Doug McMasters: Last Sunday morning, just after our afternoon, just after our service, we had our annual meeting and for all of us who are here, you know how that went.
Doug McMasters: It was a beautiful time together, just rejoicing in God's mercies over the past year and looking forward to His mercies continuing on our lives and service to Christ in the coming year.
Doug McMasters: After it was over, one of the men of the church, who's a recent member of the church, came up to me and this was his first annual meeting that he'd ever been to of the church.
Doug McMasters: And he came up to me with tears streaming down his cheeks and he said I've never been anywhere in my life in a meeting like we just had.
Doug McMasters: He said it was beautiful, it was wonderful, it was joyful.
Doug McMasters: And he said why did I ever spend the bulk of my life wanting to be somewhere else and doing something else?
Doug McMasters: It was just a beautiful testimony of joy in his heart by watching what God said would happen when he is the Lord of his people, right.
Doug McMasters: So I just wanted to share that with you for your encouragement.
Doug McMasters: It was something that filled my heart with a great deal of joy when I embraced him with tears streaming down his cheeks and wished all of you could have shared in that little testimony that he had.
Doug McMasters: So let's pray together, shall we?
Doug McMasters: Father, as we continue through this year and in light of all of the things that were settled and agreed upon last week, we continue to look to you, for you are the Lord of your people.
Doug McMasters: We recognize that all of our energizing and all of our ability to care and serve and benefit one another comes from you.
Doug McMasters: You tell us that you supply every bit of us for that purpose, so that we might be built up in Christ and that the glory might come to you.
Doug McMasters: Who is the head, father, we are dependent people and we want to recognize that openly before you.
Doug McMasters: And sadly, father, too often we are disobedient people.
Doug McMasters: So we ask you, lord, save us from ourselves, save us from our worst tendencies, save us from selfishness and pride and arrogance and vanity and jealousies.
Doug McMasters: May the fruit of the Spirit rule our hearts, not just individually but collectively, when we gather and when we meet one another.
Doug McMasters: May you be on display, lord.
Doug McMasters: May it not only be for the enriching of our hearts and the encouragement that comes by way of the peace of Christ that rules us, but may it be a living testimony to others who would exclaim that surely the living God dwells among them, for I cannot explain how they act.
Doug McMasters: But through him and Lord, we pray that you would be the very one that they see, not us, but you.
Doug McMasters: And so, father, we pray that your richest blessings would continue upon us.
Doug McMasters: We know we don't deserve them and we know we can't earn them, but we pray for them, father, that you might be Father, that you might be exalted among us and through us in the lives of others.
Doug McMasters: And, lord, now we pray that your word might instruct us, give us eyes to see it and ears to hear it.
Doug McMasters: We pray in Christ's name, amen.
Doug McMasters: Let's take our Bible and go over to the book of Isaiah, and we'll start in chapter 17.
Doug McMasters: You find a pew Bible in front of you and right around page 610, you'll find Isaiah, chapter 17.
Doug McMasters: Just a few blocks from Buckingham Palace in London and an easy walk from Big Ben and Westminster Abbey is a building which has been greatly used to influence London for well over 100 years.
Doug McMasters: There's a name of the building is Westminster Chapel, and Martin Lloyd-Jones was a minister born in 1899 and became the minister of Westminster Chapel in 1939, right on the cusp of World War II, the people of Great Britain knew what was coming.
Doug McMasters: It was right before Germany declared war against them and they knew the aggressiveness of the Nazi war machine and how they had no problems sweeping over people and taking them swiftly in Blitzkrieg.
Doug McMasters: And they understood that war was imminent, near perhaps unavoidable.
Doug McMasters: And in 1939, at the outset of his ministry there, as the senior pastor Martin Lloyd-Jones preached a series of sermons preparing the people for war, jones preached a series of sermons preparing the people for war.
Doug McMasters: He told them that, whether the bombs kill them or not, that they were to be prepared to stand before a holy God and he urged them to embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And as the war did come and continued, and as people began to evacuate from London and the bombs began to populate and destroy London, martin Lloyd-Jones continued to preach at Westminster Chapel.
Doug McMasters: There, close to Buckingham Palace.
Doug McMasters: On one occasion a bomb landed and exploded just yards away from the building and it shook the building and plaster fell from the ceilings and landed on some of the folks during the service.
Doug McMasters: At the time, martin Lloyd-Jones was praying.
Doug McMasters: When the bomb hit he stopped and paused and then continued to pray and following that opened up the Word of God and preached, and the people sat and listened.
Doug McMasters: Why didn't they run off in a panic?
Doug McMasters: Why didn't they just scatter and run?
Doug McMasters: Well, they were people that had been taught and understood that God was in control of everything, including those bombs that were whistling through the air on the very day they had gathered to worship.
Doug McMasters: They understood that God was the beginning and the end, that he was the ultimate one in control of everything and nothing could happen apart from his plan.
Doug McMasters: The truth is, god is in control of everything, and the passage of Scripture that we're about to look at unveils that for us.
Doug McMasters: We're in this section, the oracles about the nations, and we're going to look at chapter 17, 18, 19, and 20 today.
Doug McMasters: So obviously we're not going to be doing 17, 18, 19, and 20 today, so obviously we're not going to be doing a deep dive through every one of these verses.
Doug McMasters: But we'll understand as we go through these four chapters, just as the other chapters before it and after it, that the major issue it raises is the question who is in charge of all of this?
Doug McMasters: Who rules the world?
Doug McMasters: Is it the kings and powers of the day or something else?
Doug McMasters: Is it the Lord, god or them, and we'll see two ways the Lord shows his sovereign power in these four chapters.
Doug McMasters: He shows his sovereign power by way of his judgment and he shows his sovereign power by way of his salvation and mercy.
Doug McMasters: This passage will show us that the revolt of the nations and their kings and their false gods against the living God is an utterly senseless undertaking.
Doug McMasters: Gods against the living God is an utterly senseless undertaking.
Doug McMasters: We'll also see that Judah and Israel's trust in those kings and nations and gods was also just as senseless.
Doug McMasters: But we'll understand also just how sublime it is to trust this God, who not only can bring judgment but also offer salvation in a most surprising way.
Doug McMasters: So let's take a look at this, and first we're going to look at God's sovereignty in judgment.
Doug McMasters: God's sovereignty in judgment, and in chapter 17, we're introduced to two peoples.
Doug McMasters: We've read about them before as we've gone through the book of Isaiah the people of Aram, which is modern day Syria, and the northern tribes of Israel, and so Isaiah revisits these people that he'd spent more time in several chapters, back where the king of Israel and the king of Aram had conspired together to attack Judah and King Ahaz, and in this chapter we see him focusing first of all upon the king of Aram and the people of Aram.
Doug McMasters: In the first three verses, and then verses 4 to 11, going into a discussion about the futility and the destruction of the people of Israel, the prophet talks about the ferocity of the Assyrian army coming upon them.
Doug McMasters: So ferocious would it be, so lacking in mercy, that there would be nothing, hardly nothing left, hardly anything left of Aram and Israel once Assyria had moved through them.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at the first couple of verses and you can see that said very clearly.
Doug McMasters: Damascus is no longer a city.
Doug McMasters: It has become a ruined heap.
Doug McMasters: The cities of Aurora are abandoned.
Doug McMasters: There'll be places for flocks that will lie down without fear.
Doug McMasters: The fortress disappears from Ephraim and a kingdom from Damascus.
Doug McMasters: The Assyrian army was going to come down with such force that he later describes it as sort of harvesters, when they go into a field and take all the crop out of the field.
Doug McMasters: Or when they go into an olive tree and beat off every single olive off of the tree as they harvest it and there's nothing left but a barren tree with no fruit whatsoever.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 10, he gives the reason for this judgment, for you have forgotten the God of your salvation and you have failed to remember the rock of your strength.
Doug McMasters: And here Isaiah brings them back to the imagery of God in the time of the Exodus.
Doug McMasters: These two words very clearly the God of your salvation and the rock, are terms used in the season of the Exodus, when the people of God were found in bondage in Egypt and cried out to the Lord for mercy.
Doug McMasters: And he came as the saving God and as the rock who supplied them and he took care of them and brought them into this land.
Doug McMasters: But Isaiah's charge is you've forgotten him.
Doug McMasters: You have forgotten him, you have failed to remember him.
Doug McMasters: You have not taken into consideration who God is and has been to you in his supply and in his protection.
Doug McMasters: And Israel could never say about him oh, he will never save because he is the God who saves.
Doug McMasters: And they could never say he will never save us because he is your God of salvation.
Doug McMasters: And the image of the rock is not some static analogy but a dynamic one, because it goes back to Exodus, chapter 17, in which the people were crying out in the midst of a barren wasteland, wanting water, and Moses strikes the rock, and the rock gushes forth with water and supplies the people with their need and quenches their thirst.
Doug McMasters: This rock, this dependable, saving fortress-like protecting God, was the one they had forgotten in the time of deepest need.
Doug McMasters: Surrounded by the nations of Assyria and Egypt, they had forgotten their protector and their supplier.
Doug McMasters: Instead, they put trust in mustering their own armies, they put trust in making alliances with other nations.
Doug McMasters: They had sought to find security through coalitions and power by way of number instead of trusting the living God.
Doug McMasters: And so Isaiah says to them right after that, he said what you have done is you've taken a garden, you've sown seeds, you've cultivated the plants, you've watched over them, but on the day of harvest you're going to come to it and find it completely wasted away, and all of your energies and all of your efforts and all of that is going to be brought to simply nothing because you've put your trust in the wrong place.
Doug McMasters: And he leaves with this tone of this pathetic loss of people who have expended resources and energy and time and effort into cultivating a crop that never materializes.
Doug McMasters: Can you imagine investing all of your life into something that just vanishes away and it's gone, that just vanishes away and it's gone?
Doug McMasters: One day, when I was a boy, my grandfather brought out into his sitting room a stack of papers that were stock certificates that my family had bought prior to 1929.
Doug McMasters: And there were a lot of them.
Doug McMasters: But when the Great Depression hit, in the waves that it brought into the economic catastrophe, that that was, all of that money and all of that labor and all of that investment was nothing but paper with no value whatsoever.
Doug McMasters: They couldn't claw back the time and the energy and the resources that went into that and it was gone.
Doug McMasters: Resources that went into that and it was gone.
Doug McMasters: Imagine living your whole life seeking, grasping, clutching for things that you would call your securities, only to enter into eternity and find out that they were nothing but bubbles bursting in the air, with nothing left.
Doug McMasters: This is what God is telling the people here.
Doug McMasters: What have you done?
Doug McMasters: You have forgotten the living God, the one who would be your deliverer, the one who would supply you as a rock, the one who would secure you like a fortress.
Doug McMasters: Our Lord Jesus, to a lady sitting at the well, said to them I am a well of living waters.
Doug McMasters: If you asked for me a drink from me, I would give you such a supply that you would never thirst again.
Doug McMasters: Don't invest your life in the things that are worthless and wasteful and reckless.
Doug McMasters: Give yourself to the living God.
Doug McMasters: And at the end of this chapter, in verses 12 to 14, he culminates this section, which has brought us face to face with Babylon and Assyria, and Moab and Aram and Israel, and collectively speaks to the nations and summarizes all of these oracles in a short little poem.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at these last few verses.
Doug McMasters: Verse 12, the roar of many peoples.
Doug McMasters: They roar like the roaring of the seas, the raging of the.
Doug McMasters: This is imagery from ancient Near East religious literature.
Doug McMasters: When they looked out and they looked for the most powerful thing that they could see, they would look at the sea and they would see the chaos of the Mediterranean Sea and they would recognize that there was no human power that could harness that chaos, that they were subject to it in their little boats.
Doug McMasters: And so they looked for something that was the ultimate power that could calm that chaos called the sea.
Doug McMasters: You might think of that when jonah is on a little boat running away from his duties to go to nineveh and as he's out there, the sea whips up a storm and all the people in the boat are crying out to the gods, asking for them to grab a hold of this chaos and settle it.
Doug McMasters: But their gods don't hear until they talk to Jonah and Jonah says toss me overboard and my God will calm the sea.
Doug McMasters: And they did, and he did, and they worshiped the God that Jonah was running from.
Doug McMasters: And so here we have that emblem of the sea brought into the peoples, that the chaos of the universe, the sea and its emblematic descriptions, is brought into the chaos and the destructive roaring force of the peoples, the nations, the greatest manifestation of power on earth.
Doug McMasters: It is us, they say, until God speaks.
Doug McMasters: It says here, he rebukes them and they flee far away, driven before the wind, like chaff on the hills and like tumbleweeds before a gale.
Doug McMasters: In the evening, sudden terror.
Doug McMasters: Before morning it's gone.
Doug McMasters: The fate of those who plunder us and the lot of those who ravage us.
Doug McMasters: And that's exactly what happens.
Doug McMasters: In a few chapters you'll read the story of Hezekiah and what happens to the Assyrian army that God mows down in a night.
Doug McMasters: The Gospels testify the power of God to control everything.
Doug McMasters: He controls the seas, he controls the people that seem like seas.
Doug McMasters: There's no wonder, then, when Christ was on the Sea of Galilee and he looked at the wind and the waves and said peace be still that.
Doug McMasters: The people in the boats wondered who is this one that even the sea obeys him?
Doug McMasters: In chapter 18, we're brought into the land of Cush.
Doug McMasters: Cush refers to the land that's immediately south of Egypt and it's been known by many names throughout history.
Doug McMasters: The Egyptians knew it as Cush, the Greeks and the Romans called it Ethiopia, but not to be confused with modern-day Ethiopia.
Doug McMasters: This would be more like North Sudan.
Doug McMasters: And during the mid-8th century BC which is right about the time that we're in right here in Isaiah, cush attacked and overthrew the dynasties of Egypt and took control of it and ruled as pharaohs in what is known as the 25th dynasty.
Doug McMasters: And while they're in charge of Egypt and the regions to the south, they want to consolidate their power, and so look at chapter 18 and verse 1.
Doug McMasters: Woe to the land of buzzing insect wings beyond the rivers of Cush, which send envoys by sea and reed vessels over the water.
Doug McMasters: Go swift messengers.
Doug McMasters: Vessels over the water, go swift messengers.
Doug McMasters: Here they are.
Doug McMasters: Having grabbed power, having gained descendancy, having taken over Egypt, they're now sending out messengers in order to consolidate power because of the threat of Assyria.
Doug McMasters: And in the midst of all this buzzing movement that the prophet Isaiah likens to buzzing insect wings is something very quiet, something very still.
Doug McMasters: But quietness and stillness should never be mistaken for a lack of power.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 4.
Doug McMasters: For the Lord said to me I will quietly look out from my place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a rain cloud in harvest.
Doug McMasters: Heat there, but not obvious, not looking, imposing a small little cloud on the horizon during the sunny time of harvest.
Doug McMasters: The shimmering of a sun that's there, neither one of them coming with great fanfare or great pageantry, just simply present and yet so inescapable.
Doug McMasters: And here is God saying that he is going to do something that is, to him, quiet.
Doug McMasters: What is that that he's going to do?
Doug McMasters: He's going to bring these buzzing, moving, maneuvering, conniving, rushing nations to nothing To nothing.
Doug McMasters: Before the harvest, when the blossoming is over and the blossom becomes a ripening grape, he will cut off the shoots with a pruning knife and tear away and remove the branches.
Doug McMasters: God's quiet but ever-present judgment will come just when he wants it to come, and it will accomplish everything that he wants it to perform.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 7, they will acknowledge him in that judgment.
Doug McMasters: Take a look now over at chapter 19.
Doug McMasters: In chapter 19, we move chapter 17 from Aram and Israel to the end of chapter 17, to the nations, chapter 18 to Cush, and now we go to Egypt itself in chapter 19.
Doug McMasters: A pronouncement concerning Egypt.
Doug McMasters: Now, remember where Judah is in this situation To the north, northwest, but they come down through.
Doug McMasters: The north is the mighty empire of Assyria, and to their south is the mighty power of Cush that controls Egypt and all of that region.
Doug McMasters: To the south, these are the players of the day, and the goal of Assyria was to gain a hold of all of the trade routes that made their way down to the riches of Egypt and to control all of that commerce and to gain all of that wealth for themselves.
Doug McMasters: They wanted control over the trade routes in and to and from Egypt to the rest of the world.
Doug McMasters: And, of course, cush and Egypt are here resisting it and seeking to consolidate their power by way of alliances, like we looked at in the previous chapter, seeking to consolidate their power by way of alliances, like we looked at in the previous chapter.
Doug McMasters: And so you've got this mighty power to the north and this mighty power to the south, and sandwiched right in the middle of that is little old Judah, this tiny little nation.
Doug McMasters: They're caught in the crossfire of superpowers going after each other, and Assyria is moving itself and positioning itself to the very borders of Egypt.
Doug McMasters: And Egypt is trying to buffer itself and trying to call these little nation states into an alliance so they might have a little bit of a buffer there.
Doug McMasters: What's going to happen?
Doug McMasters: Verse 1, a pronouncement concerning Egypt Look, the Lord rides on a swift cloud and is coming to Egypt.
Doug McMasters: Egypt's worthless idols will.
Doug McMasters: And once again we're brought into the realm of ancient Near East literature, when the gods were considered those in control of the clouds, riders in the sky, riders on the clouds.
Doug McMasters: So many different gods of the different peoples would be considered those who rode on the clouds and brought the rain and the harvest, and so they worshiped them because of their harvesting, producing abilities.
Doug McMasters: So they thought the Mesopotamian storm gods, baal, the one who rides on the clouds.
Doug McMasters: And someone said about Baal he will appoint the season of his rain a season for moisture to appear in snow.
Doug McMasters: He will set his voice in the clouds as lightning bolts to the earth.
Doug McMasters: But who's actually in charge here?
Doug McMasters: It is God.
Doug McMasters: It is God who rides on the swift clouds and is coming to Egypt, and the all-powerful God, sovereign over the nations, is also sovereign over the heavens, and he's going to come and demonstrate himself as more powerful and more mighty than these lifeless, powerless idols.
Doug McMasters: And the ensuing terror that's going to come to Egypt is pervasive.
Doug McMasters: In verses 2 to 4, this shaking of Egypt is going to settle them so much that it's going to lead them into anarchy.
Doug McMasters: And then, in verses 5 to 10, we're going to see that he touches the Nile and disrupts the flows of the seasonal floods and going to bring economic collapse to Egypt.
Doug McMasters: And then, verses 11 to 15, they're going to be brought to hopeless defeat.
Doug McMasters: And in verses 11 to 15, they're going to be brought to hopeless defeat.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 12, a taunt God gives them so victorious he is, he can speak as a Lord in battle, standing when all others have shattered.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 12, where, then, are your wise men?
Doug McMasters: Let them tell you and reveal what the Lord of armies has planned against Egypt.
Doug McMasters: The princes of Zoan have been fools.
Doug McMasters: The princes of Memphis are deceived.
Doug McMasters: Their tribal chieftains have led Egypt astray.
Doug McMasters: Why would Judah, why would Judah go to these people and make an alliance, a nation under wrath, a nation that, by the work of God, will become a divided people, a nation that will have a collapsing economy, a nation that looks for wisdom and only finds folly.
Doug McMasters: Why would they give themselves to that nation instead of the living God, who's in control of all of it?
Doug McMasters: Chapter 20, jumping over a section we'll look at in just a moment, we find that there's no help there, there's no help in Cush.
Doug McMasters: There's no help in Egypt whatsoever.
Doug McMasters: There's no help in Cush.
Doug McMasters: There's no help in Egypt whatsoever.
Doug McMasters: And Isaiah is told to do something strange.
Doug McMasters: The Lord said as my servant, isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot, three years.
Doug McMasters: This is a sign and omen against Egypt and Cush.
Doug McMasters: So the king of Assyria will lead the captives of Egypt in the exiles of Cush, young and old alike, stripped and barefoot, with bared buttocks.
Doug McMasters: To Egypt's shame, isaiah walked around for three years with a bare backside and bare feet, as a living demonstration of what was going to happen to the people Judah was going to put their trust in.
Doug McMasters: It's brought to nothing.
Doug McMasters: And at the very end, in verse five and six, the inhabitants of this coastland will say on that day, look, look, look, look, look.
Doug McMasters: What's happened to those that we have relied on and fled to for help to rescue us from the king of Assyria?
Doug McMasters: And if it happened to them, how are we going to escape?
Doug McMasters: You know, sometimes when we listen to the news and we watch what's happening in the world, it can be hard to believe that God is actually on the throne.
Doug McMasters: But he is.
Doug McMasters: Imagine a modern day Isaiah standing in the streets of London in the spring of 1942 and proclaiming that in three years time Germany and Japan would be brought to ruin.
Doug McMasters: At that time, in 1942, germany and Japan literally controlled over half of the globe.
Doug McMasters: What kind of fool must have Isaiah of 1942 must have looked like when he's standing in the midst of bombed out buildings and streets filled with rubble and says in three years' time, your enemy is going to be nothing.
Doug McMasters: This is exactly what Isaiah is saying here.
Doug McMasters: He's saying it doesn't look like God's in control, but he is, and we can look at our world and we can make wrong calculations.
Doug McMasters: We can think that those that are in the news every day are the ones who are making everything happen, but they're not.
Doug McMasters: Despite the energy and the intellect and the power of the great nations, in Isaiah's day they were all swept away and there was one reality that they had never taken into consideration.
Doug McMasters: And that is the God who controls the heavens and the earth, and this is why we should reject all other securities beside him, because he moves mountains and shakes nations and brings mighty powers to nothing Out of the quietness of his position, without breaking a sweat, he brings them down.
Doug McMasters: He shows his sovereignty by way of his judgment.
Doug McMasters: But I want to show you something else here, in the middle of all of this chapter 17, chapter 18, the bulk of chapter 19, all of chapter 20, god showing his great power through these wasting away of the nations is something striking.
Doug McMasters: Let's go to chapter 19.
Doug McMasters: Let's take a look at verse 16.
Doug McMasters: On that day, egypt will be like women and will tremble with fear because of the threatening hand of the Lord of armies when he raises it against them.
Doug McMasters: The land of Judah will terrify Egypt.
Doug McMasters: Whenever Judah is mentioned, egypt will tremble because of what the Lord of armies has planned against it, and you think what utter destruction.
Doug McMasters: But let's keep reading.
Doug McMasters: On that day, five cities in the land of Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear loyalty to the Lord of armies.
Doug McMasters: One of the cities will be called the City of the Sun.
Doug McMasters: And on that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the center of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the Lord near their border.
Doug McMasters: It will be a sign and witness to the Lord of armies in the land of Egypt.
Doug McMasters: And when they cry out the Lord, to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and leader and he will rescue them.
Doug McMasters: The Lord will make himself known to Egypt and Egypt will know the Lord on that day.
Doug McMasters: They will offer sacrifices and offerings, they will make vows to the Lord and fulfill them.
Doug McMasters: The Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing, and then they will turn to the Lord and he will be receptive to their prayers and heal them.
Doug McMasters: On that day, there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria and Assyria will go to Egypt and Egypt to Assyria, and Egypt will worship with Assyria.
Doug McMasters: On that day, israel will form a triple alliance with Egypt and Assyria.
Doug McMasters: A blessing within the land.
Doug McMasters: The Lord of armies will bless them, saying Egypt, my people, assyria, my handiwork, israel, my inheritance are blessed.
Doug McMasters: What is this?
Doug McMasters: What is this great wonder?
Doug McMasters: We've just read.
Doug McMasters: What is this great wonder?
Doug McMasters: We've just read God is sovereign in judgment and he's also sovereign in salvation.
Doug McMasters: He is the ways of salvation, and Judah, which was sandwiched between Assyria and Egypt, is one day going to be the very linchpin of worship among the people.
Doug McMasters: No longer are they in the crossfire, but now they are the center place for it all.
Doug McMasters: God here promises to bring salvation, and he uses the emblems of these nations Assyria and Egypt and Israel.
Doug McMasters: And what is he telling us here?
Doug McMasters: He's using prophetic pictures and patterns again to bring in this idea that something dramatic is going to happen by way of God's activity, by way of his sovereign displays of power in saving as well as judging, that there are going to be people that will be conquered by him and live and not die.
Doug McMasters: And so the prophet picks up all the language and the practices of the people of Israel and uses them as emblems for his deliverance.
Doug McMasters: And so he talks about altars and he talks about pillars and he talks about sacrifices and he makes allusions to the book of Exodus and talks about the promises to the fathers, to Abraham, and he takes all of these things to give us some understanding of what he's going to do in the future.
Doug McMasters: The people of God today recognize the realities of those things which were shadows, types and figures, as the writer of Hebrews says, that speak of the living Christ and the people gathered in his kingdom who, from all nations, find themselves one in Christ.
Doug McMasters: And here's the display of it, by the way of the grace of God given and promised to the people of Egypt and of Assyria.
Doug McMasters: And I want us to notice a few things very, very briefly here, and the first is that the grace of God has come to the worst of people.
Doug McMasters: Right, this is Assyria, this is Egypt.
Doug McMasters: He's come to, this is the people that are emblematic of the enemies of God Egypt and Pharaoh that held his people in captivity for hundreds of years, in which Moses went to Pharaoh and said the Lord says let my people go, and Pharaoh replies with a stiff neck.
Doug McMasters: Well, who is the Lord anyway?
Doug McMasters: These are the chief enemies of the people of God, and yet the grace of God comes to them.
Doug McMasters: He's come to the worst of his enemies and he melts them with grace and receives them.
Doug McMasters: What a remarkable thing this is that a person so furiously opposed to God is the one that the Lord receives and embraces in Christ, takes a lion and turns it into a lamb, makes them lie down at the feet of the Savior.
Doug McMasters: This morning I was listening to a sermon of an old friend of mine who's been in heaven for several years now, steve Fernandez.
Doug McMasters: Steve was a pastor in Vallejo, a community Bible church, and when I met Steve he told me a story about how he was brought to Christ.
Doug McMasters: They had never been to church.
Doug McMasters: He and his brother were both drug dealers in the times of the hippie era in California, and his brother found a Bible, had never been to a church, found a Bible and started reading it and God saved him.
Doug McMasters: And his brother came to him one day and to Steve and threw the Bible at him and said you need to read this because you're going to hell.
Doug McMasters: And Steve started reading it and he said reading it.
Doug McMasters: And he said I am going to hell.
Doug McMasters: And God saved him.
Doug McMasters: And he went and he gathered all of his drug-dealing friends and all those that were around him and he got up on a bench a picnic bench and preached the gospel to all of them and 50 of them got saved right there.
Doug McMasters: This man who was running away from God, didn't know God, was an enemy of God, was pursuing pleasures and passions that had nothing to do with God and the Lord went to that enemy and delivered him.
Doug McMasters: Here's Egypt, one of the most degraded of all nations, and yet the grace of God comes to it.
Doug McMasters: I love what Spurgeon said.
Doug McMasters: He said the devil can't color a soul so red in sin that the blood of Christ can't make it white as snow.
Doug McMasters: Isn't that beautiful?
Doug McMasters: Satan can't drive a person so far into the mountains of vanity or into the deserts of sin, but what?
Doug McMasters: The great shepherd of the sheep can find that one and bring it home again.
Doug McMasters: You see, there's hope for all of us.
Doug McMasters: There's hope for the most sunken.
Doug McMasters: And if you're here today and you don't know the Savior, let me just say this this word is for you the God who comes in grace to Egypt can come to grace, in grace to you, and I don't know what you might think about yourself.
Doug McMasters: I've gone too far away.
Doug McMasters: I can never.
Doug McMasters: I just can't be a Christian.
Doug McMasters: My dad used to say that to me.
Doug McMasters: He said I can't come into church.
Doug McMasters: I'm like why not, dad?
Doug McMasters: He said the roof would cave in if I did and I said come on in, dad.
Doug McMasters: There's a lot of us that would have made the roof fall.
Doug McMasters: Come on in.
Doug McMasters: The scriptures say that he is able to save to the uttermost all those who come to him.
Doug McMasters: In Christ Jesus, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven you.
Doug McMasters: All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven you.
Doug McMasters: Jesus said here the scriptures speak so abundantly and superfluously about all the abundance of grace that comes.
Doug McMasters: Look at the next one, in verse 20.
Doug McMasters: In verse 20, it says here it will be a sign and witness to the Lord of armies in the land of Egypt.
Doug McMasters: They will cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors and he will send them a Savior and a leader.
Doug McMasters: That is a direct allusion to the people of Israel in Egypt, in bondage, crying out for help, and God sends them, moses to deliver them.
Doug McMasters: And here are the Egyptians who were once the captors, now feeling the oppression, calling out for help, and God says he'll send them a deliverer who will rescue them, a deliverer who will rescue them.
Doug McMasters: They cry out just like the people they once captured, and they find deliverance, just like the people they once bound in slavery.
Doug McMasters: He's come to save, he's come to deliver and he will rescue them.
Doug McMasters: The Scriptures say Now take a look at verse 18.
Doug McMasters: Not only does he deliver them, but he changes their language, which is a very interesting image here.
Doug McMasters: On that day, five cities in the land of Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear loyalty to the Lord of armies.
Doug McMasters: What is this talking about?
Doug McMasters: These people will be so aligned with the Lord, god and his people, that they'll actually learn a language completely foreign to them.
Doug McMasters: Now that they'll no longer speak the language of their old country, egypt, they will speak the language of their old country, egypt.
Doug McMasters: They will speak the language of their new alliances, the people of Israel who are in the land of Canaan.
Doug McMasters: A new speech, a new voice, a new language speaking about the allegiances and the transfer of allegiance of these people to God, that they're going to take up his voice in the voice of his people.
Doug McMasters: You know, there used to be people who would live their lives and not a word could be uttered without a curse, but now they can't and won't.
Doug McMasters: There were people who would, in their speech, speak about their pride and their arrogance, and they would posture themselves in such an intimidating way in order to impose themselves on others by the force of their personality or the strength of their arms.
Doug McMasters: But not anymore.
Doug McMasters: They take up the language of humility, softness of speech and peaceableness of heart and gentleness.
Doug McMasters: There are people whose language was full of lewdness and lasciviousness, but now they speak words of health and hope and peace.
Doug McMasters: Verse 19, these people are set into a place of service.
Doug McMasters: On that day there'll be an altar to the Lord in the center of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the Lord near her border Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord near her border.
Doug McMasters: Once they would have worshiped the other gods, but now all of their worship is given to him and they set up a pillar on the boundaries of their land as an emblem of who actually owns it.
Doug McMasters: There would have been a time they would have set a pillar up to themselves and said this is the land of Egypt and it is ours and it is under the control of our God.
Doug McMasters: And now they set up a pillar on the boundary and said this is the land of God and we are his and we worship him.
Doug McMasters: Verse 20 teaches them to pray.
Doug McMasters: It'll be a sign and witness to the lord of armies.
Doug McMasters: In the land of egypt, they will cry out to the lord because of their oppressors.
Doug McMasters: He teaches them to call out to him of whom they had never once before called.
Doug McMasters: That for me was the very first thing I ever did.
Doug McMasters: And someone shared the gospel with me.
Doug McMasters: And they asked me do you want to be saved?
Doug McMasters: Do you want your sins forgiven?
Doug McMasters: And I said yes, how do I do that?
Doug McMasters: And he said you need to pray and ask the Lord to save you.
Doug McMasters: And I balked.
Doug McMasters: I said I've never prayed before, ever.
Doug McMasters: What is prayer?
Doug McMasters: I don't know how to pray.
Doug McMasters: And he said just tell God what's on your heart.
Doug McMasters: And what was on my heart was how much I needed God's forgiveness, because I knew I was a sinner and the very first time I ever prayed was a prayer of repentance for God to please forgive me.
Doug McMasters: These people are taught to pray, to cry out, and in verse 21, they're instructed.
Doug McMasters: On that day they will be instructed, it says in verse 21.
Doug McMasters: They will offer sacrifices and offerings.
Doug McMasters: They will make vows to the Lord and fulfill them, and he will make himself known to Egypt and Egypt will know the Lord.
Doug McMasters: On that day, what was of no interest to them was now of greatest interest to them.
Doug McMasters: In verse 22, even their trouble is turned to a blessing.
Doug McMasters: The Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing, and they will turn to the Lord and he will be receptive to their prayers.
Doug McMasters: You strike a person who doesn't know the Lord and they say why is God being so mean to me?
Doug McMasters: Why has he gotten in the way of the good life I deserve?
Doug McMasters: Why has he taken away the things that are precious to me, why, why, why?
Doug McMasters: And their heart grows in anger and bitterness.
Doug McMasters: But you strike one of God's people and they say that smarts and that hurts, but even in the wounding there's health, there's life.
Doug McMasters: Verse 23,.
Doug McMasters: This grace that comes changes their relationships with one another.
Doug McMasters: On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria and Assyria will go to Egypt and Egypt will worship with Assyria.
Doug McMasters: The Egyptians and the Assyrians were in this feud, this war, this conflict that had ravished this whole area.
Doug McMasters: Multitudes of people swept up in their animosity to one another and the clutching of greed.
Doug McMasters: And now they visit each other and when they do, they don't war, they worship.
Doug McMasters: What does the gospel do to people?
Doug McMasters: What does God's intervention of grace do to people?
Doug McMasters: It breaks down barriers.
Doug McMasters: It breaks apart animosity.
Doug McMasters: I wouldn't give a dollar for your professed faith in Christ if you can say about someone else, I'll never talk to that person, ever again, person ever again, because the gospel changes who you are on the inside and if God can make Egypt his, he can certainly give you a heart of compassion, even to those who don't ever turn to him.
Doug McMasters: And if there is someone who turns to him and you have as well, you might say well, I'm not sure we could ever meet in the middle.
Doug McMasters: Nobody said you had to meet in the middle.
Doug McMasters: You meet at the cross and you can meet there.
Doug McMasters: One last thing what does the grace of God do?
Doug McMasters: It blesses these people and it makes them a blessing.
Doug McMasters: The very last verse On that day, the last two verses on that day, israel will form a triple alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing within the land.
Doug McMasters: The Lord of armies will bless them, saying Egypt, my people, Assyria, my handiwork and Israel, my inheritance, are blessed.
Doug McMasters: There was a time when God stood in the midst of Egypt and said through Moses, let my people go.
Doug McMasters: And said through Moses, let my people go.
Doug McMasters: And now God is in the midst of Egypt and he's saying you are my people, he's embraced them.
Doug McMasters: And Israel is here to see the scene as fulfilling its ultimate purpose to be a blessing to the world, not because it's good, but because God has acted among them to do something dramatic.
Doug McMasters: Yes, israel is called my possession, but Egypt is now called my people.
Doug McMasters: And Assyria is now called my handiwork and Assyria is now called my Handiwork.
Doug McMasters: The goal of the Assyrian Empire was to bring Egypt under its control, but now they're joined together in a triple alliance An alliance of worship, an alliance of fellowship, an alliance of acceptance, an alliance of blessedness, an alliance of blessedness to others.
Doug McMasters: Israel is fulfilling now its final purpose to bring a blessing to the nations.
Doug McMasters: The apostle paul picked up this idea in the book of galatians when he said christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us because it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on the tree.
Doug McMasters: And he said, the purpose?
Doug McMasters: The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus.
Doug McMasters: So we have received the promised spirit through faith.
Doug McMasters: And so, when Christ was born in this world, coming from the reaches of the east down through the north, was a group of people called Magi who walked their way from Assyria and stopped in the midst of Israel and said when is he who is born King of the Jews?
Doug McMasters: We have come to worship him, king of the Jews.
Doug McMasters: We have come to worship him.
Doug McMasters: And later, in the proclamation of the gospel, stephen was sent out and he was met up by a man in a chariot who was an Ethiopian eunuch, a man who was dead in body and under the service of another king.
Doug McMasters: And he finds the gospel in the book of Isaiah, and he finds himself given life and given hope and owns another master named Jesus.
Doug McMasters: And there, bound in Christ, together, are Assyrians and Egyptians, those bound from the places of the north and the south, found in unison, and one in Christ.
Doug McMasters: This is our Lord, sovereign in his majesty, displaying his power over all powers in heaven and on earth, controlling the destiny of nations and of people, his judgment spoken in quiet rebuke against the raging of the nations.
Doug McMasters: Our Lord also sovereign in his mercy, able to turn the fierce enemy into a humble, joyful, delighted, blessed member of his eternal family.
Doug McMasters: This is why the Gaithers wrote a song Jesus, jesus, jesus.
Doug McMasters: There's just something about that name.
Doug McMasters: Master Savior, jesus, like the fragrance after the rain, let all heaven and earth proclaim.
Doug McMasters: Kings and kingdoms will all pass away, but there's just something about that name.
Doug McMasters: At the mention of his name, he can calm the storm, heal the broken, raise the dead.
Doug McMasters: I've seen sin-hearted men melted their lives, transformed, the lights of hope put in the eyes of a hopeless child.
Doug McMasters: At the name of Jesus, hatred and bitterness turned to love and forgiveness.
Doug McMasters: Emperors tried to destroy it, philosophers have tried to stamp it out, tyrants have tried to wash it from the face of the earth with the blood of those who claimed it.
Doug McMasters: Yet it still stands.
Doug McMasters: And there shall be in that final day when every voice that is ever nuttered to sound, every voice of Adam's race, shall rise in one mighty chorus to proclaim the name of Jesus.
Doug McMasters: For on that day, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is truly Lord.
Doug McMasters: You see, it was not by mere chance that an angel, one night long ago, said to a virgin maiden His name shall be called Jesus, jesus, jesus.
Doug McMasters: There's just something about that name.
Doug McMasters: Kings and kingdoms shall all pass away, but there's something about that name.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, we thank you for these chapters which cause us to shudder, to shudder with concern.
Doug McMasters: If we were ever to be the objects of your judgment, if we were ever to be the objects of your judgment, so swiftly and completely could you take us down.
Doug McMasters: And yet, lord, also in this section of Scripture, we find ourselves shuddering with wonder that you, who are a God of such fierce judgment, are also a God who can shine upon your enemies and make them your sons and daughters.
Doug McMasters: Lord, we pray that each and every one of us might seek you and remember you, the God who saves, the rock, who delivers and supplies.
Doug McMasters: May we not give ourselves to vain and worthless and tragic things.
Doug McMasters: We pray that we might be found under the banner of your grace, one of your children, my people, my handiwork, my inheritance, and we pray this in Christ's name, amen.