Isaiah 50:1-3
This is the book of Isaiah chapter
50 verses 1 to 3. Thus says the Lord, or Yahweh,
where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent
her away, or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you
were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away. Why,
when I came, was there no man? Why, when I called, was there
no one to answer? Is my hand shortened that it
cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver?
Behold, by my rebuke, I dry up the sea. I make the rivers a
desert. Their fish stink for lack of
water and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness
and make sackcloth their covering. Amen, God’s great and gracious
word. Think about a couple things about
the Bible First of all, scriptures or verses that we know and love
are never in isolation from the verses before and after them.
They’re never in isolation from the book that they’re in. They
are never in isolation from the period of history or the work
of redemption God is up to that time. And they are never in isolation
from the whole Bible. And so if you think about Isaiah
and Israel, and you think about some of the themes that we have
considered about Israel and about God, it quickly jumps around
the scriptures. It takes you to things that pop
up in the New Testament that reach back into the old. And
of course, Isaiah reaches back all the way to Genesis. Remember
at the beginning of Isaiah, what did God say about Israel? You
are a vineyard and I planted you. I prepared you. I bought
the good grape vines. So I planted a really good vineyard,
built a wall, dug a cistern and a wine vat, a press. And when
I had my harvest, I was looking forward to good stuff. making
some money, drinking some sweet, good wine. And what did I get?
Sour grapes. So Israel is a vineyard, but
tonight you’re gonna see two other images that pop up. They’re
also in the rest of the scriptures. It’s that of a creditor being
sold as a slave or sold, you know, God pawned Israel off,
something like that. And then also Israel as a spouse,
Israel as a wife. And so if you think about in
particular tonight, I wanted to just make mention of marriage
in the garden. Before Adam and Eve fell, Adam’s
mandate in the garden was to work the garden, keep the garden,
name the animals, to have dominion over the earth and to subdue
the earth. And his goal was to bring a garden over the whole
face of the earth. As the garden expanded, the whole
earth would be full of the beauty and glory and knowledge of God. And as Adam and Eve were fruitful
and multiplied and filled the earth, the whole earth would
be full of the glory of God. Well, first thing God realized
after he made Adam, and this wasn’t an oops, but at least
in our chronology, he realized, or he knew it was not good for
man to be alone. He needed a helper. And so he
put Adam into a deep sleep. took a rib from his body and
made Eve. Adam woke up and met Eve, said,
last bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, the two shall leave
father and mother and become one flesh. And so Adam and Eve
together would support one another. He would work and he would keep
and he would have dominion. She would be fruitful and multiply.
And so while his work was out in the world, her work was in
the home. And so when Satan came on the
scene, having fallen from glory in heaven. Um, he strikes at
the heart of creation. Now, um, some of us might think,
well, if Satan really wanted to hurt God or really hurt us,
he would get rid of the beaches, right? Or he’d get rid of the
mountains. He’d get rid of the lakes. He’d get rid of the, the parts
of creation that we love and adore. Uh, but he didn’t take
those things out. He struck at the crown of creation
and that was Adam and he struck at the, um, crowning institution
of creation, which was marriage. The other creation ordinance
would have been Sabbath. So Adam and Eve would have, in
marriage, worked six days, took a Sabbath rest. And so think
about it today. What has Satan really struck
at? He struck at the home and he
has struck at the Sabbath. And both are about gone, wouldn’t
you say, in our world. So you think about the family
in the home, but also you think about Israel. Israel was a peculiar
people, saved and set apart and sent into the promised land where
they would receive an inheritance. They would have a nice wide borders. They would have Zion where God
would dwell and they could worship. They would have Yahweh. And they
would have peace or shalom. And all they had to do was observe
the commandments of the Lord and worship him and kill any
ites that were in the land. Well, they didn’t kill the ites.
They were a snare to them. And so a couple of kings in,
you know, there’s Saul, David, Solomon, the kingdom gets split
because they went after other gods. So think about creation
and marriage and think about the fall and the effects of the
fall. Israel. and the effects of their fall
into apostasy, their fall into idolatry. Then you come to Isaiah
51-3, which is sort of a, maybe it looks back on the other servant
song and it looks forward to the other one, but there’s six
questions. Where is your mother’s certificate
of divorce? Which of my creditors is it that I have sold you to? Why, when I came, was there no
man? Why, when I called, was there no answer? Is my hand shortened?
Have I no power? So these questions lead us to
think what’s on Israel’s mind. What’s on Judah’s mind is they
are stuck in Babylon, a thousand miles from home. They’re by now
second and third generation out of the land, 70 years since the
exile. And so, what’s it gonna take to rescue
and redeem them? Well, he’s promised Cyrus for the geographical problem.
He’s promised his son, the Savior, for the spiritual problem. But think through each of these
questions. Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce? with
which I sent her away.” Remember when Jesus was asked in the Gospels,
is it lawful for someone to divorce? And what does Jesus say? He said,
it’s lawful for you to issue a certificate of divorce. And
he gives a couple reasons and he says, but it was not so from
the beginning, but Moses permitted it because of the hardness of
heart. And so when a man wanted to divorce his wife, he would
give her a certificate and he would, as the Bible says, put
her away. Well, God put Israel away or Judah away in Babylon
for a time, but he issued no certificate of divorce. He did
issue one for Israel. And so there was no coming back
for those Northern tribes. but he only sent her away and
there’s hope and possibility of return. In our language today,
you might say they’re separated. Where is your mother’s certificate
of divorce? And what’s he saying to them? Nothing’s final here. I can take you back. And in fact,
I will. Then he goes on to say, which
of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Well, Think
about that for a moment. Does God owe anyone anything? No. Does God have creditors?
No. He’s a debtor to no man. And so which of my creditors
is it to I have sold you? And he gives the answer. Behold
for your iniquities, your twistedness. Behold for your sins, you were
sold. It was your debt. It was your
sins that got you sold off into slavery. It was not because I
owed somebody something and you were the quickest asset I could
sell off. And then he says, and for your
transgressions, your mother, mother here speaking of Israel,
it was for your transgressions or your rebellions that your
mother was sent away. And so our sin, Our rejection,
our rebellion, our apostasy, our wickedness is what gets us
in hot water. It’s what gets us a thousand
miles away. In Babylon, it’s what gets us in exile. It’s what
separates us from God. It’s what keeps us from having
peace. And so those two questions are answered. Now, the other
questions, when I came, there was no man. Why? When I called,
was there no answer? He’s given a reference here to
when the prophets, were ministering among the people of Israel, the
people of Judah. Who did they have? They had Moses
as a prophet. They had Samuel as a prophet. You go through
the list. How many people came on behalf
of God? And they did the fourth telling
and the foretelling. They said, get rider. Get left,
right? And how it goes, get right or
get left. Told them to get with the program, get straight, obey
Yahweh, quit worshiping other gods, quit yoking yourself to
people and nations. And so he says, when I came,
there was no man. When I called, there was no response,
no response to God’s word. That can happen to us. We can
be deaf to the words of God. We can have a dull and hard heart
and not be recipients. We think, oh, we come to church.
I’m gonna get all the blessing there is out of it. Well, if
you’re hard hearted or living in sin or harboring sin, you
know, God will stuff up your ears. He’ll make your heart hard. That’s what happened to Israel.
They were unresponsive. You think about it for a moment.
How much of God’s word have you heard? How much has it ever stirred
you up? And we know God’s word’s power,
its ability. In fact, with Isaiah, he’s going
to say God’s word never returns void. It gets sent on an errand
and that errand it accomplishes. Yesterday we heard a really,
really, really, really good sermon on Hebrews four. God’s word is
sharper than a two edged sword. It is active, it is living and
it gets in you and it cuts to joints and marrows and it reveals
what you are and God sees everything. So how can you be unresponsive
to God’s word? Well, you got to be dead. You
got to be in sin. And so why when I came, why when
I called, there was no man, there was no answer. That’s how bad
sin is. And so there’s a challenge. If
we are living in sin and are unresponsive to God, we got to
do something about it. Quit sinning for one thing, but
ask for God’s help in his cleansing and, um, All that yesterday we
heard at our Presbyterian meeting, a man confess his adultery. And he says, during this stretch
of time, I was not walking with the Lord. He said, I was faking
it. I was living a hypocritical life.
He said he was preaching warmed over sermons. But he says, now
that this has been found out, I can have the Lord back. That’s
how maddening sin is. We can’t even hear the voice
of the shepherd. Then God asked two more questions.
Is my hand shortened? Or do I have no power? Shortened that it cannot redeem,
no power to deliver. Now, God is getting kind of historical
here with them. He’s reminding them of what they
should know for generations. God rescued and redeemed Israel
by the might of his right hand. His arm was long enough to reach
and to rescue, and it has not shortened. And also, he has the
power to deliver. Now, a couple examples are given.
I speak, or I rebuke, and I dry up the sea. And they walked across
on dry land. Remember what happened when the
priest touched the water going into the promised land, the Jordan?
dried up the waters upstream as if in a heap. And so by his
rebuke, he can dry up the sea. Remember, Jesus could still the
wind and the waves, the one who creates, upholds creation by
his power. He can also break into natural
order and dry up the sea. He can make the rivers a desert. Their fish stank for lack of
water and die of thirst. He’s speaking of the plagues.
The plague on the Nile River, remember he dried
it up. The fish could not live. And
then he says, I clothe the heavens with blackness, the plague of
darkness. And so in all these questions, if we are
ever wondering, does God love us and can God save us? We run
them all to the cross. The people in Isaiah’s day had
not seen Christ yet. They had not seen the cross.
They don’t look back as we do. They don’t have Puritan theology
and confessions of faith and study Bibles and Bibles in our
own language with the whole counsel of God all written up and canonized
and put into our book for us. But we have the goods. And so
we take all of these questions like this. Will God leave us?
Will God divorce us? Could God fail to save me? Could
God fail to hear me, rescue me, redeem me? Does he have no power,
no will, no desire? Well, we think about redemptive
acts. He dries up the sea, he sends the plagues, he puts Noah
in a big ark. He provides the belly of the
well for Jonah. All these acts of mercy, acts of rescue, acts
of redemption. But we can look at the cross
and we can see that God did not spare his own son. That even the son was willing
to leave the wealth and riches and glory and beauty of heaven
and become one of us and live and obey and suffer and die in
our place. In order that when he rose from the dead, we would
have a resurrection, we’d have a new life. but we’d also have
everlasting life in him. Uh, last week we mentioned the
whole picking daisies things. You know, he loves me. He loves
me not. He loves me. He loves me not.
This passage again reminds us that yes, uh, no matter what,
uh, he loves us. And that’s something that ought
to encourage us, uh, deeply. Let’s do pray. Lord, we give
you thanks. that you are not like us. We
change our minds. We get mad. We get angry. We
get upset. We get emotional. We like people. We don’t like people. We get
revenge. We stab people in the back. We
do all kinds of things. We make people pay for their
mistakes. But you’re so great and gracious and loving. We don’t
deserve anything you’ve given us. Yet you’ve given us everything
and you’ve done it through your son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
And so we who have been loved much help us to love much, not
little. And we who have been forgiven
much help us not to forgive little, but to forgive much, because
it’s the way we have been so treated. We thank you for that
in Christ’s name, amen.