Isaiah 24 - From Curse to Consolation Part 1

Well, it is a joy to be with you and just thank you for receiving us and receiving me for this Sunday and the next.

It is an immense privilege.

I am overjoyed by this opportunity.

I want to thank you all and, of course, thank your pastor, doug, who is just a model of faithfulness in pastoral ministry and a mentor to me, and so I just want to express that beforehand my love for Doug, our love for Doug and Royal and the family and what they mean to us.

I know what they mean to you.

Thank you for Micah as well, for just how you love upon him.

We're privileged to be in his home and just graced with his hospitality and just privileged to be in this wonderful study of Isaiah.

I know I have big shoes to fill, but I'm glad that I can simply be faithful to this wonderful word in this study that you are now in, and so my hope would be to encourage you as way of reminder of wonderful truths of God and Christ through Isaiah.

It is a privilege for me as well to be here, as Banu said, with my wife and my children two of our children right now in this journey.

We're in thankful to be for a period of time in the US, we actually are celebrating our 23rd wedding anniversary today, so there's no better way to do it than to preach his word.

And yes, I did come for the pizza as well.

For tomorrow or for next Sunday night, I did come for that.

So, thank you, bono.

Please open your Bibles in Isaiah, chapters 24 and 25.

Isaiah 24 · chapter mention

Our study this morning will focus on chapter 24.

And the next Sunday morning we will be looking at chapter 25 to conclude this two-part series.

I know your series is entitled and looked at from the perspective of Yahweh or God, the Lord, god reigns, and that is exactly the title for such a study.

In my own particular study, if you will, in the next two Sundays, looking in to Isaiah, chapter 24-25, I have added or provided a title specific to 24-25, which I've called From Curse to Consolation God's glory in the last days.

Isaiah 24 · chapter mention

From curse to consolation God's glory in the last days.

Our time together in Isaiah will be mapped out then according to two stages, two stages in God's redemptive plan, also understood as God's glory, and redemption in the last days, or time of the end, or end time, end of days.

These two stages are curse, curse which we will see throughout chapter 24,.

Chapter 24, verses 1 to 23,.

And consolation, consolation, which we will see in chapter 25, chapter 25, verses 1 through 12.

Curse and consolation serve to magnify God's glory in salvation through Christ in our passage, chapters 24 and 25.

If you're taking notes, these will then be your two, two essential markers or points curse 24, one to 23, and consolation 25, one to 12.

We will cover the curse this Sunday morning, but don't run away.

Cover the curse this Sunday morning, but don't run away.

We will cover the consolation next Sunday morning.

So if you run out this morning, please come back for next Sunday, because you will want to hear about God's consolation and you will want to hear about God's curse this morning leading into consolation, curse and consolation.

That is what Isaiah 24 and 25 are about.

God will magnify himself before all people through his curse and consolation in Christ at the last days of time.

Our passage, then, will project us forward.

We will be projected forward to the time of the end and we will get a glimpse of how God will bring our world to its end.

The message Isaiah intends to herald universally through chapters 24 and 25 is please listen, god, that God will triumph in glory over the universe and over sin.

We will be hearing about God's triumphant glory, triumphant glory especially in the end time, in Isaiah 24 and 25.

God, father, son and Spirit will be exalted through our learning from Isaiah 24 and 25.

So, with that said, please read along as I read the first portion of our passage, that is, isaiah 24.

Isaiah 24.

Our passage, that is Isaiah 24, isaiah 24.

Behold, yahweh empties the earth to destruction, eviscerates it, distorts its surface and scatters its inhabitants.

And the people will be like the priest, the male slave like his master, the female slave like her mistress, the buyer like the seller, the lender like the borrower, the creditor like the debtor.

The earth will be completely empty to destruction and completely plundered, for Yahweh has spoken this word.

The earth mourns and withers.

The world languishes and withers.

The exalted of the people of the earth languish.

The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they trespassed laws, violated statutes, broke the everlasting covenant.

Therefore, a curse devours the earth and those who inhabit it are held guilty.

Therefore, the inhabitants of the earth are burned and few men remain.

The new wine mourns, the vine languishes, all the glad of heart sigh.

The joy of tambourines ceases.

The rumbling of those exulting stops.

The joy of the harp ceases.

They do not drink wine with song.

Strong drink is bitter to those who drink it.

The city of chaos is broken down.

Every house is shut up so that none may enter.

There is an outcry in the streets concerning the wine.

All gladness turns to gloom.

The joy of the earth is taken away into exile.

Desolation remains in the city and the gate is struck down to ruins.

For thus it will be in the midst of the earth, among the peoples, as the shaking of an olive tree, as the gleanings when the grape harvest is over.

They lift up their voices, they shout for joy, they cry out from the west concerning the majesty of Yahweh.

They glorify, therefore glorify Yahweh in the east, the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel, in the coastlands of the sea.

From the ends of the earth, we hear songs, glory to the righteous one, but I say I waste away, I waste away.

Woe is me.

The treacherous deal treacherously and the treacherous deal very treacherously.

Panic and pit and pitfall are upon you, o inhabitant of the earth.

Then it will be that he who flees the sound of panic will fall into the pit and he who climbs out of the pit will be caught in the pitfall, for the windows above are opened and the foundations of the earth quake.

The earth is broken asunder.

The earth is split through.

The earth is broken asunder.

The earth is split through.

The earth is shaken violently.

The earth reels to and fro like a drunkard and it totters like a shack, for its transgression is heavy upon it and it will fall, never to rise again.

So it will be.

In that day, the Yahweh will punish the host of heights on high and the kings of the earth on earth.

They will be gathered together like prisoners in the pit and it will be confined in prison and after many days they will be punished.

Then the moon will be humiliated and the sun ashamed For Yahweh, god of glory in the last days, the book of Isaiah focuses in in this particular section on the curse.

As we read, curse, chapter 24, verses 21 to 23, resounds abundantly in our passage, and so we begin then by looking at our first stage of God's glory, god's glory in salvation through judgment in Christ in the end time.

This is the stage of curse.

The curse, god's curse.

Verse six of our passage will highlight this explicitly, as we heard in the reading.

Therefore, a curse devours the earth and those who inhabit it are guilty.

We all live in subjection to the curse, currently, as we live and breathe and have our being.

This truth, though ancient, is still today present in our midst, and so our text is not far from us in its truth, in its reach, in its warning.

This means that the earth is cursed and destined to be cursed soon to be.

The curse, then, is not new.

In other words, according to Isaiah 24, the vision describes a storing up of wrath, divine rage in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.

Borrowing from Romans 2, verse 5, there is a reckoning, a payment for deeds done by the peoples of the globe.

Romans 2:5

This is a universal judgment.

We're hearing about Payment expected by God to God.

Thus we can say we have an already, already, we have the curse.

We are in the presence of the curse that is already, and yet it awaits the finish line, a curse that will be unleashed to its full, to exhaustion and full.

I hope you understand.

I hope you understand, and it is striking for me, even going through our passage for the purposes of study.

My own heart is struck and so I share with you.

I hope you understand the peril the world is in Our loved ones and neighbors.

Punishment awaits our globe.

I'll say it again Punishment awaits our globe, it's people and it's earth.

This is this is not meant to be said with the intent of dramatically raising our fears.

I am not here to scare you this morning.

This is not a scare tactic.

All of creation creation, you will recall that Paul depicts in Romans 8, as anxious, having been subjected to futility, now a slave of corruption, groaning and suffering the pains of childbirth, awaiting its freedom from the evil that has overtaken it in hope, eagerly longing for its recreation or the fullness of its new creation, the arrival of the end, that is to say glory, the coming and consummation of God's glory in creating all things new.

All of this, all of our created world, in other words, is headed to a finality of judgment, a final judgment day.

That is what Isaiah 24 highlights.

The condemnation that currently characterizes it, that prevails within it, the sin and death that pervades throughout it will all be cursed through a curse that is finally and physically fulfilled.

Again, this is not Hollywood, but the result of sin entering the world and death through sin, and so death spreading to all men Because all sinned.

Romans 5.12.

This is a curse upon those cursed.

It is the cursed them that still continue in a stubborn and unrepentant heart to refuse to find their refuge in the cursed one.

Please hear me out the cursed one that is Jesus Christ.

Hear me out the cursed one that is Jesus Christ.

They await impending doom.

He Christ was cursed, as we know, so that those cursed could live in him.

His righteousness, as we even heard in our singing and prayers, his righteousness imputed, accredited to us, imputed, accredited to us.

His righteousness accredited to those of us who were unrighteous, to our unrighteousness, justifying the cursed.

And yet the many persist in darkness and will not come to the light.

Hence live today, tomorrow, and have lived as the cursed, expecting final curse.

And hence this message of judgment this morning is a message for us as the church, as those once cursed but now blessed, to proclaim Christ.

To proclaim Christ.

The curse will be broken down in three phases.

We will break down this curse in three phases just for the purposes of capturing the flow of thought and for our own clarity.

We'll break it down into motivation, manner and moment.

The motivation for the curse, beginning in verse 1.

The motivation for the curse will extend from verses 1 to 5.

We will see the motivation for the curse.

Verse 1 of Isaiah 24 captures the curse in progress.

Look at verse 1.

It is as though we are parachuted down into an apocalyptic scene.

Never before imagery is viewed whereby God, yahweh God, is attacking the earth.

Divine wrath has descended upon its surface and its inhabitants with unimaginable violence.

Notice the language immediately out of the gate of the prophet's mouth.

Yahweh empties the earth to destruction.

He eviscerates it.

Verse 1.

We have two continuous action words, two continuous action words Empties and eviscerates, eviscerates and empties.

God is attacking, god is attacking, god is attacking, he is acting out against his own creation.

The actions themselves, along with the initial behold, behold, which could also be translated as see see that begins chapter 24, verse one, this, this combination resounds with an immediacy.

In other words, this judgment is immediate, imminent.

There is an immediacy to God's attack, though in progress, the aggression has not actually taken place.

Rather, the sense is of a nightmare about to happen.

This is a horrible scenario and this horrible scenario is immediate, immediately, immediately, on the horizon, from Isaiah's day.

Hence, in the progress, the in-progress expression, the in-progress expression beginning verse 1, and that in-progress violence communicated by the two action words empties and eviscerates adds greater impact to the terror about to be unleashed on the earth from heaven.

In other words, this is shocking.

It is meant to shock.

The initial combination used by the prophet is also known as oracular oracular in style.

This could also be expressed otherwise as an Oracle against the earth.

An Oracle against the earth.

Whoa to humanity.

Whoa to humanity.

Whoa to you If you're listening to this this morning and you are not in Christ.

In other words, cosmic best captures the nature of the horror about to hit the earth.

Again.

The earth is so emphasized here.

In other words, this judgment is global.

No one is out of its reach, as they say in the world of hurricane.

Watch.

We live in North Carolina now and we're accustomed to hearing about hurricanes, as I'm sure they reach you in some sense as well.

And what do they say?

This is a big one.

This is a big one.

The Oracle brings to bear on its hearersers the weight of judgment, of coming disaster, coming from a distance, but now in sight, now close.

It is so close we see it.

Listen to the same expressive force said by the prophet a little further, a little beyond our passage.

I'll read it for us Isaiah 30, verse 27,.

Isaiah 30:27

The prophet writes behold, the name of Yahweh comes from afar.

Burning is his anger and heavy is his smoke.

His lips are filled with indignation and his tongue is like a consuming fire.

Isaiah 30, 27.

The nations are also in sight here in the citation just cited in chapter 30, just as in our own passage as well.

In Isaiah 24 specifically, it is the nations that are on, that are focused in on God's judgment radar.

They, the peoples of the globe, will be shaken back and forth to ruin, as raging anger and a torrent of brimstone further portray God descending to destroy All of this imagery additionally designates again a time of woe, tribulation that is on the horizon.

The woe, or state of alarm is very serious.

Emphasis is on the horizon.

The woe or state of alarm is very serious.

Emphasis is on the destruction planned.

The destruction planned.

Notice how total it is.

How total it is.

We will see this more as our passage goes along.

The words that capture the repeated aggression Yahweh God commits against the earth are very telling.

Again, empties speaks of laying waste, making void, leaving the earth a wasteland after being done with it.

Observe how the emptying is to destruction.

Always in verse one, complete devastation is in mind.

Eviscerates describes the additional stripping away of the land to devastation.

The prophet continues, however, at the end of verse one.

God's emptying and eviscerating are detailed in much more painful description, almost as an open wound, an open wound to be poked and prodded.

God distorts its surface, the action here being very intensive.

It distorts its surface, the action here being very intensive.

God intentionally scatters the inhabitants of the earth, distorts.

Distorts speaks to bending and twisting, of perverting, something Similar to committing an evil.

God is not evil, nor does he commit iniquity, but the intensity of the action, along with its unorthodox nature, carries the nuance.

What is God doing to his creation?

This is horrible, we could say, humanly speaking, this is de-creation.

God, who created the earth good, is now destroying it in an unexplainable, if not humanly reprehensible act.

Scatters as well is of interest as an act perpetrated by God.

It focuses in on cause, cause.

The inhabitants, that is to say the peoples of the world, are made to scatter, caused to scatter by God himself.

You, you will recall this imagery in Genesis 11, genesis 11.

Do you remember the tower?

The tower of Babel?

At the tower of Babel, god scattered the peoples over the earth and therefore its name was called Babel, because there God confused the language of the whole earth and from there God scattered them over the face of the whole earth Genesis 11, 9.

It's just a remarkable scene to see how the scattering at Babel is in response.

Do you remember why God acted in this way?

Is in response.

Do you remember why God acted in this way?

It was in response to human gathering in rebellion against God.

They gather to be like God, building a tower to reach heaven, and God himself acknowledges that in so doing, nothing afterwards will be impossible to them.

In Genesis 11, four and six the serpent in the garden Do you remember temps the first couple peoples and inhabitants of the earth to do the same, to eat from the tree of the garden, so that the woman and her husband will be like God.

Genesis three, one in five.

All of the prophecy thus unfolds.

We have this explanation, this unfolding of a future confrontation between God and the globe's inhabitants, a distant but drawing closer rebellion that God will crush.

No one is neutral here.

No one is neutral here.

No one is neutral.

That does not mean we don't love them and share the love of Christ, but the reality is that everyone who is not in Christ Is opposed to Christ and the opposition will simply grow as the time draws near.

Hence the warning do not go there, do not be them.

The people are clearly culpable, as our own passage will shortly mention.

That said, they are driven by an even greater evil spurring them forward In chapter 27,.

Just looking ahead briefly, verse 1, isaiah envisions another enemy God will punish in the latter days, chapter 27, verse 1.

I'll read it for us In that day, yahweh will punish Leviathan the fleeting serpent with his fierce and great and mighty sword, even Leviathan the twisted serpent.

He will kill the dragon who lives in the sea, chapter 27, verse 1.

We hear the resistance as a greater diabolical, spiritual resistance that is fueling the world, its people ever so more against God and his Christ, people ever so more against God and his Christ.

The dragon is a diabolical figure who makes war against God, christ and his angels and people, in revelation 12 and 13.

He is assisted by a beast that comes out of the sea Revelation 13 one.

The more profound figure, however, is that of Leviathan.

There are many personifications of Leviathan throughout the Old Testament and Old Testament history, both cultural and mythological.

These images, however, lead back to the Leviathan.

Who is the Leviathan?

The fleeting serpent.

That is the image of Satan himself.

He is that crafty beast who spurs on the inhabitants.

The curse, please observe, involves a war, from the fall onwards, between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.

The serpent and his antichrists throughout the future will make war against the Christ, the seed of the woman and the elect seeds in Christ, that is, his people, his church, his seed, the seeds of Christ, all those justified by faith through the righteousness of Christ.

More can be said here through the wording, though the wording is not the same as that in the original curse of the serpent and the first couple, adam and Eve.

We know that later in Isaiah 53, the suffering servant will be pierced through for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.

We know this passage well.

Yahweh, god, will chastise and crush his son, the servant.

The iniquity leading to the original curse will fall upon him.

Isaiah 53, verses 4 through 6.

Isaiah 53:4–6

Paul will add later in Galatians 3, that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us, for it is written, curse it is everyone who hangs on a tree.

Galatians 3.13.

Notice the reach of our truth.

This means that for the inhabitants of the earth.

Even at this end time, latter days, tribulation, please listen.

There is hope, there is hope and that's why you need to listen.

We need to listen to the curse because the curse provides a way of escape, all the more to this day as it draws heavier and heavier toward us.

Upon us, the curse, god's curse, provides hope through God's son, cursed on behalf of all those who, by faith, believe in him.

There is hope and Isaiah, as Isaiah will say in chapter 25, that we will see next Sunday, he will swallow up death for all time and Lord Yahweh will wipe tears away from all faces and he will remove death for all time.

He will remove the reproach, condemnation or, in the language of Galatians 3, as we just noted, he will remove the curse from his people from in the language of Galatians 3, as we just noted, he will remove the curse from his people from all the earth.

For Yahweh has spoken.

This is already true, dear saints, as we know today, and we are encouraged all the more to proclaim Christ and the gospel.

Isaiah moves forward in his description in verse 2, speaking of the inhabitants.

Everyone notice in verse 2, is leveled.

In other words, we could summarize verse 2 as there are no rich, there are no poor, there is no one again that can flee this judgment.

Verse 3, notice the aim grounds itself all the more.

God is clear this is destruction.

He intends destruction, no salvation.

In other words, for the unrighteous, everything and everyone is sentenced.

Then the sentence will be applied in full retribution, with a capital.

R has arrived.

Incredible, incredible emphasis is placed on the words in verse 3, emptied and plundered.

It's again emphasizing the intent of God complete destruction, completely emptied, completely plundered.

There is nothing you can do on that day If you delay, in other words, there is nothing you can do on that day, there is nothing in you on that day that will rescue you, no one you can turn to and nothing inside of you that could help you.

Just like Noah and the members of his household, you must go to the ark, you must turn to him that God made displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood, through faith, demonstrating Christ's righteousness as the only thing, only thing, only thing, able to placate and protect the unrighteous from the wrath curse of God.

Verse three, notice, ends on the word of Yahweh, the spoken word of God.

This has the sense of a sealing the deal.

This seals the deal he has spoken.

He will not be turning back.

You cannot change his mind.

God will be faithful to his word as always.

And yet this word speaks so much more according to the verses that follow.

Verses 4 and 5 continue to accentuate this.

It is the word of God that is center, at center stage.

Verse 5, particularly, will reach a climax in our passage.

Both verses 4 and 5 reveal the consequences of disobedience to God's word.

There is a mourning and a withering, languishing and withering.

Verse 4.

Languishing and withering.

Verse 4, verse 5.

We see that God descends and judges because of the weight of pollution that has defiled the peoples of the globe, as the contagion of sin sinks the inhabitants down to the earth.

The reason given specifically is stated at the end of verse 5.

For specifically is stated at the end of verse five.

For they, the people, notice the end of verse five.

For they, the people, trespass the laws, violated the statutes, broke the everlasting covenant.

End of verse five.

Heavy, heavy truth.

The trespass, violation and breaking then brings God's destruction and violence done against his creation to a more profound understanding.

It's almost like the prophet now going from the motive discussing the motive of the curse, gives it to us in full, discloses it to us.

We have full disclosure for this curse.

In other words, we could say at this point why is god truly cursing the earth?

Why are you unbeliever this morning, subject to curse, divine cursing?

Why should you believer witness to your neighbor warning him of the curse he is under?

It is of utmost significance that we understand the importance of the reason for the chastisement of God.

The motive will simply then drop down and we will quickly rush through or brush through the manner and the moment of the curse, but the motive is central.

God is not acting capriciously like a pagan God.

God is not behaving, in the end, in an unusual way.

After all, god is not breaking out in irrational violence, almost as though His fury is unleashed rage, senseless rage, on the inhabitants of the earth, as though just wanting to punish them with cruelty, severe cruelty Observe the wording trespassing, violating and breaking to punish them with cruelty, severe cruelty.

Observe the wording trespassing, violating and breaking.

With each accusation, there is a heavier condemnation cast upon the inhabitants of the earth.

Trespassing refers to disobeying.

Violating refers to altering or changing so that one thing is replaced by another, hence perverting.

And finally, breaking refers to the breaking of a relationship to the annulment or nullifying of a bond, in this case a sacred bond involving all of life, life now and forever with God and because of God and because of His word of promise, his covenant Yahweh God.

This is incredibly covenantal, if you will.

Language here of a faithful relationship.

His covenant Yahweh God, whose name Yahweh exalts the attribute that highlights covenant magnifies him as the covenant making God, the faithful God.

To his words and his promise he is responding not in rage, irrational rage, unleashing, as we said, senseless fury on the earth and its people.

Rather, rather, he is enacting his word of covenant promised in his relationship to his people and all men universally.

He is being faithful to himself.

In other words, when he curses the earth and its people, the unrighteous, he is being faithful to himself, his word of promise to his people, by cursing or fulfilling the curse on all the earth.

What the people are doing and have done until judgment day instead, is to be unfaithful to the same word and promise of his.

The inhabitants of the globe have thus disobeyed, corrupted and annulled the covenant they have made with God.

You say this morning what covenant is that?

I don't recall making a commitment with God and I don't recall the past that is, israel particularly, making a commitment other than the commitment we know about.

That is the law of Moses and the law of God.

And I say you are right in part because notice, this is not speaking specifically to Israel alone, but this judgment is on all the nations.

In fact, going back chapters 13 through 23 that you heard through Pastor Micah explain this so wonderfully, there is a reason why God judges pagan nations that do not know of his law, never have received his written revelation, as Israel had received through the Ten Commandments, summary of the law.

They are judged by virtue of the fact that they, like all men, including Israel itself, were made in the image of God in Adam, and so what we have here is a pre-existing relationship, a commitment that all men have been born into by virtue of the fact that they have been made in the image of God and by virtue of the fact that in Adam, all of us have sinned.

Hence we have verse 5 as the capstone that explains the curse in chapter 24 of Isaiah.

It's initial progress, as we've seen, beginning with God's devastation of the earth and reaching the climax as the reason or the motive for this devastation you have sinned by breaking God's law, god's moral, god's eternal, god's creation law, by rebelling in your relationship against him and living life without him in spite of him.

Notice how this is again provides no justification for anyone, no alibi.

Just think of the agnostic who believes he does not have enough evidence here.

He is cursed nonetheless is all from the motive.

We move quickly to the manner.

Verses 6 through 20.

Notice this is a grand sweep.

The curse will devour, verse 6.

The curse will devour.

The curse is definitive.

Notice in verse 6 how it devours the guilty Devours.

Speaks of eating, as though a flesh-eating virus cuts through the body without stopping.

This is the consequence.

These are the results of the curse.

The consequences reach us and beyond us to the end.

The action is comprehensive.

In other words, the curse completely overwhelms the earth and its people as cancer spreads, ultimately to shut the body down.

This is the method.

In other words, from the motive the flesh-eating virus appears.

This is not God's fault.

Our text is clear.

Those who inhabited the earth are guilty, verse 6.

The guilt is emphasized and looked at based on the way Isaiah words.

It Notice those who inhabit the earth individually, such that each person on the globe is affected by this cancerous and deadly virus, because each one is guilty.

At the end of verse six we read therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned and few men remain.

We have a remnant here.

Who are the few that remain?

Well, they are the ones that seek out the ark.

They are the ones that seek out refuge in Christ, the righteous notice declared righteous forgiven whose sins have been placed upon someone else.

Live through this judgment almost as a source of witness.

God leaves a remnant in order to plead and cry out to those perishing, just like we, the church, are today.

You are that remnant, so to speak.

We are called to be a light to those perishing in light of that coming judgment, to those perishing in light of that coming judgment.

Verses 7 through 20 then captures the cancerous curse disintegrating the land and people.

There is so much here, but the point is to draw out the devastation as it moves From the motive.

We have the manner moving through.

Notice the people's dwellings.

We have the manner moving through.

Notice the people's dwellings.

Even the city is mentioned.

We have, in verse 10, mention of the city of chaos.

In other words, from a global perspective, isaiah goes down to the city.

Why the city.

It's an illustration of where life happens.

Where life happens, isaiah says God will come and take away that life.

You think money, you think human relationships, you think entertainment will distract you from this curse.

Well, god will come down and turn the city upside down.

Your favorite city, the pride of empires, their cities, capital cities, the pride of empires, their cities, capital cities.

From the motivation, through the manner we get to the moment, the moment to the curse.

This doesn't sound as well grammar wise, but the moment to the curse means it's that day.

We have reached that moment, or projected.

Here is the time of the curse proclaimed from Isaiah's day to the actual curse itself.

Verses 21 and 23 close out chapter 24 and close out God's focus on the curse, the moment the curse is brought to a final climax.

The climax lifts up the theme.

It is a theophany, a the the theme.

It is a theophany, a theophany.

What is a theophany?

It is the theme of theophany.

As we close out our passage.

This is the grand manifestation of God, the visible presence of God descending upon the earth.

This is when God appears.

There is both judgment and joy, defeat and triumph.

In this His appearance, emphasized is the day.

That day, that day particularly, you want to be aware of the expression that day.

This is a recurring future day that Isaiah repeatedly points to, beginning from chapter 2.

Chapter 2, beginning his prophecy early on in the book by his mention of the phrase in the last days, in the last days, isaiah 2.2.

We are in the last days.

This is the foreseen.

This is foreseen as a day of reckoning and exaltation.

In other words, the curse will also bring forth the consolation, and that's why we hear it this morning and rejoice in anticipation of coming back next Sunday to hear chapter 25, which will declare openly and exalt the triumph of the saved, god's salvation.

The sense of that day, throughout the reference to that day by Isaiah, is that of an encounter with God, a visitation.

Moreover, men will see him face to face as he dwells upon the earth, as he visits the earth.

Note the character of this visitation, verse 21.

Verse 21.

Note the character of this visitation, verse 21.

Verse 21.

Verse 21 depicts punishment to the host of heights on high and the kings of the earth on earth Verse 21.

Notice the curse is not limited to the material, to the earth and the human realm, but the curse condemns the spiritual as well the spiritual forces of darkness that currently reign or have the appearance or sense of freedom.

Though they have been made captive by Christ's cross, they continue to tempt and taunt the church and encourage the unrighteous to rebel.

Envisioned is a battle royale, a battle royale whereby both heaven and earth are judged.

Verse 22 remarks on the timing or days, once again in light of that day.

Verse 22, in light of that day, that all encompassing period of days known as the latter days.

In other words, this is not a specific day, 24 hours, this is a period, again, a period that we are presently living in from the time of Christ's coming to earth, living in from the time of Christ's coming to earth.

Punishment will come after many days.

Therefore, we say the day is, we say the day is and will be.

The day is and will be.

There is a patience to the Lord's imminent judgment day.

Verse 23 closes all of the prophecy off by depicting that moment in time as the reign of Yahweh Notice, anticipation of chapter 25, the consolation he will overshadow both the moon and sun so that there is no need for them.

His reign, moreover, will be from the midst of his people, from Mount Zion and Jerusalem, before his be from the midst of his people, from Mount Zion and Jerusalem before his elders, the leadership of his people.

More to be said here, but we will leave it for next Sunday as we enjoy God's consolation after God's curse.

If you have not trusted in Christ this morning, may this passage and message be a warning to you, a warning that sheds upon you the love and grace and truth of God in Christ, because God punished and cursed his son so that you could live, and hence the free offer of the gospel.

By faith, you today again have hope, and this is a message of hope, judgment through hope.

And if you have trusted in Christ this morning, may this message be to zealous witness, to rejoicing in worship in the lamb and to being zealous to proclaim his word to all, all around this community and the.

As the Lord provides opportunity, may Christ be proclaimed.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you this morning for your truth.

We thank you for just giving us the truth, heavy and severe, and yet we rejoice, for we, because of, have been spared the curse.

And, lord, we pray for those who still are under curse.

May this be a moment of repentance and faith to your glory in salvation.

We pray, amen.