Isaiah 17-20: Mercy in Judgement

Last Sunday morning, just after our afternoon, just after our service, we had our annual meeting and for all of us who are here, you know how that went.

It was a beautiful time together, just rejoicing in God's mercies over the past year and looking forward to His mercies continuing on our lives and service to Christ in the coming year.

After it was over, one of the men of the church, who's a recent member of the church, came up to me and this was his first annual meeting that he'd ever been to of the church.

And he came up to me with tears streaming down his cheeks and he said I've never been anywhere in my life in a meeting like we just had.

He said it was beautiful, it was wonderful, it was joyful.

And he said why did I ever spend the bulk of my life wanting to be somewhere else and doing something else?

It was just a beautiful testimony of joy in his heart by watching what God said would happen when he is the Lord of his people, right.

So I just wanted to share that with you for your encouragement.

It was something that filled my heart with a great deal of joy when I embraced him with tears streaming down his cheeks and wished all of you could have shared in that little testimony that he had.

So let's pray together, shall we?

Father, as we continue through this year and in light of all of the things that were settled and agreed upon last week, we continue to look to you, for you are the Lord of your people.

We recognize that all of our energizing and all of our ability to care and serve and benefit one another comes from you.

You tell us that you supply every bit of us for that purpose, so that we might be built up in Christ and that the glory might come to you.

Who is the head, father, we are dependent people and we want to recognize that openly before you.

And sadly, father, too often we are disobedient people.

So we ask you, lord, save us from ourselves, save us from our worst tendencies, save us from selfishness and pride and arrogance and vanity and jealousies.

May the fruit of the Spirit rule our hearts, not just individually but collectively, when we gather and when we meet one another.

May you be on display, lord.

May it not only be for the enriching of our hearts and the encouragement that comes by way of the peace of Christ that rules us, but may it be a living testimony to others who would exclaim that surely the living God dwells among them, for I cannot explain how they act.

But through him and Lord, we pray that you would be the very one that they see, not us, but you.

And so, father, we pray that your richest blessings would continue upon us.

We know we don't deserve them and we know we can't earn them, but we pray for them, father, that you might be Father, that you might be exalted among us and through us in the lives of others.

And, lord, now we pray that your word might instruct us, give us eyes to see it and ears to hear it.

We pray in Christ's name, amen.

Let's take our Bible and go over to the book of Isaiah, and we'll start in chapter 17.

You find a pew Bible in front of you and right around page 610, you'll find Isaiah, chapter 17.

Isaiah 17 · chapter mention

Just a few blocks from Buckingham Palace in London and an easy walk from Big Ben and Westminster Abbey is a building which has been greatly used to influence London for well over 100 years.

There's a name of the building is Westminster Chapel, and Martin Lloyd-Jones was a minister born in 1899 and became the minister of Westminster Chapel in 1939, right on the cusp of World War II, the people of Great Britain knew what was coming.

It was right before Germany declared war against them and they knew the aggressiveness of the Nazi war machine and how they had no problems sweeping over people and taking them swiftly in Blitzkrieg.

And they understood that war was imminent, near perhaps unavoidable.

And in 1939, at the outset of his ministry there, as the senior pastor Martin Lloyd-Jones preached a series of sermons preparing the people for war, jones preached a series of sermons preparing the people for war.

He told them that, whether the bombs kill them or not, that they were to be prepared to stand before a holy God and he urged them to embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And as the war did come and continued, and as people began to evacuate from London and the bombs began to populate and destroy London, martin Lloyd-Jones continued to preach at Westminster Chapel.

There, close to Buckingham Palace.

On one occasion a bomb landed and exploded just yards away from the building and it shook the building and plaster fell from the ceilings and landed on some of the folks during the service.

At the time, martin Lloyd-Jones was praying.

When the bomb hit he stopped and paused and then continued to pray and following that opened up the Word of God and preached, and the people sat and listened.

Why didn't they run off in a panic?

Why didn't they just scatter and run?

Well, they were people that had been taught and understood that God was in control of everything, including those bombs that were whistling through the air on the very day they had gathered to worship.

They understood that God was the beginning and the end, that he was the ultimate one in control of everything and nothing could happen apart from his plan.

The truth is, god is in control of everything, and the passage of Scripture that we're about to look at unveils that for us.

We're in this section, the oracles about the nations, and we're going to look at chapter 17, 18, 19, and 20 today.

So obviously we're not going to be doing 17, 18, 19, and 20 today, so obviously we're not going to be doing a deep dive through every one of these verses.

But we'll understand as we go through these four chapters, just as the other chapters before it and after it, that the major issue it raises is the question who is in charge of all of this?

Who rules the world?

Is it the kings and powers of the day or something else?

Is it the Lord, god or them, and we'll see two ways the Lord shows his sovereign power in these four chapters.

He shows his sovereign power by way of his judgment and he shows his sovereign power by way of his salvation and mercy.

This passage will show us that the revolt of the nations and their kings and their false gods against the living God is an utterly senseless undertaking.

Gods against the living God is an utterly senseless undertaking.

We'll also see that Judah and Israel's trust in those kings and nations and gods was also just as senseless.

But we'll understand also just how sublime it is to trust this God, who not only can bring judgment but also offer salvation in a most surprising way.

So let's take a look at this, and first we're going to look at God's sovereignty in judgment.

God's sovereignty in judgment, and in chapter 17, we're introduced to two peoples.

We've read about them before as we've gone through the book of Isaiah the people of Aram, which is modern day Syria, and the northern tribes of Israel, and so Isaiah revisits these people that he'd spent more time in several chapters, back where the king of Israel and the king of Aram had conspired together to attack Judah and King Ahaz, and in this chapter we see him focusing first of all upon the king of Aram and the people of Aram.

In the first three verses, and then verses 4 to 11, going into a discussion about the futility and the destruction of the people of Israel, the prophet talks about the ferocity of the Assyrian army coming upon them.

So ferocious would it be, so lacking in mercy, that there would be nothing, hardly nothing left, hardly anything left of Aram and Israel once Assyria had moved through them.

Take a look at the first couple of verses and you can see that said very clearly.

Damascus is no longer a city.

It has become a ruined heap.

The cities of Aurora are abandoned.

There'll be places for flocks that will lie down without fear.

The fortress disappears from Ephraim and a kingdom from Damascus.

The Assyrian army was going to come down with such force that he later describes it as sort of harvesters, when they go into a field and take all the crop out of the field.

Or when they go into an olive tree and beat off every single olive off of the tree as they harvest it and there's nothing left but a barren tree with no fruit whatsoever.

And in verse 10, he gives the reason for this judgment, for you have forgotten the God of your salvation and you have failed to remember the rock of your strength.

And here Isaiah brings them back to the imagery of God in the time of the Exodus.

These two words very clearly the God of your salvation and the rock, are terms used in the season of the Exodus, when the people of God were found in bondage in Egypt and cried out to the Lord for mercy.

And he came as the saving God and as the rock who supplied them and he took care of them and brought them into this land.

But Isaiah's charge is you've forgotten him.

You have forgotten him, you have failed to remember him.

You have not taken into consideration who God is and has been to you in his supply and in his protection.

And Israel could never say about him oh, he will never save because he is the God who saves.

And they could never say he will never save us because he is your God of salvation.

And the image of the rock is not some static analogy but a dynamic one, because it goes back to Exodus, chapter 17, in which the people were crying out in the midst of a barren wasteland, wanting water, and Moses strikes the rock, and the rock gushes forth with water and supplies the people with their need and quenches their thirst.

Exodus 17 · chapter mention

This rock, this dependable, saving fortress-like protecting God, was the one they had forgotten in the time of deepest need.

Surrounded by the nations of Assyria and Egypt, they had forgotten their protector and their supplier.

Instead, they put trust in mustering their own armies, they put trust in making alliances with other nations.

They had sought to find security through coalitions and power by way of number instead of trusting the living God.

And so Isaiah says to them right after that, he said what you have done is you've taken a garden, you've sown seeds, you've cultivated the plants, you've watched over them, but on the day of harvest you're going to come to it and find it completely wasted away, and all of your energies and all of your efforts and all of that is going to be brought to simply nothing because you've put your trust in the wrong place.

And he leaves with this tone of this pathetic loss of people who have expended resources and energy and time and effort into cultivating a crop that never materializes.

Can you imagine investing all of your life into something that just vanishes away and it's gone, that just vanishes away and it's gone?

One day, when I was a boy, my grandfather brought out into his sitting room a stack of papers that were stock certificates that my family had bought prior to 1929.

And there were a lot of them.

But when the Great Depression hit, in the waves that it brought into the economic catastrophe, that that was, all of that money and all of that labor and all of that investment was nothing but paper with no value whatsoever.

They couldn't claw back the time and the energy and the resources that went into that and it was gone.

Resources that went into that and it was gone.

Imagine living your whole life seeking, grasping, clutching for things that you would call your securities, only to enter into eternity and find out that they were nothing but bubbles bursting in the air, with nothing left.

This is what God is telling the people here.

What have you done?

You have forgotten the living God, the one who would be your deliverer, the one who would supply you as a rock, the one who would secure you like a fortress.

Our Lord Jesus, to a lady sitting at the well, said to them I am a well of living waters.

If you asked for me a drink from me, I would give you such a supply that you would never thirst again.

Don't invest your life in the things that are worthless and wasteful and reckless.

Give yourself to the living God.

And at the end of this chapter, in verses 12 to 14, he culminates this section, which has brought us face to face with Babylon and Assyria, and Moab and Aram and Israel, and collectively speaks to the nations and summarizes all of these oracles in a short little poem.

Take a look at these last few verses.

Verse 12, the roar of many peoples.

They roar like the roaring of the seas, the raging of the.

This is imagery from ancient Near East religious literature.

When they looked out and they looked for the most powerful thing that they could see, they would look at the sea and they would see the chaos of the Mediterranean Sea and they would recognize that there was no human power that could harness that chaos, that they were subject to it in their little boats.

And so they looked for something that was the ultimate power that could calm that chaos called the sea.

You might think of that when jonah is on a little boat running away from his duties to go to nineveh and as he's out there, the sea whips up a storm and all the people in the boat are crying out to the gods, asking for them to grab a hold of this chaos and settle it.

But their gods don't hear until they talk to Jonah and Jonah says toss me overboard and my God will calm the sea.

And they did, and he did, and they worshiped the God that Jonah was running from.

And so here we have that emblem of the sea brought into the peoples, that the chaos of the universe, the sea and its emblematic descriptions, is brought into the chaos and the destructive roaring force of the peoples, the nations, the greatest manifestation of power on earth.

It is us, they say, until God speaks.

It says here, he rebukes them and they flee far away, driven before the wind, like chaff on the hills and like tumbleweeds before a gale.

In the evening, sudden terror.

Before morning it's gone.

The fate of those who plunder us and the lot of those who ravage us.

And that's exactly what happens.

In a few chapters you'll read the story of Hezekiah and what happens to the Assyrian army that God mows down in a night.

The Gospels testify the power of God to control everything.

He controls the seas, he controls the people that seem like seas.

There's no wonder, then, when Christ was on the Sea of Galilee and he looked at the wind and the waves and said peace be still that.

The people in the boats wondered who is this one that even the sea obeys him?

In chapter 18, we're brought into the land of Cush.

Cush refers to the land that's immediately south of Egypt and it's been known by many names throughout history.

The Egyptians knew it as Cush, the Greeks and the Romans called it Ethiopia, but not to be confused with modern-day Ethiopia.

This would be more like North Sudan.

And during the mid-8th century BC which is right about the time that we're in right here in Isaiah, cush attacked and overthrew the dynasties of Egypt and took control of it and ruled as pharaohs in what is known as the 25th dynasty.

And while they're in charge of Egypt and the regions to the south, they want to consolidate their power, and so look at chapter 18 and verse 1.

Woe to the land of buzzing insect wings beyond the rivers of Cush, which send envoys by sea and reed vessels over the water.

Go swift messengers.

Vessels over the water, go swift messengers.

Here they are.

Having grabbed power, having gained descendancy, having taken over Egypt, they're now sending out messengers in order to consolidate power because of the threat of Assyria.

And in the midst of all this buzzing movement that the prophet Isaiah likens to buzzing insect wings is something very quiet, something very still.

But quietness and stillness should never be mistaken for a lack of power.

Take a look at verse 4.

For the Lord said to me I will quietly look out from my place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a rain cloud in harvest.

Heat there, but not obvious, not looking, imposing a small little cloud on the horizon during the sunny time of harvest.

The shimmering of a sun that's there, neither one of them coming with great fanfare or great pageantry, just simply present and yet so inescapable.

And here is God saying that he is going to do something that is, to him, quiet.

What is that that he's going to do?

He's going to bring these buzzing, moving, maneuvering, conniving, rushing nations to nothing To nothing.

Before the harvest, when the blossoming is over and the blossom becomes a ripening grape, he will cut off the shoots with a pruning knife and tear away and remove the branches.

God's quiet but ever-present judgment will come just when he wants it to come, and it will accomplish everything that he wants it to perform.

And in verse 7, they will acknowledge him in that judgment.

Take a look now over at chapter 19.

In chapter 19, we move chapter 17 from Aram and Israel to the end of chapter 17, to the nations, chapter 18 to Cush, and now we go to Egypt itself in chapter 19.

A pronouncement concerning Egypt.

Now, remember where Judah is in this situation To the north, northwest, but they come down through.

The north is the mighty empire of Assyria, and to their south is the mighty power of Cush that controls Egypt and all of that region.

To the south, these are the players of the day, and the goal of Assyria was to gain a hold of all of the trade routes that made their way down to the riches of Egypt and to control all of that commerce and to gain all of that wealth for themselves.

They wanted control over the trade routes in and to and from Egypt to the rest of the world.

And, of course, cush and Egypt are here resisting it and seeking to consolidate their power by way of alliances, like we looked at in the previous chapter, seeking to consolidate their power by way of alliances, like we looked at in the previous chapter.

And so you've got this mighty power to the north and this mighty power to the south, and sandwiched right in the middle of that is little old Judah, this tiny little nation.

They're caught in the crossfire of superpowers going after each other, and Assyria is moving itself and positioning itself to the very borders of Egypt.

And Egypt is trying to buffer itself and trying to call these little nation states into an alliance so they might have a little bit of a buffer there.

What's going to happen?

Verse 1, a pronouncement concerning Egypt Look, the Lord rides on a swift cloud and is coming to Egypt.

Egypt's worthless idols will.

And once again we're brought into the realm of ancient Near East literature, when the gods were considered those in control of the clouds, riders in the sky, riders on the clouds.

So many different gods of the different peoples would be considered those who rode on the clouds and brought the rain and the harvest, and so they worshiped them because of their harvesting, producing abilities.

So they thought the Mesopotamian storm gods, baal, the one who rides on the clouds.

And someone said about Baal he will appoint the season of his rain a season for moisture to appear in snow.

He will set his voice in the clouds as lightning bolts to the earth.

But who's actually in charge here?

It is God.

It is God who rides on the swift clouds and is coming to Egypt, and the all-powerful God, sovereign over the nations, is also sovereign over the heavens, and he's going to come and demonstrate himself as more powerful and more mighty than these lifeless, powerless idols.

And the ensuing terror that's going to come to Egypt is pervasive.

In verses 2 to 4, this shaking of Egypt is going to settle them so much that it's going to lead them into anarchy.

And then, in verses 5 to 10, we're going to see that he touches the Nile and disrupts the flows of the seasonal floods and going to bring economic collapse to Egypt.

And then, verses 11 to 15, they're going to be brought to hopeless defeat.

And in verses 11 to 15, they're going to be brought to hopeless defeat.

And in verse 12, a taunt God gives them so victorious he is, he can speak as a Lord in battle, standing when all others have shattered.

And in verse 12, where, then, are your wise men?

Let them tell you and reveal what the Lord of armies has planned against Egypt.

The princes of Zoan have been fools.

The princes of Memphis are deceived.

Their tribal chieftains have led Egypt astray.

Why would Judah, why would Judah go to these people and make an alliance, a nation under wrath, a nation that, by the work of God, will become a divided people, a nation that will have a collapsing economy, a nation that looks for wisdom and only finds folly.

Why would they give themselves to that nation instead of the living God, who's in control of all of it?

Chapter 20, jumping over a section we'll look at in just a moment, we find that there's no help there, there's no help in Cush.

There's no help in Egypt whatsoever.

There's no help in Cush.

There's no help in Egypt whatsoever.

And Isaiah is told to do something strange.

The Lord said as my servant, isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot, three years.

This is a sign and omen against Egypt and Cush.

So the king of Assyria will lead the captives of Egypt in the exiles of Cush, young and old alike, stripped and barefoot, with bared buttocks.

To Egypt's shame, isaiah walked around for three years with a bare backside and bare feet, as a living demonstration of what was going to happen to the people Judah was going to put their trust in.

It's brought to nothing.

And at the very end, in verse five and six, the inhabitants of this coastland will say on that day, look, look, look, look, look.

What's happened to those that we have relied on and fled to for help to rescue us from the king of Assyria?

And if it happened to them, how are we going to escape?

You know, sometimes when we listen to the news and we watch what's happening in the world, it can be hard to believe that God is actually on the throne.

But he is.

Imagine a modern day Isaiah standing in the streets of London in the spring of 1942 and proclaiming that in three years time Germany and Japan would be brought to ruin.

At that time, in 1942, germany and Japan literally controlled over half of the globe.

What kind of fool must have Isaiah of 1942 must have looked like when he's standing in the midst of bombed out buildings and streets filled with rubble and says in three years' time, your enemy is going to be nothing.

This is exactly what Isaiah is saying here.

He's saying it doesn't look like God's in control, but he is, and we can look at our world and we can make wrong calculations.

We can think that those that are in the news every day are the ones who are making everything happen, but they're not.

Despite the energy and the intellect and the power of the great nations, in Isaiah's day they were all swept away and there was one reality that they had never taken into consideration.

And that is the God who controls the heavens and the earth, and this is why we should reject all other securities beside him, because he moves mountains and shakes nations and brings mighty powers to nothing Out of the quietness of his position, without breaking a sweat, he brings them down.

He shows his sovereignty by way of his judgment.

But I want to show you something else here, in the middle of all of this chapter 17, chapter 18, the bulk of chapter 19, all of chapter 20, god showing his great power through these wasting away of the nations is something striking.

Let's go to chapter 19.

Let's go to chapter 19.

Let's take a look at verse 16.

On that day, egypt will be like women and will tremble with fear because of the threatening hand of the Lord of armies when he raises it against them.

The land of Judah will terrify Egypt.

Whenever Judah is mentioned, egypt will tremble because of what the Lord of armies has planned against it, and you think what utter destruction.

But let's keep reading.

On that day, five cities in the land of Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear loyalty to the Lord of armies.

One of the cities will be called the City of the Sun.

And on that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the center of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the Lord near their border.

It will be a sign and witness to the Lord of armies in the land of Egypt.

And when they cry out the Lord, to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and leader and he will rescue them.

The Lord will make himself known to Egypt and Egypt will know the Lord on that day.

They will offer sacrifices and offerings, they will make vows to the Lord and fulfill them.

The Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing, and then they will turn to the Lord and he will be receptive to their prayers and heal them.

On that day, there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria and Assyria will go to Egypt and Egypt to Assyria, and Egypt will worship with Assyria.

On that day, israel will form a triple alliance with Egypt and Assyria.

A blessing within the land.

The Lord of armies will bless them, saying Egypt, my people, assyria, my handiwork, israel, my inheritance are blessed.

What is this?

What is this great wonder?

We've just read.

What is this great wonder?

We've just read God is sovereign in judgment and he's also sovereign in salvation.

He is the ways of salvation, and Judah, which was sandwiched between Assyria and Egypt, is one day going to be the very linchpin of worship among the people.

No longer are they in the crossfire, but now they are the center place for it all.

God here promises to bring salvation, and he uses the emblems of these nations Assyria and Egypt and Israel.

And what is he telling us here?

He's using prophetic pictures and patterns again to bring in this idea that something dramatic is going to happen by way of God's activity, by way of his sovereign displays of power in saving as well as judging, that there are going to be people that will be conquered by him and live and not die.

And so the prophet picks up all the language and the practices of the people of Israel and uses them as emblems for his deliverance.

And so he talks about altars and he talks about pillars and he talks about sacrifices and he makes allusions to the book of Exodus and talks about the promises to the fathers, to Abraham, and he takes all of these things to give us some understanding of what he's going to do in the future.

The people of God today recognize the realities of those things which were shadows, types and figures, as the writer of Hebrews says, that speak of the living Christ and the people gathered in his kingdom who, from all nations, find themselves one in Christ.

And here's the display of it, by the way of the grace of God given and promised to the people of Egypt and of Assyria.

And I want us to notice a few things very, very briefly here, and the first is that the grace of God has come to the worst of people.

Right, this is Assyria, this is Egypt.

He's come to, this is the people that are emblematic of the enemies of God Egypt and Pharaoh that held his people in captivity for hundreds of years, in which Moses went to Pharaoh and said the Lord says let my people go, and Pharaoh replies with a stiff neck.

Well, who is the Lord anyway?

These are the chief enemies of the people of God, and yet the grace of God comes to them.

He's come to the worst of his enemies and he melts them with grace and receives them.

What a remarkable thing this is that a person so furiously opposed to God is the one that the Lord receives and embraces in Christ, takes a lion and turns it into a lamb, makes them lie down at the feet of the Savior.

This morning I was listening to a sermon of an old friend of mine who's been in heaven for several years now, steve Fernandez.

Steve was a pastor in Vallejo, a community Bible church, and when I met Steve he told me a story about how he was brought to Christ.

They had never been to church.

He and his brother were both drug dealers in the times of the hippie era in California, and his brother found a Bible, had never been to a church, found a Bible and started reading it and God saved him.

And his brother came to him one day and to Steve and threw the Bible at him and said you need to read this because you're going to hell.

And Steve started reading it and he said reading it.

And he said I am going to hell.

And God saved him.

And he went and he gathered all of his drug-dealing friends and all those that were around him and he got up on a bench a picnic bench and preached the gospel to all of them and 50 of them got saved right there.

This man who was running away from God, didn't know God, was an enemy of God, was pursuing pleasures and passions that had nothing to do with God and the Lord went to that enemy and delivered him.

Here's Egypt, one of the most degraded of all nations, and yet the grace of God comes to it.

I love what Spurgeon said.

He said the devil can't color a soul so red in sin that the blood of Christ can't make it white as snow.

Isn't that beautiful?

Satan can't drive a person so far into the mountains of vanity or into the deserts of sin, but what?

The great shepherd of the sheep can find that one and bring it home again.

You see, there's hope for all of us.

There's hope for the most sunken.

And if you're here today and you don't know the Savior, let me just say this this word is for you the God who comes in grace to Egypt can come to grace, in grace to you, and I don't know what you might think about yourself.

I've gone too far away.

I can never.

I just can't be a Christian.

My dad used to say that to me.

He said I can't come into church.

I'm like why not, dad?

He said the roof would cave in if I did and I said come on in, dad.

There's a lot of us that would have made the roof fall.

Come on in.

The scriptures say that he is able to save to the uttermost all those who come to him.

In Christ Jesus, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven you.

All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven you.

Jesus said here the scriptures speak so abundantly and superfluously about all the abundance of grace that comes.

Look at the next one, in verse 20.

In verse 20, it says here it will be a sign and witness to the Lord of armies in the land of Egypt.

They will cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors and he will send them a Savior and a leader.

That is a direct allusion to the people of Israel in Egypt, in bondage, crying out for help, and God sends them, moses to deliver them.

And here are the Egyptians who were once the captors, now feeling the oppression, calling out for help, and God says he'll send them a deliverer who will rescue them, a deliverer who will rescue them.

They cry out just like the people they once captured, and they find deliverance, just like the people they once bound in slavery.

He's come to save, he's come to deliver and he will rescue them.

The Scriptures say Now take a look at verse 18.

Not only does he deliver them, but he changes their language, which is a very interesting image here.

On that day, five cities in the land of Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear loyalty to the Lord of armies.

What is this talking about?

These people will be so aligned with the Lord, god and his people, that they'll actually learn a language completely foreign to them.

Now that they'll no longer speak the language of their old country, egypt, they will speak the language of their old country, egypt.

They will speak the language of their new alliances, the people of Israel who are in the land of Canaan.

A new speech, a new voice, a new language speaking about the allegiances and the transfer of allegiance of these people to God, that they're going to take up his voice in the voice of his people.

You know, there used to be people who would live their lives and not a word could be uttered without a curse, but now they can't and won't.

There were people who would, in their speech, speak about their pride and their arrogance, and they would posture themselves in such an intimidating way in order to impose themselves on others by the force of their personality or the strength of their arms.

But not anymore.

They take up the language of humility, softness of speech and peaceableness of heart and gentleness.

There are people whose language was full of lewdness and lasciviousness, but now they speak words of health and hope and peace.

Verse 19, these people are set into a place of service.

On that day there'll be an altar to the Lord in the center of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the Lord near her border Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord near her border.

Once they would have worshiped the other gods, but now all of their worship is given to him and they set up a pillar on the boundaries of their land as an emblem of who actually owns it.

There would have been a time they would have set a pillar up to themselves and said this is the land of Egypt and it is ours and it is under the control of our God.

And now they set up a pillar on the boundary and said this is the land of God and we are his and we worship him.

Verse 20 teaches them to pray.

It'll be a sign and witness to the lord of armies.

In the land of egypt, they will cry out to the lord because of their oppressors.

He teaches them to call out to him of whom they had never once before called.

That for me was the very first thing I ever did.

And someone shared the gospel with me.

And they asked me do you want to be saved?

Do you want your sins forgiven?

And I said yes, how do I do that?

And he said you need to pray and ask the Lord to save you.

And I balked.

I said I've never prayed before, ever.

What is prayer?

I don't know how to pray.

And he said just tell God what's on your heart.

And what was on my heart was how much I needed God's forgiveness, because I knew I was a sinner and the very first time I ever prayed was a prayer of repentance for God to please forgive me.

These people are taught to pray, to cry out, and in verse 21, they're instructed.

On that day they will be instructed, it says in verse 21.

They will offer sacrifices and offerings.

They will make vows to the Lord and fulfill them, and he will make himself known to Egypt and Egypt will know the Lord.

On that day, what was of no interest to them was now of greatest interest to them.

In verse 22, even their trouble is turned to a blessing.

The Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing, and they will turn to the Lord and he will be receptive to their prayers.

You strike a person who doesn't know the Lord and they say why is God being so mean to me?

Why has he gotten in the way of the good life I deserve?

Why has he taken away the things that are precious to me, why, why, why?

And their heart grows in anger and bitterness.

But you strike one of God's people and they say that smarts and that hurts, but even in the wounding there's health, there's life.

Verse 23,.

This grace that comes changes their relationships with one another.

On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria and Assyria will go to Egypt and Egypt will worship with Assyria.

The Egyptians and the Assyrians were in this feud, this war, this conflict that had ravished this whole area.

Multitudes of people swept up in their animosity to one another and the clutching of greed.

And now they visit each other and when they do, they don't war, they worship.

What does the gospel do to people?

What does God's intervention of grace do to people?

It breaks down barriers.

It breaks apart animosity.

I wouldn't give a dollar for your professed faith in Christ if you can say about someone else, I'll never talk to that person, ever again, person ever again, because the gospel changes who you are on the inside and if God can make Egypt his, he can certainly give you a heart of compassion, even to those who don't ever turn to him.

And if there is someone who turns to him and you have as well, you might say well, I'm not sure we could ever meet in the middle.

Nobody said you had to meet in the middle.

You meet at the cross and you can meet there.

One last thing what does the grace of God do?

It blesses these people and it makes them a blessing.

The very last verse On that day, the last two verses on that day, israel will form a triple alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing within the land.

The Lord of armies will bless them, saying Egypt, my people, Assyria, my handiwork and Israel, my inheritance, are blessed.

There was a time when God stood in the midst of Egypt and said through Moses, let my people go.

And said through Moses, let my people go.

And now God is in the midst of Egypt and he's saying you are my people, he's embraced them.

And Israel is here to see the scene as fulfilling its ultimate purpose to be a blessing to the world, not because it's good, but because God has acted among them to do something dramatic.

Yes, israel is called my possession, but Egypt is now called my people.

And Assyria is now called my handiwork and Assyria is now called my Handiwork.

The goal of the Assyrian Empire was to bring Egypt under its control, but now they're joined together in a triple alliance An alliance of worship, an alliance of fellowship, an alliance of acceptance, an alliance of blessedness, an alliance of blessedness to others.

Israel is fulfilling now its final purpose to bring a blessing to the nations.

The apostle paul picked up this idea in the book of galatians when he said christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us because it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on the tree.

And he said, the purpose?

The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus.

So we have received the promised spirit through faith.

And so, when Christ was born in this world, coming from the reaches of the east down through the north, was a group of people called Magi who walked their way from Assyria and stopped in the midst of Israel and said when is he who is born King of the Jews?

We have come to worship him, king of the Jews.

We have come to worship him.

And later, in the proclamation of the gospel, stephen was sent out and he was met up by a man in a chariot who was an Ethiopian eunuch, a man who was dead in body and under the service of another king.

And he finds the gospel in the book of Isaiah, and he finds himself given life and given hope and owns another master named Jesus.

And there, bound in Christ, together, are Assyrians and Egyptians, those bound from the places of the north and the south, found in unison, and one in Christ.

This is our Lord, sovereign in his majesty, displaying his power over all powers in heaven and on earth, controlling the destiny of nations and of people, his judgment spoken in quiet rebuke against the raging of the nations.

Our Lord also sovereign in his mercy, able to turn the fierce enemy into a humble, joyful, delighted, blessed member of his eternal family.

This is why the Gaithers wrote a song Jesus, jesus, jesus.

There's just something about that name.

Master Savior, jesus, like the fragrance after the rain, let all heaven and earth proclaim.

Kings and kingdoms will all pass away, but there's just something about that name.

At the mention of his name, he can calm the storm, heal the broken, raise the dead.

I've seen sin-hearted men melted their lives, transformed, the lights of hope put in the eyes of a hopeless child.

At the name of Jesus, hatred and bitterness turned to love and forgiveness.

Emperors tried to destroy it, philosophers have tried to stamp it out, tyrants have tried to wash it from the face of the earth with the blood of those who claimed it.

Yet it still stands.

And there shall be in that final day when every voice that is ever nuttered to sound, every voice of Adam's race, shall rise in one mighty chorus to proclaim the name of Jesus.

For on that day, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is truly Lord.

You see, it was not by mere chance that an angel, one night long ago, said to a virgin maiden His name shall be called Jesus, jesus, jesus.

There's just something about that name.

Kings and kingdoms shall all pass away, but there's something about that name.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for these chapters which cause us to shudder, to shudder with concern.

If we were ever to be the objects of your judgment, if we were ever to be the objects of your judgment, so swiftly and completely could you take us down.

And yet, lord, also in this section of Scripture, we find ourselves shuddering with wonder that you, who are a God of such fierce judgment, are also a God who can shine upon your enemies and make them your sons and daughters.

Lord, we pray that each and every one of us might seek you and remember you, the God who saves, the rock, who delivers and supplies.

May we not give ourselves to vain and worthless and tragic things.

We pray that we might be found under the banner of your grace, one of your children, my people, my handiwork, my inheritance, and we pray this in Christ's name, amen.