The Oracle Against Moab: God's Justice in Light of His Mercy

Please turn to Psalm number 16. Psalm 16—or excuse me, not

Psalm 16, Isaiah 16. So last time

I preached on Isaiah, we looked at the oracle of Moab, and now we're going to finish the oracle of Moab.

Last time we looked at God's mercy in light of his justice, that even though he is just, he is still merciful.

And we see him weeping over the very thing he's destroying. And this week we're going to be looking at the opposite.

We're going to be looking at God's justice in light of his mercy. Even though he is merciful, we cannot presume upon his mercy because he is still just.

So let me fix these cords underneath me for a second, and then I will read this text beginning in verse 6.

For the fields of Heshbon languish, in the vine of Sidma, the lords of the nations have struck down its branches, which reached to Jazar, and strayed to the desert, its shoots spread abroad and passed over the sea.

Excuse me. I meant to start at verse 6. We have heard of the pride of Moab, how proud he is of his arrogance, his pride, and his insolence, and his idol boasting he is not right.

Therefore let Moab wail for Moab. Let everyone wail, mourn, utterly stricken for the raisin cakes of Kier Haraseth.

For the fields of Heshbon languish, in the vine of Sidma, the lords of the nations have struck down its branches, which reached to Jazar, and strayed to the desert, its shoots spread abroad and passed over the sea.

Therefore I weep with the weeping of Jazar, for the vine of Sidma. I drench you with my tears,

O Heshbon and Elilah, for over your summer fruit and your harvest the shout has ceased, and joy and gladness are taken away from the fruitful field, and in the vineyards no songs are sung, no cheers are raised, no treader treads out wine in the presses.

I have put an end to the shouting. Therefore my inner parts moan like a liar for Moab, and my inmost self for Kier Haraseth.

And when Moab presents himself, when he wearies himself on his high place, on the high place, when he comes to a sanctuary to pray, he will not prevail.

This is the word that the Lord has spoke concerning Moab in the past. But now the Lord has spoken, saying, in three years, like the years of a hired worker, the glory of Moab will be brought into contempt, in spite of all his great multitude, and those who remain will be very few and feeble.

Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would bless the reading of your word and the proclamation of it. I ask that you would expose to us those truths here that are plain on the surface and those that are not plain on the surface, that they would reach our hearts and they would change our lives and they would transform us to be more like your

Son, Jesus Christ. I pray that you would accomplish all these things for your glory.

In Jesus' name, amen. So as we look at this passage, which is about the sin of presumption, we have to ask—we have to ask ourselves about whether or not we have been presumptuous, whether or not we have presumed upon the mercy of God.

There are many people in the world who live their lives as though they will never die. And by that,

I do not mean they think they won't die or that they live risky lives because they think there's nothing to fear.

No, a lot of people are very cautious and very scared of death. And yet, at the same time, they choose to store up for themselves as though these are things that they will have forever.

They choose to build up themselves and build up their possessions as though there is not a certain end.

And so you have this odd cognitive dissonance where people recognize that they will die and they're very fearful of death.

And yet they behave as though they can somehow escape it, as though somehow because the

Lord has been merciful to them for these years of their life, he will continue to be merciful indefinitely.

And yet that is not the case. We know that even though God is merciful for a season, for those who do not have his mercy covenanted to them, meaning contractually bound to them, they will not have his mercy forever.

They will only have it for a season. So as we as we look at this passage, we see

Isaiah addresses that sin of presumption. And we'll see him speak of the sin and the judgment, the sin and the punishment of Moab.

And then we'll see him talk about the mourning and the justice of God. That even though God is merciful, even though you see him crying over this people that he will destroy, he will still destroy him because he is still just.

We should not be like those who who know that God is love and proclaim his love and then have no concept of how that how that reaches his justice.

He is still just. Verse 6, We have heard of the pride of Moab, how proud he is of his arrogance, his pride, and his insolence, and his idle boasting he is not right.

So here you have Moab, this nation, that is proud, is arrogant.

It thinks that it will continue on, that by its military strength it will be able to fight off any foe that comes against it, that will be able to withstand any trial.

But these things are all idle boasting. You know other translations say vain boasting, that there is nothing behind them.

They're all bark with no bite. Visibly, it may look as though Moab is a very strong nation.

It may look as though these things are true. If you've tallied up the numbers of armies, perhaps it was the case that Moab had human reasons to make such boast.

But in the end, God is sovereign, and he determines the way that nation shall go.

He determines where boundary lines are drawn. And so, this boasting is simply pride.

It is idle boasting. It is vain boasting. You know, we saw earlier in Isaiah that Assyria, making the similar boast, was described as an axe in the hand of God, right?

Assyria did not realize. It thought that it was strong and mighty because of the way it was being wielded. But it was just an axe.

An axe can't do anything by itself. It needs an arm to wield it. Likewise, Moab is not recognizing

God's power, God's sovereignty. And so it makes—this nation makes idle boasts.

And this is what every person is inclined to do. Every person is inclined to boast idly on their own strength and their own ability.

And maybe this doesn't resonate you. Maybe you don't think of everyone as being inherently boastful. I mean,

I know plenty of people who are not even Christians who, in a lot of respects, are more humble than I am.

Pride is something I struggle with. But if you think about this, think about the one who, you know, lives a typical life, has a typical job, dies a typical death, and has not called on the mercy of the

Lord. Is that person proud or is he humble? If he thinks he will somehow escape the punishment that comes after death without trusting in the mercy of God, he is not humble.

He is proud. If you think of the most timid, shriveled, grandmother figure that you can, who does not know the

Lord Jesus Christ and has not trusted in him, has never made, you know, a single boast like we might think of a boast.

That person is likewise an idle boaster, is likewise a vain boaster, because she is one who thinks that she might escape the punishment that is to come.

But there is no escaping except that we have God's mercy.

We need his mercy. And apart from that, there is no hope. Verse 7 says,

Therefore, let Moab wail for Moab. Let everyone wail. Mourn utterly stricken for the raisin cakes of Kir Haraseth, for the fields of Heshbon Languish, and the vine of Sibma.

The lords of the nations have struck down its branches, which reached to Djezer, and strayed to the desert.

Its shoots spread abroad and passed over the sea. So here you have the statement, let

Moab wail for Moab. Let Moab finally realize that its boasts are idle, that its boasts are vain.

When this punishment comes, Moab will realize, and Moab will wail.

Speaks of raisin cakes of Kir Haraseth. Grapes in the Bible are frequently used as a symbol of prosperity, a symbol of joy.

Raisin cakes being, you know, you have so many raisins, you put them together in a cake, and you're able to pass them out dried.

I was reading in First Chronicles recently, this is what David did when the

Ark of the Covenant made its way to Jerusalem. David, in celebration, gave everyone who attended a raisin cake.

And you see more statements about grapes, for the fields of Heshbon Languish, and the vine of Sibma.

So vine being, you know, grapes. The lords of the nations have struck down its branches.

So it's imagining that this nation of Moab is like a vine, this fruitful vine that's spread all over the nation.

It's gone, Jazar, straight to the desert. That's like to the east. It's passed to the sea, that's to the west.

It's describing this vine that's gone every which way. But the nations have come, and they've struck

Moab. And so it is as though they have struck a vine at its root and cut it.

You know, this vine that's large. It's everywhere. You would think that it couldn't be destroyed, and yet they've cut it at its root, and there it's dying.

It's decaying. You know, I don't know how often I have seen this here, but since I was recently in the

East Coast, you know, a lot of places I would go, I'd see kudzu. If you've ever seen kudzu, you know, it just spreads over everything.

It's this vine that it doesn't just climb up a tree like some vines do, but it just spreads over the whole tree.

You know, all the leaves and everything, so that you can't see the tree underneath. You can only see the kudzu covering, you know, just this whole set of trees, like large trees and fields.

You might imagine that the kudzu couldn't be taken down. But here you have

God destroying such a prosperous, such a prosperous vine, such a prosperous branch.

So here you have the Lord destroying this proud people.

His mercy that was for a season is no more, and they have to reckon with that. These people want their joy now.

They boast in what they have now, and they are not inclined to look to the end.

But we must be looking to the end. We must be looking at what is to come. Jesus said whoever would seek his own life will lose it, but whoever would lose his life for Christ's sake would have it, would find their life.

You know, those who want to build up things for themselves in this world, they will eventually lose them.

Death is coming for every man. Death came for this nation as they stood against God. But those who would follow after the

Lord, those who would not boast against him, those who would come to him humbly declaring that they have nothing and that they only have him as their hope of salvation, those will find themselves gaining their own life.

There's an experiment known as the marshmallow experiment. I don't know if you've ever seen this, but basically you tell a child that— you give a child a marshmallow and you say, if you eat this marshmallow now, you know, you can have this marshmallow.

But if you don't eat it and you wait five minutes, I'll give you a whole bag of marshmallows. And so sometimes they'll leave the kid alone in the room so that, you know, they have time to think about how good this marshmallow will taste.

And most kids decide to eat the marshmallow. They can't wait.

And there are a few kids who don't eat the marshmallow and there have been studies done that show that, you know, this is an indicator of how successful this child will be in life, whether or not he's willing to deal with delayed gratification.

You know, those who have have focused on the things in this life and what they have now and are not looking to the future of what

God is offering, they will not prosper. They must practice delayed gratification, trusting in the

Lord, and knowing that what we have here is not sufficient. You know, I saw an atheist once talking about this experiment, and his takeaway from this he applied this to Christianity, and his takeaway was, you know,

Christians are like those who want the marshmallow now. They want all the easy answers now. But, you know, there just aren't easy answers.

You have to work for those with science. I could not believe what he was saying because it is exactly the opposite.

It's the world who wants the pleasures of this world now. And the one who follows after God that recognizes that the pleasures of this world now are only for a season, and the pleasures that are to come are forever, and we must serve the

Lord. We must deny ourselves and follow Him because He is merciful to those who have trusted in His mercy.

Verse 9. No cheers are raised.

No treader treads out wine in the presses. I've put an end to the shouting. Therefore, my inner parts moan like a liar for Moab, my inmost self for Kir Haraseth.

So, a lot of cities are mentioned here. There's not too much to note about these cities other than they are major cities.

A lot of them are towards the north of Moab. But here, once again, as we had previous time, we have a statement of God weeping,

God mourning. You know, the nation is sinned, they will be punished, and yet He mourns for them.

He weeps with the weeping of Jaser. He weeps the same way that they weep. He drenches them with His tears.

Joy and gladness are taken away. Remember, once again, that fruit, that fruit of the vine, grapes, representative of joy.

And in the vineyards, no song are sung, no cheers are raised. His innermost parts like a liar for Moab, and His inmost self for Kir Haraseth.

You know, once again, as we talked about several weeks ago when I preached on the earlier part of this passage, God cares for His creation,

His creation, especially humanity, humanity being made in the image of God. He cares for, and so He does not rejoice in the death of the wicked, as Scripture says.

Scripture says that He mourns over the death of the wicked, and yet, at the same time,

He is just. We cannot presume upon His mercy. Look who it is that puts an end to the shouting.

You know, before it says, before it said that the shouting had ceased, and it's just a statement that, oh, this thing happened, you know, the nations have come.

But now we see who is responsible for ending the shouting. It's not the nations who have come against Moab.

It is God Himself. I have put an end to the shouting. I think it was, well,

I'm sure there's lots of stories like this, but R .C. Sproul told of a time when he, while he was a professor, and he gave, he had a class that did poorly on a test, and so he graded on a curve, or he was lenient with the deadline.

I forget the details. And then that happened again, and he was lenient again, and the final exam came, and everyone had come to presume upon His mercy.

And when they didn't have the thing ready in time, and he didn't extend their deadline, they were shocked. They were, they were appalled that he would do this to them.

You know, the first time they were incredibly thankful that they had come to expect this from him. Let us not be like this with God.

He is merciful, but He has declared that His mercy is only for a season and is uncovenanted to those who have not trusted in the

Lord. You know, covenant is a contract. It is an agreement. God does not owe anyone mercy.

He does not owe a single soul mercy. But He has condescended to make a contract with those who have trusted in Him, so that He gives them what they do not deserve, and cannot take it away, or else

He would be violating His own word. He would be breaking His own promise and destroying

His own truthful nature. And so we can trust, if there is anything that we can trust in the world, it is

God's word. And His covenants,

His covenant in mercy, is something that endures forever. But His uncovenant in mercy is not something that does.

Verse 12. And when Moab presents himself, when he wearies himself on the high place, when he comes to a sanctuary to pray, he will not prevail.

So it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how much God has mourned for that nation. The fact is,

He is still just. He will still destroy this nation when they go after other gods. Their boasting has failed.

They're boasting in themselves. They're boasting in their gods. It has all failed. This is the word that the

Lord spoke concerning Moab in the past. But now the Lord has spoken, saying, In three years, like the years of a hired worker, the glory of Moab will be brought into contempt in spite of all his great multitude, and those who remain will be very few and feeble.

So now God is bringing to pass. This is the word that the Lord spoke concerning Moab in the past. It's quite possible that that means that this prophecy, you know, the indented poetic text we see or hear about Moab, it's quite possible that Isaiah was not the original prophet who gave this.

A lot of these words are actually present in Jeremiah 48. And so Jeremiah is even— he even includes a lot of the same prophecy.

And it's obvious that, you know, Isaiah came long before Jeremiah. So they at least did not originate with Jeremiah.

And possibly they came even before Isaiah. But Isaiah includes this prophecy, and he lets us know

God spoke these things in the past, but now he is beginning to bring it to fruition. In three years, like the years of a hired worker, the glory of Moab will be brought into contempt.

Now, this is not a full fulfillment of the prophecy because the prophecy talks about for example, at the end of chapter 15, it talks about even the remnant being destroyed.

For the water's deep and full of blood, and I will bring upon deep and even more, a lion for those of Moab who escape for the remnant of the land.

He talks about the whole remnant of the land being destroyed. And eventually Moab does—is completely destroyed.

And given that Jeremiah cites a lot of the same prophecy, and Moab still wasn't destroyed by that time, this is talking about a partial fulfillment.

They will—those who remain will be very few and feeble. He will begin to destroy them, just as we saw in some of the other oracles.

We saw God promising a full destruction and bringing a partial destruction as a sign that that full destruction is coming.

Now, I think the thing to take away here is that God often works in this way, where he brings some signs, some partial destruction to show that that full destruction is coming.

And we see signs of that every day. We see signs of death and decay. We see the effects of sin every day.

And we ought not to look at those and just ignore them as though there's nothing we can do about them.

Each one of those things are calls to further repentance, to draw closer to the

Lord, to call upon his covenanted mercy. To abandon the practice of presuming upon God's mercy and thinking that he will be kind to us just because he is kind.

Well, he certainly is kind, but he has stated in his word that he is not kind in the same way to every person.

And if we want the fullness of his kindness, we must call upon him. You know, think about your own life and your own— you know, if you are not one who has called upon the

Lord for mercy, you must do this. You must find his mercy. If you are one that has, this is still an area for growth.

Consider, you know, every day you go about doing various tasks expecting that because this has been easy in the past,

God will continue to be merciful and this will be easy today or this will be easy tomorrow. We must go to the

Lord in prayer. We must go to the Lord in prayer. So ask yourself what your prayer life looks like.

Is it presumptuous? Are you presuming that God will continue to be merciful the way he has before and the things you go about doing, do not require prayer to have success?

Or do you bring all things to God knowing that he is the only source of prosperity?

He is the only source of success in any endeavor. It is only through the

Lord Jesus Christ that we can have mercy. It is only through his death, his burial, and his resurrection. Through trusting in that, we can have mercy.

Moab, because they did not trust in the Lord, they did not have that mercy. But yet there was a promise, if you remember from last week, there was a promise at the beginning of chapter 16.

Send the lamb to the ruler of the land from Sela by way of the desert to the mount of the daughter of Zion like fleeing birds, like a scattered nest, so are the daughters of Moab and the fords of the

Arnon. Give counsel, grant justice, make your shade like night at the height of noon, shelter the outcasts, do not reveal the fugitive, let the outcasts of Moab sojourn among you.

Be a shelter to them from the destroyer when the oppressor is no more and destruction has ceased and he who tramples underfoot has vanished from the land.

Then a throne will be established in steadfast love and on it will sit faithfulness in the tent of David, one who judges and seeks justice and is swift to do righteousness."

So in this statement about this, in this prophecy about God's concern, his mercy, and also his justice, we have this statement in the middle that promises how one may grasp hold of God's mercy.

Send a lamb to the ruler of the nation. In other words, send tribute, send— it's like taxation, right?

There's actually another scene in the Bible where Moab does give lambs to the king in Jerusalem.

This is a sign of coming to the king of the true city, to Jesus Christ, trusting in him for all things.

All the signs that you have, do not ignore them. There's a— what they'll do, a processor chip, you know, they'll overclock it and if it doesn't break, then they'll sell those, right?

But if they push it really hard and it breaks, then they can throw it away and know that's not good to sell. So even though they don't plan on running it that hard, eventually they will sell it.

They will do that first just to test it. You know, you can— you can see when things are breaking in your life, when you do not have

God's favor, you can tell that you are in a world filled with sin and death and you can ignore those things or you can look at them as signs to go to God for mercy, to bring everything to him in prayer.

And I pray that you would. I pray that you would not presume upon the mercy of God, but you would go to him in prayer, trusting in his

Son alone for salvation, in his mercy alone for anything you might put your hand to.

Dear Heavenly Father, you are a kind and merciful God to every single person that exists, things that they have they do not deserve.

But yet you have—you have made it clear that that mercy is only for a season. I pray that you would cause those people hearing this message who have not come to you for your covenanted mercy, for that promise, that contractual obligation that secures your mercy forever,

I pray that they would. And God, I ask that you would, for those of us who have already come to you, that we would not presume upon your mercy.

I pray that we would go to you in prayer, not with idle boasting, thinking that we would— that we would secure our own success in this life or in the next, but that we would— anything that we have, that would come by your will and by your favor.