Wednesday, November 13, 2024

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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim, Pastor

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Well, let's open our Bibles and turn to Isaiah chapter 3, and we will be reading verses 13 through the end of the chapter, this final section of Isaiah 3, as the follies of Judah are being rebuked.
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Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we thank You for our time together tonight. I pray that You would bless our reading of Your Word.
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I pray that You would have Your way in our lives, that You would show us
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Your Son, Jesus, that we would rejoice in Him and be transformed into Your likeness as we follow
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Him, as we follow the Lamb wherever He goes. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.
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So in Isaiah chapter 3, we are hearing the follies of Judah being rebuked.
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It is foolish for Judah to trust in things and people, to trust in resources, when they ought to be trusting in the
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Lord. Because their trust is misplaced, because they do not fear the Lord, they are a foolish nation.
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They are so foolish that the ox and the donkey know who their masters are, but Judah doesn't know who their father is.
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And that's how foolish they are. What do they trust in? Well, they trust in self, they trust in idols, they trust in power, they trust in wealth.
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And all of these different false senses of security are being eviscerated by the prophet.
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The prophet is showing you how each one fails. And so that's what we're looking at now, the final folly being rebuked is that of trusting wealth.
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And so that's going to be verses 13 through 26. The Lord stands up to plead and stands to judge the people.
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The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders of His people and His princes.
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For you have eaten up the vineyard, the plunderer of the poor is in your houses.
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What do you mean by crushing My people and grinding the faces of the poor, says the
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Lord God of hosts? Moreover, the Lord says, because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, making a jingling with their feet.
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Therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion and the
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Lord will uncover their secret parts. In that day, the Lord will take away the finery, the jingling anklets, the scarves and the crescents, the pendants, the bracelets and the veils, the headdresses, the leg ornaments and the headbands, the perfume boxes, the charms and the rings, the nose jewels, the festal apparel and the mantles, the outer garments, the purses and the mirrors, the fine linen, the turbans and the robes.
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And so it shall be. Instead of a sweet smell, there will be a stench. Instead of a sash, a rope.
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Instead of well -set hair, baldness. Instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth and branding instead of beauty.
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Your men shall fall by the sword and you're mighty in the war. Her gates shall lament and mourn and she being desolate shall sit on the ground."
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The vision of wealth, the pictures of wealth that we see in this passage are twofold.
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The first few verses in verses 13 through 15 talk about the procuring of wealth in an unrighteous way, the pursuing of wealth in a way that breaks
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God's covenant. And that's what the princes, the governors, the rulers were doing.
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They were pursuing wealth in such a way that they were breaking God's covenant. They were being unfaithful to God even as they pursued wealth, and this was at the expense of the poor.
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The second portion, which is much longer in verses 16 through 26, is a display of trusting in wealth and parading in wealth and showing off all the wealth.
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And the 21 items listed there that adorn and decorate the daughters of Zion is used as an object lesson to see how wealth is just layered upon them, and this is kind of what they're known for, and this is how they present themselves, and it's all these different expressions of wealth where their heart is their treasure.
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This is their treasure. This is what they worship. This is their heart. This is what they trust. So what is being rebuked here?
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What is being rebuked here is not wealth. Wealth is not being rebuked here.
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Trusting wealth is being rebuked here. And we remember the passage in 1
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Timothy 6, verse 10. The first part of that says, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.
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Money isn't the root of evil. The love of money is a root of all kinds of money, right?
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It's not even the only root. It's not even the single root of all evil is the love of money.
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It is a root of all kinds of evil. So a good warning, a punchy warning, but it's not an absolute statement.
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Often people say, well, money is the root of all evil. So that is not what the Scripture says. You know, all those little words and qualifiers matter, so let's read the text for what it says.
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We also remember that Jesus says that you cannot serve
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God and mammon, or in other words, wealth. You can't be the servant of God while you're also being enslaved to a wealth and the pursuit of wealth and so on and so forth.
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So that's important to remember. That's a biblical concept that we can find, whether in the Old Testament or in the
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New Testament. But when we think about this unrighteous procuring of wealth that's on display in verses 13 through 15, we see that the rulers, the governors, those who are in charge of administrating righteousness and those who are in charge of the justice system, that these folks are pursuing wealth in a wicked way.
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What permissions are they giving themselves to act in this fashion?
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But wickedness is deemed permissible when wealth becomes the prime value.
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Perhaps it is couched in terms of human flourishing or reparative justice or some other virtue speech.
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But once God has been displaced from His proper reverence in our lives, all manner of tyranny and theft is not only justified but is pursued as virtue and valor.
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So let's look at these three verses again, verses 13 through 15. The Lord stands up to plead and stands to judge the people.
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So we see that the Lord is taking action. The Lord is going to take care of this issue of justice.
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The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders of His people and His princes. What does
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He say to these governors, these rulers? We've already seen the politics of disaster in the previous passage.
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He says to them, you have eaten up the vineyard, the plunder of the poor is in your houses.
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Why has the Lord stood up? So often we find in the Scriptures the longsuffering of God, the kindness of God, the patience of God.
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But anytime we see God stand up, and this is a man -shaped word about God who is a spirit, does not have a body like man, and so He's not resting on His laurels, physically sitting upon a throne,
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God is a spirit. And so when it says that He's standing up, that means He's getting up off of His throne, meaning
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He's taking action now. You have incited Him to action, and perhaps the elders and the princes are there, what?
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What did we do? Why are you judging us in this way? Why are you taking action against us? He explains, this is why, for you have eaten up the vineyard, the plunder of the poor is in your houses.
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What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor, says the
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Lord God of hosts. So when we think about what's going on in Jerusalem and Judah, we remember that the leaders are especially responsible for the covenant standing of the people with God.
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They're not entirely responsible, but they are very responsible. Remember that David's sin brought a plague upon the whole nation.
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The leaders are especially responsible. And so the leadership here are, from king and counselor to judge and elder, they are materially focused.
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They are materially focused. The wealth is being used for military, it's being used for idolatry, and then both the military and then the idolatry are credited for why we're doing so well.
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There's no room for trusting in the Lord in this system. So this first section of the rebuke looks at the magistrates, and then the second section moves on to their women, to their wives.
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So wealth is what they're trusting in, and we see how important wealth is by the actions of the magistrates in their acting unjustly.
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So verses 13 to 15 is all about wealth by force, gaining wealth by force, not by labor, not by diligence, not by productivity, not by ingenuity, not by taking risk.
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This is wealth by force. And the Lord stands up to judge, the
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Lord stands up to interpose, the Lord comes to bring justice and judgment because the princes have failed, the governors have failed.
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They themselves are the ringleaders. They're the ones who are leading the band of thieves. Notice what they do.
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They exhaust the vineyard. He says, why have you eaten up the vineyard? They've exhausted the vineyard, meaning that they have scraped the vineyard so thoroughly, so violently, that not only is there nothing left for the poor to eat as they pass through, which they're supposed to be able to do according to Exodus 23, 11, and Leviticus 19, 10, they're supposed to leave enough on the vines for the poor to eat as they pass through.
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They come, they gather, they eat. You don't go over your vines and your trees a second time. You don't reap to the corners.
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You don't pick up the grain stalks that have fallen down as you carry your sheaves.
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You leave that for the poor to glean. But they have scraped their vineyard so much that there's nothing left for the poor, but they have also worked it over in such a fashion that it's not even gonna come back next year.
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This is how badly they have scoured the vineyard. They've destroyed it in a way that it's not even gonna come back.
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And God is saying, why have you done this? Don't you have enough? And so, the plunder of the poor is in their houses.
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That which would belong to the poor, according to God's covenant, is in their houses now. They've taken it all up.
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There's nothing left for gleaning at all. And so, the elders and princes are made wealthy by that which, according to God, belonged to the poor.
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They ruin the vineyard. The vineyard is a metaphor for the whole nation. And they make the poor even more poor by taking the wealth off the backs of the poor.
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And then the metaphor turns slightly. We've begun with one metaphor, and then it twists, and then we come to a new image, much like how
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Paul writes. But we've got a metaphor that then turns into another metaphor. Now the poor are the grapes.
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Verse 15, what do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor, says the
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Lord God of hosts. You see, once they've scraped the vineyard clean, they got all the grapes off of the vines, and they've scoured it so bad that this vineyard is basically ruined.
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But now they've got all the grapes. And now what are they doing with the grapes? Well, it's time to throw it all into the wine press, and then what do you do?
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You go around, you stomp around on all the grapes. And the prophet says, okay, look at those little round grapes.
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And imagine that those little round grapes, each one of them is the face of the poor, all those faces of the poor.
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And here are the magistrates, here are the governors and the rulers, and they're stomping on the face of the poor and crushing them.
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That's pretty good writing. Isaiah is really grabbing our attention here with these images.
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So God confronts them. They forgot they were accountable to somebody. They didn't know they had a boss.
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They've forgotten that they're the children of God, remember? I mean, the ox knows he's got a master, so I better behave.
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The donkey knows he has a master, so he better behave. But not these folks. This is how foolish they are.
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They've forgotten that they're accountable to God. He confronts them as, notice, the Lord of hosts. He owns it all.
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He's in charge of it all. He can bring all the hosts to bear against them, but they live as if there is no
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God. Only the fool says in his heart that there is no God. They think they can escape his jurisdiction.
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They are in special covenant relationship with the Lord, and Deuteronomy is structured in such a way that the first four chapters,
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God is saying to Israel, here's everything I did, here's how I have loved you, here's how
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I provided for you, here's how I redeemed you up out of Egypt. I bought every single last one of you. All of you are owned lock, stock, and barrel by me, therefore,
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Deuteronomy 5, the covenant, the commandments, the Ten Commandments, right? They are in complete accountability to God, and they are now living as if they don't have somebody in charge of them.
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There is no fear of God before their eyes. They think that they can squeeze the last drops of the poor, or like those in Jesus' day, scrape the last two mites from the widow, and think that nobody can stop them.
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Well, who's going to confront them? When those who are in charge are the criminals, who's going to do anything about it?
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We've investigated ourselves, and we're innocent. We're going to appoint a special investigative committee to investigate ourselves and see if we've done anything wrong.
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Oh, I guess we're all right. How often does that happen? I think we should be reminded of three truths here, and first of all, vengeance belongs to the
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Lord. Secondly, we need to think about the fear of God, and then think about the heart and money.
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First of all, vengeance belongs to the Lord. I mean, we often wonder, when will the wicked ever be brought to justice?
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When will the wicked ever be brought to justice? When the elders and the princes of our
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American empire conspire again and again into wickedness, what are we to do? They steal from us at gunpoint.
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They sacralize baby murder. They arrest and prosecute religious objectors to baby murder.
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They use us like lab rats in a variety of experiments. They defraud our currency.
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They formulate our courts like an overpriced vending machine. They co -opt information systems to affect mass deception.
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They use false flag operations to deceive the public. They launder massive amounts of money through the perpetration of foreign wars.
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Who's going to stop them? Who's going to stop them? Where is justice?
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Well, Moses sings a song. Moses sings a song I think is helpful for us to consider. It's a covenantal song.
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It's a song about them being in covenant relationship with God, but the covenant, the covenants that God makes, the covenant has creation's shape and it is
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Christ's shadow. So that's why it's instructed to us. All Scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, correction, instruction, and righteousness.
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So when we look at these covenant themes, that has creation's shape and it is Christ's shadow.
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Now, in Deuteronomy 32 verses 3 through 5, this is part of the song of Moses, and then
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I'm also going to take a gander at verse 15 and verse 35. It's a long song.
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We're not going to do the whole song tonight. Moses was long -winded. But verses 3 through 5, first of all,
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Moses says, "'For I proclaim the name of the Lord, ascribe greatness to our God.
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He is the rock. His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice, a
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God of truth and without injustice. Righteous and upright is He. They have corrupted themselves.
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They are not His children because of their blemish, a perverse and crooked generation.'"
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So look at the contrast between the Lord and then
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His people. Look how faithful and righteous He is, and look how wicked and perverse they are. That's where Jesus got
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His catchphrase when He was talking about those in front of Him, a wicked and perverse generation.
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Verse 15 of Deuteronomy 32, "'But Jeshurun,' that's God's nickname for Israel when they're in trouble, "'but
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Jeshurun grew fat and kicked,' meaning, I don't want to do the work, right?
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"'When the donkey is not taken care of properly and put out into the field on a regular basis, and he just sits around and gets fat and lazy, and then you go try to put the halter on him and get him out there to do some work, he didn't like that, and then he kicks, right?'
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And that's what God is saying, "'Jeshurun grew fat and kicked. You grew fat, you grew thick, you were obese.
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Then he forsook God who made him and scornfully esteemed the rock of his salvation.'"
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Well, that's a situation that's happened again here in Isaiah. Jeshurun got fat. They've got all...
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Look, we've got all this stuff. We don't want to do anything that the Lord tells us to do. They don't even...
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They don't esteem the rock of their salvation anymore. Verse 35, God concludes, here's how he's going to take care of things, "'Vengeance is mine.'"
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God says, "'Vengeance is mine and recompense. Their foot shall slip in due time, for the day of their calamity is at hand and the things come to hasten upon them.'"
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Vengeance belongs to God. He made that clear from the time he put the mark on Cain until Christ came with his message, right?
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God always made that point. Vengeance belongs to God. We find
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God's character and power and glory consistent from Genesis 4 .15, where God is talking to Cain and putting the mark on Cain, to Romans 12 .19,
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where he says, "'Vengeance is mine, I will repay. Do not repay your enemies, evil for evil.'" And we've got from Genesis 9 .5,
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where he says, "'If anybody murders a man and sheds his blood by man, his blood must be shed.'" And there's an orderly way of bringing capital punishment.
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That's consistent with Revelation 20, verse 11, at the great white throne judgment, where everything is sorted out, right?
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So we see that God is just, that God executes vengeance, and we have to trust that he will judge.
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When the princes and the leaders, when the government officials are all the criminal racket, who's going to judge them?
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Well, guess what? They're accountable to somebody. Jesus Christ is the ruler of all the kings of the earth, present tense.
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That's our assurance in the Scriptures. He's in charge. And all of these criminal government officials who think that they're so stalwart and they're in charge and they have all the power, they're nothing but clay pots, and Jesus Christ has a big metal rod in His hand.
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So we can trust that God will bring vengeance. We can trust that God will bring vengeance in His way, in His time, and it'll be better than anything else that we could ever possibly come up with.
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Second thing we should remember is that wicked flourishes where there is no fear of God. Wickedness flourishes where there is no fear of God.
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The classic description of mankind's wickedness and depravity is Romans 3, verses 10 through 18.
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And I think it accurately describes the evil leaders of Judah whom
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Isaiah addresses. And that's where we read, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one.
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There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable.
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There is none who does good, no, not one. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit.
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The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.
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Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. Sum it all up, there is no fear of God before their eyes.
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Now that's a description of man's depravity, and it becomes really clear, man's depravity, when man gets put into the spotlight.
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When man gets put into the spotlight under pressure with a lot of resources and power in his stewardship, under that magnifying glass, you can see just how depraved somebody is.
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They don't have Christ. If they're not born again, if they don't have a new nature, if they're not a new creature, then what are you going to see?
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You're going to see this magnified. Now, this collection of Old Testament quotes concludes with, there is no fear of God before their eyes, and that comes from Psalm 36.
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So wickedness flourishes where there is no fear of God. And that's an observation that we make from Isaiah, from Romans, and so forth.
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So what is the need? What is the need?
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When we don't know God, don't fear God, don't love God, don't revere God, that's the problem.
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We need much more understanding of God, much more knowledge of God, much more fear of God, much more reverence of God.
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That is what is needed. The third thing we ought to recognize from this passage is that evil is not in the wealth, but in the heart.
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Evil is not in the wealth, it's in the heart. Now, some folks look at wealth disparity and see evil simply by the presence of a contrast.
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Virtue is thus infused into the wealth proper, which makes sense if you have a materialist worldview, and there's nothing but matter, so nothing matters, and matter is everything that matters, and it ain't much, then virtue must be a part of the matter, the material.
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And if somebody has more material than somebody else, then that's just not fair. Or maybe they have more matter than somebody else, and that makes them more important.
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Materialism either way. But just as foolish is the idea that having wealth means having guilt.
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Possessing wealth means that you're just guilty. To possess more wealth must necessarily mean to have more sin.
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That's some people's perspective. That's also unbiblical. Now, Matthew 6,
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Jesus talks to us about not being anxious. Living each day as He gives it to us, and we are not to serve
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God and mammon. We are to trust in the Lord and His provision. And if you think that worrying about material possessions is the sole purview of the poor, then you've not met a rich person who has a hard time sleeping at night.
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I worked for a wealthy man who had more than one business and several properties, and he was a man always with worries and concerns.
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And he'd be hauling us one way or another way, trying to take care of everything he owns. And he told me, he said, Michael, what you own soon owns you.
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And he was a harried, anxious, worried man. And he knew better, but still.
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So Jesus' words in Matthew 6 are not just to the poor, it's to all of us. But it's about what's in the heart.
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Jesus says, verse 21 of Matthew 6, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
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Verse 24, No one can serve two masters. So it's not about wealth being evil, it's about not serving wealth, not pursuing wealth.
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1 Timothy 6 says, Now the godliness with contentment is great gain.
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For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
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And having food and clothing with these, we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich, right?
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I mean, that's where they're serving wealth. My whole idea is I want to be rich. They will fall into temptation and a snare.
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And into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.
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Then we have the passage, For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
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So wealth isn't the answer. That's not to be the focus. Godliness, Christlikeness, our
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Savior, Jesus Christ. Where is our focus supposed to be? It's not about wealth. Do we have it? Do we want it?
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Or we don't have enough, and where is it? The focus is upon the Lord serving our true master,
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God, not mammon. And we can see that from... See, the problem in Isaiah 3 is not that Israel had wealth.
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The problem was that they trusted in that as a sign that everything was good. We don't need redistributed wealth.
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We need a Redeemer. We don't need reparations. We need redemption. We don't need socialism. We need a
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Savior. The free market is not a Savior, for men are not free except in Christ. Capitalism is not the new creation.
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Christ makes us stewards of all He possesses, and He possesses everything, to take up all of His means for His glory.
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So, massive amounts of tyranny is perpetrated in view of forcefully gaining wealth.
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Unrighteous gain. So what's our response? Those who are made in God's image to live according to Christ. Well, we are to love
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God supremely, love each other rightly, and steward creation faithfully. We are to repent of serving or loving or worrying about mammon.
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And we are to love others rightly, so we are to work hard, to have something to share, care for Christians, embrace freedom in giving to the poor, employ generational wisdom in hope.
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Don't make it, you know, my wealth is for me and no other, as if there aren't children and grandchildren and great -grandchildren and great -great -grandchildren to be thinking about, because I only live in my generation.
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Love others rightly, even those you haven't met yet. Steward creation righteously. We don't have to be misers, we don't have to be philanthropists.
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We don't have to be a world citizen, and we don't have to be an imperialist. We are to shape, direct, and develop, and even risk for the
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Master. What has He entrusted to us? Let's make the most of it for His sake, right? Okay, next time we're going to walk through the passage that focuses on the daughters of Zion and how they were flaunting their wealth, and then learn the lessons there as we close out