Greetings brothers and sisters from the Capitol Hill Baptist
Church in Washington, DC. It's a joy to see so many of you
who I know and love and have prayed for, and to meet many of
you who I'm meeting now for the first time.
My prayer as I've thought about this time and prepared a message
has been Paul's from Romans chapter one that I might be able
to impart some spiritual gift to strengthen you.
And when Paul prays that prayer, when he tells the Romans that
that's what he's been praying for them, he says that we may be
mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and
mine. He didn't just expect to give
them a gift, but to receive one in return.
And the gift that that I received from you as I sing, as
I pray with you, as I see your attentiveness to God's Word, is
the encouragement that the same gospel is being proclaimed here,
the same gospel is being believed here, the same gospel
is being cherished and treasured here.
So it's a joy to bring you God's Word.
I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that history is a
battleground. This is the year that our nation
celebrates its 250th anniversary.
And many of the questions that are being asked and answered and
debated and argued over in these days is who are we?
What is our identity? There?
There debates about who we are, about where we're going.
See, the stories we tell shape our memories.
Our memories shape our identity. And our identity justifies an
intended course of action. That's why history is a
battleground. This is true for the stories we
tell about ourselves as individuals.
This is true for the stories we tell about our churches.
This is true for the stories we tell as a nation.
See, there's no sure way to control a person or people than
to control their history. See, if I control your memory, I
control your identity. If I control your identity, then
I'm justified in whatever course of action I take against you.
What's the saying? History is written by the
victor. What is the truth about
America's story? What's the truth about your
story? What's the truth about Trinity
Baptist Church's story? Who decides it?
What will it be? See in Isaiah's day?
Back in the Old Testament, in the 8th century BC, God's people
were engaged in a fight for their very life over questions
of memory and identity and destiny.
Who they were as a nation was being redefined in front of
their eyes, not by their fellow Jews, but by the surrounding
nations, by their oppressors, especially the mighty Babylonian
Empire, which would conquer and exiled Judah in 586 BC.
See if history is written by the victor.
The Babylonians were masters of composing narratives to justify
their treatment of subjugated peoples and their status as a
superpower. Their main tool wasn't just
their military might, it was the soft power of theological
narratives. The belief was that when one
nation conquered another nation, it was proof beyond shadow of of
a doubt that their God had conquered the subjugated
nation's God. In this case, Babylon's conquest
over Judah was supposed to prove that Mardock, the chief God of
the Babylonian pantheon, had conquered Yahweh, the God of
Israel. After all, how could God allow
this to happen? How could God allow His people
to be defeated and taken into exile if Yahweh had not been
beaten by Mardock? Was he who he said he was?
Was he the all powerful good God, the only creator?
Or is he a lower deity beaten by a greater God?
Were his promises true? Could he be relied on?
See, it wasn't enough for Babylon to shackle Judah's
hands. They wanted to rewrite their
history as well. The problem was that Judah had
began to internalize the narrative, and as their view of
God shrunk, their fears grew. Judah's fear is captured in a
single verse. We're in chapter 51 this
morning, but go back to chapter 49, chapter 49, verse 14.
This is the verse that God is responding to through His
prophet Isaiah in chapter 49, in chapter 50, in chapter 51 and
chapter 52, all the way up to chapter 52, verse 13.
So if you want to understand this section of Isaiah, you need
to understand chapter 49, verse 14.
It's Judah's declaration, but Zion said the Lord has forsaken
me, the Lord has forgotten me. That's how Judah felt.
Judah felt forgotten. And to this cry, to this cry of
his dejected people, God responds in chapter 49 with the
tender image of a mother with her child, asking the question,
Can a mother forget her nursing child?
And in chapter 50, he responds with the image of a husband with
a wife saying, I haven't divorced you.
He's saying I haven't forgotten you, I haven't rejected you.
And he's going to prove it. He's going to continue to prove
his faithfulness and his sovereignty to his people.
Trinity Baptist Church, I don't know all the fears you're
facing, whether that's individually or corporately as a
church. I know some of them.
I know that leadership transitions our hard time in the
life of a church. It raises questions.
But what God's doing and what His purposes are in this?
Today's passage offers you a path out of fear, a path out of
fearing man and circumstances and instead fearing the God who
controls them. Turn with me in your Bible to
Isaiah 51. If you're using the Black Pew
Bibles, they can. That can be found on page 572.
This is the word of the Lord. Listen to me, you who pursue
righteousness, you who seek the Lord.
Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry
from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father, and
to Sarah who bore you. For he was but one when I called
him, that I might bless him and multiply him.
For the Lord comforts Zion, He comforts all her waste places,
and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden
of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found
in her Thanksgiving. In the voice of song.
Give attention to me, my people, and give ear to me, my nation.
For a law will go out from me, and I will set my justice for a
light to the peoples. My righteousness draws near, My
salvation has gone out, and my arm will judge the peoples.
The coastlands wait for me, and for my arm they wait.
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look to the earth
beneath. For the heavens will vanish like
smoke. The earth will wear out like a
garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner.
But my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness
will never be dismayed. Listen to me, you who know
righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law, fear not
to the reproach of man, or be dismayed if there are violence.
For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm
will eat them like wool. But my righteousness will be
forever, and my salvation to all generations.
Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord, awake as in the
day of old, the generations of long ago.
Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?
Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great
deep? You who made the depths of the
sea away for the redeemed to Passover and the ransom to the
Lord, shall return and come to Zion with singing.
Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads.
They shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow in sighing
shoutfully away. I I am he who comforts you.
Who are you that you are afraid of man, who dies of the Son of
man who is made like grass and have forgotten the Lord your
Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundation
of the earth? And you fear continually all the
day, because of the wrath of the oppressor when he sets himself
to destroy. And where is the wrath of the
oppressor? He who is bowed down shall be
speedily released. He shall not die and go down to
the pit, neither shall his bread be lacking.
I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea so that his
waves roar. The Lord of hosts is his name.
And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the
shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the
foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, You are my
people, wake yourself, wake yourself.
Stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the
Lord the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs, the
bowl, the cup of staggering. And there is no one to guide her
among all the sun she is born. There is none to take her by the
hand among all the sun she has brought up.
These two things have happened to you.
Who will console you? Devastation and destruction,
famine and sword, Who will comfort you?
Your sons have fainted. They lie at the head of every
street, like an antelope in the net.
They are full of the wrath of the Lord, the rebuke of your
God. Therefore hear this, you who are
afflicted, who are drunk but not with wine.
Thus says the Lord, the Lord your God, who pleads the cause
of his people. Behold, I have taken from your
hand the cup of staggering, the bowl of my wrath.
You shall drink no more, and I will put it in the hand of your
tormentors, who have said to you, bow down, that we may pass
over, and you have made your back like the ground and like
the street for them to pass over.
Friends, what do we do when fears loom large?
This passage gives us 3 answers, three ways where we can be free
from fears, control. First, look up at who God is.
Second, look back at what God has done.
And 3rd, look forward to what God has promised.
Look up, look back, look forward.
Because this chapter contains overlapping themes, I won't be
preaching these verses in order. We'll be jumping around, but I
will give you the verses that map onto each point, and we're
going to begin right in the middle, right?
Really in verses 12 to 16 where we see Isaiah's first answer.
The first way to be free from fierce control is to look up at
who God is. See to his fearing and
despairing people. God responds in verses 12 to 16
by telling them to look up at who He is.
That's why God says in verse 12, I am he who comforts you.
Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the Son of
man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the Lord your
maker. Did you notice the connection
between fear and forgetting? That's because fears grow when
we forget who God is. Judah's fear was that God had
forgotten them. Reality was that they were
starting to forget who God is. This is just one of a dozen
times that Isaiah tells his people to fear.
Not fear is mentioned three times in chapter 51 alone.
Verse 7 if you're not the reproach of man, verse 13 you
fear continually all the day because of the wrath of the
oppressor, and verse 12 you are afraid of man who dies.
Isaiah is making one basic point about fear.
Fear arises when God is forgotten.
When God is forgotten, the fears in our lives metastasize out of
proportion. Fear is the response of the
heart when what we treasure is threatened.
Isaiah isn't saying that that the things we treasure are bad.
And you can treasure things like your marriage or your children
or your job or your church. And what you treasure can be
threatened in a fallen world. Other people can threaten the
things you treasure. He's not saying the things you
treasure are necessarily bad. He's just reminding you to
remember who controls them. The one who controls his people
is God, so he tells them to look up to his fearful people.
He hands a telescope and says, look up, look at the stars who
made them. Verse 6, lift your eyes to the
heaven and look at the earth beneath.
Or verse 13, your maker stretched out the heavens and
laid the foundations of the earth.
Count the stars if you can. Who made them?
Not the people who are threatening you.
I made them. He's reminding them of who he
is, because when we forget God, people become big.
Our fears become big because God has become small.
Verses 12 to 16 teaches that people can oppress and destroy.
That's verse 13. People can imprison and revile.
That's verses 7 and 14. God's people were going to be
taken into exile. Bad things were going to happen
to them, but those bad things were not proof that God wasn't
who He says He is. The basic point of verse 12 is
that man dies. These people who are oppressing
them are mortal, perishing, temporary.
Then contrast that with who God is.
God is the all powerful creator, but we forget that, don't we?
Because the fears in our lives grow large and we forget who God
is. One of my favorite presidents
was Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore had a contemporary who
recounts visiting him at the White House and he goes up after
dinner. Roosevelt says, let's go up to
the rooftop. They go up to the rooftop after
dinner, and they look up at the stars.
Theodore Roosevelt just wanted to stare at the stars.
And they spend a minute. Another minute, several minutes
go by, lost in silent contemplation at the wonder
above them. After a few minutes, Roosevelt
breaks the silence by saying, let us return now.
We are small enough now. You hear what he's saying,
right? There's something about the
immensity of the cosmos that puts ourselves, our own
concerns, back in appropriate proportion.
We can't do that today, can we? I don't know what it's like here
in Durham or Chapel Hill, but particularly in Washington, DC.
If I step out on the average night and look up at the sky, I
can see maybe 6, maybe 10 stars. Scientists blame this on light
pollution. The light from streetlights,
buildings, especially in cities, disrupts the darkness and makes
stars invisible to the naked eye.
Millions of stars shining brightly in galaxies afar,
totally invisible to the naked eye.
Does that ever happened in your life?
Does the does the the the light pollution of the ordinary day,
or the work or the fear blind your eyes to the reality of who
God is being proclaimed even by inanimate creation?
Friends, where do we go to remember who God is?
Friends, we don't just go to the stars, we go to God's Word.
If Psalm 19 as we saying is right and God is declaring His
invisible attributes even from creation, how much more is God
declaring who He is from His Word?
Friend, to be free from fears control, look up and remember
who God is supremely by turning to His Word.
Members of Trinity Baptist Church, it is so good for you to
share your fears and concerns with each other.
You want to have a culture in your church where you can share
honestly the hard things. How how you're responding to
hard events in your life or hard events in the life of this
church. As you share those fears with
each other. Also share God's word with each
other. Share truths about who God is to
strengthen your faith during a time of difficulty and
transition. God is the all powerful creator,
but He's also personal. Did you see that in verse 16?
The same voice that spoke the world into existence says to
you, you are my people friends, This is where fears go to die.
Remembering who God is and that He loves you.
He made you and He has purposes for you and nothing will stop
him from bringing them to completion.
So when fears take hold, friends, look up.
Look up at who God is, but don't stop there.
As you look up at who God is, also remember to look back.
Look back at what God has done. And that's .2.
We see this call to look back, to look back at what God has
done, especially in the 1st 11 verses of our passage.
Isaiah highlights the story of Abraham in verses one to three
and then the story of the Exodus in nine to 11.
To remind his people where they come from.
He snatches the telescope. He hands them a history textbook
and he says remember your roots, remember where you came from.
And it's not flashy. Look at verse one.
Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from
which you were dug. Look to Abraham, your father,
and to Sarah who bore you. God is saying, remember where
you're from. Some people take a lot of pride
in their lineage and their family history.
I had a college classmate who was a direct descendant, Patra
Linearly, from President William Howard Taft.
He was very proud of that fact, maybe more proud than he should
have been. Sometimes lineage serves as a
source of pride. That's not what's going on here.
Isaiah is not telling them to look back at Abraham and Sarah
because of Abraham and Sarah's greatness.
It's exactly the opposite. The point is Abraham's
smallness. That's what the middle of verse
2 means. He was but one when I called
him. See, if ever there was an
unlikely couple from which to form a nation, it was Abraham
and Sarah. What was their glaring problem?
Abraham was too old and Sarah was infertile.
He's glaring problems and God chooses them.
This is the couple God calls an idol worshipper from east of
Babylon. How about that?
And he gives them the promise of land and descendant as numerous
as the stars in the sky. God is saying, look back at your
roots. Abraham and Sarah were as
infertile as an inanimate rock, Yet I struck the rock, and I cut
descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.
You think exile is going to stop my purposes?
You think you're going to be too few after exile?
You think that God's purposes were will be thwarted.
Remember where you started. Remember where you were when God
called you. God says I did it once, I can do
it again. I didn't choose you because I
needed you. I chose you because I loved you
to display my power through you. It's a it's an argument from the
greater to the lesser. If he could do this with Abraham
and Sarah, he can do it again. How much more can he redeem and
restore his diminished and and discouraged people from exile?
Friends, the point isn't their attractiveness.
The point is their unlikeliness as candidates of God's electing
love. And it's always been this way.
We know this in our own lives, don't we?
Where were you when God found you?
Scripture tells us we were dead in our transgressions and sins.
We were dead. We had nothing to commend us.
We had only sin to condemn us. We had no hope that He would
befriend us. But God, being rich in mercy
because of his great love with which He loved us while we were
dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.
And he doesn't leave us there. He then saves us for good works
that he's prepared beforehand for us to walk in.
He calls His people from the most unlikely places, He makes
them alive, He changes them, and He equips them for a life of
fruitful service. He did that with Abraham and
Sarah Trinity Baptist Church. This is what God is doing in
you. The promise of God's blessing on
this church is not tied to the skill of its pastors or their
national reputation. The promises of God for this
church are tied to His Word and His purposes, and unlikeliness
and unlikely candidates are God's calling card.
When God goes looking for a people to work through, he
doesn't go searching on Sotheby's.
He's looking for fixer uppers only.
You see where God goes. He says I go to the waste places
and make them like Eden. Verse three he turns waste
places into vineyards as as God said through John the Baptist in
Luke chapter 3, God is able from stones to raise up children for
Abraham. Trinity Baptist Church.
When you look on the events of this past year, does your future
seem as uncertain as Abraham and Sarah's?
Does it feel as hopeless as theirs?
Yes, there are these great promises, but how can God work
through these hard circumstances or these people?
Friends, that has never stopped our God at all.
That's the point of this comparison.
If God can work through Abraham and Sarah, if He dug Israel out
of that quarry, can't you trust Him to finish the work that He
began in you? It's His work.
See, trials come and Satan says God hates you, or God is unable.
God has abandoned you. If he loved you, why would he
let you suffer? But faith, strengthened and
sanctified by memory, says, yes, he may be striking me.
It's not to hurt me, but to heal me.
Yes, He may be cutting me, but I know that my God works all
things for my good. Yes, it hurts, but it is not
meaningless. He's doing something, friend.
He's doing something stroke by stroke, cut by cut.
God is carving a statue out of a rock for his glory.
So look to Abraham, look to Sarah, look back at what God has
done in your life individually, in your life corporately.
But don't stop there because the same God that called Abraham out
of Babylon also rescued Israel from Egypt.
That's what verses 9 to 11 are all about.
God calls His people to remember where they were.
In verse 9, we see the heartfelt prayer of petition and response.
See, God's people hear this promise, and maybe you hear it
this way this morning. That sounds great, but what
about right now? That may be very good and well
for coming generations. I just don't see it in my
lifetime. What is God doing now in my
pain? What is God doing now in my
suffering? And in verse 9, that's how God's
people cry out. They call out for God to awake,
awake. They're not literally asking for
God to wake up. He's the God who doesn't slumber
or sleep. They're asking for him to act
awake, awake, put on strength or arm of the Lord.
They're begging for God to do it again.
They're saying you've done it once, do it again.
This is a prayer of faith. It's also a prayer of pain.
They're saying do it now. Was it not you who cut Rahab in
pieces? Was it not you who dried up the
sea? Was it not you?
Rahab is a poetic name for Egypt.
It's not a reference to the the prostitute who helped the two
spies. Rahab is often presented in the
Bible as a mythical sea monster or or dragon identified with
Egypt. See, in Babylonian mythology,
the same serpent is is known as Tyamat, the primeval dragon
monster of chaos. According to Babylon mythology,
Mardock, if we go back to the beginning, the chief God of the
Babylonian pantheon was supposed to have defeated time at in
combat at creation, showing himself to be supreme.
So the Bible doesn't endorse that Babylonian mythology, but
the Bible often shows itself conversant in those rival
accounts of creation. And the allusions here to Rahab
are not accidental. See, the Babylonians were saying
that their God had conquered Yahweh, Their God had conquered
Judah's God. Yahweh isn't who he says he is.
He isn't all powerful. He can't keep his promises.
He doesn't love you. But what does verse 9 say?
Verse 9 counters that view directly.
It asks who cut Rahab in pieces? Who pierced the dragon?
It wasn't Mardock, it was Yahweh.
God redeemed his people from Egypt.
He did this not in the unverifiable shadowy past of
creation myths like the Babylonians.
He did it in history. He did it in in the sight of all
the nations. It was verifiable that God had
come down and rescued his people from slavery in Egypt.
In verse 9 to 11, document three specific events.
Three specific events that highlight God's faithfulness in
power. Verse 9 says that God defeated
Egypt's gods. Verse 10 says that God dried up
the Red Sea. Verse 11 says that God brought
His people safely into the Promised Land.
God's people are looking back in faith and remembering what God
has done. Friends, remembering God's
faithfulness is an antidote to fear.
Have you taken time, individually or corporately, to
step back and remember what God has done in this church?
To remember what God has done in your life?
Friends, spend time recounting the faithfulness of God.
And if that's if that's too challenging for you because of
circumstances you're facing, if your faith is struggling and
weak and you don't feel like you have anything to share, ask
someone else to share with you how God has shown him so
faithful in their life. Ask them this past year, what
has God done in your life? And draw strength to nourish
your faith by hearing of God's faithfulness in their life.
One of the great privileges I had over the past several years
was to work on researching and eventually writing a history of
my local church, Capital Baptist Church.
We're approaching 150 years in just two years, and a year or so
ago I published a book called The Light on the Hill recounting
God's faithfulness. And one real encouragement in
the process was helping members of my local church understand
the challenges that we went through, especially early on.
So you look at a church like Capitol Hill Baptist Church and
marked ever and you think things have always must have always
been great. Things have always must have
always just been amazing there. Maybe it's just they've always
had just great preachers and that's not the case.
The church was started by a newly married couple that you
have never heard of named Abraham and Celestia Faris.
They had no theological education.
They had no degrees. They had no certificates.
They started a prayer meeting in their home and they said, let's
pray for a Baptist Church to be started in our neighborhood.
We want a church that we can send our kids to.
We want a church that can evangelize this neighborhood.
God started small. Isn't that like God?
Isn't that like God to work through small, apparently
insignificant people in the world's eyes?
Abraham died before the church even got started.
Celestia was left a widow in her mid 20s with three young
children. She never remarried.
She had to go back in the workforce to provide for herself
and her kids. And I can't help but think that
there were so many times in Celestia's life when she asked,
Lord, what are you doing? What am I here for?
Why did you send this trial my way friends?
Did she have any idea what the Lord was doing in her and
through her? Did she have any idea how the
Lord would answer prayers that she prayed in faith in ways that
she will only see fulfilled in glory?
Friends, it didn't end there. Six years into the church's
existence, we went through a horrible season of conflict.
A year of tension and conflict over debt and where to build a
second building. It ended with the senior pastor
resigning and taking half the church with him to plant a
church a block and a half away. Not exactly a successful church
plant story if you ask me. And yet the the Lord continued
the work through the faithful Saints.
Through unlikely circumstances, the Lord preserved the church.
Even more recently, in the 1990s, a senior pastor
disqualified himself very heinously and and was fired by
the church. And there were people who had
come to the church under his ministry to be there and support
the work. Some of those were Matt and Eli
Schmucker. Some of you may know them.
One night Matt and Eli were up after all this had happened.
They had no pastor. They had moved there for this
church and nothing seemed to be going the way it should.
I said, what are we doing here? We uprooted our family for this.
And Matt said to Eli, he said, we're here for the people who
are to come. The Lord's not done with this
work. The Lord is going to finish what
he started. We can be here for them.
That's how God works through unlikely people, through
unlikely circumstances, through trials.
Why? Because He gets the glory.
Trinity Baptist Church, my prayer for you is that you would
persevere in trusting the Lord and His promises and His
purposes for your church. I don't think those events felt
good to them. I think for our church, many of
those members may have felt like things were a failure.
It wasn't a failure. It was instead the foil.
It was the foil in the plot. It was the darkness that would
make the light shine all the brighter.
Friends, the circumstances in your life might feel like a
failure from heaven's perspective.
That will just be the foil. That will be the darkness
against which the light of God's grace shines.
Your job is to be faithful, and you do that in part by looking
back, by remembering what God has done in your life, in your
church's life, in other church's life.
But don't stop there. Look up, look back and let all
of that, let your view of God, let your trust in God's goodness
lead you to look forward in faith to what God has promised.
That's our final point. Look forward.
Look forward to what God has promised.
We see this especially in verses 17 to 23.
We see here the second of three wake up calls in chapters 51 and
52. This time it's the prophet
Isaiah addressing God's people. See, unlike God, God's people
needed to wake up. They needed to wake up because,
as verse 17 says, they had drunk from the hand of the Lord, the
cup of His wrath. Throughout the Bible, God's
wrath, God's judgement for sin, is often pictured as a cup.
A cup which the nations would drink.
And yet, because they had broken God's covenant, God's people
would drink that cup through exile.
It's important year to to distinguish between God's
temporal judgments and God's eternal judgments.
Temporal judgments are the covenantal consequences for
Israel's sin. You can read about them in
Deuteronomy 28 or Leviticus 26. The the punishment of exile.
Eternal judgments refer to eternity separated from God in
hell. God isn't saying that his people
will drink that cup of wrath, His eternal judgement though
they may. He's saying they would face a
season of temporal judgement in exile.
The effects are terrifying. In verse 17, they are described
as staggering. This isn't the stumbling of a
drunkard. This is the involuntarily
tremoring or trembling of a of a of a person in deep affliction.
Verse 18 pictures Judah as a blind woman without a guide.
Verse 19 describes the fourfold punishment of devastation and
destruction, famine, and sword. Verse 20 to fix God's people as
a wild animal trapped in the net and unable to escape.
These are horrific images of judgement.
See, Judah would experience this temporal judgement as a
consequence of their sin when they go into exile.
And in that sense, verse 17 can say that Judah has drunk to the
dregs the cup of God's wrath. Literally, they've drained a cup
of the promise of verse 21 to 23 is that there is a day coming
when God will say enough. God is promising in verse 22 to
to one day turn from pouring out His judgement to instead
pleading the cause of his people.
He says in verse 22, Behold, I have taken from your hand the
cup of staggering and the bowl of wrath.
You shall drink no more. He takes it out of the hands of
his people, and he places it in verse 23 into the hands of your
tormentors. He's saying there's a day coming
when your enemies, the nations who are punishing you, who have
been the agents of my judgement, will themselves become the
objects of my judgement. Exile isn't the end.
The question is how and when. Because as horrific as these
descriptions are, and they are terrible, they are a mere shadow
of the much greater punishment that awaits any of us who have
rebelled against God, which is an eternity separated from God
in hell. See, Judah could go into exile.
They could face God's temporal discipline for their sins.
They couldn't do anything to assuage the wrath of God.
For sin, Friends, the wages of sin is death, eternal separation
from God. This is what we should really
fear. Not a temporary affliction, not
a temporary trial, but an eternal conscious torment in
hell. Not for a season, but forever.
Not a cup that is quickly turned over and emptied, but a cup that
never ends. Our sin demands A punishment
that lasts as long as the one we have sinned against.
So how can this be? When will the cup of God's wrath
be drunk? And who will drink it?
Isaiah 51 doesn't give us the answer.
It leaves us in the tension. Attention that has been building
ever since the first servant song of Isaiah 52.
Attention that is building and building over the course of
Isaiah until you get to the words in Isaiah 52 verse 13.
Behold, my Servant, all along God has been slowly unveiling
one who would come and bear the punishment that his people
deserve, not just the temporal punishment for sin, the eternal
cup of God's wrath. Because you get to verse 21 and
the tension has been building and you get to that word.
Therefore, and this is really the load bearing word of our
passage. Therefore, what if God's people
have really sinned? If God really has been so good,
if he has shown himself so faithful and his people have
sinned again and again and again, what is the sentence
going to be? And I think if you're reading
these words in Isaiah's day, you're not expecting a happy
ending. You're expecting a sentence to
come down of judgement. Therefore, I want nothing more
to do with you. It's over, we're done.
I'm through. Here's what he doesn't say.
He doesn't say you're getting what you deserve.
He says give me the cup. I'll drink it.
I'll drink it all. I'll drink it all for you all.
Plead your case. Verse 22.
I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering, and it's only
in Christ that we see the awful cost at which this salvation is
achieved. Because in the garden Jesus
cried out. My father, if it is possible,
let this cup pass from me, this cup of wrath, this cup of
judgement. And friends, there was another
way, the way for that that cup to not be drunk by the sun was
it was for it to be drunk by you and me.
And so Jesus says I will take it.
I will take the cup. Friends, if you are in Christ,
this is what Jesus has said for you.
He said I have taken it. That bitter cup, love drank it
up. He drank it all in that same
hands that took the cup in your place.
He offers you a different cup. Not a cup of judgement, not a
cup of wrath, a cup of joy, a cup that he has reserved to
drink with you on that last day. He says take and drink.
No, not the cup of wrath. I drank that up.
I drink it all. No, drink the cup of gladness.
Drink the cup of the New Covenant in my blood.
Trinity Baptist Church. This is the gospel that will
sustain you through any trial. This is the gospel that causes
fears to flee. So look up and wonder.
Look back and remember. Look forward together, because
one day soon the one who took that cup out of your hand will
hand you a different cup. He'll tell you to look up.
You won't see the stars, you will see his face.
He'll tell you to look back and you'll see the whole way that he
led you. You'll see all the trials and
that they were but foil to contrast with his purposes for
you. And there will be nothing left
to look forward to other than an eternity of joy in His presence.
Friends, our lives may be a battleground.
History may be a battleground, But He has won the battle.
He has fixed your identity. He's determined your destiny.
So fear not, because this dying Lamb, His precious blood, will
never lose its power till all the ransom Church of God be
saved to sin no more. So fear not, let's pray God, we
praise you as the only true God, and we praise you that you have
not dealt with us according to our sins.
We praise you for the Lord Jesus Christ who took the punishment
that we deserve in our place, and we thank you that because of
Him, no trial that you send our way can separate us from your
love. So help us to fear you and to
fear not. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.