Doug McMasters: Welcome to 2025.
Doug McMasters: What a delight it is to, by God's mercies, to have a new year to look forward to, and I'm excited for what God has ahead of us.
Doug McMasters: A large part of what we'll be doing through 2025, at least on Sunday mornings is studying the book of Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: So let's go there now.
Doug McMasters: Let's go to Isaiah, chapter 10.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah, chapter 10.
Doug McMasters: If you're new here or you don't have a Bible, you'll find one in front of you, and right around page 607 or 808 or 908, you'll find one in front of you or 808 or 908 or 909, somewhere in there is Isaiah chapter 10.
Doug McMasters: This morning we're going to be stepping into this chapter, looking at the bulk of it, and this passage is full of names that are unfamiliar to us and places that we don't know, and it deals with a situation that happened a long time ago.
Doug McMasters: But it introduces to us two themes that are extremely important.
Doug McMasters: There are two major themes in Scripture, and they are the themes of judgment and mercy, judgment and mercy and the concepts of judgment and mercy.
Doug McMasters: Judgment and mercy and the concepts of judgment and mercy reveal the character of God and they express the way God deals with humanity.
Doug McMasters: These themes are intricately woven throughout Scripture.
Doug McMasters: First of all, we have God's judgment.
Doug McMasters: God's judgment it's a fundamental characteristic of God and his activity.
Doug McMasters: As I said, it is the outworking of his holiness and his righteousness and his justice.
Doug McMasters: The Old Testament has a word, mishpat, and it denotes judgment, and it emphasizes particularly the legal and moral order that's been established by God.
Doug McMasters: Contrary to what a lot of people think today that we can do whatever is right in our own eyes, or that our truth is not perhaps the same as your truth, but we can happily get along with each other's truth, even though it's contradictory.
Doug McMasters: The scriptures tell us that God is the author and upholder of all things that are right and true, and so his justice and his judgment is his righteous response against sin and disobedience.
Doug McMasters: The Bible consistently upholds God as a righteous judge who holds any disobedient and sinful individual or nation accountable for those actions.
Doug McMasters: His judgment ensures that evil will not go unpunished, and if we were honest with ourselves, we would say that all of us have a desire for those things which are truly evil to be punished.
Doug McMasters: We find ourselves calling for justice all the time.
Doug McMasters: In fact, I think my son's first words after learning data and maybe mama was to say that's not fair.
Doug McMasters: So we have innately within us this idea of things that are just and right, and if those things are broken, they must be taken into account for.
Doug McMasters: But there's also the mercy of God.
Doug McMasters: Not only is there just judgment, but there's also mercy, again, another expression of God's activity toward humanity.
Doug McMasters: As much as judgment is a reality, so is mercy, and the Hebrew word chesed means loving, kindness or mercy, or steadfast love and compassion.
Doug McMasters: It is a covenant-keeping fidelity of God.
Doug McMasters: Now, mercy is not merely the absence of judgment.
Doug McMasters: Mercy is an active expression of God's kindness and love, as he extends forgiveness to humanity despite our unworthiness.
Doug McMasters: It's an active word.
Doug McMasters: It is a testament of his loving desire for reconciliation and redemption and communion with people who are sinful.
Doug McMasters: Now it's easy for us to think that judgment and mercy must stand as opposites of one another and therefore have to act in isolation of one another.
Doug McMasters: After all, justice is the dispensing of a deserved punishment against wrongdoing, and mercy is the extension of pardon to someone who is an offender.
Doug McMasters: So we think that these two things must be opposite and therefore isolated from one another.
Doug McMasters: In fact, some religions even say that is the case.
Doug McMasters: In Islam, allah's mercy is exercised at the expense of justice.
Doug McMasters: Allah may grant mercy, but he does so by setting aside the penalty that's due the person for their disobedience.
Doug McMasters: But the scriptures don't present mercy and judgment as contradictory at all.
Doug McMasters: They express judgment and mercy as things that work complementarily with one another judgment and mercy as things that work complementarily with one another, and they reveal the fullness of God's character.
Doug McMasters: And so, as we think about these concepts of his judgment and his mercy, we need to carefully look at scripture.
Doug McMasters: We need to see how it consistently portrays them together, in harmony with one another, and this morning, as we look at Isaiah chapter 10, with one another.
Doug McMasters: And this morning, as we look at Isaiah chapter 10, we're going to see judgment and mercy being played out in human history, and we'll also understand how judgment and mercy continue to be played out even in our history, even in our day.
Doug McMasters: So let's begin with judgment and then we'll get to mercy.
Doug McMasters: But let's begin with judgment.
Doug McMasters: And the first thing I want us to understand as we look through this passage of Scripture is God's judgment in action toward Israel and Judah, toward Israel and Judah.
Doug McMasters: We'll look at a few passages that display that in just a second, but as we've been going through the book of Isaiah, as we've gone through all the first nine chapters of Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: One of the things that we've gone through all the first nine chapters of Isaiah, one of the things that we've understood is that Israel and Judah have been acting as if they can ignore anything that God has called them to do and to follow, that they can refuse any of the demands that he's placed upon their lives.
Doug McMasters: And the king of Judah, king Ahaz, who we've been looking at since chapter 7, is a prime example of that.
Doug McMasters: Listen to how 2 Chronicles describes him in chapter 28.
Doug McMasters: Ahaz was 20 when he became king.
Doug McMasters: He reigned 16 years in Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: He did not do what was right in the Lord's sight.
Doug McMasters: Like his ancestor David, he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and made images of the Baals.
Doug McMasters: He burned incense in Ben-Hanom Valley and burned his children in the fire, imitating the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had disp, only representative of the nation.
Doug McMasters: Later on, in that same chapter, it talks about how Ahaz actually shut down the temple and took sacred vessels from it.
Doug McMasters: In order to make paraphernalia and to put together a bribe for the king of Assyria, ahaz gathered up the utensils of God's temple, cut them into pieces, shut the doors of the Lord's temple and made himself altars on every street corner in Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: He made high places in every city of Judah to offer incense to other gods, and he angered the Lord, the God of his ancestors.
Doug McMasters: And the people were no different than their king.
Doug McMasters: They gladly carried on as if God never even existed, and they plunged into religious, moral and societal decay by violating God's laws and being unfaithful to the covenant that the people were required to keep.
Doug McMasters: The book of Amos, speaking about the Israelites, is a prime example of what was going on in both Israel and Judah.
Doug McMasters: In Amos, chapter 5 and verse 7, it says they turned justice into wormwood and threw righteousness to the ground.
Doug McMasters: They hated the one who convicts the guilty at the city gate and they despised the one who speaks with integrity.
Doug McMasters: The Lord says I know your crimes.
Doug McMasters: There are many and your sins are innumerable.
Doug McMasters: They oppress the righteous, they take a bribe and they deprive the poor of justice at the city gates.
Doug McMasters: Now, this is why we get to chapter 10.
Doug McMasters: And when we get into chapter 10, we understand that God is about to use the nation of Assyria as his instrument of judgment against Israel and even Judah.
Doug McMasters: It provides us a broader understanding of what's about to happen in history, and God's just anger against these Israelites and people of Judah will be satisfied through the Assyrians.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 5 for a second.
Doug McMasters: In Isaiah, chapter 10, and verse 5, it says Woe to Assyria, and we'll understand why the woe is there in just a minute.
Doug McMasters: The rod of my anger, the staff in their hands, is my wrath.
Doug McMasters: Well, who are these Assyrians?
Doug McMasters: We've alluded to them over the past few weeks and months as we've looked through the earlier chapters of Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: But who are they?
Doug McMasters: Well, if you know the book of Jonah, you've probably heard of the capital city of Nineveh, which was Assyria's capital.
Doug McMasters: Assyria was a warring nation that lay in the northern Iraq area of what's modern day Iraq.
Doug McMasters: And before the sun never set on the British Empire and before Genghis Khan swept through the steps and before the Roman Empire rose to encircle the Mediterranean region, we had the Assyrians deemed as probably the first major empire of human history.
Doug McMasters: They were at their height in the 7th century BC.
Doug McMasters: They were at their pinnacle right at this very moment that these things are happening in Isaiah, chapter 10.
Doug McMasters: As their empire increased, it stretched out, it took over modern Iraq, syria, lebanon, israel, parts of Turkey, parts of Iran and even a large section of modern day Egypt.
Doug McMasters: It was an expansive empire and over the course of several hundred years its fortunes rose and fell and eventually crumbled away.
Doug McMasters: But at this point in time, they are a major force and they are intimately involved in the life and the history of the people of Israel.
Doug McMasters: And here, in Isaiah, chapter 10 and verse 5, god declares that he's going to use this empire as his instrument of judgment against the people.
Doug McMasters: You see, assyria, though they're not aware of it, are an instrument in God's hands.
Doug McMasters: Despite how they think about it, that's exactly what they are.
Doug McMasters: Look at verse 5 again.
Doug McMasters: Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff in their hands is my wrath.
Doug McMasters: This is instrumentality here.
Doug McMasters: And if you go down to verse 15, you'll see that again.
Doug McMasters: Does an axe exalt itself above the one who chops with it?
Doug McMasters: Does a saw magnify itself above the one who saws with it?
Doug McMasters: Would it be like a rod waving the one who lifts it?
Doug McMasters: It would be like a staff lifting the one who isn't wood.
Doug McMasters: And here we see implements, tools of lumbering and tools of warfare or oppression the ax and the saw and the rod and the club.
Doug McMasters: And in chapter 6, god said he was going to cut down the tree of Israel's pride.
Doug McMasters: And now we have the axe in God's hands.
Doug McMasters: These people of Israel are being brought into the land as an expression of God's judgment.
Doug McMasters: Now look at why.
Doug McMasters: In verse 6.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah 10, 6, it says I will send him against a godless nation.
Doug McMasters: I will command him to go against a people destined for my rage, to take spoils to plunder and to trample them down like clay in the streets.
Doug McMasters: A godless nation.
Doug McMasters: The people of Israel must have been crying in protest.
Doug McMasters: We're not the godless nation.
Doug McMasters: The Assyrians are the godless nation.
Doug McMasters: But this word godless is actually the word for perverted or twisted or warped, which means that these people had understood God's clear revelation of what was right and not right and had perverted it, had twisted it to their own personal ends.
Doug McMasters: So God turns around and tells them.
Doug McMasters: So God turns around and tells them look, you're just as bad, no, you're even worse, because you know better than even they do.
Doug McMasters: The people of God knew better, but they perverted God's ways and turned their backs on the God who had delivered them.
Doug McMasters: And so the expanding empire of Assyria invaded Israel and, in 722 BC, destroyed the northern kingdom and its capital, samaria.
Doug McMasters: And after Samaria's invasion, samaria, the glorious capital, lay in a smoldering ruin, and along with that was a mass deportation of the population, brought into exile into mesopotamia.
Doug McMasters: This was one of the tactics of the assyrian people, and that's how they gained such a large group of large area is they would go in and conquer people and then send them all over the place and disperse them into places that they didn't know, so they could never rally enough resistance or opposition to be able to stand against them.
Doug McMasters: Indeed, assyria proved to be the rod of God's anger.
Doug McMasters: 2 Kings 17 gives us a theological understanding of why it happened.
Doug McMasters: Now notice their actions and how their actions are portrayed up against what God had done for them and what God had said to them.
Doug McMasters: As you hear these words, all of this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord, their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt, from under the power of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Doug McMasters: They worshiped other gods and practiced and followed the practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before them, as well as the practices that the kings of Israel had introduced.
Doug McMasters: The Israelites secretly did things against the Lord, their God, that were not right.
Doug McMasters: From watchtower to fortified city, they built themselves high places in all their towns.
Doug McMasters: They set up sacred stones and asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree.
Doug McMasters: At every high place they burned incense, as the nations whom the Lord had driven out before them had done.
Doug McMasters: They did wicked things that aroused the Lord's anger.
Doug McMasters: They worshiped idols, though the Lord had said you shall not do this.
Doug McMasters: The Lord warned Israel and Judah through all his prophets and seers turn from your evil ways, observe my commands and decrees, in accordance with the entire law that I commanded your ancestors to obey and that I delivered to you through my servants.
Doug McMasters: You see, god doesn't respect a double standard.
Doug McMasters: The judgment he meets out to the sins in the world is no different than the judgment he meets out to those who call themselves his people.
Doug McMasters: Saying we belong to God will not rescue us from judgment.
Doug McMasters: It makes us actually all the more accountable.
Doug McMasters: If we refuse, we are, practically speaking, godless, just like the Israelites were, and it's a very dangerous thing to think that we can ignore God.
Doug McMasters: Dangerous thing to think that we can ignore God.
Doug McMasters: You see, the God that we worship is a God who stands justly against evil, and he will move against it in his due time in the ways that he sees fit.
Doug McMasters: Now, people who don't know their Bibles are surprised, even sometimes repulsed, at what they read in the Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: But they forget that this was Jesus' Bible too, after all, and he never once said anything contrary about the judgment of God.
Doug McMasters: You see, when you don't understand what sin is, you can't really fully appreciate why God acts against it the way he does.
Doug McMasters: But once you've seen God's holy character, as Isaiah did in chapter 6, and when he got a glimpse of the majesty and the holiness of God, he cried out quickly woe is me, I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among an unclean people.
Doug McMasters: He didn't walk around with an accusatory finger that wasn't first pointed at himself when he saw who God was.
Doug McMasters: The scriptures tell us God acts in judgment, and he begins here by bringing judgment against his own people who have treacherously abandoned him.
Doug McMasters: But this section of scripture is largely about something else.
Doug McMasters: Interestingly enough, it's about God's judgment against Assyria.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 12.
Doug McMasters: When the Lord finishes all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say I will punish the king of Assyria for his arrogant acts and for the proud look in his eyes.
Doug McMasters: God said that Assyria was his instrument, his judgment against the sinful people of Israel and Judah.
Doug McMasters: It was the rod of his anger, the staff of his wrath.
Doug McMasters: Assyria is his axe to chop down and to saw and to cut down the pride of the people.
Doug McMasters: Now, assyria doesn't even admit this.
Doug McMasters: They don't even think this.
Doug McMasters: They think that actually, everything that they are has been built up by themselves, that they're the source of all their successes.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 5 to 7, it tells us this Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff in their hands.
Doug McMasters: As my wrath, I will send him against a sinful nation, a godless nation.
Doug McMasters: I will command him to go against the people destined for my rage, to take spoil, to plunder and to trample them down like clay in the streets.
Doug McMasters: But this is not what he intends, this is not what he plans.
Doug McMasters: It is his intent to destroy and to cut off many nations.
Doug McMasters: You see, assyria here is denying any accountability at all, denying that they're the product of God's rising.
Doug McMasters: And the king of Assyria here has no qualms saying that he's superior to everything on the face of earth.
Doug McMasters: He's so great that even his commanders are greater than kings.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 8 and 9.
Doug McMasters: For he says aren't all my commanders kings?
Doug McMasters: Isn't Calno like Carchemish?
Doug McMasters: Isn't Hamath like Arpad?
Doug McMasters: Isn't Samaria like Damascus?
Doug McMasters: He's saying, my commanders stand as greater ones than the kings of these nations that they've conquered.
Doug McMasters: This emperor thinks he's truly king of kings.
Doug McMasters: Emperor thinks he's truly king of kings.
Doug McMasters: And since he's already taken Samaria and its gods, why should he think anything at all about being an instrument of Jerusalem's God?
Doug McMasters: In fact, he believes he's superior to God and he can do to Jerusalem whatever he wants.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 10 and 11.
Doug McMasters: As my hand sees the kingdoms of worthless images, kingdoms whose idols exceeded those of Jerusalem and Samaria, as I did to Samaria in its worthless images, will I not also do to Jerusalem and its idols Now?
Doug McMasters: He's not speaking against the false idols of Samaria and Judah and Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: He's speaking against Yahweh.
Doug McMasters: He's talking against the Lord God and he's seeing it as just another local, tribal deity that couldn't save just as much as all the conquered city-states that he had just mentioned couldn't stand against his mighty force.
Doug McMasters: Yahweh was just another idol.
Doug McMasters: The Lord God was just some small deity of a small nowhere.
Doug McMasters: People, nobody people in this little faraway place of Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: He did not see himself as an instrument in the hand of God.
Doug McMasters: Rather, he boasts that it's his hands, his hands that have captured the nations.
Doug McMasters: His hands that have captured the nations.
Doug McMasters: I have done this by my own strength, he says in verse 13.
Doug McMasters: And my wisdom?
Doug McMasters: For I am clever.
Doug McMasters: I abolished the borders of nations and plundered their treasures.
Doug McMasters: Like a mighty warrior, I subjugated the inhabitants.
Doug McMasters: My hand has reached out, as if into a nest, to seize the wealth of the nations.
Doug McMasters: Like one gathering abandoned eggs, I gathered the whole earth.
Doug McMasters: No wing fluttered, no beak opened or chirped.
Doug McMasters: His hand, his hand captured the nations.
Doug McMasters: His hand seized their wealth.
Doug McMasters: His hand looted them, as if he was simply plucking eggs out of an abandoned nest, without even a wing daring to flap in protest.
Doug McMasters: And here he makes no appeals to the gods as energizing him or being gracious to him or helping him in any way.
Doug McMasters: This is all him, him, him, him.
Doug McMasters: He repeats the first person pronoun some 13 times in these verses.
Doug McMasters: He is the center of the world after all.
Doug McMasters: The King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, another Assyrian emperor, a couple hundred years before this, speaks with the same sort of mentality In these days and here's a quote from ancient Near East literature in these days when, at the command of the great gods, my lordly sovereignty had manifested itself, going forth to plunder the goods of the lands.
Doug McMasters: Now listen to how he speaks.
Doug McMasters: I am royal, I am lordy, I am mighty, I am honored, I am exalted, I am glorified, I am powerful, I am all powerful, I am brilliant, I am lion brave, I am manly, I am supreme, I am noble.
Doug McMasters: Wouldn't you want to meet that guy in?
Doug McMasters: But one thing that we learn in the Bible is that God will not stand human pride.
Doug McMasters: Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against the one who wields it.
Doug McMasters: 100 years later, assyria crumbles and is no more, and the only thing that we have left of Assyria are wall reliefs smattered around a number of different museums.
Doug McMasters: The kingdom is gone.
Doug McMasters: Babylon walked in literally walked in, and took it over.
Doug McMasters: What do we learn from this?
Doug McMasters: God judges Judah and Israel.
Doug McMasters: God judges the Assyrians, judah and Israel.
Doug McMasters: God judges the Assyrians.
Doug McMasters: What we learn here particularly is, though God may work through people's sinful activities, he never condones it.
Doug McMasters: Once his purposes have been served, the people that have been used to operate his purposes will be brought under the same moral authority as any other people.
Doug McMasters: And just because a nation has been used by God as a tool doesn't mean that those people can live without accountability to God.
Doug McMasters: God is able to use evil, but he's also not compromised by it.
Doug McMasters: He will hold every villain accountable and no one will get away with anything, not even arrogant speech or boastful looks.
Doug McMasters: And one of the things we learn here is the Lord is the Lord of history over all people, in all generations, and that includes ours, and that includes ours.
Doug McMasters: And that includes us.
Doug McMasters: It includes us as individuals, it includes us as peoples, it includes us as nations, it includes us as humanity.
Doug McMasters: You see, the Lord calls and dismisses nations.
Doug McMasters: He determines the destinies of people, he divides the ages and determines the eventual course of mankind.
Doug McMasters: And he will stand over every person and stand over every nation and call every single one of us into account for our sin and our rebellion.
Doug McMasters: This concept is front and center here God's judgment.
Doug McMasters: But the scriptures, even in the New Testament, speak about this.
Doug McMasters: We've seen Jew and Gentile, assyrian and Israelite mentioned here as both under the scrutiny and the judgment of God.
Doug McMasters: The book of Romans does the same.
Doug McMasters: Romans, chapter 3, says what then?
Doug McMasters: Are we any better off?
Doug McMasters: Not at all, for we've already charged that both Jew and Greek are all under sin.
Doug McMasters: As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one.
Doug McMasters: There is no one who understands, there's no one who seeks God.
Doug McMasters: They've all turned away.
Doug McMasters: All alike have become worthless.
Doug McMasters: There is no one who does what is good, not even one.
Doug McMasters: And he says this now.
Doug McMasters: Whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are subject to the law, so that every mouth may be shut and the whole world may become subject to God's judgment.
Doug McMasters: For no one will be justified in God's sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law.
Doug McMasters: You will never get to heaven by saying to yourself I will keep the commands of God, because those commands, mixed with our hearts, will do nothing but expose just how wrong we actually are.
Doug McMasters: That's its purpose, and its purpose brings us all to the same place, to the place of judgment.
Doug McMasters: But, as I said, judgment is not all that Scripture talks about.
Doug McMasters: It also talks about mercy, and here we see God's mercy in play in this chapter.
Doug McMasters: As heavy and as hard as it is, it's also full of mercy.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 12.
Doug McMasters: But when the Lord finishes all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say I will punish the king of Assyria for his arrogant acts and the proud look in his eyes.
Doug McMasters: Now the Assyrians wouldn't accept the idea that they were no more than a tool in God's hands.
Doug McMasters: But look at what it says there.
Doug McMasters: God limits Assyria's reach.
Doug McMasters: They wanted to do more, as it said earlier in there.
Doug McMasters: They wanted to subjugate all of the nations.
Doug McMasters: They thought they could mow down all the nations at their will, but even with all of their might and their power.
Doug McMasters: It says here that they were God's tool to serve God's purposes to the extent that God determined, and no further.
Doug McMasters: They could go, no further than what God said they would do.
Doug McMasters: You see, god is not only just in His judgment.
Doug McMasters: Even His judgment is marked by mercy because it has an end.
Doug McMasters: It's not capriciously free and just wantonly rages and sweeps over all without a measure of movement.
Doug McMasters: The promised destruction by Assyria is temporary and not permanent, and God is not going to allow them to wholly wipe out the people.
Doug McMasters: He's not going to let them do.
Doug McMasters: That, and in the midst of this statement of judgment, is a word of consolation to the people of Judah Don't be afraid of Assyria, because they can only do what I'm letting them do and they can't do anymore.
Doug McMasters: They can only do what I'm letting them do and they can't do anymore.
Doug McMasters: God will eventually remove the Assyrian yoke and he will bring them to an end.
Doug McMasters: And the prophecy abruptly stops the discussion of the destruction of Assyria in order to lead us to another statement, that God is going to rescue a remnant.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 20.
Doug McMasters: On that day, the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no longer depend on the one who struck them, but they will faithfully depend on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel.
Doug McMasters: The remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob to the mighty God, Israel.
Doug McMasters: Even if your people were as numerous as the sands of the sea, only a remnant to them will return.
Doug McMasters: Destruction has been decreed.
Doug McMasters: Justice overflows, for throughout the land, the Lord, God of armies, is carrying out a destruction that was decreed.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah's firstborn son was named Shir Jashab, which means a remnant will return.
Doug McMasters: And here God is telling them that the people will not be utterly wiped out, even as they succumb to the mighty empire of Assyria.
Doug McMasters: Now, this lesson is double-edged, but it is merciful.
Doug McMasters: It tells us, in one sense, that it's only a remnant that will survive, telling us that the judgment was indeed just and necessary.
Doug McMasters: But it also tells us that, once that judgment is over, there is a remnant after all who are saved, telling us that God is still keeping his promises, even to a people who have utterly proven the lack of worthiness of being deemed carriers of God's promise of deliverance.
Doug McMasters: And it goes in line with all of the book, of all of Scripture.
Doug McMasters: From Genesis forward, we see this happening.
Doug McMasters: When the world was in ruins, god delivered a remnant of Noah and his family.
Doug McMasters: He called Abraham out away from idol-worshiping people.
Doug McMasters: He gave Isaac promises to receive, and out of Isaac were two twins and Jacob was the son who would carry forth that promise.
Doug McMasters: And out of Jacob's sons there was Judah, narrowed down down to one line.
Doug McMasters: Little by little, in the period of the wilderness, the whole first generation succumbed to God's judgment and the remnant of the second generation entered into the land.
Doug McMasters: And the remnant of the second generation entered into the land During the time of Ahab's apostasy, elijah found out there were 7,000 who had not bowed to Baal.
Doug McMasters: In the day of Jehu's reform, the Rechabites were the only people faithful to God.
Doug McMasters: In every age, god secures a few that he prepares to serve him.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah will speak about this remnant.
Doug McMasters: He calls them one man left out of every seven.
Doug McMasters: He calls them a tenth in chapter six.
Doug McMasters: He calls them the gleanings left on a harvested olive tree in chapter 17.
Doug McMasters: And the apostle Paul quotes this passage of Scripture in Romans, chapter 9, along with another verse in chapter 1 of Isaiah talking about a remnant telling us that this is God's way of dealing with the people of Israel in Isaiah's day and in Paul's day, that there are a people for his name, but not a majority of people.
Doug McMasters: What lies behind all of this is grace, because for every single one of these people, including the ones who are delivered, there's absolutely no reason why they deserve to have deliverance.
Doug McMasters: None, it's not because of their merit that they were spared.
Doug McMasters: It was because of God's mercy they were spared.
Doug McMasters: The fact that any of them were saved from destruction is because God is also a merciful God, and this is a lesson we need to desperately hear.
Doug McMasters: We need to understand that we have nothing to boast about, that God has been merciful to us to deliver us and the only reason why we even have that next breath is because a merciful God grants it.
Doug McMasters: Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, or the strong man boast in his strength, or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on this earth.
Doug McMasters: Let's bring this to a close.
Doug McMasters: The concept of judgment and mercy it's a recurring theme, as I said, throughout the scriptures.
Doug McMasters: It's very clear here in the history of the people of Israel and it reflects the character of God and it reflects how he operates and extends himself into the affairs of humanity.
Doug McMasters: Understanding God's judgment and his mercy means that we understand that they're actually complementary roles in God's divine plan.
Doug McMasters: And just a few minutes we're going to be celebrating the Lord's table and this is a demonstration of this very thing that the cross of Christ stands at the pinnacle spot of the convergence of judgment and mercy.
Doug McMasters: You see, christianity shows us that God's mercy is shown through judgment.
Doug McMasters: God's mercy doesn't act in opposition to judgment and it doesn't stand by setting aside judgment.
Doug McMasters: The scriptures tell us that Christ died as a satisfactory substitute in the place of sinners, that all of our injustices and all of our sins and all of our disobedience and rebellion and godlessness was placed on Christ, who bore the wrath of God in the place of undeserving people, and that it is only because of that sacrifice that mercy is shown and extended to undeserving people who look to Christ as their deliverer.
Doug McMasters: You see, this is what the scriptures say and this is what the gospel is.
Doug McMasters: Paul says it in chapter 3 of Romans All are justified freely by his grace.
Doug McMasters: How, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
Doug McMasters: God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith.
Doug McMasters: He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.
Doug McMasters: He did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and also to be the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Doug McMasters: See, god will never set aside his justice, but he will meet his justice and he meets his justice for redeemed people in his own Son, people in his own Son.
Doug McMasters: God's justice and his mercy are seen at the cross.
Doug McMasters: At the cross, god's justice was meted out in full upon Christ, god's perfect mercy is exercised in his perfect justice.
Doug McMasters: The question is are you going to go into the presence of God holding on to your own right for justice?
Doug McMasters: Are you going to go into the presence of God clinging to the offered mercy of God found in the justice of God's punishment against sin in his Son?
Doug McMasters: That's the gospel, that is the message that we declare.
Doug McMasters: Flee from the wrath of God by going to the only place you can be delivered, and that is Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: God gave us a great picture of that as the people of Israel were in prison, in slavery in Egypt, and the last plague that came would be the plague that would rip from every household the firstborn in death.
Doug McMasters: And with that statement of coming judgment there was also the instruction to take a spotless lamb into the household and there sacrifice that lamb and lay its blood on the lintel and the doorposts, and when the angel of death would go by, anyone who had that blood on the outside of their house would be spared judgment.
Doug McMasters: Now the threat of judgment was against everyone, egyptian and Israelite alike.
Doug McMasters: And if an Israelite said I can stand on my own through this.
Doug McMasters: I don't believe judgment will come.
Doug McMasters: I will just simply go to bed tonight.
Doug McMasters: They would have woken up to the reality of death.
Doug McMasters: It was only the ones who took the lamb.
Doug McMasters: It was only the ones who took the lamb that trusted the fact that this puzzling thing of lamb's blood laid on the outside of their door was actually going to deliver them from judgment.
Doug McMasters: And here we are, proclaiming to humanity something just as puzzling.
Doug McMasters: Are we saying that the death and crucifixion of one person, jesus the Christ, can actually deliver me from eternal judgment?
Doug McMasters: Yes, if it's applied to you, if it's applied to you, if you trust the deliverance that God has offered you, you shall be saved.
Doug McMasters: The scriptures tell us that.
Doug McMasters: So now we, whether we're Jew or Gentile, we don't need to be afraid of judgment, because judgment has been placed on our Savior and there's now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
Doug McMasters: Paul said now that we've been justified by his blood.
Doug McMasters: How much more shall we be saved from God's wrath by him?
Doug McMasters: There's a song that we sing, and we should sing it heartily.
Doug McMasters: Not that I've gotten, but what I've received.
Doug McMasters: Grace has bestowed it and I have believed.
Doug McMasters: Boasting excluded pride.
Doug McMasters: I abase.
Doug McMasters: I'm only a sinner saved by grace.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray, father.
Doug McMasters: Lord, as we walked into this chapter, it certainly is something well outside of our normal conversation day by day.
Doug McMasters: We do not like to speak about judgment, we don't like to understand that we are culpable, that we are accountable before you, a holy God, and instead of facing that truth, we often run from it, covering up the thought of it, trying to stifle our conscience and to swallow it down so it will never rise up and haunt our thoughts.
Doug McMasters: But, lord, you tell us that that doesn't make it go away, that simply ignoring you is not the answer.
Doug McMasters: And so, father, we pray that we might understand the reality of judgment, but also understand the wonderful welcome of mercy.
Doug McMasters: And, lord, I pray that we who know you might not ever think lightly about sin, to know that we cannot live a double standard of saying that we're your people and yet continue to walk in the ways that displease you, that we are not saved merely by saying we're yours.
Doug McMasters: We actually have to be yours, father.
Doug McMasters: I also pray for any in this room who do not yet know the Savior, who have not yet called upon him, who have not gone to the place of mercy.
Doug McMasters: Father, I pray that you would move their hearts to flee.
Doug McMasters: Flee to Christ, to cling to him, until they have an understanding that he is their most merciful and wonderful Savior and that they are truly in Christ and delivered and no longer have to fear Father.
Doug McMasters: We pray that they might see Christ now and believe on Him, and we pray this in Christ's name Amen.
Doug McMasters: All right, let's stand, let's sing, please.