A Climactic Vision of Future Glory

As you've already seen this morning in the songs that we've

sang, there's a strong pattern in Christian music of reserving

the final verse of a hymn to talk about the second coming and

to talk about the new heavens and the new earth and to talk

about Christ's return and eternal life.

Or we might sum up. All of that with the climactic

vision of future glory. That's what we've been singing

about. If it was stirring your heart,

well, that's why. And that's what we look forward

to. And.

That's what I want you to think with me, actually.

This will be a pop quiz time. Think through some of these

classic hymns, some we've sang today.

What is the? Final verse of It is Well with

my soul it goes this way and Lord haste the day when my faith

will be sight, and the clouds will be rolled back as a scroll.

The climactic vision of future glory.

How does how great thou art end? How does that last verse start?

When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation or blessed

assurance? Which begins or which ends with

watching and waiting and looking above?

And you all know this one. How does Amazing Grace end when

we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun?

We've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun.

He ends with this blending of eternal worship.

It's eternal things. Worship and hope, worship and

hope. And then these hymns do this

because it it, it inspires and fuels our hope.

We are as Christians by definition.

Men and women. Of hope, and we are given true

and ultimate hope. And this is hope that deals with

injustice and it deals with the evil in the world, that deals

with final salvation, that deals with eternal life.

Looking ahead to the New Testament.

It has much to say about hope. We're in Isaiah 66.

But looking even to the the entire corpus of the New

Testament, those 27 books, hope is a word used 84 times, Paul

says. This is the hope that belongs to

your. Call, meaning hope, is

inseparable from the call to salvation that you've received.

It's part of it, inseparable. Paul calls it the hope to which

you've been called to, as if you're supposed to capitalize a

capital H. This is the hope.

And the New Testament says that while we were strangers to the

covenant of promise, we were without God in the world and

without hope. Meaning, if you do not know

Jesus, if you have not yet kissed the Son, then this is a

description of lostness. As you are a person without hope

in the world, you are literally the hopeless ones.

In Isaiah 59, Jesus put on the helmet of salvation, and Paul

takes that in Ephesians 6 and says part of your spiritual

armor is to take that helmet of salvation.

But it is. It's called in that text the

helmet of the hope of salvation. And the hope of the Bible is

true and living hope because it's grounded in the

resurrection of Jesus Christ who overcame death, and it's

grounded in all of the promises of the eternal, omnipresent,

omnipotent, triune God and Jesus Christ.

And so promises, they're, they're built on his promises.

And there are promises that have been recorded all through the

Bible. They're they're promised by

Isaiah and they're promised by authors like Paul who wrote to

the Colossians to say that God has chosen to make known to his

church how great are the riches of the glory of Christ.

In you and then he adds this. The hope of glory.

And so there's an important theme.

We're going to be tying all of these themes of Isaiah together

in this last chapter. But one theme of Isaiah that's

been going through the book as a whole, it's been central to the

theology of Isaiah, is captured in a single word.

It's a theology of hope, the single word hope.

And the word in Hebrew, looking back now to the Old Testament,

is Kava. And this word means literally,

it can mean to hope or to wait. And depending on the context,

sometimes it's very hard to tell what word is supposed to be used

there. He used it in Isaiah 817.

I will wait for the Lord, and I will hope in Him.

He uses them. Together, Isaiah 3818.

Those who go down to the pit do not hope for your faithfulness.

So you have the the redeemed who hope for it and the lost who

don't. Isaiah 40, verse 30.

Isaiah 40:30

One a very famous. Passage those who hope in the

Lord He will renew their strength, they will soar on

wings like eagles they will run and not go weary you might read

this way those who wait on the Lord he will renew their

strength and they will soar on wings like eagles.

Isaiah 51 the coastlands hope for me chapter 60, verse 9 the

coastlands will hope for me and we're in the final chapter, the

final words of Isaiah this morning and he ends where he

began. He told you what he was going to

tell you, He told you and now he's telling you what he told

you. And so this theme of hope has.

Been there from the beginning if you think.

Back to Chapter 1. He he starts there with hope.

He confronts Israel with their sin and he doesn't shy away from

it. He says in the very beginning

how the faithful city has become a whore, your silver has become

mixed with dross, and your Princess are rebels.

Those are very important words as they'll be seen all through

Isaiah. But then he uses the same

language to provide hope for his church.

As he says, I will restore your judges who were rebels.

I will restore your counselors as at the beginning.

Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the

faithful city. You who are unfaithful,

faithless, you will be faithful. He has the same metaphor in

Isaiah 5 where he says that you're a vineyard and you're

producing wild grapes. You're supposed to produce wet

grapes. You're you're not producing the

food that I called you to. And as you go through Isaiah,

you see this vineyard is restored and it begins to

produce the fruits that God called it to produce.

And you say, what unlocks that hope?

What's the means of the hope? He tells you in chapter 1, verse

27. Those in Zion who repent shall

be redeemed by righteousness. There's your hope for all those

who kiss the Son, for all those who repent and as you.

Move from Chapter 1 into Chapter 2.

He begins to illustrate hope already, and you have one of the

most beautiful, unforgettable images of the future church.

He says in the climactic vision of future glory.

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of

the House of the Lord shall be established as the highest of

the mountains. It shall be lifted above all the

hills and the nations. Shall flow to it.

This is you. You will be part of this, this

final pilgrimage where all the people come to Jerusalem, he

says. All of the ports will be open

for the ships of Tarshish to bring in worshippers from every

tribe, tongue, and nation they're going to bring with.

The wealth of the nations, the gates to Jerusalem are going to

be opened eternally, making way for people to come to, to see

Christ and the beauty of his city as he sits on the throne of

David. And if you could take a bird's

eye view and look down on that city, he says it looks like

streams of water flowing uphill into the city.

But really it's people. It's you and me.

And this is picturing hope. It's fueling.

Your hope? And like all Psalms, hymns, and

spiritual songs, the final verses, the final words of

Isaiah, end with a consideration of eternal things.

And if you haven't already turned to Isaiah 66 and we're

going to hear together the final words of the prophet.

We're going to go little by little through the book or

through the chapter. And I've already said Isaiah. 66

is the perfect end to the book because he takes all of these

themes, we should say most of these themes, many of these

themes that he's been working out, and he ties them all

together. He puts it all in a neat bow at

the end as it culminates in the new heavens and the new earth.

And the themes he's going to be binding together are true

worship, which is worship that comes from a humble and contrite

heart. He's talked about this, the

future prosperity of Zion. And remember all of the beauty

says he's going to have resources and food and jewels

from every nation. And they're all going to be part

of this glorious new Kingdom. And they'll be fruitful final

judgment where God is coming in in the future and he's going to

bring recompense with him. Final salvation, which is going

to include all nations, tribes and tongues.

The new heavens and the new earth is a theme which will be

the final state of all believers.

And finally, the church's global mission to reach not just Jews,

but Gentiles and the coastlands with the gospel.

And so the question is, what binds all of these?

We mentioned 6 themes here. What what binds all of the

themes together? Worship in the nations and final

judgment. And what binds it together?

What holds it together is worship.

It involves the chapter 66 and Isaiah is about worship.

And as a local church, we are here this morning.

We are bound together. We worship because we have been

given hope. That's what it means to be a

Christian. And our hope culminates in

eternal worship of God the Father in Christ.

So we're brought together because we have hope and our

hope culminates in eternal worship.

And so for that reason, what I want you to see in chapter 66 is

7 marks of true worship. You'll see them clearly as we go

through 7 marks of true worship and it begins with the very

first mark. You can read with me in verses

one to two true worship exalts, the true God.

If you're worshiping any other God or you're worshiping this

God in the wrong way, it is not true worship.

The verses 1 to the second-half of verse 2 he says thus says the

Lord heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool.

What is the house that? You would build for me and what

is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has

made and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord.

A little bit of context. If you were to go into the

ancient world, Thrones were set up on a a platform or there

would be stairs leading up to a throne.

And the idea is the higher the throne is above the.

The lay people, the more dignified and sovereign you are.

And so here God is saying. His his throne is in the heavens

and not heaven like the spiritual place where

disembodied spirits go as as completely otherworldly.

He's not talking about heaven in that sense.

He's talking about heaven as in Psalm 19, the heavens declare

the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

He's talking about the. Sky.

And he says, my throne is so high and lifted up that it's in

heaven, it's in the heavens, it's in, it's in the.

Clouds, that's how. Dignified and superior I am to

any other king. It's like he's saying I am the

King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and so high am I that my

footstool is earth itself. So he's saying I am dignified.

The same thing came. In Isaiah 6 when it said that he

had the train of his robe filled the temple.

And kings throughout history, including even the Queen of

England, have trains of robes. And even the the Robe of the

State that Queen Elizabeth wore was 18 1/2, or 18 feet 4 1/2

inches. Long and four foot wide.

Which is a little bit overkill, but it's saying I am sovereign.

I am. Dignified and of course, they

say of Jesus Christ, His throne or his robe fills the temple.

There is no end to it. It's the same image.

He is sovereign. He's high and lifted above, and

as we continue down, I want to feel the rhetorical power of

what Isaiah is saying. I want you to think back and

consider back to an unlikely place, Edwin Hubble and his

discovery back in the 1920s. Hubble looked through his

galaxies and saw what we call redshift, and realized for the

first time that our galaxies are moving away from one another.

As a matter of fact, not only are they moving away from one

another, but they're accelerating as they move.

And it's still unclear why, but the scientific consensus is that

the universe is again not only expanding, but rapidly expanding

and rapidly accelerating, and it's become so large that we

can't even comprehend the figures when we read them.

The current estimated radius of the observable universe is 46.5

billion light years, and it's estimated using Hubble's law

that the universe is expanding at its boundaries at a rate of

three times the speed of light, and the farther it is away, the

quicker it expands. And so with that.

In mind, think also of Scripture saying that God fills the

universe with His glory. He is at every point, especially

Psalm 139. He is omnipresent and now here.

What he says here in verse 2 or at the end of verse one, what is

this house that you would build for me?

And what is the place of my rest?

All the other gods of the ancient Near East.

You could put Dagon in a temple and the temple could house that

God, and God says, are you going to house me in this little

building made of gold and wood and bronze?

Think about the fullness of God and the bigness and the vastness

and the sovereignty and he says, and are you going to put me in a

house? You're going to limit me

spatially. And then he adds to that more

than that. In verse 2, he says all these

things my hand has made. And so all these things came to

be, declares the Lord. He says, I'm the creator of

heaven and earth. I made the gold, I made the

stones, I made the wood. I put the processes.

I invented the processes that you're going to put together to

make bronze, and you're going to put me in a house made of the

things that I created. You can hear Paul saying, are

you going to give a gift to me that I might be repaid?

It's like getting something from your mother's closet to give to

her as a gift. There's nothing that you can do

to contain God. He wants you.

To see that He is omnipresent, He's omnipotent.

This is the context. This is what it wants you to

know about God the Father. True worshippers worship the

true God. He is the God of heaven and

earth. He cannot be contained.

He is sovereign. He is dignified.

Second point, second mark of true worship.

True worship springs from a true worshipper.

So if all of these collectively are the marks of true worship,

then the second. Point looking at.

Verse 2 would say these are the marks of a true worshipper.

These are the people that come to Yahweh.

Look at the second-half of verse 2 with me.

But this is the one to whom I will look, he who is humble and

contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word.

The commentator, McKay kind of summarizes all of Isaiah's just

conversation about true worshippers.

And he says there's really three things that God is looking for,

three characteristics to which God, which commends us to God,

which he delights in. And the first he says is God

commenced himself to the poor. And he says poor are those at

the lowest levels of society. And then he comments on what we

already know from reading through the book of James.

When Scripture talks about the rich and the poor, he's not

always talking or only talking about economic categories.

Rich and poor and scripture are theological words and

theological categories, and he says that here, saying it became

a religious term for those who are prepared to rely solely and

absolutely. On the Lord.

So a true worshipper is somebody who relies on God, is completely

destitute. They live and move and have

their being. They are lost without the

salvation of Jesus Christ and of God the Father.

If you are not completely reliant and dependent on God,

you are not a true worshipper. This was apparent in Isaiah 61

with the opening words Jesus selected for his ministry.

As he says, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the

Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to who the poor,

Jesus said, and the greatest sermon ever preached, the Sermon

on the Mount. He said blessed are the poor in

spirit or Luke simply blessed are the poor and he says that's

the word destitute. If you are not destitute

spiritually, then you do not yet worship the Lord of glory.

The second mark of a true worshipper he uses here.

He says it's the contrite in spirit.

That's our translation and and underlying this metaphor.

The original word is. Crippled.

You are lame. You cannot walk.

You're crippled. We translate it contrite in this

context, and contrite means penitent or sorry or expressing

remorse. You're broken over your sin and

if you do not come to the Lord humbly and broken over your sin,

then you have not come to the Lord.

And so I remember Isaiah 5715. We're we're revisiting all of

these themes. He says, remember, we're

preparing a highway in our hearts because God has two

addresses. Do you remember?

God lives in two places. He has his home.

Isaiah 6. He's dwelling on the in the

throne room of heaven. Completely distinct and utterly

apart from us. And he also dwells in the hearts

of every broken center. And he says prepare the highway.

This is what John the Baptist said, prepare the highway

because God wants to live there and with you.

What an amazing God we have. He says in Isaiah 42.

Three, remember. Jesus's work.

The first thing it says about Jesus in the first servant song.

Who did He come for? It says a bruised Reed he will

not break, and a smoldering Wick he will not quench.

She comes for the crippled, broken, humble, ruined Sinner.

And then finally he adds this amazing statement.

The third mark of a true worshipper are those who tremble

at His word. And this would become a

technical term for those who submit to the authority of God

and His commands. We recognize that every time we

open this, we recognize that God is ruling and reigning in this

world through an open Bible. And that's why we take so much

effort and pain to to understand it and to apply it because it

reveals God's will to us. It is the power of God for

salvation. It's the.

Power to live according to the way that that God would have us

to live. And so these are those who have

a healthy fear of God and a healthy respect for his word.

And you look at the seven marks of a revival.

What's marks this morning? 7 marks of revival throughout

church history. One of those is a spiritual

hunger for spiritual truth. I mean, in church history,

Charles Brown, we'll call him Charlie Brown.

He says in his book Revival of Religion, he talks about a

minister in the Church of Scotland as he describes revival

in his own time. He says, quote, it was a common

thing, as soon as the Bible was opened after the preliminary

services, and just as the reader began, for great Meltings to

come upon the hearers. And a lot of you have

experienced that and you know what he's talking about.

When you open the word or you hear the word preached and it

melts you because you you recognize you're falling short

and you set the standard for yourself.

This is what happened in Nehemiah 8.

As Ezra opens the book on the side of all the people and they,

they are so ensconced in this word, they love the word so much

that as the book opens, the people involuntarily rise and

they stand as Ezra reads the word.

It's incredible. And So what?

Will be we see here in the future, we will eternally be

doers of the Word and not hearers only.

We will come to Jerusalem and be taught by the living God

himself. We pray now your mayor will be

done on earth as it will be on that day in heaven.

And we can hear the words of James 121 where we're called to

put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive

with meekness the implanted word which is able to save our souls.

And So what? What does What is the second

mark of true worship? It's a true worshipper, a humble

Sinner fully dependent on God and God alone, trembling at His

Word that says this. Is the man or woman who.

Captivates God's attention and delights His heart.

A mark of true worship. The 3rd as you move through to

verses three to four. True worship is not just

religious ritual. It's more than that.

It's more than just doing outward external religious

things. And as you look at that, these

verses, it says that it describes an ox sacrifice and a

lamb sacrifice and a grain offering and the burning of

frankincense. And it says if your religion and

your rituals, your external righteousness does not come from

the heart and is not done in the right spirit, then it's like

murder in God's eyes. But does it come from the right

spirit and the right heart of worshipping the God that we've

seen in verse one and two and from the the heart that we've

seen in in verse 2. Then he says it's like animal

cruelty. That's all it amounts to.

It's like Pagan worship. Read with me verse 3 and on.

He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man.

He who sacrifices a lamb is like one who breaks a dog's neck, He

who presents a grain offerings like one who offers pigs blood,

and he who makes a memorial offering of frankincense like

one who blesses an idol. They've chosen their own ways

and their soul delights and their abominations.

I will choose harsh treatment for them and bring their fears

upon them. Because when I called, no one

answered. When I spoke, they did not

listen. That they did what is evil in

their eyes and chose that and which I did not delight.

If you're filling your life and your time with things that God

does not delight, and the warning is here, He'll bring

your fears. On you he's.

Going to get your attention. And you see here the man who

comes with his external sacrifice, a good thing,

something God prescribes, an ox sacrifice.

You come with an ox sacrifice, you come like a murderer.

He says the man who sacrifices a lamb is like the one who touches

a dog, an unclean animal. And it gets worse.

The one who offers a grain offering is like one who offers

pigs blood. And if you put yourself back

under the Levitical law, in that ancient context, there is

nothing more offensive or disgusting than a pig.

Which is why in in 167 BC, Antiochus Epiphanes, when he

conquers Jerusalem and he wants to offend the Jews and and be

sacrilegious, and what does he do?

He desecrates the temple. By slaughtering a pig on it, It

was the worst thing that he could think of, and he's saying

that that's what your offerings amount to.

And worst of all, one offering a memorial offering of

frankincense is like one who blesses an idol, which is quite

literally the breaking of the second commandment, or if you're

Catholic or Lutheran, the first commandment.

It's this is idol worship. Think back to Exodus 20, verse

Exodus 20:4

4, where the 10 commandments are given.

He says you shall not make for yourself a carved image.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them.

For I the Lord your God and the jealous God.

So you're inciting the jealousy of God.

You're taking the worship that's meant for him, and you're giving

it to an idol. Hudson taught us earlier in the

series, Idol translates nothing. It's no thing.

It's vanity and it's vain. You're taking what's meant to

glorify the God of heaven, and you're giving it to vanity and

nothing. And God is jealous and it

incites his wrath. And Isaiah taught us repeatedly,

if you, if you pour yourself out unto outwardly religious things,

but miss true religion. This was Isaiah 58, one of my

favorite passages in the whole book.

You miss your fasting, he says. But you've missed a true fast.

You're doing the things that you think delight God, but you've

missed what's really his heart, which is caring for the orphan

and the widow and the the prisoner and the sojourn and

then sick and worshipping God from a true heart.

You've observed the Sabbath and missed the true Sabbath.

You've missed God's heart and he says, even though you're doing

the things that I have commanded, because you've missed

what I delight in. It's false worship, and it might

as well be. Murder and animal abuse.

And then Andrew Davis, who's a leader in our own denomination

and our own convention, he says in Isaiah 66 that what it's

doing, especially in verses 3 to 4 with this religious external

religion, and especially in verse 17, which you're going to

see is just purely Pagan religion.

He's separating the world into two categories, eternal

worshippers and false worshippers.

And there's no middle ground. You're worshiping God eternally

or your worship is false worship.

And to those who worship in the wrong spirit, who do not tremble

at His word, who have not been counted righteous, He says

you're on par with murdering pagans.

Look at verse four. He says he's going to treat them

harshly. And if you think that's harsh,

look at what He says. He says I called you, but you

didn't answer. I spoke to you, I revealed

myself to you, and you did not listen.

But you did what was evil and did not do what delighted God

most when you've seen what delights Him.

To be a humble, broken Sinner, to fall on the Lord of glory for

mercy, to tremble at His Word, to provide and protect and

include the orphan, the widow, the prisoner, the soldier and

the sick. To love your neighbor as

yourself, and to love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your

strength. That's what He delights.

And that's the true Sabbath and the true fast, the 4th mark of

true worship. This is a promise.

This might. This isn't.

Maybe this will happen. This is.

You can take it to the bank. This will happen.

True worship brings persecution. Verses 5 to 6.

Let's read those together. Hear the word of the Lord, you

who tremble at His word, He's talking to you, the true

worshippers. Hear the word, those who tremble

at His word, your brothers who hate.

You, and cast you out for my name's sake, have said, Let the

Lord be glorified, that we may see your joy, but it is they who

shall be put to shame. The sound of an uproar from the

city, the sound from the temple, the sound of the Lord rendering

recompense to his enemies. He says your brothers hate you

and they're going to cast you out for my name's sake.

They're doing it even now. And he says they're going to

mock the faithful. These words let the Lord be

glorified that we may see your joy as as sarcasm.

They're being sarcastic and so the world.

Hates you. And it's For these reasons that

it says the world is. I mean, they already hate you.

And because they hate you, they're going to cast out you

for Christ's name's sake. It says they're going to mock

you and they're going to persecute you.

This is a promise. The days are coming.

Jesus said the same. As a matter of fact, he

pronounced you blessed. He says blessed are you when

others revile you and persecute you and that are all kinds of

evil against you falsely on my account.

And we don't like to think about the hatred of the world.

We think about them being neutral.

They're they're like wheat out there waiting to be harvested.

That's not how Scripture sees them.

The world out there is anti God and Antichrist and nobody talked

more about the hatred of the world than Jesus did and his

words are recorded in John. He says the word hate 7 times in

John 1518 to 20. Five And he gives you a theology

of hate. He says verse 18 the world hates

you. Verse 18 the world hated Jesus

before it hated you. Verse 19 Listen, they hate you

because Jesus chose you. Verse 23 They hate God the

Father. Verse 24, they hate the Father

and they hate His Son. In verse 25, they hated Jesus

without a cause. And So what you have put forward

here is the doctrine of imputed hatred.

You get Christ's righteousness. They hate Him.

Now they hate you because you are the light of the world, and

so the sole reason that they hate you is because you are a

true worshipper. Why do they persecute you?

John tells you. Jesus tells you.

It's so simple. Because your works are good and

theirs are evil. That's why.

That's why your worship invites their persecution and their

hate. Your works are good and theirs

are evil. And so if you receive love and

praise from the world, Jesus says you are not his disciple.

But if you are persecuted, he says you're blessed, you are

filling up and completing the sufferings of Jesus Christ and

on that final day you will be glorified for it.

And they will ultimately it says here, this is your hope.

They will ultimately be put to shame, but not before they

ridicule you for your true worship. 5th mark of true

worship as we continue. Down this large section from

verses 7 to 14. True worship is eternal.

To read this section together, this metaphor of Zion as a

mother, it says before she was in labor, she gave.

Birth. Before her pain came upon her,

she delivered a son. Who has heard such a thing?

Rhetorical question. Who's seen such things?

Shall a land be born in a day? Shall a nation be brought forth

in one moment? For as soon as Zion was in

labor, she brought forth her children.

Shall I bring to the point of birth, and not cause to bring

forth? Says the Lord.

Shall I Who? Cause to bring forth.

Shut the womb, says your God, verse 10.

Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love

her, rejoice with her, and joy all you who mourn over her, that

you may nurse, and be satisfied from her consoling breast, that

you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious

abundance. For thus says the Lord, Behold,

I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the

nation's like an overflowing stream.

And you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip, bounced

upon her knees, as one whom his mother comforts.

So I will comfort you, you shall be comforted in Jerusalem, you

shall see, and your heart shall rejoice, your bones shall

flourish like the grass, and the hand of the Lord shall be known

to his servants, and he shall show his indignation against his

enemies. And so in This isn't the

familiar theme of the the glorious abundance of Zion.

Remember, the ports are open eternally so that all the wealth

of nations can continually flow into to that city, come up to

that city with worshippers and with their.

They're well, think of the the gates being open continually.

It's picturing Zion as a mother. You have God as your father and

Zion as your mother eternally. God says, and he says he's going

to bring forth the people in the nurturing environment of God's

eternal Kingdom. He says you're going to to suck

on the breast of this eternal city and it's going to be like

prosperity. Coming to you the.

Comfort and prosperity you're going to take part in.

Remember the the beauty of the city of all the stones and all

the gold and all the jewels. The the streets will be made of

gold and the gates will be made of fine pearls.

He says that will be your eternal state.

This worship is eternal and the restoration of God's people is

going to be against the curse of Eden, where he says childbirth

is now going to be slow and it's going to be painful.

And yet it says here that Zion is a mother who brings birth

painlessly and suddenly he asked a rhetorical question like a

Riddle in verse 8. How can a woman give birth

before her pain has come upon her?

This is nevertheless that's what's going to happen before

she even experiences birth pains.

The children will be. There.

And the restoration of God's people is contrary to the slow

and predictable processes like we would think a nation would be

built. America was built on the slow

movement of a mother has children and they have children

and the mother dies. And there's a slow, predictable

birth rate and death rate of a city or of a nation.

And it grows. And it says that's not how Zion

will be brought forth. It will come forth in a day, in

the twinkling of an eye, miraculously.

And in the sea, it's not just a political pilgrimage, but a

miraculous rebirth. Zion will be eternally

prosperous. As previous chapters again have

said, The gates and ports will be open.

They will be comforting. The city will be comforting.

The metaphor is a mother bouncing you on her knee.

It's a picture of Joy carrying you on her hip and nursing.

You and you have a really interesting verse in verse 13

where God the Father says he will be to you like a comforting

mother. He's exhibiting the attributes

of a mother saying as one whom his mother comforts.

So I will comfort you. And this isn't the slow process

of history. This is an immediate coming and

we have to say what what is this referring to?

And you read the commentators they see.

Multiple fulfillments of this passage.

The first fulfillment would be when Cyrus God put it on King

Cyrus's heart to to let the people go. 10% of the Jews left

their captivity and came back to Jerusalem and it was the city

grew in a day. As soon as they got back, here

were the people with their spiritual energy rebuilding the

walls and reconstituting the nation.

They came forth without this long birth rate of this.

The second fulfillment that the commentators see is at the birth

of the church at Pentecost. You have 120 believers in the

upper room praying, and the Spirit comes and all of a sudden

3000 are added to the Kingdom of God.

We think through the Psalms as God is writing in the heavenly

registry of Jerusalem. This one was born there.

You have 3000 or I guess 3120 on that day.

Now as citizens of the Kingdom, it will grow so quickly,

miraculously and instantaneously.

And then finally, above all, the sudden bringing forth of God's

restored people is in the new heavens and the new earth. 1st

Corinthians 15 talks about that day.

It says the trumpet is going to blow and in the twinkling of an

eye we will have glorified bodies.

The the dead will be raised and the twinkling of an eye you will

have God's eternal Kingdom and his people.

They will come forth immediately, says the trumpet

will sound and the dead will be raised in perishable.

And we shall all be changed, and we will be his people and He

will be our God and we will worship Him forever. 6th mark of

true worship. True worship avoids the wrath of

gods. Probably said better negatively.

False worship incites God's fury.

And here you have in verse 17. It's not like the false worship

of verses 3 to 4 where it was masked in kind of God's

commandments and religious language and Christianese here

it's just Pagan religion. It doesn't even masquerade as as

Christianity. Look at verse. 17 Those who

sanctify and purify themselves to go into gardens following one

in the midst eating pig's flesh, and the abomination in mice

shall come to an end. Together declares the Lord and

when you see these words sanctify and purify this is

religious language and these individuals believe that

whatever their Pagan idolatry is doing that it's getting them

closer to God whatever that is whatever conception that is for

him they're being made acceptable in his sight and it's

interesting that we think of paganism as being something in

Bible times these. Illiterate foreigners, these

pagans. But paganism is on the rise in

America. We have this new movement called

Neopaganism and and people are willingly identifying themselves

as pagans. Nature based rituals are

everywhere. The celebration of festivals and

solstices and equinoxes. I hear it all the time.

Wiccans are prevalent and their ritual magic and their crystals

and their herbs and their images and their candles.

And you have in your every time you open your newspaper or the

magazines, there are the horoscopes and there's the

astrology. And we have two blocks from this

church, a new metaphysical shop. And every time I drive downtown,

I see people coming and going from that shop.

It's here. And he says that these pagans

are on par with the Christ less Christians of verses 3 to 4.

They are inciting God's wrath and they're on par with them.

And to these false religions, Paul says in the New Testament,

they are returning to worthless and and weak elemental things of

this world. That's what they're returning

to. They're enslaved to them over

and over again, and they return to them like a dog returns to

its own vomit. And it says that their religion

is demonic. And above all, it brings.

God's wrath, which is why we can see verses 15 to 16.

This is the end of false worship, for behold, the Lord

will come in fire, and his. Chariots like the.

Whirlwind to render his anger and fury.

And his rebuke with flames of fire.

For by fire will the Lord enter into judgment, and by his sword

with all flesh, and those slain by the Lord will be many.

He speaks of the the judgment of the sword.

He speaks twice of the judgment of fire.

If you were to look up fire in the Theological Dictionary of

the Old Testament has this wonderful illustration of this

metaphor. In the Old Testament, he says

fire is not limited to any form. It blazes up to an intensity

that is pure and inaccessible. It disseminates light and heat

like the stars and like lightning flashes.

It can be either beneficial or destructive.

All this giveth the nimbus of the mysterious, the immaterial,

the terrifying. What God is saying is that for

all those whom His fire does not purify and refine, it will burn

you eternally. He's going to give into that

amenity. You'll be sent to a place where

the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

It is terrifying, it's mysterious.

It's immaterial to those who do not follow Christ.

He will enter into judgment with the sword and with the fire and

the warning. Those slain by the Lord will be

many true worship avoids this wrath of God.

And finally, the seventh true worship, I love this true

worship is. Global worship.

True worship is multi ethnic, it is Without Borders, it is

without barriers, it is eternal and it is global.

And this is a glorious theme that's prevalent.

It's in the the first part of God's mind in Isaiah it says all

people from all nations everywhere are called in these

verses to listen to the word of the Lord, to hope and his

justice and his salvation and to join in his worship.

That's the call to everyone. And Paul makes a huge point of

this in Romans 15. He begins to survey through the

Old Testament on this theme of the worship of the nations.

And he he makes an ordered list. He says in order that Gentiles

might glorify God for his mercy continues down as it is written,

I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing your name any

any Gentiles in the room praising the Lord of glory this

morning. This is what he's saying.

Again it's written, Rejoice, O Gentiles with his people.

Again Isaiah says, quoting Isaiah, the root of Jesse will

come, and even he who arises to rule the Gentiles, in him will

the Gentiles hope. You have Paul, who is writing a

letter to the Gentiles. He is the minister of God to the

Gentiles, is writing to them saying, may the God of hope.

There's our theme, Phil, you with all joy and peace and

believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may

abound in hope. The Gentiles are called to

worship and eternal hope, just like the Jews.

And we say it as a Gentile preaching to Gentiles.

Praise God, He's not left us without salvation.

And you can read verses 18 to 19 with me.

I want you to see the geographical references and why

he chose these. He'd kind of pick some places

that he's talking about. He says I know their works and

their thoughts and the time is coming to gather all nations in

tongues, and they shall come and see my glory, and I will set a

sign among them. From them I will send survivors

to the nations, to Tarshish and to pull and Lud, who draw the

bow to Tubal and Yavin, to the coastlands far away that have

not heard my fame or seen my glory.

And they shall declare my glory among the nations.

And look at these references and you'll see why he picked them,

he says. First is Tarshish.

Tarshish was in Spain. We're talking the far West of

the world or for you, we said the far West of the world.

It's it's the the farthest end of the known world.

Paul, when he is riding to the Romans, what does he say?

I'm trying to get to you the end of the known world and even more

than that for you to send me on to Spain.

And you see that is what he's talking about.

That is Tarshish. The ends of the world are going

to come to Christ. That is the far coastlines to

the West. And then he says pull and LED

which are not mentioned in scripture except for in their

connection to Kush which is in the far South.

So you say go straight S you come to Africa and remember the

Ethiopian eunuch as the salvation is going out to all

the world. This Enoch comes from the court

of Candace to the South and is saved and eunuchs are included

and Africans are included. You have the West and you have

the South. And then Tuval is modern day

Turkey to the north, which is the the place of Paul's

missionary journeys. He went all through Turkey to

the north. And then finally Yavin, which is

either Macedonia or Macedonia. Anakea.

Why is that significant? Because we studied together as a

church the epistles to the Ephesians.

And Yavl is the Thessalonian believers.

They were to see his glory. They were to receive a survivor.

And with the birth of the Thessalonian church, these

prophecies were coming to pass. You see it in Scripture.

Isaiah being fulfilled before your eyes, the the salvation was

going to all of the Gentiles. And finally it says the

coastlands, which just represented the absolute

farthest ends of the world, the furthest away Gentiles.

It's a theme in Isaiah. 41 One, listen to me in silence, O

coastlands, let them renew their strength, let them approach, let

them draw near, let them speak. 42 Two, this is the servant

song, the first servant song describing the mission of Jesus

Christ. He will not grow faint or be

discouraged until he has established justice in the earth

and the coastlands. Wait for his law, The servant

song again in Isaiah 49, the mission of Jesus Christ.

Jesus says, Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention

you peoples from afar. The Lord has called me from the

womb again to minister to them. Isaiah 51 My righteousness draws

near, my salvation has gone out my arms.

Wait to judge the peoples, the coastlands.

Hope for me. In my arm, for my arm they wait.

Chapter 60, Verse 9. The coastline shall hope for me,

the ships of Tarsus first to bring your children from afar.

We've said it before, we've said it again.

It does not bring God enough glory.

For one nation, one ethnicity, the Jewish people, to bring him

glory. He wants worship from every

tribe, every tongue, every nation from every period of

history, the poor to the rich. That is what he desires and that

is what he will receive. On the last day.

Amazing rhetorical force in verse 21.

Look with me and it says in some of them I'm going to take for

priests as Levites declares the Lord.

And he's saying if if Gentiles are becoming priests, then every

religious boundary is now gone. Gentiles who were hated,

Gentiles who were excluded are now becoming the very ministers

of God included in the presence of God, which shows you that God

is impartial and he wants worship from every socio

economic class. Every nation gets to be a true

worshipper. And verses 22 to 23 as we

continue down are the eternal climax to God's promises, The

fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant, the fulfillment of the

Davidic covenant, the fulfillment of the new covenant,

the covenant of grace. For as the new heavens and the

new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord,

so shall your offspring and your name remain.

From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all

flesh shall come to worship before me, says the Lord.

The final state is being described.

You will be my people, and I will be your God from this time

forth and forevermore. Somebody say Amen to that.

But Isaiah doesn't end here graciously.

Isaiah does not end here. Our passage does not stop here.

There's one more verse and that will end this section as

multiple sections have ended before it.

That serves as the end of all word false worship.

It is a warning to the wicked. Read with me the last words of

Isaiah the prophet. They shall go and look out on

the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me.

For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be

quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.

And rebel is the keyword. The Princess had become rebels.

It says that the wicked were rebelling against God.

It means they knew His will, they knew that His design for

their life, and they did what they wanted to anyway.

When they rebelled, it said they grieved His Holy Spirit.

We had to point the finger at ourselves last week to say when

we rebel, we too grieve the Spirit of God.

And this verse is the ultimate fruit of rebellion.

Go out, probably. Means even in that eternal city,

go outside of the city gates and you think of Jerusalem.

To the South of the city was their dump, their town dump,

their the refuse heap. And it was a place of constant

burning in the constant process of decay.

It was the biblical picture. It became the biblical metaphor

for hell. It was the.

Valley of Hanam and what is gnawing at them is their worm,

and what's burning is their fire.

The worm will never go away, and the burning and the fire will

never be quenched. And Isaiah setting up a parallel

in verse 23 to the eternal worship of God's people and the

eternal torment of those who he refused to acknowledge him and.

As we look toward saying goodbye to Isaiah, I want you to

consider with me that every country in the world, without

exception, it's important to say, has segregated along socio

economic boundaries. And you see it in America, You

see it in the developed world, perhaps more than others.

You go to Beverly Hills, there's gates.

The poor are not allowed in. They segregate themselves.

They've got better transportation, better trash,

better sanitation, hospitals, school security.

We segregate our poor. My wife spent a summer in India.

And she was amazed there when she went there.

They don't segregate their poor like we do in kind of the the

first world, she says. It's incredible.

You would have shanties just leaning up against some of the

richest homes and they they dwell together.

But this? Further exemplifies the problem,

you have luxury apartments towering over slums and caste

structures where the poor are permanently made vulnerable

because it's part of their political system it's it's

ensconced into their religious system and there is no escape We

see also that every country in the world without exception is

full of corruption. Isaiah in chapter 10 said woe to

those who make unjust laws and. Deprive the poor of their

rights. Transparency International

started a. A corruptions indexed, a

perceived corruptions index where they, they take experts

and they measure every country in the world for their how

corrupt their public sectors are.

And you know, the best score in the world is an A minus.

The best country in the world gets a 90.

In America, we're ranked 65th with a score of or 28th with a

score of 65. And every country in the world,

without exception has been built on the backs of slaves without

exception. Which is a sobering thought

until we remember what Raleigh Sadler taught us when he came to

train us on how to care for vulnerable people.

He said the only Kingdom not built on slave labor is the

Kingdom of God. And he said the only country

that experiences no corruption, 100 out of 100 on the

corruptions Index, is the Kingdom of God.

And this Kingdom is upside down. Rather than keeping the poor out

of the vicinity of the rich, God keeps the rich out of the

vicinity of the. Poor.

And need the poor stream to Jerusalem and enjoy the wealth

and the privilege of Jerusalem. And the rich are taken to the

valley of Hanam, the town dump, and are burned eternally with

fire. And so the Kingdom of God is

unlike any Kingdom on the earth because it's a Kingdom of

righteousness and justice and peace.

Foreigners are not second class citizens in his Kingdom.

Completely contrary to Jewish expectations.

Gentiles will be first class citizens.

Foreigners in eunuchs will be serving alongside Levites as

priests. Money means nothing because the

streets are going to be paved with gold and the gates made of

the finest jewels. Status means nothing because all

glory pales in comparison with the glory of the King, whose

whose throne is in the heavens and the earth is his footstool.

And what a beautiful. Picture it will be a full

provision, full protection, full inclusion of every true

worshipper of the King of Glory and from every tribe, tongue and

nation. I want you to see as the book

ends. Kim points out the book ends in

the Kingdom of men with the wicked everywhere, with the the

righteous being hated and persecuted by the world.

It ends with the righteous servants of God struggling to

build and maintain justice, surrounded by wicked

governments, with the reality of racism and slavery and sex

trafficking and governmental corruption.

But Isaiah 66 says we. Are not left without hope in the

world and in John Bunyan's classic book Pilgrim's Progress.

Has anybody read Pilgrim's Progress before?

The two people that make it across the the gate into the

Celestial City, What are their names?

Christian and hopeful. Christian and hopeful.

Are the two that make it and I don't know if it was consciously

or not, but the book. Ends in the same way the book of

Isaiah ends. Christian and Hopeful come into

the Eternal City and Christian looks and he sees somebody

that's trying to come in. Their own way with their own

relationship with God, with their own doing it their own

way. And he says, Christian says.

I turned my head to look back and saw ignorance coming up to

the Riverside. When he came, when he was come

up to the gate, he looked to the writing that was above and he

began to knock, supposing the entrance should be quickly

administered to him. But when he was asked by the men

that looked over the top of the gate, Whence come you and what

would you have he answered. I have ate and drank in the

presence of the King, and he is taught in our streets.

Then they asked him for his certificate, that they might go

in and show it to the King, and he fumble in his bosom for one,

and found none. And so they said, have you found

none? But the man answered never a

word. So they told the King he would

not come down to see him, but commanded the 2 shining ones

that conducted Christian and hopeful to the city, to go out

and take ignorance and bind him hand and foot and have him away.

Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gate of

heaven. And just as striking is the

conclusion of Isaiah. It ends with the image of

unburied corpses of the wicked and the thought of their eternal

suffering in hell. And verse 24 is a warning to.

Anyone who does not know Jesus Christ, to anyone who would

worship God in their own way, hear the warning again.

Then they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men

who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die,

their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an

abhorrence. To all flesh, let's pray

together. Lord, we tremble at your Word.

Your word is reflecting to us Your will, Your design, Your

plan for the cosmos. Lord, if there is any in this

room that does not have ears to hear, open their ears this

morning and may they hear verse 24 to see that there is a place

called. Hell, and it is real, and there

is a pathway to hell even from the gate of heaven, for all

those who would try to enter in with their own righteousness,

their own way, their own worship, make the Lord true

believers out of them. And for those who do have hope,

who are the hopeful ones? Who are the Christians?

Lord, we pray that you would make Your hope abound in our

hearts, that these promises would be so true, that the

future heavens and earth would be so tactile and so real to us,

that would we would. Live this life as if we're

already there. Lord, we live as if that day is

tomorrow. Because it will be.

God, we love you with all our hearts and mind and strength.

Thank you for your word and press the words of Isaiah and

our soul. May they transform us forever

and make us more like your Son. God, we love you.

We ask all this in Christ's name, Amen.

Thanks for listening. To learn more about Heritage

Church or if you'd like to respond to this sermon, visit

our website at www.heritageshawnee.org.