The Strength of the Lord

Please go ahead and turn in your Bible to Isaiah 25. Isaiah 25.

We've been looking at this section that from Isaiah 24 to 27, it summarizes all the oracles that came before.

Last week, we looked at verse number one that talks about God being worthy of praise because he has made plans from of old.

Here we're gonna look at what those plans were. So let's go ahead and start reading in verse 1, but today we'll be preaching from,

I'll be preaching from specifically verses 2 through 4. Isaiah 25.

Please stand when you have that for the reading of God's Word. O Lord, you are my

God. I will exalt you. I will praise your name. For you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.

For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin. The foreigner's palace is a city no more.

It will never be rebuilt. Therefore strong peoples will glorify you. Cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat.

For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall, like heat in a dry place.

You subdue the noise of foreigners as heat by the shade of a cloud. So the song of the ruthless is put down.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, you are great and greatly to be praised.

You have made the city a heap. You have provided salvation to the lowly.

We thank you for everything that you have accomplished in Jesus Christ, and I pray that as we come to this passage, that you would help us to see these truths afresh, that you would help us to see these truths more clearly.

In Jesus' name, Amen. So as mentioned a minute ago, the previous verse, verse 1, talks about how

God is to be praised. He is to be exalted. He is to be praised because he has done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.

And what things has God done? What things does he do so that he may be praised?

He has demonstrated his might. He has demonstrated his strength in the earth.

In particular, he has demonstrated his strength by subduing the strong and defeating the mighty.

He has demonstrated his strength by protecting the weak and helpless. This is one way that we could speak of the ways that God has glorified himself.

He has done so by demonstrating his might in the presence of people's strength, what they think their strength is, in the presence of people's weakness when they come to him, admitting that they have no strength to offer.

So breaking those down just into three groups, he destroys the great, he subdues the strong, and he protects the weak.

Verse two starts with that first one, that he destroys the mighty. He destroys the great.

For you have made the city a heap. Cities, especially during biblical times, are a place of strength.

The reason why people would gather into cities is because they could protect a city more easily than you can protect open country.

You can gather around, you can have a wall around your city, and you can be protected. But these things are nothing to God.

They are absolutely nothing. He has destroyed the city and made it a heap. Cities are also things of structure, things of organization.

A heap refers to chaos. God has taken all that structure, and he can turn it into chaos. The fortified city, a ruin, doesn't matter how strong it is, doesn't matter how fortified it is.

The foreigner's palace is a city no more. Palace speaks of wealth, the things that people may latch on to as being the source of their strength, having much wealth.

And when it speaks of foreigners, in particular, it has in mind all of God's enemies. Those who would come against his people are his enemies.

They would think that, especially at that time where people are trusting in their different gods, to come against another people is to say that our

God is stronger than your God. People who would come and attack God's people would say that their

God is stronger than their God. If God destroys their city, it shows that he is stronger than their God.

The foreigner's palace is a city no more. It will never be rebuilt. These actions are permanent. The Lord destroys in a way where it will not be built up again.

There are several things to take away from this. The first is something that I mentioned last week, that God's destruction, calamities that are in the earth, they are purposeful.

God has a purpose in them. His purpose is to show his glory. Romans 8 28 says,

All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purposes.

Anytime you see destruction in the world, you can be assured 100 percent that God is working something to his glory.

He's working it for the good of those who trust in him. The next thing that you could take away from this is that it doesn't matter how strong one is, how much trust one has in his own self and his own accomplishments.

It will ultimately come to nothing in the end. Now, not only is that obvious in this world where everyone dies, but the

Bible says that on the great day of judgment, Jesus will come and he will destroy all his enemies.

This is a guaranteed truth, that Jesus will come and he will destroy every last of his enemies.

So do not trust in—do not trust in anything other than God. Do not trust in political heroes that you think may protect you.

Do not trust in your relationships that you think will give you true comfort.

They will all fade out in the end. Do not trust in yourself and your own wealth. Moth and rust will eat all these things away.

You know, and if you think about all those things, and maybe you think, well, I don't trust in those, ask yourself how vexed would you be if you were to lose any of those?

If you were to lose any particular relationship you have or any amount of your wealth, how vexed would you be?

If you would lose your peace for losing any of these things, it reveals that your trust is not fully in the

Lord. We must place our trust in the Lord. And as we grow in faith, even if you have put your trust in the

Lord, as we grow in faith, we must recognize that we must grow all the more, trusting in him more, not allowing these other things to distract us, not finding our peace and our comfort and wealth and relationships and any kind of hero.

Not even in our own works. A lot of people think that they will stand on the day of judgment before God because of the greatness of their own works.

You know, they've been good to the needy. They have done what God has required, and they've, you know, obeyed various commandments.

But no one has obeyed God's commandments perfectly. Everyone has sinned in the eyes of God, and everyone will stand before him and not be able to offer him any merit of their own.

But all they will have is their imperfect works to hold before him works worthy of judgment.

Do not trust in yourselves. Now, in addition to destroying the great,

God additionally subdues the strong. And I mean a particular thing by subdue. Let's look at verse 3. Therefore, strong peoples will glorify you.

Cities of ruthless nations will fear you. Now, God does not only destroy the great and strong peoples of the world, but there are many that he subdues and brings into his kingdom.

There are many that he reveals this truth to, and they recognize that though they are the strong peoples of the world, that God is stronger, and they turn to him in faith.

Strong peoples will glorify you. Cities of ruthless nations will fear you. And consider when this was written.

When Isaiah is writing these words, he has prophesied many times of things that refer ultimately to the gospel, but yet those people at that time, they wouldn't have quite understood what it would mean that strong peoples would glorify, that cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

Now, this speaks of individuals being subdued to the Lord, but it also speaks of the gospel going out to the

Gentiles, that this would not be a truth just for the people of Israel, but that as we've heard in the past couple weeks about the mystery of Christ being revealed, this mystery being revealed, that the gospel goes out not just to Jews, but also to Gentiles.

And so, the strong are brought in. They are subdued. Do not— do not resist the

Lord. You should fear the Lord. Think about this in this context. What does it mean to fear the

Lord? A lot of people have asked themselves this question. They come up with words like respect, you know, that well, we should respect the

Lord, and that is part of fearing the Lord, but it's a very, tame way of describing

God and the fear of Him. He is truly strong. He is truly great. We are to fear

Him in all senses. To fear the Lord is simply to recognize

His strength. To recognize His strength is greater than your own. If His strength is greater than your own, you do not want to be

His enemy. You do not want to malign yourself with Him. If His strength is greater than your own, instead you want to cast yourself at Him for His mercy.

You know, if you have someone that you have made yourself an enemy with, and you recognize that they are much stronger than you, and there's no way to run, there's no way to hide, there's no way to fight them, the only thing you can do is plead for mercy.

So you have two options. You can be, like these people of the previous verse, destroyed.

You can be the example, or you can learn from the example.

Now we are all, by nature, ones who trust in ourselves, who see ourselves as sufficient, and don't worry about what is to come.

But there is a great day of judgment coming, and if we are to be prepared for that day, the answer is not to avoid the situation, not think about it.

It is instead to fear the Lord, and to recognize that we have nothing to offer, but must come to Him with empty hands of faith.

And in Galatians 5, 4, it says that you are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by law, you have fallen from grace.

That's basically saying that anyone who considers themselves self -sufficient because they have done enough good, because they are good in the eyes of God, doesn't get it.

And not only that, but if they bring anything to God, thinking that they have some strength to stand before Him to offer, that they are actually severed from Christ, the only way to be acceptable by God is to come to Him with faith.

If you are offering something other than the empty hands of faith to the Lord, you are severing yourself from Christ.

You are severing yourself from Him. It's something to consider, as there are a lot of religions that would claim the name of Christ that believe that works are part of what justifies us before God, part of what makes us right before God.

This is not just incorrect. It is something that severs from Christ, as it says in Galatians 5, 4.

Now, God does not only glorify Himself in His strength by destroying the great and subduing the strong, but also by protecting the poor.

It says in verse 4, Now, before God had destroyed the stronghold,

He destroyed the fortified city. Now He is the stronghold. You see, this is what God is accomplishing, in allowing there to be these strong people that He destroys.

He shows how much stronger than He is than them, and allowing, and there being these weak people and choosing to save them in their weakness,

He shows how strong He is to defend. He destroys fortresses, and He is a fortress.

And He does this particularly for the poor. Now, it's a good thing to stop and ask yourself, who are the poor?

There have been a lot of people in Christian history who have come to passages like these and thought that it was right for Christians to take vows of poverty, to have very little money, and that was a way to secure one's own salvation.

But, you know, if you're coming to the Lord with works, once again, you aren't going to find any safety in that.

The Bible speaks of many people who were saved, though they had great wealth. And if you consider that wealth isn't just a matter of currency, but of general comforts in life, who in this world, even the very poor people, they have much in terms of wealth broadly considered that people in the past did not have.

If the matter were really how much you have, there would be no one today that is safe.

Consider this. Luke 6 says, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.

And later on in the same chapter, it says, woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Now, I think that phrase, you have received your consolation, is real important to clear up what this means by being poor and being rich.

Because like I said, the Bible has talked about many who will be poor and not saved, many who will be rich and will be saved.

So how can these fit together? You have received your consolation wealth in this context.

While there is a certain relationship to having wealth and people's tendency to trust in the money they have, the possessions they have, the primary thing is trusting in what you have, trusting in yourself, thinking that you have something that will last.

Not having that eternal perspective to realize what you have in this life is worth nothing apart from having

Jesus Christ as Savior. So to be poor is to not be comforted by the things you have in this life, is to not be, to not find any rest or trust in these things.

To be rich is to find everything you need in those things, is to not sense your need of God.

To be poor is to sense your need for a Savior, to sense your poverty and your need for Christ.

And Matthew, when Jesus makes the same sermon, he says, blessed are the poor in spirit. It's not particularly about physical wealth, even though that's certainly related, but it is about recognizing that you have nothing to stand before God with.

It says, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat for the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against the wall, like heat in a dry place.

The poor have great needs. Those who recognize that they have nothing to offer

God, they are without God, they are hopeless. They recognize that they are hopeless.

They have nothing to offer. You see these images here of a storm. You know, a storm can tear apart a building.

You think of the hurricanes and those pictures of devastation you see today. This is what can happen to the one who has nothing, who has nothing to protect themself.

And we have a great enemy on the horizon. There is the enemy of death. There is what lies beyond death.

There is Satan, the accuser, who stands ready to accuse and to say, this person has sinned against you.

This other person has sinned against you as well. On the day of judgment, when you stand in that throne room, you don't want the accuser to be able to accuse you of these things.

But God is a fortress. If you have come to him for mercy, he protects you from all such accusations.

So the poor, apart from God, are in great danger. But with God, they have a perfect, certain hope.

It says, you subdue the noise of foreigners as heat by the shade of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is put down.

There are several different ways it talks about the nations using sound. It talks about their breath in verse four, the noise of foreigners, the song of the ruthless.

These pictures are frequent imagery in the Old Testament, speaking of the sound an army would make as it approaches a city.

If you can imagine, you know, the anxiety that you would feel if you're in a city and you hear the enemy nation coming at you, getting closer and closer and louder and louder, and then suddenly it stops.

It stops. Why? Because God has put it down just as simply as a cloud takes away heat.

Ever think about that, how oppressive heat can be? But then just like that, a vapor can just go in front of it, a cloud can just go in front of the sun and take away all that heat, and it feels cool and wonderful.

That is the ease with which God defeats the strong. That is the ease with which he shows how mighty and how strong he is to save.

There's something else that's going on here. I believe when it's repeating three times, talking about the enemy as heat and talking about God as a protective shade, that we're supposed to think of some imagery that we've seen elsewhere in Isaiah.

Back in chapter 4, it said the following, Then the

Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day and a smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night.

For over all the glory there will be a canopy. There will be a booth for shade by day from the heat and for a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain.

Shelter from the storm, canopy from the heat, and all this imagery pointing back to something else.

Cloud by day, smoke and a shining flaming fire by night. If you're familiar with the first five books of the

Bible, you'll know that in the Exodus, as the people were led through the Red Sea and out of the

Red Sea, they were followed around by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire and they were sheltered by these things, this being

God dwelling with them, dwelling with the people, and they were protected. And what you see here in Isaiah 25 is a similar illusion.

It's talking about God's salvation that just as he protected in the Exodus, he will protect the poor again.

And who was it that protected God in the Exodus? Jude 1 5 says it was

Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ protected people in the Exodus. And ultimately, this passage is about the strength and might that are found in Jesus Christ to accomplish all these things and to protect the poor.

Jesus Christ destroys the mighty. This picture of cities being destroyed,

Revelation 19 says that on that day of judgment, Jesus Christ will destroy every last nation. And he has already defeated death and he has already defeated the accuser through the power of the cross.

Because if one trusts in him, those accusations mean nothing since he has already accounted for it in paying that penalty for sin.

Secondly, who is it that subdues the strong? Who is it that draws people into the kingdom that though they have much in this world that they would put their trust in and by a worldly perspective have every reason to have self -confidence?

It's Jesus Christ by his spirit working through his word in their hearts to change them and to transform them and to draw them into his kingdom so that it can be said that a strong people will glorify you.

Cities of ruthless nations will fear you. So many have feared the Lord through Jesus Christ and so many more will.

Do not resist. Do not be one of the ones who are made an example of, rather learn from that example.

And lastly, who is it that protects the poor? Who is it that is a stronghold for the poor?

It is Jesus Christ, our rock, that if we go to him not with not offering anything of ourselves thinking that we have any strength of our own but coming to him in complete weakness recognizing that he is the only source of salvation, that he is the only one who can cleanse us of our guilt and our sin and our shame, he will protect us.

Just like heat in a dry place is taken away by a cloud, just like a storm is powerless against a strong wall,

Jesus saves. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the great salvation we have in Jesus Christ.

We thank you that he destroys strong ones but subdues others and we thank you that he protects the poor.

I pray that you would help us to recognize our poverty, that though we have much in this life, that it would help us to recognize that it is all vanity apart from Christ, and that as we come to him in faith, we would be reassured of all these truths and this certain hope of salvation.