The Destruction of Ariel

Amen. Please go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 29, continuing on in Isaiah 29, in this section here that began in the previous chapter, talking about the folly of trusting in the nations.

And here we see something particularly about Israel's folly and trusting even itself in its own worship, and how that is a folly as well.

Please stand when you have that for the reading of God's Word. Looking at Isaiah 29, beginning in verse 1.

Ah, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David encamped, add year to year.

Let the feasts run their round, yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be moaning and lamentation, and she shall be to me like an

Ariel. And I will encamp against you all around, and I will besiege you with towers, and I will raise siege works against you.

And you will be brought low, from the earth you shall speak, and from the dust your speech will be bowed down.

Your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost, and from the dust your speech shall whisper.

These are the words of the Lord. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you would bless us through your

Word today, that it would speak to us, not just to our minds but to our hearts, that we might fully understand your

Word, that it might fully dwell with us and rest with us, that we would become transformed by it, being made more into the image of your

Son. And God, I pray that today you would find our worship acceptable before you and the mediator that we have,

Jesus Christ. Amen. So that's the question

I have for you today, is what makes your worship acceptable to God? You come here week after week, you worship the

Lord, how do you know that your worship is accomplishing anything? Maybe I should start by just asking, what is the point of worship?

You know, there are all kinds of religions that worship their gods, and the point is to have some experience of the favor of their

God, to have some sort of experience of the favor of their God, to know that favor. And it is the same for us.

We come to worship to have the favor of the Lord. We know that we don't earn that favor, however, the means that God has given us to experience his favor is through worship.

Now, how do you know that your worship has effect? How do you know that you are actually receiving grace of God through worship?

How do you know? How do you know it has any effect? Well, this is the question that's posed here. As the people have trusted in their cultic worship, cultic not meaning the way we use the word cult to mean something negative, but meaning ritualistic, right?

Cultic just means, in the technical sense, it means, you know, having some sort of ritual. You know, we have cultic worship here in this church, even though it's not cultic in the sense that someone might derogatively use the word cultic.

So it's the question asked here, what do these people have that makes them trust in their worship?

How can they trust in their worship when their hearts are so far from God? Indeed, it's the same with us. Our worship, our imperfect worship before God will not save us.

In fact, just the opposite. It will condemn us. Our imperfect worship will condemn us. Yet, imperfect worship, if it's accepted, that is accepted by God, happens through a mediator.

Imperfect worship that is given through a perfect mediator is acceptable to God, and we have a perfect mediator in Jesus Christ.

Let's go ahead and begin looking at this. He says, Ah, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David encamped.

Add year to year, let the feast run their round. What is

Ariel? A lot, not a lot of people are familiar with that name, other than that has been incorporated into our culture as an occasional name for some, and most popularly

The Little Mermaid. However, the origin of that name is right here in the

Bible. It is a word that some have interpreted to mean lion. They imagine that because the temple was smaller in the back than it was in the front, it sort of resembled the shape of a lion.

And there's some ways that you could read that into here, that the city is being called

Ariel because it has wrongly consumed its own sacrifices. However, the more common interpretation of this, and I think the more right interpretation, is it's referring to an altar.

It's using a word that means altar. This is, in fact, the same word that's used in Ezekiel to refer to the altar, except for one letter is placed elsewhere.

However, it is the same sounding word. So, I believe this is just the same word that's being used in Ezekiel to speak of the altar.

So God speaks of his own altar. He speaks of Jerusalem in this way because it is his own altar.

It is the place where his worship happens. It is where the feasts and the sacrifice happen year after year.

He calls it the city where David encamped. So if you needed any proof that this is talking about Jerusalem, it's very clearly talking about the city of David, the place where David encamped.

He took the city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites, he encamped there, he took it over, and he made it his city.

He made it the capital of all of Judea. Now why does it, why does Isaiah speak of the city of David?

What is he trying to evoke here? Well, not only is David this great mighty ruler, but in addition to that, there is a covenant made with David that he would have a son who would reign forever, and that this son would establish the favor of God there forever and ever.

And so as he speaks of it being the city of David, there's this recollection of covenant promises made, an expectation that the city will continue forever with the favor of God, and yet all that seems threatened as forces of Assyria come against the land of Jerusalem, as the people see that perhaps they do not have the favor of God.

It says, add year to year. Let the feasts run their round. Add year to year.

Let the feasts run their round. The feasts meaning the cultic feasts, meaning the the feasts of religious worship.

These are feasts that were instituted by God. There was nothing wrong with these feasts in and of themselves. In fact, they were what

God had commanded. And yet, as the people, year after year, brought their sacrifices to the

Lord, year after year, they're going through the the festival full of booths, year after year, they're going through the day of atonement, and they're doing all these things, and it is not, it is not bringing them the favor of the

Lord, because their hearts are not right before God. And this is something that is not just now appearing in Isaiah.

This has been a theme from the beginning of Isaiah. In fact, if we go back all the way to chapter 1 in verse 13, it said, bring no more vain offerings.

Instance is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations.

I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates.

They've become a burden to me. I am weary of burying them. The Lord despises the rituals of Jerusalem, even though they are the rituals of worship that he has instituted.

He despises them because they are brought with a wrong heart. They may come year after year.

The feasts can run their round, but they will not accomplish anything. They will not bring the favor of God.

Now, consider that, how important sincerity is in worship. You know, every time we pray to God and our heart's not really in it, every time we sing to God, our heart's not really in it, when we're hearing the preaching, the word, and our heart's not really in it, we are not sincerely worshiping the

Lord. And more specifically, I would say that this is a violation of the third commandment, that we are not to take the

Lord's name in vain, but when we sing to him without meaning it, when we pray to him without meaning it, when we engage in the worship of God without really meaning it, we are violating the third commandment.

We're taking the Lord's name in vain. Now, you might think, well, I never, I never say the Lord's name in vain.

But when you come to worship him without a whole heart, you are taking the

Lord's name in vain. How is that worship that he can accept, given that he's a perfect and holy

God? This is a, this is a serious problem in the world. This is a serious problem, especially in the United States, especially where I'm from, the east coast and the south, the

Bible Belt. You know, you have a lot of people who believe that they're a Christian because they're engaged in this worship of God, and that that's what makes them right with the

Lord, is the fact that they've gone through the motions, they said the prayer, they showed up at church, and maybe they only show up at church twice a year, but they think that that, that ritual, that is going to save them, that is going to give them a favor with God.

And when you're engaged in evangelism in a place like that, it's interesting. The first step is not to tell them the gospel.

It's not even to tell them the the bad news, that they need the gospel. It's rather to explain to them that they aren't really

Christian. That is, that is the first step in trying to make someone a Christian, trying to convert them.

Oftentimes it's explained to them that they aren't, because they think they are. And even though that's more of a problem in the

Bible Belt, it's a problem here too. There are many people in the Bay Area who think they are in Jesus Christ because of their involvement in worship, and it is simply not the case, because they do not have right hearts before the

Lord, they remain unconverted. And so this worship, it will not save us.

And it doesn't matter how much it seems that God is not judging us, the same is true.

If you remember the the previous passage, you know there are no chapter divisions originally in the Bible, these are things that we added later.

What he was speaking of just before, when he talks about in verse 24, does he who plows for sowing plow continually?

Does he continually open and harrow the ground? You know, the farmer is

God in this metaphor, and the farmer is going about doing the thing that he is doing, plowing, but he will not plow forever.

Eventually he will reap. And so the fact that there does not seem to be any judgment or condemnation on those who go about insincerely in the worship of God week after week, year after year, does not mean that God is not going to do something.

In fact, he will. God, who is above all things, he will surely reap one day.

And we see this in the next verse. It says, Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be moaning and lamentation, and she shall be to me like an

Ariel. I will distress Ariel, specifically distressed by the coming assault of Assyria.

Assyria is marching on Jerusalem. They will construct siege warfare, implements of siege warfare, where they stand around the city and starve them out.

This is often how warfare was done back then. You didn't necessarily actually have to do a lot of direct violence.

You stand outside, you make it clear that no one can come outside or else they'll get killed, and then you starve to death inside.

So he's going to distress Ariel. And why? Why will there be moaning and lamentation? Particularly because of the people's worship.

Because of the people's worship. This includes both false worship that is done truly with a sincere heart.

You know, a lot of people have a falsely worshiped God, and they do it with a sincere heart, or they're worshiping a false

God, and they have to have a sincere heart. There's no provision made for that. There are people who worship

God truly. They worship people who have true worship, but do it falsely, right?

They've introduced elements to worship that shouldn't be there. They're worshiping God their own way. They're worshiping

Him insincerely. And these things are regarded as something worthy of God's judgment, something worthy of Him distressing, of moaning and lamentation.

Now, as I was contemplating this passage, I was thinking about how this means that they are wicked people. They are wicked people.

And yet, the way we use the word wicked is often just not so, we're not so at ease to use the word wicked to describe someone who, you know, is going about something without malintent, without some kind of nefarious purposes, right?

These are people who more or less are like the people that we live around, right?

They are like the people who are our friends, our relatives, who often either don't know the true God or know the true

God and worship Him falsely. Maybe even people you know who are very close to you, very dear to you, that you think of as very kind, because usually we use the word wicked only for those who are very evil in their intent, very, very harmful in their intent.

But yet, the Bible pictures even those who come to God insincerely as being wicked.

You know, I think we should use that word more frequently, that we should be willing to speak of things as wicked if they deserve the judgment of God, and if the

Bible everywhere speaks of wickedness in this way, that even things that are insincere are wicked, then we should be willing to speak so clearly with our words as well, and not soft -pedal it.

There'll be moaning and lamentation. Moaning and lamentation. You know, this is a great distress that's being described, moaning and a lamentation.

So much sincere intent that people have. You know, I'm using the word sincere differently here.

A lot of people are very misguided, and so they think that they're, they're very sincere in their approach to worship that is insincere, right?

They are sincerely, they sincerely think that nothing is wrong with their insincerity.

Yet, that road to hell, as the saying goes, is paved with good intentions, right?

There's all kinds of people who mean very well, who don't realize that there are odds with God, but indeed, they are.

She shall be to me like an Ariel, like an Ariel. What this literally just says is like, they shall be to me an

Ariel, excuse me, and she shall be to me as Ariel.

Something, something along those lines. If you look at older translations, it says as Ariel, not an Ariel. The idea being that he's saying this identity that I have spoken of for Jerusalem and being an altar, she will truly be an altar.

Now, what does that, what does that mean, she will be an altar? Basically, that God will indeed conduct a sacrifice there.

This place that is designated for his sacrifice will be a place of sacrifice as the people themselves are burned up on the altar of sacrifice.

As Jerusalem experiences warfare, it will indeed become an altar. God takes this identity of this as being a place of true worship, where his, his demands are satisfied, and he changes it to being a place where his demands are satisfied, not in this, not in this holy worship, but rather in the destruction of his people.

Now, that's a very wild thing to imagine, because what he's talking about here is some kind of human sacrifice, that the people itself will be burned up on this altar, that they will be the ones who are destroyed and satisfy the

Lord's wrath. Now, why is it that human sacrifice is so displeasing to God? Well, there's several reasons.

One is that it's usually involuntary. Two is that it's always blemished, right?

God only accepts perfect sacrifices, and yet when someone sacrifices another human, that human not being perfect, this is an unacceptable sacrifice to the

Lord. It will not cover anything. Yet here, when speaking of this, the sacrifice of the people, because they are the ones paying for their own sins, it is necessary.

God is imagining this human sacrifice to satisfy his wrath, to satisfy his justice.

Yet there is, there is a sacrifice that is perfect. There is a sacrifice that does perfectly atone for sins, and that is, of course, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

You know, one day, about 700 plus years later from Isaiah, Jesus Christ comes and he dies in Jerusalem, lays himself down on that altar, and he pays for the sins of his people by that perfect sacrifice.

However, as the city is ultimately destroyed, it is not through worship, it is not through the external actions that we receive the benefits of that sacrifice.

Rather, it is only through faith, it is only to coming to God sincerely, repenting of our sin, turning to him, and having trust in Jesus Christ that we receive those benefits.

Otherwise, who belongs on the altar? It is either Jesus in substitute for us, or it is us, like Jerusalem here, that belongs on the altar to burn as an imperfect sacrifice to make up for our own sins.

These are the only two options. You have a perfect sacrifice to account for you, or you yourself become the imperfect sacrifice.

And this passage is echoed later. Well, first, I'd like to point out that the, um, it's very surprising in Isaiah.

Often, Isaiah is the one speaking, but occasionally, Isaiah speaks with God's speech itself.

So who is the one speaking here? Yet I will distress Ariel. This is the Lord speaking.

And then Jesus Christ, who is himself God, who is the messenger of the

Lord, he speaks with this same language later. I'd like you to go ahead and turn to Matthew 23.

We can see how Jesus alluded to this passage in the

Gospel of Matthew. Matthew 23, verse 37. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.

So do you see the, do you see the connection? O Ariel, Ariel, the city of David, the city where David encamped.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets. Now, Jesus is using a similar pattern of speech, speaking of Jerusalem twice over, saying,

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, and then talking of the city's privileged position. You know, speaking of Ariel, the city where David encamped, it talks about this, this privileged position that the city had, being the city of David, the city that you know what true worship is.

David was a king zealous for true worship. He would not offer something that did not have cost, and he is the one who said, in Psalm 46,

Psalm 40, verse 6, in sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an ear.

Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. David understood that it was not sacrifice that God required, but sincere heart.

It was not sacrifice, but obedience. David understood what a true heart of worship looks like.

And here, and so that's, that's how Isaiah speaking of it, here Jesus says something similar, but then speaks of a different privileged capacity.

It's the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. It's a city that's been subject to the

Word of God, who's received the Word of God. You know, very few people throughout human history have had the privilege of hearing the

Word of God, and yet this is a city that repeatedly had the Word of God given to it by prophets. And what did they do to those who came?

They stoned them. So they should know, being the city of David, what right worship is, and yet they've, they've rejected right worship and gone with bare and sincere ritual.

The city that's supposed to know what the Word of God is, and they've rejected the Word of God.

And he continues, and he says, how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.

See, your house is left to you desolate, for I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. So what is Jesus talking about? Why is he, why is he alluding to this passage in Isaiah?

Well, what is this passage in Isaiah saying will happen? It's saying that Assyria will come, and it will assault the people.

It will, it will turn the city into an altar where Jerusalem is destroyed.

And ultimately, God ends up saving the people. It undergoes great destruction, but it, he ends up saving it.

Now, Jesus takes the same phrasing and brings it up right before he prophesies the destruction of Jerusalem.

But this time over, the temple is completely destroyed to never be rebuilt again.

If you know the gospels well, then you may know that Matthew 24 comes, and it talks about the destruction of the temple.

So just after Jesus evokes these words of Isaiah that are prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem, he then goes and speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple.

And what's so significant about the temple being destroyed? If the temple is destroyed, you can't have worship.

There's no place to worship God. If God's not dwelling with the people, how do you come to him and worship? And he says, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. Now, maybe you're wracking your mind a bit and you're thinking, oh, I know that's, I know that's somewhere else in the gospels, that people, people do say that, right?

They say that in a couple of chapters. It was a couple of chapters before. It's a couple of chapters before in Matthew 28 that was the triumphal entry where the people said, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord, but yet many have rejected him. And those many who have rejected him, they will not see him again until they say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. You see, if you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, if this is the response you have to Jesus Christ, then it does not matter if that temple has been destroyed because he is the true temple.

He explains in John 2 that he is the true temple, explains elsewhere in the New Testament that those who believe, who have the

Holy Spirit, Christ dwells in them so that they become temples themselves, they become houses of God.

And what was the passage we heard this morning, John 4, that talks about true worship being in spirit and truth so that you don't need this mountain, you don't need that mountain in order to worship

God where a temple is dwelling, but rather those who worship him, worship him in spirit and truth because Christ dwells within them.

How is it that our worship can be acceptable to God if it is imperfect, if it is insincere?

You know, think back to the singing today, you know, for how many of the songs, for what percentage of the songs were you not just going through the motions, saying the words, doing the tune, you know, how much was your heart in that?

Now think about that. What makes that singing acceptable given that so rarely are we entirely, our hearts truly lifted up to heaven completely sincerely?

What makes that worship acceptable? The answer is if we have said blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord, then we are that temple where God dwells and our worship is acceptable because it is mediated by a perfect mediator.

It is not, it is not the goodness of our worship that's acceptable to God.

He doesn't need anything. Rather, it is in Jesus Christ, the one who is all things, the one who has all things, the one who who is over all things, he is the one who makes our worship acceptable to him.

This is how you can know that your worship is acceptable. This is how you can know that it's not just a waste of time to come here and that you aren't actually building up judgment against yourself, is if you have

Jesus Christ, then your worship is acceptable, even when it is imperfect, because it is perfectly mediated by him.

And this is his heart. It says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings?

You know, it's only occasionally in scripture that God uses feminine analogies to describe him and describe his heart, but you have one here, that he earnestly cares for these children of Jerusalem, and he desires to gather them under his wing and to give them, to give them true worship, that they might have this, so that they might have his favor.

And all those who come to Jesus Christ have that. And this is how we should be approaching the nations, this is how we should be approaching the lost, these people who are not able to approach

God, is to have that heart of Christ, that heart of Christ that desires to gather them under his wings, so that they may worship

God truly. This is the, this is the great promise of this passage.

Now, this passage itself only speaks of judgment, but the implications are there, that if there is judgment, there is a salvation from that judgment, and that salvation is spoken of by Jesus Christ there in Matthew 23.

But we continue here in this passage in Isaiah 29. He says, and I will encamp against you all around, and I will besiege you with towers, and I will raise siege works against you.

You know, I spoke momentarily ago what siege works is, how warfare used to work in that time.

A lot of times this was the strategy, it was just to starve people out, it wasn't actually to go in, to break into the city and kill them with swords, rather you just starve them out until they're too weak to fight.

But who is this encamping around them? You expect him to say, the Assyrians will encamp around you, yet rather he says,

I will encamp around you. You know, there's this human perspective, where you see these human enemies, and there's this divine perspective where you realize

God is actually the one enacting this judgment. You know, you could imagine that you can escape some sort of natural thing that has natural weaknesses, but if it has a divine empowerment behind it, there's no escaping.

You know, there was this earthquake this past week, I didn't end up feeling it, some of you all did, but you know, if you imagine, you can imagine a lot of natural things you could escape, but imagine if the earth just opened up beneath you.

What do you, what do you grab onto? What do you grab onto? The Lord. He's, He's high,

He's exalted, and He is the one behind every power of judgment. So even if you imagine that you can escape because things seem weak, because the

Assyrian forces seem like they might be conquerable, the Lord is behind, the

Lord is behind all judgment. He cannot be escaped. Verse 4 says, and you will be brought low from the earth you shall speak, and from the dust your speech will be bowed down.

Your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost, and from the dust your speech shall whisper. You know, four times over speaking of speech being in the dust, like someone who's been buried alive, like a ghost.

In fact, the word here for ghost is not just ghost, it's the word for medium. Some, some translations say like one who has a familiar spirit.

Now, the idea is that the medium is speaking on behalf of the dead person, so they're muttering, and this comes up earlier in Isaiah.

In Isaiah 8, I believe it's 819, it talks about how the necromancers murmur and mutter and, and speak soft words.

It's talking about the voice of a ghost, the voice of a dead person speaking through a living person.

And this is what, this is what they are brought down to, brought down to the dust.

But God has given a great hope. He's given a great hope in Jesus Christ, and He's given a great hope even in this, uh, even in this book of Isaiah.

He had said in Isaiah 26, 19, your dead shall live, live, excuse me, your dead shall live, their body shall rise.

You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy, for your due is a due of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.

You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy, and the earth will give birth to the dead.

You know, there is a hope even for the one who is feeling the affliction of God, even for that one who is feeling the, the sting of God's judgment.

You can turn to the Lord in repentance, and there is a great hope that you will be risen from the grave. You'll be given new life in your heart today, but then on top of that, on the last day, you'll be risen from the literal earth.

From the dust, your speech shall whisper. You know, it's interesting to think about this people's voice being brought to a whisper, because just in the previous passage,

Isaiah was telling the people to cease their speech. You know, all the prophets, all the priests, they were speaking things they shouldn't be speaking, and he says in verse 23, give ear and hear my voice, give attention, hear my speech.

People need to cease with their speaking and rather hear the Lord, hear the

Lord speaking. Yet this is a senseless people, and it is something that's been a major theme in Isaiah, right?

In Isaiah 6, where they receive the commission, where Isaiah receives his commission to go and speak to the people, is to speak to the people even though they are deaf, even though they are blind, even though they are unsensible to the things that God says.

And Luke 19 .44 says that the reason that Jerusalem will be judged, the reason that the temple will be destroyed, because the people did not know the day of their visitation, they are not sensible to the day of their visitation.

You see, this is what we need. We need, God uses discipline, he uses means, he uses these tastes of judgment so that we might realize our need for him, so that we might become sensible to this truth.

However, apart from Jesus Christ, there is no sensibility. Apart from him, rather, we experience that destruction in the full, and we are on that altar burning.

Yet, if we look to him, and we have him on the altar, on that aerial for us, then he makes us sensible.

He opens our eyes as he opened the eyes of the blind. He opens our ears as he opened the ears of those who could not hear in his time.

And we who dwell in this continued city of David, this Zion, as the

Bible calls the church, we have a greater king, we have a greater son of David, we have a sensible life, being aware of the realities that are around us, being aware of what is true, we have this great hope that we'll be raised from the dust, and we can know that our worship is acceptable for God, and that we have his favor, not because we are perfect, but rather because Jesus Christ is perfect, and he is a perfect mediator, accepting our praises, accepting our hearing of the word, accepting all of our worship, including these prayers that we will be giving to him this afternoon.

They are not acceptable because they are perfect, but they are acceptable if we have said, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord, then we have that temple within us that we might worship him truly.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this great promise.

We thank you for this mediator, Jesus Christ, so that in him we can offer a true worship that is acceptable to you, so that those feasts, as they come year by year, as we worship you week after week, that we can know that our worship is acceptable before you, and it is not building up judgment, but it is rather a way that we can experience your goodness and kindness towards us.