Okay, shall we just have a word of
prayer and we'll make a start.
We just want consciously, Lord, to come before
you again and lift our hearts to you
and declare our dependence upon you.
We do pray, Lord, for that special help
of your spirit which will open this book
and show us our Saviour.
Lord, we give ourselves to you and pray
for your blessing upon this time.
Amen.
Someone said to me earlier that if nothing
else, he said, we have a great sense
of anticipation.
I think that's because of all the things
that have been said indirectly about me during
these last couple of meetings.
I really don't know where I got this
reputation for erudition from.
It reminds me of a story told about
a lady, a negro lady in the deep
south of North America who had a reputation
for being very wise and being able to
give very good counsel to different people.
And on one occasion, someone asked her how
it was she had this ability.
And she said, well, she said, when you
had no education, you just have to use
your brains.
And that's really the principle we shall have
to work on.
I tell you, it was only the posh
houses that had gutters where I came from,
so you couldn't even play in the gutters
where I came from.
I want to center my thoughts really on
some of the things that are said in
the book of Isaiah.
Someone asked me earlier on what I was
going to do, and I said, I thought
I would be in Isaiah.
And he said he'd just come back from
Romania where there was a specialist on Isaiah
who had spent many years doing all kinds
of charts trying to work out what a
specialist on Isaiah would be called, a kind
of an izeologist or something like that.
Well, I'm not one of those, but there
are parts of the book of Isaiah which
I really think can be very helpful in
enlarging our concept of God.
I reveled in what we were listening to
last night and at other times.
There aren't many people who talk to us
about God.
There aren't many preachers who talk to us
about God.
Lots of ideas, and truths, and salvation, and
what should happen, and where we should go,
and how we should be, but there aren't
many people who talk to us about God.
And it's a delight just to be able
to do that.
And one of the purposes of people like
Isaiah for us is the way in which
God can continue by his spirit to enlarge
our understanding and enlarge our concepts of who
God is.
Many others here will know the book of
Isaiah well.
And if I try to put it a
little bit into its context, it's just because
when you put a thing into its context,
often it can help you.
It can mean quite a bit more if
you put it into its context.
For example, um, I will quote something to
you.
This is almost probably a direct quote.
If I can remember it, it's something like
this.
Have you remembered that the car has to
go in tomorrow?
Now, there's only one person here who just
looked up.
There's only one person here who will understand
that quote, and it's because there's only one
person here who understands the context, who knows
who it was said by, and when it
was said, and what car was being referred
to.
It was something that Naomi said to Tom
yesterday.
And of course, the quotation makes no sense
at all to us, because we don't know
what the context was.
We don't know who said what.
But when you do know the context, then
you begin to understand some of the implications
of those kind of statements.
Let me just begin in a very slow
and gentle way to say something about prophecy,
and about the way that prophecy has come
into being.
If you turn to the writings of Peter,
1 Peter chapter 1, in
verse 9 he makes reference to our salvation,
the salvation of our souls, and then in
verse 10 he says this, Of which salvation
the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who
prophesied of the grace that should come to
you, searching what or what manner of time
the Spirit of Christ which was in them
did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings
of Christ and the glory that should follow.
Unto whom it was revealed that not unto
themselves but unto us they did minister the
things which are now reported unto you by
them that have preached the gospel unto you,
with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven,
which things the angels desire to look into.
It's a fascinating little comment that the Spirit
of God brings us at this time about
the way in which prophecy worked.
Peter also says in his other letter that
no prophecy comes by private interpretation.
Prophecy is not the opinions of men.
It's not the result of Isaiah's meditations, his
contemplations, and then saying, well I think probably
God is thinking like this.
They're not private interpretations.
It was the Spirit of Christ who was
speaking in them of sufferings and glories which
would follow.
And one of the things that Peter says
here is that the prophets themselves were very
aware that they did not understand the full
implications of what they were saying.
The prophets themselves did not know the full
implications of what they were saying.
In fact, what it says here is that
they searched and inquired diligently.
Those are metaphors from mining.
They dug and they delved.
The words that God had given to them,
they sought to understand.
They knew that God had said things, the
implications of which were far greater than they
could really see.
They knew that there was truth beyond the
horizons of their own situation.
They knew they were saying things that had
a far greater relevance than just the context
in which they spoke.
And when they asked God what the relevance
of these things were, one of the things
that was told them was this.
Verse 12, it was revealed to them that
not to themselves but to us they did
minister the things which are now reported to
you by them that have preached the gospel
to you.
And it goes on.
Verse 12 tells us, if you have eyes
to read it and a heart to receive
it, that the prophecy of Isaiah was written
to you.
According to verse 12, the Isaiah was written
to you.
There are all kinds of parts of the
Old Testament which have a far greater relevance
to you than they do to the people
who originally spoke them or wrote them, and
the people who originally heard them.
Let's go back to an Old Testament prophet.
Let's go back to Hosea.
Hosea chapter 11.
This, perhaps, will just illustrate a little bit
something of the nature and the wonder of
this book that God has given to us.
Hosea chapter 11.
When Israel was a child, then I loved
him and called my son out of Egypt.
As they called them, so they went from
them.
They sacrificed to Balaam and burnt incense to
graven images.
It's not, perhaps, a very edifying two verses,
but the reason I read it is because
if you look at the first verse and
then say to yourself, what did this mean
to Hosea?
What did this first verse mean to the
man who originally uttered it or wrote it?
When Israel was a child, then I loved
him and called my son out of Egypt.
And if you think about it, it's not
complicated.
You'll come to the conclusion, I'm sure, that
Hosea is thinking about the Exodus.
He's thinking about the time when God called
Israel to be his nation, and God spoke
of Israel as his son.
God said, Israel is my son, my firstborn
son.
Israel must be set free so that he
can serve me.
And here he says, when Israel was a
child, then I loved him and called my
son out of Egypt.
And if you had said to Hosea at
the end of the meeting, or whenever it
was he uttered this prophecy, if you had
said to him, what did you mean by
that sentence when you said, when Israel was
a child, then I loved him and called
my son out of Egypt?
I have no doubt at all in my
mind that Hosea would have said, well, I
was referring to the Exodus.
I was referring to the time of God's
choice of the nation when he brought the
people out to become his people.
Well, let's turn to Matthew in that case.
Matthew, who constantly goes back to the Old
Testament, here in Matthew chapter 2.
I'll read from verse 12 because that will
be enough for us to catch the sense
of it.
Verse 12.
And being warned of God in a dream
that they should not return to Herod, this
is the wise ones, they departed into their
own country another way.
And when they were departed, behold, the angel
of the Lord appears to Joseph in a
dream saying, arise and take the young child
and his mother and flee into Egypt and
be thou there until I bring thee word,
for Herod will seek the young child to
destroy him.
When he arose, he took the young child
and his mother by night and departed into
Egypt and was there until the death of
Herod in order that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken of the Lord by the
prophet saying, out of Egypt have I called
my son.
Now, how about that?
That means that we have the opportunity of
understanding the prophecy of Hosea better than Hosea
did.
That might sound staggering, but it's true.
You and I have the opportunity of understanding
the prophecy of Hosea better than Hosea did.
I don't suppose, I know it's speculation, but
I don't suppose for a minute that Hosea,
if you had said to him, do you
really think you were speaking about the Messiah,
I'm sure he would have said, well no,
I was just referring to the exodus when
they came out.
But Hosea was saying more than he knew.
You see, it was God speaking by Hosea.
It wasn't the private interpretation of Hosea.
He was speaking things, and it's when we
come into the New Testament that we begin
to get a definitive exposition of some of
these wonderful passages of Scripture.
Not just what they meant in their time
and their context, but what they meant in
an eternal context.
It speaks, we just read in Peter, of
the Spirit of Christ.
The Spirit of Christ is the eternal spirit.
He's spoken of like this in Hebrews.
I'll try not to get too close to
Hebrews.
I was thinking when we were driving down
in the car and just sharing a little
bit about the things that were on our
hearts that we might share.
But really, it's counterproductive, you know, to say
to people, I'm thinking of doing this, so
please don't you think about it, because it
just has the opposite effect.
It's like the story that maybe some of
you recall that Edgar Parkins used to tell.
Now Edgar was a master at storytelling, so
I can't compete with that.
But he told a story that had something
to do with some African country in which
there was kind of a witch doctor who
had a special brew or medicine that was
guaranteed to cure anything.
It didn't matter what you had, this concoction
would cure it.
But there was just one proviso, and the
witch doctor said when you use it, it
will cure anything as long as when you
use it, you don't think about red monkeys.
Now you can work out exactly what would
happen, of course, couldn't you?
As soon as you reach for it, the
first thing you think is, so it's not
going to work.
So, once you begin to say, I'm going
to think along these lines, please don't do
anything along that line, immediately, most of your
thoughts go along that line.
But in Hebrews, it speaks of the Lord
Jesus, and it uses this phrase, it says
that it was through the eternal spirit that
he offered himself for that spot unto God.
What happened on the cross, we've already touched
on it this morning, what happened on the
cross, although it was at a point in
time, and at a geographical location, you can
put it in its context in those senses,
in another sense, it was outside time.
It was an eternal event, an event which
doesn't grow old, it never becomes jaded.
Things that are just purely historical become tired,
they grow weary, and the memories of them
slowly begin to fade away.
I remember hearing a historian who once said
that if you want a sense of history,
or in order to have a sense of
history, you have to have a sense of
loss.
That's a bit profound for early in the
morning, but it really means that it's when
you begin to realize that something is beyond
you, and you can't get it back, and
there's a sense of loss, that people usually
begin to get interested in their history.
When their parents are getting old, or their
grandparents have died, they begin to think, oh,
I wonder what granny used to do when
she was little, or this kind of thing.
You see, if you have a sense of
loss, it often creates a kind of a
sense and an interest in history.
The marvellous thing is that I have no
sense of history at all about the cross.
I have no sense at all of loss.
It's not growing tight.
I have to constantly remind myself that it
was 2,000 years ago, because in my
spirit it seems as though it's now.
Like Wesley's hymns, even now we see him
die, even now.
There's something that happens in the spirit that
doesn't grow old.
It doesn't get weary.
It doesn't get jaded.
It doesn't become stagnant.
It is alive, and what happened on the
cross was that the Lord Jesus offered himself
through the eternal spirit to God, and the
consequence of that is eternal.
Now, eternal does not just mean it goes
on forever, like some preachers.
It doesn't mean that.
Eternal means, really, outside time of a different
nature altogether.
From eternity to eternity thou art God.
It's an entirely different dimension, but it's a
dimension that touches time at certain places in
God's orderings.
And that's why it can speak of the
death of the Lord Jesus Christ as being
from the foundation of the world.
That's why he can say those kind of
things.
And things that happen in eternity, you can
see them any time.
You can see them before they happen, and
you can see them after they happen, because
they always are.
Things that are eternal are always as they
ever were.
Let me go back a little bit to
Psalm, Psalm 22.
There are many psalms like this.
This is a psalm of David, and again,
I hope it will just begin to help
us to understand something that is happening in
the Old Testament, and why we should not
relegate the Old Testament just to an Old
Testament way of looking at things.
If you do that, you end up locked
in history, and all you end up with
is a list of facts and information, and
maybe one or two lessons.
But you won't have the living life of
God.
You won't have the continuing revelation of his
Spirit making things real to you.
This is Psalm 22, a very well-known
psalm, in which David begins by saying, my
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Very familiar, of course, because they're the words
that the Lord Jesus spoke on the cross.
And some people who perhaps haven't thought this
right the way through would say that Jesus
was quoting these words on the cross.
He wasn't.
David was quoting the words from the cross.
Now, if you want a timeline, it's a
useful one if you want it.
David is a thousand BC.
He's a thousand years before Christ.
And yet, a thousand years before Christ, David
heard something and repeated it.
And what he heard was this word, this
testimony of the Spirit of Christ that was
within him.
This is what Peter says, isn't it?
He says that it was the Spirit of
Christ in them that was testifying of things
that would be concerning sufferings and glories.
What David heard was the testimony of the
Spirit of Christ.
There's a verse in Revelation chapter 19 which
says, the testimony of Jesus is the spirit
of prophecy.
Sounds a kind of a vague, obscure, mystical
verse.
And it means many things.
You can use the word testimony in the
sense of bearing witness to someone, speaking the
truth to someone.
And prophecy was certainly that.
But you can also use the word witness
or testimony in the sense of your recounting
of your personal experience.
And it is the testimony of Jesus, in
this sense, which is the spirit of prophecy.
If we read a little bit farther on
into Psalm 22, you'd have words like this.
Verse 14.
I am poured out like water, and all
my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax, it is melted
in the midst of my bowels.
My strength is dried up like a pot
shard, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws,
and thou hast brought me into the dust
of death.
For dogs, that's what the Jews call Gentiles,
for dogs have compassed me.
The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me.
They pierced my hands and my feet.
And you and I know that this is
not David's testimony.
This never happened to David.
He never had his hands and his feet
pierced.
It goes on, I may count all my
bones.
They look and stare upon me.
They part my garments among them, and cast
lots upon my vesture.
This isn't David's testimony.
We know whose testimony this is, and this
is the testimony of Jesus, which is the
spirit of prophecy.
This is the spirit of Christ in David,
speaking things which are eternally true.
From that eternal moment—that sounds like a contradiction
in terms—but from that eternal moment, David heard
this chronologically a thousand years before the time,
but he heard it in the spirits.
Things happened in David, and in all these
Old Testament prophets, that were beyond their understanding.
They weren't the result of their hard work.
They weren't the result of their meditations.
They were the result of something bubbling up
inside them.
That's another way that David expresses it.
I think it's Psalm 145, is it?
Psalm 45.
While we're here, we'll have a look.
Psalm 45.
This isn't called a song of David, and
it wasn't, but whoever it was had exactly
the same experience that David would have had.
The A.V. says, my heart is inditing
a good matter, but probably in your margin
it says, bubbling up, or something like that.
My heart is bubbling up with a good
measure.
I speak of the things which I have
made touching the King.
My tongue is the pen of a ready
writer.
All right, if his tongue is the pen,
who is the writer?
If his tongue is the pen, who is
the writer?
This isn't a result of his own brain
work.
This is something that's bubbling up.
This is the Spirit of Christ that's within
him, testifying of eternal realities.
And you get that kind of thing happening
all the way through the prophets, and that's
why they are eternally relevant.
It's an interesting thing, and I'm not advocating
it, I'm not saying that it's the only
way that God wants to speak to us,
but probably the strongest words of comfort that
God has brought to you in your Christian
pilgrimage have been from the Psalms and from
Isaiah.
Is that right?
Well, I won't kind of test the meeting,
as I used to call it, but probably
the strongest words of encouragement have come from
places like that.
And it's not because you are reading some
historical document that gives you some vague kind
of consolation, it's because the Spirit of Christ
is still testifying, still speaking.
These words still have lasting power, they've not
grown old.
You must have had the experience, I have
it constantly, where you read a passage of
Scripture and you think, I've never seen that
before.
Sometimes you come to a verse, and you
must have read it 20 times in your
lifetime, but you come to it and you
think, I've never seen this, I've never seen
it.
There's a life that comes into things, not
just the book, but the Spirit using the
book.
This is a very, very powerful instrument, and
like all instruments, it can be used wrongly.
The greatest blessing, the greatest heritage that the
Jewish nation had was this book.
That's what Paul says.
He asks a question, he says, what advantages
then are there to circumcision?
And he says, much in every way, but
chiefly, that to them were committed the oracles
of God.
This is their greatest treasure, and their greatest
tragedy.
Jesus said, you search the Scriptures, because in
them you think you'll find eternal life, and
they testify of me, and you won't come
to me that you might have life.
Their greatest treasure, and their greatest tragedy.
Interesting, isn't it?
But, in the hands of God's Spirit, this
book, and the words of this book, as
God addresses them to our hearts, can bring
life again and again, and transform situations of
all kinds.
So, Isaiah isn't just locked away in the
Old Testament.
I sometimes think that I would like to
get a Bible which had kind of rings
on the back of it, so that when
you got to the Old Testament, you just
kind of kept on turning around, and you
went to the into the New Testament, and
when you got to the end of the
New Testament, you just went automatically into the
Old Testament, as though it was just kind
of a circular thing.
I think it was Augustine who used to
say that in the Old Testament, the new
is concealed, and that in the New Testament,
the old is revealed.
They're not at one another's throats.
They're not in contention.
They are different ways that God has spoken.
Supremely, of course, God has now spoken to
us in a son.
In divers' plays, in divers' times, in other
ways, God had sought to express himself through
his prophets, but now, in these last days,
he has spoken to us in a son.
Now, at last, God has a perfect means
of expression, a way of making it clear
to every heart just exactly who he is,
and what he's like.
God used all kinds of different people.
He used people who were simple herdsmen, like
Amos.
He used people like Isaiah, who many people
say, and certainly Jewish tradition says very strongly,
was a cousin of the king, cousin of
King Uzziah.
They reckon that Uzziah's father and Isaiah's father
were actually brothers.
It can't be proved, but it's a very
old tradition, so there may be some kind
of truth in it.
There are one or two places in the
book of Isaiah where you get the sense
that the king would have known Isaiah's children
by name.
So, maybe there was a close connection.
Let's turn to Isaiah chapter 1.
Perhaps you've noticed when you've read the scriptures
just how often the Bible is date-stamped,
how often you get some reference to the
date.
It was during this rain, or it was
after this earthquake, or it was at this
point in time, and that's because the context
really often does give a tremendous relevance to
things.
It's not necessary.
It doesn't have to be this way.
While you're looking to the first part of
Isaiah, I'll just look for another verse so
that I can quote it exactly.
I recall many years ago now being at,
when I was in Birmingham and I was
at a college, and there was a Christian
sister at this college who had only recently
become a Christian, and she had had difficulties
with her parents at home.
She was a Liverpudlian girl.
I can remember her very, very clearly.
And she'd had difficulties with her parents, and
particularly with her father.
And she was always getting into arguments and
contention with her father, who thought that the
decisions that she had made were nonsense.
So, there were constant rows in the family,
and she was often very, very distressed by
these rows that went on, these quarrels.
And on one occasion, after a very strong
quarrel, she went upstairs to her own room,
very, very distressed, and just opened the Bible
at Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 22.
I'll read it for you.
This is what she read.
She read that you put off concerning the
former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt
according to the deceitful lusts.
And it was a source of great encouragement
to her, because she was sure it was
telling her that she wasn't to worry about
this conversation that she'd had with her dad.
Now, that is not good exposition, but God
can use his book like that.
God can use his book like that all
the time.
All the time, God has the right to
take a verse out of context and use
it in whatever way he wants to, but
you don't have the right to do that.
You have a responsibility, really, to try to
understand just what God is saying in a
more plain way.
This is Isaiah chapter 1.
The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz,
which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in
the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah,
kings of Judah.
Isaiah began his time of prophecy at a
sad time for the nation of Israel.
Now, God had made them his own people,
he'd made them one, but after the reign
of Solomon, some of the cracks that were
already in the system began to open out,
and in Solomon's son's reign, the time of
Rehoboam, the nation divided into two parts.
And the northern part of ten tribes became
known as Israel.
God said, this is Israel.
And the remaining part was given for David's
sake to Rehoboam and became the nation of
Judah in the south.
So, you had a split nation, and God
sent some prophets to one nation, and some
prophets to another nation, and sometimes the prophets
spoke in the way that God saw things
in his heart, still regarding everything as one,
but with an understanding that things were not
as God had intended them to be.
Well, here, Isaiah was a prophet during the
time of these kings of Judah, that's to
say, the southern kingdom.
If you want some dates, it's roughly, this
is just very roughly, about 750 BC to
about 700 BC.
That's very rough and ready, but it's enough
just to kind of get it into some
kind of picture.
This was when, during that whole period, of
50 years or something like that, God gave
the prophetic word to Isaiah.
So, what we have as the book of
Isaiah was not written at one sitting.
It was written over a period of 50
years, and part was added to part, and
the Spirit of God constantly building the revelation
and increasing truth, and sometimes it's very local,
sometimes it's just referring to things that are
happening there at that day, but there are
other times when it lifts, when it really
takes off, and you begin to describe something
which is on the earthly level, and almost
imperceptibly, you suddenly discover you've become airborne.
Let me just show you an example of
that, if I can find it quickly.
It's in Isaiah chapter 14, Isaiah
chapter 14.
God had a lot to say about other
nations as they touched his nation at this
time, and this begins like this in verse
4, that you shall take up this proverb
against the king of Babylon.
All right, now that seems very straightforward, isn't
it?
We're talking about the king of Babylon.
I'll explain a little bit about these superpowers
in a minute.
They shall take up this proverb against the
king of Babylon and say, how has the
oppressor ceased?
The golden city ceased.
The Lord has broken the staff of the
wicked and the scepter of the rulers.
He who smote the people in wrath with
a continual stroke.
He that ruled the nations in anger is
persecuted and none hinders.
The whole earth is at rest and is
quiet.
They break forth into singing.
Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee and
the cedars of Lebanon saying, since thou art
laid down, no axman has come up against
us.
Hell from beneath is moved for thee to
meet thee at thy coming.
It stirreth up the dead for thee, even
all the chief ones of the earth.
It hath raised up from their thrones all
the kings of the nations.
All they shall speak and say unto thee,
art thou also become weak as we?
Art thou become like unto us?
Thy pump is brought down to the grave
and the noise of thy vials.
The worm is spread under thee and the
worms cover thee.
Well, what is all that about?
It's a picture that Isaiah is giving of
the end of the Babylonian empire.
There were different superpowers in those days as
there are in our days and this is
a prophecy of the time when the superpower
of Babylon would come to an end and
it's personified in its king, the king of
Babylon.
And you've got this picture of hell itself,
Hades, and all the other kings that the
king of Babylon has conquered and put to
death, they are in Hades and now as
he is dispossessed of his authority, he comes
down to Hades and they all stand up
to watch him and they say, now look,
you're exactly the same as we are now.
What happened to us is exactly the same
as what's happened to you.
And then it says this in verse 12.
Remember, this is a proverb against the king
of Babylon.
Verse 12, how art thou fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning.
Now, how did we get from Babylon to
heaven?
This is one of the things that happens
often in prophecy.
You begin at a certain level and without
warning it suddenly takes off and you're at
an entirely different height.
You're operating with different things.
You have begun to touch principles which are
working out on the earth.
You've begun to touch practical, down-to-earth,
solid flesh-and-blood issues, but behind those
flesh-and-blood issues there are spiritual powers.
And as you begin to address the earthly,
you begin to identify the spiritual powers that's
behind them, and the word of God goes
to the source of things and not just
to the manifestation which is in flesh and
blood.
Behind the king of Babylon there was another
power.
Behind the king of Babylon there was another
power.
And Isaiah, speaking in the spirit, begins to
speak to the king of Babylon and then
addresses the power that's behind him and says
this.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer,
son of the morning?
How art thou cut down to the ground
which didst weaken the nations?
For thou hast said in thine heart, I
will ascend into heaven.
I will exalt my throne above the stars
of God.
I will sit also upon the mount of
the congregation in the sides of the north.
I will ascend above the heights of the
clouds.
I will be like the Most High.
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell,
to the sides of the pit.
They that see thee shall narrowly look upon
thee and consider thee, saying, Is this the
man that made the earth to tremble, that
did shake the kingdoms?
We're back on the earthly level of things
now.
It's as well to keep this kind of
thing in mind when you read the scripture,
that at times when it begins at one
point and without warning will suddenly move into
another dimension of things, onto another level of
things.
Well, Isaiah was living at a time of
tremendous conflict amongst the nations.
Last night, Rez just jokingly said that we'd
left Mr. North the maps to preach on.
I like to kind of preach on the
maps, so you'll have to preach on the
preface to King James or something like that.
If you've got a map at the back
of your Bible, or if you haven't, just
try to keep something in your mind.
We've already spoken about the division of God's
people into two parts, the northern, which was
Israel, and the southern, which was Judah.
And around these times, if you had gone
northeast from Israel, the land of Israel, you
would have come to the heart of what
was known as the Assyrian Empire.
Its capital was Nineveh, and at one time
it was one of the great superpowers.
It was a very cruel superpower.
It had a time of weakness, and during
that time of weakness, there was an opportunity
for some of the kings in the northern
kingdom of Israel to be their own men
a little bit more.
They could make different kinds of decisions, and
they could strengthen their borders against attack.
But then, there was a kind of a
revival, not a spiritual revival, but a kind
of political revival in Assyria, and there was
an Assyrian general whose name was Pol, who
took the throne, changed his name to Tiglath
-Pileser III.
They liked catchy names in those old days.
And he became a real pain for everyone
who was around, and one of the things
that happened was that he strengthened the land
of Assyria and its empires, and the people
who had had a measure of freedom before,
now came again under the shadow of these
superpowers.
They could only really do what the superpowers
allowed them to do.
And this was the state of things when
Isaiah was beginning his prophecies.
So, things were very uncertain.
They were very uncertain for the northern kingdom
of Israel.
They were pretty uncertain, too, for the southern
kingdom of Judah.
And as you go through the first part
of Isaiah, up to chapter 39, you've got
a series of words that God brings concerning
the nations.
Let me just see if I can find
a verse in Deuteronomy which will explain a
little bit, perhaps, about the way that the
Bible works.
Deuteronomy chapter 32.
Les said last night, this is a very
short book.
It's not a big book at all, and
it does not pretend to be a chronicle
of world history.
That's not its intention.
It's really a highly selective view of key
incidents in the world's history that have a
spiritual relevance.
It is a God's-eye view of history.
It's God choosing particular things of particular relevance
and giving us a record of them.
You know, the Bible tells us that very
plainly.
It tells us that in John's gospel.
John says that if he had made an
account of all the things that Jesus had
done, well, the world itself wouldn't be sufficient
to contain the books that it would need.
But these are written, he says, for a
specific purpose.
These have been selected so that you would
know that Jesus is the Son of God
and that believing, you would have life through
his name.
So, there was a specific selection process going
on by the Spirit through the ministry of
John to produce the gospel of John, and
that is true of the whole Bible.
It doesn't pretend to gather all of history
together.
It really is very, very selective, and there's
a verse here in Deuteronomy that I don't
understand the full implications of, but it's amazing.
It says this, Deuteronomy 32, and verse 7.
This is when the people were poised to
go into their promised land, and Moses repeats
the law to them a second time, hence
the word Deuteronomy, which means the second law,
the second giving of the law.
Chapter 32, verse 7.
Remember the days of old.
Consider the years of many generations.
Ask thy father, and he will show thee.
Thy elders, and they will tell thee.
When the Most High divided to the nations
their inheritance, when he separated the sons of
Adam, he set the bounds of the people
according to the number of the children of
Israel.
Now, how about that for a verse?
I'll read it again, shall I?
Verse 8.
When the Most High divided to the nations
their inheritance, when he separated the sons of
Adam, he set the bounds of the people
according to the number of the children of
Israel.
Now, I'm not going to explain it, because
I don't fully understand it.
I do understand this, that it means that
this nation was God's reference point.
Israel was God's earthly reference point, and you
know that Israel, the land, is the reference
point for this book.
If this book says north, it doesn't mean
north of Exeter, it means north of the
land, which is God's reference point.
It's this reference point, and everything that has
reference and relation to Israel, and God's purposes
worked out in that people, will come into
the Bible story.
But things that don't have relevance to Israel,
and that point of geography, don't come into
the story.
So, there's nothing about the Aztecs, or the
Chinese, or even the mighty empire upon which
the sun never sat.
That's the British empire, for any foreigners amongst
us.
There's no reference to these things in it,
because they did not touch this particular thing.
This is highly selective.
This is the story of salvation.
This is God tracing redemption and reclamation.
This is God working to reverse the processes
of sin, and bring in his purposes.
So, everything that God did in these days,
he did with reference to Israel, and when
a nation touched Israel, God had something to
say about it.
And God used these nations, he used them
to chastise Israel.
Sometimes they went over the top with their
chastisement, and then God chastised them for chastising
Israel too strongly.
And there's all this kind of pattern of
things that were happening.
Now, God was going to use the people
of Assyria.
He was going to use it as part
of his purposes.
And Isaiah has these prophecies that speak about
Assyria, and about all the nations that are
around, and the effects that these things will
have.
At this time, there was an old empire
which had almost been forgotten.
It was so long ago that no one
really gave much importance to it, and that
was the old empire of Babylon.
But it was at this time, there was
an old empire which had almost been forgotten.
It was so long ago that no one
really gave much importance to it, and that
was the old empire of Babylon.
But it was long gone.
It had now been superseded by the superpower
of Assyria, so no one really had much
to think about that.
But, when you get partway through the book
of Isaiah, Isaiah begins to speak about Babylon,
because God has a purpose that he's going
to work out with Babylon.
He's actually going to use Babylon to overpower
Assyria.
And so, you've got this pattern of things.
If you read Isaiah, and you read the
Old Testament, you discover, like the old preachers
used to say, that history really is his
story.
That's what it is.
It's God working out his purposes.
God working all things according to the counsel
of his own will.
Not forcing his will upon people, but in
a wonderful way, being sovereign, and at the
same time, allowing men to make his choices.
Let's go a little bit farther on into
Isaiah before we even begin.
I'm not going to get into the early
chapters of Isaiah very much at all.
I want to get into a section of
them which is sometimes called the Servant Songs.
There are a series of prophecies which have
to do with someone in particular, and that's
really what's on my heart.
But this is just kind of a long,
slow introduction to it.
Isaiah chapter 48.
I'm reminded of a preacher who once said
that his sermons always had a beginning and
a middle and an end, but not always
in that order.
And I think it's going to be a
little bit like that this morning.
We've kind of come to a different place.
This is Isaiah 48.
Where shall we read from?
Let's read from the beginning.
Verse 1.
Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which
are called by the name of Israel, and
are come forth out of the waters of
Judah, which swear by the name of the
Lord, and make mention of the God of
Israel, but not in truth nor in righteousness.
For they call themselves of the holy city,
and stay themselves upon the God of Israel.
The Lord of hosts is his name.
I have declared the former things from the
beginning.
And they went forth out of my mouth,
and I showed them.
I did them suddenly, and they came to
pass, because I knew that thou art obstinate.
Who's he speaking to?
Just remind ourselves.
Verse 1.
O house of Jacob, which are called by
the name of Israel, and are come forth
out of the waters of Judah.
Verse 4.
Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and
thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy
brow brass.
I have even from the beginning declared it
to thee.
Before it came to pass, I showed it
thee.
Lest thou should say, my libel hath done
them, and my graven image, and my molten
image hath commanded them.
Thou hast heard, see all this, and will
not ye declare it?
I have showed thee new things from this
time, even hidden things, and thou didst not
know them.
They are created now, and not from the
beginning.
Even before the day when thou heardest them,
lest thou should say, behold, I knew them.
Yea, thou heardest not.
Yea, thou knewest not.
Yea, from the time that thine ear was
not opened, for I knew that thou wouldst
deal very treacherously, and was called a transgressor
from the womb.
That's a poignant comment.
God says here of his people, halfway through
verse 8, I knew that you would deal
very treacherously.
If you got to the end of the
Old Testament and came to the book of
Malachi, the second verse of Malachi sums up
all God's dealings with his people.
And God says very simply, I have loved
you.
That's it.
That's the explanation to everything that had happened
to them.
That's God's testimony to them.
In spite of all their misunderstandings of what
was happening, God's testimony is, I have loved
you.
But three or four times in the book
of Malachi, you'll find the word treacherously used.
God accused his people of treachery.
They had acted in a disloyal way.
They had committed high treason against the one
who was to be their king.
They had gone against him, but none of
it had taken God by surprise.
I knew, he says here, halfway through verse
8, I knew that you would deal very
treacherously.
It tells me something very wonderful about God.
It tells me that when God makes a
promise and begins a thing, he doesn't do
it half-heartedly.
He doesn't hold back.
Even though he knows sometimes that there will
be no fruit as a result of what
he is doing, he doesn't hold back.
He still gives.
It's an amazing thing.
Because our resources are limited, and maybe because
our hearts are narrowed too at times, if
we look at a hopeless case, we tend
to kind of shrink away from it.
And we say, well, I know what's going
to happen here.
There's no point in my getting involved in
this.
I haven't got the time or the energy
to waste on this.
This is dead in the water from the
start.
It's hopeless.
No way.
God isn't like that.
God speaks to nations, and he speaks to
people, and he makes great and glorious promises,
and sometimes he knows from the beginning that
those promises will never come to full effect
in the lives of the people to whom
he speaks.
Does that surprise you?
When the nations divided, Israel and Judah, and
became two parts, the northern kingdom came under
the rule of a man named Jeroboam.
If you know the Old Testament, you'll know
that often it says, Jeroboam, the son of
Nebat, who made Israel to sin.
And he constantly took the people of Israel
in wrong directions, and as that nation began,
so it continued.
And through all its line of kings, they
constantly went off in other directions.
But when Jeroboam first took the kingdom, God
spoke to him, and promised great things to
him.
God said to Jeroboam, I will make a
covenant with you that is like the covenant
that I made with David.
The sure covenant that I made with David.
It's in the book of Chronicles, you'll find
it.
God makes this amazing promise to this man.
Now you can say, well, what are the
implications of this?
What would have happened if Jeroboam had fulfilled
the conditions of the promise?
Because God had said, well, you've got to
walk before me, and you've got to keep
my word.
And if you do, all these promises are
yours.
And by implication, if you don't, none of
them are yours.
Turn please to Jeremiah, chapter 17.
Sorry, chapter 18.
Jeremiah, chapter 18.
The word which came to Jeremiah from the
Lord, saying, Arise, and go down to the
potter's house, and there I will cause thee
to hear my words.
Then I went down to the potter's house,
and behold, he worked a work on the
wheels.
And the vessel that he made of clay
was marred in the hand of the potter.
So he made it again, another vessel, as
seemed good to the potter to make it.
Then the word of the Lord came to
me, saying, O house of Israel, cannot I
do with you as this potter, saith the
Lord?
Behold, as clay is in the potter's hand,
so are ye in mine hand, O house
of Israel.
At what instant I shall speak concerning a
nation and concerning a kingdom to pluck up
and to pull down and to destroy it,
if that nation against whom I have pronounced
turn from their evil, I will repent of
the evil that I thought to do unto
them.
And at what instant I shall speak concerning
a nation and concerning a kingdom to build
and to plant it, if it do evil
in my sight, that it obey not my
voice, then I will repent of the good
wherewith I said I would benefit them.
That's a world-long statement of God's policy.
God speaks in promise and speaks in all
the generosity of his heart, and there's nothing
false about it.
He's not pretending.
He really is willing to do all that
he says he will do, and all the
resources are at the disposal of those to
whom he speaks.
But if they turn from his way, the
things that he has promised will not come.
They will not come about.
And the promises that God gave to the
people of Israel are really quite amazing.
Glorious promises.
And all the time in his heart, God
says, I knew.
I knew that you would be treacherous.
I knew.
I knew that in spite of my saying
this to you and this to you, I
knew what would happen.
But he didn't draw back.
You see, he has a large heart.
And if he speaks in judgment to a
nation or to an individual, for that matter,
while there's life, there really is hope.
While there's life, there's hope.
To me, one of the most remarkable stories
in the Old Testament is of a king
who came after Isaiah.
The last king that Isaiah prophesied during his
reign was Hezekiah.
And Hezekiah had a son whose name was
Manasseh.
And Manasseh was the most wicked king that
either Israel or Judah ever had.
Manasseh plunged into sin and into idolatry with
tremendous vigor and energy.
In fact, the Bible says that he was
worse than the nations that God had dispossessed
when he gave the land to Israel.
And God had said, of those nations, the
land is vomiting you out.
It can't take any more the way that
you're behaving.
Well, Manasseh repeated their actions, and worse.
He sacrificed his son in fire to one
of the heathen gods.
He went from one degree of wickedness to
the next.
And in the end, as a result of
God's threat to him, Manasseh was taken away
captive to...
It's a bit complicated, so I won't tell
you where, because it would confuse you if
I told you where he was taken to.
But he was taken away to another city
as a captive, and the intention of the
king of Assyria was that for the rest
of his life he should be there in
bondage, he would be in chains, and that
would be the end of him.
This is the most wicked king that the
nation had ever had.
And the Bible tells us that when he
was in this city, a captive, he turned
to God, this most wicked king that they
ever had.
He turned to God, and he repented.
And God said, alright, take him back.
It's staggering.
This man destroyed the nation.
He left such a legacy as could not
be put back together again.
And yet, individually of him, God says, alright,
take him back.
And he went back, and he began a
kind of a reform, tried to put some
of the things right that he had done.
Amazing, God's generosity, God's love.
We almost sang a hymn last night, Who
is a pardoning God like thee?
God's willingness again and again to forgive.
The disciples couldn't fathom it.
In the days when the Lord Jesus was
upon the earth, they said, well, how often
then can I be reasonable?
Seven times?
And he said, not seven, but seventy times
seven.
Let's just turn to Matthew.
It's Matthew 18 for a moment.
Matthew 18.
So much of this chapter is about forgiveness.
So much about what he has to say
about binding and loosing is about forgiveness, if
you have the eyes to see it.
Verse 21.
Matthew 18.
Then came Peter to him and said, Lord,
how often shall my brother sin against me
and I forgive him?
Until seven times?
Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto
thee until seven times, but until seventy times
seven.
Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto
a certain king, which would take account of
his servants.
When he had begun to reckon, one was
brought unto him which owed him ten thousand
talents.
But for as much as he had not
to pay, his Lord commanded him to be
sold, and his wife and children, and all
that he had in payment to be made.
The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him,
saying, Lord, have patience with me and I
will pay thee all.
Then the Lord of that servant was moved
with compassion and loosed him and forgave him
the debt.
But the same servant went out and found
one of his fellow servants which owed him
a hundred pence.
And he laid hands on him and took
him by the throat, saying, Pay me that
thou ow'st.
And his fellow servant fell down at his
feet and besought him, saying, Have patience with
me and I will pay thee all.
And he would not.
But went and cast him into prison till
he should pay the debt.
So when his fellow servants saw what was
done, they were very sorry and came and
told unto their Lord all that was done.
Then his Lord, after that he had called
him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant,
I forgave thee all that debt because thou
desirest me.
Shouldst not thou also have compassion on thy
fellow servant even as I had pity on
thee?
And his Lord was wroth and delivered him
to the tormentors till he should pay all
that was due to him.
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also
unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive
not everyone his brother their trespasses.
The amounts that are used in this story
are really quite fascinating.
There's a way that you can work out
your own conversion system of values for the
Bible.
It's very difficult just to kind of say,
well what does this represent in pounds?
But because of the story that Jesus told
about a man who went and hired people
to work in his vineyard for one penny
for one day's work, you've got a kind
of a basic unit or a building block
to try and work out some other things.
In other words, it was a fair day's
wage for a labourer in the vineyard to
have one penny.
So if you want to work out the
purchasing equivalent of that, in modern terms you
need to know roughly what a labourer would
get for one day's wage today.
Now that's a long time since I was
a labourer so I don't know, but probably
let's say just roughly so that we can
get some idea.
Let's say thirty pounds.
Are there any employers here?
Is that roughly about right?
Or more?
Alright, well let's stick to thirty and then
you can increase it.
Let's say thirty.
Well, a hundred pennies, which is what the
second servant owed to the first servant, a
hundred pennies is a hundred days' work at
about thirty pounds a day.
That's to say it's about three thousand pounds
worth in purchasing value in today's terms.
But if you want to put it another
way around, it means that if you worked
for about four months of a six-day
week and taking one off for a rest,
it would take you about four months to
discharge your debt of a hundred pennies.
Okay?
That was the second servant.
He owed about three thousand pounds.
The first servant owed ten thousand talents.
That is an equivalent of 1.8 billion
pounds.
1.8 billion pounds.
You would have to work about four months
to discharge your debt of a hundred pennies
and you would have to work 191,236
years to discharge your debt of ten thousand
talents.
Give me time and I will pay, he
said to his master.
I have no idea how he got into
that kind of situation.
1.8 billion pounds he was in debt
and he was forgiven.
One moment he had a weight of impossible
measure upon him.
1.8 billion pounds he owes one second
and the next moment he is a free
man with not a debt to his name.
This is God.
This is God's continual generosity.
Who is a pardoning God like thee?
Or who has grace so rich, so free?
I have loved you.
That is what he said to his people.
Again and again he came to them.
Again and again he said, I rose up
early and sent my servants to you.
He is referring to his prophets.
Again and again when they turned their back
on him, he sent them another one.
Patiently, constantly, loving them, loving them, never turning
his back upon them.
But I knew, he said, I knew what
you would do.
I knew you would act treacherously.
That verse was made mention of last night
in the end of John chapter 2.
When there were some who saw the miracles
that Jesus did and believed on him.
And it says, I'll read it just again
so we can read it accurately.
The end of John chapter 2, verse
23.
Now when he was in Jerusalem at the
Passover, in the feast day, many believed in
his name.
When they saw the miracles which he did.
But Jesus did not believe in them.
What I've done is I've simply translated the
same word by the same word.
Because the word that is translated believed in
verse 23 is translated commit in verse 24.
It's exactly the same word.
They believed in him, but he didn't believe
in them.
This isn't cynicism.
This isn't cynicism, it's just he knew what
was in them.
I knew.
I knew how you would behave.
His love is open towards them if they
turn and repent.
Even the adverse things that he said, he
will repent and change.
While there's life, there's hope.
Even if you get into debt to the
tune of 1.8 billion pounds, he's willing.
He's ready.
He loves, he avails himself, but there is
a sense in which he does not believe
in men because he knows what's in men.
I'll tell you who he believes in.
He believes in himself.
He believes in his ability to do all
that's necessary in men and women, to present
them faultless before his presence with exceeding joy.
He is able.
Sorry, that's Hebrews as well.
Well, and it's Titus and other places too.
He is able.
Literally, he has the power.
Man doesn't have the power.
That's why he doesn't put his confidence in
men.
But he has the power.
That's why he puts his confidence in himself
and his workings within men.
And men who will respond to him, men
who will give themselves to them, he is
able.
I love the way the Scripture expresses things.
The Scripture doesn't get tied up with answers
to questions like, is it possible to live
a life that is free from sin?
Is it possible to live a life that's
pleasing every day?
It doesn't get tied up with those questions.
It says, he is able to save to
the uttermost those that come to God by
them.
He is able to keep from falling.
Notice the focus all the time.
He, he, he.
These are the questions we ask.
Can I?
Will I?
Do I?
This is the question he asks.
Is he able?
How many times do you think it uses
the word, behold, in the Bible?
Behold really means, are you looking at what
I'm saying?
That's what it really means.
It's a word that's used so often in
the Bible that you hardly notice it.
You just, well, it just always says behold,
doesn't it?
But behold really is God attracting your attention.
He's saying, now look.
You see, if I think you're kind of
going to sleep, and I said, now look.
And people kind of say, oh, now what's
he going to say?
Well, I think it's over 1,200 times
in the Bible that the word behold is
used.
And the reason that God has to keep
saying it is because we're always looking at
the wrong things.
We're always distracted.
There's a verse in Isaiah, maybe we'll look
at it another time.
When God says to his people, don't be
dismayed, and the revised margin version gives exactly
what it means.
That particular word for dismayed means don't keep
looking all around.
Don't keep looking over there and looking over
there.
Don't look over there.
Look unto me, you ends of the earth,
and be saved.
If God can get us to look at
him, it's salvation.
I have an old Bible at home that
someone was going to throw away, and I
couldn't bear to see it thrown away.
So, I ended up with it.
And it has some of those old watercolor
pictures, I think they were from Harold Copping.
And one of them that it's got in
is the story that comes from Numbers, when
the people of Israel had sinned against God,
and he had sent amongst them fiery serpents.
And they had bitten them, and people were
dying, and they cried to God.
And God said to Moses, well, make a
fiery serpent, make a brass one, and put
it on a pole.
And anyone who looks away to it, they'll
be saved.
That was the promise.
And this picture of Harold Copping, you've got
in the kind of the background, you've got
long, low tents of the Israelite people.
And you've got here and there bodies that
are lying about, and some snakes slithering around.
And in the distance, you've got this pole
with the bronze snake wrapped around it.
And in the foreground, you're looking in kind
of the opening to one of these tents.
And there's a man, I suppose he must
be maybe 60 or something like that, and
his wife.
And they are cradling in their arms their
son.
And their son looks to be, I would
think, in his late teens, in all the
vigour of his youth.
And he's dying, and his life is ebbing
away.
And frantically, because there are no words for
this, but frantically the father and the mother
are pointing.
Pointing.
There's no solution.
There's no other antidote.
There's nothing in man.
There's nothing.
But if you look away, there's salvation in
a look.
Let's pray.
Isaiah means Jehovah saves.
Jesus means Jehovah is the Saviour.
Lord Jesus, we do just come in these
moments, Lord, now and again and again and
again.
We lift our eyes to you and our
hearts to you.
Thank you, Lord.
There is salvation for now in you.
No matter how we got to where we
are.
No matter what kind of debt we've got
into.
No matter how many times we've squandered our
inheritance.
Thank you, Lord.
You're still saying, come.
You're still saying, behold, your God will come.
We lift our hearts to you, Lord.
Do help us these days and the future
days to have this upward look, Lord.
Not to be distracted by the things that
are around, by the circumstances, by the rising
and falling of the superpowers, by the things
that are outside our control.
But give us, Lord, that instinct to look
up and away.
Lord Jesus, looking unto you.
Lord Jesus, thank you.
Thank you.
Amen.