Joel Brooks: If you have a Bible, invite you to turn to Isaiah chapter 48. It's also there in your worship guide. We've been, working our way through some of the major prophets. We've been in the Isaiah forties for a while now. For those of you who don't know, our church has a time capsule out front in the cornerstone.
Seven years ago, we opened it up. I had read about it that the original church here, Avondale Baptist, they put it in over a hundred years ago. It was gonna be the 100 year anniversary. And so we opened that thing up and sure enough, there was the time capsule. We closed off the street, invited all of the community to come.
And if you were there for that event, you you might have remembered my little disappointment when we opened it up. It was the most Baptist thing you could possibly imagine. I can say that because I grew up Baptist. I'm still licensed in the Baptist church. Deep affection for my my, brothers and sisters in the Baptist church.
You would have thought maybe maybe a hymnal, maybe a bible, maybe something like that, but it was actually just a list of their committees. So it was a list of those who served on the finance committee, a list of those on the missions committee, a list of who sang the choir, that that's that's all it was. So what we decided to do is we put our own things in this time capsule. And so we put photos of our church. We put a bible that many of you signed.
We put a CD in there, which I have no idea how they will ever listen to it a hundred years from now. And then I wrote a letter. And I wrote a letter to be opened in a hundred years from whatever congregation is here. And it was a letter of the things that I hope they believed. I mentioned a little bit the cultural battles we're fighting and that we've been standing firm on God's word and I I am standing on his gospel and and I wrote that I hope that they are holding to these things as well.
And I I explained gospel in this letter. Now when I did that, my audience was twofold. One, I was definitely I was thinking about those who would be living a hundred years from now and what I hope they believed, the the truths that I hope they held on to, But it was also a way of me casting a vision to our church. These are the things that we must hold on to if we're gonna be around in a hundred years. These are the things we we have to believe.
In a very similar way, that's where we are in Isaiah. Once we hit Isaiah 40, if you remember, he actually began preaching to those who would be living a hundred and fifty years in the future. God had given him this this supernatural insight as to what the people would look like, where they would be, that they would be living in exile in a hundred and fifty years, and that they would be wondering if God had abandoned them because of their sin or if the Babylonian gods were too powerful for Yahweh, but they would be in a they would be having an emotional crisis. And so Isaiah, he writes these words of comfort to them while at the same time, he wants those words to cast a vision for the people who are currently listening to him. Does that make sense?
So he's he's writing to them but but he wants everybody here, hear these truths because these are the things we got to hold on to. And what he does when he is writing here is he really, he wants to answer one question. The question he knows that they have. How exactly do we know God will save us? What's the best hope that we have that despite our constant failings, that despite our repeated sin, that God will actually save us.
Is it because God just thinks so highly of us he's gonna do it? Or is it because God thinks much of God? And that's what Isaiah 48 is about. I'm not gonna read the whole thing. There's no way we get through it all.
I'm gonna read the first 11 verses. Hear this, oh 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 because 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 announce to you new things, hidden things that have not been 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 have never heard, you have never known. From of 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. This is the word of the Lord. You pray with me.
Father, we believe that Isaiah's words were not just for his people. In his day, they weren't just for the people that lived a hundred and fifty years later, but he's also speaking to us. He's casting a vision for us and may we listen. Lord, I pray that we would come to see you as glorious. To do that I ask that my words would fall to the ground and they would blow away and they would not be remembered anymore.
But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. When my oldest daughter Caroline was, little, Lauren and I, we were trying to pick out a good children's Bible, that we could read to her from. Our options were a little limited because the Jesus storybook bible wasn't written yet.
And and I still read that today. But we kind of, you know, we picked several different options. And I remember one night I'm reading to her the story of David and Goliath because it's a children's classic. And I she could tell you about this. I love to always just pick out the inaccuracies of all the children's bibles.
It made her childhood really fun. And and in this one, I was like, oh gosh, there's several things that are wrong. Goliath's not twenty five feet tall. You know, that was the first thing that was there. He's not that tall.
He's not French. He looked like he had this little thin French mustache. I said his armor's not gold. It was actually bronze. You know, all these different things.
But but here was the main issue I had. The real error that was on this page. And it had a picture of David, he had just slung the stone. It would just just hit Goliath. He's falling down.
And underneath it, the caption read this, David was very brave, but he knew God had helped him. David was very brave, but he knew God had helped him. Now when you read that story, who do you think is the center of the story? I mean, it reads like David's the center. When I read that, I thought, well, I'm so glad David you feel that way.
I'm so glad that David knew that he knew that the very God that spoke the universe into existence, the very God that establishes or throws down entire kingdoms, the very God that upholds the entire universe by the word of his power, let alone David's very next breath. I'm so glad that David knew God had helped him. It should have read, and God defeated Goliath using the weakness of a little boy named David. This is not a story about how we're supposed to go when we're supposed to now slay our giants. That's not the point of the story.
The story is not about football, about go out there and win one for God. It's not about hitting a home run and as you're, you know, trotting around the bases, you're like, couldn't done it without you. That's not it. This is a story about the greatness of God and how he uses such weakness as a platform for his glory. He loves using weak, small things as a way of showing how great he is.
God's the center of the story. Always remember that as you read through scripture. Every page of your bible, God is the center of the story. He is also the center of your story. Do you realize that you are not the main character in your own story?
If you don't realize this, then you're going to waste your life trying to prove yourself. Prove yourself to God, trying to prove yourself to yourself, trying to prove yourself to your friends. You're gonna be doing that because you're gonna think that all of your circumstances, of your struggles, even your salvation is ultimately about you showing your worth. You making much of you. But your life is about God's glory not yours.
And make no mistake, God is 100% for you. He is absolute. Scripture's clear about that. He is for you. But the reason that God is for you is not to make much of you.
It's because God wants to make much of God. You were created for his glory. And as we're gonna see, as we unpack this, this is actually the greatest comfort and the greatest joy we could ever have. Your joy is actually dependent upon God wanting to see himself as glorious and for you to see him as glorious. So your joy is dependent on his glory.
And I don't believe there's a clearer place in all of scripture to see this than actually Isaiah 48. It was verses nine through 11, 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 a 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. Before we unpack these particular verses, let's see how Isaiah gets there. Verse one, he says, hear this, oh house of Jacob, who were 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.
Now remember the Isaiah forties, they're all about God giving comfort. Comfort, comfort my people says your God. That's how Isaiah 40 begins. This seems though right here kind of a strange way to give comfort. God tells these people who are professing believers that they're actually lying to themselves.
They don't really believe these things. And he says that they're not right or they're they're not righteous. Today we would probably just call these people cultural Christians. They're people who go to church, people who have you know, they've marked Christianity on their profile page or in the last census. They probably in their car they've at least got like K Love programmed in on the stereo.
They might not never listen to it but it's programmed in. They were either confirmed at a young age or perhaps even baptized. But the truth is they did all these things because it's just what they were supposed to do. For me when I was younger, going to church, it was kinda like writing thank you notes. Like I knew you were supposed to.
I knew it's a good thing to do, you're supposed to, but in all honesty, I would rather just be outside enjoying my gift than having to write down a thank you to the one who gave it to me. And that's kind of how I viewed church. And that's the Israelites here. Thank you God for the whole Red Sea thing. Thank you for making us into a great nation.
I use it every day. The truth is god did not actually have the affections of their heart. We just rather be enjoying the gifts. He didn't have the affections of their heart, let alone their obedience. Verse four, God says that they are also obstinate.
He describes them as a people with an iron neck and a head made of brass. In other words, they were a stubborn, stubborn people. Picture a, you know, a two or three year old kid having a tantrum. That's what God says, yeah, you're like that. Yeah, you try reasoning with that.
He's actually gonna go on to
Connor Coskery: call them a whole lot of
Joel Brooks: other things throughout this chapter. Rather than me going through verse by verse, I just kinda wanna give you a summary of everything God says about the Israelites, about humanity here. This list is compiled by me using several different translations of this chapter. But in this chapter alone, God calls his people. He says, you are stubborn, cantankerous, resistant, incapable of submission, self confident, opinionated, close minded, idolatrous, disobedient, unfaithful, treacherous, and unwilling to be convinced by any amount of evidence.
I mean, if you all you know you've seen Christmas Vacation, you know when Chevy Chase unleashes on his his boss. This is kinda it's kinda what it feels like here. You know, you you you cheat, lying, no good, rotten, foul, fleshing, low life, snake licking, dirt eating. I mean, he just goes on and on. Like, we get the point, God.
Remember this is about comfort. So be comforted if he's describing you. All these terms here, they describe an intentional and a deliberate refusal to listen to God. Refusal to do what's right. When we talk about the original sin and we talk about the fall, don't think of the falls like you know, you tripped on a curb and you fell in a ditch.
That's not what happened. We didn't just trip on a curb, we kicked God to the curb. That's the fall. We kicked him out. It's an intentional rejection of any relationship with God.
You see God's law that he he gave us, it's not it's not just a bunch of arbitrary rules. He's throwing them at us. Say no, these are instructions, these are guidelines to to lead you into this joyful pursuit of becoming more like me. To reject those rules is to reject him. Let me give you a little illustration of of really what kind of, you know, the whole bible's about.
Instead of thinking of just, you know, God creating Adam and putting him in the garden, when you think of it in this terms, think of it like a relationship of a father and a son. Father takes his son in the backyard and says, you see this backyard? You see all the materials I have here? I have got us everything we need to build the most unbelievable tree house you've ever seen. It's gonna be glorious.
We're gonna do it together. So I have right here, here's the instruction manual that I've made. It's really simple, but you're not gonna be able to understand it. I'm gonna have to go over it with you. Okay?
So don't don't read this on your own. Don't try to put it together on your own. And then the moment the dad goes away, the first thing the son does is like, I think I could do this on my own. And so it goes over there and opens up the instruction manual and tries to make sense of it. It says okay, think I could do this and this and this.
And then the father returns and sees what he has done. He's like what what have you been doing? You weren't supposed to try to do it on there. You weren't supposed to read that. You've made an absolute mess of things.
I mean, gosh it's it's not only like ugly, it's it's dangerous. Here, alright, so this is what we're gonna do. I'm gonna we'll try to fix this. I'm gonna write you a few more instructions to try to fix the bad things you've done. Here's a few more, here's a few more, here's a few more, we'll put it in there.
Now don't go reading this, we're gonna put it in together. Put it up together. The father goes away, sounds like I think I could do that. Opens it up, more instructions now trying to make sense if we can't do it. Keeps building this tree fort and now it's even uglier and it's even more dangerous than before and the father comes back, it's like, I told you to wait.
We were supposed to do this together. That's the story of the bible. It's what it is. We just keep saying we don't need you, we could do this all on our own, we keep messing it up, God's got to write more instructions, he's got to write more laws, he's just kicking them out more and more and more. We're trying to make a, you know, trying to fix our mess but we've just gotten into way overheads.
It is such a big mess. But a rejection of all of his law, particularly the one, don't read this, it's a rejection of him. We didn't wanna build it together with him. Now at this point, you've you've got to wonder here, how exactly has God benefited from our relationship? I mean are are any of you in some relationships out there and they're just really life suckers?
Any of you got some of those? Yeah, I mean you know what I'm talking about. You you get a text from this person and you're like, you don't even want to read it. I mean, I'm talking about you, not me. I don't get those.
I love it when you guys text me. But you know that person's in the ass and when I want to get together, it's always ugh. Or you see them in the grocery store and you're like, oh I got to go down a different aisle. You make sure you're not seen because you don't want to have a conversation with them. Once again, talking about you, not me.
But perhaps you have relationships like that. Ever wonder if that's how God feels about us? I mean, what exactly has he gained from being in a relationship with us? Do you think you fall into the life giver or the life sucker category? Do you ever wonder if God's like this?
Great. Got another text from Joel. Probably, you know, needs to, needs, needs me to give him something, wants to borrow something from me again. Reads it. Oh, big surprise.
No, he just wants to say he's sorry. For the hundredth time because he did the same thing again. How exactly do you feel like God feels about Israel to this point? Verse 18 he says, oh that you had paid attention to my commandments. Then your peace would have been like a river, righteousness like the waves of the sea.
Can't you just hear the the exasperation and also just the heartbreak of God here. It's like, oh if only you would just listen to me. We wouldn't have this mess if you just listen to me. How many times do you think God has said that about us? If only.
If only you had listened to me and you didn't go do that thing that's against the way I designed you to do it, then you wouldn't have known such pain. If if only you have trusted that I would actually provide, then you wouldn't be filled with such anxiety. If if only you had come to me to drink, then you would have actually been satisfied. But you didn't. If only, if only, if only.
I think those two words summarize our relationship with him pretty well. So what is our hope? In particular, I'll say this, what is the hope for a stubborn, cantankerous, resistant, incapable of submission, self confident, opinionated, close minded, idolatrous, disobedient, unfaithful, treacherous, and unwilling to be convinced by any amount of evidence person have. Perhaps some of those resonated with you. I mean, God has every right.
Doesn't he at this point just be like forget this and he just throw Israel, throw us into the furnace and be done with us. And actually this is what we would expect at this point. It's it's certainly what Israel is expecting. They're expecting this because it's what any other king and power would do to those who've rebelled against him. It's also exactly what all the other so called gods out there would do.
But if you have been listening at all, if you've been listening to Isaiah at all, God has repeatedly been saying, I don't care what other people do, don't care what other people are like, what other gods are like, I am nothing like anyone else. He said that over and over and over. Isaiah forty eighteen, to whom will you liken me or what likeness will you compare me to him? Isaiah forty twenty five, to whom will you compare me that I should be like him? Says the Holy One of Israel.
Isaiah 46, to whom will you liken me and make me equal or compare me that we may be alike. Over and over again, God has been telling anyone who will listen that he is simply unlike any other person or thing you could possibly even think of or imagine. And because he is this, because he is not like anyone else, He's going to do something unexpected. He's going to forgive. He's not gonna annihilate us.
He's actually gonna redeem this mess. Hear me, God's grace towards absolute failures like us is what makes him unlike anyone else. And this is where we get to those glorious words that are found in verse nine through 11. I'm gonna read this. Actually, wanna read the last part of verse eight first.
For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously and that from before birth, were called a rebel. Stop there. Your failures have not taken God by surprise. You doing the same sin for the hundredth or the thousandth time didn't shock him. He's he knew that was gonna happen.
He knew those didn't take him by surprise. He knew it before he even had a heartbeat. Verse nine, for my name's sake, you might add the word though, even though I knew all this, 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.
That means I just put you into affliction and exile thinking you come out purified but you didn't. 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. So so did you get what God is is saying here?
It needs to seep deep within your bones. God is saying, for my own sake, I love the haters. For my own sake, I love the foolish. For my own sake, I love the rebellious. For my own sake, I've loved the stubborn.
For my own sake, I've loved those who have been unfaithful to me. For how could I let my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. Stay with me here. God does not forgive us and save us because we are glorious.
Not because he's impressed with our resume and he's like, oh, there's wow. He doesn't save us because we are glorious, he saves us because he is glorious. He's doing this for his name's sake. And can I tell you that once that sinks in, once you understand that, you're gonna begin seeing this all throughout your Bibles? That we were created for God's glory and he saves us for his own sake.
Isaiah 4three 25, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my sake. You want to know the reason I forgive you? It's for my sake. Ezekiel 36, which we looked at a few months ago, Jeff preached on this. Says, therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, oh house of Israel, that I'm about to act, but for the sake of my holy name which you have profaned.
I will vindicate the holiness of my great name. Or or pick a real familiar one. Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Catch that? And we quote it all the time.
He's he's doing all of that. He's providing for us. He's leading us. He's restoring us. He's forgiving us.
He's saving us. Not because of us. Not because we're so great. It's because he is. Once again, you gotta remember that you are not the censor of the story, of your story.
All of the good that he's been doing in our lives is so that he might receive glory. And this is tremendous news for us because what this means is that our salvation does not depend on our performance. Not at all. It depends on God's own desire to show him as glorious. That's what our salvation depends on is God wanting to be glorified.
Now now throughout Isaiah, especially as we've gotten into the forties, I hope you've seen that God has just been putting on full display his glory for us to see. I mean, have just been relishing in this over the last few months. There's so many different texts I could choose from to just kind of pull this out, but I want to just choose one, my favorite. Isaiah 40 verse 25, To whom will you compare me or who is my equal? Says the holy one.
Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all of these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. Now guys, you've you've heard me geek out on the whole star thing in the past.
I I know. I absolutely love this stuff. Lauren warned me earlier. She's like, don't go don't just geek out on this. It's not a science class and she's trying to rein me in.
I don't care. I'm geeking out just for a little bit. I won't I won't look at where's Lauren? She's not here right now. Okay.
She is. She's right there. I'm gonna look this way. As I say this, but I I do want to just geek out just a little bit. And now probably most of you have heard that there's more stars in the universe than there are grains of sands on all the beaches in all the world.
Which is true. I mean it's it's astounding. It's I I don't like the beach. I like the mountains. I really I I don't like the beach because it's hot, it's flat, and there's sand.
The only redeeming value I I see in the beach is I I get to pick up sand and I get to think it's just stars. For all whole world. Now, that statement that there's more stars in the universe than there are grains of grains of sand on all the beaches in all the world. It likely came from Carl Sagan and it's only partially right. Because he didn't know what we know now.
When when he said that information there, that was based on him and the scientists at the time understanding that there were a little over a million galaxies out there. Each of these galaxies, you know, had maybe a few 100,000,000 stars or billion stars in them, which would mean that there's more stars and grains of sand. But now we know more with the Hubble and James Webb telescope. And the truth is this, there are 10,000 times more stars in the universe than all the grains of sand on all the beaches in all the world. Because there are over 2,000,000,000,000 galaxies, each with over a 100,000,000,000 stars.
It's mind boggling. Why do you think God tells us this? I mean, why did he has to tell us this information that he just, you know, he calls them all forth by name. I have a hard time remembering my own children's names at times. Maybe you maybe you do too but I mean God's like, Johnny, come on.
Susie, come on. R9X, whatever, you know, 1911, come on. I mean, I'm having a hard time thinking of names. God calls out all the stars by name. Why does he do that?
Why does he tell us this? It's because he wants us on our knees. He wants us to just think glory. Oh my gosh. Glory.
And let me tell you what, you are never more joyful than when you're beholding glory. The happiest moments you have ever experienced in your entire life have been the moments when you actually haven't been thinking of yourself at all. You've actually been caught up in the glory of another or the glory of a scene. You've just looked at it, you've just beheld it, you've just spoken its praise, you couldn't help yourself, you're not thinking of yourself at all and you've never been more happy. Just beholding glory.
That's why God's been telling us these things. It's for His glory and it's for our joy. There's no more joy we can have than beholding His glory. Now here's the kicker. This is where we're moving.
It's what Isaiah has been driving us at. He's been building to this crescendo over the last few chapters. He says this, is incomprehensibly glorious. It is that God actually calls out all the stars by name. That's not the climax of His glory.
The climax of His glory is His grace towards sinners. That's it. It's more glorious than him calling the stars by name. It's him taking things that deserve nothing but annihilation. People made a total mess of his life and goes, I will be glorified in them.
I will raise them up. Oh, just see what's gonna happen to them. What I'm gonna make them become. Above everything else, God's glory shines most through his grace towards sinner. And in particular, through His grace given to us through His son, Jesus Christ.
Again, there's a ton of places I could go. I just wanna read Ephesians one. Blessed be the God and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Even as he chose us in him before the foundations of the world, That we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.
And now he tells us why. To the praise of his glorious grace, which he has blessed us in the beloved. God says, you wanna know the reason I've given you every blessing? You wanna know the reason that I've called you to be holy, to become part of my family? Well quick, it's not because of what you've done because I did this before you were even born.
It's not because of you. I knew you'd be rebels before you took your first breath. But I wanna bless you. I wanna make you part of my family. All to the praise of my glorious grace.
Grace that we see coming to us through Jesus. Jesus came into this world in order to save us through his own blood. And Isaiah's pointing there saying that's that's glory. And what we are called to do as his people is to just see and to savor and relish that grace. I mean, someday, Revelation 21, when there's a new heavens and a new earth, actually read there's no longer gonna be a sun, there's no longer gonna be a moon.
God says, you know what's gonna light everyone up? My glory. And he says, and you know what the lamp's gonna be? The lamb. It's the lamb of God coming.
He is the shining brilliance of the glory of God. His sacrifice for sinners like us. Pray with me church. Lord, oh oh the depths of your word. Oh the riches that can be found there.
We have barely scratched the surface. But Lord what we have seen is such good news. Lord I pray for every person here who has made a train wreck of their life, who has failed you for the thousandth time. May they hear the good news that you still created them for your glory and that you're gonna use all of that weakness and all that mess as a platform for your glory because you are a gracious, gracious God. We pray this in the sweet name of Jesus, our savior.
Amen.