Doug McMasters: I turn with me, if you will, to Isaiah, chapter 27,.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah, chapter 27.
Doug McMasters: One of the things I love about singing is the ability, in song, to express complex issues and theology, not with close argument, but with striking images and figures of speech.
Doug McMasters: Our Christian songs and hymns are rich with imagery, draw on nature.
Doug McMasters: We draw on biblical stories, we make up spiritual metaphors that evoke deep emotion within us as it connects to the truth of God's word.
Doug McMasters: Just think of some of the things that we sing.
Doug McMasters: This is my father's world, and we reach into the universe and also to the grass on the ground to think about how God is everywhere.
Doug McMasters: This is my father's world, and to my listening ears, all nature sings and around me rings the music of the spheres.
Doug McMasters: And then he goes to the grass.
Doug McMasters: In the rustling grass I hear him pass, he speaks to me everywhere.
Doug McMasters: Songs about pilgrimage and journey, amazing grace, through many dangers, toils and snares I've already come or a destination.
Doug McMasters: Sing me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues.
Doug McMasters: Above Praise the mount.
Doug McMasters: I'm fixed upon it, Mount of God's unchanging love.
Doug McMasters: And then there's songs about cleansing and life-giving.
Doug McMasters: There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunge beneath the flood lose all their guilty stains.
Doug McMasters: And then a song that I used to sing a lot when I was a new believer I'll fly away.
Doug McMasters: Some glad morning, when this life is o'er, I'll fly away.
Doug McMasters: These are all examples of how Christian songs and hymns use poetic language and vivid imagery to inspire within us faith and hope and love as we reflect upon God's word.
Doug McMasters: Well, we're in a section of Isaiah that began in chapter 24, that focuses on song, that focuses on song, in which singing is the chief expression of our spiritual lives.
Doug McMasters: We started in chapter 24, chapter 25, in a glorious song about the resurrection, chapter 26, also about the defeat of death and the resurrection, and now, in chapter 27, we're continuing to sing an expansive song of glorious victory of God for his people.
Doug McMasters: When we come into chapter 27, we'll see some similarities between it and chapter 26.
Doug McMasters: Like chapter 26, this is, as I said, a hymn focusing on what God will do for his people.
Doug McMasters: But there's a little bit of a difference.
Doug McMasters: When we looked at the song of chapter 26, it moved from the future to the present, from the future to the present, with songs that we'll sing and the implications that it has for us very clearly expressed throughout the chapter.
Doug McMasters: In chapter 27, we don't have those exhortations.
Doug McMasters: What we have is an effluence of song about the future and the victory, and so the application which there is is going to be a little more muted in what we should do, but is expansive in what we should feel and how we should rejoice and bask in the light of God's glorious victory.
Doug McMasters: Sometimes it's good just to sit and listen and receive a message of victory without thinking about what I need to do tomorrow or today.
Doug McMasters: So, as we go through this chapter, there are three things I want us to bask in, and the first is the destruction of death.
Doug McMasters: The destruction of death.
Doug McMasters: Now, when we looked at chapter 26 last week, we saw that God gives us hope that on the final day he's going to exert his mighty power and give us a victory over life where death reigns.
Doug McMasters: You can see that in verse 19 of chapter 26.
Doug McMasters: Your dead will live, their bodies will rise.
Doug McMasters: So wake and sing, you who dwell in the dust, for you will be covered with the morning dew and the earth will bring out the departed saints spirits.
Doug McMasters: What a wonderful remark.
Doug McMasters: That is right.
Doug McMasters: Imagine walking up to a graveyard and saying to it those of you who lie in the dust, you will live.
Doug McMasters: Your bodies will rise, awake and sing.
Doug McMasters: People would see us and think we're crazy, but it's going to be true.
Doug McMasters: How do we know?
Doug McMasters: Because Christ himself rose from the dead.
Doug McMasters: Yesterday I attended the memorial service for James Samuel's.
Doug McMasters: I really felt the force of death.
Doug McMasters: Yesterday morning, tears were abundant.
Doug McMasters: The memorial service for James Samuel's father was filled with a lot of weeping.
Doug McMasters: There were tears over the realization that death is still here and it's still a part of our existence.
Doug McMasters: There were tears that sort of reflected upon his father's failing health as he succumbed to aging, and his body and even in his mind.
Doug McMasters: There were tears over all the shared words and actions of love that are no longer going to be heard or felt now that James's father has passed away.
Doug McMasters: There were tears over shared experiences which are no longer going to happen, where they're only now captured by what's going to be an increasingly faded memory.
Doug McMasters: I was also heartened during that time to hear the clear testimony of James's father's love for Jesus Christ and how he had dedicated himself to the gospel, and I loved Ian his grandson's testimony about his grandfather's faith in Christ and wanted to make sure everybody who was in that room understood what his grandfather loved, and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: It was wonderful, and so I was encouraged, to see the family, even though they were weeping, to be rejoicing in hope and mingle together these extreme emotions as we come into chapter 27,.
Doug McMasters: We come into chapter 27 and it presents to us in our present, where there is truly still weeping, a message about a future, a future that is grand and glorious and affects the whole cosmos.
Doug McMasters: As we enter into this passage, we'll understand that God is doing something.
Doug McMasters: He is bringing death to death, but he's not only destroying death, he's also destroying the one behind death.
Doug McMasters: As we'll see in a moment, there's something bigger that he's accomplishing here, not just the effect of sin, but the force behind sin is going to destroy.
Doug McMasters: One day.
Doug McMasters: He's going to defeat that force, the devil.
Doug McMasters: He's going to bring an end of all of Satan's deceptions and temptations and crippling accusations.
Doug McMasters: As chapter 25 said, there'll be no death one day, but in chapter 27, there's no power behind death.
Doug McMasters: That is now destroyed.
Doug McMasters: The language is figurative and it might feel a little awkward for us for just a moment, but the figures of speech would have been familiar to people in Isaiah's day, they would have easily taken on board the deep imagery here and understood its meaning quite readily.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 1, chapter 27.
Doug McMasters: On that day the Lord with his relentless, large, strong sword will bring judgment on Leviathan the fleeing serpent, leviathan the twisting serpent.
Doug McMasters: He will slay the monster that is in the sea.
Doug McMasters: It's an image that seems a little awkward to us.
Doug McMasters: The closest thing that we might get to that image is maybe watching the Lord of the Rings right and in their journey coming up against Balrog right.
Doug McMasters: Who's this fiery, demonic figure?
Doug McMasters: Who's holding this whip that's swinging around and whipping things?
Doug McMasters: That seems large, too large to overcome.
Doug McMasters: What is the worst thing you can imagine?
Doug McMasters: What is the thing that you can conjure up in your mind that would bring you to the very edges of your imagination in trying to bring up a horrific image.
Doug McMasters: For me, having been in the military and having been a part of the Cold War, an imagery of a nuclear holocaust comes to mind, in which nations are obliterating nations in this mass conflagration, in which millions and moments are cast into eternity and civilization is left in rubble, only to be followed by a dystopian society.
Doug McMasters: That's kind of where my mind goes.
Doug McMasters: What's the very worst thing that you could imagine.
Doug McMasters: In Isaiah's day, one of the most terrifying images that they could have conjured would have been people getting into a boat and casting off into this reckless sea, and then all of the dangers of the wind and the waves and the storm, surpassed by what lurked underneath.
Doug McMasters: What is in that murky depth?
Doug McMasters: Could it be a multi-headed monster that is about to come washing up out of the waters and to swallow them whole?
Doug McMasters: That would have been the kind of image they would have thought about.
Doug McMasters: That was about as bad as it got.
Doug McMasters: So Isaiah uses this imagery in the chaos of the sea, in the darkness of the ocean, in the uncharted depths of the waters and what beasties lie beneath, and he uses this imagery to talk about God's victory.
Doug McMasters: To talk about God's victory.
Doug McMasters: And Isaiah shows God holding a blood-stained sword and standing over the headless monster, a Leviathan chopped down with the swing of his arm.
Doug McMasters: Now we don't know a whole lot about Leviathan.
Doug McMasters: There are references in several places in Scripture.
Doug McMasters: There's references in the book of Psalms, and when you read the Psalms like Psalm 74, it talks about Leviathan as a multi-headed beast Psalm 74, 13.
Doug McMasters: You divided the sea with your strength.
Doug McMasters: You smashed the heads of the sea monsters in the water.
Doug McMasters: You crushed the heads of the sea monsters in the water.
Doug McMasters: You crushed the heads of Leviathan.
Doug McMasters: In Job, chapter 41, job is being spoken to by God and God asks him if he can control powerful things on earth, and he uses Leviathan as an example of that.
Doug McMasters: Can you pull in Leviathan with a hook or tie his tongue down with a rope?
Doug McMasters: Can you put a cord through his nose and pierce his jaw with a hook?
Doug McMasters: Will he beg for mercy and listen to you?
Doug McMasters: And listen to you.
Doug McMasters: Imagine Job's kind of going?
Doug McMasters: Absolutely not.
Doug McMasters: God continues lay a hand on him and you'll remember the battle and not repeat it.
Doug McMasters: Any hope of capturing him proves false.
Doug McMasters: Does not a person collapse at the very sight of him?
Doug McMasters: That's how horrific the imagery was.
Doug McMasters: And God reminds Job on earth there's nothing like Leviathan, which is made without fear.
Doug McMasters: He beholds every high thing.
Doug McMasters: He's the king over all the children of pride.
Doug McMasters: There's nothing stronger than that.
Doug McMasters: And God uses the weakness of mankind against this formidable force of Leviathan as a touch point for the unfathomable knowledge and actions and power of God.
Doug McMasters: He says to Job no one is ferocious enough to rouse Leviathan.
Doug McMasters: Well, who then can stand against me.
Doug McMasters: Well, no wonder then, right after that rebuke, job says I give I'm neither smart enough, knowledgeable enough or righteous enough to question God, enough or righteous enough to question God.
Doug McMasters: Here, in Isaiah, chapter 27, leviathan is described as a fleeing serpent, as a twisting serpent, and he's called the monster that is in the sea, or, as other translations put it, the dragon that is in the sea.
Doug McMasters: Translations put it the dragon that is in the sea.
Doug McMasters: And here he refers to Leviathan as this fleeing, twisting serpent, which evokes in us, if we know our Bible, memories of Genesis, chapter 3, referring to the creature that tempted Adam and Eve to their destruction by questioning God's goodness and God's justice.
Doug McMasters: There Adam and Eve listened to the voice of a serpent as it questioned God, and they rolled the words of that serpent around in their minds and they began to imagine a life that would be better without God, and so they decided to disobey God.
Doug McMasters: They decided to go against his prohibition not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and, among a million and one yeses, they decided to say yes to the one no that God gave them.
Doug McMasters: They looked for a world where they could determine what was lovely and they could determine what was best for them, without God's advice and without God's leadership and without having to submit to it.
Doug McMasters: And behind it all, behind the serpent and in the voice, was this supernatural diabolical force, the devil, satan, the adversary, the tempter, the slanderer, the liar from the beginning.
Doug McMasters: And the imagery of the serpent in Genesis 3, picked up here in Isaiah, chapter 27, is also laid out for us in the book of Revelation where it connects the thread and it gives us a portrait of Satan or the devil, in Revelation 12.9.
Doug McMasters: So the great dragon was thrown out, the ancient serpent who is called the devil, and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world.
Doug McMasters: He was thrown to earth and his angels with him.
Doug McMasters: By giving heed to the seductive statements of the serpent, adam and Eve plunged the whole universe, people and creation into a fallen, futile and failed state where death and disobedience and chaos reign.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah 27 takes up that imagery.
Doug McMasters: It takes up that imagery of death and disobedience and chaos and sticks it into a sea monster.
Doug McMasters: But then there is over this sea monster, that is a force beyond the power of humanity.
Doug McMasters: Is God standing there over the lifeless, headless body of this beast as he swings his sword and cuts it down in a moment.
Doug McMasters: What is this?
Doug McMasters: What is this imagery?
Doug McMasters: It's a description of everything that is mighty, this unassailable force that wreaks havoc, this chaos, this destruction, this death is put to death.
Doug McMasters: Not only is death dead, but the one who holds the power of death is dead.
Doug McMasters: That's how dead death is.
Doug McMasters: That's how dead disobedience is.
Doug McMasters: It's gone.
Doug McMasters: The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus shared in flesh and blood so that, through his death, he might destroy the one who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, and free all those who, all their life, were in slavery, held in bondage by the fear of death.
Doug McMasters: Through Christ's sacrifice and his resurrection, he stood with this mighty crimson sword over death itself and over Satan.
Doug McMasters: All powers, seen and unseen, all rulers earthly and otherworldly, seen and unseen, all rulers earthly and otherworldly, all those things that oppose God and his people are now hacked to death by God himself.
Doug McMasters: This is the image, this is the victory, this is Leviathan gone, and only Yahweh, the mighty Lord, with his great and strong sword, is able to overcome this power.
Doug McMasters: This is our God.
Doug McMasters: Not only is the image here of the destruction of death and the one who holds the power of death.
Doug McMasters: It's also a picture of divine delight as instantly the image moves a different direction In verse 2.
Doug McMasters: On that day, sing about a desirable vineyard Boy.
Doug McMasters: It's a really quick movement away from a battlefield to a glorious hills of Napa Valley, for instance.
Doug McMasters: But here's a song to sing about a delightful vineyard.
Doug McMasters: It follows hard on this destruction of Satan and his downfall and again it's repeated in that day.
Doug McMasters: We've heard a lot of that phrase in the past few weeks, but here it is again, introducing that glorious fulfillment of God's plan by way of his activity.
Doug McMasters: And now a song is sung again, a song about a pleasant vineyard.
Doug McMasters: As we've been going through Isaiah, this might sound familiar to you because we looked at a passage that talked about a song about a vineyard in Isaiah chapter 5.
Doug McMasters: David Parker was the one who took this passage and in Isaiah chapter 5, that song was not a song of delight and cheerful music.
Doug McMasters: It was a mourning lament.
Doug McMasters: It was a song that was sad.
Doug McMasters: In Isaiah chapter 5, it was a song crying over the people of Israel and their failures and their disobedience and the destruction that would come upon them by way of judgment.
Doug McMasters: But here is a positive song full of hope for the vineyard that stands in extreme and sharp contrast to that in chapter 5.
Doug McMasters: And it's meant to be a contrast because it flows similarly.
Doug McMasters: Because it flows similarly In chapter five and in chapter 27,.
Doug McMasters: There are songs that talk about God's care of the vineyard.
Doug McMasters: There are songs about his attention to it, tending to it, and there are identification markers of Jacob and Israel in chapter 25 and chapter 27.
Doug McMasters: This is the same vineyard but a completely different song.
Doug McMasters: In chapter 5 and verses 5 and 6, god was angry with the vineyard, but in chapter 27, there's no anger.
Doug McMasters: God is not angry with them because there's nothing in the vineyard to provoke his displeasure.
Doug McMasters: In chapter 5, the harvest was ruined.
Doug McMasters: In chapter 27, the harvest is abundant.
Doug McMasters: In chapter 5, there are thorns and briars that need to be burnt.
Doug McMasters: In chapter 27, there's no thorns or briars, even existing.
Doug McMasters: In chapter 5, god stops the rain on the bad vines.
Doug McMasters: In chapter 27, he freely waters the vineyard.
Doug McMasters: In chapter 5, the fruit to the vineyard is sour, unpleasant to the taste, while in chapter 27, the vineyard produces good fruit and it flourishes around the world and everybody gets to eat of it Everybody, everybody.
Doug McMasters: Instead of bitterness and bloodshed in the old vineyard in this new vineyard is protection and peace and abundance.
Doug McMasters: Where does all of this come from?
Doug McMasters: It comes from God.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 3.
Doug McMasters: I am the Lord who watches over it, to water it regularly so that no one disturbs it.
Doug McMasters: I watch over it night and day.
Doug McMasters: I am not angry.
Doug McMasters: God's activity to this vineyard is one of watching over it repeatedly, watering it.
Doug McMasters: It shows his devotion, it shows his attention, it shows his care, it shows his ownership, it shows his sovereignty as he makes every effort to ensure this vineyard success.
Doug McMasters: And that success comes forward.
Doug McMasters: Where other vineyards have failed, this one succeeds.
Doug McMasters: God's people.
Doug McMasters: Instead of being the vineyard of chapter 5, are now the vineyard of chapter 27.
Doug McMasters: Being the vineyard of chapter 5 are now the vineyard of chapter 27.
Doug McMasters: They're a valued vineyard with God watching over it.
Doug McMasters: They're a verdant vineyard full of plenty.
Doug McMasters: They're a victorious vineyard flourishing all over the earth.
Doug McMasters: It's a vineyard without thorns.
Doug McMasters: It's a vineyard without briars.
Doug McMasters: It's a vineyard with images of full, plentiful fruit.
Doug McMasters: It's full of vigor, no impediments, no opposition, nothing to hold back the fruitfulness of the harvest.
Doug McMasters: What is this?
Doug McMasters: It elicits from us the garden of where there's no thorns and no weeds and no mitigation of potential, where everything is brought to the very fullness of what it was designed for.
Doug McMasters: That's the image and here it is of God looking over this vineyard with all of his care, with all of his attention, with all of his nurture, with all of his love and with all of his acceptance.
Doug McMasters: His vineyard, his people.
Doug McMasters: This captures for us this ultimate restoration of creation, where sin is eradicated and the original design of people and creation in Eden is fully realized.
Doug McMasters: This is the glimpse of the future.
Doug McMasters: In this imagery, life restored, eden regained Harmony once again, where nature and humanity coexist in perfect balance, where we live in perfect harmony with God and one another and with the things that we walk upon and meet in the created world.
Doug McMasters: Imagine that for you an environment untouched by conflict and destruction.
Doug McMasters: Imagine a place where the forest thrives, where the river runs crystal clear, where every living creature flourishes without fear, where every human life is embodying simplicity and joy, where all of us are connected, sharing in this abundance without greed or competition.
Doug McMasters: Think about it Everything that we do bringing us to the fullness of joy, fullness of harmony and the fullness of connection before God himself who takes pleasure in its all.
Doug McMasters: This is that image.
Doug McMasters: This is that vineyard that receives God's everlasting care.
Doug McMasters: You might say, well, that's just too wonderful a picture for me.
Doug McMasters: I'm a person full of danger and trouble and hardship and conflict.
Doug McMasters: I live among people that make me sad and sadly, I make them sad too.
Doug McMasters: I'm more like a thorn than a fruitful vine.
Doug McMasters: I'm more like a briar than I am a vineyard of plenty.
Doug McMasters: There's hope for us who are thorny people.
Doug McMasters: There's hope for us who are briars rather than vines.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse four and five.
Doug McMasters: How complete is this beautiful creation.
Doug McMasters: God says I'm not angry.
Doug McMasters: If only there were thorns and briars for me to battle, I would trample them and burn them to the ground.
Doug McMasters: You're like oh well, that's not hope, pastor.
Doug McMasters: Well, it's what we deserve.
Doug McMasters: Thorns and briars really don't belong in God's beautiful creation, which means none of us belong in God's beautiful creation.
Doug McMasters: But take a look at verse 5.
Doug McMasters: Let it take hold of my strength.
Doug McMasters: Let it make peace with me.
Doug McMasters: Make peace with me.
Doug McMasters: God repeats the phrase because he wants it to sink in.
Doug McMasters: How are you ever going to possibly be in that beautiful place of the future?
Doug McMasters: By making peace with God.
Doug McMasters: That's how it's, not by working to be a fruitful vine and trying to change your own nature.
Doug McMasters: Mr and Mrs Thorne, it's not by ignoring how prickly you are and saying well, I'm no different than everybody else.
Doug McMasters: You don't enter into the beautiful vision of the future without this making peace with God.
Doug McMasters: But here's God making the appeal to you Make peace with me, come to me as you are, but come to me with a desire to be something different than you are, and I will include you.
Doug McMasters: I will include you in the vine and I will include you.
Doug McMasters: I will include you in the vine, I will include you in the picture of the future.
Doug McMasters: This promise is to everybody.
Doug McMasters: It's a promise not just to the natural vine, the people of Israel.
Doug McMasters: It's the promise to the thorns and the briars and the bristles, to the thorns and the briars and the bristles.
Doug McMasters: You see, the hope is found in coming to Christ, to coming to the Lord.
Doug McMasters: You know the one you've ignored, the one you've disobeyed, the one you've shunned, the one you don't want to listen to.
Doug McMasters: Come to him.
Doug McMasters: Come to him and seek to be at peace with him.
Doug McMasters: When I was 21 years old, this was bubbling up in my heart and the only thing that I could think of that was most important to me at that moment, which was a new thought to me, was that somehow I needed to be right with God.
Doug McMasters: I didn't know what that looked like.
Doug McMasters: I asked somebody and I said what do I do?
Doug McMasters: And I thought maybe I needed to do something.
Doug McMasters: Maybe it meant joining a church, maybe it meant I don't know what it meant, but I felt like I needed to do something.
Doug McMasters: And he said pray and ask God to save you.
Doug McMasters: Well, that seemed really counterintuitive and scary actually, because I'd never prayed before.
Doug McMasters: But he pointed me to the scriptures that said that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved, for the same God who is rich over all, both Jew and Gentile, for whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Doug McMasters: And he said believe on Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: But what did that mean?
Doug McMasters: It meant relinquishing any trust that I had in my goodness, relinquishing any trust I had in any of my activities, as if those might be good enough to obtain favor from God.
Doug McMasters: Let go of that, repent of your sin, those things that you loved.
Doug McMasters: Turn away from them as you come to God, let go of yourself and let God set the priorities of your life.
Doug McMasters: And it meant receiving Christ as my Savior.
Doug McMasters: And in a moment those things happened, and in a moment come flooding in or rejoicing in my heart, and I stood up and I looked out the window and all of a sudden the sky looked bluer than it ever had before and the grass looked greener than it ever had before.
Doug McMasters: And the thought came into my head Doug, you're going to heaven when you die.
Doug McMasters: That that is what it meant for me to be at peace with God, and it's what every person understands when they come to peace with God.
Doug McMasters: Having therefore been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord, jesus Christ, and we have obtained access through him, by faith, into this grace in which we stand and we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
Doug McMasters: How does this entrance come?
Doug McMasters: Not by anything we do, not by anything we hold on to, or not by any excuse we make.
Doug McMasters: We're brought into this beautiful picture because it's God who loves, who cares, who waters, who takes pleasure, who is not angry.
Doug McMasters: The third picture is found in the last two verses, verses 12 and 13, where, on that day, shows up again and again.
Doug McMasters: On that day, the Lord will thresh grain from the Euphrates River as far as the wadi of Egypt, and you Israelites will be gathered one by one On that day, a great ram's horn will be blown.
Doug McMasters: Those lost in the land of Assyria will come, as well as those dispersed in the land of Egypt, and they will worship the Lord at Jerusalem, on the holy mountain.
Doug McMasters: We've seen the destruction of death and we've saw the picture of divine delight.
Doug McMasters: And now we have a determined destiny.
Doug McMasters: In their sin, the people of Israel, both the northern tribes and the southern tribes, were scattered around the known world.
Doug McMasters: In their disobedience, the northern tribes ten of them were captured by Assyria, and, as Assyria would do, they dispersed them throughout their kingdom in small little pockets so that they could not be strong enough to rise up any resistance against the empire, and they ceded the land with conquered people from other areas, so confused by language and culture.
Doug McMasters: There was no way the population could amass any strength.
Doug McMasters: In 2 Kings 17, verse 6, we hear that the people of Israel never returned from those dispersed places.
Doug McMasters: In Jeremiah's day, a group of other people sought refuge in Egypt and Cush, and they remained there in small little clusters under the failing arm of Pharaoh.
Doug McMasters: A smattering of weak and poor people remained in the land, and as Assyria began to seed the land with conquered people, they began to intermingle and intermarry with them and they became known as the Samaritans.
Doug McMasters: And then the people of Judah were captive to Babylon.
Doug McMasters: Babylon soon fell.
Doug McMasters: It fell to the Persians, but a lot of people didn't return.
Doug McMasters: The majority of the folks stayed there.
Doug McMasters: Only a minority of people returned to the land of promise.
Doug McMasters: So here is people scattered everywhere, god's people taken out into the lands of the Assyrians, the lands of the Babylonians, the lands of the Egyptians, intermingling with people so confusing you can't rally a cry to them to bring them together.
Doug McMasters: You couldn't get an alert on your smartphone that just told everybody something's happening Until an angel blew a trumpet.
Doug McMasters: And here's that picture of this glorious day when God will pull from the Euphrates and he'll pull from the wadi of Egypt and he will gather his people together and there will be this blast of a ram's horn blown and all those lost in those places will come together.
Doug McMasters: The dispersed will reunite.
Doug McMasters: And where does he summon them?
Doug McMasters: He summons them to the very place of worship to the holy city and Mount Zion itself, and the rest of their life will be filled with what looks like a day of jubilant celebration in the presence of God.
Doug McMasters: Their unity is not based upon their nationality, it's not based upon their political interest.
Doug McMasters: They are unified in a common worship of God.
Doug McMasters: They return to Zion and, as other places talk, they returned with the nations to this place.
Doug McMasters: The kingdom will be like an endless feast on a holy day of worship, as the people rejoice and feast in the presence of the Lord, in the presence of the Lord.
Doug McMasters: It's no wonder, then, that Paul, when he spoke to the Thessalonians and when he spoke to the Corinthians, he talked about a time when the trumpet will sound and all of God's people will be gathered into the presence of God, the trumpet fulfilled as the angel speaks, and all of God's people hear and come into God's presence.
Doug McMasters: This is why we read the book of Hebrews in chapter 12, because that reality is already here and that reality will be known even better then.
Doug McMasters: Instead, you've come to Mount Zion.
Doug McMasters: You're already positionally there.
Doug McMasters: You've come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the myriad of angels, a festive gathering.
Doug McMasters: The party's already started.
Doug McMasters: To the assembly of the firstborn, whose names have been written in heaven, to a judge who is the God of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, to the sprinkled blood, which says better things than the blood of Abel, which says better things in the blood of Abel.
Doug McMasters: This is Isaiah's song, a song of victory.
Doug McMasters: The death of death and the one who holds the power of it, the delightful vine and the regathered people.
Doug McMasters: The kingdom of Israel longed for and the people of all nations have yearned for.
Doug McMasters: As we've dreamt up and conjured in our minds ideas of beauty and wonder and harmony, it's a reality in God's word.
Doug McMasters: What does this teach us?
Doug McMasters: Well, let's just think about it for a moment.
Doug McMasters: This passage teaches us that presently we are in a world that's fallen and we don't wrestle against flesh and blood.
Doug McMasters: We wrestle against principalities and powers in the heavenly places, that there are things that energize the present forces of destruction and there are spiritual forces that reinforce the fear of death in our soul than that wonder of what's beyond when our eyes shut for the last time.
Doug McMasters: And so it must evoke from us a recognition of just how weak we are.
Doug McMasters: We can't stand up against Balrog.
Doug McMasters: We can't stand up against the Leviathan.
Doug McMasters: We can't stand up against Satan.
Doug McMasters: We can't even stand up against death, which is just the effect.
Doug McMasters: We can't stand up against Satan.
Doug McMasters: We can't even stand up against death, which is just the effect.
Doug McMasters: We can't stand up against any of it.
Doug McMasters: What we need is a formidable force of God himself swinging the sword to cut the heads off of those enemies.
Doug McMasters: And so this passage teaches us to be prayerful, but to be humble, but also to be hopeful.
Doug McMasters: Hopeful even when the kingdom seems like it's never coming.
Doug McMasters: Hopeful when it seems like all the things that we do as humans just don't affect anything positive.
Doug McMasters: The day's going to come when God will affect everything positive.
Doug McMasters: The day is going to come when God will affect everything positive.
Doug McMasters: It reminds us that the work is not ours, the timing is not ours, the victory is not ours and the praise is not ours, it's God's.
Doug McMasters: And this song teaches us to sing as we continue to traverse through enemy territory.
Doug McMasters: Think about that for a moment.
Doug McMasters: What would be the most despicable, rage-inducing activity?
Doug McMasters: To hear the taunts of your enemy.
Doug McMasters: That's why, when you go to a soccer game in England, you've got oppositional teams singing oh, we're going to beat you.
Doug McMasters: You're like no, we're going to beat you.
Doug McMasters: I'm not going to repeat the lyrics.
Doug McMasters: Some of them just can't be repeated, repeated here.
Doug McMasters: Imagine walking through the enemy territory and singing, taunting death and taunting the devil, not because we're powerful, but because we have a victory we're anticipating.
Doug McMasters: Imagine singing a song like Nearer my God to thee.
Doug McMasters: Listen to its lyrics.
Doug McMasters: Even though it be a cross, that raises me still.
Doug McMasters: All my song still shall be nearer my God to thee, though like a wanderer.
Doug McMasters: The sun gone down, darkness over me, my rest a stone.
Doug McMasters: Yet in my dreams I'll be.
Doug McMasters: Nearer my God to thee.
Doug McMasters: There let the way appear, steps unto heaven, all that thou sendest me in mercy, given angels beckon me.
Doug McMasters: Nearer my God to thee.
Doug McMasters: Then, with my waking thoughts, bright with thy praise, out of my stormy griefs, bethel, I raise, so by my woes to be nearer my God to thee.
Doug McMasters: Or if, on joyful wing cleaving the sky, sun and moon and stars forgot.
Doug McMasters: And then one more verse added later Nearer my God to thee, nearer, perfectly blessed age after age, to be nearer my God to thee, nearer my God to thee.
Doug McMasters: In the middle of enemy territory we're saying it doesn't matter.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't matter.
Doug McMasters: I'm going to be nearer to God and I'm going to be in the place where the ages will roll from one to another, without any calendar, and I'll always be near to him.
Doug McMasters: So, whether you're eight or 80 or 95, like George, we can sing in the middle of enemy territory.
Doug McMasters: We can sing like we were teaching Elias a few weeks ago.
Doug McMasters: My God is so great, so big and so strong.
Doug McMasters: Right, he's so mighty.
Doug McMasters: There's nothing my God cannot do.
Doug McMasters: And yes, I messed up the lyrics just now, teaching him to sing and one day to possess a song in the middle of enemy territory.
Doug McMasters: Because one day, as believers, all of us will sing and there won't be any enemies around.
Doug McMasters: And one day we'll sing, on the last day of days, this beautiful song.
Doug McMasters: I'm telling you a mystery will not all sleep, but will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, and the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we will be changed.
Doug McMasters: For this corruptible body must put on incorruptible and must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body clothed with immortality.
Doug McMasters: And when this corruptible body is clothed with incorruptibility and this mortal body clothed with immortality, then will be the saying that is written will take place Isaiah 25.
Doug McMasters: Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Doug McMasters: Where death is your victory, where death is your sting, leviathan's dead.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, thank you for the glorious song, a glorious song that we can sing today, a song that we can sing when all trouble still continues around us and even still resides within us, because it's a song not dependent on our ability, but yours, and we're grateful that you're the mighty God who has come to save thorns and briars and to make them a fruitful vineyard.
Doug McMasters: Lord to you be the praise, to you be the glory, to you be the honor, to you be the majesty, forever and ever.
Doug McMasters: Amen.