Doug McMasters: I invite you to take your Bible and go over to the book of Isaiah, chapter 8, isaiah, chapter 8.
Doug McMasters: If you'll allow me to introduce this message with a little bit of a, maybe a strange analogy at first, but I think there is a connecting point.
Doug McMasters: Just recently I had a unique experience in my backyard.
Doug McMasters: I have a bird feeder, a couple bird feeders, in my backyard, and I enjoy a regular visit from birds that we're used to seeing a lot there Sparrows and finches and morning doves and pesky pigeons, and occasionally we'll see cardinals coming in and out on a fairly regular basis and blue jays and once in a while woodpeckers and sometimes even hawks who have a real love for pigeon meat.
Doug McMasters: We've come back there and there looks like someone has torn a pillow apart and realized that one of the pigeons had been dispatched in our backyard.
Doug McMasters: Realized that one of the pigeons had been dispatched in our backyard.
Doug McMasters: But a few weeks ago, as I was looking at our bird feeders, I was amazed to see something that was completely out of place.
Doug McMasters: There were seven parakeets bright, brilliant green parakeets eating bird seed on my bird feeder and my immediate thought was where did you guys come from?
Doug McMasters: Because you don't belong here.
Doug McMasters: And I just sat and marveled in watching them and for the past few weeks they've actually come back and revisited our bird feeder a few times.
Doug McMasters: They're hungry, so they come back.
Doug McMasters: I don't know if they'll survive the winter.
Doug McMasters: They must be.
Doug McMasters: There's seven of them, so they've obviously look healthy and thriving somehow.
Doug McMasters: But it was odd to see them, because those big green birds just really don't fit in with the rest of the birds that come by.
Doug McMasters: They're just not natural to our place.
Doug McMasters: Well, we, as believers in Jesus Christ, are in a world, and the way we behave, I think, causes them to look at us much like I did the first time I saw those parakeets.
Doug McMasters: What are you doing here and who are you?
Doug McMasters: We are a peculiar people, unique in the way we operate.
Doug McMasters: Now just think about it for a minute.
Doug McMasters: We stand apart in this world in several different ways.
Doug McMasters: We proclaim God's presence in a secular society.
Doug McMasters: We exercise generosity and simplicity in a consumer world.
Doug McMasters: We encourage one another to live selflessly in a world that's dominated by selfishness.
Doug McMasters: We hold out hope in a world that's lost hope for the future.
Doug McMasters: We express praise and joy and thanksgiving in a world that's convinced of its own entitlement.
Doug McMasters: I have no one else to thank but me for what I've gotten.
Doug McMasters: Some of these practices cause us to be welcomed, because they're attractive, of course, but some of the things that we do as believers cause others to look at us and say who are you?
Doug McMasters: You're not like the rest of us.
Doug McMasters: Some of these things even make us a bit odious to our society today, because we stand as bold witnesses to the truth of Jesus Christ in a world of relativism.
Doug McMasters: Jesus said that he was the way, the truth and the life, and no one could come to the Father but by him.
Doug McMasters: And the apostolic message of that gospel of Jesus Christ was that there was no name given among humans by which we must be saved.
Doug McMasters: It's an exclusive message singularly focused upon one person, jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And the whole world is being told that only through Jesus Christ can you have an assurance of your sins forgiven and an entrance into the presence of God without condemnation.
Doug McMasters: Now that message rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
Doug McMasters: Why, well, we can't join them in this era of tolerance that we're being told we must do in our Western society?
Doug McMasters: We can't agree that all truth claims have to be shuffled aside into the private sector.
Doug McMasters: We can't do that and we understand that our mission in this world is going to prove to be increasingly costly to us, and it might even include suffering.
Doug McMasters: In fact, paul said that everyone who lives godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
Doug McMasters: You see, suffering is a result of being God-centered and gospel-focused.
Doug McMasters: It is a result of standing for the absolute truth that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
Doug McMasters: It's becoming increasingly difficult to live our lives in this society because the modern American pluralistic story is seeking not only to be a story in America, not only a dominant story in America.
Doug McMasters: This pluralistic idea is seeking to be the exclusive story in America.
Doug McMasters: And as we desire to be faithful to the gospel, we're going to be faced with a choice Do we accommodate ourselves, do we just relegate ourselves to some minor community in our culture and mute or modify the comprehensive and exclusive claims of the gospel, or do we remain faithful to that message and thus experience some degree of conflict and suffering?
Doug McMasters: As we engage the structures of our society today, we're going to face the pressures to play that cultural game.
Doug McMasters: We're going to face the pressures that cause us, or seek to cause us, to compromise to round off the rough edges, to be silent when words need to be spoken.
Doug McMasters: This morning, I believe Isaiah chapter 8 gives us the equipment that we need to be able to live in society without compromise.
Doug McMasters: Let's dig into it, let's take a look at it, and as we dig into it, I want to bring back the setting that we set up last week as we looked through Isaiah chapter 7 and the first part of chapter 8.
Doug McMasters: And last week we discovered that, after Isaiah was called to prophetic ministry, one of his first assignments was to meet King Ahaz in Jerusalem, and Isaiah came across Ahaz there, likely inspecting the water supply of the city, in advance of what seemed to be an imminent siege by the two northern nations of Aram and the 10 tribes of Israel.
Doug McMasters: These two kings of those two nations threatened Ahaz with death and destruction if he did not comply with their building of an alliance against the strengthening muscle of Assyria in the region.
Doug McMasters: If they didn't join him, they would die by him.
Doug McMasters: And so he was in no place to make an agreement with them because, as the truth be told, he had already made an alliance with Assyria himself.
Doug McMasters: So there's no way he's going to fight the very people he had already made a pact with the very people he had already made a pact with.
Doug McMasters: God instructs Isaiah to meet Ahaz and to inform him of some things, to inform him that the living God would be with him and remain faithful to the house of David.
Doug McMasters: In chapter 7 and verse 4, isaiah was instructed to tell King Ahaz to be calm and to be quiet and not to be afraid or cowardly because of the threats of these two kings.
Doug McMasters: But along with those comforting words, isaiah was told to exhort Ahaz that in order to come through this crisis successfully, he needed to trust God and not himself.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 9 of chapter 7, if you don't stand firm in faith, you won't stand at all.
Doug McMasters: If Ahaz leaned on the Lord, he would see God at work on his behalf.
Doug McMasters: And in a wonderfully accommodating way, god told Isaiah to give Ahaz the opportunity to ask God for a sign.
Doug McMasters: Anyone he chose, as high as the heavens are, as low as the grave.
Doug McMasters: Pick what you want, present it to God as a test, so that God might demonstrate to Ahaz that he truly was there to help him out.
Doug McMasters: Ahaz demurred and, in a mock demonstration of piety, said that he wouldn't do such a thing.
Doug McMasters: He wouldn't look to the Lord for assurance and he wouldn't look to the Lord for help.
Doug McMasters: And so the Lord instructed Isaiah to speak to Ahaz and inform him that God was still going to be faithful to the house of David.
Doug McMasters: But Ahaz and the disobedient people in Judah were not going to enter into the good things that God had prepared for those who trust him.
Doug McMasters: And in chapter 7, verse 17, he said the Lord will bring on you and on your people and on your father's house.
Doug McMasters: Such a time has never been since Ephraim separated from Judah.
Doug McMasters: He will bring the king of Assyria.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah was told to tell Ahaz and the people of Judah, who had already submitted themselves to the king of Assyria in an alliance, that he wasn't going to come to them as a refuge.
Doug McMasters: He was going to come to them as their ruin.
Doug McMasters: And in chapter eight he said said the Lord spoke to me again in verse 5.
Doug McMasters: And because the people rejected the slowly flowing waters of Shiloah, the Lord will certainly bring against them the mighty rushing water of the Euphrates river, the king of Assyria and all his glory.
Doug McMasters: It will overflow its channels and spill all of its banks.
Doug McMasters: It will pour into Judah, it will flood it over, it will sweep through, reaching up to the neck and the flooded banks will fill your entire land, emmanuel.
Doug McMasters: Certainly God had every right to utterly refuse these people and leave them to their fate.
Doug McMasters: But that last word in that passage, emmanuel, that God was still the God who was going to be good and he was going to be gracious, and he was going to stand by his promises to David, there's a whisper of hope, even in the rebuke.
Doug McMasters: Their failure to take into account the presence of God on their behalf would soon turn to the swift plundering of the land of Judah, but it wouldn't be able to change the fact that there were people there who could say God was with them.
Doug McMasters: Despite the fact that most, all of Judah had turned away, there was a little band of people who were continuing to trust the living God, continuing to rest upon the promises that God had made to David, and we call those people the remnant people.
Doug McMasters: They're just a small little bit of the populace, a residue, a vestige of the people, but they were the people who trusted God in the midst of a society that was refusing him, in the midst of a society that was refusing him.
Doug McMasters: And to those people God promises to be Emmanuel, god, with them While he was going to move as judge and bring judgment upon a nation.
Doug McMasters: These people were still able to trust the living God in the middle of that confusion and conflict and catastrophe, and know that God was there with them in the turmoil.
Doug McMasters: To say that God was with them sounds wonderful, but keep in mind that they were going to be living in the very land where God was going to bring the judgment of the Assyrian people over every inch of that place.
Doug McMasters: Their lives were going to be disrupted.
Doug McMasters: Their whole world was going to be turned upside down.
Doug McMasters: Their whole world was going to be turned upside down but even though things were unstable and dangerous, they could still rest in the knowledge of Emmanuel, that God was with them.
Doug McMasters: How were they to navigate this dangerous situation?
Doug McMasters: How were they able to continue to trust in the midst of all of this conflict, the conflict between their belief and the other people's unbelief, the conflict of warring nations at their doorstep?
Doug McMasters: How were they to navigate it?
Doug McMasters: Well, that's what Isaiah chapter 8 is all about.
Doug McMasters: It's here to give them hope as they navigate these troubling waters, as the remnant looks to God while the rest of the nation is being judged.
Doug McMasters: We live in a similar situation Ever since the gospel of Jesus Christ came into this world situation.
Doug McMasters: Ever since the gospel of Jesus Christ came into this world, christians have found themselves in conflict with the society that they were in and are in.
Doug McMasters: In fact, the Apostle John said we know that we're of God and the whole world lies in the sway of the evil one lies in the sway of the evil one.
Doug McMasters: We are on a side that is in conflict with another side and we are in, if you number us, a serious minority.
Doug McMasters: But he also said we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we know the true one and we are in the true one.
Doug McMasters: So in our day, we too live with the kind of complexities, maybe not the imminent physical danger of life like the people in Judah did, but with the same construct of light versus dark, of one versus the other.
Doug McMasters: And as our world is experiencing this sort of degradation, full of disobedience and the disintegration of those things that are truly right and just and righteous in our society, how do we stand up against those aligned forces of evil?
Doug McMasters: The same way that the remnant did in Isaiah's day, they and we need to be strengthened in the confidence in God-shaped resolve that will help us to walk forward despite what we're watching around us.
Doug McMasters: We need God's spirit and we need the truth to fill us, to fill us with holiness and justice and righteousness, when holiness and justice and righteousness are scorned and mocked in our society.
Doug McMasters: So the details of this passage will help us to discover how to navigate these troubling waters.
Doug McMasters: Of this passage will help us to discover how to navigate these troubling waters, and the first thing I want us to notice here is that the remnant possesses a distinguishing resource.
Doug McMasters: A distinguishing resource.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verses 9 and 10 of chapter 8.
Doug McMasters: Band together peoples and be broken.
Doug McMasters: Pay attention all you distant lands.
Doug McMasters: Prepare for war and be broken.
Doug McMasters: Devise a plan.
Doug McMasters: It will fail.
Doug McMasters: Make a prediction it will not happen, for God is with us Now.
Doug McMasters: When Ahaz was told that there was going to be this alliance of Aram and Ephraim coming down against him, his heart shook, as it says in chapter 7, like the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind, and he's scrambling about trying to muster every bit of military might that he can find to be able to stand up against what was coming his way.
Doug McMasters: But the remnant could be confident and not frantic and fearful.
Doug McMasters: They could stand as a solid force in the middle of a troubled society because they have this unique characteristic, this distinguishing resource of God's presence with them.
Doug McMasters: God is with us.
Doug McMasters: These verses are so confident.
Doug McMasters: They carry a sarcastic tone about them.
Doug McMasters: Tone about them Band together people.
Doug McMasters: Go ahead, make your alliances.
Doug McMasters: Prepare for your war.
Doug McMasters: Empty out all of your resources.
Doug McMasters: Go to all of your armories and pass them out among all your strongest men.
Doug McMasters: Devise your plans.
Doug McMasters: Get your strategies in place.
Doug McMasters: Talk to your generals.
Doug McMasters: Make your alliances with other nations.
Doug McMasters: It's all going to fail.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because God is with us.
Doug McMasters: To the unbelieving people of Judah and King Ahaz, the people who really trusted the Lord could be confident in contrast to their fear, and they could be clear in demarking the differences of their responses.
Doug McMasters: Divide your plans.
Doug McMasters: They're going to fail.
Doug McMasters: We don't need to devise plans.
Doug McMasters: We don't need to run to alliances.
Doug McMasters: We don't need to count the number of our men.
Doug McMasters: We don't have to wonder how erudite and strategically astute our generals are.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because God is on our side.
Doug McMasters: God is on our side.
Doug McMasters: That's why, now this might sound arrogant, but it's not arrogance.
Doug McMasters: It's actually humble confidence that God is on our side.
Doug McMasters: Just think about this for a minute Apart from Jesus Christ, what resources do any of us actually have?
Doug McMasters: Right, none.
Doug McMasters: Do we really think that we have the power to be conquerors in this world?
Doug McMasters: Can we stop a tornado?
Doug McMasters: Can we slow down a hurricane?
Doug McMasters: Can we still an earthquake?
Doug McMasters: Any of us?
Doug McMasters: Not one of us, not even all of us together.
Doug McMasters: There's no fail-safe that any of us have against the potential of fiscal ruin.
Doug McMasters: The markets could crash, climates can change, famine can happen.
Doug McMasters: It's outside of our control.
Doug McMasters: I love to work out, but I know this body's going to fail.
Doug McMasters: I don't have the wherewithal to protect myself against disease and aging.
Doug McMasters: I don't, none of us do and we certainly have no power to face down death, do we?
Doug McMasters: How powerful are we, then?
Doug McMasters: Really Not a single one of us.
Doug McMasters: I was at dinner with someone last night and he talked about a friend of his who is approaching death simply because he fell down a couple stairs and hit his head.
Doug McMasters: One little momentary decision to go down the steps slipped and fell and is now on the brink of eternity.
Doug McMasters: None of us have the ability or power to protect ourselves like we think we do.
Doug McMasters: You see, safety true safety is not found in avoiding danger completely, is not found in avoiding danger completely.
Doug McMasters: True safety is found that you can go into the danger and come out of it without full evil effect harming you.
Doug McMasters: And while others are frantic and fearful and clutching at solutions and trying to paper the facade of their lives with the pretense that they can have it all under their control, god's people can simply say God's with us.
Doug McMasters: It's like one pastor said if you feel like you're alone in the world, just know this.
Doug McMasters: You and God make a majority.
Doug McMasters: That's all you need.
Doug McMasters: You don't need anything beside Him.
Doug McMasters: In the book of Romans, in chapter 8, paul raises a few questions to get us to consider these things and he says there who can bring an accusation against God's elect?
Doug McMasters: It's God who justifies.
Doug McMasters: It's God who declares people righteous.
Doug McMasters: Who is the one who condemns Christ?
Doug McMasters: Jesus is the one who died.
Doug McMasters: Even more has been raised and he's also at the right hand of God interceding for us.
Doug McMasters: These questions are causing us to think and he's telling us that if we're a believer in Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven and we're declared righteous before a holy God, that there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and that we could say about ourselves blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven and whose sins are covered.
Doug McMasters: Blessed is the one in whom the Lord will not impute their sin against them.
Doug McMasters: We're declared righteous in the eyes of God, not because of anything that we've done, but because of his mercy.
Doug McMasters: But Paul doesn't end there.
Doug McMasters: He said not only did Christ die for us, he rose from the grave and he presents us to the Father on our behalf.
Doug McMasters: He's at the right hand of the throne of God.
Doug McMasters: Why is he there?
Doug McMasters: To represent us, to speak on our behalf, to defend us, to love us, to enter into relationship with us, so that nothing might separate us from God's eternal love.
Doug McMasters: And to make sure we get the point, paul continues the questioning who can separate us from the love of Christ?
Doug McMasters: He says Can affliction or distress or persecution, or famine or nakedness or danger?
Doug McMasters: Danger, our sword, and we might experience some of those, because it's written.
Doug McMasters: Because of you.
Doug McMasters: We're being put to death all day long.
Doug McMasters: We're counted as sheep to be slaughtered.
Doug McMasters: Hmm, safety's not escape from the trouble.
Doug McMasters: Safety's being able to go through the trouble?
Doug McMasters: No, he says no, no, no.
Doug McMasters: What can separate me from the love of God?
Doug McMasters: My persecutors, no.
Doug McMasters: My unbelieving family members, no.
Doug McMasters: Satan no.
Doug McMasters: Death, no, can't.
Doug McMasters: Even if we experience all those things, what can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus?
Doug McMasters: Nothing, nothing, in fact.
Doug McMasters: He says in all these things, whether we experience famine or nakedness or peril or sword or persecution or death, whatever it might be, in all these things we're more than conquerors.
Doug McMasters: Through him, who loved us and he said I'm persuaded that neither death or life, angels or rulers, things present, things to come, powers, height, depth, any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Doug McMasters: Paul's trying to help us understand that we can say to the rest of the world prepare for war, make your alliances Frantically, search for an answer for the security you know you don't have.
Doug McMasters: But know this there's one place God is with us.
Doug McMasters: That's it.
Doug McMasters: God is with us.
Doug McMasters: To the people in Isaiah's day, the promise of the presence of God in the prophesied Emmanuel would give them hope.
Doug McMasters: And this month, as we do every December, we celebrate Jesus Christ, who is the Emmanuel, and he gives us the same comfort and hope.
Doug McMasters: We have a distinguishing resource that makes us unique.
Doug McMasters: This is why we can stand in the middle of the storm.
Doug McMasters: This is why John would say and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith, our dependence on God.
Doug McMasters: And so we sing.
Doug McMasters: We sing with delight and joy that God is with us.
Doug McMasters: From the squalor of a borrowed stable by the spirit and a virgin's faith, to the anguish and the shame of scandal, came the Savior of the human race.
Doug McMasters: But the skies were filled with the praise of heaven.
Doug McMasters: Shepherds, listen as the angels sing.
Doug McMasters: The gift of God come down to man at the dawning of Emmanuel.
Doug McMasters: Through the kisses of a friend's betrayal, he was lifted on a cruel cross.
Doug McMasters: He was punished for a world's transgressions.
Doug McMasters: He was suffering to save the lost.
Doug McMasters: He fights for breath.
Doug McMasters: He fights for me, loosing sinners from the claims of hell.
Doug McMasters: And with a shout our souls are free.
Doug McMasters: Death defeated by Emmanuel.
Doug McMasters: How do we navigate this world?
Doug McMasters: We remember that we have a distinguishing resource.
Doug McMasters: God is with us.
Doug McMasters: God's directives here also lead us into something we need to know and to practice.
Doug McMasters: In verses 11 through 13, we're given some directed responses in this world not just distinguishing resource of God with us, but some directed responses Verse 11, for this is what the Lord said to me with great power, to keep me from going the way of this people.
Doug McMasters: Here we go.
Doug McMasters: Do not call everything a conspiracy that these people say is a conspiracy.
Doug McMasters: Here we go.
Doug McMasters: Do not call everything a conspiracy that these people say is a conspiracy.
Doug McMasters: Do not fear what they fear.
Doug McMasters: Do not be terrified.
Doug McMasters: You're to regard only the Lord of armies as holy.
Doug McMasters: Only he should be feared, only he should be held in awe.
Doug McMasters: And there's four rapid fire commands given here in this little section, these directed responses in the middle of difficulty.
Doug McMasters: First of all, don't regard alliances with paganism as valid or useful.
Doug McMasters: Ahaz and the people were very happy to make their alliances.
Doug McMasters: It was the only way they could get stronger.
Doug McMasters: But God tells the remnant people and tell us.
Doug McMasters: He tells us don't put your trust in man.
Doug McMasters: Don't think that you can build a protection around the worldly ways of alliances like that.
Doug McMasters: The second thing he tells them is that God's people are not to live in fear.
Doug McMasters: Ahaz and Judah were wringing their hands over the threat that hung over their head.
Doug McMasters: But we're supposed to live life differently.
Doug McMasters: God is telling us that our orientation should be radically different than theirs.
Doug McMasters: Because we put God into every equation of life, we don't need to fear.
Doug McMasters: We dare not overlook God or ignore God, and because he is in every area of our life, it stabilizes us, it secures us and it can keep us from fear.
Doug McMasters: Because the third thing that we're to do is regard the Lord of armies as holy, as set apart in our life, as the one that means the most to us.
Doug McMasters: And if he is, it means we can live our life in a completely different kind of way.
Doug McMasters: And a great example of that comes from an encounter that a young John Wesley had with a group of German believers called Moravians, and when he first encountered them, wesley was a very religious man, but he was an unconverted man.
Doug McMasters: He was trying to establish his standing before a holy God by making himself as holy as he could be and through his own self-effort.
Doug McMasters: Perhaps, just perhaps, god would accept him.
Doug McMasters: He was so fervent in this endeavor he decided to become a missionary from England to the colony of Georgia, just south of here a few hundred miles.
Doug McMasters: He didn't understand the gospel at all and if you read a history of his life, he made a total mess of his time in Georgia.
Doug McMasters: But trying to seek salvation through self-effort was taxing and draining on him, despite his religious discipline.
Doug McMasters: And when he met these German believers called Moravians, he wrote this about them in his journal.
Doug McMasters: He said I've observed the great seriousness of their behavior, their humility, where they've given a continual proof of it by performing servile offices for other passengers which no one else would undertake.
Doug McMasters: Do you hear that?
Doug McMasters: For they desired and would receive no pay, and said it's good for our proud hearts and their loving Savior has done more for them than they deserve.
Doug McMasters: More for them than they deserve?
Doug McMasters: Ah, interesting, right.
Doug McMasters: And every day they gave occasion of showing a meekness which no injury could move.
Doug McMasters: And if they were pushed or struck or thrown down, they rose again and went away, and no complaint was found in their mouth.
Doug McMasters: Why could they live like that?
Doug McMasters: Because they counted the Lord of armies as holy.
Doug McMasters: That's why, because when God means more to you than anything else, you can let go of yourself.
Doug McMasters: They regarded the Lord of armies as holy.
Doug McMasters: And fourthly, they were and this sounds awkward, but it's not to fear only the Lord.
Doug McMasters: Now, the word fear has a whole range of meanings, all the way from terror to worship in scriptural use and when we talk about God's people fearing the Lord, we're not on the terror and dread side as much as we are on the reverence and devotion and trust and worship side of that word.
Doug McMasters: It is, for us, a reverent submission that leads to our obedience that is accompanied with reliance and trust and hope in the living God.
Doug McMasters: Yes, we understand with clarity the knowledge that God is holy and we aren't, and that he is rightly and justly angry at sin.
Doug McMasters: But we also know that he's a God of great forgiveness and mercy and grace, and toward us we know that he says I love you.
Doug McMasters: And so we draw closer to this one, our Lord.
Doug McMasters: We don't fear him in terror and run away.
Doug McMasters: Wesley needed to learn this and he came across those Moravians again, and he discovered the difference between the fear that he possessed as a religious but lost man and what they possessed as humble believers in God.
Doug McMasters: He was bound for the Georgian colony in 1736 on a ship that was caught up in a storm on the Atlantic Ocean.
Doug McMasters: A ferocious storm had shredded the mainsail and the waters were about to flood the decks and he said during this storm, everybody's lives were threatened and he was scared.
Doug McMasters: And this is what he wrote in his journal In the midst of the psalm wherewith the service began.
Doug McMasters: So these Moravians were actually having a worship service when the storm was occurring, he said.
Doug McMasters: The sea broke over, split the mainsail in pieces, covered the ship and poured in between the decks and, as if the great deep had already swallowed us up, and a terrible screaming began among the English up.
Doug McMasters: And a terrible screaming began among the English, the Germans.
Doug McMasters: They looked up and, without intermission, calmly sang on.
Doug McMasters: And I asked one of them afterwards.
Doug McMasters: He said were you not afraid?
Doug McMasters: And he answered I thank God.
Doug McMasters: But no, were not your women and your children afraid?
Doug McMasters: He replied mildly.
Doug McMasters: No, our women and children are not afraid to die.
Doug McMasters: And then the German asked me a question of his own Do you have faith in Christ?
Doug McMasters: These people were daring to treat God as God, even in the storm.
Doug McMasters: And if God is God and God is their God, that's really all that matters.
Doug McMasters: If you're welcomed into his presence without condemnation, without fear of judgment.
Doug McMasters: Death is but a doorway into the presence of the living God.
Doug McMasters: This passage of scripture tells us how to navigate these disturbing times that we're in With this distinguishing resource that is God's presence with us With these directed responses that show us how practically to put that into practice.
Doug McMasters: But also he grants us an understanding of divine respite, of a place of rest, of sanctuary.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verses 14 and 15.
Doug McMasters: He will be a sanctuary, but for the two houses of Israel he will be a stone to stumble over and a rock to trip over, and a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: Many will stumble over these.
Doug McMasters: They will fall and be broken, they will be snared and captured.
Doug McMasters: What a distinguishing difference the same God is To those who trust in him.
Doug McMasters: He is their sanctuary.
Doug McMasters: He is a place where they can rest, where they have divine respite, security, regardless of what's happening all around them.
Doug McMasters: They can have confidence that he is a safe place for them.
Doug McMasters: But as much as the remnant enjoy the presence of God, for those who don't believe, he's a place of stumbling and falling.
Doug McMasters: The rock upon which the people who trust in God can build their lives is the very rock upon which people trip and lose their lives, lose their lives.
Doug McMasters: The very presence of God that some can enjoy is the very purity of God that causes others to fall into eternal terror.
Doug McMasters: And this is exactly the passage of Scripture that Peter quotes in his first letter.
Doug McMasters: In the second chapter he quotes this very statement again to a people trying to learn how to walk with God in the midst of an antagonistic culture, telling them that the Savior is a place of refuge, but he's also a touchstone of differentiation, because it will cause others to fall.
Doug McMasters: The stone that the builders rejected, this one's become the cornerstone and a stone to stumble over and a rock to trip over.
Doug McMasters: They stumble because they disobey the word.
Doug McMasters: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you might proclaim the praises of the one who's called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Doug McMasters: See, peter is quoting Isaiah, chapter 8, because how you view Jesus Christ determines how you experience God.
Doug McMasters: Can I repeat that how you view Jesus Christ determines how you experience God?
Doug McMasters: God is either a refuge for your soul or a ruin of your eternal life.
Doug McMasters: He becomes a sanctuary or a snare.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus is the crux point of it all.
Doug McMasters: If we take him into account as God and Savior, we enter into the sanctuary of his person and into the joy of his presence.
Doug McMasters: But if we don't, we will trip over him and fall headlong into a Christless eternity that none of us should ever, ever enter into without fear.
Doug McMasters: The one who falls on this stone, jesus said, will be broken into pieces.
Doug McMasters: Society is today looking at this message as irrelevant, but I see it as the only significant relevance for humanity.
Doug McMasters: I couldn't have a more opposite perspective.
Doug McMasters: Every one of us are going to die and after death, go into the presence of God and there the judgment.
Doug McMasters: And the question is are we prepared or do we have one who will stand on our behalf?
Doug McMasters: Can we stand ourselves presented before the Holy God?
Doug McMasters: No, we cannot.
Doug McMasters: But when Christ steps forward and says this one's mine, I died for this one, then we have a rescue.
Doug McMasters: There'll be no place for spiritual bravado there.
Doug McMasters: None of us will be able to stand in it and, believe you me, there will be no parties in hell with all my friends.
Doug McMasters: John Wesley was shaken by what he saw in these Moravians and after his failed attempt to be a missionary and after he started to feel the distaste of self-improvement, he headed back to London broken.
Doug McMasters: Taste of self-improvement.
Doug McMasters: He headed back to London broken and he decided to meet up once again with these Moravians.
Doug McMasters: He had to talk to them one more time and he found out that they were meeting in a place in Aldersgate Street in London and he went in there and he was done with his rigid rules.
Doug McMasters: He needed to hear something different.
Doug McMasters: And the message that he heard was simple and direct believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
Doug McMasters: And he wondered at the thought could that be it all?
Doug McMasters: Could it simply be that simple?
Doug McMasters: Could I simply believe and trust?
Doug McMasters: Is that all?
Doug McMasters: And he said that's when God sung to his soul a message of life as he was reading the preface of Martin Luther's commentary on the book of Galatians Can you believe that?
Doug McMasters: How many of you do that for nighttime reading?
Doug McMasters: Right, the preface to a commentary on the book of Galatians?
Doug McMasters: That's what he was being read and discussed there.
Doug McMasters: And as it was being read and discussed, he said I felt my heart warmly, strangely warmed, strangely warmed, and I felt I did trust in Christ, christ alone for salvation.
Doug McMasters: And an assurance was given to me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me.
Doug McMasters: The one who was the stumbling stone of offense to this man, this self-righteous, religiously experienced John Wesley, was now the sanctuary, the sanctuary of his soul.
Doug McMasters: The passage goes on to give us two more points, but I don't have time to talk about them as much as I'd like to have time to talk about them as much as I'd like to this distinguishing resource of God with us, these directed responses of not trying to contrive our powers and alliances and not to sort of fear what others fear, but to set the Lord as holy before us and to give him the due regard of our lives, and then to realize that we have a divine respite in Christ.
Doug McMasters: He is our place of sanctuary.
Doug McMasters: And that leaves us with a determined resolve to continue to trust.
Doug McMasters: And I'll just read the passage Verse 17,.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah says, after making these words, bind up the testimony, seal up the instruction among my disciples, I will wait for the Lord who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob.
Doug McMasters: I will wait for him.
Doug McMasters: Here I am with the children the Lord has given me to be signs and wonders in Israel, from the Lord of armies who dwells in Zion.
Doug McMasters: Life was going to get rough, isaiah said.
Doug McMasters: But I'm going to hold on to the promises because one day, when the rough is over, the realization of God's promises are going to unfold and I'm going to be there for that.
Doug McMasters: I'm going to be there for that.
Doug McMasters: And so there is that resolve in his heart.
Doug McMasters: And lastly, there's a dividing rescue In verses 19 to 22.
Doug McMasters: When they say to you, inquire the mediums and spiritists to chirp and mutter, shouldn't people inquire their God?
Doug McMasters: Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?
Doug McMasters: Go to God's word, go to his instructions and his testimonies.
Doug McMasters: And if anybody speaks according, do not speak according to this word.
Doug McMasters: It's because there's no dawn for them.
Doug McMasters: They'll wander through the land dejected and hungry and when they're famished they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God.
Doug McMasters: They will look toward the earth and see only distress, darkness and the gloom of affliction, and they will be driven into thick darkness.
Doug McMasters: When life goes in a way they don't like, they're going to get angry.
Doug McMasters: They're going to get angry at God, they're going to get angry at others.
Doug McMasters: They're going to see nothing but ruin and it's just going to flavor every area of life.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah is holding on to the promise.
Doug McMasters: Life is hard, life is difficult, life is oppositional.
Doug McMasters: Might even be my death.
Doug McMasters: I'm living among a ruined people who are facing judgment, but I'm keeping the testimony for the day when it'll unfold and the dawn will come, but for them there will be no dawn.
Doug McMasters: It's hopeless.
Doug McMasters: So as we live our lives in this world, we're given what we need here for everything that will help us to live godly in this present generation.
Doug McMasters: We've got a resource of God with us.
Doug McMasters: We've got instruction on how to respond.
Doug McMasters: We have a place of sanctuary that is God himself.
Doug McMasters: We can have a determined resolve as we await patiently for the unfolding of our hope of Christ's return and we will live rescued one day.
Doug McMasters: David Wells, in his book God in the Wilderness, closes it off with these words and this is our marching orders.
Doug McMasters: He said the choice for the church is to begin to form ourselves by his grace and truth into an outcropping of counter-cultural spirituality.
Doug McMasters: We need to recover the sense of antithesis between Christ and the culture and we need to find ways to sustain ourselves in that antithesis.
Doug McMasters: What does he mean by that?
Doug McMasters: He means that we need to give up self-cultivation and enter into self-surrender.
Doug McMasters: We need to give up entertainment to enter into worship.
Doug McMasters: We need to give up intuition to dedicate ourselves to truth.
Doug McMasters: We need to give up slick marketing for giving ourselves to authentic witness.
Doug McMasters: We need to give up success-oriented work and focus on faithfulness.
Doug McMasters: We need to let go of clutching for power and to move ourselves toward humility.
Doug McMasters: We need to give up God bought on cheap terms and embrace the God who calls us to a costly obedience.
Doug McMasters: And he said in short we must be willing to do God's business on God's terms.
Doug McMasters: That's the only way we succeed in an oppositional society.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray, father.
Doug McMasters: We thank you for your wondrous word and, lord, we pray that you'd help us to hear it well.
Doug McMasters: Just as you gave it as a resource to the people of God in the midst of Isaiah's challenging season, so we receive it now in ours.
Doug McMasters: We pray that you would equip us with all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Help us to know, father, that you would equip us with all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Help us to know, father, that you're with us.
Doug McMasters: Help us to recognize that there are certain ways that we can respond differently.
Doug McMasters: Father, when we feel the weakness, may we run to you and, lord, shape our resolve.
Doug McMasters: Help it to be determined, holding on to those very promises, because you're the God who does not lie, and Lord, we pray that you might help us to be proclaimers of a message, so that others might have a dawn rise on them and not be lost into the despair of hopelessness.
Doug McMasters: And we ask this Father in Christ's name, amen.