Special Grace

Common Grace and Special Grace in Isaiah 30

Amen. Well, please, please turn in your Bible to Isaiah 30. We'll continue there in Isaiah 30. Just as a reminder, the section we're in in Isaiah from 25 all the way to 35, talking about the folly of trusting in the nations, folly of trusting in nations, that people have trusted in Egypt rather than in the Lord.

When this passage we'll look at, the Lord is talking about His promise to the people that despite their sin, He will somehow restore them. Of course, we know how that takes place, it takes place in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Please stand for the reading of God's word. Isaiah 30, beginning with verse 23. And he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground and bread, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous.

And that day your livestock will graze in large pastures, and the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground will eat seasoned fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. And on every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water, and the day of the great slaughter when the towers fall.

Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold as the light of seven days, and the day when the Lord binds up the brokenness of His people and heals the wounds inflicted by His blow.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, we thank you for the wonderful promises that it gives, we thank you for this passage in particular, and we ask that you would help us to see and understand the great hope that you have for us and the great reality you have for us even in this life of a special grace through Jesus Christ.

In His name we pray, amen. Well, the great task before humans is to know themself and to know God. There's no way to know yourself without knowing the One who has created you. And along with that, you want to know what your relationship is with Him, whether or not you are in His good graces, whether or not you have favor with Him.

And so, as mankind considers this, must also consider the fact that even, not just good men, but even evil men have good things they receive from God. God is good and kind to many people. He is good and kind to all, in fact.

And so, it is not His goodness and kindness that demonstrates whether or not we are His friends or whether or not we are His enemies, not in the broadest sense. However, there is a way of understanding His goodness and kindness that can tell us whether or not we are His friend or we are His enemy.

It is not sufficient to have what is known as His common grace, we must have His special grace. As we look in this passage, it speaks of water and it speaks of light. These are two things which represent God's favor upon man.

Repeatedly throughout Scripture, water and light are brought back as two themes showing God's favor upon man. You see, when the whole world was created and God created everything out of nothing, the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and then God said, let there be light.

From the very beginning, there was water and there was light. This is God's goodness in creating the world and we see it repeated as a motif demonstrating God's kindness to humanity. This passage speaks of that kindness, it speaks of water and light, and it speaks of it particularly of His people upon whom He has a special favor.

So it's not talking about that favor that is common to all man, it is talking about a special favor, a special grace. Now before we look at that in particular, I'd like to consider God's common grace with you.

Common grace. A lot of people misunderstand what common means there. Common means that it is common to all, it is something that everyone receives, as opposed to something that is special, right? Common does not mean of low value, it means something that is shared by all.

Please turn, if you will, to Matthew chapter 5 all the way at the end of the chapter. In Matthew chapter 5, this is the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks to His disciples about how they should behave in the world and He says some pretty difficult things.

People think that they follow the law just by doing bare, outward things that it commands, but He calls them to something much higher. He calls them to perfection because if you are a son of the Father and He is perfect, you must therefore be perfect.

So you see here in Matthew 5, verse 43, it says, You have heard that it was said, you should love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.

For He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. God is kind to all. He sends His rain on the just and the unjust. He sends His sun on the good and on the evil.

And what Jesus is illustrating from this is the fact that we should likewise love our enemies, that we should engage in kindness with our enemies because if we are to be like our Father in heaven, then we too should be kind to them.

We should be kind. Now it is very difficult to be kind to your enemies. It's difficult to love your enemies. They're incredibly difficult to love. But God loved us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

This is a great love that He has given us. And if we are to follow in His footsteps, we must love others as well. Consider this as you interact with your enemies, as you interact with your enemies and want to lash out at them, seek justice, seek retribution, seek vengeance.

God has called us to love our enemies. Now this, speaking of His, God's kindness to His enemies, this is speaking of what is known, once again, as common grace, that God is gracious. See, He sends His rain and He sends His sun.

You have those themes, that water and that light. He sends His rain and He sends His sun, sun, S-U-N, sun. Now, there are many objections to, to common grace, many objections to common grace, right?

One is that people say, well, how can this be good intention? Sure, God is kind to people and that they receive certain blessings, but how can that be with good intention? Well, it says right here that it is with good intentions.

It says that we are supposed to love our enemies because God has, is kind to His neighbor. Should we love our enemy with, with hidden intentions? No, we are to love them with a true kindness. And if this is the case, then God loves His enemies with a true kindness.

Another thing that people say, well, this only builds wrath up against them. It builds wrath up against His enemies if He gives them good things and they continually, continually take those and do not appreciate them as they ought.

Well, you see, there's two aspects to God's common grace. One is a positive one, where He gives them good things, part of this creation. There's another, there's a negative one in that He restrains their evil.

Now, these are both aspects of common grace. Now how does restraining evil build up wrath against them? I think it's very clear it does not. And so the idea that theologians or Christians are misguided for believing in common grace because, because it could only build up wrath, they're misunderstanding what common grace entails.

It does not entail only those positive elements of God's kindness. It also consists of those negative elements where God is restraining man from engaging in more evil, whereby there would be more judgment.

On that day of judgment, not every man will face the same reward. Not every man will face the same penalty. Bible explains that we will give an account for what we have done in this life, whether good or evil, and that the rewards and the punishments will be proportionate.

Not that we can earn some kind of favor with God, but He has set it up in His system so that in Jesus Christ we are capable of doing good works and receiving rewards for those. And the evil man who does more evil than the next man, that will be accounted for as well.

And if this is the case, then God restraining one from evil is actually restraining them from a greater judgment. Now, what's going on here is that people are thinking of God's purposes only from the perspective of an eternal purpose.

And if you do that and you deny the reality of what is going on in this world in time and space, you're missing out on some real realities. For example, if that is true of the unbeliever, that God could only have wrath against them in every sense and not any sort of kindness, then what does that mean for us?

What does it mean for us? What does it mean when the Bible calls us children of wrath at one point prior to being saved in Jesus Christ? We would have to deny the reality of that too and say that God in His eternal purpose only loved His people.

There's no sense in which He had wrath. And so we just have to throw that verse from Ephesians 2 out the window. Now it is true that God is eternal and unchanging and there is certainly a sense in which He only has love towards His people because He is eternally unchanged.

But we cannot deny the reality of what He has done in time and in space. If we are to deny that God has kindness against man in time and space, against every man in time and space, we are to deny also, we must deny also that He has had wrath towards those who are called children of wrath, us prior to conversion.

And this is not the case. We can't throw that verse out the window. So we must acknowledge that there is a real sense in which God has kindness upon all of His creation. He created His creation. He called it good.

He has some favor towards this thing He has created, even though it has become corrupted, even though it is the cause of much consternation, even hatred and anger. I do not deny that. There is a sense also in which we can say, along with Matthew 5, along with other passages, that there is a kindness and a favor, a genuine, intentional kindness and favor from God towards even those who are not saved, who are not among His elect.

And then people say at this point, well, why would you call that grace? Grace is something that saves. What do you call something that is a gift that is undeserved kindness? There's a very simple word for that.

There's grace. There's no reason to pick another word. We distinguish between special grace or saving grace and common grace. There's nothing wrong with using this word, grace. Now, there are several things that common grace is not.

Common grace is not what's known as pervenient grace. In the Wesleyan tradition, there's this notion of pervenient grace, the Wesleyan tradition including Methodism, right, Methodists. This notion of pervenient grace is basically the idea that God has given every man grace that he is able to, of his own free will, come to God apart from having any sort of regeneration or change of heart.

And that this is something that's been applied to every single person. That's not the case. What common grace presumes is a total depravity, is the idea that mankind is not capable of coming to God on his own.

In fact, that is what makes it grace. That is what makes it undeserved because mankind does not have some neutral standing before God so that he is choosing either one way or the other. In fact, what common grace acknowledges is that man in his natural state is wholly bent against God and therefore it is his kindness by which God gives them any good gift.

So there is no neutrality, right? The idea that common grace or that there is some grace applied to every man so that they are epistemically, that means in the way of their thinking, neutral. Every man at his core is either a friend of God or an enemy of God.

He either acknowledges and honors God or he dishonors God and suppresses the truth and unrighteousness as it says in Romans 1. So what is common grace not? It is not pervenient grace. It is not sufficient to save and it is not sufficient to know whether or not you are a friend of God.

In fact, what does this passage here in Matthew 5 say? It speaks of God's kindness towards his enemies. People may look at their estate, see that God has been very kind to them, and might come to the conclusion, well, that means that I am a friend of God.

No, it does not because God is kind even to his enemies. And so what kind of kindness does he have to those who are his friend, to those who truly are among his people, to those who truly are among his elect?

That is what we have in Isaiah 30. In Isaiah 33, excuse me, 30, 23 through 26 is a description of this special grace. Not the rain that falls upon both the good and the evil, the sun that comes upon the just and the unjust.

Rather, it's rain that comes especially upon his people. It's a sun that comes especially upon his people. Only the good and only the just, only those who have been transformed by God's special grace, only those who have trusted in Jesus Christ, only those who have received his Holy Spirit.

And so considering this passage back in Isaiah 30, when is it that these things take place? First, I would call your attention to the paragraph that came previously that we looked at last week, and we've already discussed when these things take place.

When it talks about a people dwelling in Zion, the New Testament interprets that, the gathering of the people back into Zion, as ultimately being fulfilled in the creation of the church, in the gathering of God's peoples into the church.

So yes, there is an immediate sense in which Isaiah is concerned about the threat of Assyria and the eventual threat of Babylon and the people being restored from Babylon back into Jerusalem, but ultimately this is pointing forward to Jesus Christ restoring his people into a church, gathering his people into a church, and then even beyond that, at the second coming, gathering us all into one place so that even physically we would be together and not just in spirit as we assemble in local congregations.

Now I would have you also consider that even though there are these several fulfillments, right, there's the immediate one dealing with Assyria and Babylon, there's this later one at Christ's first coming, and this even later one at the second coming, that the primary one that we should consider is what has taken place with the first coming of Jesus Christ through his death, burial, and resurrection, through his establishing of the church.

And I'll point out what I pointed out last week in verse 20, where it says,. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your teacher.

This is talking about God becoming man in the person of Jesus Christ, coming to earth, displaying himself to us, and yet at the same time us still being partakers of the bread of affliction and the water of adversity.

In other words, though he continues to feed us with trials in this life for his purpose, he has revealed to us who he is in the person of Jesus Christ. In other words, the primary fulfillment that we should be concerned about is the one that we are living in now.

It is the reality of the New Testament church. And this passage that we have here before us answers this question on its own. At the end of speaking of water, it explains what day this will take place.

The end of verse 25. And the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. At the end of verse 26, talking about light, it says,. In the day when the Lord binds up the brokenness of his people and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.

So you have something very symmetric here. Both talks about water and light. Talks about rain and sun. And at the end of the rain, he says, when will this take place? When the towers fall. At the end of the sun, he says, when will this take place?

When he heals up the brokenness of his people. Now towers in the book of Isaiah has repeatedly referred to the high and lofty things of the world, the proud things, the enemies of God. When has God defeated his enemies?

Primarily, he has defeated them through the cross. This is the central point in history when those enemies have been defeated. As a central point in when this has become most fully fulfilled. And when is it that he has healed the brokenness of his people and bound up their wounds?

The answer, once again, is through the cross of Jesus Christ. That is when these things have taken place, and they have taken place only in him. Only in Jesus Christ. Now let us consider this passage as it speaks of rain and as it speaks of sun.

Verse 23 says,. And he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and bread, the produce of the ground, which be rich and plenteous. So God speaks of rain. Rain is a gift of God. Very literally, it falls down from the heavens and is the source of life along with the sun.

Both of these things, they come down from heaven, demonstrating that they are gifts of God in a very literal sense, and they give life. These are things that represent God's kindness. And so God describes an abundant rain that it is even beyond that which he gives the unbeliever.

It is something especially for his children. And they sow the ground with it, and they receive bread. Bread in Scripture so frequently represents the Word of God. And given that this passage repeatedly has used phrases interpreted by the New Testament to refer to the realities of the Gospel, should we not recognize that this is not talking about literal bread?

Let us not be like the disciples who, in talking to Jesus about, Jesus speaking to them about the leaven of the Pharisees, thought that he was thinking of literal bread. Let us rather, recognizing that Scripture, especially in prophetic passages like this, is talking about something more than literal bread.

Matthew 4 says that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Man has the Word of God in full. Now with the finalization of the New Testament, that Christ gave his word to the apostles, the full revelation of God's intent, he said, now I call you friends, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have disclosed to you everything.

He has disclosed to us what he is doing. And so he has disclosed that through his apostles, through their recording of the New Testament, and now we have that before us. We have the fullness of God's Word, we have the fullness of that bread, and we have Jesus Christ himself, the bread who has come from heaven.

It continues on, it says, in that day your livestock will graze in large pastures, and the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground will eat seasoned fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork.

So just considering what this is speaking of, it's speaking of the fact that the animals will even receive good things from God, even they will have something plenteous. So first of all, what they receive has been winnowed with shovel and fork.

Now when you winnow something, you're basically throwing grain up into the air so that the chaff, which is lighter, will float away and the heavy parts that you want will remain. Now as you're feeding animals, you generally don't care whether or not you have a bunch of chaff mixed in with what they're eating.

In fact, you would just, why would you bother doing all that work? You would just give to them what it is with the chaff and everything. But this is describing a world of such plenty that they receive winnowed grain, that there's such a plenty of grain that they can even receive what is winnowed.

It doesn't have to be supplemented with chaff. In addition to that, it talks about it being seasoned fodder. This is describing adding salt to the grain, something that is flavorful for the cattle. Now animals, you know, some of you have had pets before, and you know what you give animals.

You give them that same dry dog food day after day after day. You give them that cat, that thing that comes out of the can that looks disgusting, you know, day after day. You know, you don't try to give them the best because you're not too concerned about it, but God is describing this world where even the animals are receiving what is good.

Proverbs 12, 10 says that a righteous man has regard for the life of his beast. Now God is righteous, and out of his righteousness, he is giving to his creation, to his people especially. Now, how are we to consider these animals, given that this is talking primarily about Christ's church?

Once again, the New Testament gives us a lot of tools by which we should interpret prophetic passages like this. I would put along with that 1 Corinthians 9, 9 says,. For it is written in the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.

Is it for the ox that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake? So as you're reading this passage in Isaiah, you should have that same thing in mind. Is God concerned primarily about the ox?

Is he not telling us this for our sake? It was written for our sake because the plowman should plow in hope, and the thresher thresh in the hope of sharing the crop. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?

If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Paul, speaking of the maintenance of ministers, ministers being supplied so they may do God's work. You know, who are the workers in God's kingdom?

Who are the workers on a farm? The workers on the farm are primarily the ox and the donkey. Yes, you have other workers who are leading them around, but the real muscle on the field is the ox and the donkey.

This is talking about their provision. Now, who are the main laborers in the kingdom of God, working for the kingdom of God? It is God's ministers, and so this is describing an ample supply of God's ministers.

You know, throughout the Old Testament, there were many times where the Levites were not taken care of. This is describing that God will, out of His good graces, give to His workers abundantly. Now, what you see in this world is not always ministers being well-supplied.

In fact, often by our standards, they are not. However, God is assuring us that He has given to us such plenty that even in those times, even when we are, according to this earlier verse, verse 20, eating the bread of affliction, excuse me, the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, that He is giving abundantly to both His people and the workers among His people.

But just by the way of application, you know, consider what it is that God has such a great concern for the workers in His kingdom. You know, consider how they ought to be supplied, and as you're giving, make sure that that is part of your thought process, that God has called for His workers to be well-supported, and that's something that you want to be a part of.

It continues on here, And on every lofty mountain and every high hill, there will be brooks running with water in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall, there will be brooks running with water.

Now, on the top of a mountain, that is one of the last places you'll find water, right? Water usually runs through the valleys. At the top, it all runs down, and so the second after it's done raining, all the water has already moved off the top.

But this is describing, once again, a world of such plenty that the water would even exist at the top of the mountains. John 7, 37 says, On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

When is it that those waters of life have overflowed? Is it not in Jesus' establishing of the church? Is it not in his giving of the Holy Spirit? We can come to Jesus Christ and drink. Now if you've ever been hiking before, and you've gone up to the top of a mountain and forgotten to bring water with you, I've done this before, you know how thirsty it can be, because there's no water up there.

And let me tell you, the people in this world, they are thirsty. They are thirsty. You know, if you are thirsty, you should come to Jesus. He has the water of life. As you talk to your neighbors, you need to learn to recognize that thirst.

They may not display it, but people without water on top of a mountain, they are thirsty, and we have access to that water of life through Jesus Christ, and it's something that needs to be offered to them.

It's something that needs to be offered. In the context of this people of Israel, keep in mind that they were often threatened, especially by the enemies, especially by the onslaught of Assyria. What kind of things were they doing?

It was siege warfare, where they would stand around the gates of the city and make it so that no food or water could come in. They would poison the river upstream so that the people would not have water, so they would not have bread.

And so in light of all that, Isaiah is describing a world where God provides abundantly for His people, not just what is common, what He gives to His people normally, water in the valleys, but even water on the mountains.

And this is all accessible to us in Jesus Christ. Verse 26 says,. Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold as the light of seven days, and the day when the Lord binds up the brokenness of His people and heals the wounds inflicted by His blow.

God gives to us a wonderful light. Once again, what do we see the New Testament say about this light? John 3, verse 19 says,. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wickedness hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his work should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

And as you read the first chapter of John, you know that the light that John is speaking of is Jesus Christ Himself. Jesus Christ is the light. He is the one who gives the water of life, His Holy Spirit, and He has offered these things freely to all who believe.

All who desire light, all who desire water, all who live in darkness and are thirsty, they may come to Jesus Christ for such things. You know, and this is, once again, this is not to be read literally.

Many people come to Isaiah, and they believe that the only way faithfully to handle this is to understand it literalistically, as though each phrase must mean exactly, that the image is something that will have a physical, literal fulfillment.

That's not a reasonable way of treating these things. Not only because the New Testament gives us different interpretations, but also because even in this context of Isaiah, you see different images used.

In fact, speaking of this same glorious event that will take place, Isaiah 24, 23 had said, maybe you remember this from the preaching,. Then the moon will be confounded, and the sun ashamed, for the Lord of hosts reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and His glory will be before His elders.

So earlier in Isaiah, he said that God's glory will be so great that the sun will cease to shine and the moon will cease to shine. And here it talks about the sun shining brighter and the moon shining brighter.

Now, he's using different images to describe the same thing. He's not talking about that the moon will literally stop and then the sun will, and then the moon will literally be as bright as the sun. There's no reason to anticipate such literal things when he has spoken oppositely of the same event.

Same thing with, for example, you see the book of life in the Bible. Occasionally, the book of life, you have names being scratched out of it. Occasionally, you have names being written into it. You know, it's not that there are, some people say that there are two books in heaven.

You know, they imagine there's two books in heaven. There's one that has everybody's name, and then you get scratched out, and there's one that has nobody's name, and they get added in. No, these are similar images that represent the same truth.

There's not, there's not such a book that we should be so narrow in our way of thinking about this. But so, once again, he's giving this picture of this great abundance of God's great favor, especially upon his people.

So his people would have guidance so that they would have provision for everything that they need. This was explained in the previous passage where it talked about the voice standing behind them saying, this is the way, walk in it.

When you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, it speaks of God's graciousness and hearing, him hearing us as soon as we give our cry. These are all the blessings that are available to us in Jesus Christ.

And once again, consider the world they lived in. Not only was there threat of not having food and not having water, but there was also not as much light as there in the time and place that we live now.

They lived in a world without electricity. They didn't have light by which to do all the things they needed to do. And so, describing it as the moon being as the sun, to have a 24-hour day where you are able to enjoy creation without ceasing, this is the idea, is that God has given us in Jesus Christ an abundance of provision, an abundance of guidance so that we can have joy, even despite, once again, that bread of adversity and that water of affliction, which he gives us in order to grow us, we may have great joy and enjoyment in him.

But these things, this special grace that is beyond God's common grace, is only available in Jesus Christ. And it's something that not only restores creation, you look at this passage and you see a restored creation, but it's something that is even greater, is far beyond what the Garden of Eden was originally.

This is a sun and a moon that shine far brighter, the sun shining perfectly seven times over, the moon shining as bright as the sun. This is a rain that is more abundant than the rains of Eden, where even the mountaintops have water.

Just real quick note, not that it rained in Eden because a cloud covered the garden and rain came later with the flood. But regardless, consider how it is the world started. It started with water and light, Spirit of God moving over the face of the water, God saying, let there be light.

And then we see the Bible speak with such images describing man's relative poverty, man's being thirsty and living in darkness, and at the same time, God's kindness to humankind in general, sending his rain and sun on the just and on the just, on the good and on the evil.

But yet, there's a special favor that is available to God's children only through Jesus Christ. And it is something that not just brings things back to the Garden of Eden, but restores even beyond that.

Consider how Revelation ends. At the end of Revelation 21, it says, and I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. And the city had no need of a sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. And its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and honor of the nations.

So this is describing this great world that is accessible to us in Jesus Christ, a world that is full of light, and there is no darkness. Not because of the literal sun, but because Jesus Christ is that light that we need.

And then how does it end? In the next chapter. In the next chapter, he speaks of water. The Spirit and the Bride say, come, and let the one who hears say, come, and let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires to take the water of life without price.

The world dwells in darkness and thirsty, but God has made light and water available in Jesus Christ. If you are without, if you feel dry and parched, come to Jesus Christ. Come to him for his mercy. Come to him in prayer.

He has made himself accessible. He has made the Father accessible through him. He has offered his Spirit that water by which we are quenched. He has brought light into the world, being that light. There's no reason to continue on in sorrow.

There's no reason to end this world of afflictions, continue on without joy, but rather we can have joy knowing that even despite the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, that we can have the light and rain, the sun and rain of Christ Almighty.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the great abundance that you have made available in Jesus Christ. We thank you for your provision of him and for your provision in our Christian walk, that you have given us guidance by your Spirit and by your Word, that you have sustained us, that you provide for us as we need.

And though you are kind to all, though you are kind to both the good and the evil, we know that in Jesus Christ we have access to a special kindness which shines sevenfold, and we thank you for that. And we pray that you would give us eyes of faith that we might know this and experience it and that we might not be blinded by the things around us so that we do not enjoy this thing that we have in him.