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Sermon: A Fire In Zion Date: June 4, 2023, Afternoon Text: Isaiah 31:6–9 Series: Isaiah Preacher: Conley Owens Audio: https://storage.googleapis.com/pbc-ca-sermons/2023/230604-AFireinZion.aac
Amen.
Please turn your Bible to Isaiah 31.
We'll finish Isaiah 31 today, beginning here in verse 6.
Once again this passage has been about the people's folly and trusting in Egypt and so the chapter began with woe to those who
go down to Egypt for help.
We talked about how God is far stronger, that He is the Lord of hosts, which means He commands armies of
angels.
Angels are more powerful than horses.
His angels are more numerous than horses, so it would be foolish to trust in Egypt over the Lord.
As we look in this last passage, it will speak of the results of trusting in the Lord versus
trusting in horses.
Please stand when you have that for the reading of God's Word.
Isaiah 31, verse 6.
Turn to Him from whom people have deeply revolted, O children
of Israel.
For in that day everyone shall cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which your hands
have sinfully made for you.
And the Assyrian shall fall by a sword not of man, and a sword not of man shall devour him,
and he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be put to forced labor.
His rock shall pass away in terror, and his officers desert the standard in panic,
declares the Lord whose fire is in Zion, and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.
You may be seated.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for these words, for these words that speak of the goodness of repentance, for
those words that speak of your strength and your own goodness.
I pray that our hearts would be filled with the zeal described here to cast away all idols.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
So the point of this passage is quite simple.
The point of this passage is that the fear of the Lord is inevitable.
The fear of the Lord is inevitable.
Whether you serve Him, whether you resist Him, whether you are simply His enemy, you will
one day respect God with fear.
Every knee will bow, heaven and earth, all men will bow the knee to
Jesus.
Whether they do so willingly or they do not do so, they will do so.
And the right response to that is to not to delay, but rather to, as soon as possible,
repent from sin, to turn toward the Lord, and to serve Him.
For this is the end that will be for every man, to fear the Lord, to serve
Him.
And the sooner that you go about that, whether believer or unbeliever, whether you're repenting from,
whether you're repenting from sin as one who is an enemy of God, and turning to Him, or whether you are His child, and you have
a waywardly trusted in your own mechanisms, either way, the sooner you turn from
sin, the better.
It speaks, and it begins in verse 6,
Children of Israel have revolted against God.
They have sought after Egypt rather than seeking the Lord and His strength, and so they have rebelled
against Him.
And so God, very simply, calls them to turn to Him, to trust in Him.
Now, consider the way that it speaks of Israel.
It speaks of them as children.
Now, children, we know children like to rebel.
It's very common that children rebel.
In fact, it's often a joke that if you want a child to do something, you tell him to do the opposite, and then he'll be
sure that he does the thing that you wanted him to do, because children are so rebellious.
But the reason why children tend to be rebellious very often is
because children are fearful beings.
It's a very childlike quality to fear, and so children
tend to fear one who can harm them.
Speaking of adults as children, of these Israelites as children, points to the fact that they fear
men.
They fear the nation of Assyria, and that is why they have made this alliance with Egypt.
Likewise, people today often fear man.
Because they fear man, rather than trusting in the Lord as their help, they
turn to other men as their help.
It's very ironic that people would act in this way, that their fear of man would lead them to trust in men,
but that is exactly how it works.
And so the way to think about this is to think
about what fear is.
Fear is a concern that someone is going to spoil your happiness.
And don't think of happiness as, you know, a giddiness or something like that, but rather your well -being.
If someone has the capacity to threaten your well -being, that is worth being afraid of.
But if you recognize that your well -being is bound up in eternal things,
rather than things that are of this earth, you can be sure that there is
none of your well -being that can be truly threatened.
These people of Israel, rather than thinking about the promises that God had made, this
promised land, rather than thinking of his promises and what they had to lose if they were to turn
away from him, they thought about this in terms of whether or not men could take
things away.
And because they felt threatened that this could be taken away, that their land and their livelihood could be taken away by
Assyria, they turned to men.
Hebrews 13, 5 through 6 says, tells us not
to love money, but be content with what we have.
For he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you, so that we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper.
I will not fear.
What can man do to me?
You see, that passage there binds up these two things, which the Bible often puts together, but people
find it hard to think about them together.
The love of money leads to the fear of man, and the fear of man comes from the love of money.
And by the love of money, think the love of any earthly thing.
The reason why people fear is because they think that something can be taken away from them.
But if they have a love for those things which they should not love, they will fear the one who can take it away from them.
But if they love the things they should love, then they will fear the one who they should fear.
If you love the promises of God, you will fear God, because he is
the only one who can take those away.
Man may take your life away, but God can throw both soul and body in hell, as
it says in Matthew.
And so we should have a right fear of the Lord, rather than a fear of man.
And we should turn to him.
And this is surprising as well, because you usually do not turn to the one that you're
afraid of.
Usually you turn away from the one that you are afraid of.
But, and, and as it is in Israel, the people have turned away from Assyria to
Egypt.
They've been afraid of man, and so they trust in other men.
But with God, there is no equal.
And so the only opportunity you have to protect yourself from him, is to
rather than run away from him, it is to run to him.
You know, the one who repents, the one who is truly sorrowful of her sin, wants to turn to God, must
understand that it is not problematic to run toward the one that you have offended.
Rather, they must understand that he is merciful.
You know, I love the way our catechism describes repentance, because it describes repentance as
an anticipating the mercy of God.
It talks about turning away from sin, etc.
But it says it is characterized by an anticipating of the mercy of God.
If you think of God as only one who is against you, as
one who, if you were to expose your sin, if you were to confess it to him or to others, acknowledging
it, that it would not be met with mercy, you would not do it.
But rather, if you anticipate the mercy of God, how eagerly would you bring this
to him?
If you know that there is full pardon, if you know that it will be wiped away, how easy is it to
bring it to him?
But if you do not anticipate this mercy, if you do not know that God is merciful, you will not be eager to bring it to him.
So we must anticipate the mercy of God.
It's like we heard in the preaching earlier.
The man knew that it was not necessary for him to become clean before he came to Jesus.
Rather, he came to Jesus as an unclean man, anticipating the mercy of Christ.
It continues on here in this passage.
For in that day, everyone shall cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold,
which your hands have sinfully made for you.
The one who repents throws away his idols.
And the people of Israel, these are literal, physical idols to gods.
And these are idols of silver and idols of gold, things that are valuable, things that you would think, well, you wouldn't just throw them away.
You would melt them down and reuse them since silver and gold are valuable.
But no, people will be so disgusted by their sins, so zealous for the Lord, they would be willing to throw these things away.
This is what true repentance looks like.
It had said in the previous chapter in verse 22, 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.
You know, one who is disgusted with sin, one who is eager to
repent, finds their sin so abhorrent that they are willing to
part with it, even the good things that were associated with it.
They will part with it completely.
It says a few other things that I would like to bring to your attention here.
It talks about your hands having sinfully made them.
So this is a way of speaking here that a lot of translations translate it this way.
It turns sin into an adverb to make it a little more easy to understand.
But the way this is originally written, and you'll see in some more little translations, is it speaks of your
hands have made this a sin for you.
That they have fashioned a sin.
It was a sin to make this thing.
It was a sin to keep it.
And it's just a sin that sits there, possessed in their own life, as it sits there in their house.
There are a lot of things that we have done and continue to be sins in our lives.
Not something that we just sinfully did in the past, but remains a sin that we have held on to.
And these are things that must be gotten rid of, must be abandoned.
You know, why is it that people serve idols?
They serve idols because they think they will give them happiness.
Remember this, you know, fear and happiness being combined.
That the one who fears someone is, the one who fears,
fears because they believe their happiness, their well -being can be taken away.
One who serves an idol does so because they think that idol will provide them with happiness.
This is why people worship other gods.
This is why people follow after other things.
This is why Paul speaks of covetousness as idolatry, because the one who covets is not
content with what the Lord has given them, but rather thinks that they will find happiness pursuing other things.
They will find happiness having a desire for something other than what the Lord has assigned to them.
But none of this is accurate.
All of this is a distraction from what God has made for us, which is to be completely content in him
alone, knowing that we have a glorious inheritance waiting for us that is not here on this earth.
And consider how these two verses come together.
Having spoken of these people who have revolted, people who have not feared the Lord, who need to fear the Lord,
they should turn to him.
One day they will cast away their idols, and this is indeed the case.
As the Lord saves them from Assyria, they do end up following him once again after
several more hardships.
They've recognized the purpose of following the Lord.
If you are a child of God, and this is speaking to you, think of it this way.
You will one day serve the Lord completely.
You will one day live in a world without sin.
You know, Brian spoke earlier of a hundred years from now.
Where will you be?
If you're a child of God, a hundred years from now, you will be in the presence of the Lord.
And you'll be in the presence of the Lord without any sin.
And if there is no sin, then there will be no idols.
There will be no covetousness.
There will be nothing that you are holding on to now.
And God has told us the trajectory as well, that we will grow in holiness over this life as we reach that
stage.
And if that is the case, that one day we will eventually be without any idolatry, eventually be without any covetousness or sin.
Why would we hold on to those things here?
Why would we not immediately get rid of them, knowing that they do not continue to serve us?
Knowing that they will not continue to serve us as we finally reach that final end.
Perhaps we think that they will avail us something in this life.
But God has, as I said, explained the trajectory to us that he grows his children in sanctification.
He grows them in holiness.
And if that is the case, then it is the case that your sin will be dealt with.
And the longer that you hold on to it, it is not the more that it will serve you.
Rather, the more that you will have, you have built up works against you
that will have to be accounted before the Lord on that day of judgment.
More that you will have things that will require the hand of God and discipline against you as his
child, because he is a good father and disciplines his children.
Thus, we should fear him now and cast these things aside now.
Whatever sin it is you are holding on to, whatever covetousness.
Continues on in verse 8.
And the Assyrian shall fall by a sword not of man, and a sword not of man shall devour him.
You know, what is a sword not of man?
I've explained several times, and we'll see later in the narrative of Isaiah, that on the night that Assyria is about to go
destroy Jerusalem, the angel of the Lord comes and destroys Assyria.
Now, this is not the hand of man.
This is not the sword of man.
Rather, it is the angel of the Lord who does it.
That angel of the Lord is the Son of God.
The Son of God himself destroys the enemies of God.
Earlier, in Isaiah 27, it said, in that day, the Lord with his hard and great and strong
sword will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent.
You know, Leviathan being a sea monster that represents Satan.
Leviathan, the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.
You know, this is the sword of the Lord.
The sword of the Lord is the Son of God who will destroy these things, destroy all enemies.
So, here you have the earlier passage that speaks of the children of God
ultimately fearing God completely as they ought.
It also speaks of those who are enemies of God being destroyed so that they would fear him.
As it says in verse 9, his rock shall pass away in terror and his officers desert the standard in panic.
The standard being the flag that they would carry proudly.
All will fear the Lord.
It doesn't matter if you're a child.
It doesn't matter if you're an enemy.
There is no neutrality.
There's no third option here.
You are either a child of God, you are not a child of God, and both of those have the same end.
A lot of people imagine that they could find some third path, find some place of neutrality, but
there is nothing available.
You either serve God or you serve mammon.
You're either a child of God or you're a child of the devil, and
all will bow the knee to Christ.
So, it says in this final line, declares the Lord whose fire is in Zion and whose furnace
is in Jerusalem.
God's fire is in Zion and his furnace is in Jerusalem.
This explains why it is that the people should worship and serve the Lord.
They should worship and serve him because he responds to them.
The statement about there being a fire in Zion, a furnace in Jerusalem, this is talking about the
accepting of the offerings, right?
People go to their idols because they think the idols will respond to them and give them what they want, but this is asserting that
God is in Jerusalem.
If he is in Jerusalem, then he will respond to their offerings.
He will respond to their worship by providing for them.
Earlier on in Isaiah 29, verse 1,
it said, Ah, Ariel, Ariel, where David has a camp, add year to year, let the feast run the round.
Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be moaning and lamentation, and she shall be to me like an
Ariel.
The word Ariel refers to an altar, refers to a furnace at an altar,
and so it's describing Jerusalem as an altar where year by year, false worship, worship that is
not honoring to God because it is not met by the right heart, is offered and God does not respond to it,
and so the people have not received blessings from the Lord.
But now, here at the end of chapter 31, it promises that that fire does exist
in Zion.
You know, if you have come to worship the Lord today, if you come in spirit and truth, God
receives your worship.
John 4 speaks of the importance of worshiping him in spirit and in truth, and that it doesn't
matter whether what mountain you worship and on, it is not like in these days of Isaiah where it had to
be particularly in Jerusalem.
God has destroyed that physical altar, and rather anywhere where Christ dwells, if he
dwells within you, he accepts your worship.
We still need a mediator, but Christ is our mediator.
We do not need priests.
We do not need any man other than Jesus Christ.
We do not need any temple other than the one that we have as we gather and the one that dwells within us as the Holy Spirit is
in us.
And if this is the case, if God receives our worship, if he
will grant us everything we need, if he secures this this need for us, all the things to
make us happy, to give us well -being, what reason is there for fear of man?
Rather, we must fear the Lord.
So I would encourage you to not delay
in any matter of repentance, any idol that you are holding on to, whether you be doing so as a child of
God who is in rebellion or as an enemy of God in rebellion.
Cast these things aside because the Lord is good, and the Lord is merciful, and the Lord's fire is
burning in Zion.
This is the promise of the gospel, that though these people in Israel have, by their
rejection of God, made their worship worthless, we have a
New Testament worship that God receives, and we can be 100 assured that all of
our needs will be met.
The promises are so rich in Jesus Christ, and he has repeated that
if God cares for the flowers and the birds, how much more does he care for us?
It says in Romans that if he has given us his Son, how much more will he give us all things?
All these things are available in Christ because that altar hearth, because Ariel, because that fire
is in Zion, and the furnace is in Jerusalem, and we have that Jerusalem here as the
New Testament has proclaimed.
We have it in Jesus Christ.
So do not fear man.
Throw the idols aside.
Follow after God who accepts your worship and will grant you every last need.
Fear him alone.
Let's pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word.
We thank you for this encouragement to come to you, you who are merciful, who have
set your fire up in Zion.
We thank you for gathering us together into this Zion where we may worship you and receive
from your hand all good things, all blessings.
We pray that you would give us the endurance to undergo temptation, and testing, and
trial, and that we would trust in Christ alone who is the sword who is not of man, who will
defeat every last enemy.
In Jesus' name, amen.