A Greater Salvation

Please turn to Isaiah 29. Today we'll be looking at verses 17 through 19 in Isaiah 29.

Just as a reminder, this is a section in Isaiah that's talking about the folly of trusting in the nations.

The people had trust in Assyria. Assyria's turned on them. Now they're trusting in Egypt to deliver them from Assyria.

And the Lord is confronting that sin of theirs of trust in human powers when he has offered his own assistance and they have rejected it.

Well, please stand when you have Isaiah 29. And I'll go ahead and read verses 17 through 21, although the message this morning is particularly on the first three of those verses, 17 through 19.

Is it not yet a very little while until Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field?

And the fruitful field shall be regarded as a forest. In that day, the deaf shall hear the words of a book and out of their gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see.

The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord and the poor among mankind shall exult in the

Holy One of Israel. For the ruthless shall come to nothing and the scoffer cease and all who watch to do evil shall be cut off.

Who by a word make a man out to be an offender and lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate and with an empty plea turn aside him who is in the right.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you today for your word.

We thank you for the great salvation that you have given in Jesus Christ and the great salvation that you have promised even through him.

Today, I pray that you would help us to see the greatness of that salvation. That we would not be fooled into believing something less.

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, a lot of people,

I think like me, come from a background, before they get interested in Reformed theology, they come from some sort of charismatic background.

One of the errors in the charismatic background is praying not according to God's will and praying often very big and expansive things that do not understand the nature of God's will.

There was one headline a couple of years ago or one particular charismatic church who was praying for God to raise a dead girl who had died.

Now, can God raise the dead? Absolutely. Absolutely. If you understand his word, though, you will understand that that is not his intention at this time.

His point for each man wants to die and then comes judgment. So, we do not want to pray against God's will.

We do not want to pray things that are big and grand apart from his will. But, a wrong corrective to that is to pray things that are too small.

To think that God's will is something that's very small. It's only small salvations that God offers.

So, as we pray realistically, realistically, we want to pray for small things.

That would be a wrong corrective to this error of praying against God's will. It's to think that God's will, instead of thinking that it's these big, ginormous signs and acts, that rather it's very small things.

We should instead pray along God's will, but pray for great and glorious things and to recognize how great salvation is.

We should pray for wonderful acts of salvation. We should not pray for small things, but we should pray for very large things.

As we pray for our own area, we should be praying for God to do wonderful works of salvation.

As we pray for our own lives, we should be praying great things and expecting great things, because God's salvation is great.

The error that Judah had was thinking that God's salvation would not be that great.

For having low expectations, for having low patience with God, and expecting him to do too little.

And so they turn to someone who they think can do more, who cannot do more, who cannot do more than God.

But the Lord's salvation is great. The Lord delivers us from enemies. He gives us wonderful sensibilities to the work that he is doing.

I'd like us to consider both of those things here in this passage, as it speaks of him giving ears to the deaf and eyes to the blind.

It speaks of him raising up the meek and the poor. God grants a great salvation.

So in verse 17, it says, Lebanon turned into a fruitful field.

Now, oftentimes the Bible uses a metaphor in different ways.

For example, yeast in the Bible is often used to mean something sinful. Yet, another time,

Jesus gives a parable. The kingdom of God is like a little leaven that spreads across the bread and makes it grow.

And it describes the kingdom of heaven in this way. And there, yeast is not referring to sin.

It's actually referring to something good. It's the growth of the kingdom of God. Well, throughout the prophets,

Lebanon, this place with tall cedar trees, is often used to refer to something prideful. Here, however, and especially as you see this very same metaphor used in the next chapter, here, it's not talking about Lebanon as something prideful.

It's talking about the forest as something unfruitful. You go to a forest looking for something to eat, and it's a difficult task.

You have to forage for, what, fungi? But this is describing how

God will take the forest and turn it into a fruitful field.

And the fruitful field shall be regarded as a forest. In other words, that God's work of salvation will be so great that previous acts of salvation will seem small in comparison.

God will turn the forest into a fruitful field, and it will be such a fruitful field that previous fruitful fields will be regarded as nothing, as desert areas, as just forests without fruit.

God's work of salvation is great. And so what is the fulfillment of this?

Well, in the context of this passage, in the immediate context of this passage, it's talking about salvation from the attack of Assyria.

I've mentioned several times that God will, in a few chapters, will see that he wipes out 185 troops of the

Assyrians in a single night. He provides this great salvation that no one expects. And if you look through the history of Israel, you don't see anything like it before that.

But, as we have seen time and time again throughout Isaiah, that he is not just talking about that immediate context, but this prophecy applies to the coming of Jesus Christ.

If you're familiar with the words of the New Testament in this passage and speaking about opening the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind and raising the meek and poor, then you should recognize that these are passages that are talking about the great salvation that we have even in Jesus Christ.

Not just deliverance from the Assyrians 700 years BC, but the great salvation that we have in the gospel.

And not just the magnitude of the salvation in the individual's life as he's saved the way from sin, but also the advance and spread of it geographically and numerically.

Matthew 21, 43 says, Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.

You know, many commentators, as they've looked at this passage in Isaiah, they've gone to that passage in Matthew to speak of the fruit that is produced by the gospel.

Who ends up producing the fruit? It's not just the nation of Israel. In fact, the nation of Israel is not, by and large, full of gospel -believing individuals.

Rather, it's spread to all the nations, and God's gospel goes to all the nations. And as churches appear in each place, congregations worshiping the

Lord, you see the fruit that God is producing. And it's a salvation that's greater than the salvations he's provided before, because it's not one that merely grants a good life on this earth.

It's not one that merely offers a promised land of Canaan, but the promised land of heaven, eternal life, not merely a long life in the land.

It is a great salvation. And so we should pray for great things. We should pray for high things.

We should pray for great salvation. Ephesians 3 .20 says that God is able to do far more than we ask or think.

He does far more than we ask or think. You know, today, as we come together in prayer, we should be praying zealously for God to do wonderful work in this valley.

And especially as this next year is coming, and not that those dates are so important, but rather, given the seasons that this area goes through, you see a lot of people come in during the summer, we should be praying for God to do a great work in those people's lives.

We should be praying for God to do a great work in this neighborhood. And we should not set our expectations low, but we should set them high knowing that God produces a great and wonderful salvation.

Romans 8 .23, excuse me, 8 .32 says, He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

You know, if God has given us his own son, how will he not graciously give us all things? If we ask for wonderful things that are according to his will, he answers such requests.

We need to pray for these things, and we need to pray for them persistently and with faith that God is capable and willing to answer them.

You know, just a famous story that you may have heard about Spurgeon and his life. His mother prayed for him to become a believer, and, you know, she prayed and prayed, and finally he converted and became a believer, became a

Baptist, and she was not expecting this part. She didn't want him to become a Baptist, and she said,

I prayed that God would save you, but not that you would become a Baptist. And he said, well,

God has answered with his usual bounty, and he has asked beyond what you ask or think. But hopefully, you know, and you've experienced in your own life that often as you pray for things,

God does answer more than you ask or think. God is capable of doing far more, and he does do far more.

In fact, there are many things that you've received you never even prayed for at all, because God is so merciful and kind.

Just think about how much he does for those who do seek him diligently in prayer.

And at the very beginning of this verse, it started off by saying, is it not yet a very little while?

Is it not yet a little while? Not only do people have low expectations, they also have low patience.

They don't expect God to work swiftly in their time frame. Well, certainly he doesn't work in their time frame, but he works in an appropriate time frame.

And what this is getting at in the context is the people's great folly in not waiting on him.

God has promised that he will deliver them from the Assyrians if they trust in him, but they're not willing to wait and see if he will do it.

Rather, they immediately go to Egypt for their help. You know, if you look at this passage as the previous passage, they were going and they were counseling and they were seeing what they should do, and they were not regarding themselves as the clay, but rather God is an equal with them, not him as the potter, but rather they were treating

God as one who is not over them but beside them, similar to them.

But he's great. He is mighty and he works, certainly. He will expose their great folly by acting in just a short while.

You know, when we, when Jesus returns, it feels like a long time right now. It feels like it's been, you know, 2 ,000 years seems like a long time.

And however long it takes all the way there, no doubt people will feel like it's very slow.

But once it's there, once it's over, and we see how short that time span was in the course of eternity, we will realize just how foolish it was to be impatient with God's work.

He works very swiftly, and we, by expecting something even swifter, show just how foolish we are to not trust in him.

It says, In that day the deaf will hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see.

So now he starts describing what that salvation will entail. He starts describing it as the deaf hearing the words of a book.

And if you've been following along in this chapter, you know that this is an image that's been used previously. In verse 11, it says,

This vision of all this has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. When men give it to one who can read, saying,

Read this, he says, I cannot, for it is sealed. We spoke about how

Isaiah had been given this commission in chapter 6 to go and preach to the people so that seeing they would not see, and hearing they would not hear.

And so Isaiah's commission was one that did the opposite of what we see described here.

Isaiah's commission was go speak to this people so that their eyes would cloud over and their ears would plug up.

But now he's prophesying that something great will happen, and that will be removed, and the people will become sensible to what

God is saying. They'll become sensible to what Isaiah has said. This words of the book, what is it?

In verse 11, this vision has become to you like the words of a book. It is Isaiah's own words.

What it's describing is Isaiah's own words that were designed so that people wouldn't understand them will become understandable to a people who have been transformed by God, have been transformed to become spiritually sensible.

Now by sensible, I do not mean reasonable. By sensible, I'm meaning having senses, right? Having ears that hear, having eyes that see.

This is what God does. This hardness, this blindness, this deafness, these are things that are self -imposed as we are ones who are blind.

As it is said in verse 9, astonish yourselves, be astonished. Blind yourselves and be blind.

We've blinded ourselves, we've hidden dark places trying to hide away from God, but God is one who shines his light into the darkness, opens eyes, opens ears, and says they wake up out of their gloom and their darkness, referring back to the things that were said before.

Out of the gloom, out of the darkness that the people hide in. People hide in darkness thinking that God can't see them there, but whose eyes are dimmed by the darkness?

It's not God's eyes. It's man's eyes that are dimmed by the darkness. They don't do anything to hide from them.

They only make themselves more blind. And God, through Jesus Christ, opens the eyes of the blind.

Matthew 11, 26 speaks to this particular situation.

Excuse me, 11, 2. 11, 2 through 6, not 26. Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him,

Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another? Now, I'd like to suggest to you that John had read the words of Isaiah and is expecting a lot of great things to happen.

He's read the words. He's expecting the eyes of the blind to be opened. He's expecting the ears of the deaf to be opened.

He's also expecting, as Isaiah says later in his prophecy, that the prisoners shall be set free.

But where is John? He's in prison. And so he's wondering, is he really the one?

And Jesus answered them, Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them.

And blessed is the one who is not offended by me. Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

This passage is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Now, this should be a warning to us to understand prophecy rightly with the way it was given and the way it was intended.

First of all, if Jesus is saying that these prophecies are fulfilled even though John is still in prison and the prophecies are fulfilled, then we should not understand

Scripture that when it speaks of things like the eyes of the blind being opened, et cetera, that everything has to be taken exactly the way you might imagine it on the first reading because those set free from prison, while people are set free from prison in the book of Acts and later, ultimately this is pointing to something more.

This is not pointing to what you might initially think when you look at it, but rather Jesus is not just opening physical eyes and opening physical ears.

He's opening spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. There's a greater salvation that he is accomplishing in people.

There's a greater salvation. And back to the errors of some churches who focus on the charismatic gifts.

They have a big focus about God is really working when you see great and miraculous healing being done.

Well, certainly miracles exist and God is working when such miracles are done. But if we are seeing only with eyes of only physical eyes and not with our spiritual eyes the work that God is doing, we are going to miss it.

And we are going to be just like these people of Judah who cannot anticipate what God is going to do because they cannot sense the truth, sense the spiritual truth of what he is saying.

Because we're primarily seeing what is in front of us and not understanding the truth of what

God says, not understanding the greatness of the miracles that happen even in the heart. And so, one takeaway

I want you all to have for this, especially as we go into a season of multiple holidays where you're going to be probably going home to your friends and your family for Christmas and for New Years and you're going to encounter people who don't know the

Lord and maybe you're even anxious about having conversations with them about the faith and maybe you're going to be tempted to have very realistic expectations about what

God can do in their life. And those realistic expectations are not tied to God's reality, they're tied to the reality you can see.

And I want you to pray along God's will, to pray his will and with an anticipation that he is good and he is great and he works mighty things.

Don't be like those who in Judah say, you know, I'm just not counting on God to pull through in this particular situation and so I'm going to just duck out over here.

Rather, recognize that God is great and he has promised in this particular era that the gospel will go to many, it will go to those who have hard hearts and you should pray with a great anticipation that God is capable of opening their eyes.

This is what he does, he opens eyes. And he doesn't, a lot of people feel like, well if their eyes have been, you know, if their eyes are blind that shows that, you know, they can't really be open because they're so resistant to the truth.

But in the case of the man who was born blind, what did Jesus say? Jesus said that he was born blind so that the work of God could be shown in him.

You see, God often has people blinded, not just physically but spiritually for many years in order that his glory might be revealed in a greater salvation than it would have been otherwise.

Right? He intends not just to do small salvations, he intends to do great salvations.

And if you understand that, if you understand that that is his will, it can give you the kind of faith that can cause you to pray with the right expectations rather than with low expectations and low patience like the people of Judah had.

It says in verse 19, the meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord and the poor among mankind shall exult in the

Holy One of Israel who are the meek. The meek are those who are generally humble and submissive and so they're the ones that are easily oppressed.

The same with the poor. The poor cannot defend themselves often. They are easily, they're easily oppressed.

But what does God do in Jesus Christ? He saves. He saves the meek. He saves the poor.

2 Corinthians 8 said, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich.

We come rich. We become rich through the poverty of Jesus Christ. Through his sacrificial death on the cross as well as his whole life lived in the difficulties of his first century era under the

Old Covenant law. Through all of that poverty, we become rich through these things.

And it's God's intention once again to save those who are impoverished. Those who are not just impoverished physically, obviously, but spiritually impoverished without any hope.

And of course, well before I go there, the poor among mankind shall exult in the

Holy One of Israel. What's the significance of God being the Holy One of Israel?

You know, it's a phrase that comes up frequently throughout Isaiah, but there's usually a purpose when particular names are chosen for God, when particular titles are specified.

And so, what is the significance of him being the Holy One of Israel? God is holy, and so that means several things in Isaiah.

It means that when he is, he will not be mocked. When someone does something evil, they will be punished for it.

But it also means, and this is kind of the conundrum of Isaiah that doesn't get resolved more directly until the final chapters, but it also means that if his people are despised, if his people are trampled down, then it makes him look bad.

His holiness is profaned if his own people are destroyed because it looks as though he is not a powerful

God. And so, that's kind of the question in Isaiah.

The first half of Isaiah is mostly focusing on God is holy, so even if his own people sins, he will destroy them for it.

And then later, God is holy, so that means that his people cannot be destroyed without his name being profaned.

So, how will this work out? And that's what the end of Isaiah is primarily about, that God will make his people holy so that he will uphold them and save them out of their salvation, or, sorry, into salvation, out of the judgment.

But, but considering that, this is the point. Isaiah specifies that God is the

Holy One of Israel because it is based on that holiness that we can count on God doing great salvation and not allowing there to be just a small and pathetic people that have been saved, but rather than just a mere remnant,

God grows them into something much greater, and we know that that happens through the gospel.

And then, connecting this once again with the New Testament words that speak of this.

Once again, the words of Christ. In Matthew 5, 2, it says, And he opened up his mouth and taught them, saying,

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This is a fulfillment. Blessed are the poor.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. For they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive merciful.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you under all kinds of evil against you, falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

So a blessing Jesus Christ pronounces on the poor and on the meek. The poor have the kingdom of heaven, the meek inherit the earth.

Those who are oppressed, God lifts them up out of their oppression. How? Through Jesus Christ.

Through Jesus Christ. And so we have, we have a great inheritance.

If he has given us his son, how much more will he give us all things? We have a great inheritance. We have a great salvation in Jesus Christ.

And this is something that we should rejoice in. You know, if you are sharing the gospel with your friends this, this

Christmas, this New Year's, having a gloomy outlook on life, having something less than the joy that is sensible to this great salvation that God has worked in your life, that's not a, that's not a great way to sell something, right?

If God has given us this great salvation, we should rejoice in it, we should be joyful, we should have that fruit of the Spirit whereby others can see how great that salvation is.

You know, as you contemplate the salvation, as you look to Jesus, you should be full of such joy recognizing what

God has done in your life. And so considering all this, considering all that Christ has done through the gospel,

I'd like you to just step back and consider how it talks about the deaf and the blind, people having these sensibilities given back to them because what had happened?

Well, they had fallen under, their own senses fell under oppression because they have gone into the darkness, and God takes people out of that.

And then speaks of the meek and the poor, this is enemies from external, from external sources having oppressed the people, and God saves them out of that.

So both self -imposed oppression and externally imposed oppression, God saves out of both of these things through Jesus Christ, and he saves wonderfully.

He saves not just forgiving people and not just restoring their senses so that they're no longer blind, but even giving them greater senses so they can sense the wonderful mercy and majesty of God, not just knowing his justice, but knowing his mercy, knowing his goodness and grace.

And not just saving from enemies so that they continue, but making them victorious, making his people victorious so that they can rejoice in what the

Lord has done. He has not just paid our debts, but he has given us credit as well.

He has not just put us back at square one where Adam was so that we can try again.

No, rather Christ has accomplished everything, and he has guaranteed us a glorious inheritance, a glorious resurrection.

And this is something that we should, that we should rejoice in, and that we should, that we should recognize how great it is and that we can count on God to provide great salvations.

We should not keep our expectations low, we should not have little patience with God, rather we should persistently recognizing that though his timing is not our timing, he works swiftly, and he works in great and extraordinary measure.

And so we should pray along those lines as we gather here today. Let's go to him this moment in prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the great and glorious salvation we have in Jesus Christ. We thank you that he has opened our eyes and our minds and our hearts, he has opened our ears.

God, we thank you that he has raised us up though we were poor and meek. God, we thank you that you intend to do that even for others and not just us, and we call upon this promise.

We recognize the great commission not only as a responsibility and obligation on our part, but something that you have blessed and promised to, promised to bring to fruition as we follow in it.

And Lord, as we seek to reach this area with the gospel, we are counting on you for wonderful victory over sin and death and blindness.