The Record Of Rebellion

The Call to Read Isaiah’s Oracle as a Witness

Please stand when you have Isaiah 30 for the reading of God's Word. I'll read from verses 8 to 17. The preaching this morning will be particularly on verse 8 through 11. Isaiah chapter 30 verse 8. And now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever.

For they are rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord, who say to the seers, do not see, and to the prophets, do not prophesy to us what is right. Speak smooth things, prophesy illusions.

Leave the way, turn aside from the path. Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. Therefore, thus says the Holy One of Israel, because you despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and rely on them.

Therefore, this iniquity shall be to you like a breach in a high wall, bulging out and about to collapse, whose breaking comes suddenly in an instant. And its breaking is like that of a potter's vessel, that is smashed so ruthlessly, that among its fragments not a shard is found, with which to take fire from the hearth, or to dig up water out of the cistern.

For thus says, for thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you were unwilling, and you said, no, we will flee upon horses.

Therefore, you shall flee away, and we will ride upon swift steeds. Therefore, your pursuers shall be swift. A thousand shall flee at the threat of one. At the threat of five, you shall flee, till you are left like a flagship, flagstaff, on the top of a mountain, like a signal on a hill.

These are the words of the Lord. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the correction it provides. We are people in need of your correction. We are children who are in need of your word.

And so today, Lord, I pray that your word would be made clear to us. In Jesus' name, Amen. We live in a world that does not value truth. It values what it finds pleasant. What it finds true is what it finds pleasant.

Those two definitions have been conflated so that what is true is what has utility, what is pleasant to hear. You know, it's no, it's no secret that many different websites, social media, all kinds of tools suppress information, not necessarily because it could be wrong or because it because it could be misinformation, but even information that could be harmful for some definition of harmful.

Because it's a truth that people don't want to hear. It's a truth that people don't want to be known even. But the people of God must be people who value truth because it is true. Whose definition of goodness must accord with God's definition of goodness, so that when we see truth and we don't think of it as good according to our standard of goodness, we recognize it is good because it accords with God's standard of goodness and not our own.

This people in Judah and Isaiah 30, they have seen God's truth as not a good truth, not a pleasant truth. This truth that he will reprimand them for their sin of turning away to Egypt. What they want to hear is that this backup plan that they have of going to Egypt for help is going to succeed, that it's not going to fail them.

They want to hear lies spoken to them rather than truth because they find the lies good and the truth bad. But the truth is always good and lies are always evil. So we must believe the truth not because it is pleasant to our ears, but because it is true.

The Record of Rebellion Is Written for Future Generations

Verse 8 says, And now go write it before them on a tablet and inscribe it in a book that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. So Isaiah is to write something on a tablet. He's to inscribe it in a book.

What in particular is he to inscribe? Now there are various answers to this question. Some say that it's much of the previous chapter, that it's something else entirely. I think it seems very obvious that verses 6 through 7 are an oracle that stand on their own.

The oracle on the beasts of the Negev. And so he is to write this on a tablet and he is to write this in a book. Now it could be that saying to write it in a tablet and to write it in a book is simply a parallelism for emphasis.

It's also the case that these imply different things. That to write it on a tablet is for it to be publicly displayed for now. Just as in Isaiah 8, when Isaiah wrote, for all the people to see as a sign on a tablet.

So he is to write it. And then in addition to that, he is to write it in a book to be archived for future generations. He is to record the people's rebellion. And so it is not just for the people then, but it is for the time to come as a witness forever as it says.

And so this that is written here is a witness forever. It's not just a witness to those people at this time, but this is something that was recorded for us. For us to see and read and for us who have softer hearts than the people of that time did to be changed by it.

And it is the case additionally that our own actions, our own rebellion, are being recorded. You might object and say, I am not a rebellious child. I obey the Lord. Well, maybe you have obeyed him occasionally, but no one has obeyed God perfectly.

And everyone's rebellion is being recorded so that on that great day as we all stand before the Lord, we will be judged on the basis of what we have been done, what we have done in the body, whether good or evil.

We will have to give an account for these things. This is what 2 Corinthians 5 says. The only way to avoid this is through God's forgiveness, through the forgiveness we have in Jesus Christ. There is no other way.

And so these things are recorded. These things are recorded for us, for our benefit, and your actions now are recorded so that one day there will either be a testimony that says, if you stand before the Lord and you are judged wicked, it will be a testimony that that judgment is right.

If you stand before the Lord, having the blood of Jesus Christ, having his forgiveness, it will be a testimony of how great his mercy is toward you. And there is no way around it. So this record, it is right to recognize that our own actions are being recorded, and it is a record of us and for us.

It is of what we have done and it is for our good so we might see God's goodness. Verse 9 continues on. So how has this people of Judah rebelled? They have rebelled against the Lord by going to Egypt, by going against his word, wanting to hear these lies rather than the truth, wanting to hear the lies that that Egypt's horses will succeed, even though they do not think that God will save them.

That God will keep his word. And is this not a description of our own generation as well, that people are rebellious and lying? They do not want to hear the truth. Think about this in all kinds of examples.

The way people think about sexual ethics is just a very obvious one given how far the world has fallen on this matter. And it's not just the world out there. It is even in churches, so-called churches, even true churches where people have been tempted by the world to think worldly thoughts.

Let me tell you a story. When I first started working at Google, I joined a Christian lunch and I met a lady there and later I saw this lady in the cafeteria. And she asked me, she came up to me very bubbly, said, Hi, how are you doing?

Let me ask you, how have you been doing at sharing your faith with your co-workers? And I was very surprised that she just asked this so directly while we were, you know, standing there in the cafe. And I said, you know, I'm convicted by your question because I feel like I've been avoiding it to some degree because I don't want to have a conversation where a touchy subject is going to be broached.

She said, oh, touchy subject, like what? And I said, well, you know, abortion or same-sex marriage. And she, so her bubbly face suddenly dropped and she said, you mean you think the two people who love each other very much shouldn't be able to spend their lives together?

And so this woman that was so excited about evangelism and sharing her faith, even she had been affected by this. And we sat together and we talked about the word of God for about 30 minutes. And I could just see the, the internal contention that was going on in her mind, the cognitive dissonance as she recognized that the Bible says one thing, but she just can't believe that's true given that that doesn't seem good or pleasant to her.

This is the way people think about these matters. And now maybe that one seems, well, I'm not like that. I don't, I am more directed by the Bible. Maybe this one hits closer to home. How often is it that when we see someone who is trying their hardest to follow the law of God, that we accuse them of legalism because they're following a rule or a law that seems just a little too burdensome for what we would want to follow.

Not necessarily that we understand God's law to say something different, but it just seems too burdensome for us. And so it's very easy to label this legalism. Once again, that is desiring to hear lies.

That's unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord labeling the good law of God as legalism. Now, certainly there are instances of legalism where people have invented out of their own traditions all kinds of rules to obey.

However, it is still easy for people to even call good laws legalism. It says here that these are children, children unwilling to hear. Now, that's an interesting word, children. On one hand, it evokes this imagery of the children who reject their father's instruction of the nature of childhood.

However, what it also suggests, not only that disposition of generally being rebellious, but also the idea that these are children or children of some variety. Now, these children will be either found out to be false children or they will be found out to be true children.

This is the way Hebrews 12 describes it. It says that the true children of God are corrected, but those who are not corrected by God, who are not disciplined by Him, are false children. You can tell the true children of God from the false children by whether or not they are willing to hear the instruction of the Lord, by whether or not He corrects them.

And so today, if you have rejected the word of the Lord because it is not pleasant, be corrected by Him. Turn in repentance toward Him. There is forgiveness in Jesus Christ. It continues on in verse 10.

Smooth Things, Illusions, and Itching Ears

Who say to the seers, do not see, and to the prophets, do not prophesy to us what is right. Speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions. Smooth things. There are things that are easy to hear, things that sound good to us.

Proverbs 5 .3 speaks of the forbidden woman, speaks of her speech as being smoother than to oil. It may not necessarily be true, but boy, does it sound good to hear. And this is how people frequently think about the preaching of the word of God, about their interactions with Christians as they talk about truth in the word.

There are a few verses I'd like to share with you. In Micah 2 .11, Micah says of the people, If a man should go about in utter wind and lies saying, I will preach to you of wine and strong drink, he would be the preacher for this people.

You know, if someone goes around and saying the thing that people want to hear, they love that. They eat it up. If you think about the preachers who are very popular, who are the most popular, what are they saying?

They're talking to people about the things people want to hear. Maybe they're even true things, the love of God, but to the exclusion of what is what is true in context of that. Right? The fact that God's love is found in Jesus Christ and that apart from turning in repentance, there is no hope of salvation.

These truths, these truths are important, and when you cut that away and take only the truths that people like or you change those truths to be something else, you have something smooth, something that people want to hear, but it's not true.

And of course, this continues on. This isn't just in Micah's time or in Isaiah's time, but also 2 Timothy 4, 3 says, For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Wander off into myths. This is how people think about what they hear. They want to hear what they want to hear. They want to have their ears tickled. They want to hear smooth things, but we should not have that mindset.

Now, there are a number of examples that I can think of where this comes up. And one of them, you heard earlier, Pastor Brian talked about Asbury, the revival at Asbury. One thing that I've seen a lot of people get, I guess, castigated for, is for suggesting that this is not a real revival.

It's not a real revival. I can tell you from what I have seen, there is nothing there that marks it as a real revival. The word that was preached that started this thing off was a very, very bland message that didn't call people to serious repentance.

In addition, all that has been going on is lots and lots of singing punctuated only by the smallest bit of preaching, often by women, which scripture forbids women to preach in that way, and people neglecting their vocations, skipping classes.

This is not revival. What revival is, and that's not a biblical term, by the way, but what people have spoken of with revival is mass conversions, people turning to Christ, and that has not happened here at all.

I've not heard any reports of conversions at Asbury. So, yeah, this is just a very good example of something where people say that and they get castigated because they've spoken against what people want to hear.

What do people want to hear? That this is real revival, that God is doing something wonderful. They want to hear peace, peace, when there is no peace. People desire to hear those good reports, and for someone to cut that out so that there's no hope of such a good report or there's a or the likelihood of that being a good report is cut down.

People get very disturbed by this, and so Isaiah has been told repeatedly by these people that they don't want to hear the word of the Lord. This comes up later in Jeremiah. He is told the same thing.

People do not want to hear what is right. They want to hear what they want to hear, and a lot of times the way this comes out is not stop preaching to me the truth. Now, Isaiah is speaking here in a very direct way, in a very, not hyperbolic, but he is saying the logical consequence of what these people are telling him.

He is characterizing the people as telling him that do not prophesy to us what is right. Now, what person is really going to say do not prophesy to us what is right? Often this comes out in much more diminished ways, right?

People say that we should take a more winsome approach when they don't hear what they want to hear, where winsome is a code word for soft-pedaling the truth, or they say that that should be saved for a different audience, or that someone should focus on a different topic.

This happens all the time. You know, I once listened to a man present on his doctoral dissertation after he had studied theology, and before he began his presentation, he said this isn't what he originally wanted to study.

Originally, he wanted to study infant salvation and the the age of accountability, and talk about how the age of accountability was not a biblical doctrine, and he got advice from several of his mentors that he didn't want to be the guy to write this.

He didn't want this on his record, and so he chose an entirely different topic instead, one that he wasn't as interested in. So he decided to preach what people wanted to hear rather than preaching what he knew the people needed to hear.

So this is how this happens. Why don't you pick a different topic? Why don't you focus on a different truth? Why don't you pick a different audience rather than this audience that doesn't want to hear this thing right now?

Why don't you speak more winsomely? This is often how that attitude manifests itself. So when you hear the truth, don't evaluate it by your standard of goodness, because your standard of goodness must accord with God's standard of goodness.

Know that if it is true, it is good because it is God's truth. You know, another good example of this would be universalism, right? If we were to judge truth based on whether or not we find it pleasant, many people would agree with the notion of universalism, that everyone is going to heaven, that everyone is all right in God's eyes, that there are no children of wrath, as the Bible says.

But we can't judge things by what we find pleasant. Universalism is a lie from the pit of hell. We must be ready to understand the truth based on what is actually true, not based on what we find pleasant.

We must be willing to accept that even in our own lives. When we hear criticism from others about ourselves, we must be ready to hear it and to take it if it is true and not judge it based on whether or not it is pleasant.

Criticism is never pleasant. You know, some people just cannot handle criticism because they have this mindset. They only want to hear what is pleasant to them. In verse 11 it says, leave the way, turn aside from the path.

Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. You know, this reminds me of Psalm 14 1. It says, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. You know, he says, get him away from me. I don't want to even think about whether or not, you know, God is watching.

I'm just going to say that there is no God that is, that is watching me. Leave the way, turn aside from the path. Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. And so, just like children that think they can't be seen when they're covering their eyes or hiding under the covers, they go and they hide away from God.

They don't want to hear the truth. We should be people who are eager to hear the truth, who are eager to step into the light, knowing that the light is good, even if it is painful for us, even if it exposes our sin and our faults, the truth sets free.

We should be able to come to God and confess to him openly, not hiding any of our sin, because he already knows all of our sin. He is truth itself. So you see, there is a great day coming. There's a great day coming where all of our rejection of God's truth will be held out and made public.

And we will have to give an account for this, for everything that we have done in the body, whether good or evil. And we want to be able to say that we have followed in God's truth and not that we have rejected it.

But given that we have all rejected God's truth at one time or another, the only hope for us is to find forgiveness in Jesus Christ. See, Jesus Christ, he was perfectly truthful. He embraced God's truth all the time, even when it was not pleasant.

However, those people who opposed Jesus, why did they not like him? They didn't like him because they found his words unpleasant. It wasn't necessarily that they thought that they were untrue. They just didn't like what they heard.

They didn't think it had the right utility. They didn't think it was for the good of the people. They decided that what Jesus was saying should be rejected because it was going to split the people apart.

Either it was going to incur the wrath of the Romans or it was just going to break the people up within itself. Or they didn't like it because it was taking away their own prominence and the ear they had with the people.

People rejected Christ's truth because they found it unpleasant. But his words were always true. And moreover, he always believed what is true. In fact, he is, as I have said, truth itself. John 14 6 says Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

He is truth. Now that is not just an interesting way of describing him. That is an ontological fact that truth itself, God is truth itself. Right? Something is true. Something is—a propositional statement is true based on whether or not it records with reality.

All reality is God's reality because he is the only one that existed prior to creation and then he created all things. All things come from him. He is truth itself. Anything that exists exists because he ordained it to be that way.

And so if truth itself is calling us to him and if he is offering forgiveness through his death on the cross, substituting for our sin of having rejected the truth, is this not a perfect sacrifice? Is this not a perfect sacrifice that accounts for all of our sins so that on that day of judgment, as we see all the times that we have rejected God's truth because we found it unpleasant, that that will be enough for us?

This is what Christ offers to us. He offers a perfect forgiveness. He offers his own life and any who come to him in faith find that perfect life in him. And more than that, having described these people as a rebellious children, as a rebellious set of children, we look to Jesus Christ who is not only truth itself, but he is the son of God.

He has status as this perfect, without sin, son of God. And those of us who are to be sons of God, where can we find that sonship unless it is in him? As rebellious children, we have no standing in God's kingdom unless we are found in the one who is the unrebellious son of God, Jesus Christ.

This is our only hope. There is no hope in rejecting truth. There is no hope in telling ourselves lies. There is only hope in truth itself, Jesus Christ, who has offered himself that we might have forgiveness despite our sin.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you for sending him to reveal yourself to us. And Lord, as we are a people who have uh who've believed lies, who've rejected truth, we ask that you would bring us into the light, that we would know the truth more fully, and that that truth would set us free.

And God, I pray that we would find perfect forgiveness for our sin in Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.