Well, good morning. As you're turning to your Bibles
to to Isaiah chapter 48, which would be 6 O 8 and six O 9 in
the Pew Bibles. Just want to share a little bit
of a story. Some of you may remember that I
preached a little over a year ago and I introduced that sermon
with a with a confession. I guess that I'd had a dream
that I was late for church on the day that I was supposed to
be preaching. That dream came true today,
almost came true today. I was about 5 miles from the
Highway 52 exit onto Hwy. 52 coming from high Interstate 90,
Started to notice a little wobbling in the back tire and
Lisa said I think it's kind of vibrating.
I think our wheels might be out of alignment.
Turns out it was way worse than that.
We we barely made it off the Interstate.
Some of you may know that on Interstate 90 and on Hwy. 52
there's a place of ill repute that is just South of the there.
I made sure I didn't park the car there.
I went all the way down to the to the quick trip.
I got parked there and thankfully my son Jake was able
to come pick me up. I was not late, but I did.
I did tell Pastor Steve that I might be late and he said, well,
we'll just sing another hymn if we need to do that.
So anyway, didn't need to do that.
So as as we return to Isaiah 48, invite you to hear with me the
word of the Lord and then keep it open afterwards because we'll
be walking through it during the message.
Let's pray. Well, actually I'm going to,
like I said, I'm not flustered at all by the experience of
today. We're just going to go right
ahead now to my copy of the Scriptures and Isaiah 48.
Hear this, O House of Jacob, who are called by the name of
Israel, and who came from the waters of Judah, who swear by
the name of the Lord, and confess the God of Israel, but
not in truth or right, for they call themselves after the holy
city, and stay themselves on the God of Israel.
The Lord of hosts is His name. The former things I declared of
old. They went out from my mouth, and
I announced them. Then suddenly I did them, and
they came to pass. Because I know that you are
obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your forehead
brass. I declared them to you from of
old. Before they came to pass.
I announced them to you, lest you should say, My idol did
them. My carved image and my metal
image commanded them. You have heard.
Now see all this, and will you not declare it from this time
forth? I announced to you new things,
hidden things that you have not known.
They're created now, not long ago.
Before today, you've never heard of them, lest you should say,
Behold, I knew them. You have never heard.
You have never known. From an old your ear has not
been opened. For I knew that you would surely
deal treacherously, and that from before birth you were
called a rebel. For my name's sake I defer my
anger. For the sake of my praise I
restrain it for you that I may not cut you off.
Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver.
I have tried you in the furnace of affliction for my own sake.
For my own sake I do it. For how should my name be
profaned? My glory I will not give to
another. Listen to me, O Jacob and
Israel, whom I called. I am He, I am the 1st, and I am
the last. My hand laid the foundation of
the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens.
When I call to them, they stand forth together.
Assemble all of you and listen. Who among them has declared
these things? The Lord loves him.
He shall perform his purpose on Babylon, and his arm shall be
against the Chaldeans. I even I have spoken and called
him. I have brought him, and he will
prosper in his way. Draw near to me.
Hear this from the beginning. I have not spoken in secret from
the time it came to be. I have been there, and now the
Lord God has sent me and His Spirit.
Thus says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of
Israel. I am the Lord your God, who
teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way that you should
go. Oh, that you had paid attention
to my commandments? Then your peace would have been
like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of
the sea. Your offspring would have been
like the sand, and your descendants like its grains.
Their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me.
Go out from Babylon, free from Chaldea.
Declare this with a shot of joy. Proclaim it.
Send it out to the end of the earth.
Say the Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob.
They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts.
He made water flow for them from the rock.
He split the rock, and the water gushed out.
There is no peace, says the Lord, for the wicked.
The grass Withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God
will stand forever. Let's pray, Father, we trust
Your promise that the word that goes out from your mouth will
not return to you empty, but that it shall accomplish that
which you purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which
You sent it. Please attend to Your Word by
Your Holy Spirit and open our ears, enlighten our minds, and
warm our hearts to hear and receive and believe it.
Use this time for our prophet and for the glory of Your Son
our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, as we ask it in His
name. Amen was many of you will
remember Trinity hosted the most recent meeting of the Siouxlands
Presbytery just this last September.
The Siouxlands Presbytery is made-up of all the PCA churches
in the Dakotas as well as Minnesota.
It stretches from Duluth on the east, the northeast to Rapid
City in the southwest. It's about 13 hours or something
like that across if you're driving.
We meet three times a year at least the teaching elders or
pastors are required to be there are expected to be there unless
they have an excused absence. And we're also expected to bring
a representative a a congregational representative as
a ruling elder to have at least one of those ruling elders are
men like me who are they're also the other ones that you see on
the back of the bulletin who also leading in in
congregational prayer. We're generally not seminary
trained, but we serve on the session of the local church and
also then as congregational representatives to the
presbytery meetings or a General Assembly.
Our Book of Church Order, which we lovingly call the BCO, has
two sentences about the role of ruling elders In Chapter 8 and
Section 10 is what it says. It says elders, being of one
class of office ruling elders, possess the same authority and
eligibility to hold office in the courts of the church as
teaching elders. They should, moreover, cultivate
zealously their own aptness to teach the Bible and should
improve every opportunity of doing so.
I'm standing here today instead of sitting there this morning
because of both of those sentences.
To reflect the equality of the two orders of elders, the
Siouxlands Presbytery has a tradition that one year that the
moderator, the one who runs the meeting, rotates between the
ruling elders and the teaching elders. 1 And so one year it's a
teaching elder. And this next year coming up
happens to be a year for a ruling elder.
So, as Providence would have it, I was minding my own business,
literally minding my own business, on my laptop in the
church office on September 25th on the 1st morning of
Presbytery, when Pastor Johnson approached me and asked if I
would consider being a candidate for moderator in 2026 because
next year is is a ruling elder year in the rotation.
So I asked him the dates of the meeting and I checked my
calendar and I found out that I didn't have any conflicts.
So I said I was willing. I didn't realize I'd be the only
candidate. So it's kind of like when we
have our congregational meetings like next week and Pastor Harper
will ask, so we need to have somebody take minutes.
Does anyone want to take minutes?
And I end up getting to do it. So I was it unanimously elected.
How about that? Seriously though, I, I do look
forward to serving in this role. I think it's a great opportunity
for growth and building relationships with the other
ruling elders, with the teaching elders as I run the meeting and
rule them out of order and all that kind of whatever else I
need to do. So after I got elected to the
moderator role, Pastor Harper ordered a couple of books for
me. One of them is this
Parliamentary Procedure at a Glance, it's a guide to Robert's
Rules of Order. And then there's this page
Turner they got me. This is our bond of Union.
The subtitle is A Commentary on the Book of Church Order of the
Presbyterian Church in America. So as I was started reading
through this to prepare for becoming the moderator, I came
across this second aspect of the ruling Elder role, where it says
they should moreover cultivate zealously their own aptness to
teach the Bible and should improve every opportunity for
doing so. It was just a couple weeks later
that Pastor Harper asked if I'd be willing to preach on November
16th. So I thought and prayed about it
overnight and it seemed like a good opportunity for some
zealous cultivation. So as Isaiah said earlier in the
book, here I am, send me a pastor Harper said I could
choose my own text or I could continue in the Isaiah series.
And he said that Isaiah 48 was was Next up.
And it's such a majestic conclusion to the section of
Isaiah. I couldn't imagine picking
another passage since this was what was on the docket.
He again helped by providing several of his commentaries as
resources and I'm going to be adapting one of them by Alan
Harmon as the framework, guided by the others and filling in
some of the sub points. And as we say in the membership
follows in humble reliance on the grace of the Holy Spirit.
But it's that outline is on page 7, I guess, of your bulletin.
And so if you'd like to follow along, that'd be great.
So Harmon titles this whole chapter, the Lord's rebuke to
Israel to in many ways, a summary and A and a
recapitulation of the section of Isaiah that begins with chapter
40. Second Timothy 316 and 17 of the
New International Version says all Scriptures God breathed and
is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness. So the servant of God may be
thoroughly equipped for every good work instead of useful.
The the ESV and King James say Scripture is profitable for
these things. So I kind of want to focus on
prophet today in the verse 18 of of our passage, the Lord our
Redeemer, the Holy one of Israel tells us he's the one who
teaches you to profit. So my prayer for this morning,
as has been for the last several weeks, is this time together
will be profitable for all of us, teaching, rebuking,
correcting, and training us in righteousness.
So we might be fully, completely, thoroughly equipped
for the good works that God has prepared for us beforehand that
we should walk in them. So as we as we begin walking
through the passage, the first half is on the refining of
Israel, and it begins with a sharp rebuke from the Lord.
Starting again at verse one, hear this, O House of Jacob, who
are called by the name of Israel, and who came from the
waters of Judah, who swear by the name of the Lord and confess
the God of Israel, but not in truth or right, for they call
themselves after the holy city and stay themselves on the God
of Israel. The Lord of hosts is his name.
God here is addressing their hypocrisy.
They're professing faith without possessing faith.
They call themselves after the holy city, but their claim
doesn't respond, doesn't correspond to reality.
As he says, it's not in truth or right.
So then the Lord through Isaiah continues the indictment of
their hard heartedness and their hard headedness.
Picking up on verse 3, The former things I declared of old,
they went out from my mouth and I announced them.
Then suddenly I did them and they came to pass.
Because I know that you are obstinate and your neck is an
iron sinew and your forehead brass.
I declared them to you from of old before they came to pass.
I announced them to you, lest you should say my idol did them.
My carved image and my metal image commanded them.
You have heard. Now see all this, and will you
not declare it? Despite the many ways they've
seen God's miraculous deliverance in their nation's
history and been told and had been told of His mighty acts in
fulfillment of prophecy, they still went astray in their
hearts after worthless idols. One of the former things that
Isaiah is Speaking of was God's promise to Abram in Genesis 15,
when he said, no for certain that your offspring will be
sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants
there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years.
But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and
afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
Now this was of course fulfilled in the exodus from Egypt.
And yet, what did the people of Israel do when Moses left them
alone at the foot of Mount Sinai after Aaron full fashioned a
golden calf which was made out of the great possessions they
had plundered from the Egyptians?
They said these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out
of the land of Egypt. This pattern of lapses into
idolatry had persisted for centuries by the time of
Isaiah's ministry. Over the 450 years since the
Exodus, the people of Israel and Judah had lost sight of God's
mighty hand in deliverance. They'd even sought an alliance
with Egypt to fight their enemies instead of trusting the
God who had delivered them from Egypt.
And so now, through Isaiah, for the last several chapters and
culminating here, God was declaring new things, picking up
in the last half of verse 6. From this time forth I announced
to you new things, hidden things that you have not known.
They are created now, not long ago, before today.
You've never heard of them, lest you should say, behold, I knew
them. You've never heard, you've never
known from of old your ear has not been opened.
For I knew that you would surely deal treacherous, treacherously,
and that from before birth you were called a rebel.
Knowing that they were stiff necked people, the Lord held
back, revealing these things until just before they happened.
So it will be clear that He, and not their idols had done them.
They would be taken into captivity, into Babylon, but not
utterly wiped out so that His name would not be tarnished.
Begin up in verse 9. For my name's sake, I defer my
anger. For the sake of my praise, I
restrained for you that I may not cut you off.
Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver.
I've tried you in the furnace of affliction for my own sake.
For my own sake I do it. For how should my name be
profaned? My glory I will not give to
another. They were to be tried in the
furnace of affliction as they had been in Egypt.
They were not to be refined as silver, which ChatGPT tells me
is heated at 1800 to 2200°F until only the dross remains.
One of the commentators said this was a good thing because
dross was all they had. God would not cut them off
because the glory of His name was at stake.
If He forsook His people and failed to deliver them, the
nations would say He's no better than Bell or Nebo or one of the
other idols fashioned by human hands.
Those idols were powerless. But Israel's God is omnipotent,
as we see in the next verses which begin the second major
section of the chapter, the redemption of Israel.
Listen to me, O Jacob and Israel, whom I called.
I am He, I am the 1st and I am the last.
My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand
spread out the heavens. When I call to them, they stand
forth together. Who is this all powerful God?
It's Yahweh, the I am the capitalized Lord in our English
Bibles. And here, without mentioning him
by name, he again affirms his never before seen plan for the
Persian king Cyrus. We first met in chapter 45 and
it was still several decades from being born.
This Cyrus would overflow overthrow Babylon in a single
day beginning verse 14. Assemble all of you and listen.
Who among them has declared these things?
The Lord loves him. He shall perform his purpose on
Babylon, and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.
I even I have spoken and called him.
I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.
Cyrus is an instrument in the Lord's hand.
He's not a robot or an automaton.
He uses his own skill and intellect to freely and
willingly accomplish the work for which the Lord has called
him. The Lord loves him.
He is a servant of the Lord. Harmon says, and the other
commentators agree that the next verse, verse 16, is an
interjection from not a servant, but the servant of the Lord
who's going to take center stage in the next chapter.
Draw near to me. Hear this from the beginning.
I have not spoken in secret. From the time it came to be, I
have been there and now the Lord God has sent me and His Spirit.
Harmon notes that the previous chapters have only designated
one person as spirit in doubt and that is the servant of the
Lord. See chapter 42 verse one and the
name for God used in this passage here.
Adonai Yahweh is the same one used in the third servant song
in Isaiah 50. So if we put these together, the
last phrase there becomes a description of the of a
conspiracy of the Trinity. The Lord God and his Spirit have
sent the servant. In verses 17 to 19, we hear
God's heart as he mourns over Israel's regrettable resistance,
the failure of his people to love, trust and obey him.
Thus says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of
Israel. I am the Lord your God, who
teaches you to prophet, who leads you in the way you should
go. Oh, that you had paid attention
to my commandments. Then your peace would have been
like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of
the sea. Your offspring would have been
like the sand, and your descendants like its grains.
Their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me.
This is echoed in Jesus lament over Jerusalem in the days
before his crucifixion and also in Psalm 81.
And so I'd like to invite you to turn with me to Psalm 81, Psalm
81, and I'm going to begin at verse 10.
I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land
of Egypt. Open wide your mouth, and I will
fill it. But my people did not listen to
me, who did not listen to my voice.
Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their
stubborn hearts to follow their own counsels.
Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in
my ways. I would soon subdue their
enemies and turn my hand against their foes.
But the good news for those in captivity was that despite their
sin and unbelief, despite their failure to love and trust their
Redeemer, He would steal out of sheer grace and for the sake of
His name, deliver them yet again.
And there would be the second Exodus.
This was the new thing, and not now, only now prophesied and
soon to be fulfilled. And so, as He promises the
second Exodus, God reminds them of His faithfulness in the first
Exodus when He led them through the desert and provided the food
and water they needed, even making water flow from the rock,
picking up again in Isaiah 48 and verse 20.
Go out from Babylon, free from Chaldea.
Declare this with a shout of joy.
Proclaim it. Send it out to the end of the
earth. Say the Lord has redeemed His
servant Jacob. They did not thirst when He led
them through the deserts. He made water flow for them from
the rock, He split the rock, and the water gushed out.
When they were to be freed from Babylon, they would not be
sneaking out in the middle of the night.
They'd be walking out boldly because of the conquering,
because the conquering King Cyrus was the Lord's chosen
instrument, would set them free. Whoever heard of such a thing?
When one nation conquers another, they ordinarily would
keep the slaves, right? They're part of the property,
the part of the plunder. Why would Cyrus have it in his
heart to send the people back to Jerusalem and even pay for the
rebuilding of its walls and the temple?
Because, as Proverbs 21 one tells us, the King's heart is a
stream of water in the hand of the Lord.
He turns up wherever he will. This is something only the
omnipotent King of the universe could do, and something only the
God of all grace would do. The chapter concludes with a
sobering warning. There is no peace, says the
Lord, for the wicked. The promise that the nation
would be liberated by Cyrus was sure, but individuals must not
become complacent as to their own standing.
As Paul writes in Romans 9, not all who are descended from
Israel belong to Israel. Salvation of the nation doesn't
translate to every individual. As Harmon puts it, the promised
blessings only apply to those within Israel who seek the Lord
in truth and righteousness. Pastor Harper usually concludes
his sermons with So what to apply Scripture to our context.
But to finish off my alliteration of rebuke and
refining and redemption, I'm going to close with
ramifications for God's people today.
The first is one that we haven't called out specifically, but
it's all through the text. Listen, listen to God when God
speaks. Listen the comment, the
commentator say the Hebrew word for listener here is sprinkled
through this chapter 10 times. So let's walk through and see
some of them in verse one. Hear this, O House of Jacob,
verse 6, you have heard. Now see this, Now see all this
and will you not declare it? Verse 12 listen to me, O Jacob.
Verse 14, assemble all of you and listen.
Verse 16, draw near to me. Hear this.
When the omnipotent Lord speaks, Our Calling is to listen.
The second ramification is that when we listen, the way we show
we've heard is to trust the message and to obey it.
Obedience is the evidence that we've really heard.
We don't want to hear Jesus say on the Judgment Day that we have
been calling ourselves Christians, but not in truth or
right. Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday, today, and forever. He teaches us to profit.
He leads us in the way we should go.
Today we have the fullness of His revelation, first through
the prophet, but finally in his incarnation as well, and as his
victorious resurrection that vindicated Him and justified
those who are in Him. Our hearing and obeying doesn't
merit our salvation, which comes only from the finished work of
Christ on our behalf, but it is the fruit of faith in Him.
As He said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments, and
it will be good for us. It will be profitable.
Our prophet may not be temporal or financial, but we know that
when we lay up treasures in heaven, they are eternal,
undefiled, unfading, and not subject to Moss, rust, or
thieves. And where our treasure is, there
will our heart be also. The final ramification of this
passage is a call to repent. There are other ramifications.
This is the last one I got. It's implied in the final verse.
There is no peace, says the Lord, for the wicked, if you've
been calling yourself after the name of Christ, but, as Isaiah
would say, not in truth or right, or if you've never
professed faith in Christ. The right response to this is
found later in this book in Isaiah 55 verses 6:00 and 7:00.
Seek the Lord while he may be found.
Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his ways,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts.
Let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
There is no peace for the wicked, but yet God graciously
calls us to repentance and trust in Him.
And then finally, I'd like you to take a little turn over to
the right in your Bibles, a little bit to Ezekiel, because
the prophet Ezekiel brought a very similar message in chapter
18. And I'm going to begin at verse
23, Ezekiel 1823. Have I any pleasure in the death
of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he
should turn from his way and live, And then skipping down to
the last half of verse 30 and through the end, repent and turn
away from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be
your ruin, castaway from you all the transgressions you have
committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.
Why will you die, O House of Israel?
For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the
Lord God. So turn and live.
The first of Martin Luther's 95 theses nailed to the church door
in Wittenberg in October 1517 was this.
Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ.
In saying repent, ye intended that the whole life of His
believers on earth should be a constant penance.
Repentance isn't a one time act. Like the people of Israel, we
are all prone to wander. That's why we confess our sins
corporately and individually each week in the service, and
why as we come to the Lord's Table, we remember his sacrifice
to deliver us from the penalty of sin, from the power of sin,
and one day from the presence of sin until that day.
God calls us to this cycle, to this pattern.
First, to listen, to trust and obey, to repent when we fail,
and to repent even when we think we're succeeding, may grant that
we all would bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
Let's pray. Father, we confess that we are
prone to listen to the clamor of Babylon instead of Your still
small voice in our weakness, help us to listen to You, to
trust You, and to obey You, and to not be LED astray by the
deceitfulness of sin. Give us eyes to see Your
majestic power and glory, ears to hear Your voice of our Good
Shepherd, Your only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and by Your
Holy Spirit's indwelling presence, give us increasing
love for You and for our neighbors, and especially for
those of the household of faith. We humbly ask this, not because
of any merit in ourselves, but because of who You have revealed
yourself to be through Your Word, Who became flesh and gave
Himself to redeem us from all lawlessness, and to purify and
to purify for himself a people for his own possession, where
zealous for good works. We ask it in His name.
Amen.