Isaiah Lesson 73

Would you mind opening us in prayer?

Lord God, we see the work that you're doing here at Cornerstone. The number of people that came on Sunday and on Friday, the number of people that have come here. We do know, Lord, that the church is a lamp lit so that the world will see and hear truth.

We rejoice when people come. Lord, we do pray that we would be cautious and aware. The evil one will bring false prophets and bring false influences. We must always be on guard. This should be a house of prayer, but we should always, always be on guard against those who are insincere.

With love and, Lord, maintaining the true gospel, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

I know of a pastor who pastors a very large church. And they're very evangelistic. They're warm.

They're welcoming.

Everybody wants to tell their friends they come. But the problem is they don't guard the doctrine of the church. And so many people come, and yet many of those in the flock are actually wolves in sheep's clothing.

And this phenomenon repeats itself over and over again throughout the country. I know of a discernment minister who spends his time researching every heresy known to man. And he operates an online forum.

But he married someone from an online dating relationship. After a few weeks or months, it didn't work out, and he sent her away and continued on with his online discernment ministry. I know of other online discernment ministries that they're right about so many things.

And a handful of people attend their church because they spend all their time criticizing and very little time evangelizing, evidently. What you don't often find is a church like John MacArthur's church in California, where there is discernment.

In fact, John MacArthur says that the biggest need of the church today is discernment. And you find that in MacArthur. He's fought the heresies that have come into the church. But at the same time, he stayed focused on the word of God, preaching expositionally through the scriptures.

He's maintained a well-rounded ministry with children's ministries and vacation Bible schools and teaching for different groups and ages and all manner of ministry, even to the handicap and the hurting, service kind of projects and things of that nature, a very well-rounded Christian gospel ministry.

You don't see much of that. So when you have a guy like MacArthur, he's almost like, oh, an anomaly. Here's a man that is standing for truth, has stood against the nonsense of 2020 and the overreach of government.

And yet, he remains a warm, evangelistic posture. This is the need, I think, of the hour, to have churches that are warmly evangelistic and discerning. It's a very rare thing to find. That's what our ambition is, to be both of those things, that we would be a well-rounded, gospel-centered church, but also maintain a spirit of discernment.

Justice, Righteousness, and Sabbath Rest in Isaiah 56

As we read through Isaiah 56, Isaiah begins by kind of applying what we've heard of the Messiah. In Isaiah 53, we have this beautiful invitation, really, to the world that Jesus is our sin bearer. He's the lamb of God.

He's made substitutionary atonement on behalf of his people. And there's this welcoming, this offer of grace that we see following that. That's there in the early parts of chapter 56. But then at the end, it makes this drastic shift and turns and puts the leaders of Israel on blast.

They come into the crosshairs because they're not discerning. And so you have kind of both of these elements in Isaiah 56. Let's go through it. At first, you have kind of the call to justice and righteousness.

It's the idea that as a born-again person here, Old Testament Israel, you would be regenerate the same way we are. They would need faith to be truly Israel. That doesn't mean that being saved by faith,.

You don't work.

In verses 1 and 2, there is the call to Christian life, the expectations of duty for us. So would somebody read for us Isaiah 56, 1 and 2?

Who's my first reader? Bob, you got it.

This is what the Lord says. Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand, and my righteousness will soon be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, the man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.

Okay.

So here we have the duty of the truly godly life, and it is this, to keep justice and do righteousness. Now, is that anti-gospel, that God would say.

You need to do?

I thought salvation is by grace, not by what we do,.

Not by our works.

I believe it's because if your heart is right with the Lord, you're gonna wanna do these things.

Very good, Bob.

Yeah, so the idea of justification by faith does not mean a faith that doesn't work. We don't work for salvation, but the genuine faith works. There is fruit. There's things that we are to do. We are to do righteousness and to keep doing, keep justice.

And he says, for soon my salvation will come, namely the deliverance, that God himself will deliver from the enemies of the world, the flesh, the devil, and my righteousness be revealed. He will make himself known.

He will show himself. Now, look at the second part of verse two, because we get an idea of what God has in mind. This is kind of a parallel construction here. What would it mean to keep justice and do righteousness?

Well, he gives some examples. Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast. Here, son of man doesn't mean much more than just humanity. It's a parallelism with the first part of the verse, the man, the son of man.

And when Jesus is called the son of man, he's identified as human. He's fully one of us. Well, what is it that is justice or doing righteousness? Interestingly, what's the first thing that Isaiah mentions?

He mentions justice.

Okay, in the parallel here, second half of verse two, it is that, right? But what's the first example that would give of that?

Keeping the Sabbath.

Keeping the Sabbath. How many of you would have gone there first? Of all the 10 commandments, that would be, to me, kind of like the least important, right?

Or is it?

How is it that Jesus can say, man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man?

Day of rest.

It's for our rest, okay.

I think it was also because there's a dedicated day to commit ourselves to learning more about God and to studying him and to allowing us to grow and knowledge of him. And if we didn't have that day set aside, we'd just keep going on with work all the time or whatever's keeping us busy or pleasure.

And so I think that's why it's so important.

Okay, how many of y 'all raised a show of hands, follow the Sabbath. You take the Sabbath seriously. You don't work on the Sabbath.

Meaning Saturday?

Interesting.

Friday night and the Saturday or?

Because the Sabbath was Saturday. If you were to read Jonathan Edwards' resolutions, he wrote resolutions for his life. One of them was that he would make no merriment. He would do no work on the Sabbath.

And by that, the reform saw that as Sunday. Sunday was the Christian Sabbath because Jesus rose on the first day of the week, not the seventh day of the week. I think there's something deeper here. Why would the Sabbath be the first thing listed?

I think the Sabbath points to the finish work of Christ. I think the Sabbath was given to man. Yes, that we could rest, Bob. I think that's part of it. And I think we need to obey that from the general equity of the Old Testament.

We do need to take a day of rest. And often when we fail to do that, our bodies will signal that there's something wrong and you'll get stress built up in your body and you'll get sick. We do need to have a day of rest.

But turn with me to Hebrews chapter four, verse four. This is the longest commentary on the meaning of the Sabbath outside of the gospels in the New Testament. And in the actual gospels, you have references to the Sabbath.

It's usually Jesus being criticized for breaking it according to their traditions, not according to the word of God. So if he healed and he'll say, which one of you wouldn't lift your animal out of a pit if it fell into a pit on the Sabbath?

He's exposing the hypocrisy of their interpretation of honor of the Sabbath to keep it holy. But in Hebrews, we have exegetical reason to find a deeper meaning in the Sabbath. And this is, let's pick up at verse four and then again at verses nine and 10.

John, I told you, would you mind reading Hebrews 4 .4?

For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way. And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.

Okay, so the seventh day Sabbath that we are told to honor doesn't begin in Exodus 20, it begins in Genesis one,.

At the creation of the world.

Six days it creates and then he himself rests. So his rest is something he wants to share with us and we're commanded then to obey the Sabbath in Exodus 20. Now look at verses nine and 10. John, you're doing a good job.

Let's do a couple more verses.

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

You see it there? The context here is Moses did not give them rest because he struck the rock, but Joshua brought them into the promised land, the land of rest. And this picture is the Sabbath as we saw in verse four.

God's rest on the seventh day. The promised land is a rest, but then look at the application here. It says in nine and 10. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Now, interesting phrase there, people of God.

He doesn't say Israel or the church. Salvage. He's referring to those who are truly saved and regenerated. So, you can refer to the people of God as both Israel and the church. True Israel, believing Israel, and then the church who have been grafted in, all of us together for all time, everyone who is believed and by faith been justified are the people of God.

There's still a distinction between Israel and the church, but here, this applies across the board. The Sabbath rest, what is it? Verse 10. For, that grounds the thought, whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

So, earlier, and we can turn back now to Isaiah 56, we're beginning with duty. You have to do this. You have to do justice. And so, you have social justice warriors who want to do justice, and they conflate what justice even is.

Or you have other people who are active politically. They might do justice.

They're fighting against abortion.

They're fighting against the machinery of government that's become so enlarged. But listen, the doing of righteousness and the doing of justice can only be pleasing in God's sight for those who have, first of all, learned to rest.

What kind of rest is this? What does it mean, resting from his work?

God looked at what he created and said, it is good. I view it as focusing on God's grace and God's glory and magnificence that he has done for us.

Okay?

And you're on track to where I'm going.

Let's just take it from Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and then verse 10. For by grace you are saved through faith. It's not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And you say, okay, so salvation is all by grace.

It's through faith.

And this faith is resting in Christ, his finished work. It's not of your work. It's not of works. You have to stop trying to earn it. You come to an end of yourself. And that's Romans 3, 21 to 5, 21. It is by faith that you are justified.

The person who thinks they're earning something from God is on a treadmill, they're on a hamster wheel, and they'll keep running and running and wearing themselves out trying to do, do, do, but never getting anywhere with it until they rest.

Now, what does Ephesians 2, 10 say? For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which he prepared in advance.

For us to do.

So this is what's happening in Isaiah 56, if you'll go back there. It begins with do, do, do, keep, maintain, hold.

Blessed is the man who does this,.

And the son of man who holds it fast.

Action verbs.

Action verbs.

Yes, this is what we're prepared.

We have a part in living out this life. But it starts here. Who keeps the Sabbath not profaned. The Sabbath was an Old Testament reminder to rest in God. You're not the one that brought the manna from heaven.

It was God that did it, and you just gathered it. And so on the seventh day, there'll be no manna falling from heaven. You need to eat what was given, and you gathered the first six days. Each time it was a reminder, it's God who is providing for you, and salvation is the gift of God.

And so the Sabbath reminds us that we don't work to earn anything from God. That's the starting point of salvation. I think that's why it's first here, and it'll be repeated throughout. The Sabbath pictures our resting from our works to rest in Christ, to trust in him, that his work has atoned.

Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

All right, amen.

The Welcome of Foreigners and Eunuchs in God's House

So then, now we get into this second section of this warmth, this compassion, this welcoming. And some churches are great about this. Have you seen some churches that they just welcome everybody? If somebody comes in the door, they're showing them love.

That's good, and we can learn some things from that if we're not always that way. Let's read it. How about we read this section through before we get to the kind of the criticism of the leaders? Would somebody read three through eight?

I'll read that.

Just to get the feel of how warm and inviting it.

Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, the Lord will surely separate me from his people. And let not the eunuch say, behold, I am a dry tree. Thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters.

I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the sabbath and does not profane it and holds fast my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer.

The burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar for my house should be called a house of prayer for all peoples. The Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel declares, I will gather yet others to him besides those who already gathered.

Isn't that a beautiful passage? You think of Ruth, the Moabitess. Remember how Moab was formed from Lot's daughters and their sexual immorality with Lot? And they're this despised people and always enemies.

When Israel is coming into the promised land, Balak is the king of Moab and he invites Balaam to curse Israel.

And all Balaam can do,.

Because his donkey helped him out on this, is blessed because what God has blessed will be blessed and you can't curse what God has called blessed. So Moab is this wicked people.

And when they fail to conquer,.

Balaam gives them instructions. Here's how you can do it. Send your young women to seduce their young men and teach them sexual immorality. And so that's how they led the Israelites into sexual immorality.

So the Moabites are just sexually immoral. They're violent and hateful. They want to destroy Israel and yet here's Ruth, the Moabitess and she comes under the kinsmen redeemer.

And is welcomed in Israel. Even in the Old Testament, God has a heart of compassion to those who would come.

And find shelter under his wings. And yes, Moab was crushed by Syria and Israel was constantly at war,.

But to anyone who would come,.

Come, come, like the end of Revelation, drink from the waters of life. The Moabitess, the foreigner, the eunuch. Why would that Ethiopian have written up from Candace's court to Israel?

Because Israel was to be welcoming to the eunuch,.

The foreigner. So let's look at this verse by verse. Verse three, let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say. There's a lot of parallelism and irony in this section. The foreigner doesn't need to say, I'll be separated.

He's a foreigner, he's not one of the people.

Don't say that.

When you come under the feathers of his wing, his eagle feathers over you, you're a part of his family. You are fully included, and you're not gonna be separated and quarantined off as a lesser citizen.

The Lord will surely separate me from his people.

Don't say that.

God will fully join you to his people. And let not the eunuch say, behold, I am a dry tree. The eunuch has been emasculated, he's been damaged. And imagine the damage that such a core part of his being, his masculinity has been taken away.

Imagine what that's done to his soul, the deep wounds of his self-esteem. Can you hear it in his words? Behold, I am a dry tree.

He says, this translation says, I am only a dry tree. That's what he's focusing on, that's all.

Only a dry tree. And it's the concept there that, it's his vision of himself. He's nothing, he's dried up, and he can't have a name for himself. Later it'll say, of the eunuch, he says, sons and daughters and a name.

Well, we can just read it. Verse five, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name. He can't pass on his name, that's the problem. He can't have sons and daughters. So God says, what I have waiting for you is better.

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has in store for those who love him,.

Who are called by his name.

Jeff, that just struck me as being rather painful for a person, especially in those ages where your children were your retirement and what else. I mean, my children are my love. But this picture that's drawn is a man that is not a complete member of the existing society.

It's like someone with only one leg. If you walk down the street and there's six people and one with one leg, you know which one it is. So I was trying to figure out, why would the Lord single out eunuchs?

But it's very simple. He's not a complete member of the society in which he's joined.

That's very good, that's right.

But he is in faith.

Yeah, and he, I think, is prototypical of someone who feels less than and someone who just feels like an outsider. I can't be fully a part, I'm not as valuable. And he's somebody who's wounded, has a deep soul wound.

As we talked about the faint-hearted in 1 Thessalonians 4, which meant small-souled, somebody who's just broken and damaged and hurt. God is saying, come to me, I can complete you. I can satisfy your desires.

I can give you what this world cannot give you. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Again, the parallelism and the irony that he's been cut, he's lost, but his name will last forever.

Okay, then going on to verses six to eight. And the foreigners, so here we have people.

Who aren't even Israelites.

Jonah would have nothing of that, right?

Not Nineveh, they're foreigners,.

And not only that, they hate Israel. God could have no love for them in the mind of Jonah. But guys, we have to apply this to our lives as well, because even the Old Testament is fully written for us as well, that we can be instructed by it.

So are there people who are cast off that look like there's no way they would ever become a Christian?

Well, they're not Christians,.

So we have no business judging that, right? What we do is we offer them grace to come and believe and be forgiven and saved, and all the promises that come with the gospel. We have good news to offer, and we should have hearts that are burning, even for those who look like they're the most foreign to us.

They're not necessarily the wolves. So the wolves in the church are something different. We're gonna see this in verses nine to 12. But the foreigner here is just somebody, he's outside, he doesn't know.

Well, even the Gentiles.

Yeah, the Gentiles.

In this context, the Gentile would be the foreigner.

Correct, yeah.

Yeah, this is the Gentile. So the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord to minister to them, to love the name of the Lord. See, there is repentance and turning to God, and to be his servants. Everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it and holds fast my covenant.

See, the Sabbath here is like a metonym. It's one smaller thing that stands in place of the more. One example of what it would be to be, in our context, to become a Christian. In that context, to become an Israelite.

To come and fall under the covenant of God.

Become a covenant keeper.

You might be a Moabitess, but if you wanna come and shelter in Israel and obey the Sabbath and therefore all the law, you're gonna be an obedient, almost as if you were born in Israel, grafted in, he's welcoming them.

That's what he's saying.

Everyone who keeps the Sabbath, foreigners too, and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain.

Wow.

And make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar. And here's that beautiful line that we're all familiar with. From my house shall we call a house of prayer for all peoples.

And I think the stress here is not so much on prayer, because when Jesus came, he rebuked them for making it a den of thieves when it should have been a house of prayer. But in the context here, what Isaiah's saying.

Is it's for all people.

Foreigners too, eunuchs, whoever wants to come, may come.

It's this open, warm invitation.

So that's what's happening. From my house shall be called a house of prayer.

For all peoples.

Yeah, the key phrase, I think, is in verse three, where he says, for all those who have joined themselves.

To me.

Yeah, that's it. All those, yeah. And then in verse eight, he underscores it so that we can't miss the big point, right? The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts. Remember David had a band of outcasts, nobody else wanted him.

But David said, hey, come run with me. And this band of brothers were the outcasts of society. They rallied to David. How much more so the son of David, the king of kings?

Did David want David's mighty men?

Some of them might have been.

There were 30 of them. 30 might have been, yeah. But I think there were 600 that joined David.

I'm pretty sure there were 600.

About, yeah, right, about that, yeah.

You guys would know all about that because you just saw David at Sight and Sound.

Yeah.

So it says, who gathers the outcasts of Israel. I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered. What do you think that's referring to? We're at the end of verse eight.

I'll take a stab and think it's the Levites at this point.

Okay.

They'd be separated out.

Well, they're separate in that they don't have an inheritance of land, but they're esteemed in Israel. They're actually the, they're up there.

I go to the barrage piece where the master keeps sending the servants, bring more, bring more, bring more, and until somebody finally shows up who's not worthy and he throws him out because he came unworthily, but it's that measure, like Rich said, going back to verse three, having that heart towards God, but he is continually called.

Yeah.

Even through the book of Revelation, he's still called.

Yeah.

It's a great verse.

I think this has a gospel missionary picture to it. Here you have Israel and the outcasts of Israel in verse eight. The Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel declares, I will gather yet others. Who said the Gentiles earlier, Bob?

This again is the foreigner, the Gentile. The idea here is salvation to the ends of the earth. Remember in the trial of false gods when he, where Yahweh says, it's too small a thing that you would gather the house of Israel, but my salvation shall go to the ends of the earth.

Yeah.

This is the gospel now going to the ends of the earth to rescue all of those who will come, not just Israel. So I think that's what's happening. Verse eight, the outcasts of Israel, and I will gather yet others to him.

It's a picture of what happens in Acts chapter two, where all the nations, and they're Jewish people at first, but then it goes beyond to the Gentiles, to the whole known world. Okay, so now there's a stark change of theme right here at verse nine, because he's welcoming the sinners and the prostitutes as Jesus did, but how did Jesus deal with the Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees, the chief priests?

It's pretty hard, right? Read Matthew 23. Well, all of a sudden, the sites now turn to the beasts of the field, because here's a very important note, and this is important for us in a season of growth in this church.

We're gathering and gathering. Everybody is welcome and coming, but when you see a church growing, Satan sees it, too, and when the world sees things, you know, taking land and building buildings, guess who's gonna show up when we build a new building?

The evil one.

Well, yeah, there's gonna be Satan.

There'll be new people coming,.

And some of those people will be there because so many new people are coming. They'll be beasts, wolves in sheep's clothing. Whenever you have people gathering in his name, you're also going to have worldly people looking to take advantage of that.

Hey, here's a chance for power, for influence, and that's what happens here.

Look at verse nine.

So you have the gathering of the nations in verses three to eight.

Now look at verse nine.

All you beasts of the field come to devour. Didn't expect that, did you? He's just gathering the eunuchs and the foreigners and the outcasts, and then all you beasts of the field come to devour all you beasts in the forest.

Okay, why did he just say that? This is why we have to keep reading, right?

Thank you, next verse.

The next verse is gonna help us see.

Read it for us. Read 10 to 12.

Okay, Israel's watchmen are blind. They all lack knowledge. They are all mute dogs. They cannot bark. They lie around and dream. They love to sleep. They are dogs with mighty appetites. They never have enough.

They are shepherds who lack understanding. They all turn to their own way. They seek their own game. Come, each one cries, let me get wine. Let us drink our fill of beer, and tomorrow will be like today, or even far better.

Not true at all.

Not true at all.

I trust you.

Well, in verse nine, he calls on the beasts to come. Not because God wants his people devoured, but his point is, hey, the beasts will come, and you might as well throw the doors wide open because the watchman on the wall is not watching.

The guard dog is not barking. The shepherd has no staff, and he has no discernment. He has no knowledge. All of this refers to the same person. The watchman, the dog, the shepherd is the leader,.

The leaders of Israel.

These were the ones, Levites and priests, and the prophets.

Teachers of the law.

Yeah, teachers of the law. Remember the prophets when Micaiah was a righteous prophet and he told what would happen if he went to war? A whole band of prophets were surrounding, mocking him, slap him in the face, throw him in jail.

There was one prophet telling the truth, but all the rest of them were liars. And of all the kings, how many of the kings were leading well? In the south, less than 50%. In the north, 0 .0%. None of them were righteous.

So kings, prophets, priests, they're not leading. So what were they failing at?

This reminds me of previously when he used Babylon and he used Assyria to come in and kind of purify the nation. I think it's the same kind of idea. Come in, you beasts of the field. You're not part of my kingdom, but I'm gonna use you to help purify this nation.

Yeah, well, it's almost a bit of a lament that the beasts are gonna come and kill here. But yeah, even in the terrible things that happened, when the beasts come, God has a plan and a purpose. He has one purpose that he's working, even while they have a different agenda.

That's that Isaiah 10 idea. But this is more of a rebuke. Look at verse 10. His watchmen are blind. That's the idea. Might as well just not have a watchman. If he can't see, here comes a wolf just trotting up to the sheepfold and the watchman is, he can't see anyway.

He's blind. It's a spiritual blindness here. They are without knowledge. They are all silent dogs. I have a little dog and she loves people. So when people come to the front door, she can run right out and she'll just jump up.

But the same person who came to the front door, who's gonna work on the pool,.

She greeted him.

But then when she looked out and saw him walk into the backyard,.

That's where people aren't supposed to be.

She's growling and showing her teeth and barking.

You know, let me out.

But you like him.

She didn't recognize him. But the point is, a good dog doesn't like people just milling around in the backyard, especially at night, right? What if you had a dog where a burglar came walking in and just the dog just lays back down and falls asleep?

Is that a good watchdog?