Interpreting Abandonment

Please turn to Isaiah chapter 42. Isaiah 42 can be found on page 603 if you're using the pew Bible in front of you. 603. We will be finishing up Isaiah 42 today. Just so you can anticipate, I will likely go on a few side trails upcoming weeks away from Isaiah, but then we'll be back to continue in Isaiah in several weeks time.

Reading Isaiah 42 and Asking How to Interpret Abandonment

When you have that, go ahead and stand for the reading of God's word. Isaiah 42. I will begin reading in verse 18. Who among you will give ear to this, will attend and listen for the time to come? Who gave Jacob to the looter and Israel to the plunders?

Was it not the Lord against whom we have sinned, and whose ways they would not walk, and whose law they would not obey? So he poured on him the heat of his anger and the might of battle. It set him on fire all around, but he did not understand.

It burned him up, but he did not take it to heart.

Amen.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we ask for your blessings on the proclamation of your word, that you would feed us by it, that you would help us to understand it, that we would tremble at its threatenings, that we would rejoice at its promises.

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, as I've mentioned before, Isaiah is frequently a handbook on how to interpret God's providence. You can see the title of the message today is Interpreting Abandonment. So how do you interpret when you sense that God has abandoned you?

Now, the reason why Isaiah functions so frequently this way is because in the commissioning passage of Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter 6, you find that Isaiah is sent not to open people's eyes and to open their ears, but rather that their eyes would be closed, that their ears would be closed.

And so it is written to a people in a sense to blind them, and yet it is also written for a people of a later generation, ourselves, who have God's gospel, in order to see how we should think about situations where people are blind, that we may not ourselves be blind.

Jesus, citing that commissioning passage of Isaiah as he gave parables, said that he spoke in parables in order so that some would not understand, but to you has been made known the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

Well, today you may know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, while the world may be blind in the way it receives God's providence, you do not have to be blind in the way you receive God's providence.

You can receive it with understanding, knowing how to interpret it. I would encourage you today not to be one who is blind to God's providence, who goes about life not recognizing that God is speaking to you.

Reading Providence Through Trial and Sin

Now, I understand that those there are those who would read God into everything in ways that are ungrounded and unsound. They would see every single coincidence as a message from God. Now, all things work together for God's glory, and all things do tell us of God, but the way that many people will do this is to say something like, well, there were three green lights in a row.

That means that that plan that I had today is a go, that God wants me to do that thing. They'll come up with all kinds of ideas like that. I think I mentioned before that I had a co-worker who's incredibly intelligent, one of the most intelligent people widely known outside of the company, even across the world, as being very intelligent.

And he had told me that he was thinking about how much money he should give to a particular organization. And he saw that my server was giving him 500 errors, and so that meant he should give $500 to this ministry that he was considering.

There are ways like this that people will read God's providence that are unsound, but that does not mean it is not to be read. It is still to be read, but simply to be read in a sound way that understands what God is telling us.

Well, today he is telling us about situations that look like his abandonment. Does it mean that he is absent, that he is not there? Instead, we should understand that he may be operating in discipline to correct us, rather than just him not being present, him not caring about us, that the trials that we are facing may very well be the discipline of the Lord designed to correct us.

Look at the flow of this passage. In verse 18, he talks about those who are blind and deaf. There is no one quite as deaf as a servant, no one as deaf as those people who should have their ears open, should have their eyes open in order to understand the Lord.

Verse 21 explains that God was pleased for his righteousness sake to magnify his law and to make it glorious. That means that his desire is that there would be a people who know his law, who follow his law, that he would uphold.

And so the fact that this people of Israel are not exalted, but rather have gone away into exile in Babylon is not because he doesn't desire to uphold a people that is following his law. It is rather that they have not upheld his law.

Rather than them being upheld, they are looted and plundered. Now they might ask, why is this the case? Why are we looted and plundered? Does God not care about the people who have his law? Well, of course he cares about the people who have his law, but they have not followed his law.

And who among you will give ear to this, will attend and listen for the time to come, to come?

Who will listen?

So it answers in verse 24. This is our passage, verses 24 to 25. We looked at the previous verses last week. He answers, Who gave up Jacob to the looter and Israel to the plunderers? Was it not the Lord against whom we have sinned?

So it is God who has done this. He has given up the people to the plunders. So God's providence, his correction, may be known through the fact that they are facing destruction. They're facing destruction at the hand of the Lord.

Was it not the Lord against whom we have sinned and whose ways they would not walk and whose law they would not obey? God's providence, his correction in your life, may also be known simply by the fact that you have sinned, that you are in need of correction.

So you have these two factors that come together to show that God is correcting someone, that he is giving them a judgment of correction and they are one who is in need of correction. I'll unpack this a little more in a moment, but just to consider the people of Israel and what they are facing.

They are people who prophetically, Isaiah is talking about them as a people who have gone off into Babylon, people who have been taken away into exile. What was their sin against the Lord? Well, they did not trust him.

They rather trusted Assyria. Instead of trusting the Lord, they trusted in Egypt. In the course of Isaiah's ministry, they had trusted other nations. Instead of trusting the Lord, they had made false alliances, alliances that God had not permitted.

Rather than trusting God, they had trusted in others. And then furthermore, the particular sin that led them off into Babylon is that Hezekiah had boasted in his accomplishments as though they had come from him ultimately and not from the Lord.

He had boasted to Babylon. And so God said, all these things and even your own children will be taken off into Babylon, which once again is a failure to trust the Lord. There's not trusting the Lord and going to other things.

And then not trusting in the Lord after the fact and boasting in yourself as though it is something that you have done rather than something that the Lord has done whenever there is some great victory, whenever God has blessed you, taking credit for those things yourself.

And then in verse 25, so he poured on him the heat of his anger and the might of battle. It set him on fire all around, but he did not understand. It burned him up, but he did not take it to heart. And this is the end of it all.

It's not that the people, okay, the people have sinned. God has sent a judgment, letting them know that they are in need of correction to correct them. Then he sets his fire all around, but they don't listen.

They don't hear him. Now in the following chapter, you will learn that God has an effectual call by which he will open up people's eyes in order that they might hear. But this is the condition of so many that the Lord sends judgments against them to correct them that they simply do not listen to.

They do not hear. They're like those who hear the parables, but don't understand and so they continue on. But to you, it has been revealed to know the mysteries of the kingdom. So do not be a foolish one who would not receive these things.

How God’s Correction Appears in Judgment and in Our Own Sin

So let's look at those two parts. How God's correction might be known in his providence. First, there is the destruction, the trial that comes. In Isaiah 36, in Isaiah 36, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, as he came against Judah, told them that, moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this land to destroy it?

So it's not that God has abandoned the people so much as that he has actively sent Assyria against them in order to discipline them. And this is stated repeatedly throughout Isaiah, especially in chapter 10.

But here in chapter 36, you find out Sennacherib himself, the king is even in on this, that God has even spoken to him and told him what he is doing. And yet the people end up being relatively deaf to these things.

Now, Hezekiah turns and repents in this particular instance, but they will still go on to Babylon. You might, in your circumstances, as you face trials, this is a common thing that people do. They call it and they say, where is the Lord in the trial?

Now, there could be all kinds of reasons that God has given you trials, but it is always with correction. Now, there are different kinds of correction. Some people, whenever they hear me saying this, say that there's necessarily some grave sin that has been committed.

Now, I understand that the man who was born blind was not, it was not his sin or his parents' sin that he was born blind, but it was in order that glory of God might be shown in him. And part of that glory is in having one who is miraculously healed and becomes a committed disciple.

There is still a sense in which that is a correction. The Bible uses the word discipline in multiple senses in scripture. Sometimes it uses it as to a child who has done some transgression of the law of God.

We talked this morning about the catechism question. What is sin? Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. Sometimes discipline is about transgression against his law. There needs to be some kind of correction so that you would cease to transgress the law of God.

Sometimes scripture uses the word discipline to talk about like an athlete. For example, in Hebrews chapter 12, the athlete needs to be trained more to serve the Lord better. Now that's where we're talking about sin not as a transgression of the law of God, but as a want of conformity unto the law of God, as a sin of omission rather than a sin of commission.

So God gives discipline in either circumstances in order to correct someone. Sometimes it is to correct them from a sin that you might, as you might normally think of the word sin, a direct transgression against God's law.

And sometime it is simply to grow them in the Christian faith. This is why some of the greatest servants of the Lord will have some of the greatest trials, not necessarily because they have the greatest sins, but because God is growing them even in their sins of omission they might serve the Lord in greater ways.

You see Job, it is very evident that his, and the error of those around him are that they think that this is something that Job's trials are sent to him as discipline to correct his transgressions against God's law as a sins of commission.

But Job's error is that he doesn't think he has any sin of omission, that he doesn't realize that he has some sense in which he can grow and acknowledge the Lord's wisdom. And by the end of it, he is corrected in greater understanding of the Lord's wisdom and he puts his hand on his mouth.

Okay, so understanding these two kinds of discipline, like the discipline of the child and the discipline of the athlete. So with that, all trial in the Christian life should be understood as some kind of corrective, whether it be of the one form or of the other.

It's never punishment. It's never penal of the wrath of God towards his children. It is either correcting sins of omission or correcting sins of commission. It is growing his children in one means or another until that final day when they suffer that final pang of death, death itself, and be perfectly sanctified to live with him forever in all holiness.

But this is far different than the person who questions, where is God in my trial, thinking that God may just simply be absent. Now, what is the, you're familiar with the poem, Footsteps, or I don't know what the full name of it is, Footsteps in the Sand.

But it goes something like, I'm not going to be able to recite the poem. It doesn't even rhyme. But someone says that they're having a dream where the Lord was with them, but then, and they saw the times in the past where his footsteps were with them in the sand.

But then during the greatest trials, his footsteps weren't there. And they ask why, why wasn't he there? And then they realize, because the Lord tells them, well, it was then when you only saw one set of footsteps that I was carrying you.

What this passage is letting you know, it might be those times where you only see one set of footsteps that his hand is against you to correct you. Don't be like these people who say,.

Where's the Lord?

Shouldn't he uphold the people who have his law? Perhaps you are not following his law and he is correcting you at this very time. Likewise, people often wrongly think of a hell where God is not. Hell is not a place where God does not exist.

Hell is a place where he exists and his hand is against people, not in correction, but in wrath and anger. Do not think of God as absent. God is never absent. So that's one principle that you can take with you to the bank as you're interpreting God's providence.

He is never absent. Absent is just not a thing that he is. The Bible might use that term occasionally or talk about a lack of his presence, speaking of a lack of his favor, but he is never absent in an absolute sense of not being omnipresent, of not being in all places.

He is immense, transcending space itself. He is everywhere. So people may ask, where is God? Well, God is always present. He is always doing something. Do not think that he is erring in his providence.

His providence has a purpose to it. And if there's some trial, it is some manner of correction, whether it is simply training you in patience or it is actually correcting some direct transgression of his law.

Any of these may be the case. Now, the second aspect of this is not just the kind of trial that you may face that would indicate this, but also your own sin. Clearly, if you evaluate your life according to the law of God and you see some sin in your life, then necessarily you are in need of correction.

It really is in some ways that simple. Before I continue on to that, it is important to realize how deaf we are inclined to be as God speaks to us in this way through his providence, through trials. We are inclined to be deaf because we are people who do not walk by faith as we ought.

We are often people who walk by sight. And so we need to hear these things. We need to understand them. In Hosea chapter seven, it says, and this is speaking of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Remember, we were just reading about Judah not hearing God's law.

Judah is the one that goes off into Babylon. Ephraim, which is taken away by Assyria, never comes back. Hosea seven says the following about Ephraim in chapter seven, verse eight. Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples.

Ephraim is a cake not turned. Strangers devour his strength and he knows it not. Gray hairs are sprinkled upon him and he knows it not. So it's talking about the Northern Kingdom of Israel dying out and not even realizing it, just being simply unaware.

Don't be a people who is unaware. Be aware that God's providence is action. He's accomplishing something. A lot of times I will try to correct my children in ways that they won't pick up on. One common one with very little kids, during family worship, if we are praying together, I won't want to stop and correct them with any kind of words because I don't want to disrupt prayer.

So if they're playing with something, I might bat the thing away that they're playing with. You know, if they've got a ball, knock the ball and they'll wonder why I did that and go grab the ball. Then I'll do it again.

They'll go grab the ball again. Then maybe I might smack their hand a little just to let them know, hey, like I'm serious about this. And they'll just be very confused. And I'll have to talk to them afterward and explain, hey, don't do that again.

You don't need to play with the ball while we're praying. It is, we are like children in that way where God will essentially being tapping our hands, smacking it harder and harder as need be. And we will just think, boy, where is God in all this?

When he is right there, the one bringing it about. Do not be ignorant. It is very plain that he's always at work. Do not be ignorant of his working. Now, so the other half of this, the one half is that destruction, that trial.

The other half is our own sin. These are how you, this is how you read God's providence. You look at the trial and you also look at the sin. Sometimes the trial is directly connected to some kind of sin.

Part of the reason why Israel, and by Israel, I'm talking about Judah here, is so blind and so culpable for their ignorance is because them being carried away into Babylon is precisely the penalty that God had prescribed for their trusting in other nations, for their failure to uphold his law.

So in Deuteronomy 28, it says, the Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone.

This is talking about those who would, if as the nation goes into the land of Israel, if they cease to obey his law, he will carry them out of the land of Canaan. They go in, they cease to obey his law, he carries them out.

This is what's happening. There's no reason that they shouldn't know these words. These are some of the most prominent words in all the law of Moses, Deuteronomy 28, that explains the blessings and curses as they go into the land.

There's no reason that they shouldn't know that. Often, that is the case with our own sin. We will look at our trials and wonder, well, why is this here? Sometimes it's not so difficult to understand why.

Many times it is directly connected to some transgression. Now, like I said, sometimes it will be just a trial that is designed to increase patience in us, but many times it will be direct. A lot of times, family life will be difficult in a particular way.

Maybe it will be some difficulty with children. Now, the Bible has a lot of instructions about how to raise children. How many people go back and evaluate, their initial thought is, well, I should evaluate my life by what God says about how I should be raising my children to see whether or not I'm applying the rod properly, whether or not I am teaching them as we walk by the way, et cetera.

And then evaluating whether or not anything needs to be corrected there. A lot of times people's first thought is, boy, why has God given me such a hard child? Rather than their immediate thought being, maybe there is some need for correction.

Maybe this isn't just me growing impatience. Maybe there is some need for correction. Same thing with marriage relationships, not just parents and children, but other things in families like marriage.

If there's some disharmony between husband and wife, it is worthwhile to go back and review your duties as a husband or review your duties as a wife and see whether or not you are doing your part to uphold marital unity.

In fact, that lack of marital unity might be God's correction directly for your lack of understanding of his law or failure to uphold his law. Take these as opportunities to go back and review because they very well may be not just correcting sins of omission, teaching you patience, but they very well may be giving you an exact correction to something that you have either misunderstood or failed to apply.

Properly, you could look at your own economic situation. Sometimes people wonder, you know, God, why have you kept me so poor? But then they won't see all the laziness that pervades their life. Okay, you get up past noon, you don't spend a whole lot of time on actually working.

Well, what does the Bible say about the sluggard and about his inability to provide for himself, et cetera, right? These are things where there's a pretty direct connection. All you have to do is put these things together.

And if you consider the trial, the nature of the trial, and consider God's law, and you combine these things, you can often understand his providence way easier than you would if you just look at these things in isolation or your initial thought is that it means God is absent.

The same thing applies not just with economic situations for an individual, but economic situations for a society. Is it any wonder that our society languishes while so many aspects of justice are not upheld when God promises difficulties for societies that would not uphold justice, that would not hold the things that he would have them uphold?

Why is it that people lack dominion? Well, is it not because our society has undermined the whole notion of dominion and ownership? By the way, it approaches about half of people's goods is common among everybody.

And then assurance of salvation. This is a big one, and this is often considered a no-no to say because we don't want to pin someone's assurance or ground it in themselves so that they're not looking to Christ and just becoming navel gazers.

But is it not the case that many people wonder why they don't have assurance and it is simply because they have some major areas of sin in their life that they have not corrected, and God will not grant them assurance apart from them growing in the ways that he has commanded.

This is what all of 1 John is about. All of 1 John is given in order that we might know that we have eternal life through walking in the way that God has called us to, through abiding in divine to have life and know that we have life.

Now, our primary grounds of assurance is in trusting in Christ, but he will not give you that assurance apart from you following his way. If you are cultivating some area of sin in your life, don't be surprised if you do not have assurance while you are cultivating that area of sin.

Take that as an opportunity to review what God's word says about what the Christian life looks like. Take it as an opportunity to review 1 John 5. Once again, not navel gazing, not grounding your assurance in yourself as though it is through your own works that you make yourself right with God, but knowing that the blessing of assurance that's had in the Christian life is had in coordination with aligning yourself with God's will.

And he provides that as a blessing to his children in order that they might be corrected and not haphazardly walk off into grave error. Think about what a bad father God would be if he did not correct his children, if he just gave all of his children assurance without any kind of sense of conscious that may niggle at them in order to get them to question some area of sin that they were cultivating.

Okay, one of the reasons that God withholds assurance is a blessing to his children in order that they would take inventory of any way that they might need correction. Put these two together. It's a very simple formula, but it's one that people fail to do often.

The formula is simply consider the nature of the trial, consider the nature of your sins in conjunction with that trial, especially if it's in a certain, if that trial is in a certain area of your life, and you ask yourself how it is that God would have you to grow.

He will always have you grow in some way. Some are going to be more direct and others less direct, but ask yourself how you can grow. And then you can ask others more mature than you to look into your life and tell you how you can grow if the answer to you is not obvious.

There are reasons that he has given. You do not have to be one who is set fire all around and you do not listen, you do not understand, you do not take it to heart. You can take these things to heart.

You can understand them. Part of what is needed in order to be able to understand these and make these evaluations is a familiarity with God's law in order that you could experience that correction. How do you familiarize yourself with God's law?

Well, certainly you should read his word. There is a particular value in studying the Ten Commandments. If you have never read them before, I know every few years we end up going through the Ten Commandments in the Baptist Catechism, but if you have never read the Westminster Larger Catechism on the Ten Commandments, I highly recommend it.

It will explain in much more detail how each one of the commandments applies to your life. And then many of the Puritans wrote whole books on the Ten Commandments. Thomas Watson wrote on the Ten Commandments.

That one is especially good. I would recommend that. It's sad how ignorant many Christians today are of the Ten Commandments. I know when I was growing up, I understood the Ten Commandments to be something that were part of the Old Testament and that that was not something that really bound the Christian life.

Yes, we shouldn't murder. Yes, we shouldn't. We should obey our father and mother. But it is not. My thought was that that law does not apply to the New Testament Christian in the same way that it was a different kind of law that applied, not the Ten Commandments.

And so whenever I would see monuments to the Ten Commandments places, like I saw one in somebody's front yard one day.

And I was like,.

What a foolish person to have the Ten Commandments. We have the gospel. The law is good. The law leads you. It tells you of your need for Christ so that you can enjoy the gospel more fully. Read these things.

Just to give another illustration of the kind of ignorance that's pervasive in society. Maybe I won't name names, but I saw the managing editor of a very influential Christian magazine recommend a modern work on the Ten Commandments that was written by a not very good female preacher and said this was one of the, and this is a conservative magazine too, so this is one of the most insightful, this is the most insightful work on the Ten Commandments that I have ever read.

And I asked myself, has this guy not read the Puritans?

There's no way.

Now I haven't read that book,.

So I don't know.

Maybe it's amazing,.

But there's no way. There just seems to be no way.

That you could actually have read some of the older writings that God has blessed us with living in this era, having those saints who have gone on before us. And yeah, there's no way you've read those things and then don't realize what treasures we have back there.

Avail yourselves of those. Very, very helpful works have been written on the Ten Commandments. Now what is the answer to all this? The answer comes in the next chapter. We will look there, but in short, the answer is God's effectual call.

We may be blind, but through God's effectual call, the gospel convinces sinners of their sin and misery. That's important. Most people don't even recognize their misery. They don't recognize their sin, of course, but they don't recognize their misery.

You look at this picture of being surrounded by fire and not even realizing how bad it is. Like they recognize they have some trial. They recognize the situation is not great, but they aren't aware that they are under a divine wrath.

This is a significant misery that they are under. The gospel, through the gospel, God opens the eyes of sinners that they can understand their sin and misery, turn to the mercy of Jesus Christ and have their sins forgiven, have his righteousness, and grow in the Christian life, also having his spirit.

These are things that you can enjoy not merely as that sinner who receives God's effectual calling for the first time as the gospel is preached and you believe, but rather even as one who has already received that effectual call.

In fact, even moreover, as one who has received that effectual call, you can enjoy this repeatedly being corrected by God, enjoying the mercies of the gospel new each day. New each day, you can experience the trials in your life, recognize your need for growth, recognize God's goodness in your life in growing, you recognize his goodness in your life in forgiving you and grow in the joy of your salvation.

Every day you can experience this,.

Not thinking,.

Why has God abandoned me? But rather, why is God's hand delivering me trials in the particular way that he is? Is it against me in such a way that I have some great transgression that needs correction and thank him for correcting me in that way?

Or is it a lack of growth where he is giving me some special trials like an athlete in order that I might be a stronger warrior for his cause? You can ask yourself these things and you can rejoice in the nature of the gospel, not just rejoice through the trial, but rejoice because of the trial itself.

It pointing you to the goodness of God's gospel, God's gospel in forgiveness, God's gospel in giving you his spirit in order to grow you in the Christian faith. Do not be ignorant. Do not be blind like this servant of the Old Testament and said, that servant of the Lord whom God has upheld in the former part of 42, all the way in the first verse.

He is one who perfectly hears. He is one who perfectly sees. He is one who, as we are found in him, he makes us to see, he makes us to hear that we might under him be servants of the Lord, just as he is the only begotten son of God and makes us sons of God in him.

He is the only true servant of the Lord and in him makes us servants that our eyes can see, our ears can hear. There is no reason why you who have trusted in the Lord need to go about blind and deaf. You can see the trials and interpret them, not ignorantly, but as one who has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

Amen.

Dear Heavenly Father, we ask that you would make our trials clear to us, that your law would be clear to us and your trials would be clear to us, we would understand your hand in them, that we would not ask where you are, but that we would understand where you are.

Hear you speaking loudly and clearly and so grow in the life that you have given us in Jesus Christ. Him being that perfect servant of the Lord and us in him being your servants. In Jesus' name.

Amen.