1. "We were made to rest. And that resting is not merely a cessation of work, resting is the idea of fulfillment of satisfaction, of completion. It is enjoying life as it was meant to be enjoyed."

2. "At its core, idolatry is the worship of anything in creation over the worship of the Creator God. It is to trust, to love, to obey anything in creation over our love and trust and obedience to the God who made all of creation."

3. "Not only do our idols fail us and so prove cruel, they are cruel because they are worse than false saviors. They are the problem. They are the weight. They are the burden."

4. "It is not like the idols are a somewhat okay parachute. No, it's an anvil that you strap to your back as you jump out of a plane. It's not skydiving, it's just suicide by other means. That's what idolatry is."

5. "Are the questions that you ask to the people in this church deep and direct enough that they would need to lie to you in order to keep you in the dark?"

6. "Every other god must be carried by their people, but no, this God carries his people. The worshipers do not carry the Lord."

7. "If you have any honest reflection on your own heart and life, you'll see lots of reasons to doubt that you will be faithful to the end. God says, what is definitive in this relationship is not your faithful grasp of me, but my faithful, unswerving grasp of you."

8. "God does not passively see the future and then tell us about it through the prophets. No, rather, God knows because God actively works all things by his sovereign will. History is not something that he watches like a movie, but rather that he plans like the director and executes at every moment."

9. "Even as we start to lose our grip on reality and on the things of God, God does not lose his grip on us."

10. "When you are in your quiet times and you're having a really hard time reading the Bible, remember that these means of grace are not ladders to heaven but bread from heaven to feed us in our weariness and cause us to rest all the more in Jesus."

Observation Questions

1. According to Isaiah 46:1-2, what happens to the Babylonian gods Bel and Nebo, and what effect do they have on the beasts carrying them?

2. In Isaiah 46:3-4, what specific promises does God make to the house of Jacob regarding how long and in what ways He will care for them?

3. According to verses 5-7, what process do idol worshipers go through to create and maintain their gods, and what is the idol's response when someone cries out to it?

4. What does God declare about Himself in verses 9-10 regarding His uniqueness and His relationship to future events?

5. In verse 11, who is the "bird of prey from the east" and what does God say He will do through this person?

6. According to verses 12-13, how does God describe the spiritual condition of His audience, and what does He promise to bring near to them?

Interpretation Questions

1. What is the significance of the contrast between idols that must be carried by their worshipers (vv. 1-2, 6-7) and the God who carries His people (vv. 3-4)? What does this reveal about the nature of true versus false worship?

2. Why does God emphasize His ability to declare "the end from the beginning" (v. 10) in the context of encouraging His exiled people? How does God's sovereignty over history relate to His promise to carry His people?

3. The sermon describes idolatry as "an elaborate system of self-salvation." How do verses 5-7 support this interpretation, and why is trusting in ourselves ultimately deceptive?

4. In verses 12-13, God addresses people who are "far from righteousness" yet promises to bring His righteousness near. How does this promise point forward to the work of Christ as described in Isaiah 53:4 and 53:11?

5. What does it mean that God will "put salvation in Zion for Israel my glory" (v. 13)? How does this connect to the sermon's theme of finding true rest in God?

Application Questions

1. The sermon asks, "Where do you go when you feel weary?" What specific things (entertainment, work, relationships, accomplishments) do you tend to reach for when you feel burdened, and how might you redirect that impulse toward trusting in God?

2. God promises to carry His people "even to old age" and "to gray hairs" (v. 4). How should this promise shape the way you view seasons of weakness, failure, or diminished capacity—either in your own life or in caring for aging loved ones?

3. The sermon challenges us to have relationships deep enough that someone "would need to lie to you in order to keep you in the dark." Who in your life knows about your greatest struggles and temptations? What step could you take this week to build that kind of accountability?

4. Considering that our spiritual disciplines are "not ladders to heaven but bread from heaven," how might this truth change the way you approach times when Bible reading or prayer feels difficult or unfruitful?

5. The sermon calls Christians to lovingly share the gospel with those who worship false gods. Who in your life is currently trusting in something other than Christ for fulfillment and rest? How might you begin a conversation that points them to Jesus?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Psalm 46:1-11 — This psalm echoes Isaiah 46's theme of God as our refuge and strength, inviting us to "be still and know that I am God" rather than trusting in human power.

2. Matthew 11:25-30 — Jesus explicitly invites the weary and heavy-laden to come to Him for rest, fulfilling the promise that God alone can carry His people.

3. Isaiah 53:1-12 — This passage shows how the Suffering Servant bears our griefs and carries our sorrows, providing the means by which God brings His righteousness near to sinners.

4. Romans 1:18-25 — Paul explains how humanity exchanges the glory of God for idols, reinforcing the sermon's teaching on the evil and foolishness of idolatry.

5. Acts 17:22-31 — Paul's address to the Athenians demonstrates that God is not served by human hands and calls all people to repent of idolatry and turn to the living God.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Introduction: Our Hearts Are Restless Until They Rest in God

II. Will the Gods Whom We Carry Give Us Rest? (Isaiah 46:1-2, 5-7)

III. The God Who Carries Us Gives Us Rest (Isaiah 46:3-4, 8-13)

IV. Finding True Rest by Being Carried by the Living God

Detailed Sermon Outline

I have a confession to make. I'm not much of a reader. There's certain irony in that because you pay me to read, understand, and apply a particular book. I know this is a church of readers, or at least many of you are. My typical defense of my non-reading ways are number one, I've always been a very slow reader, and so it takes me a long time to work through things.

And then secondly, I never want to ruin the movie adaptation. And so I always hold out just in case Spielberg gets his hand on something.

Now, there is one book recommendation, a book that I've read that I would unreservedly encourage all of you to read, and that is Augustine's Confessions. Augustine lived in the fourth and fifth century A.D. He was the pastor of the church in Hippo in North Africa. And in his Confessions, he is confessing his sin to some degree, but most basically he is confessing the way in which God saved him, the way in which God was sovereign and finally bringing him home. And the first book of his confessions is the most quoted and rightly so.

There he famously says, you stir us to delight in praising you, for you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. In that, Augustine is capturing the essence of what the Bible is all about. We were made to rest. And that resting is not merely a cessation of work, resting is the idea of fulfillment of satisfaction, of completion. It is enjoying life as it was meant to be enjoyed.

It was baked into the Garden of Eden, that Sabbath day rest where God rested from his labors and invites his people to rest from theirs and so enjoy him in all of his goodness. It was symbolized in the tree of life set there before Adam and Eve that if they would obey God, they would eventually enter into that perfect rest, that state of eternal true to rest in God. But ever since the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve fell in their sin, they fell away from that perfect rest. And we have been restless. We have been weary ever since.

I wonder what ways that restlessness has shown up in your life. What do you run to to bring you that sense of joy, of satisfaction, of fulfillment, of completion. What Isaiah 46 is all about is that we can find that true rest in the only true God. And that's what we'll study today. If you have your Bibles, please do turn with me to Isaiah 46.

You'll find it beginning on page 607 in your red pew Bibles. You'll remember that the book of Isaiah, which we're doing this occasional study, this study that we've been working for the past number of years, every once Once in a while we are thinking here in Isaiah about a grand journey from the sinful, earthly Jerusalem to the perfect heavenly Jerusalem. And the question is, how do we get from the Jerusalem that is marred by sin and corruption and fallenness to that Jerusalem that is perfect and will have perfect rest with God? And Isaiah is clear throughout that the only way to get there is to trust in God alone. He's the only one who can bring us to that great city.

Here in Isaiah 40 through 66, Isaiah is especially turning to encourage God's people who would be in exile in Babylon. Because of their many sins, God would send the Babylonian empire to destroy the city of Jerusalem in 586. God prophesies through the prophet Isaiah to King Hezekiah, the king of Judah in Isaiah 39:6, Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house and that which your fathers have stored up till this day shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And so starting in chapter 40, Isaiah pivots to then give comfort to this people who would be in exile.

Yes, there was application for people in Isaiah's day and there's application for us today, but this is especially going to be an encouragement to those who are exiled in Babylon, seemingly far from the land and far from the Lord. What hope would they have? Well, Isaiah 46 is brimming with hope. Let's turn to read it now. Follow along as I read.

Belle bows down, Nebo stoops, their idols are on beasts and livestock, these things you carry are born as burdens on weary beasts. They stoop, they bow down together, they cannot save the burden but themselves go into captivity. Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel who have been born by me from before your birth. Carried from the womb. Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.

I have made, and I will bear; I will carry, and will save. To whom will you liken me, or make me equal, and compare me, that we may be alike? Those who lavish gold from the purse, and weigh out silver in the scales, hire a goldsmith, and he makes it into a god; then they fall down and worship, They lift it to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place and it stands there. It cannot move from its place. If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble.

Remember this and stand firm. Recall it to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me.

Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose, calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass. I have purposed, and I will do it. Listen to me, you stubborn of heart, You who are far from righteousness, I bring near my righteousness. It is not far off, and my salvation will not delay.

I will put salvation in Zion for Israel my glory. This is God's word and thanks be to him for it. Well, friends, let me just briefly give you an overview of how this text is structured before we jump in to the exposition of it. We see that the text hangs together on a contrast between the so-called gods of Babylon and the God of the Bible, the God of Israel. We see there verses 1 to 2 show us that idol worshippers are made weary by carrying their own gods, while verses 3 to 4 show us that the Lord carries his weary people.

In verses 5 to 7, the Lord shows that gods that must be made by their people are no gods at all. While in verses 8 to 11, God shows us that he makes history by his decree in order to serve and save his people. And then finally, in verses 12 to 13, God assures his sinful people that he will soon save them by his own righteousness. I think the main idea of this text, and so if you're taking notes, I think the most important thing that I'll say all morning is simply this: The only way to true rest is to be carried by the living God. The only way to true rest is to be carried by the living God.

I just want to unpack that in two points, answering one question: who will give us rest? Will it be the gods whom we carry? Verses 1 to 2 and 5 to 7. Or the god who carries us, the rest of the passage. First, let's consider the gods whom we carry.

Will they give us rest? Well, verse 1 introduces these two gods. You'll see them there, Bel and Nebo. These are some of the chief gods of the Babylonians. Bel is just another way of referring to Marduk, the chief of the Babylonian gods.

He's the city god of Babylon. And Nebo, who is worshiped in a city just outside of Babylon, this would be the son of Marduk, and these two great gods would be chiefs of the pantheon of gods of Babylon. And what it seems like is that Isaiah is drawing on a picture or an event that would have been well known to both the Babylonians and to the Israelite exiles there in Babylon. Every new year, there would be this new year festival of 12 days, and one of the high marks of that festival was the procession of the idols of Bel and Nebo through through Babylon to the house of the gods, where Nebo, the god of writing, would write on the tables of destiny to determine the fate of the people for the coming year. This 12-day festival was essentially an attempt to try to get a favorable fate over the next year by celebrating Marduk and his son Nebo and the rest of the gods along with them.

But here, Isaiah is using that image in a very different way. He's saying, you,'re going to see a procession of these gods, but they will not be entering into their house in order to establish the future for you. Rather, these gods that now seem so impressive and victorious will soon be carted away into captivity and exiles themselves. What Isaiah is saying here is that Bel and Nebo, though they look impressive now, will soon be shown to be rubble, to be worthless to the people who worship them. The Lord is giving us a kind word here.

He knows that the people would be in exile in Babylon and thus be tempted to worship the Babylonian gods. They seemed so great, so glorious, so permanent. And then of course in their own experience, these Babylonian gods had seemingly conquered the Israelites. They not only seemed great, they seemed to work. And so I might as well give my affection, my trust to these gods.

And before that happens, Isaiah is telling us, or the Lord through Isaiah is telling us, Do not trust these gods. They will not bear you up. I think there are four things that we learn about idols like Belial Nebo and every other idol that we might trust. Four things. Number one, first, we learn that idols are evil.

Idols are evil. Look at there in verse five. To whom will you liken me and make me equal and compare me that we may be alike? At its core, idolatry is the worship of anything in creation over the worship of the Creator God. It is to trust, to love, to obey anything in creation over our love and trust and obedience to the God who made all of creation.

And here in verse five, it's highlighting how evil idolatry is because at its core, idolatry is blasphemy against God.

It speaks about him falsely and irrelevantly. It treats the Lord God who is different from us in every way as this one who's just another God that you could pick at the ice cream shop of gods. I'll have Rocky Road, oh, and I'll have Bell, and maybe a bit of Yahweh. That's the core of idolatry there. It treats God not as the Lord God but as just another thing in creation that isn't even to be preferred.

It is, as Paul would put it in Romans chapter one, that we who were made to worship and glory in God, rather, we exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things. It is to give honor to that which is not honorable in comparison to God. And now we get the faintest picture of the evil of idolatry in our own personal relationships. One that's often used throughout the prophets is the image of spiritual adultery. That what is happening when we worship one who is not the Lord is that we are committing adultery.

We're giving what should be given to the Lord instead to someone else. It is like the husband who delights in images on screens rather than in the embrace of his wife. It's that kind of evil. It's to take something that is worthless and to exalt it over the God who is worthy of all praise and honor and glory. Friends, idolatry is evil because it blasphemes God.

Most basically, what we need to understand is that idolatry makes us guilty before God. God will have his name honored and at the end of the day, as Mark has been teaching us through Revelation, God will show himself to be worthy and he will show idolaters to be wrong. They will bear his judgment and that justly because we have done great evil in our idolatry. What we need then is to flee from these evil idols. I think another point that we should just remember here is that while Christians may triumph or rather promote and advocate for religious liberty, we want people of all faiths to be free to worship as they see fit.

We are not believers in religious indifferentism. We do not think that those who worship Allah as Muslims or who worship the many gods of Hinduism are doing right by God. That they are glorifying God. No, we think they are sinning grievously against God and Christians in love would call all people to repent and to honor the one true God, not the false gods that would deceive them. Idolatry then is evil.

But secondly, we also see that idolatry is foolish. And you can see it there in verses 6 to 7. Those who lavish gold from the purse and weigh out silver in the scales hire a goldsmith and he makes it into a god.

Then they fall down and worship. They lift it to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place and it stands there. It cannot move from its place. Isaiah, as he has glorified God by describing God, so he mocks the idols by describing the idols. These idols made by human hands from the gold that their worshipers have formed by the skill of goldsmiths, moved about by their worshipers and fixed there because they can't move by themselves.

Isaiah is mocking idolatry as foolish. It is to look at a goldfish and say, you are my God, when the God of heaven and earth calls us to worship him. Now, we understand in some sense that idolatry is foolish. If we're able to describe the idols that we give our hearts to in some objective way, we would see that our idolatry is foolish too. Just think, you know, we're in DC, just think of political idolatry.

Think about idolizing a political savior as one who will bring us into a state of true rest. He or she will bring this country or this world into this utopian state where I won't be afraid anymore, where I will have all that I want and need, where I'll be happy. Friends, as we pin messianic hopes on such figures, we find out very quickly that they are quick to fail us.

And we should know better. For a politician in this Republic to get into any kind of political power, they need to be voted on by you. Not by me, just to be very clear, I don't vote in US elections. They need to be voted on by you. They need your campaign donations.

They need your advocacy to get any monikum of power. And while they are in power, they're so fragile and easily frustrated. The executive frustrates the Congress, and the Congress frustrates the executive, and the courts frustrate everybody. What happens then is that we see that their power is so limited, so fragile, and it is soon to be lost. The executive is term limited.

The one who serves indefinitely, is trying to be elected in the Congress every two to six years, and will often be primaried, and even if they are successful as politicians, One day, their strength or their cognitive ability or their very life will come to an end. Their power is quickly won and quickly lost. They cannot be trusted in. Our idols are as foolish as Bel and Nebo. Bel and Nebo, who, by the way, I had to research in order to explain them to you.

That's the point that Isaiah is getting at. These were great gods at the moment, but oh, they are just figments of our imagination now. So too all our idols will be.

But third, we also see that idols are deceptive. They are deceptive. Of course, there are many ways in which our idols deceive us, but tied to its foolishness, there's one particular deception that we should notice in the text. Who is the idolater trusting in? Or if you'd like it grammatically correct, in whom is the idolater trusting in?

In some sense, of course, the idolater is trusting in his idol, in Baal or in Nebo. After all, they cry out to their gods to save them. But in another sense, there's someone else that they are trusting. Who does all the work in this passage? Especially there in verses 5 to 7.

Friends, it is the worshiper who does all the work. They lavish the materials. The goldsmith makes it. He carries the idol around. He prays to it.

He does all the work.

In some sense, the idolater trusts in himself. He trusts in his own ability to worship and to carry his God, trusting that if he does enough, eventually that God might be able to carry him. In that sense then, idolatry often boils down to an elaborate system of self salvation. We might say that there's a quid pro quo relationship, a this for that relationship with our idols. If I do enough, then my idol will come through for me.

But what is definitive in that relationship relationship is what I do for my idol. And when our idol disappoints us, as it so often does in this life, we chalk it up to our failure of worship. If only I had tried harder, if only I had sacrificed more, if only I had given more of my time and my finances to my idol, oh, I could have been fulfilled. It would have given me rest. What we need to see then is that in idolatry we are so often trusting in ourselves.

Now, I say this to a group of people who are on the spectrum of type A to type B, lean pretty heavily on the type A. There are some of you that have been successful in everything that you've done. You have not met a commandment that you feel like you haven't been able to obey. If you haven't succeeded yet, it's just a matter of time until you succeed. I just gotta try a little bit harder.

I think that temptation is especially towards those who are younger. If you're just here for a few years, you're so optimistic about what you can achieve by your work. I mean, praise the Lord for the ways in which he gifts this congregation with people who do great things to serve this country and this region and the Lord. But friend, you cannot ultimately trust in what you do to be right with God or to bring you into the fullness of true rest. I think if you live just a little bit longer, you will see that you so often fail yourself.

I'm in my now close to mid-30s and I fail myself all the time. I misspeak constantly, I spill things, I forget things, I misjudge things. As I've said before, Katie's always worried that when I'm going downstairs, I'm gonna fall down the stairs, which I take to be her care for me and not any kind of backhanded compliment there. But friends, we fail ourselves all the time. And if I can't trust myself with conjugating the proper verb when I'm speaking to you, why would I trust myself with my eternity?

Why would I trust myself with things that really matter, like entering into true and lasting rest? We cannot trust ourselves. We must see through the deception that idols bring. We see that they are deceptive and that they cause us to trust in ourselves. But then lastly, we also see that our idols are cruel.

Our idols are cruel. You see that a couple of different places in the text. Look there at the end of verse 7. If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble. Well, in some sense there, Isaiah is just giving us the back end of idolatry.

After all of your worship, after all of your effort, when you finally need your idol to come through, it will fail you. It does not hear your prayers. It does not love you. It will not help you. It cannot.

It's dead. There's nothing there. Behind it is nothing at all. Our idols fail us and so they are cruel. They are the supposed miracle drug that only allows the cancer to grow worse.

They are the hope that is ultimately a false hope, a mirage in the desert. But not only in the final analysis are our idols cruel, they are cruel to us as we worship them. Do you see there in verses 1 to 2? See how he describes it? Bel bows down, Nebo stoops, so these idols, these gods are laid down, their idols are on beasts and livestock.

These things you carry are born as burdens on weary beasts. They stoop, they bow down together, and they, that's the idols, cannot save the burden, the people, the city. But themselves go into captivity. Friends, not only do our idols fail us and so prove cruel, they are cruel because they are worse than false saviors. They are the problem.

They are the weight. They are the burden. Friends, it is not like the idols are a somewhat okay parachute. No, it's an anvil that you strap to your back as you jump out of a plane. It's not skydiving, it's just suicide by other means.

That's what idolatry is. It is wearying to the people who idolize these things. We carry them, we bear them, and so just as the beasts are, we are weary too. Friends, if you talk to anyone in this congregation about the many idols that we have served, because if you're a non-Christian here, I just want to let you know, we understand, all Christians understand, that we ourselves were idolaters before Christ. We trusted and loved and obeyed other things more than the Lord God.

And even in the Christian life, we continue to struggle with it. And if you ask anyone here about their struggle with idolatry, they will be able to tell you something of the cruelty of their idols. Friends, as one of your pastors, sadly, sometimes I get a front row seat to hear how sin has been so difficult for you. There are members of our congregation who have given themselves heart and body to sexual morality in the hope that they will be happy. And it has left them empty and ashamed.

There are some who trusted in their work that it would make them great and give them a name, and they are remembered by no one, loved by no one. There are some who idolize the people around them, if only they love me and trust me. And even as they do that, they bear the weight of the fear of man. The person next to me could see a crack through the facade that I have created and see me for who I really am. Idols are cruel to us.

They cannot save us and they make us weary. A few points of application then. If this is what idols are like, what should we do? Well friends, the first letter of John, John tells us in the very last verse that we should keep ourselves from idols. And so in our own personal lives, we we must keep ourselves from idols.

What are you tempted to trust in as a way to true rest? What do you think apart from God might bring you into that place of satisfaction, of enjoyment, of fulfillment? Another way at that question: Where do you go when you feel weary? Our idols are those things that we claw after when we feel burdened or weary we think this thing will give me rest. As I was doing a little heart surgery on myself this week, I was just thinking that man, entertainment feels more and more to me like a potential idol in my life.

Whenever I come home from a long day of work or whenever I'm feeling super busy, my first impulse is I just need to watch that show. I just need to watch that video on my phone. For some reason I just think that's going to make me happy. That's gonna give me rest. And now friends, I'm not saying that anytime you watch a show that you're singing against God.

I think you you can glorify God while watching the office and other such funny shows. I hope I continue to do that. But the fact that my first impulse is what will give me rest? Oh, it's that show. It's that bit of entertainment.

What is it for you, beloved? What is it that you reach for when you're weary? Keep yourself from idols. But also as a church, we should help one another to fight idolatry. As we press into relationships here in our church, as we build those relationships, part of the work and the duty that we all in one another's lives is to watch out for one another spiritually, to help each other fight the idols that we often put our trust in.

And so just thinking about your own relationships, are the questions that you ask to the people in this church deep and direct enough that they would need to lie to you in order to keep you in the dark? Do you ask such questions at a heart level about what we love and trust and obey? That someone would need to lie to you in order to keep you in the dark. Or do your relationships skim the surface? You never get too close to the heart.

It's pretty easy for someone to avoid sharing things with you because it seems like we can just talk about all sorts of surface things. To get to the other side of that, is there anyone here with whom you freely share your greatest struggles and temptations? Take a moment to think, is there one to five people here at this church that if you're going through something, if you're tempted with something, you would reach out to that person or that that person already knows what you're going through? If that's a pretty meager list, if there's no one on that list, beloved, you are in a spiritually dangerous situation. You need brothers and sisters in your life whom God has placed here to help you run the Christian race.

And so freely share those things which may be deeply embarrassing to you, but your brothers and sisters will receive and look to help you and serve you in. And then lastly, we should call others to flee idolatry. Friends, it is a loving thing to share the gospel with people that they might turn from dead idols to serve the living God. Idols are evil and cruel, they are foolish and deceptive, and we love other people best when we point them to to the Lord Jesus. Oh be free of this burden.

It will not save you but look unto Jesus. How could you imagine a more kind and loving master and savior? Non-Christian friend, if you're here this morning, I do hope that you understand that however imperfectly we do that, we do really mean that whenever we share the gospel with you to be loving you. We know what it is to worship false gods and we would call you to worship the God that we have found in Jesus Christ. There's nobody like him.

And so, who will give us rest? It certainly will not be the gods whom we carry. But it is secondly, the God who carries us. The God who carries us. We see this in verses three to four and then also in verses eight to 14.

Like we see three things about the Lord who gives us rest. First, we see that God promises to carry us. He promises to carry us. You see that in verses three to four. Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been born by me from before your birth, carried from the womb: Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.

I have made, and I will bear; I will carry, and will save. Compared to these idols that we must carry, the God of grace interjects and says, But not so with my people, Every other god must be carried by their people, but no, this God carries his people. The worshipers do not carry the Lord. As we're reminded in Acts 17, as Paul addresses the Athenians, God is not served by human hands, nor does he dwell in a temple made by human hands. Oh no, God needs nothing, and so he's able to super abound to care for all of our many needs and carry us amidst all of our many burdens.

This was especially true in Israel's history. That as the nation of Israel, God had carried them. As a pregnant woman carries the unborn child, so the Lord had carried the patriarchs. Before they were even a nation, he takes Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and bears them through their many journeys and sojournings. So too, he delivers the nation of Israel from Egypt in the Exodus, bringing them out of the tyranny of slavery and unto true worship of him.

He carried them as he sustained them in the wilderness. He carried them as he continually delivered them from enemy nations in the land. He carried them by preserving them and forbearing with them in their centuries of idolatry and sin. There was not a moment that the Lord had failed to carry his people Israel, even though they were so unfaithful to him. And friends, as that is true for the people of God, so that is also true for each individual believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

God carries his people. If you are in Christ, you have been eternally on the mind and in the arms of God. He has set his love upon you and has so ordained all the circumstances of your life that you would trust in the Lord Jesus and be preserved all the way home into that eternal land of perfect rest. We can all pray with confidence that prayer that David or the psalmist prays in Psalm 71:9, Do not cast me off in the time of old age. Forsake me not when my strength is spent.

And that's exactly what verse four is all about. In verse four he's saying, as in verse three, God cared for us before we even were, so God carries us in verse four even to old age. From the beginning to the end, God will carry his people. And I think here he's highlighting old age just as the psalmist does in Psalm 71 because as we grow older we lose our strength, and we lose our memory, we lose our grasp on things, we seemingly have less and less to give to our gods, but God continues to carry his people. It is ultimately the grace of God set upon the Christian, not their worthiness, but rather his free and sovereign choice to save a sinner and to bear them up.

God does not despise us in our weakness, he will carry us all the way through. To the end. By carrying here, of course, he's meaning to save and to sustain and to finally bring us home. That's what the Lord is promising here. There are a couple of applications from this verse, from verse 4, we can take confidence in the Christian life that God will not lose hold of us.

If you have any honest reflection on your own heart and life, you'll see lots of reasons to doubt that you will be faithful to the end. God says, what is definitive in this relationship is not your faithful grasp of me, but my faithful, unswerving grasp of you. I will bear you all the way there. I think it's also an encouragement for us in thinking through how we relate to Christians as they age, those dear older saints that the Lord blesses us with, even as we thought about Maxine's homegoing just a couple of weeks ago.

Go. Even as we start to lose our grip on reality and on the things of God, God does not lose his grip on us. And so as we're caring for a parent or a grandparent or a spouse, or if we ourselves start to feel that we're losing our grip on things, it doesn't mean that God has lost his grip on us. We can be confident in God's good promise to carry his people even to the end. But he doesn't only promise to carry us, we also see that God is able to carry us.

And that's the point of verses 8 to 11. God highlights that he is the one who is able to carry his people. Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind you transgressors. Remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.

Saying, My counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose. God is reminding us that the one who has promised to carry us is like nobody else. I have two young kids at home. I often have to carry my kids. And as I've been, especially carrying Maria, she's growing, even as we're singing in the evening service and I'm holding Maria, I feel my strength slipping away.

And so I'm like, you know, that fourth or fifth song, especially if it's one of those multi-stanza, you know, seven-stanza songs, slipping away. Slightly slow. And I'm just thinking, oh boy, I might need to sit down for this one. Right, my strength seems to fail. Not so with the Lord.

No one is like the Lord abounding in strength and power. What he highlights here, like he has highlighted in chapters 45 and 44 before it, is that he is entirely sovereign and powerful. He rules all of creation by his sovereign decree or counsel. That's what verses 10 and 11 are especially highlighting. That God does not passively see the future and then tell us about it through the prophets.

No, rather, God knows because God actively works all things by his sovereign will. History is not something that he watches like a movie, but rather that he plans like the director and executes at every moment. It is by his decree that all of history unfolds and it unfolds for the good of his people such that they will be carried all the way He highlights that in verse 11, calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my council from a far country. I have spoken and I will bring it to pass. I have purposed and I will do it.

Verse 11, this bird of prey, this man from the east is Cyrus of Persia. Cyrus of Persia, who's spoken about explicitly in chapters 45 and 44, would eventually come and defeat the Babylonians. And he would set the people of God free to return back to their land, rebuild their temple, and reenter their covenant with the Lord. Formally. This is an amazing promise that God will not leave them in Babylon.

That here, speaking 150 years before it happened, I am going to bring one to deliver you. Regardless of how you view him, as in chapter 45, they seem to buck at this idea that a pagan would be their deliverer. God is saying, I will use him to carry you home. He is my instrument in my hands. And so God is able to carry us.

And then lastly, we see that God is faithful to carry us. He is faithful to carry us. We see that in verses 12 to 13. Listen to me, you stubborn of heart, you who are far from righteousness. I bring near my righteousness, it is not far off, and my salvation will not delay.

I will put salvation in Zion for Israel, my glory. What we see here is a contrast in verses 12 to 13 on the topic of righteousness. On the one hand, the people of Israel, idolaters as they are, were far from righteousness. When judged against the law of God as Philip was leading us to pray about and as Abigail was reading the summary of the law in the commandments of Jesus, we realized that we have fallen far short. That God calls us to worship no God above him and that's what we do all the time.

As John Calvin would famously say, our heart is a perpetual factory of idols, always creating new things to trust in and to love above God. We are far from righteousness. But, verse 13, God will bring his righteousness near to us. Once again, this is highlighting the basic, gracious nature of this great God who carries his people. He does not say, Here is this great salvation.

Now go climb this mountain in order to get it. He doesn't say, Hey, here's this great salvation. Now pray and pray and pray and obey, obey, obey enough in order to enter into this great salvation. No, he says, I will bring my righteousness near. I will bring it to them.

It will not be far off. And friends, this would, in the near-term fulfillment, this righteousness is God's, his rightness, his justice in fulfilling his covenant promises to his people. God, as the faithful God, cannot lie. And when he has promised to his people that he will save them, it would be unrighteous of God not to to do it. And so he is saying, I have bound myself by covenant oath, I will save my people.

That's his righteousness there. And that near-term fulfillment, it does get fulfilled. And we see in the 537 BC that Cyrus sends the people home. And about 70 years later, we see the temple built. We see God reestablishing his people in the land that he had promised.

But friends, that near-term fulfillment is always looking forward to this greater fulfillment that God would give us in the Lord Jesus Christ. What he sees in his unrighteous people marked by idolatry. When he brings his righteousness near, it does not come to us in the abstract. It comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ. He who in receiving the law from God would obey it perfectly as none of us would obey it.

He would not be an idolater but finally the true worshiper of God. And it is this Jesus, who accounts the or causes us to be accounted righteous who are unrighteous precisely because he has fulfilled all righteousness for us. It's interesting that this carrying language in Isaiah 46 is echoed in Isaiah 53. Turn a couple of pages that way. Isaiah 53, this is a famous passage about the suffering servant fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we see it a couple different times this idea of carrying, especially there in Isaiah 53: Look at it with me, Isaiah 53:4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken and smitten by God and afflicted. So friends, our sins, our iniquities, our sorrows, those things that would condemn us to that place, not of rest, but of eternal weariness and eternal woe, the Lord Jesus bears upon himself. The righteous one is accounted unrighteous for us. So bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows and being esteemed by God a sinner, being put to death in the place of the people of God, bearing away all of the wrath of God. But that's not how the story of Jesus ends.

Look there at 53:11, jump down just a few verses more. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied and by his knowledge shall the righteous one be delivered. My servant make many to be accounted righteous. Jesus would be resurrected to new life and in that resurrection God is judiciously saying he is righteous, a perfect life, a life deserving of eternal life and eternal rest. And that righteousness is accounted to us who believe.

If merely entrusting in Jesus we are accounted righteous with him and enter into the reward that he He has won for us eternal life and eternal rest with God. That is the righteousness that is brought near to us. And so we hear the invitation of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 11, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Friends, what other God offers you true rest?

Jesus is the only one who can bear you there. We see at the end of verse 13 there in Isaiah 46, I will put salvation in Zion for Israel my glory. God is seeing Israel not in their sinfulness, but as they would be in the Lord Jesus Christ, conformed to his glorious image, as we heard about in 2 Corinthians 3:18. As Philip read it for us, as the assurance of pardon. What is happening there is a picture of God's people dwelling with God in that heavenly city that he has prepared for them.

That heavenly city that we heard preached on just last week by Mark as we were thinking about that new Jerusalem to come, a place where all weariness and all sinfulness is gone and there is simply rest in God. That is what God has won for us and he has won it for us by carrying us to to it, not by what we have done but what he has done alone. A couple of applications for us. First and foremost, there is much effort that we have to expend in the Christian life. We have to come to church to hear the gospel preached.

We have to read God's word and pray and fellowship with other Christians. Those are the appointed means by which we grow up in Christ. And yet in all of that, they are not our means of climbing a ladder to heaven. Those are means of grace whereby God gives us the Lord Jesus to feed us in our faith, to remind us that he is carrying us all the way home. So friends, when you are in your quiet times and you're having a really hard time reading the Bible, you're feeling discouraged, maybe you're feeling guilt stricken because you didn't read the Bible yesterday as you had hoped you would, remember that these means of grace are not ladders to heaven but bread for from heaven to feed us in our weariness and cause us to rest all the more in Jesus.

So expend effort, yes, but know that ultimately, definitively, it is God who carries us to that great city. Lastly, I think in all of this, what we need to recognize is that God's carrying care bears us up when we are entirely unaware of the ways in which he is carrying us. There are many hardships that the Lord will bring and we think, the Lord has failed to carry me. If the Lord is carrying me, why would he put me through this? Why would he bring me through divorce and all this sin in my life?

Why would he bring me through cancer and all these terrible things? Friends, we know not the ways of the Lord, but we know that he carries us through it. That whatever distress and trial and trouble that we are in, we are in it with the Lord God who has promised never to leave us nor forsake us. And that as he walks this path carrying us, he is carrying us to that eternal city where all such sin and suffering will cease and we will only know rest in God forever. Friends, as we conclude, Augustine did find that rest that he longed for.

God, through a series of wonderful providences, would bring him to finally rest in Jesus. And near the end of his life he's able to say, I have read in Plato and in Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful, but I have never read in either of them, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Friends, while the gods of this world, the idols that we might be tempted to trust, might offer that rest to us, they will fail in their promises. Houses. The Lord Jesus never will.

And so who will give you rest? The gods whom you carry or the God who carries us. Let me pray for us.

Father of our Lord Jesus, we praise you as the gracious God who sees us in our sin and misery and suffering. And does not leave us. But yout bring forth to us the Lord Jesus. We thank youk that yout carry us in him. We pray especially for those brothers and sisters in our congregation who are going through seasons of suffering and difficulty and doubt.

We pray, oh God, that yout would remind them of youf keeping care. Let us pray for those of us who are trusting in things that are not God's. We pray that yout would expose them to us, that we might flee from them and unto the Lord Jesus. In his name we pray, amen.