WWUTT 1959 Yahweh Will Destroy Death (Isaiah 25:1-12)

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Men will boast in their fortifications and their great accomplishments, but the most powerful men on earth will not withstand the hand of God.

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So let us humble ourselves, and He will deliver when we understand the text. This is

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When We Understand The Text, teaching through a New Testament book on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and a

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Q &A on Friday. With our Old Testament study today, here's Pastor Gabe. Thank you,

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Becky. In our study of the book of Isaiah, we are up to chapter 25, and I'll go ahead and read through all 12 verses out of the

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Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. O Yahweh, You are my

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God. I will exalt You. I will give thanks to Your name, for You have worked wonders, councils formed long ago with perfect faithfulness.

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For You have made a city into a heap, a fortified town into a ruin.

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A palace of strangers is a city no more. It will never be rebuilt.

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Therefore a strong people will glorify You. Towns of ruthless nations will fear

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You. For You have been a strong defense for the poor, a strong defense for the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat.

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For the breath of the ruthless is like a rainstorm against a wall. Like heat in a dry land,

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You subdue the rumbling of strangers. Like heat by the shadow of a cloud, the song of the ruthless is silenced.

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And Yahweh of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain, a banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow, and refined aged wine.

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And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, even the veil which is stretched out over all nations.

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He will swallow up death for all time. And Lord Yahweh will wipe tears away from all faces.

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And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth. For Yahweh has spoken.

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And it will be said in that day, Behold, this is our God in whom we have hoped that He would save us.

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This is Yahweh in whom we have hoped. Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.

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For the hand of Yahweh will rest on this mountain, and Moab will be trodden down in his place as straw is trodden down in the water of a manure pile.

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And He will spread out His hands in the middle of it, as a swimmer spreads out his hands to swim.

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But Yahweh will lay low His lofty pride together with the trickery of His hands.

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The unassailable fortifications of your walls He will bring down, lay low, and cast to the ground, even to the dust.

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So this is a chapter, a prophecy is being made about the way that God will rescue

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His people, specifically the Jews. But it's even about so much more than that. For that particular rescue is not exactly named, although we do have these statements toward the end about Moab being brought down.

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But we have generally here a statement about the way that God will rescue His people.

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We can all receive these promises that are given here in Isaiah 25, and know that God will deliver us out of our distresses.

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So we begin with a praise unto God, unto Yahweh, you are my

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God, I will exalt you. You've been a strong defense of the poor, that's in verses 1 -5.

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And then God will not only destroy His enemies, but He will make a lavish banquet for His people.

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We have that in verses 6 -9. This is God in whom we have hoped. And then in verses 10 -12, the hand of Yahweh will rest on this mountain, and Moab will be trodden down in His place.

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So these are the three parts that we have of Isaiah 25. So we begin, as I mentioned once again, with Isaiah saying in the word of the

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Lord, O Yahweh, you are my God, I will exalt you, I will give thanks to your name, for you have worked wonders.

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Councils formed long ago with perfect faithfulness. That is a statement of saying

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God has already determined these things from long ago. So we always have to trust in our

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God. We have no reason not to trust in God if we know that He is sovereign and reigns over all, that He knows the beginning from the end.

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Statements that are made throughout Isaiah, incidentally, that God has ordained all that comes to pass.

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If you know that's true, then you have no reason to doubt His promises. You have no reason to doubt

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God. He will deliver us out of our distresses. He has promised for us an eternal kingdom, where these wretched things that we go through in this life will be no more.

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He will dry every tear from our eyes. Statements that come up here in this particular chapter, verse 8,

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Lord Yahweh will wipe tears away from their faces. Same thing that is said in Revelation 21 .4,

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we'll get to that here in a moment. But once again, just to say, knowing that God is sovereign, knowing that Christ is on His throne, knowing that He has determined the end and He's going to bring all things to completion, leading to that end that He decreed from the very beginning, then we have no reason not to trust

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God. We can trust in Him that He will deliver us out of our trouble.

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He works wonders, counsels formed long ago with perfect faithfulness.

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Of course, He's faithful to complete these things. If God wasn't faithful to do it, then He wouldn't be

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God. He would be lying. He would say, I'm going to do this, but then something happens, oops, I didn't see that that was going to take place.

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I guess I better change the plan and do something else. No, God knows because He has ordained it from the beginning to the end.

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So we have no reason to doubt His promises. Verse 2, for you have made a city into a heap, a fortified town into a ruin.

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A palace of strangers is a city no more. It will never be rebuilt. And those are statements that have come previously in the book of Isaiah, those oracles that have been made against these cities that are never rebuilt again, like Tyree, for example.

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Therefore a strong people will glorify you, it says in verse 3, towns of ruthless nations will fear you.

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This is a parallelism. So the first line means the same as the second line. Therefore a strong people will glorify you.

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So you're talking a strong nation or a strong kingdom, a strong army of some kind.

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They will not glorify in themselves. They will not glorify a false God. They will give glory to God.

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And giving glory to God may not necessarily mean that they worship God, like pledging devotion and faithfulness to Him.

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It could just simply mean that they cower before Him. They know He is mighty and they are not. Hence the next line in verse 3, towns of ruthless nations will fear you.

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So these cities that were fortified, strengthened, invincible, enemies had come against them and could not succeed, yet they will cower before God and fear

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Him because they know that God can strike them down. When God sent

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Joshua into the Promised Land, He told Joshua and the people of Israel that the fear of God would be in the hearts of the

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Canaanites, of the people that dwelled in the Promised Land. So that when Israel came against them, they would succeed because these would not be armies that were strong of heart and will.

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They had been weakened by God. Whatever strength they had in the past, God was taking away from them, even their very will to deal mightily with the

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Israelites. And so in this way, God was giving the Israelites enemies into their hands.

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And so God may do with a people. Their hearts may become weak within themselves and they not be able to fight back against their enemies.

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You think about what a superpower the United States of America is. A military strength with might that no one can match.

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No one on Earth seems to be able to match. Yes, Russia's a threat. China's a threat. But do they really have the strength in their military the way that the

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United States has in ours? China has more numbers.

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If they wanted to fight against the United States, they could. North Korea, if I remember right, actually has more people in their army, though they are a smaller country.

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They have a stronger army or a more numerous army than the United States of America. So if any one of these nations wanted to come against the

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U .S., even though the U .S. is mighty in military strength, if it be

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God's will for the United States to lose, he will put weakness, cowardice into the hearts of American soldiers that they not be able to fight back as they should.

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And in their weakness, they will be overcome by their enemies. If that's God's will, that's what will happen.

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It doesn't matter what kind of technological advancements the United States has over any other nation in the world.

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If it's God's will to destroy America, it will happen, even by the hands of a foreign army.

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If God wants the Netherlands to rise up with an army and conquer America, he can do that. I don't think the

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Netherlands are going to do that. I'm just, you know, using an example. Canadians, when Canada's just as wicked as the

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United States. Anyway, I think you get my point. If it is God's will to judge a nation, he will diminish the hearts of that people so that they can be conquered, just like he did with the

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Canaanites in the Promised Land. In Romans 1, it says that God will turn them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done, so that they will come into judgment, because they loved unrighteousness rather than the righteousness of Christ.

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And so, in that same way, God turning a nation over to a depraved mind is also to turn them over to a weak spirit that they would not be able to fight back against those that would try to come against that people, if it is

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God's will to judge a nation. So it should be among us as Christians, it should be in our hearts, that we fear

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God and we come before him in repentance. And we have, later on here in Isaiah 25, how

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God rewards the repentant. So let's continue on here. Verse 4, for you have been a strong defense for the poor, a strong defense for the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat.

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For the breath of the ruthless is like a rainstorm against a wall.

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This is an interesting metaphor, and I don't know that I truly understand it, but the possibility here is just talking, it's more like talking about the sound of a storm, how devastating a storm can be, how loud it can even be.

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Because you have the statement of the breath of the ruthless, so that which comes from their mouth, is like a rainstorm against a wall.

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There's nowhere for the sound to go, it doesn't, you know, dissipate into the air, it's beating against this wall and it's just really loud and noisy, and there's nowhere for the person to go.

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So then in verse 5, God provides relief from this pressure that is being given by the enemy.

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Like heat in a dry land, you subdue the rumbling of strangers. So again, if the breath of the ruthless is like a loud sound that comes from their mouth, and earlier

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Isaiah had talked about these foreign enemies that spoke in tongues that the Jews would not be able to understand, they were going to be conquered by a people whose language they didn't know.

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So you have the rumbling of strangers, and like heat in a dry land, you subdue the rumbling.

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They become thirsty, their mouth dries up, so they aren't able to continue to pressure the people with even false words, with calamitous noise that doesn't mean anything to the

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Jews. God has taken away their ability to drive against them. Like heat by the shadow of a cloud, the song of the ruthless is silenced, and you have that parallelism there.

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But then we go on to the next part, which begins in verse 6, and you have painted for us here the way that God rewards those who are repentant.

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So remember, if this is specifically referring to the Jews, obviously we can draw some things out of this and we see the way that God delivers any of his people, even the church today.

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But talking specifically here about the Jews, the Jews are being punished because they turned away from God.

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God brings an enemy against them. But you have the remnant of the Jews that's been talked about in Isaiah, who will turn to the

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Lord and repent. And so how does the Lord deal with the repentant? That's what we have beginning in verse 6.

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And Yahweh of Hos will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain.

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Talking about the mountain of God, the Mount of Zion, as it is referred. A banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with morrow, and refined aged wine.

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Now you have aged wine mentioned twice, but one of the things about it being aged wine and even refined aged wine,

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God has prepared for this day. Remember that the enemy that comes against the

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Jews is going to destroy everything. There won't even be anything left of the vineyard with which to make wine.

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But God is rewarding the repentant. He has preserved for himself his remnant and preparing for this day.

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He already has wine and a banquet feast set aside, planned for that day.

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You have to plan to have aged wine. You can't just on a whim decide, let's have aged wine.

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God has prepared this feast. That's what's being said here. So there is a day on which we will feast together.

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The Apostle Paul told the Greeks at the Areopagus in Acts 17, there is a day that is fixed by God on which he will judge the world in righteousness.

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And we read in the book of Revelation about that day where we will gather with Christ at the wedding feast of the

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Lamb. The church together with God in glory. And so here we have this feast that is being talked about, prepared for his people, a banquet of aged wine.

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Verse 7, and on this mountain he will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, even the veil which is stretched over all nations.

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Now what is this referring to? Two possibilities. And it could be that these possibilities, it could mean that it means both.

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So first of all, a reference to a veil is a veil that somebody would wear over their face because they're mourning the dead.

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And remember, there are many that are going to die when Yahweh comes in his judgment. But in that day that we gather with him at the feast, that veil will be taken away.

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We will not have tears. We will not mourn any longer. For consider the next statement in verse 8, he will swallow up death for all time.

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And Lord Yahweh will wipe tears away from all faces. So that's the first understanding, the veil that one covers their face with because they are in mourning.

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Second possibility, and maybe the second understanding of this as well, it's in reference to the veil that prevents a person from knowing

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God. You have a veil that separates the holy of holies in the temple from the rest of the temple.

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You have the veil that Moses covered his face with, and the apostle Paul talks about in 2

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Corinthians as that veil having been removed so that we may testify with unveiled face.

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So it's being said here that the veil is being removed. That veil, which is over all peoples, even the veil which is stretched over all nations.

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So this is talking about all peoples coming to God, not just the Jews, but people from everywhere.

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So we're prophetically looking toward a time when all kinds of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation on earth will be coming to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. That is happening now through the gospel. But we are probably reading this with the understanding that we see a final culmination or the consummation of Christ with his church could also be what's being referenced here with regards to the feast, with regards to the veil being removed from all nations.

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And then of course this statement in verse 8, he will swallow up death for all time. So we know that this prophecy in chapter 25 is not just about the way that God is going to deliver the

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Jews from the hands of their enemies that they've been succumbed to at this time and place.

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We're talking about how ultimately even God will destroy death.

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Lord Yahweh will wipe tears away from all faces. Same thing that said in Revelation 21 for he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

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Death will be no more, nor will there be any mourning or crying or pain for the former things have passed away and he will remove the reproach of his people from all the earth.

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And again, this is not just the Jews. This is all who are in Christ, his people.

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He will remove their reproach for Yahweh has spoken. This is what God does for the repentant.

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Those who truly come before God with a humble heart, desiring to be cleansed of unrighteousness and clothed with his grace.

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Verse 9, and it will be said in that day, behold, this is our

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God in whom we have hoped that he would save us. This is not just the voice of the

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Jews. This is the voice of all people who come to Christ. This is Yahweh in whom we have hoped.

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Let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation, a salvation that comes not just to the

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Jews, but even to the Gentile. Romans 1 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe to the

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Jew first and also to the Greek final movement here in this chapter versus 10 through 12 for the hand of Yahweh will rest on this mountain.

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Now that's specifically talking about Mount Moriah, the place where the temple was Mount Zion and Moab will be trodden down in his place as straw is trodden down in the water of a manure pile.

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Moab had a distant relation to Judah, but they had betrayed Judah.

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And yet God's judgment is going to come against Moab. They will not be delivered. Even though there's a kinship there, they will come to destruction because they did not fear

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God as straw is trodden down in the water of a manure pile. What a picture is that verse 11 and he will spread out his hands in the middle of it as a swimmer spreads out his hands to swim.

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He will attempt to swim in this watery manure pile, but Yahweh will lay low his lofty pride together with the trickery of his hands.

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What a way to die drowning in watery manure. But that is what

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God thinks of a people that comes against his people. Anyone who would betray anyone who would come as an enemy against the people of God.

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God would drown them in watery manure and they will come to judgment.

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Verse 12, the unassailable fortifications of your walls.

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He will bring down no matter how invincible you feel. God will bring down, lay low and cast to the ground, even to the dust.

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I wrote an article this week on the Titanic tragedy, or rather the

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Titan, the submersible that was going down to the Titanic wreckage. And the

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Titan imploded about two thirds of the way down. What can we learn from this?

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I wrote an article about that, which is at my blog, PastorGabe .com or hang tight on Saturday.

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The audio from that blog will appear here on this particular podcast. But anyway, that article being about how proud we can be and even the richest people in the world, despite their millions and their fame and their fortune, they cannot save themselves.

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So even if the wealthy and powerful cannot save themselves, neither can we who are not wealthy or powerful save ourselves.

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We must humble ourselves before God and he will save us. Even the most unassailable fortifications,

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God can destroy. This little sub that was going down to the Titanic, the builder of that sub said it was invulnerable.

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And God humbled him and the people that were aboard and anybody else that would have thought this submersible could beat the deeps that God had fashioned.

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God will humble us in our pride. So humble yourself before God and at the proper time, he will exalt you as said in James and in first Peter.

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Let's finish there with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what you deliver us from.

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You have saved us from sin, from death, from the judgment of God that we all deserve because of our sin against you, humbling us and bringing us to yourself.

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Now we have been invited to a wedding feast, a banquet with aged wine, a banquet that you have prepared where we can fellowship with you and the veil that covers the earth will be lifted and we will see you as he, as you are, because we will be made to be like you as it says in first John chapter three, verse two, come quickly,

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Lord Jesus. And until that day, continue to sanctify us and make us holy as we grow before you.

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It's in Jesus name we pray, amen. This has been When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes.

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For all of our podcasts, episodes, videos, books, and more, visit our website at www .utt

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.com. If you'd like to submit a question to this broadcast or just send us a comment, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com

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and let your friends know about our ministry. Join us again tomorrow as we grow together in the study of God's Word when we understand the text.