Isaiah 29
Let’s hear God’s word together,
Isaiah 29. I think you’ll recognize a couple
of the references in the latter half, references from Corinthians,
references from Romans and references from the words of Christ. And
so at the beginning of Psalm 29, when it mentions the name
Ariel, that is a reference to God’s hearth or his altar at
Jerusalem. Ah Ariel, Ariel, the city where
David encamped, add year to year, let the feast run their round.
Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be moaning and lamentation,
and she shall be to me like an Ariel. And I will encamp against
you all around, and will besiege you with towers, and will raise
siege works against you. And you will be brought low.
From the earth you shall speak, and from the dust your speech
will be bowed down. Your voice shall come from the
ground like the voice of a ghost, and from the dust your speech
shall whisper. But the multitude of your foreign
foes shall be like small dust. and the multitude of the ruthless
like passing chaff. And in an instant, suddenly you
will be visited by the Lord of hosts with thunder and with earthquake
and with great noise, with whirlwind and tempest and the flame of
devouring fire. And the multitude of all the
nations that fight against Ariel, all that fight against her and
her stronghold and distress her shall be like a dream, a vision
of the night. As when a hungry man dreams he
is eating, and awakes with his hunger not satisfied or as when
a thirsty man dreams he is drinking and awakes faint with his thirst
not quenched. So shall the multitude of all
the nations be that fight against Mount Zion. Astonish yourselves
and be astonished. Blind yourselves and be blind.
Be drunk but not with wine. stagger, but not with strong
drink. For the Lord has poured out upon
you a spirit of deep sleep and has closed your eyes, the prophets,
and covered your heads, the seers. And the vision of all this has
become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. When
men give it to one who can read saying, read this, he says, I
cannot, for it is sealed. And when they give the book to
one who cannot read saying, read this, he says, I cannot read.
And the Lord said, because this people draw near with their mouth
and honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from
me and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men, therefore, behold,
I will again do wonderful things with this people. With wonder
upon wonder and wisdom of their wise men shall perish and the
discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden. Ah, you
who hide deep from the Lord your counsel, whose deeds are in the
dark, who say, who sees us? Who knows us? You turn things
upside down. Shall the potter be regarded
as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, he did
not make me, or the thing formed say of him who formed it? He
has no understanding. Is it not yet very little while
until Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field? and the
fruitful field shall be regarded as a forest. In that day the
deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom
and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall
obtain fresh joy in the Lord. and the poor among mankind shall
exult in the Holy One of Israel. For the ruthless shall come to
nothing, and the scoffers cease, and all who watch to do evil
shall be cut off. Who by a word make a man out
to be an offender, and lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate,
and with an empty plea turn aside him who is in the right. Therefore,
thus says the Lord who redeemed Abraham concerning the house
of Jacob, Jacob shall no more be ashamed, no more shall his
face grow pale. For when he sees his children,
the work of my hands in his midst, they will sanctify my name. They
will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob and will stand in awe of
the God of Israel and those who go astray in spirit. will come
to understanding and those who murmur will accept instruction. Amen. This is God’s great and
mighty word for us. One of the scariest things I
hear is often something said at the funeral home. You go to
the funeral home, you meet with the family, their loved one has
died and They asked, you know, when can you do the church service?
They asked the funeral home, when can you, you know, handle
the things that need to be taken care of? And so then you begin
to talk about, well, the funeral. You begin to talk about what songs mom liked or dad liked,
what will be sung, those sorts of things. And then you stay
a little while and the funeral director says, let’s make sure
we have the obituary correct. And I’ve, Always found this to
be very interesting. One who was a real pain in the
you know where, two days ago is all of a sudden a saint. You
know, they become in death what they could never achieve in life.
And maybe two days ago before anybody knew they were sick or
dying, you know, oh, so and so, you know, difficult person, all
the rest. Now, there’s never been a better
person than them. Right? And of course you say
it with a still small voice. You say it with a sigh and a
look of distance in your eyes and it makes it all real. Right?
I’m sort of joking here, but I’m trying to point out to you
the things that people say. Oh, so-and-so is a good person. And this is the classic. If anybody
deserves to go to heaven and I’m thinking, oh boy, brace,
brace yourself for it. If anybody in this world deserves
to go to heaven, I want to say it’s not them. It’s Jesus. No, I don’t say that. I’m nice.
I’m kind. But they say things like that. If anybody in this
world deserves to go to heaven, it’s, you know, old Billy or
old Susie, old Sally, whatever. And I think sometimes we live,
especially, particularly maybe in the South with Southern Christianity,
though we are on the coattails of the Christ-haunted South,
it’s quickly ebbing away because of culture and being the distinctives
of the Southern culture are no longer quite so distinctive,
but we’re living now outside the reality of, oh, that person
goes to church, that person sits in their pew, that person is
a fine upstanding citizen. We’re getting away from that. But for a long time, I think
the outward look is something we read much into. Oh, their
tie is straight. Oh, their dress is beautiful.
Oh, they never miss a Sunday in their pew. They never miss
a tithe. They never miss an offering.
They never miss a mission cause. They never miss Sunday school.
They got all the bulletins stacked, stacked, stacked to prove they’ve
been there. And what do we say? We say, Oh, that person for sure. Well, that’s the, that’s the
outward life of the people of Israel. They were good regular
attenders in church. They were church going people.
They sat in their pew, they opened their Bibles, they did all the
right things. And yet what does Jesus say of
them in his day? You honor me with your lips, but your hearts
are far from me. You honor me with your outward
obedience, but where is your heart? And this ought to point
out to us two things. One from the passage and one
I’ll just point out very practically for us. point out two things. Number one, unless there’s an
inward reality worked by the Holy Spirit, an inward reality
of being a new creation in Jesus Christ, we would be like the
people of old whose hearts were far from God. We would be like
the people in Jesus’ day who honored with lips and not life.
So there has to be an inward change. And we’ll speak a bit
more about that in a moment. Those who are not in Christ can’t
keep from the heart, the requirements of obedience from God. But there
are also, and here’s the warning for us who profess faith, there
are times when Christians go through the motions and we honor
God with our lips, but not with our lives. And perhaps it’s because
we’ve become enamored with things of this world. It’s perhaps because
we’ve let sin grow up in our lives and the weeds take over.
Perhaps because we’ve grown cold. in our walk with God or our love
for Jesus. Perhaps it’s because some temptation
has befallen us and we get stony hearted. We get cold hearted
to the things of the Lord. We may continue to come. We may continue to say, Oh, praise
the Lord. Or, you know, we may continue
to do the things that outwardly appear to be godly and from a
right heart. But we must be careful. always
to examine our hearts to see if we are in the faith and see
if we are indeed new creations in Jesus and living and worshiping
and obeying him out of the right heart. Well, this chapter of
Isaiah is a very strong warning, a very strong reminder, not only
to the Israelites in Isaiah’s day, but to us who sit here today,
even those who profess faith, we need to be careful to see
the work of God in each of our lives, each of our hearts. Lest
we say, you know, doggone, I’m pretty good. Why wouldn’t God
want me? Isn’t he lucky to have me on the team? Now, say this is the people in the
pews. It could also be the pastor in the pulpit. How many times
have you heard the story of the pastor who taking up the call
to ministry did not realize his conversion until later. But he
went through the motions, you know, thus saith the Lord. He
went through the motions, rest in Jesus. He went through the
motions. This is how you ought to live. There’s a prayer in
a little book that I read through most weeks, and there’s a prayer
for ministers. And it talks about how sometimes
a minister can minister from a cold heart. He can minister
not from a place of strength, but from a place of great spiritual
weakness. And so the danger is not just
for the people in the pews, it can be for the man in the pulpit. And so we want to be awake, we
want to be aware, we want to read scripture and tremble at
the threatenings and embrace the promises and yield our lives
to the obedience to God’s commands. Today, after morning service,
someone came up to me and they said something about last Sunday’s
guest minister. And the, I forget exactly the
words that were said to me, but it was something like this. I
am, I am still pricked in my conscience. I am still thinking
about the hard words that were said because they are true. And
my life does not reflect a life of evangelism or love for the
lost. And I was thinking to myself,
mission accomplished. That’s why we did what we did last week.
Because it doesn’t matter if we change our name. It doesn’t
matter if we fix up our sanctuary. It doesn’t matter if we dot all
our theological I’s and cross all our theological T’s. Unless
we are cut to the heart by the power of the spirit, we will
be empty and lifeless. And so let me challenge you this
evening to take delight in God, devour his word, do Do all that
he says because you run to him, you jump in head first, you jump
in feet first to live out of all the goodness of God’s grace
and glory. So we don’t wanna keep up appearances,
right? Any of y’all watch that show
on PBS? Sometime ago, Keeping Up Appearances with Hyacinth,
I think it was her name. Yeah, and she was always doing
things to make sure the neighbors saw that she was an aristocratic
part of society. My favorite episode, I think,
was where she wanted her husband to ride around with his skis
on top of the car, so everybody know that he had gone skiing
or something. But highest in her candlelight suppers, Keeping
Up Appearances, what a good title. We do not want to be the church
that keeps up appearances. We want to be the church. We
want to be the people of God, whether it’s all of us or individuals
out in the world. We want to be the people that
people say, you know, they’re the real deal. They seem to be
blood-bought, spirit-filled, God-fearing people. Yes, still
sinners. Yes, still struggling with the world and the devil
and remnants in the flesh. Yes, sometimes looking like hypocrites,
as we all can do, but people think of us. Whatever they got
going, that’s what I want to be part of. Well, let’s think
for just a minute or two or three or six, I don’t know, about the
people of Israel in chapter 29, in the first four verses, you
have an announcement about the fate of the city. This is the
city where God has dwelt with his people. This is the place
where he lays his fire, certainly the fire of his altar, where
sacrifices are offered. But think about old days when
you didn’t have a thermostat on the wall and you couldn’t
just turn up the heat. You had to lay a fire and that fire was
the heart of the home. My family and the three houses
that we lived in here in Burlington always had a fireplace, always
had a fire going. That was sort of the hallmark of family life
for us. We had a wood stove in one house,
we had an open fireplace in another, and then had a giant fireplace
in the next. And always chopping and stacking
and hauling wood, and always keeping a fire going. Used to
be that my clothes always smelled like smoke, not cigarette smoke,
but hickory smoke, whatever. But the fire was the gathering
place. Now it’s the TV, right? We’ve replaced the fireplace
with the TV. That’s the new log and fire and light in the house.
But God has loved Israel. And year by year, as you go through
the cycle of the years, Jerusalem has been the place where God
has met with his people, delighted with his people, received their
sacrifices, and where it’s been kind of the hearth and home of
Israel. And so they’ve had all the feasts.
It’s the city of David. And so he announces in verses
one through four, the fate. He says, I’m going to send enemies.
They’re going to encircle you. They’re going to encamp around
you and they’re going to lay waste to your city. Well, most
see this historically as the time when Sennacherib, the leader
or king or whatever of Assyria surrounded Israel and Hezekiah
and crew were all afraid. And, you know, you looked out
over the city walls and there were just enemies on and on and
on. And God relented from that. He
sent his angel of destruction and killed 185,000 Assyrians
and wiped them out. And so the fate of the city was
delayed until the Babylonians would come later. And that does
take place. I remember Jeremiah’s lamentation. Oh, the city, it’s
been laid waste, been laid to the fire, laid to the ruins.
So in one through four, you get this picture of, okay, doom and
gloom. It’s going to be really terrible.
And then in verses five through eight, you get, oh, there is
a reprieve. The multitude that surrounds
the nation does disappear. Now think about how quickly we
forget judgment when it comes. You know, we just had some storms
pass through. And maybe in the midst of a storm,
we think a certain way. Last week I had a, really bad
pinched nerve in my hip. And it was really painful. And so I had a lot of time to
think. And you start making promises, you know, during the storm, you
start to make promises when you ache and you think, Lord, if
you’ll get me through this, you know, I’ll be a good Christian,
a better Christian, right? That’s how we think. And then
the pain goes away, the storm passes, and we think, well, back
to it. Right? How quickly the judgments, the
megaphone of God subsides from our lives. And so there’s a reprieve
from the Assyrians. It should have made them repent.
I mean, if you had 185,000 enemies outside your door, they were
big, bad, hairy, scary, mean, nasty. You know, they were going
to lay siege against you and starve you out of the city. Shouldn’t
you say, never again will I look at an idol. You know, never again
will I look away from the Lord. and trust in Egypt or some other
human ally. Well, that’s of course not what
happens. And so you get the spiritual condition of the people that
pops up in 9, 10, and 11, where God says to the people, astonish
yourselves, be astonished, be drunk, but not with wine, stagger,
but not because of strong drink. The Lord has poured upon you
a spirit of deep sleep. Now I mentioned just a few moments
ago, It’s one thing for non-Christians to be unaware of spiritual things
and just to live headlong in sin because their hearts are
hardened, their eyes are closed, their minds are darkened to the
things of the Lord. But what happens when God’s people
get there? What happens when they ignore
the word, when they ignore the spirit, when they quench the
spirit? What happens when God’s people see the warnings, hear
the warnings, God puts them into a stupor. He puts them into a
spiritual condition. And we’ve chatted about this
several times at our men’s group and at our ladies confession
of faith study, where if you neglect the means of grace, if
you’re harboring and nurturing a secret sin, if you are, you
know, just making a shipwreck of your Christian life, it can
seem as if you have no light at all. And you can seem to be
in this spiritual drunkenness and stagger that’s not with wine.
not with strong drink, but it is brought on by the Lord. And
what a terrible thing it is to fall into the hands of a God. And so we need each other. Say,
you know, brother, you don’t, you don’t look like you should,
or dear sister, you’re not living. It seems something’s changed
in you. We need to take notice of each other, encourage one
another and pull one another along. The spiritual condition
here is much like Pharaoh. When God hardened his heart,
it’s much like Esau. Esau, God loved, or Jacob, God
loved, but Esau, he hated. We can be blinded by unbelief
and not have salvation. But in our state of salvation,
if we neglect or get into things we should not get into, it can
certainly harm us as well. And it seems as if there is no
salvation. So there’s a great challenge here. There’s a great
challenge to the people of God. And here’s the warning. It comes in 11 and 12. God can
give you his word and you can’t hear it. God can give you his
promises, but you can’t see it. God can tell you about his plans
to send his son, the Lord Jesus, but your hard heart, your depraved
mind just can’t get it. Now that is certainly true. We got to think in two ways here.
One of that is certainly true of the unsaved, right? They don’t
care. They’re doing what they do, they’re doing what they do
well, and they’re happy about it. But what about when a Christian
who’s tasted and seen that God is good, but neglects the word,
they neglect the sacraments, they neglect church and preaching
and all the rest, they can get themselves in a fix. Now, it
doesn’t take away their salvation. They cannot be fully and finally
lost. Jesus never lets the evil one
snatch one of his lambs from his hands. But as an act of discipline,
as an act of chastisement, we may fall into a state like this
where we read the book, but it does us no good. We hear the
sounds and see the sights and taste the taste of church, but
it does us no good. And maybe that’s where you are
or where you have been or definitely where you don’t want to go. Or
perhaps you know someone in that condition and what a terrible
thing it is and we must encourage one another, beg God to keep
us out of such a situation. It can be too late for the one
who isn’t saved, right? But we can warn the folks in
the congregation, we can encourage one another to snap out of these
sorts of things. Well, what’s the issue with these
folks? Several things pop up in the second half of this passage.
Number one, they honor God with their lips and not their life. Do you ever think I’m just going
through the motions? I’m just checking the boxes.
I’m just doing what I gotta do because I gotta do it. And if
I don’t do it, it won’t be right. And I think sometimes when we’re
in a spiritual funk, it’s good to keep doing the motions, right? It’s good to keep doing those
things. Come to church, hear the word, sing the songs, and
perhaps we’ll be jolted awake. But we do not want to live a
consistent life apart from God or a consistent life of lips. But our hearts are far from him.
And so there’s a strong counsel here, isn’t there? To make sure
the condition of our heart is right with the Lord and ready
to receive. So we want to honor God with
our lips, yes, but with our lives. It should be a spirit wrought
new creation reality that comes out of us. But also there’s this
idea in verse 14 of fools and wisdom. God says, I’ll do wonderful
things with his people, promises redemption. With wonder upon
wonder and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish. Think
of Paul in Corinthians when he says, the wisdom of this world
does not understand the foolishness of the cross. And while this
world may live with all its pomp and all its circumstance and
all its high thinking, the foolishness of the cross is eternal and is
forever. And then we have in verse 15,
the reference that Paul makes in chapter, well, whatever chapter
it is of Romans about the potter and the clay. Who can say to
the potter, what are you doing? Who can say to the potter, why
did you make me this way? God does what he pleases. You who hide deep from the Lord,
your counsel, whose deeds are in the dark and who say, who
sees us? Who knows us? God does, right? He’s your, he’s
your maker. He knows every thought, every
inclination, of our heart, and so he does as he pleases. Then
there’s a twist here at the end, and you find it in 17 on. God
is going to fix what’s broken. When we get to the coming of
Jesus Christ in the Gospels, I like to say we get down payments
on full redemption. So blind people can see. Maybe
you haven’t been healed of your blindness or your lameness or
your weak heart or whatever in this life. Jesus didn’t pass
through your village and touch you, but he’s going to do that
at the last day, isn’t he? And so all the things that we
see Jesus do in the Gospels are wonderful little down payments
or pointers to the new heavens and the new earth. And so we’re
told in verses 17 on, even Lebanon is going to become a fertile
field. It’s going to be a fruitful field. In that day, the deaf
shall hear, verse 18 tells. They’ll hear the words of a book.
Now there’s probably there a physical hearing, but also a spiritual
hearing. They will understand and they
will come out of their gloom and their darkness. And the eyes
of the blind shall see. For sure a physical blindness
maybe is in view here. God restores our broken by sin
bodies. but he also restores our dull
eyes and our hard hearts. And so these little down payments
that we see in the life and ministry of Jesus are promised here. The
meek shall obtain fresh joy. The poor among mankind shall
exult in the holy run of Israel. The ruthless shall come to nothing. God is going to bring justice.
He’s going to bring health. He’s going to bring peace and
goodness. Now, why does he do all this? Why does God come to
us and his son, the Lord Jesus? Why does he come make all things
new? Because he promised to Abraham. He promised to Abraham that when
he had Isaac, and after Isaac had Jacob, and after Jacob beget
Israel, and on and on through the generations, there would
be a savior. There would be a seed. There
would be an offspring, a singular offspring, God promises to Abraham,
who would come and be a blessing to the entire world. And that
is no other than the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we have a wonderful
redemption in store for us because of the promises of God to Abraham
and to Isaac and to Jacob, the covenant promises. And so in
history, yes, Judah and Jerusalem will fall under Babylonian captivity. They will fall under the destructive
hands of the armies of Babylon. They got a reprieve from Assyria.
But yes, judgment and justice will come. God will take care
of them in exile. He’ll bring a remnant back. He’ll
send his son, the Lord Jesus. And then we who are still exiles,
strangers and remnants of Israel will be called home to glory
one day. And that’s all because the promise that God made to
Abraham, I will be your God and you will be my people. And I
will dwell with you and you will dwell in my midst. We’ll be back
to the hearth. back to the place where God dwells
and delights to be with his people. And so as we think of this passage
tonight, think about unfaithful Israel, perhaps unfaithful church,
and then think on where you have been unfaithful and ask God to
work in your heart that you might not just honor him with your
lips, but that you would honor him with your life. and may it
be so, let’s pray together. God, we ask that you would help
each of us to think on where we are, what’s really true, and
what’s needed, and by your word and by the work of your spirit,
would you revive us, and would you restore us, and would you
rejuvenate us, keep us from being allies with this world, but make
us content with Jesus and the heavenly city that is ours, and
we pray it in Christ’s mighty name, amen.