1. "Coming to church for you is a little bit like going to the fridge. You open up the door, your eyes glaze over, and you forget why you were there. You shut the door with, I don't know, a drink in your hand, and, well, I guess that was that."

2. "Sin brought them here and their response to this sin was more sin, more disobedience. And their response to the fruit of their sin was more disobedience. Sin will lead you places that you never thought you would go."

3. "The effect of a sin can never be nullified by committing more sin, even if we didn't commit the original sin, even if that sin was against us. The bitter taste of the fruit of sin, whether that's our sin or another's, should remind us to obey."

4. "They thought that obedience was opposed to self-preservation, when in fact the opposite is true. Self-preservation depends on obedience. That doesn't mean that obedience never hurts, that obedience is never costly. Sometimes it is. Obedience may hurt a lot in the short term, but obedience to God always turns out for our good in the long term."

5. "In rejecting the Holy One of Israel, they were rejecting their whole reason for existence. Their rejection of the Holy One was a pronouncement of judgment upon themselves."

6. "We all know want of some kind. We all have suffered loss, and we will continue to suffer so long as this world lasts. So we wait. But what is the fuel for our waiting?"

7. "Christ may not end your struggles, but he will certainly carry you through every last one if you have Christ in your heart. And your struggles may not end until your life in this mortal body does, but on that day when it does end, Christ himself will bind up every wound."

8. "We have two options: We can live in reverent fear of God and repent of our sins, or we can live in fear of His judgment. Those are really the only two options."

9. "The only funeral on that day will be the funeral of God's enemies, and after that, there'll never be another funeral. Praise the Lord."

10. "His Word is the fuel for the fire of faith. This day prepares us for that day as we stir one another up to love and good works through our collective gathering around this Word."

Observation Questions

1. In Isaiah 30:1-2, what specific actions does God accuse Judah of doing "without asking for my direction"?

2. According to Isaiah 30:9-11, what do the rebellious people tell the seers and prophets to do, and what do they say about "the Holy One of Israel"?

3. What does God promise will happen to Judah's iniquity in Isaiah 30:13-14, and what imagery does Isaiah use to describe the completeness of this destruction?

4. In Isaiah 30:15, what does God say would bring salvation and strength to Judah, and how does the passage say they responded to this offer?

5. According to Isaiah 30:18-19, what is God waiting to do for His people, and what will happen when they cry out to Him?

6. In Isaiah 30:27-28, how is the coming of "the name of the Lord" described, and what does He intend to do to the nations?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is Judah's decision to seek help from Egypt described as "adding sin to sin" (v. 1), and how does this represent a reversal of what God did for Israel in the Exodus?

2. How does verse 18 resolve the apparent tension between God's justice and His mercy? What does it mean that God "waits to be gracious" and "exalts Himself to show mercy" precisely because He is "a God of justice"?

3. What does the contrast between Judah's desperate military planning (vv. 15-17) and God's promised provision (vv. 23-26) reveal about the nature of true security and blessing?

4. How does the description of God's judgment in verses 27-33 function both as a warning and as a source of hope for God's people? Why would this judgment produce "a song" and "gladness of heart" (v. 29)?

5. Throughout Isaiah 30, God's Word (His direction, instruction, and promises) plays a central role. How does the passage show that trusting God and receiving His Word are inseparably connected?

Application Questions

1. Judah sought security from Egypt when they felt desperate about Assyria. What situations in your life right now tempt you to seek solutions that ignore or contradict God's Word, and what would it look like to "ask for His direction" instead?

2. The people told the prophets to "speak smooth things" and stop talking about the Holy One of Israel (vv. 10-11). In what ways might you be tempted to avoid or soften parts of Scripture that feel uncomfortable, and how can you cultivate a heart that welcomes God's truth even when it is challenging?

3. Verse 15 says that "in returning and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and in trust shall be your strength." What practical step could you take this week to practice quietness and trust rather than anxious striving in an area where you feel pressure?

4. The sermon emphasized storing up Christ in your heart to endure spiritual winters. What specific practices (Scripture memory, songs, meditation, conversation with other believers) could you implement or strengthen to help you draw on Christ when trials come?

5. How can your small group or church community better fulfill the role described in the sermon—helping one another remember God's promises and bear burdens together—especially for those who may be in a place of desperation right now?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Exodus 13:17-22 — This passage shows God's original guidance of Israel out of Egypt and His prohibition against returning, providing the background for why Judah's alliance with Egypt was such a grievous sin.

2. Deuteronomy 17:14-20 — Here God gives instructions for future kings of Israel, including the command not to return the people to Egypt, which Judah's leaders violated in seeking Egyptian help.

3. Isaiah 36:1–37:38 — This narrative describes the fulfillment of God's promise to deliver Jerusalem from Assyria, demonstrating His faithfulness to those who trust Him rather than foreign powers.

4. Romans 8:18-25 — Paul describes the present groaning of creation and believers who wait eagerly for future glory, reinforcing the sermon's theme of waiting on God's grace with confident hope.

5. Hebrews 10:19-25 — This passage calls believers to draw near to God with faith, hold fast to hope, and encourage one another, connecting to the sermon's emphasis on the Sunday gathering as a discipline of trust.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Why We Gather on Sunday: The Question of Trust

II. We Must Obey His Words (Isaiah 30:1-7)

III. We Must Remember His Promises (Isaiah 30:8-17)

IV. We Must Wait on His Grace (Isaiah 30:18-26)

V. We Must Fear His Name (Isaiah 30:27-33)

VI. How Sunday Prepares Us for the Final Day

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Why do we do the things that we do right here in church? How is it that what we do in here, how is that helpful out there?

When I was a child, these questions were ever relevant. I always wondered why I had to get up early on one of my precious weekend days to come into church and sing and listen to a pastor preach. And children, maybe you're here this morning and you're wondering the same things. Why do we do this every Sunday? And how are the things that we do here on Sunday, how are they helpful?

Well, if you're a child here today and you're wondering this question, pay close attention to this entire sermon. That'd be my challenge to you. Make this a sermon that you try to get something out of. And try to answer that question, how is what we do here on Sunday helpful? What's with all the singing and the preaching and the reading and the praying?

And if you don't have that question answered for you, maybe ask your parents afterwards and see what they have to say. Maybe you've been a Christian for a while and you can't really remember why you come to church. Coming to church for you is a little bit like going to the fridge. You open up the door, your eyes glaze over, and you forget why you were there.

You shut the door with, I don't know, a drink in your hand, and, well, I guess that was that. Or maybe you're a visitor here today and you don't understand yourself to be a Christian. You promised a friend that you would come today or a family member dragged you here. And you're really not sure why Christians do the things they do either. Maybe you were actually curious and you wanted to see what all these people were doing gathering here at 525 A Street every Sunday morning.

And so you came here and you're like, I'm going to figure out what it's all about.

One of the big reasons that we gather on Sunday is to help ourselves trust in God, as Mark said earlier. The Sunday gathering is one great discipline of trust. For example, we trust God with the first few hours of every week. And by gathering, we encourage each other to receive instruction on how to trust in God throughout the week. So how we practice trusting in God here on Sunday is to inform and instruct us on how to trust God out there during the week.

As a church, the question of why we do the things that we do and we gather is important because if we start gathering around the wrong things, we'll forget the main reason why we're gathering entirely. We open ourselves up to a great danger, a danger of forgetting who God is and what he has said to us. We open ourselves to the danger of trusting in something other than this God that we claim to worship. So how does the gathering help us trust in this God? Well, our text for today is Isaiah 30.

And it helps us to answer this question: How do we trust in God? You can find it in the Red Pew Bible in front of you on page 590. And if you're visiting with us this morning and you don't have a Bible that you can read yourself, feel free to take that Red Pew Bible home with you and read it for yourself. Page 590. And since we're parachuting into the middle of the book of Isaiah, I'll give you some context for this scripture passage while you're turning there.

Isaiah was a prophet to Israel around 750 BC, and his ministry saw some of the most turbulent times in the history of Israel. But to understand our text, we need to go back centuries before Isaiah was born. We need to go back to the Exodus. In the Exodus, God saved for himself a people out of Egypt. The Hebrews were enslaved to the Egyptians, and he brought them out of slavery in a miraculous way.

And he brought them into the promised land, and he told them that if they obeyed him, they would be blessed. But if they disobeyed him, they would be cursed. He became their covenant Lord, and all of the stipulations of the covenant were given to Israel before they made it in. It wasn't long before Israel did rebel against God. This rebellion led to a split in the kingdom north and south.

The southern kingdom was known as Judah and was made up of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. And the northern kingdom was made up of the rest of the tribes. And even after the split, both kingdoms continued in their rebellion against their covenant Lord. By 720 BC, the north had been overthrown and scattered throughout all of Mesopotamia. And the south, Judah, was hanging around for another 130 years before they eventually, too, were destroyed, but this time by Babylon, and that was around 587 BC.

It's during the 700s, it's during that time of the destruction of the northern kingdom that Isaiah is speaking this this prophecy here. So Isaiah lives through the destruction of Israel, the northern kingdom, but he never sees the destruction of the southern kingdom. And our text for today comes right around that time of Israel's destruction. Judah is looking up to the north and they're seeing Assyria just blow through nation after nation. Assyria is like a black hole that's just sucking up everything in its wake.

And Assyria has just sucked up their northern neighbor, Israel. And now this black hole is right on Judah's doorstep. So Judah does the natural things. Judah looks around for the nations for help, and Judah looks to the south and sees the superpower Egypt, and they think, we'll make an alliance with them. After all, Egypt has something to gain by having Judah there.

Judah is a nice little buffer between them and Assyria. In our text, it is this action by Judah specifically that Isaiah is talking to. That's the historical context. But what about the book of Isaiah? What about the message that Isaiah is giving his people?

Well, Isaiah is commissioned to tell God's people of God's faithfulness, that he will be faithful regardless of what his people do. Whether they disobey or obey, he will be faithful. He will be faithful to his promises to curse or his promises to bless. Our text comes in the third major section of this book. The first section is chapters 1 through 11, and that's where Isaiah is just giving the overview of where we came from and how we got here.

Israel's rebellion and God's faithfulness. And then the second section is chapters 12 through 27. That's the second major section of the book. In that, Isaiah is hoping as people see why they can trust in this God, how this God can be faithful, and the answer is that God is utterly sovereign. He's powerful.

And he is sovereign not only the international conflicts that are going around in Isaiah's day, but he's also sovereign over history. Not a single thing is outside of God's sovereign plan and he will follow through on his promises. And then in our section, sections 28 through 35, Isaiah zooms in. Keeping the sovereign God in mind, Isaiah zooms in on this problem between Assyria and Israel and Judah. And he says, let's apply that here.

And that's what he's doing here in chapter 30. Here in chapter 30, Isaiah has one main message and that's going to be the main idea for our sermon today. Here it is, God is faithful so we must trust in him. God is faithful so we must trust in him. But how do we trust in this God?

What does trusting in this God look like? Well, Isaiah gives us four things that we must do in this passage. We must obey His words. We see this in verses 1 through 7. We must, second, remember His promises.

See this in verses 8 through 17. Third, we must wait on His grace. See that in verses 18 through 26. And then, fourth and finally, we must fear His name. We see that in verses 27 through 33.

So how do we trust in God? We obey. We remember, we wait, and we fear. That's how we trust in God. And maybe along the way, we can think through the answer to that question of why we do the things that we do on Sunday.

How do those things help us trust in God? Let's begin with point one. The first thing that we must do is obey his words. We see this in verses 1 through 7. Follow along with me as I read.

Ah, stubborn children, declares the Lord, who carry out a plan but not mine, and who make an alliance but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin; who set out to go down to Egypt without asking for my direction, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh, and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt.

Therefore shall the protection of Pharaoh turn to your shame, and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your humiliation. For though his officials are at Zoan and his envoys reach Hannak, everyone comes to shame through a people that cannot profit them, that brings neither help nor profit, but shame and disgrace.

An oracle on the beast of the Negeb: Through a land of trouble and anguish, from where come the lioness and the lion, the adder and the flying fiery serpent, They carry their riches on the backs of donkeys and their treasures on the humps of camels to a people that cannot profit them. Egypt's help is worthless and empty. Therefore, I have called her Rahab who sits still.

Here we read of Judah's own solution to their Assyrian problem, Egypt. They decide that their best hope for surviving a future Assyrian invasion is their neighbors to the south, Egypt.

But there are two problems with this. The first problem and obvious from this text is that this alliance will fail. Verses 3, 5, and 7 make that clear. Shame and humiliation is all that will come out of this alliance. Egypt will be no help to Judah.

But there's a second problem as well and a more significant one. And that's that this alliance to Egypt is a rejection of God's Word. And therefore it's a rejection of God himself.

Remember the Exodus? God saved Israel out of Egypt to be a people for his own possession. They were to be like a jewel placed in the midst of the nations that was going to be glorious and it was going to show off God's glory and majesty and holiness. And the people were to do this by obeying God, by honoring him as their covenant Lord. And the whole reason they were even in this situation to begin with is because they had decided that obedience to this covenant Lord was optional.

Judah had an Assyrian problem because they had a sin problem. And the looming threat of Assyria was meant to wake them up, to help them see that the reason they were in this situation is they had disobeyed him and to cause them to repent. Of their disobedience. And yet how does Judah respond? They turn back to Egypt.

They reject God's shelter and protection and in painful irony, they decide that Egypt of all nations is going to be the one that is more protective and a better shelter than their covenant Lord. On top of that, this very action of going back to Egypt for help was forbidden by God explicitly. In Exodus 13:17, in Deuteronomy 17:16, God forbids them to go back to Egypt for help. That's why in verse 1, Isaiah says that they are adding sin to sin. Sin brought them here and their response to this sin was more sin, more disobedience.

And their response to the fruit of their sin was more disobedience. Sin will lead you places that you never thought you would go.

This irony shows up most clearly in verses 6 through 7 where Isaiah underlines this reversal that's happening. For those of you who remember the VCR and I think I'm not that old. Most of you should remember the VCR. It's like Isaiah is putting the tape into the VCR and pressing rewind on the Exodus. Instead of, remember, if you remember, God saved his people out of Egypt, his people plundered Egypt and he led them through the dangerous wilderness and into the promised land.

But now his people are plundering themselves. They're braving the dangerous wilderness without God. They're offering themselves up back as slaves to Egypt.

And for those of you who are having this question about Rahab, who is this Rahab? Well, Rahab's not a reference to the Rahab in Jericho that helped out God's people during the book of Joshua. It's a reference to a mythical dragon-like creature in ancient Near Eastern myth. And in the Bible, Egypt is often equated to this mythical dragon, Rahab. So you can see that in Psalm 89:10.

What Isaiah is saying here is, you, think that Egypt is this powerful dragon, but really it's just going to sit still and do nothing.

Friends, if we learn anything from this section of Isaiah 30, we must learn that we must obey the Lord. In our planning, we must account for his obedience. We must ask for his direction, as verse 2 says. And we must obey even when our disobedience looks like it's going to save us. You see, in going to Egypt, the chief lie that Judah was believing is that it was necessary to disobey God to survive.

They thought that obedience was opposed to self-preservation, when in fact the opposite is true. Self-preservation depends on obedience. That doesn't mean that obedience never hurts, that obedience is never costly. Sometimes it is. Obedience may hurt a lot in the short term, but obedience to God always turns out for our good in the long term.

It is a fail-safe investment.

Not only should we obey God, but we also need the foolishness of responding to disobedience with more disobedience. Later on in this passage, Isaiah will call Judah lying children. This makes me think of the young child who's growing up, maybe he's two or three, and he's growing in his powers of speech and likewise he's growing in his powers to sin.

I think many of us have seen this situation where little Johnny and little Timmy are playing and their parents are in the room and watching them and Johnny hauls off and smacks Timmy. And mom and dad are like, Johnny, why did you do that? He's like, what did I do? I didn't do anything. Just bald-faced lying.

And we find that humorous in a two-year-old, but it's sad and pathetic in the case of an adult. And that's what's going on here. Israel is trying to cover up their sin with more sin and God has seen it all.

The effect of a sin can never be nullified by committing more sin, even if we didn't commit the original sin, even if that sin was against you.

After all, the people of Judah's day weren't around when Israel rejected God in the wilderness. They weren't around when Solomon committed idolatry. They had in fact inherited these split kingdoms, these kingdoms that were split by sin, yet they were reaping the bitter fruits. But that did not give them the right to then go and turn away from God's commandments. The bitter taste of the fruit of sin, whether that's our sin or another's, should remind us to obey.

Sin doesn't justify anything that we would do in retaliation, whether it's gossip or vengeance or anything that we would do to make ourselves feel better. A palate that's tainted by sin's bitter fruit cannot be cleansed by more sin.

Well, the one who trusts in God obeys God's word. But when God speaks, he doesn't just give us commands to be obeyed. He gives us promises to be remembered. And that brings us to point two, remember God's promises. That's verses 8 through 17.

Follow along with me as I read.

And now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. For they are rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord, who say to the seers, 'Do not see,' and to the prophets, 'Do not prophesy to us what is right.

Speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel, 'Because you despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them, therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach in a high wall, bulging out and about to collapse, whose breaking comes suddenly in an instant. And its breaking is like that of a potter's vessel that is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a shard is found with which to take fire from the hearth or to dip up water out of the cistern. For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you were unwilling, and you said, 'No, we will flee upon horses, therefore you shall flee away.

And we will ride upon swift steeds, therefore your pursuers shall be swift. A thousand shall flee at the threat of one, and at the threat of five you shall flee till you are left like a flagstaff on top of a mountain. Like a signal on a hill.

Here Isaiah makes plain to his hearers the spiritual reality of this move to go to Egypt for help. We see this in the first four verses of this section, verses 8 through 11. Isaiah explains what this move reveals about their hearts, that they are rebellious. And lying. In verse 10, they tell the prophets to stop speaking the truth.

They no longer want to hear things about themselves that are stressful to hear, disturbing to hear. They want the prophets to speak smooth things to them. In other words, they want the prophets to sin by flattering them. Of course, they didn't want the truth because God's prophets keep talking about God and what God has promised. Judgment for their rejection.

And that rejection is what verse 11 makes clear. Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. Some translations translate this verse, Let the Holy One of Israel cease from us.

However it's translated, the main thrust is clear. Israel is saying, We'd rather live as if our Lord didn't exist. We don't want him anymore. We don't want to hear about him anymore. We would rather be on our own.

The language here is haunting and tragic. You see, back in Leviticus, God told them, you, shall be holy, for I am holy. Leviticus 19:2. So in rejecting the Holy One of Israel, they were rejecting their whole reason for existence. Their rejection of the Holy One was a pronouncement of judgment upon themselves.

The next line then is both fearful and unsurprising. Therefore, thus says the Holy One of Israel, you, want me to cease? You want me to stop speaking? Therefore, I will speak, and it will be judgment. The shame and humiliation promised in the first seven verses isn't merely the bad result of a a reasonably calculated risk taken, like an investment.

No, the Lord himself would ensure that they would receive shame and humiliation for disobeying him. And why is this? Well, it's because they were trusting in the wrong thing. They trusted in their own wits and craftiness. They looked at Assyria, perceived that they were on their own, lived as if the Lord didn't care, It lived as if God wasn't going to do anything, and then they acted.

God's promises that if they go down this path is that they will be destroyed. That's what this vision of the bulging wall is for there in verse 13.

This wall will break. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

And this wall will be---its breaking will be such that not a single stone will be useful for anything. It will be completely and utterly pulverized. Then in verse 15, he makes clear that they're facing this judgment because they have rejected his promises. They've rejected his promises. If they trusted in him, if they returned to him and rested in him, they would have peace.

If they would stop trusting in their own plans, if they would stop trusting in Egypt for their salvation, they would find salvation. No matter the number of soldiers and horses they acquire, they will be routed until all that's left is smoke rising up from their destruction and a flag post marking where they used to be. This episode of Judah and her disobedience to the Lord is meant to serve as a witness to us. We read that in verse 8. It makes it clear that this is an event that we're to mark in our minds and learn from.

And that's what we're to do with all of the events in the Old Testament and the New, is mark in our minds and learn from them, both the good and the bad. And what are we to learn from this account? We are to learn the price of misplaced trust. We are to learn that this is what happens when we fail to trust in God's promises, when we forget his promises.

I think that in order to feel the full weight of this passage, we need to feel and try to climb into the intense desperation that Judah felt here. I think this is an element easy to miss in our day and age. An invasion by Assyria was imminent, if not already underway, and Judah knew what that meant. People would die. People would suffer in horrendous ways.

And when Assyria did finally lay siege to Jerusalem, the atrocities that were committed inside her walls were harrowing. Judah was desperate for a solution, and in its desperation, Judah forgot their Lord and His promises.

Now, it's unlikely for DC to be under siege anytime soon, least of which because we don't have walls. But in a congregation this size, I have to believe that somebody is here this morning and it's feeling a sense of desperation. Deep down in your gut, it's gnawing at you. You found yourself in a situation that you're not sure how to get out of and you're thinking about ignoring God. You're thinking about laying aside His promises.

You're thinking about blowing by the warning lights in your conscience. This can come in many forms.

Maybe you're desperate for a spouse or maybe you're desperate for children of your own and this has you forgetting God's promises that he is your rest and he is your salvation. Maybe you feel like you've been placed in an impossible situation at work and you just don't know how you can be faithful. Or maybe you're out of work and you don't know how you're going to pay that next bill. Maybe your health is failing. Maybe your family is falling apart.

Maybe your children are wayward and you're thinking about fudging on some of your beliefs in order to try to woo them back.

Don't ignore God's Word. Don't ignore God's promises. God's promises and God's word will stand true long after whatever trial it is that you're facing will end. Remember God, return to him, rest on God in your desperation. And don't forget the helps that God has given you in the people that are around you.

I can think of so many ways in that members of this church have cared for one another in miraculous ways and just walked through hard situation after hard situation. This is why the pastors are at the door afterwards so that if you have a question or if you have a situation, you can bring them to us. We would love to help you with this. Or maybe you don't feel comfortable walking up to a pastor, but you have a close friend. We'll resolve in your mind right now that if you are in a place of desperation, walk over to that friend immediately after the service and just tell them what's going on.

We have covenanted together to love one another and bear each other's burdens and sorrows. We would love to pray for you. We would love to point you back to God's promises and His character. And we love to walk with you and encourage you towards faithfulness.

We must remember God's promises. And we must remember God's promises whether we're in a state of desperation or whether things are going well.

All rejection of God's promises will lead to our destruction. Trusting in God involves both remembering and obeying, but it also involves waiting. And we see this in our next point. We must wait for His grace. We see this in verses 18 through 26.

I'll read them now.

Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all those who wait for Him. For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem. You shall weep no more.

He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your teacher, and your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it, when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. And then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things.

You will say to them, 'Be gone! And he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and bread, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. In that day your livestock will graze in large pastures, and the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground will eat seasoned fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. And on every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water, in the day of the great slaughter when the towers fall. Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold as the light of seven days in the day when the Lord binds up the brokenness of his people and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.

At this point in our passage, Judah's situation seems beyond hope.

It seems catastrophic. Honestly, it seems as if God has backed himself into a corner. Doesn't justice require the complete destruction of Judah and Israel as we know it?

But wait a second. What about God's promise to Abraham that he would bless the nations through his line? Aren't these people Abraham's children? And what about God's promise to David that there would be a king that would reign on his throne forever? What about that promise too?

Well, here we read that along with promised judgment, there is promised mercy and grace. This is clear in verse 18. And then verses 19 through 26 explain to Judah the effects of God's grace. They will cry out to him. God will draw near to them and teach them.

They will listen and cast away their idols. And God will bless them with the very blessings that they thought their idol worship would provide: prosperity and victory. This is a shocking and delightful turn of events. And verse 18 alone seems strange. Let's look at that again.

Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all those who wait for Him.

God says He waits to be gracious and that He exalts Himself to show mercy. Why? For the Lord is a God of justice or because the Lord is a God of justice. How in the world does this make sense? Aren't mercy and justice opposed to one another?

If a criminal shows up at the bar of a judge and the judge just lets him go, was that just? No. And the truth is that God has already been gracious to Judah. He saved them. And he was gracious to them as they sinned again and again and again and again.

How can he promise more mercy because of his justice? How does that work? And how does that fit with the judgment that he's promised? Well, here, friends, we meet with the big question of the Old Testament. The Lord himself makes it clear when he reveals his name to Moses in Exodus, He says that he's forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but he will by no means clear the guilty.

God will be merciful and God will be just because he is perfectly both at exactly the same time. But how? How will he do this? Well, it says that he will wait. And he will wait for exactly the right time.

My friends, if you're here this morning and you don't consider yourself a Christian, this is the big question that you need to answer. This is really the big question of your life. How can God be both merciful and just? Because if God really is God, he must be just. There's just no way around it.

Otherwise, God is no God worth following and entrusting ourselves to.

But at the same time, you have sinned against this God. You have rebelled against this God in the way that the Bible says all of humankind has done and Judah has personified here. You have at one time or another ignored his commandments. Like Judah, you have overthrown his good rule over your life.

You deserve the just punishment of God. And the just punishment of offenses against an eternal, holy God is infinite, eternal wrath under the just wrath of this God. But praise the Lord. God is not only just, but he is merciful and he is gracious. God sent his only son.

His name is Jesus. Jesus came and he lived the life that we should have lived. Jesus obeyed the Father perfectly. He perfectly remembered all of the Father's promises. He waited on the Lord and he offered himself up as a sacrifice.

Jesus was crucified. He died and was buried and he rose again on the third day. And Jesus is still alive today. Jesus is sitting at the right hand of his Father now and Jesus promises to come back one day so that he will judge the living and the dead. And the only way that any of us can withstand that judgment as if we withstand with the righteousness of Christ clothed over ourselves.

Well, how do we do that? Well, we repent of our sins, we turn from our sins, and we trust in this gracious and merciful savior. See, God is just and merciful. God is mercy or God is merciful in the sense that he took his beloved son, his most beloved son, and he sent him to earth to die a horrific a perfect death for rebellious people like you and I. But he's just in that this beloved son took up his cross and was crucified on behalf of all of those who would trust in him.

And so now those who trust in Jesus can be both just and righteous in Christ's robes before him. Mercy and justice embrace on the cross. So if you're not a Christian, this is what we gather around every Sunday. This is the message of the gospel. This is what makes us Christians by turning from our sins and trusting in this Jesus.

If you haven't done so yet, turn from your sins. Trust in Jesus today.

Well, that's God's mercy and grace, but what about this waiting? We read here that he waits. Well, friend, God's waiting itself is a sign of his mercy to you. As God long suffers, as he's patient with all of your sins, he is waiting for just the right time. But one day his waiting will be over.

One day he will call you to the bar of judgment. And all that will matter on that day is whether you're found with the robes of Jesus Christ. Trust in him.

And now, Church, what are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to do with this truth that God waits? This text bids us to wait on Him. Well, there's a sense in which verses 19 through 22 were fulfilled in Judah. Judah itself ends up surviving the Assyrian invasion because, verse 19, they cry out to God.

Future generations in Judah would give their ear to Scriptures and destroy their idols. We see this in in the reign of Josiah, for example. But they would always turn back to their idolatry, and that's why they were ultimately destroyed by Babylon. The spiritual renewal that's described here in this section is the spiritual renewal, really, of the new covenant, of the covenant that you and I are in today as those who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit and receive the blessings of the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost. That is what this is promising.

As Christians, we have the privilege of knowing much of what these verses are talking about. We are those who have cried out to God and he has heard our prayer. God has come and dwelled with us in his Holy Spirit within us. He has drawn near to us and he is teaching us even now.

My daughter, Nora, is nearly 10 months old, and recently she has started to crawl. And for those of you with children who have had children, know that once the baby begins to crawl, the baby now gets into things and gets into things all the time. So Abby and I spend much of our days following Nora around and redirecting her whenever she gets into trouble, telling her whether to go to the right or to the left. That's what the Lord says that He's going to do for us. Only the Lord is far more tender and gracious than I am with my beloved daughter.

And He doesn't have an ounce of the impatience that I have. That's how our God teaches us. Furthermore, as Christians, we are those who have begun to make war on our idolatry. By God's grace, we have already casted out some of those idols. But we also know that this war will never end as long as we're in our sinful flesh.

Then as we move on to verses 23 and 26, we see a glorious future that Judah never saw and we frankly haven't seen yet. Brooks on top of the mountains. Imagine the skyline drive of Shenandoah National Park being turned into a river, just being replaced by a river. That's what this text is picturing. We had wonderful weather this week, and even at this early stage, this weather was a sign of spring to come.

It is a sign of spring, but we would be foolish to put away our winter clothes as if spring had already arrived. That's a little bit of what we're feeling in this text. And of course, we learned today that spring definitely isn't here yet.

We all know want of some kind. We all have suffered loss, and we will continue to suffer so long as this world lasts. So we wait. But what is the fuel for our waiting?

For those of you who don't know, I used to be a basketball coach back in Indiana. My last coaching gig, I was a JV coach and varsity assistant. The head coach, before a game, as we were in the tunnel, the team had already taken the floor, the band's playing, he would look at me playfully and be like, well, Keys, the hay is in the barn. And I love it because it's just a classic hoosierism. What he was saying was that we've done all we can to prepare.

The result's out of our hands mostly. We've prepared, and it's up to the players now.

You see he was referencing what farmers with cattle have to do to get through the winter. Farmers have to cut and bale hay all summer to have a cheap way so that they can pay for their herds' feed during the winter. Hay keeps best if it's tightly stacked by hand, if it's cured with salt, and if it's stored in a nice, dry barn.

And this takes a ton of work along with actually a surprising amount of planning. It's not quite like mowing your lawn. So when he said the hay is in the barn, he was saying, we've done all we can do to prepare for this metaphorical winter for this game. As a coach, all you can do is prepare. And of course, whether you're preparing for winter or whether you're preparing for an opponent, most of the results are out of your hands.

Winter can last longer than normal. Your barn can quite literally burn down with the hay in it, and this has happened. Or that scouting report that you've worked so hard on, you have every shot charted of every opposing player, and that player who hasn't hit a three all year goes for four in the first quarter alone.

Friends, if you're going to wait well, you need to fill your barn up with something better than hay. You need to fill your barn or your heart up with Christ and his benefits. In our waiting, we will endure many spiritual winters. We will fight many battles with the world, the flesh, and the devil. And though we've had some victory over idols, we have still more idols to destroy.

And we will outlast all of these troubles if Christ is stored up in our hearts, if we know his benefits, if we draw on him for strength. He is our rock and our refuge. He is the promise of good in the future. All of these blessings that we see in this passage come from Christ himself. Christ promises to be our light.

Christ is the bread of life. The water that Christ gives is water that wells up to eternal life. Christ may not end your struggles, but he will certainly carry you through every last one if you have Christ in your heart. And your struggles may not end until your life in this mortal body does, but on that day when it does end, Christ himself will bind up every wound, as verse 26 says. Just as farmers spend all summer thinking through how many cuts of hay they can get in and hoping that it'll last them the winter, store up Christ in your heart, scheme for ways that you can get him in your heart, and then trust confidently that he will be more than enough to bring you through any spiritual winter.

That can be thrown your way. Maybe take some time over lunch today and think through ways with the people that you're eating lunch with, particularly how you've tried to store up Christ in your heart. Share some favorite Bible passages, list some songs, maybe some of the songs that we sang this morning that have been particularly helpful for you to remember Christ and his benefits. Talk about the ways you help yourself meditate over the words of Christ.

So friends, whatever you're facing, whether it's trial or whether it's plenty, keep trusting, keep waiting, keep singing songs like Glory Land or whatever my God ordains is right, and know that the Lord Jesus Christ will bring you through. Know that suffering will come to glory at the end. Wait for Him. He will surely come.

In fact, this is what trusting the Lord in this life entails: waiting. It's the basic posture of the Christian. It's the shape of trust in this life waiting for Jesus. And likewise, God himself continues to wait. We have known some of his grace and at the very right time on the last day we'll know his grace in its fullness.

Isaiah chapter 25 verse 9 tells about that day when he says, It will be said on that day, behold, this is our God, we have waited for him that he might save us. This is the Lord, we have waited for him, let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. We must trust him by waiting on him. But there's one more way that we're taught how to trust God in this passage. And we saw a glimpse of it in this section that we've just covered.

Look back at verse 25. Did you notice this reference? It says, yeah, it says, In the day of the great slaughter when the towers fall.

We will not be finished waiting until that day, which is described here in fuller detail. In our next session. So let's go ahead and look at that now. That brings us to our next point. We must fear His name, and that's the last seven verses of the passage.

We must fear His name.

Follow along with me as I read.

Behold, the name of the Lord comes from afar, burning with His anger, and in thick rising smoke. His lips are full of fury and his tongue is like a devouring fire. His breath is like an overflowing stream that reaches up to the neck to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction and to place on the jaws of the peoples a bridle that leads astray. You shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept and gladness of heart as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the Lord. To the rock of Israel.

And the Lord will cause His majestic voice to be heard and the descending blow of His arm to be seen in furious anger and in a flame of devouring fire, with a cloud burst and storm and hailstones. The Assyrians will be terror-stricken at the voice of the Lord when He strikes with His rod, and every stroke of the appointed staff that the Lord lays on them will be to the sound of tambourines and lyres. Battling with brandished arm, he will fight with them, for a burning place has long been prepared. Indeed, for the king it is made ready. Its pyre made deep and wide with fire and wood and abundance.

The breath of the Lord like a stream of sulfur kindles it.

After Isaiah gets finished talking about the distant future in verse 26, he snaps back to the near future. And underscores for Judah where their trust should lie. The Egyptians will not defend Judah. God himself will defend them. And more than that, like a torrent, he will sweep Assyria away.

Here he is foretelling the events that we can read about in Isaiah chapter 36 and 37 when the Lord miraculously delivers Jerusalem from the hands of the Assyrian king.

Just like the first section, this last section is full of Exodus imagery, only it's used in a positive way this time. You can go back and look at it. God is coming like a cloud of smoke. He will subdue a foreign, oppressive king. There will be hail and natural disasters.

The route of this king will be thorough, and his people will celebrate a holy feast in the night. Sounds a lot like the Passover. And God's awesome power will be on display. The nations will see it, and they will wonder. Just as God saved his people at that time, so he will save his people from Assyria.

In this passage, Isaiah is putting Judah and us in mind of the exodus in order that we may have confidence in a future deliverance. This is meant to help Judah put the threat of Assyria in perspective. Assyria will fall before this Lord just as Egypt did before it and just as every other superpower will after it. By hearing this, Judah was meant to turn from trusting in Egypt and any other military solution and trust in God alone because he alone is to be feared. And for us, we're to look at Assyria and notice that he's not just talking about Assyria here.

Notice verse 28. He says he will sift the nations with a sieve of destruction. In view here is the universal judgment of all nations at the end of time, of which the Assyrian destruction is just a picture. And so we learn in order to trust God, we must fear him. We should fear him above everyone and everything else.

He is the sovereign God that is in control of our circumstances and international circumstances and universal circumstances. He is the warrior that fights for his people. He's the judge that executes sentence against his enemies. His is the vindication that we hope for. And we will rejoice when our enemies are put scattered or scattered by the Lord.

In this passage, his sovereign power is on display so that we might not trust. In anything or anyone else.

So how do we cultivate this fear in God? Well, one way is by focusing on passages like this. There are many of them in the Old Testament where God is pictured as snapping nations between his fingers like matchsticks. Another way is to ask what competes with the fear of God in your heart? In other words, what fears are causing you to trust or hope in something other than God.

Teenagers, if you're still listening, I applaud you. But if you weren't listening, I'm talking to you right now, teenagers. Maybe after understanding yourself to be Christians as kids, you've now made it to middle school and high school and you're wondering whether following Jesus is really worth it.

You're starting to realize that it actually could be pretty costly. Are you tempted to fear your classmates more than you're tempted to fear this God? I know it's tough to see now, but it's not worth it to align yourself against this God in order to avoid a few years of social awkwardness. It could turn into a decision that you regret. For the rest of your life.

It could turn into a decision that there is no turning back from. We, or if you are considering this decision today, if you're thinking about abandoning Christ for just an easier time in high school, please talk to one of the members of this church. And you may not feel like talking with your parents, that's fine. Come talk to one of the pastors at the door afterwards. We were in high school once too.

Even though in Mark's case it was a long time ago, we remember what high school was like. This church is full of high school survivors. We have all survived high school. And you know what? Many of us have made that bargain that you're considering today.

And every one of us that have made that bargain regret it. We would be happy to talk with you about it. Don't mistake the fearing of your classmates. Don't make that mistake. Fear God.

The fear of God is also meant to inspire repentance. When we look at the one judged, we are meant to see ourselves. We are meant to look at our sin and we're meant to repent of it otherwise we too will suffer the same fate. We have two options: We can live in reverent fear of God and repent of our sins, or we can live in fear of His judgment. Those are really the only two options.

And finally, the fear of God is meant to produce in us a confident joy. We can see this in verse 29. Verse 32 itself is striking as well: It says, Every stroke of the appointed staff that the Lord lays on them will be to the sound of tambourines and lyres. There will be feasting. There will be singing.

There will be the sound of joy. How could such a scene inspire joy? There's multiple reasons. First, the judgment of God signals the end of all oppression. To look at the world is to see an extraordinary amount of injustice, and at that day, God will make every wrong right.

No longer will we open up the newspaper and see a troubling headline. This alone will be cause for rejoicing. Second, the judgment of God will mark the end of the curse time, as Mark talked about in his sermons on Job. We live in a cursed time. We live in a creation that's groaning, and on that day when sin ceases, so will groaning.

We will have no need for the word disaster in our vocabulary after that day. The only funeral on that day will be the funeral of God's enemies, and after that, there'll never be another funeral. Praise the Lord. And third, and finally, we will see God in His glory. We will see His goodness, we will see His majesty and its fullness on that day, we will see His mighty power, and that will mark the time when we dwell with God, never to be parted from Him again.

The joy of this final judgment ultimately will be the joy of salvation. John 5:22 tells us that our Savior Himself, Jesus Christ, will be the one to judge. And this is the same Savior that was judged for us. Every stroke that was appointed for us fell on Him. He was executed on the pyre that we should have been fastened to.

And on judgment day, that is the day when we will see Him, judge all of His enemies, and this will be a cause of rejoicing. That day has been appointed. God has appointed it and it will come. We should reverently fear him now or fear his judgment on that day. We should fear this God.

Now, I want to end by considering what that day has to do with this one. Sunday. What does that day have to do with this day? And how does the rest of this chapter in Isaiah answer the question that I began the sermon with? How does our time together on Sunday help us trust in God?

Well, look back through your text, just scan back through it, and notice every time God's word or his mouth or his tongue or his breath or his spirit is referenced. You may not have time right now but you can do that this afternoon. In this chapter we read that his direction is the one we should follow. He judges through his word. Judah was judged for not listening to his word.

Spiritual renewal comes through the teacher drawing near and instructing his people by his mouth. And the final judgment will take place when the one with a devouring mouth comes. His lips are full of fury and his tongue is like a devouring fire. His breath is like an overflowing stream.

The answer to that question is that on Sunday, every Sunday, we come together around this word.

God's word, to be instructed in how to trust him and remind one another that God is faithful and to encourage one another in trusting in God. We exhort one another to obey his word as we confess sin and read his word to one another and sing to one another. We remind each other of God's precious promises, especially whenever we baptize or we celebrate the Lord's supper together. We encourage one another to wait. We wait on God as we cry out to him and let him know of our needs.

And we spur one another on to reverent fear of our God together as we see him and he meets with us in his word. When we praise his name in prayer and in song. That's what we do here every Sunday. God himself comes to us in his word. And instructs us by it and tells us that we can trust him and reminds us Sunday after Sunday after Sunday to trust him.

That's how we're trained to trust God. We don't dare stray away from this word and rely on our own thoughts, on our own plans, on our own desires, on our own judgments, just like Judah did before us. Otherwise, if we reject him, we will cease to have a reason to exist. His Word is the fuel for the fire of faith. This day prepares us for that day as we stir one another up to love and good works through our collective gathering around this Word.

And we have confidence that He will keep us in it because Scripture cannot be broken. Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have forgiven us in Christ. We thank you that you have not left us to ourselves, but you have drawn near to us, that you have spoken to us. As we look to Christ, help us to trust you today, this week, and the rest of our days. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.