Doug McMasters: Stick our Bibles and go to the book of Isaiah, chapter one.
Doug McMasters: For those of you that are visiting, there's a Bible in front of you in a pew.
Doug McMasters: And you can turn to page 601.
Doug McMasters: 601, you'll find it there for you.
Doug McMasters: And if you don't have a Bible, we just want to make this clear.
Doug McMasters: If you don't have a Bible and would like to have one, the Bible that's in front of you, won't you just take it home?
Doug McMasters: And just take it as a gift from us to you.
Doug McMasters: We'd like you to have it.
Doug McMasters: So Isaiah chapter one.
Doug McMasters: You know, we live in a world that's flooded with the river of words.
Doug McMasters: Researchers tell us that the average human speaks about 7,000 words a day.
Doug McMasters: And if we can estimate that there's roughly 7 billion people in the world, you do the math, you realize that uttered into the airspace are about 50 trillion words every single day.
Doug McMasters: The explosion of all of our mass media through the internet and other means.
Doug McMasters: We find ourselves drowning in words.
Doug McMasters: And occasionally I go back and I look at my watch history of my YouTube viewing, and I go back and I go, I watched those that many videos this morning.
Doug McMasters: I don't even remember a single one of them.
Doug McMasters: Just flooding yourself with words and information.
Doug McMasters: God doesn't have a podcast.
Doug McMasters: But he does speak.
Doug McMasters: And he speaks here in the Word of God, and He's got a lot to say.
Doug McMasters: We've introduced ourselves to the book of Isaiah, and we find that at the very beginning, God calls heaven and earth into the room and says, Listen, I've got something to say about my people.
Doug McMasters: Look in verse two.
Doug McMasters: The significance of the verb tenses is important there.
Doug McMasters: Listen now, heavens.
Doug McMasters: Pay attention, now, earth, for God has spoken.
Doug McMasters: And here we are, thousands of years later, in a country far removed in a language that's different from Isaiah's day.
Doug McMasters: And it's a message that God wants us to hear now.
Doug McMasters: Because there are situations in our life and situations in our society that are no different than what Israel and Jerusalem was going through in its day and time.
Doug McMasters: We as individuals are every bit as sinful as the people that lived there were.
Doug McMasters: Or we've seen him come alongside Jerusalem at a table of conciliation and saying, let's talk this over.
Doug McMasters: He's come to them with words of encouragement.
Doug McMasters: Your sins, though they're red, can be turned to be as white as snow.
Doug McMasters: And now in verses 21 and into verse 26, God takes up another way of describing the situation.
Doug McMasters: And he enters into the realm of lament.
Doug McMasters: Lament's not a common word for us.
Doug McMasters: It's a verbal expression of sorrow, our pain, our loss, our confusion.
Doug McMasters: This is a cry with tears over something that's broken.
Doug McMasters: It's a broken heart looking at a broken situation.
Doug McMasters: Have you ever done that?
Doug McMasters: I know I have.
Doug McMasters: It's a lament.
Doug McMasters: And these hard-hearted people who are just carrying on callously with their lives might be awakened with a lament.
Doug McMasters: To hear someone sobbing is an emotional pull to our hearts.
Doug McMasters: One of the things I did last week was listen to a 911 call of this young girl sobbing over a horrific family situation to the 911 line on the 911 line.
Doug McMasters: And it just gripped my heart wrenchingly as I listened to the sobs of this young girl begging for help to come immediately to a situation that was so, so desperate and dangerous.
Doug McMasters: So here we have God through his prophet weeping, sobbing, crying, a lament.
Doug McMasters: And the people of Israel are going, What's up with Isaiah?
Doug McMasters: Why is he crying?
Doug McMasters: He's crying over you, Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: Their hearts might not be broken.
Doug McMasters: But if I can put it in human terms, God's heart is broken.
Doug McMasters: And he's expressing this sorrow.
Doug McMasters: And you take a look at verse 21.
Doug McMasters: It's couched in language that just seems, well, we could just read it and not pay attention to it.
Doug McMasters: The faithful town, what an adulteress she's become.
Doug McMasters: There's that force of a woe.
Doug McMasters: Other translations even put other words in there to try to give us a sense of what we're looking at.
Doug McMasters: But we're looking at a lament.
Doug McMasters: And in these first verses, this cry of agony and pain over loss and corruption goes into three different directions.
Doug McMasters: It cries over Jerusalem and Judah, the people.
Doug McMasters: It incorporates their possessions, and then it talks about their princes in these verses.
Doug McMasters: First, the people in verses 21.
Doug McMasters: The faithful town, what an adulteress she's become.
Doug McMasters: She was once full of justice, righteousness once dwelt in her.
Doug McMasters: But now murderers.
Doug McMasters: And he begins by fondly remembering what they were.
Doug McMasters: They were the faithful town.
Doug McMasters: They were once full of justice.
Doug McMasters: But that past is not the present anymore.
Doug McMasters: Now they're characterized by adultery and murder.
Doug McMasters: Jerusalem, the place that was once the place of welcome, of God's justice and righteousness, is now being mourned over because of her adultery.
Doug McMasters: And we're introduced to what Isaiah will give us many, many times through the rest of the book: this idea of Jerusalem being Lady Zion.
Doug McMasters: Now, the Semitic languages would use the feminine to describe cities, and so they were often described as her, but the metaphor here goes beyond just linguistic use.
Doug McMasters: This is a metaphor of God being married to a people as he's given them commitments of his faithfulness.
Doug McMasters: And in that bonding together, he has also received from them commitments of faithfulness.
Doug McMasters: And so they were meant to live together as husband and wife in this mutual love and fidelity.
Doug McMasters: But now Zion has turned her back on her husband.
Doug McMasters: And she's now sold herself into adultery.
Doug McMasters: Instead of trusting the living God, she's gone into alliances with the nations around her.
Doug McMasters: Instead of trusting God alone and worshiping him purely, they've encountered these other gods and have bent the knee to them in worship.
Doug McMasters: And God mourns.
Doug McMasters: He laments.
Doug McMasters: He talks about their possessions in verse 22.
Doug McMasters: Your silver has become dross to be discarded.
Doug McMasters: Your beer is diluted with water.
Doug McMasters: These things that were pure are now degraded, and they've degenerated into wasteless, wasteful, worthless things.
Doug McMasters: What was once beautiful, valuable silver has now just become worthless waste metal.
Doug McMasters: What was once the finest brew has now been watered down and is nothing but worth throwing away.
Doug McMasters: The quality of these things has deteriorated because of the impurities that have diluted them.
Doug McMasters: And so is Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: It's nothing but dissipation and loss because it's been degraded from what it ought to have been and what it once was.
Doug McMasters: And this is exactly what sin and Satan do to us.
Doug McMasters: When we follow him and it, we find our lives moving into dissipation, a word that the Bible uses to describe iniquity.
Doug McMasters: Sin promises so much to us and delivers so little to us.
Doug McMasters: There's nothing so beautiful, there's nothing so fresh, there's nothing so sweet than the ecstasy of the good.
Doug McMasters: And there's nothing so bad and boring as evil.
Doug McMasters: But that's not how our ears are often hearing the message.
Doug McMasters: Out there is always the idea, energized by Satan himself, that it's the other way around.
Doug McMasters: That what is good is boring, and what is to be received is intriguing and attractive and charming.
Doug McMasters: But it's a lie.
Doug McMasters: Thomas Brooks, a Puritan, wrote a book, Precious Remedies Against Satan Devices.
Doug McMasters: It's a great book to read if you can find it.
Doug McMasters: And you can, it's still being published.
Doug McMasters: And in it, he talks about the devices of Satan to try to persuade us to sin.
Doug McMasters: And he gives precious remedies to those devices.
Doug McMasters: And one of the devices that he talks about is that Satan presents the bait and hides the hook.
Doug McMasters: That's exactly how he puts it.
Doug McMasters: That he presents the golden cup and hides the poison in the cup.
Doug McMasters: That he speaks to the soul about the profit that you'll receive by pursuing your pleasures, but hides the soul from the wrath that will come from pursuing your pleasures.
Doug McMasters: Points us all the way back to the book of Genesis, where Satan speaks about things that are alluring but ruinous.
Doug McMasters: And his devices haven't changed.
Doug McMasters: He presents the bait, he presents the sweet, he presents the pleasure, he presents the prophet and hides the hook.
Doug McMasters: He hides the shame, he hides the wrath, he hides the loss until you're ruined.
Doug McMasters: And then he drives your soul and grinds it to nothing with the loss and with the shame and with the wrath.
Doug McMasters: To ruin you.
Doug McMasters: And they awoke to a fool's paradise.
Doug McMasters: He promised them honor, he promised them pleasure, promised them profit, he promised them knowledge, and he paid them back with contempt and shame and loss and ruin.
Doug McMasters: And here the Lord is lamenting that movement to ruin, that sin in the people here have been brought to.
Doug McMasters: And then he goes on to speak about the princes in verse 23.
Doug McMasters: Your rulers are rebels, friends of thieves.
Doug McMasters: They all love graft and chase after bribes.
Doug McMasters: They do not defend the rights of the fatherless, and the widow's case never comes before them.
Doug McMasters: What they were there for, righteousness and justice and care has been replaced by murder and corruption and indifference.
Doug McMasters: It's led them not only to steal, but to be partners with those who steal and to accept bribes, to curry favor from the powerful, to get gifts from them, and in so doing have turned away from the poor, the widows, and the orphans.
Doug McMasters: In our generation, we have that same sort of awe of those who are in power, or that same awe of gaining power ourselves, or maintaining power if we have it.
Doug McMasters: And there have been people throughout the ages who have used even good things as a means for their own selfish ends.
Doug McMasters: They've used a cloak of patriotism or a veneer of Christianity in order to gain a footing by swaying gullible people to be supportive of them.
Doug McMasters: Or have used those things as means for their own benefit.
Doug McMasters: In the 1950s, Billy Graham preached in Los Angeles, and a newspaper publisher by the name of Hearst realized that there was something going on over there.
Doug McMasters: Now, he didn't care what Graham had to say.
Doug McMasters: He didn't care about the gospel at all.
Doug McMasters: What he did care about was how many people would read his newspaper.
Doug McMasters: And when he saw that there were people listening to what Billy Graham had to say, he said to his editorial team, push Graham.
Doug McMasters: Push Graham.
Doug McMasters: And so they did.
Doug McMasters: Not because they cared about the gospel, not about caring about Billy Graham, even for that matter.
Doug McMasters: What he cared about was how much money he could gain by putting Graham in the paper.
Doug McMasters: And there are politicians that do the same thing.
Doug McMasters: They will talk like a Christian, they will act like a patriot, but they really aren't.
Doug McMasters: They're there for themselves.
Doug McMasters: And when we move into that realm, we find ourselves degrading justice, degrading righteousness, degrading truth.
Doug McMasters: And all of it is really just put on the auction block for sale.
Doug McMasters: And the question is: at what price are you going to sell out for what can be gained there?
Doug McMasters: And he's bemoaning this deterioration of righteousness and justice in places where it was meant to be upheld and honored, where integrity was important, because people's lives and livelihoods were at stake.
Doug McMasters: And it was the very place where the worst corruption was happening.
Doug McMasters: How does God think about this?
Doug McMasters: He begins with a mourning cry.
Doug McMasters: And I don't mean AM, I mean mourning over the loss.
Doug McMasters: This faithful city, this beautiful silver, these righteous princes, they're gone.
Doug McMasters: They're gone.
Doug McMasters: Instead of faithfulness, there's infidelity.
Doug McMasters: Instead of right living, there's murder.
Doug McMasters: Instead of silver, there's dross.
Doug McMasters: Instead of pure drink, there's this insipid, watered-down mess.
Doug McMasters: Instead of rulers who serve with honor and honesty, there's rebels grasping after power.
Doug McMasters: Instead of advocates of the weak and defenders of the helpless, there's people selling their positions for influence to the highest bidder.
Doug McMasters: What's amazing about this is God begins there with this emotive language to help us realize how significant this loss matters to him.
Doug McMasters: But he moves from these words of loss to words of determination.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verses twenty-four through twenty six.
Doug McMasters: Therefore, the Lord God of armies, the mighty one of Israel, declares, Ah, I will get even with my foes.
Doug McMasters: I will take revenge against my enemies.
Doug McMasters: And it goes on to talk about things God will do.
Doug McMasters: You see, in the midst of all of this, God is not going to be silent, and God is not going to be inactive.
Doug McMasters: And he's not helpless.
Doug McMasters: He's not talking on one side of the table of conciliation.
Doug McMasters: He's not the encourager with his arm wrapped around the sunken shoulder.
Doug McMasters: This is the Lord God Almighty, the mighty one of Israel, talking here.
Doug McMasters: We have just aroused the wrath of the general.
Doug McMasters: And he's ready to take on the enemy.
Doug McMasters: And he's got two determinations.
Doug McMasters: His first determination is to oppose sin.
Doug McMasters: And he's going to get active in this warfare and oppose sin.
Doug McMasters: Now, this must have come as a shock to the people of Jerusalem because, well, they thought themselves to be on the right side of God, and that God was on the right side of them.
Doug McMasters: He had chosen them, he had promised to bless them.
Doug McMasters: They had come from Egypt as slaves and are now in their own lands.
Doug McMasters: They become known as a significant player on the international stage.
Doug McMasters: They had God's law, they had God's temple, they were in God's city, they were residing on God's land, they had God's commitment as a husband.
Doug McMasters: Everything was good.
Doug McMasters: God's got to keep up his side of the bargain.
Doug McMasters: He's going to take care of us.
Doug McMasters: And so they had removed from themselves any understanding that God might call them into account for their behavior.
Doug McMasters: And they got lulled in this false sense of security.
Doug McMasters: Blinded by their sin, they had this one-sided view of God.
Doug McMasters: And just like a person who stares into a bright light, and I don't want to for very long, or stares into the sun for the length of time, the next thing you know, all you see is that light everywhere you turn.
Doug McMasters: And what they've done is they've stared solely into the brightness of God's mercy, time and time and time and time and time again, realizing that God was not just merciful, that every time they looked around in life circumstances, all they saw was mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy.
Doug McMasters: Look at my sin.
Doug McMasters: Mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy.
Doug McMasters: Nothing but mercy.
Doug McMasters: Until verse 24.
Doug McMasters: Jerusalem, you are my enemy.
Doug McMasters: Just think about it.
Doug McMasters: If God didn't act in justice, how horrible would this world be?
Doug McMasters: There's screams within us, a call for justice.
Doug McMasters: It's innate within us, isn't it?
Doug McMasters: Besides data, I think the first sentence my sons learned was, that's not fair.
Doug McMasters: Yeah?
Doug McMasters: And boy, we memorize that one quick.
Doug McMasters: We say it the rest of our lives.
Doug McMasters: We cry for justice.
Doug McMasters: We cry for fairness.
Doug McMasters: We cry for these sorts of things innately.
Doug McMasters: What if there never was any fairness?
Doug McMasters: What if there never was any justice?
Doug McMasters: What if there never was any retribution of wrongs?
Doug McMasters: This whole world would be driven to atheism in a mad striving for being on the upper side of everybody's weaknesses.
Doug McMasters: But when we realize God is a God of justice, we can realize that maybe that justice isn't meted out now, but it will be meted out one day.
Doug McMasters: Then we can live.
Doug McMasters: This is the Lord in heaven speaking here.
Doug McMasters: And he cares about his own justice that's been offended.
Doug McMasters: And he will get relief against his enemies, and he will avenge himself against his foes.
Doug McMasters: This God is not changed.
Doug McMasters: He still searches the hearts.
Doug McMasters: He still hates hypocrisy.
Doug McMasters: He still threatens the unrepentant with destruction.
Doug McMasters: He still brings severe judgment on people for their sin.
Doug McMasters: He still summons senseless rebels to the settlement of the issue.
Doug McMasters: There's more to say.
Doug McMasters: But let that just weigh upon our hearts.
Doug McMasters: This is not the resolve of some feeble, toothless grandfather who's lost his voice and sees the rebel grandchildren around him and just meekly says, Guys, could you just settle down a little bit?
Doug McMasters: This is the mighty one of Israel.
Doug McMasters: He rises up with the banner of warfare against this.
Doug McMasters: And it is with him, the God of the Bible, not the God of our own sentimental fantasies that we'll have to deal with.
Doug McMasters: Ask yourself, if you're disregarding him, do you want to meet this God like that?
Doug McMasters: I certainly don't.
Doug McMasters: He's described as a consuming fire in another place.
Doug McMasters: And none of us are going to go into heaven with a spestus suit song.
Doug McMasters: Not one of us.
Doug McMasters: But let's keep reading.
Doug McMasters: Therefore, the Lord God of armies, the mighty one of Israel, declares, I will get even with my foes.
Doug McMasters: I will take revenge against my enemies.
Doug McMasters: I will turn my head against you and burn away your draws completely.
Doug McMasters: I will remove all your impurities.
Doug McMasters: I what?
Doug McMasters: I will restore your judges to what they were at first, and your advisors to what they were at the start?
Doug McMasters: What?
Doug McMasters: Afterward you'll be called the righteous city?
Doug McMasters: What?
Doug McMasters: A faithful town?
Doug McMasters: What?
Doug McMasters: Wait wait wait a second here.
Doug McMasters: Something's changed in the plot line here.
Doug McMasters: There's a twist in the story here, isn't there?
Doug McMasters: This removal.
Doug McMasters: And this is the second thing he's going to do.
Doug McMasters: Not only does he oppose sin, but he's going to remove sin.
Doug McMasters: This removal goes deeper than his determinations to turn against his enemies.
Doug McMasters: There's something else involved here.
Doug McMasters: There's a purifying process.
Doug McMasters: There's a restoring process that's part of his opposition to sin and his determination to remove sin.
Doug McMasters: This is not at all what we might expect.
Doug McMasters: We would expect him to follow on with words of annihilation and utter destruction, and just sort of taking the metaphor of warfare and just driving it all the way to ultimate victory and the crushing of the rebels.
Doug McMasters: But his aim is not that here.
Doug McMasters: His aim is restoration.
Doug McMasters: And all of us should weep with joy over these words.
Doug McMasters: Because we all deserve the first part of this, and none of us deserve the last part of this.
Doug McMasters: Here's a God who speaks now that there are people who are going to find forgiveness, who are going to find cleansing, that are going to find renewal by his determination to oppose their sin.
Doug McMasters: He's not going to crush them under the weight of his wrath, he's going to crush and heal them under the weight of his grace.
Doug McMasters: And he predicts the day is going to come when Zion, the faithful city, the unfaithful wife, is going to one day be again the faithful city.
Doug McMasters: His determination is to renew and to save and to deliver.
Doug McMasters: And this is where he wants to take us.
Doug McMasters: You see, that feeling of guilt and shame that God brings upon us is not meant to grind us to dust and leave us there, but to drive us back to the God we've offended with godly sorrow that ushers into repentance, that leads to forgiveness and reconciliation and restoration and cleansing.
Doug McMasters: It's exactly what Brian was talking about when before we read that passage in Second Corinthians.
Doug McMasters: Godly sorrow.
Doug McMasters: What a wonderful full circle this is, right?
Doug McMasters: Humanity, created by a holy God, to be in utter union with Him.
Doug McMasters: Where the song we sang before the message, Beulah Land, would be our reality forever.
Doug McMasters: We'd never talk about longing for it because we would have lived in it forever, has ruinously left and gone down the way of dissipation and degradation by deepening our love for things that are ruinous.
Doug McMasters: And instead of being left there, God has brought life to light through the glorious good news of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And he says, I'm bringing you back, and I'm giving you promises to be with me forever.
Doug McMasters: Welcome without condemnation.
Doug McMasters: This is the story.
Doug McMasters: And here in Isaiah chapter one, we've got these promises of a redemption.
Doug McMasters: We've got the terms of the promises that talk about repentance and a purging away of iniquity and a restoration of all that is lost, to give us an understanding of what God means to do in us when he redeems us.
Doug McMasters: You see, his redemption is more than just releasing us of the consequences of our sin.
Doug McMasters: It means that he wants to cleanse us from all the defilement of our sin as well.
Doug McMasters: And he wants to restore us to that ultimate idea of what he had made us to be, so that the very fullness of our persons can be expressed to the glory of God within the context of the beauty of holiness, and that we can let our imaginations fly and our hands unfold an activity that will always be to his glory and will always be full of the love and benefit and sharing of the rest of the redeemed, without any loss, without any tiredness, without any regrets, without any shame, without any shadows, to restore us, to grant us a dignity and an honor that he meant the human race to possess when he breathed life into the dust of Adam.
Doug McMasters: The question that's provoked here.
Doug McMasters: How?
Doug McMasters: How is this going to happen?
Doug McMasters: We've got the promise, but not the pathway.
Doug McMasters: All we see now is justice stands against the city.
Doug McMasters: And yet, a prediction of a promise of God to do something different than crush them.
Doug McMasters: How is this going to happen?
Doug McMasters: How are we going to be redeemed?
Doug McMasters: How is this perfect righteousness in God's sight going to be found?
Doug McMasters: How are we going to be once again made a faithful city?
Doug McMasters: How?
Doug McMasters: Written seven centuries before Jesus Christ, this chapter, this book is yearning for a deliverer to come.
Doug McMasters: Come.
Doug McMasters: We can't do it.
Doug McMasters: And the Bible's answer is clear.
Doug McMasters: Christ alone is how sinners are washed.
Doug McMasters: Christ alone is how sinners are transformed.
Doug McMasters: Christ alone is how sinners are redeemed.
Doug McMasters: Christ alone is how we stand righteous before a holy God.
Doug McMasters: Listen to the word of God.
Doug McMasters: It is from Him, from God, that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption, in order that it is written, let him who boast boast in the Lord and not ourselves.
Doug McMasters: Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling.
Doug McMasters: This is our hope.
Doug McMasters: You see, Christ is the perfect sacrifice that actually cleanses our guilt.
Doug McMasters: It is through Christ that our consciences become pure and made whole again.
Doug McMasters: In Isaiah 53, which we'll get to later, speaks of this coming, suffering one who was, as he said in verse 5, pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities, punished so that we might have peace and healed by his wounds.
Doug McMasters: And when Jesus arose, Isaiah 53 became flesh and blood reality.
Doug McMasters: And it's by him that we're justified.
Doug McMasters: It's by him that we're redeemed.
Doug McMasters: In Christ alone our sins, though they're scarlet, shall be as white as snow.
Doug McMasters: It's in Christ alone that wicked sinners become declared righteous in his sight.
Doug McMasters: It's by Christ alone that those who repent of their sins are redeemed and justified.
Doug McMasters: It's by Christ alone that we stop bringing meaningless worship into the presence of God and are filled with the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name, which is true worship.
Doug McMasters: And it's in Christ alone that we learn to care for each other.
Doug McMasters: Afterwards, afterwards, you'll be called the faithful city.
Doug McMasters: How does God see us now?
Doug McMasters: Cloaked in the righteousness of our Savior.
Doug McMasters: God's not finished speaking, though.
Doug McMasters: He's pronounced those descriptions of woe in his lament to the people and possessions and the princes of the city.
Doug McMasters: He's given his determinations to oppose sin and to remove sin.
Doug McMasters: But then he continues to speak about a day of decision.
Doug McMasters: Verse 27.
Doug McMasters: Zion will be redeemed by justice, those who repent by righteousness.
Doug McMasters: At the same time, both rebels and sinners will be broken, and those who abandon the Lord will perish.
Doug McMasters: Indeed, they will be ashamed of the sacred trees you desired, and you will be embarrassed because of the garden shrines you've chosen, and you will become like an oak whose leaves are withered and like a garden without water.
Doug McMasters: The strong one will become tender and his work a spark.
Doug McMasters: Both will burn together with no one to extinguish the flame.
Doug McMasters: Yes, he put a surprising twist in the plot line.
Doug McMasters: But let us not forget the first sight of that.
Doug McMasters: Without repentance, there's nothing left but ruin.
Doug McMasters: With repentance, there are promises of restoration.
Doug McMasters: And God doesn't redeem us by casually sweeping aside all of our wrongs.
Doug McMasters: God Himself paid the price demanded by his own justice and righteousness.
Doug McMasters: Christ was wounded for our transgressions.
Doug McMasters: He was bruised for our iniquities.
Doug McMasters: The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.
Doug McMasters: There is the reality of God crying out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Doug McMasters: As he was hung on a cross, and the scripture saying, Cursed is everyone who's hung on a tree.
Doug McMasters: He became a curse for us.
Doug McMasters: He that knew no sin became sin for us.
Doug McMasters: This is a reality that God took upon himself our ruinous punishment.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't just casually sweep it aside.
Doug McMasters: He is the just one and the justifier of the ungodly.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't become unjust by delivering us.
Doug McMasters: He satisfies his justice in himself through the death of Christ.
Doug McMasters: This is not God's leniency just letting us go.
Doug McMasters: Ah, I just I got more to do today.
Doug McMasters: Get out of here.
Doug McMasters: No, it's not that.
Doug McMasters: Each and every one of us has been bought by the blood of Christ, who are delivered from sin.
Doug McMasters: Every one of us have a high price tag that God put upon each and every one of us, the death of his own son for your life.
Doug McMasters: But that good news is only available to those who repent.
Doug McMasters: Part of the gift of life means going through the hard movement of repentance.
Doug McMasters: There's no justification for continuation in rebellion here.
Doug McMasters: Those who persist in rebellion, God wants this to be capped clear, crystal clear.
Doug McMasters: Will continue.
Doug McMasters: If you continue on in that, you will be destroyed.
Doug McMasters: There's no way around repentance.
Doug McMasters: You either repent and are delivered, no matter how painful that repentance is, or you continue on in disobedience and your ruin will be far greater than any cost demanded in your repentance.
Doug McMasters: And so this warning at the very end calls us to a decision.
Doug McMasters: It calls us to take heed to the words and to welcome the hope that's found there.
Doug McMasters: To put ourselves in that place, and not just think that this might be good for someone else to hear.
Doug McMasters: To realize that we too are at a place of decision.
Doug McMasters: Am I going to persist in disobedience or am I going to submit to the mighty one of Israel, the Lord God, when he demands I bend the knee to him?
Doug McMasters: Will I continue to hold stiff against him and bear whatever consequences may come?
Doug McMasters: Or will I face the reality that I need a deliverance from the King of Heaven?
Doug McMasters: This is the call.
Doug McMasters: This is the call that Isaiah started with when he opened up these oracles, these words of prophecy to the people.
Doug McMasters: See, God spoke to them then, and God's speaking to us now.
Doug McMasters: Because the heart condition is no different.
Doug McMasters: Our languages are different, our time frames different, our technology is different, our situations are different, but our hearts aren't.
Doug McMasters: And we need to hear it.
Doug McMasters: Hear the warning, hear the welcome.
Doug McMasters: Run from the ruin.
Doug McMasters: That's all I can tell you.
Doug McMasters: Run to the one who will ruin you if you don't come back.
Doug McMasters: Run to him.
Doug McMasters: And when you run to him, you'll find his arms open wider than you could ever imagine.
Doug McMasters: With welcome and release and forgiveness and acceptance and restoration and renewal and honor and transformation.
Doug McMasters: Run to him.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Oh Father.
Doug McMasters: Fifty trillion words spoken every day, added on top of one another, could never measure the significance of one sentence out of this.
Doug McMasters: I will remove all your impurities.
Doug McMasters: I will restore your judges to what they were at first, your advisors to what they were at the start.
Doug McMasters: Afterward, you will be called the righteous city, a faithful town.
Doug McMasters: There's nothing more important for us to hear than that.
Doug McMasters: There's not a thing that will be said today, tomorrow, for the rest of human life, apart from this good news.
Doug McMasters: That you're a God that promises life to the repentant and restoration to the broken and acceptance to those who have forsaken you.
Doug McMasters: Father, help us to hear it.
Doug McMasters: We pray.
Doug McMasters: Give us the ears that we need to listen.
Doug McMasters: Give us the transformation of heart that comes in your work of grace.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Jesus' name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.