Isaiah 33
Isaiah 33 is our passage for
this evening. So make your way there and begin reading. It says, this
is speaking of Assyria, all you destroyer. Who yourself have
not been destroyed? You traitor, whom none has betrayed. When you have ceased to destroy,
you will be destroyed. When you have finished betraying,
they will betray you. Oh Lord, be gracious to us. We wait for you. Be our arm every
morning, our salvation in the time of trouble. At the tumultuous
noise, peoples flee. When you lift yourself up, nations
are scattered and your spoil is gathered as the caterpillar
gathers, as locusts leap. It is leaped upon, leapt upon. The Lord is exalted for he dwells
on high. He will fill Zion with justice
and righteousness. He will be the stability of your
times. Abundance of salvation, wisdom,
and knowledge. The fear of the Lord is Zion’s
treasure. Behold, their heroes cry in the
street. The envoys of peace weep bitterly. The highways lie waste. The traveler ceases. Covenants
are broken. Cities are despised. There is
no regard for man. The land mourns and languishes.
Lebanon is confounded and withers away. Sharon is like a desert,
and Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves. Now I will arise,
says the Lord. Now I will lift myself up. Now
I will be exalted. You conceive chaff. You give
birth to stubble. Your breath is a fire that will
consume you, and the peoples will be as if burned to lime,
like thorns cut down that are burned in the fire. Hear you
who are far off what I have done. And you who are near acknowledge
my might. The sinners in Zion are afraid.
Trembling has seized the godless. Who among us can dwell with consuming
fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting
burnings? He who walks up righteously. He who speaks up rightly. He
who despises the gain of oppressions. He who shakes his hands lest
they hold a bribe. He who stops his ears from hearing
of bloodshed and he who shuts his eyes from looking on evil,
he will dwell on the heights. His place of defense will be
in the fortress of rocks. His bread will be given him,
his water will be sure. Your eyes will behold the king
and his beauty. They will see a land that stretches
afar. Your heart will muse on the terror.
Where is he who counted? Where is he who weighed his tribute?
Where is he who counted the towers? You will see no more. the insolent
people, the people of an obscure speech that you cannot comprehend,
stammering in a tongue that you cannot understand. Behold Zion,
the city of our appointed feast. Your eyes will see Jerusalem
and untroubled habitation and immovable tent whose stakes will
never be plucked up, nor will any of its cords be broken, but
there the Lord and majesty will be for us. A place of broad rivers
and streams where no galley with oars can go. Nor majestic ship
can pass, for the Lord is our judge. The Lord is our lawgiver. The Lord is our king. He will
save us. Your cords hang loose. They cannot
hold the mast firm in its place or keep the sail spread out.
Then prey and spoil in abundance will be divided. Even the lame
will take the prey, and no inhabitant will say, I am sick. people who
dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity. Amen. The word
of the living God. So I understand, um, at least
in my mind, I’m sure yours, you know, here we are 33 chapters
in, we’ve been at this about six months plus, um, just lost
in the forest of Isaiah. So where have we been and where
is this thing headed? Or maybe like your favorite television
show back in the day, last time, you know, on Masterpiece Theater,
right? They show like a little two minute, you know, yeah, a
little, this is what went on. Up till now, we might say. Up
till now, we remember that God called Israel. He called Abraham
out of Ur of the Chaldeans. He said, this is the land you’ll
inherit. This is where your people will dwell. They get off in Egypt
for a while. They’re 400 years there. They’re
under slavery. Moses comes because God hears their cry. Moses answers
the call at the burning bush, delivers his people. They go
through the wilderness 40 years. Then they end up in the promised
land. They want a king, and so they get Saul. Then God says,
let me pick the king this time. And so they get David, a man
after God’s own heart. So there’s David, Solomon, the
kingdom gets split, and eventually the northern kingdom is hauled
off by Assyria about 722. So this is just a little bit
later. The Assyrians are still big, bad, nasty oppressors, and
they love to gobble up land. They love to gobble up people
and haul them off into slavery. And so Judah, who in 605 to 586
is going to get hauled off by Babylon. Assyria is going to
be no more. Babylon, the Persians, are going
to rise up. And so they’re going to come destroy Jerusalem, Judah,
And they’re going to haul the people off to Babylon. There’s
Daniel and all that good stuff. And they’ll come back and rebuild
like we looked at last year. But for now, Babylon’s not even
risen up. Assyria is still big, bad and
nasty. And so this problem has been God is issuing woes and
judgments on all the nations. Woe to Edom, woe to Egypt, woe
to this country and that country. And a couple of times it’s been,
woe unto Judah, woe unto God’s people. You’ve not lived for
me. So this is the last big woe before
a section change in the book of Isaiah. And this woe is on
Assyria, but there is no woe mentioned. It’s just mentioned
that they are going to fail and they’re going to fall and that
the people of God who live for God are going to dwell in the
midst of heaven. So this has a long look of not
just return and rebuild in Jerusalem, but this has a view of the heavenly
city that we get in the book of Revelation. This has a view
of the eternal Jerusalem, the Jerusalem that is not below,
but the Jerusalem that is above that we are told of in the whole
book of Revelation. So, I wanna think about just
briefly four things. The first is prayers and promises,
verses one through six. Tell us about the destroyer,
tell us about the traitor, tell us about the bribers, that’s
Assyria. They’re gonna be destroyed and
they’re gonna be betrayed, but they’re still looming outside
the walls of the city, outside the walls of Jerusalem. And so
in verse two, Israel prays, Judah prays, Lord be gracious to us.
We wait for you. Now you’re probably scratching
your head, at least you should be, and saying, I thought Israel
was going to get it too. I thought the people of God,
Judah, were going to get it also. But here they are saying, Lord,
be gracious to us. We wait for you. Remember a couple of Sunday
nights ago, we read that place where they basically told God,
buzz off. We don’t need you. We can call on Egypt. They’re
good to go. And now they’re saying, Lord,
be gracious. We wait for you. Be our arm every
morning, our salvation in the time of trouble. When the noise
of the enemy rustles up and clamors, when spoil is gathered, when
the locust and the caterpillars eat everything, we need you.
And so the promise, the answer to that prayer comes in verse
five, the Lord is exalted. He dwells on high. He will fill
Zion with justice and righteousness, and he will be the stability
of your times. And he will be the abundance
of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge. The fear of the Lord is Zion’s
treasurer. So outside their walls, outside their windows, they have
the big nasty Assyrians. but in their hearts and minds,
at least in some of them now, they regard God as holy. They
fear the living and true God and they believe that he will
show up and that in the morning, as it were, salvation will come,
that God will be their arm and their salvation. So that’s the
prayer and the promise of the first six verses. It seems there’s
been a revival and I don’t know about you, but we go through
stretches in life where, um, You know, you love God, you worship
God, you seek after God, you read his word, you think, boy,
I’m going to really knock it out of the park this day, this
week, you know, you’re doing great. And then you’ll get through
stretches where it’s just dry and you, maybe you don’t want
it to be that way, but that’s just the way it is. And you come
back to the Lord. And I think it’s really important
for us to see that Etta, at a hard point when the Assyrians were
knocking on the door, the people finally got their act together.
And that is often what it takes, isn’t it? Is it C.S. Lewis who
said, pain is God’s megaphone. And sometimes it takes a good
beating, a good fatherly chastisement from the heavenly father to get
us looking and listening. And that seems to be what takes
place. And then there’s the broken human covenants in verses 7 through
12. So apparently Israel had brokered
a deal with Assyria and said, go back home to your leader,
send an emissary. Here’s a bunch of gold and silver
and here’s a bunch of money. Go back home to your king and
say, hey, here’s a bunch of money. Leave us alone. Okay, we’re going
to do that. And so you, you find here when
they’ve made another human alliance, it’s not, they’ve called on Egypt
to help them. They’re making an alliance with their enemies
and they’re going to, they’re going to not keep their word.
They got their fingers crossed. It says in verse seven, their
heroes cry in the streets. They’re probably announcing no
treaty, no treaty. As they come back from Assyria,
the envoys of the, of peace, we bitterly, we couldn’t work
it out. Right. The highways lie waste. Nobody
wants to come into a war zone. Nobody wants to come sell their
wares. And so the highways lie waste, the traveler ceases, covenants
are broken. Assyria has double crossed the
people of God. So the covenants are broken,
the cities are despised, and there is no regard for man. They’re
back at being big and nasty and scary. And the land mourns and
languishes. And it speaks of the surrounding
countries. Lebanon, that’s where the big cedars come from, right?
Lebanon is confounded and withers away. Sharon is like a desert
and basin and caramel shake off their leaves. It’s as if the
trembling of nature is showing the wickedness and the impending
doom and gloom because of how big and nasty the Assyrians are. And you might think all is lost.
broken human covenants. But what does God say in the
midst? Verse 10, now I will arise. Anytime God arises, you know,
so Dennis Swanberg, the Baptist preacher turned comedian, he
said anytime something bad was going on in the house, they heard
the dad’s lazy boy. Remember the stick on the side
and he had the chair pop and he gets up. If dad gets up, right? And that’s the idea, the Lord
will arise. He says to the Assyrians, you
conceive chaff, whatever it is you think you’re going to do,
it’s going to be chaff. You’re going to give birth to
stubble. That’s like, you know, you ride by a cornfield, maybe
go out Huffman Mill Road where there’s still some Farms out
that way out shoe road where it goes into Guilford County
and you see the corn crop has been cut down It’s just stubble
and you think there used to be corn there this summer It was
big and tall and they probably got the corn off sold it at market
and now they’ve mowed the field and it’s just stubble Well, what’s
a Syria gonna do you’re big and bad. So whatever you do is gonna
succeed. Well, not anymore. You’re gonna
give birth to Stubble you’re going to conceive chaff Your
breath is a fire that will consume you and your peoples will be
as if burned to lime, like thorns cut down that are burned in the
fire.” And so that’s the great blessing of God. Though human
covenants are broken, Yahweh keeps his word. And then there’s
this looming question, and it’s the question Martin Luther had
during his own personal crisis before the Protestant Reformation.
How can a holy God accept unholy people as righteous in his sight?
How can we, who are unholy, withstand the consuming fire that is God?
If the Assyrians couldn’t stand it, and certainly they’re bad,
how can we, who’ve been under the heavy hand of God, who’ve
been told we’re wicked, we’re unrighteous, we’re in need of
judgment as well, how can we have a standing before the holy
God? And so the question comes, 13,
here, you who are far off, what I have done, And you who are
near acknowledge my might. The sinners in Zion are afraid. Trembling has seized the godless.
So what questions do they have? Well, how can we live in Zion,
God’s holy hill, without ourselves getting burnt up, getting consumed? So who among us can dwell with
the consuming fire, who among us can dwell with everlasting
burnings? And there’s going to be six answers. Okay. It’s sort
of like Psalm 15. It’s like Psalm 24. Who can ascend
God’s holy hill? Who can dwell in the presence
of God? Same question here. It’s he who walks righteously.
He lives a righteous life. He who speaks up rightly, doesn’t
tell lies or falsehoods. He who despises the gain of oppression. He who shakes his hands lest
they hold a bribe. He who stops his ears from hearing
of bloodshed. And he who shuts his eyes from
looking on evil. Holy living is required to live
before the Holy God. And we know that great question. And it seems as if maybe Israel,
Judah here has had a little bit of a revival. So they’re asking
the right questions. And we know this, don’t we, from
the gospel. We know that we are sinners born in sin with original
sin. And from that original sin proceeds
actual sin. We are unrighteous. We are unholy.
We stand before a holy God, a judge God. If the day of the Lord should
take place, who could stand? And we thank the Lord for Jesus
who has taken our sin on himself on the cross. And he has given
us his righteousness, that two sided coin. He pardons all our
sin and he accepts us as righteous in his sight. It’s just as if
we never sinned. It’s just as if we’ve always obeyed. He takes
our filthy rags and gives us his righteous robes. And so these questions are age
old questions, ultimate questions. How can I, a sinner, stand in
the sight of a holy God? And he gives this list of answers. And under the old covenant, you
loved righteousness and you lived righteously. And under the new
covenant, we become Christians, we come to faith in Jesus. And
it’s not, oh great, my sins are gone. I can live the way I want
because my sins are forgiven. No, God puts a new heart within
us. He puts a new spirit within us and we can hate what is evil. We can hold fast to what is good. still worry about the consuming
fire, though we are justified, we still can fall under God’s
hand of discipline. But we ought to walk uprightly.
We ought to speak righteously. We ought to be people who do
not oppress. We should be people who despise
gain and do not take bribes and all the rest. But these universal
questions, these ultimate questions are answered. in the passage.
And we thank the Lord that we get to be Zion dwellers through
faith in Jesus. And our ultimate Zion is in the
new heavens and the new earth. And that’s the last thing to
get a picture of. It’s a strange picture, but you
get it in verses 17 to 24. And I think this line in verse
17 was in one of the hymns we sang tonight. Your eyes will
behold the King and his beauty. Maybe it was in Revelation six.
I think it was in, Oh, I think it was in for all the saints
as well. Your eyes will behold the King
and his beauty. They will see a land that stretches
afar. Those are the two hopes that
Israel always had. You’ll get a promised land with
big boundaries and you’ll have a righteous King who will be
a just King, a righteous King, a fair King. a judging king and
a defending king. Remember a couple of weeks ago,
we talked about Jesus, prophet, priest, king. How’s Jesus our
king? Well, he subdues us to himself by his word and spirit.
He gives us his commands. We obey them. And then he rules
over us, but he also defends us from his enemies and our enemies. And so that was the big picture.
We’ll get a king. We’ll get a land. Our heart will
muse on the terror. Where is he who counted? Where
is he who weighed the tribute? Where’s the Assyrians? Used to
look out my window and there they were. Now there’s nothing. They’re gone. That big, bad,
mighty nation is now gone because of God’s angel of death, God’s
angel of protection. So you’ll see no more of the
people. You’ll hear no more their foreign tongues. Your eyes will
see Jerusalem. your eyes will see an untroubled
habitation. You know, when you read about
the city of God in the book of Revelation, it’s an everlasting
city. It’s a city that has big, thick
foundations, walls. It’s made of lasting things like
gold and stones and precious stones. It’s got gates that are
thick, walls that are high. It’s a fortified city and there’s
a little, picture of Jerusalem here, it says it will be an untroubled
habitation, an unmovable tent. You can’t pull up its tent stakes
and its cords will not break. It’s a permanent tent. It’s a
permanent home, a permanent habitation. For them, there was the tabernacle. There was the wilderness. There
were things that were on the move. Now we’re the tabernacle.
Now we’re the people of God on the move, on the way to the heavenly
city. But it says there in verse 21,
the Lord and majesty will be for us. And in that place, there’s
going to be broad rivers. So you’ve got not only the city
of God, but you’ve got all these rivers coming in and going out
and no galley with oars, no ship can navigate these rivers. It’s
safe. None can invade for the Lord
is our judge. The Lord is our lawgiver. The
Lord is our King and he will Save us. And so what’s the picture
of Jerusalem here? It’s the picture of the new heavens,
the new earth, the everlasting city. Promise to those who put
their faith, hope and trust in God and in God alone through
Christ for salvation. Now, there’s an interesting little
ending here in verse 23. Your cords hang loose. They kind
of hold the mast. You know, if you’ve got a sailboat,
you’ve got to stick the mast down in there and you’ve got to cord
it down, tie it down. So it doesn’t wobble around because
you put the big sail on and it catches the wind and your mast
is just, you know, wiggle wobbling all around. It’s going to do
you no good. And so he’s saying to Jerusalem,
he’s saying to the people of God, for now, you’re kind of
in a wobbly state, but this is the secure state that is coming.
And then he’s going to speak of the coming day. Prey and spoil
and abundance will be divided. It’s like Israel when they plundered
the Egyptians. Remember when they left? Everybody
gave them their earrings, their gold. And yes, they made the
golden calf with some of it, but eventually they’ve made the
tabernacle with those things. It says, even the lame will take
the prey. Don’t you love that when you read a story or watch
a movie and the underdog gets to go kick the enemy? You know,
just give them a good swift kick while they’re laying down. That’s
sort of the idea here. We get to step on our enemies’
necks. They forgot to kiss the sun. They forgot to kiss the
sun’s people, but no inhabitant will say, I am sick for the people
who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity. So what are we
to do with all this? We’re not Israel. We’re not surrounded
by the Assyrians, but here we are living in 2025 soon. And there’s all kinds of evil
around us. And sometimes it seems like it
is encroaching on our houses, on our personal lives. on our
churches, even on our nation that used to dwell in more righteousness
than it does today. And I think we have to remember,
this is not our home, as bad as it may get. Think about those
horsemen in Revelation 6. They unleashed those horses and
there was peace removed. There was death for some, there
was pestilence, there was famine, there were wars. And there will
be times in history where God is at work in strange ways we
do not understand. And we’ve got to keep our eyes
on the heavenly city. We drive in our tent pegs a little
too deep here. And the only place that has tent
pegs that should never come up is the heavenly Jerusalem, the
heavenly Zion. And so this is a good perspective
for us to remember what is lasting, what is not lasting. what will
triumph and what will fail. And maybe we’re enamored with
the markets and the money and the amenities of this life. And
perhaps we’re like Lot who said, please don’t send me to a cave.
At least let me live in a small town, at least one with a Bojangles,
right? That’s kind of his negotiation. He didn’t want to live in a cave. He still wanted some amenities.
And I think sometimes we’re too in love with this present evil
world. that we lose sight of the everlasting home that is
ours. And so may that change this evening.
Let’s do pray. Lord, let your word dwell in
us richly. May we be reminded of your arm
that brings salvation morning by morning. And we long for that
morning when the trumpet sounds, the day breaks, the shadows flee,
the sun comes, the shout and the dead in Christ rise, the
spirits who’ve gone before us are united to their bodies and
the wicked receive their just due. Lord, that day brings you
worship, that day brings us joy. So hasten it, Lord, come quickly
and make all things new, we pray in the mighty name of Christ,
amen.