: And in just a few verses, in a couple weeks, we're going to hear these words behold my servant, the servant who will come, the one who bears God's spirit, the one who fulfills what the people of Israel couldn't, the one who embodies what all humanity was meant to be, the one who not only will suffer as we'll see in chapter 52 and 53, but also will succeed.
Doug McMasters: His name is Jesus and, as we'll learn as we go through this, that that image of the servant also includes us, that he calls us bruised, small, overwhelmed, weak, weary, wayward, identifies us with this servant and calls us into a commission of mercy across these lands.
Doug McMasters: You see, you may be fearing your story's ended?
Doug McMasters: It hasn't.
Doug McMasters: There's one place it continues, and that is in the welcoming invitation of a God of grace and mercy.
Doug McMasters: If you feel like your hands are too tired and your soul's too thin, go to Jesus.
Doug McMasters: There you will find him, and there you'll hear the voice of Isaiah speaking to you like it spoke to these people.
Doug McMasters: You are my servant.
Doug McMasters: I have chosen you.
Doug McMasters: I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray, I will uphold you, let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, we thank you for these glorious words.
Doug McMasters: They're too profound and too beyond our comprehension for them to enter in simply with our mental capacities.
Doug McMasters: For them to enter in simply with our mental capacities, we would find ourselves stunned at the shock of them all.
Doug McMasters: And so, father, we pray that you, lord, would give us ears to hear, that you would open our hearts, as you did to others, to receive and believe this message.
Doug McMasters: And I pray that, not only for those this morning who might be here, who don't know Christ as their Savior, but for all of us, no matter how long we've known, our sins are forgiven in Jesus, that we would receive what you say to us, far deeper than just mere mental interest.
Doug McMasters: May it soak into our soul and strengthen our hearts with grace and supply energy to our hands so that, when we step into this afternoon and tomorrow and the days and weeks and months and years and decades ahead of us as long as we live, that we will be energized by the truth of who you are and what you tell us.
Doug McMasters: And we ask this, father, for your glory's sake, in Christ's name, amen.