Doug McMasters: Let's take our Bible and go to the book of Isaiah, chapter 48.
Doug McMasters: I'm excited for you and I'm excited for me.
Doug McMasters: This Friday I'll start with myself and then I'll move to you first.
Doug McMasters: This Friday I get to join my sons.
Doug McMasters: They're coming to San Diego, or from London to San Diego, and I'll be meeting them there for a fishing trip.
Doug McMasters: We're going to share together a tuna fishing journey, a joint fishing trip we haven't done together since 1999, the year my mother passed away and joined my father in Northern California to catch a lot of trout.
Doug McMasters: So we're going to be in Southern California and doing some tuna fishing.
Doug McMasters: But in my absence, dr Michael Grisanti and his wife Martha Ann will be with us.
Doug McMasters: Dr Grisanti is a professor of Old Testament at the Master's Seminary and just wonderfully so he and his wife Martha Ann are on a seven-day cruise touring through New England area all the way up into Canada, and we'll be back here on Saturday and we'll be joining us on Sunday and Michael Grisanti is going to be preaching Isaiah 49 for us.
Doug McMasters: So I'm excited for you even more than I'm excited for me.
Doug McMasters: It's going to be glorious.
Doug McMasters: But here we are in Isaiah, chapter 48.
Doug McMasters: And as I think about this chapter.
Doug McMasters: There's a tension here between God's good purposes and Israel's great rebellion.
Doug McMasters: It's a stunning, stunning chapter.
Doug McMasters: Let's go before the Lord in prayer and prepare our hearts to hear it.
Doug McMasters: Father, we come in to this moment with expectant hearts, knowing that your word will speak truth.
Doug McMasters: But we have to come not only with expectant hearts but willing ones.
Doug McMasters: We don't want the truth simply to expose, but to transform, and we pray our Heavenly Father that we might be willing to hear not only the warm and understand that our ways are not best but yours are.
Doug McMasters: And we ask this in Christ's name, amen.
Doug McMasters: As I've been preparing to meet my sons, I've been reflecting back on a lot of our memories together, and one of the precious ones as a dad was teaching my boys how to ride their bicycles.
Doug McMasters: After a season of them being on their training wheels, the day came when their training wheels had to come off, and that was a scary moment for me as a dad.
Doug McMasters: What's this going to look like?
Doug McMasters: And it actually went a lot easier than I thought it would.
Doug McMasters: Matthew, with just a little bit of coaxing, within a couple hours was riding his bike.
Doug McMasters: I was impressed, but not as impressed as I was with Ben.
Doug McMasters: I took the training wheels off, he hopped onto the bike and off he took, like he'd been riding it for years.
Doug McMasters: I was stunned.
Doug McMasters: I'd never seen anybody do that before and I certainly didn't.
Doug McMasters: Well, for this morning, as we go into Isaiah, chapter 48, I want you to picture in your mind a father teaching his daughter how to ride a bike.
Doug McMasters: But it's a little bit different.
Doug McMasters: This daughter is insisting that she knows already what she's doing and she pushes her dad's hands away.
Doug McMasters: She refuses the training wheels and she does just like I did when I was learning to ride a bike she ran right into the bushes.
Doug McMasters: And again and again, this daughter is resisting her father's guidance.
Doug McMasters: And she's constantly running herself right into the bushes.
Doug McMasters: And the reason is is because she trusts what she thinks is best rather than what her dad's trying to teach her.
Doug McMasters: And so she just continues in this sort of stiff self-desire to go on her own way.
Doug McMasters: And yet the father doesn't just walk away.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't just say, father, doesn't just walk away.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't just say well, go ahead and learn then and leave her to figure it out on her own.
Doug McMasters: He stays with her, he steadies her, he speaks to her in comforting words, his love doesn't quit simply because she's stubborn and self-willed.
Doug McMasters: Actually, his love leans in even harder.
Doug McMasters: Actually, his love leans in even harder, and that's something of what we capture here, in far grander tone than Isaiah, chapter 48.
Doug McMasters: This chapter is a chapter of a tug of war where human rebellion fights against divine resolve.
Doug McMasters: The prophet here in chapter 48 moves back and forth between these two things contrasting what God has said, he has done and what he's going to do, and what Israel refuses to hear and refuses to do.
Doug McMasters: God, in this chapter, has predicted, he's forewarned, he's acted, has predicted, he's forewarned, he's acted.
Doug McMasters: And Israel, all the while, has turned a deaf ear, refused to listen, and continues on in their rebellious ways.
Doug McMasters: And like a parent who is as stubborn as the child, but stubborn in love, he keeps calling out to Israel here in love.
Doug McMasters: He keeps calling out to Israel here and throughout this chapter he uses these kind of words.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at a few verses with me very quickly Verse 1, 6, 8, 12, 14, and 16.
Doug McMasters: And note the words listen and hear this and you've heard it before.
Doug McMasters: Verse 1, listen.
Doug McMasters: Verse 6, you have heard it.
Doug McMasters: Verse 8, you have never heard, you have never known your long time your ears have not been open.
Doug McMasters: Obviously, to what?
Doug McMasters: To the Lord speaking.
Doug McMasters: Verse 12, listen to me, jacob.
Doug McMasters: Verse 14,.
Doug McMasters: All of you assemble and listen.
Doug McMasters: Verse 16, approach me and listen.
Doug McMasters: You don't tell somebody to listen that many times when they are listening.
Doug McMasters: You tell someone to listen that many times when they're not listening.
Doug McMasters: Every mom and dad.
Doug McMasters: You know exactly what I'm saying, and with each of these calls, the Lord's voice gets weightier and weightier and weightier, and the tone gets heavier and the seriousness of it builds and it becomes painfully clear that these people are headed to judgment.
Doug McMasters: And it's tragic, and it's tragic and it's shocking.
Doug McMasters: But what's even more shocking in this chapter is that their stubbornness is meant with God's resolve not to abandon them.
Doug McMasters: They meet a God whose grace is even more stubborn than their sin.
Doug McMasters: And the Lord is not passive in this chapter.
Doug McMasters: He isn't saying, well, fine, just go your own way.
Doug McMasters: Then he's determined to redeem them.
Doug McMasters: And let there be no mistake, this is not an indulgent leniency, this is not just some helpless great-grandfather in the sky who just says, well, I really can't do much, go on anyway.
Doug McMasters: No, this is a God who is faithful, even to the unworthy.
Doug McMasters: And so there's this tension in this chapter and we need to feel that tension, this tension between stubborn hearts and stubborn grace, and it sets the stage for what you're going to hear next week in chapter 49.
Doug McMasters: Because in chapter 49, the tension gets resolved.
Doug McMasters: The tension gets resolved between these stubborn hearts and stubborn grace.
Doug McMasters: The tension declares that it's resolved in the servant who comes in the next chapter, the servant who obeys where Israel fails and who responds where Israel resists.
Doug McMasters: But first we have to clarify the problem.
Doug McMasters: And that's where we are in this chapter.
Doug McMasters: In the midst of this clash of wills and this conflict of intentions, we'll find that there's a Redeemer that's needed to come to the rescue.
Doug McMasters: So for the first five verses, let's look at our first point Israel's resistance to grace.
Doug McMasters: Let's build that tension.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah opens up with a piercing diagnosis of Israel's need, and he begins by talking to them that they bear God's name but they don't bear God's nature, and that they invoke God in prayer but not in truth.
Doug McMasters: And that they wear this badge of identity but they do so without grace, thinking of it as a birthright and not as a calling.
Doug McMasters: And so he diagnoses them in three ways.
Doug McMasters: In verse 1, by prodding their privilege and showing it without purity.
Doug McMasters: Notice how he does this in verse 1.
Doug McMasters: Listen to this, jacob, those who are called by the name Israel and have descended from Judah, who swear by the name of the Lord.
Doug McMasters: And the Lord here begins by reminding them that Israel is the sacred name by which they've been called.
Doug McMasters: But notice what else he says they are House of Jacob.
Doug McMasters: Now, jacob was a man that God chose and, by God's intervention, changed his name to Israel and God established promises to Jacob.
Doug McMasters: God's intervention changed his name to Israel and God established promises to Jacob and that, through him, a people would be called.
Doug McMasters: Now, jacob's name means heel grabber, or surplanter, or usurper.
Doug McMasters: This was a man who, by deception, tried to grab a hold of things that were other people's and claimed them as his own.
Doug McMasters: He was that self-oriented and selfish.
Doug McMasters: And that man, jacob, god wrestled with and changed his name to Israel's Prince of God.
Doug McMasters: Name to Israel, prince of God.
Doug McMasters: Now notice the irony of this statement here that these people coming out of Judah have been called by the name Israel, prince of God, and yet they need to be told that they're really nothing more than the house of Jacob.
Doug McMasters: When they really ought to be living like princes of God.
Doug McMasters: They're living more like selfish surplanters, heel grabbers, all.
Doug McMasters: And so he's telling them that they're living their life by way of presumption.
Doug McMasters: They put on the clothes of Israel, but their heart is the heart of Jacob.
Doug McMasters: They were chosen, but they're still not changed.
Doug McMasters: They're being blessed, but they're not serving the Lord with honesty and humility and sincerity.
Doug McMasters: And secondly, he exposes them in this diagnosis of their hypocrisy of ritual without relationship, who swear by the name of the Lord and declare the God of Israel, not in truth, not in righteousness, for they're named after the holy city and lean on the God of Israel.
Doug McMasters: His name is the Lord of armies.
Doug McMasters: Yes, they have the Lord's name in their lips, but they don't have the Lord's character in their hearts.
Doug McMasters: And so he exposes their religion as nothing more than ceremonial and perfunctory, not transformational, calling on Yahweh and their rituals and expecting his presence, but not thinking about how their life might represent his name or what it really means to truly belong to him.
Doug McMasters: They prided themselves on having this spiritual status, but God is a God of truth and God is a God of righteousness.
Doug McMasters: These virtues were absent in their lives.
Doug McMasters: Their public allegiance meant nothing if there wasn't a private life that walked in alignment with who God was, and he continues this diagnosis in verses 3 to 5 by bearing their inexcusability because they don't respond to his revelation with repentance.
Doug McMasters: I declared the past events long ago.
Doug McMasters: They came out of my mouth, I proclaimed them Suddenly.
Doug McMasters: Long ago, they came out of my mouth, I proclaimed them Suddenly, I acted.
Doug McMasters: They occurred.
Doug McMasters: And because I know that you're stubborn and your neck is iron and your forehead bronze, therefore I declared to you long ago, I announced it to you before it occurred, so that you could not claim my idol, caused them my carved image and cast idol.
Doug McMasters: Control them.
Doug McMasters: Cause them my carved image and cast idol.
Doug McMasters: Control them.
Doug McMasters: You see, israel's rebellion was not born out of ignorance.
Doug McMasters: Israel's rebellion was born out of defiance.
Doug McMasters: God had spoken to them, god had warned them.
Doug McMasters: God had acted mightily in their presence.
Doug McMasters: He had done great things.
Doug McMasters: He had moved history for their benefit.
Doug McMasters: He had removed them from the hand of Pharaoh and out of the land of Egypt and its slavery.
Doug McMasters: He brought them into a land of milk and honey.
Doug McMasters: He had acted, he had done great things for them.
Doug McMasters: And all of those things.
Doug McMasters: The only thing that they could accredit behind that act is that God alone had done this, and yet they were stubborn and they denied these things, they refused him and they were betrayed by this rebellion.
Doug McMasters: Now let's just pause for a moment, because there's a tension already developing here, isn't there?
Doug McMasters: A tension that isn't simply for us to read in some historical framework, but a tension that might be lying within our own hearts, possibly?
Doug McMasters: Because, just as they, it's quite easy for us to have the name of Christian without having the nature of a Spirit-transformed life.
Doug McMasters: And just as Israel, in Isaiah, chapter 48, claims God's name and claims God's heritage without heartfelt devotion, it's easy for us too to wear the label Christian and have nothing of the Spirit lighting within us.
Doug McMasters: Israel called themselves gods, but God said they had iron necks that were stiff and unrepentant and unyielding.
Doug McMasters: That were stiff and unrepentant and unyielding.
Doug McMasters: And so it's quite possible for us to recite creeds, for us to pray prayers, for us to do scripture reading in public, to display crosses on our clothing, to hang beautiful Bible verses on the walls of our house and yet continue to bow to the idols of comfort and power and convenience and control.
Doug McMasters: You see, being a Christian isn't a badge to wear, it's the indication of a life transformed by grace.
Doug McMasters: And when our devotion stops at just mere appearances.
Doug McMasters: There are some several debilitating things that happen.
Doug McMasters: First of all, we're denying the glory of God's grace, but we're also denying our deep need for renewal, because we're presenting a facade that everything's good, when we know it's not.
Doug McMasters: And what happens, not only to ourselves and to God, is tragic, because when we walk around simply claiming the name of Christ and not living a life that is in comportment with Christ, Everybody knows.
Doug McMasters: Now they may call every Christian a hypocrite, but they know a real hypocrite when they see one we forfeit the ability to represent Christ.
Doug McMasters: Our joy, our intimacy with God is gone.
Doug McMasters: We reduce our connection in His rich presence and privileges of His presence to simple slogans and empty phrases.
Doug McMasters: We grieve the Spirit, who's there to comfort us, to guide us, to assure us.
Doug McMasters: What do we do with that?
Doug McMasters: Well, before we get any deeper into the tension, perhaps we need to stop and do a little self-examination and ask the Lord to expose our hearts, like David did when he prayed in Psalm 139, "'search me, o God.
Doug McMasters: Search me and see if there's any grievous way within me and lead me to the way everlasting, to invite the Spirit into our hearts, to soften it so that we might be afraid of pride, that we might be resistant to the resistance of pride, might be resistance to the resistance of pride, that we might share our struggles with others who might help us and hold us up and pray for us, that we would truly align ourselves with that identity of Christ that we claim.
Doug McMasters: But there's someone else I want to speak to here, not to us as a congregation, so much as members of New Hyde Park Baptist Church, but to anybody listening here who knows within your heart that you truly are not a believer, even though you might have said you are, that you realize that your connections to Christ have simply been those passed down to you by way of your family connections or your cultural inheritance, simply external.
Doug McMasters: I want you to hear something.
Doug McMasters: God is not calling you to polish your spiritual resume right.
Doug McMasters: He's not asking you to present yourself here.
Doug McMasters: He's not trying to urge you on to some moral upgrade at all.
Doug McMasters: What he's doing here is he's telling us that he's come to save sinners.
Doug McMasters: And if your heart has never been truly broken over your sin, if you're never been gripped with grace to the place where your heart is just speechless with awe, if the name of Jesus that you've used has never been the one that you've truly trusted in with life and eternity.
Doug McMasters: Today is not a day to try harder.
Doug McMasters: Today is a day to simply come humbly before the Lord and lay yourself before him, lay down your pride, lay down your pretense, lay down the patterns of this empty title of Christian that you might have called yourself, and receive the mercy of a God who delivers.
Doug McMasters: The scriptures tell us that Christ came to bear the wrath that we deserve, that he came to give us life that we could not make on our own, to give us forgiveness for our sins and an inheritance in the kingdom of light to share with Christ himself.
Doug McMasters: And he wants to receive you, not as some refurbished Christian, but as a new creation.
Doug McMasters: Now let's move on.
Doug McMasters: Let's feel this tension even deeper because it starts off with the indictment of Israel's resistance to grace.
Doug McMasters: But the tension gets stronger when we move over to the other side of the rope in this spiritual tug-of-war, to God's side, and we see God's relentless pursuit, despite their resistance, and we see this in verses 6 to 11.
Doug McMasters: If Israel's rebellion is persistent, god's grace is even more persistent.
Doug McMasters: Let me just read this whole section.
Doug McMasters: You've heard it.
Doug McMasters: Observe it all, will you not acknowledge it?
Doug McMasters: From now on, I will announce new things to you, hidden things that you've not known.
Doug McMasters: They've been created now and not long ago, and you've not heard of them before today, so that you could not claim well, I already knew that You've never heard, you have never known.
Doug McMasters: For a long time, your ears have not been open, for I knew that you were very treacherous and were known as a rebel from birth.
Doug McMasters: I will delay my anger for the sake of my name and I will restrain myself for your benefit and for my praise, so that you will not be destroyed.
Doug McMasters: Look, I have refined you, but not as silver.
Doug McMasters: I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.
Doug McMasters: I will act for my own sake, indeed my own, for how can I be defiled?
Doug McMasters: I will not give my glory to another.
Doug McMasters: Here is a statement that grace is not going to quit, that God's not waiting for their cooperation for him to act, that he's going to move forward even while their hearts are still stuck in reverse, and he promises to act Verses 6 and 7, he says that he's going to reveal new things, that this grace is going to be surprising beyond what they can even imagine at this moment, not some recycled mercy, not some predictable kindness, but fresh, undeserved grace.
Doug McMasters: The Apostle Paul, just to give you a hint, said eye is not seen, nor is ear heard, nor is it entered into the hearts of men.
Doug McMasters: The things that God has ordained for those that love him, of men, the things that God has ordained for those that love him, ah, there's something grand and glorious.
Doug McMasters: The people's hearts have grown hard and cold.
Doug McMasters: God is going to act, not because of their obedience, but in spite of their disobedience.
Doug McMasters: And here's the miracle in that.
Doug McMasters: Just think about that for a moment.
Doug McMasters: Would you act this way to somebody who had been constantly resistant to your reaches of care and love and help and assistance and truth?
Doug McMasters: I don't think any of us would.
Doug McMasters: But God here is telling us that he is that different than us, that his purposes are not going to be thwarted by human stubbornness and that he doesn't need Israel's cooperation to accomplish what he intends to do.
Doug McMasters: He's going to move forward, even if it means dragging these people through the furnace to do it, and it's going to be the kind of grace that they've never even heard about before, that they couldn't even imagine.
Doug McMasters: That was so stunning that even the powers of darkness.
Doug McMasters: Had they known about this, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Doug McMasters: Some grace super bounding beyond human comprehension Just whispers of that right at the moment.
Doug McMasters: But I think you understand where that's headed.
Doug McMasters: But notice, in verses 8 and 9, it's not only this statement of surprising grace to come, but also restraining his wrath.
Doug McMasters: I restrained myself for your benefit and for my praise.
Doug McMasters: God knew their hearts all along, from the very beginning.
Doug McMasters: They weren't innocent people, even when he first owned them, and he did so not because they were holy, but because he wanted to make his name great in the midst of them.
Doug McMasters: And then, in verses 10 and 11, he speaks about refining them.
Doug McMasters: Verses 10 and 11, he speaks about refining them.
Doug McMasters: That this exile that he's pointing them forward toward was not going to be abandonment but actually refinement, that he wasn't going to send them to Babylon simply to discard them but to purify them.
Doug McMasters: And that his discipline was intentional and purposeful and it wasn't putative in the sense that it would be final.
Doug McMasters: It was meant to be redemptive for the people, because the promises would continue on.
Doug McMasters: And what we see here is this tension between rebellion and a God who refuses to let go.
Doug McMasters: They were relentless in their rebellion, but God is more relentless in his grace, and this gives us hope, doesn't it?
Doug McMasters: It gives us hope that God's glory is the anchor of our hope, that he acts not because we're worthy, but because he desires for the glory of his grace to be known to us, and that he deals with us not in some indulgent, hands-off manner, but rather with an intervention of love and mercy to continue to press his promises deep into our soul.
Doug McMasters: And even his discipline, which we might take immediately as abandonment, is not there simply because God has walked away from us, but because he intends to use those things to transform us.
Doug McMasters: The writer of Hebrews said that there's no discipline that comes.
Doug McMasters: That is joyous but grievous, but it has an intent, because when it's finished it'll work, the peaceable fruit of righteousness within us.
Doug McMasters: Even God's heavy hands have good purposes behind them, and so this leads us to look to this Lord and to let go of our end of the rope and to get on.
Doug McMasters: Paul, in Romans 2 said this.
Doug McMasters: He said, he said do you despise the riches of his kindness, his restraint, his patience, not recognizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
Doug McMasters: Wow, here is a God who means to break our rebellion with love and not greater strength.
Doug McMasters: And so we can trust him and anchor our hope in his name, and we can know that he comes into our life not because of our merit, but because he has a mission of grace to perform within us.
Doug McMasters: And so this leads us to the third point, where we've looked at one side of the rope Israel and rebellion God's side of the rope and the tug of grace.
Doug McMasters: In the next section, those two are combined together in verses 12 to 19, where God reinforces his gracious declarations and reinforces Israel's defiance.
Doug McMasters: God here speaks, and he brings this tension to a peak in this section.
Doug McMasters: He begins with himself.
Doug McMasters: Let's start in verse 12.
Doug McMasters: Listen to me.
Doug McMasters: Jacob in Israel, the one called by me, I am he.
Doug McMasters: I am the first, I am also the last.
Doug McMasters: My own hand founded the earth and my right hand spread out the heavens.
Doug McMasters: When I summoned them, they stood up together.
Doug McMasters: All of you assemble and listen.
Doug McMasters: Who among the idols has declared these things?
Doug McMasters: The Lord loves him.
Doug McMasters: He will accomplish his will against Babylon.
Doug McMasters: His arm will be against the Chaldeans.
Doug McMasters: I have spoken, I have spoken, yes, I have called him, I have brought him, and he will succeed in his mission.
Doug McMasters: Approach me and listen to this.
Doug McMasters: From the beginning, I have not spoken in secret.
Doug McMasters: From the time anything existed, I was there.
Doug McMasters: And now the Lord God has sent me in his spirit.
Doug McMasters: And this is what the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, says I am the Lord, your God, who teaches you for your benefit, who leads you in the way you should go.
Doug McMasters: Boy, this is quite a reinforcement, isn't it?
Doug McMasters: This is a God who identifies himself, in verses 12 and 13, as the eternal voice.
Doug McMasters: He is the first and the last, the alpha and the omega.
Doug McMasters: He's the one who's called creation into being and he's the one that holds history in his hands.
Doug McMasters: The mountains move at his word and the stars stand at attention when he speaks.
Doug McMasters: And he is not one voice among many, he is the voice of the heavens and the earth.
Doug McMasters: Verse 14,.
Doug McMasters: He's sovereign, he's the Lord of history.
Doug McMasters: No idols had predicted Babylon's fall.
Doug McMasters: No false gods had ever foreseen Cyrus.
Doug McMasters: But Yahweh did.
Doug McMasters: And he didn't just foresee it, he ordained it to happen.
Doug McMasters: You see, cyrus was not just some political accident, it was a divine appointment and history was going to bend to God's will.
Doug McMasters: In verse 16, he talks about the spirit speaking, this divine disclosure that God speaks through His Word, his Spirit and His Son.
Doug McMasters: Ultimately, and the question is not, does God care and does God speak?
Doug McMasters: The question is, do we have ears to hear?
Doug McMasters: Are we listening to what he has to say?
Doug McMasters: Now, that's one side of this tension that gets strengthened in this section.
Doug McMasters: The other side, the tension strengthens still verses 17 to 19.
Doug McMasters: Verse 18, if you had only paid attention to my commands, then your peace would have been like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
Doug McMasters: Your descendants would have been as countless as the sand and the offspring of your body like its grave.
Doug McMasters: Their name would not be cut off or eliminated from my presence.
Doug McMasters: You know those horrible moments when your parents told you what you just missed out on because you didn't listen to them.
Doug McMasters: Israel wouldn't listen.
Doug McMasters: Their selective obedience had brought them into spiritual drought.
Doug McMasters: The river of peace had dried up.
Doug McMasters: The waves of righteous never broke upon their shores.
Doug McMasters: And Lord here, doesn't speak with rage.
Doug McMasters: Catch the tone.
Doug McMasters: It's not rage speaking, it's lament.
Doug McMasters: My sons never believed me when I said that giving them discipline was harder on me than it was on them.
Doug McMasters: And what made it hard on me was.
Doug McMasters: I wanted to show them love, but in the moment they needed correction, in the moment they needed rebuke, in the moment they needed that side of me, when, all along, I really just wanted to embrace and care and shower them.
Doug McMasters: And here the Lord is speaking in that sort of lamenting tone.
Doug McMasters: If only you had paid attention to my commands it's that tone.
Doug McMasters: Then your peace would have been like a river and your righteousness it would have been like a river and your righteousness it would have been like waves on the sea.
Doug McMasters: Your descendants would have been as countless as the stars.
Doug McMasters: He mourns over what could have been.
Doug McMasters: The Lord doesn't speak here in riddles or shadows, does he?
Doug McMasters: He's plain.
Doug McMasters: He speaks prophetically, publicly, declaratively.
Doug McMasters: I am he, the first and the last, the one who calls creation into being, holds history in his hands, the mountains moving at his word and the stars standing at his attention.
Doug McMasters: And yet the tragedy of this tension is that the people are still stubborn and the tension is not the Lord in his message.
Doug McMasters: The tension is because of their hardness of heart.
Doug McMasters: He speaks to them with unmistakable authority and he tells them that they forfeited peace and righteousness and blessing, and he laments all that could have been for them, laments, all that could have been for them.
Doug McMasters: Oh, jerusalem, jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: Jesus said how I would have gathered you as a hen does her chicks, but you would not.
Doug McMasters: The Lord is going to do something in the light of this.
Doug McMasters: He's going to do something in the light not only of Israel's failures but our own, not only in the face of Israel's obstinance and stiff-necked heart, but in light of our own.
Doug McMasters: And it's going to be this, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.
Doug McMasters: What a remarkable, remarkable thing.
Doug McMasters: And here, right at the very edge of the end of this chapter, isaiah builds us up to this point of tension by looking first at Israel's rebellious and stiff-necked heart and God's continued remarkable grace.
Doug McMasters: And this sort of look at both sides and the tug that's going on here as the tension reaches its apex.
Doug McMasters: And he leaves us with a question that's more than just a rhetorical question.
Doug McMasters: It's a personal question.
Doug McMasters: Israel, are you listening?
Doug McMasters: Are you listening?
Doug McMasters: Am I listening to this?
Doug McMasters: Let's take a look at the last section.
Doug McMasters: Israel's resistance in the first five verses, god's relentless pursuit in the next section.
Doug McMasters: God's reinforcement of his gracious declarations and Israel's defiance is culminated in the last three verses of God's redemption declared.
Doug McMasters: Now, remember this is prophecy.
Doug McMasters: And here we see the Exodus reimagined.
Doug McMasters: Listen to it, because Isaiah closes this chapter with a call of movement, a call to leave Babylon.
Doug McMasters: Leave Babylon, flee from the Chaldeans.
Doug McMasters: Declare with a shout of joy, proclaim this.
Doug McMasters: Let it go out to the ends of the earth and announce the Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob.
Doug McMasters: What do we have here?
Doug McMasters: The Lord calling the people to leave babylon.
Doug McMasters: But it's more than just a geographical command.
Doug McMasters: It's a spiritual summit.
Doug McMasters: It's a call not just to abandon the captivity physically and to leave the location, but to to abandon Babylon and your allegiance to that.
Doug McMasters: Because Babylon represents more than just the city and the people it represents.
Doug McMasters: And this represents more than just the exile from that.
Doug McMasters: Babylon represents the compromise and the confusion and the consequences of covenantal desertion by Israel.
Doug McMasters: And God's invitation is not simply for them to—a change of address needs to be registered with the post office.
Doug McMasters: This is about a realignment with God and His promises.
Doug McMasters: This is about a realignment with God and his promises.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't want them simply to relocate, he wants them to return to him.
Doug McMasters: And he does so with this language of Exodus here.
Doug McMasters: Right, you know the Exodus, where they're in bondage and slavery in Egypt, and Moses and Aaron come down and say let my people go.
Doug McMasters: And after the plagues, moses leads the people across the dry land and into, eventually, the land of promise, the Exodus.
Doug McMasters: And this is the language he uses here when he talks about the freedom of the people from the captivity of Babylon to return back to the place of Jerusalem and to rebuild the temple.
Doug McMasters: But it's more than that, even, and so Isaiah evokes the memory of that first exodus, that time when water flowed from a rock, when God led his people with a pillar of cloud and fire, when God didn't just promise deliverance but he performed it.
Doug McMasters: And he calls them into the summons to leave Babylon.
Doug McMasters: And this exodus is going to be different Because it's reimagined and it's even prophetic.
Doug McMasters: It's reimagined in the sense that he wants them not just to leave a place but to enter into the promises.
Doug McMasters: And it's prophetic in the sense that it's going to reach forward as you go into chapter 49 to talk about a greater redeemer who's going to bring people on a greater journey and bring them into a greater inheritance.
Doug McMasters: And the New Testament picks up this theme.
Doug McMasters: The writers of the New Testament use Exodus phraseology and Exodus motifs to describe Jesus to believers today.
Doug McMasters: And it's no accident.
Doug McMasters: The believers are doing that or the writers are doing that intentionally, very intentionally.
Doug McMasters: Just listen to a sampling of it.
Doug McMasters: You can read these later on your own Jesus, in Hebrews 3, 1-6, is called the greater Moses, a greater Moses who leads his people out of the bondage of sin.
Doug McMasters: In 1 Corinthians, chapter 10 and verse 4, jesus is called the rock from which the living water flows.
Doug McMasters: Jesus himself said in John chapter 14 that he is the way, the truth and the life, the truth and the life.
Doug McMasters: When you go to John, chapter 14 and verse 6, you'll read that In 1 Peter, chapter 2 and verse 9, it says that Jesus called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Doug McMasters: What is that?
Doug McMasters: That's transference, just like the Exodus was.
Doug McMasters: And in Hebrews, chapter 12 and verse 28, jesus brings us not just into a new land, but into a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
Doug McMasters: And those are just a few of many, many more verses that carry the motifs of Exodus and the phraseology of that time.
Doug McMasters: But just like the Exodus, isaiah ends with a warning there's no peace for the wicked, says the Lord.
Doug McMasters: Because with all of this Exodus imagery and with all of this Exodus language, with all of the freedom and deliverance promised there is, just like the Exodus, faithlessness rebuked.
Doug McMasters: You see, that Exodus journey took 40 long years, the wilderness and did not enter into the land of the promise.
Doug McMasters: And as tender as he's portraying this about coming out of Babylon, going on a new Exodus journey back to the land of promise, he says if you refuse this, know this, there's nothing left for the wicked, there's no peace for them, no shalom, no ultimate understanding of the fullness of God's many rich blessings.
Doug McMasters: Because the Exodus wilderness journey is not neutral.
Doug McMasters: It reveals the God who is to be trusted, but it also exposes the resistant heart.
Doug McMasters: And just like those in the first exodus who perished in unbelief, those who reject God's voice in this new exodus will also perish in unbelief.
Doug McMasters: And when you read the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, you realize that only a small sliver of people returned from Babylon back to the land and they simply, most of them simply relocated their address and did not realign their hearts.
Doug McMasters: And this is why the Lord Jesus, when he comes, speaks to a wicked and adulterous generation, yes, with a changed address, but with the same old hearts that Isaiah has been exposing in this chapter, and this is why the writer of Hebrews picks up this phrase and says how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?
Doug McMasters: Because the greatest exodus is the exodus out of the domain of darkness and sin and rebellion, and if you do not believe on the one who will lead you into the kingdom of light and hope and forgiveness, how shall you escape?
Doug McMasters: You can't deliver yourself, and if you refuse the deliverer, there is no peace, says my God to the wicked.
Doug McMasters: And so Isaiah ends here, not with a threat, but with the truth, because redemption is here.
Doug McMasters: We must leave Babylon and believe the Lord on the journey.
Doug McMasters: Now let me bring all this to a close.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah 48 is not just a chapter of confrontation.
Doug McMasters: It's really, in its essence, a chapter of compassion.
Doug McMasters: From the beginning of it to the end of it, god is speaking.
Doug McMasters: He's talking about acting sovereignly.
Doug McMasters: He is displaying his heart by lamenting deeply.
Doug McMasters: He's not indifferent to the rebellion.
Doug McMasters: He's actually very grieved by it and his voice is thundering with authority.
Doug McMasters: But his heart is aching with longing for them.
Doug McMasters: And we don't see displayed here the cold distance of deity, but rather the tender persistence of a father.
Doug McMasters: And here, in this whole chapter, he's been reinforcing his declarations, he's been recalling his past faithfulness, he's been reissuing his invitations and he's calling the people out of Babylon.
Doug McMasters: Thankfully, this isn't where the story ends, because Isaiah, chapter 48, doesn't end in despair.
Doug McMasters: Like I said at the beginning, this is setting us up in anticipation for something that's coming, because the final verse that ends with there's no peace, says my God for the wicked, opens up this way.
Doug McMasters: Coast and islands, listen to me, distant peoples pay attention.
Doug McMasters: The Lord called me before I was born.
Doug McMasters: And it goes on, verse 3, you are my servant.
Doug McMasters: A servant is coming, and not just a prophet, but the very embodiment of the complete faithfulness of God, and he is going to be the answer to this tension.
Doug McMasters: He is going to be the resolution of the rebellion, he is going to be the fulfillment of the Father's compassionate love.
Doug McMasters: And he's going to come not with wrath, but with the purposes and the means to bring redemption and reconciliation between sinful people and a loving God, between sinful people and a loving God.
Doug McMasters: He's going to restore Israel and be a light to the nations and bring salvation to the ends of the earth.
Doug McMasters: Who is this servant?
Doug McMasters: You got it Absolutely.
Doug McMasters: This servant is Christ himself.
Doug McMasters: Jesus the Savior, the one sent by the Father, the same Father who's mourning here over Israel's disobedience, sent to bear our sins, sent to bring us peace, not just to tell us go, walk off away from Babylon, but to lead us as the one who is the way, the truth and the life himself.
Doug McMasters: Because in Christ, if we leave Babylon, we embark on a journey of promise and reconciliation and hope.
Doug McMasters: The question is will you receive the invitation or will you still stand rebellious in the light of it?
Doug McMasters: Will you refuse it with ardent, strengthened resolve?
Doug McMasters: Or will you simply walk away from it saying I'm not worthy of it, as if you ever were anyway?
Doug McMasters: Will you receive it Because God is a God of grace, god is a God of love, god is a God of truth and righteousness.
Doug McMasters: Also, there's no peace, says my God, to the wicked, but there's wondrous embrace to the broken and contrite heart.
Doug McMasters: The Father's heart is still faithful.
Doug McMasters: Today is the day of salvation, now is the accepted time.
Doug McMasters: Pray that we all respond with soft hearts and not stiff necks.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray, father, father, father.
Doug McMasters: How can we respond to this, this revelation of who you are, this revelation of who you are, how you persisted in your pleadings and your arguments and your warnings and your invitations to a people so long and their disobedience to you.
Doug McMasters: How can we respond to promises beyond belief, to encouragements outside of our abilities to comprehend, but to simply say yes, yes, lord, yes, lord yes.
Doug McMasters: Put down any rebellion, put down any stiffness, put down any selfishness, put down any self-will within us and deliver us.
Doug McMasters: Cause peace to reign, cause the waves of righteousness to roll over us again and again.
Doug McMasters: Cause the fullness of your blessing to reach not only into our lives but beyond it, so that our children and our children's children might praise your name, that all the earth might hear and rejoice together.
Doug McMasters: There's a God in heaven who saves undeserving people.
Doug McMasters: Empower our witness, fill us with joy, strengthen our hearts.
Doug McMasters: We ask you in Christ's name, amen.