Remembering the Lord

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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It's pretty Yeah Good afternoon everyone just a couple of announcements once again our

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Upcoming members excuse me our upcoming workday. We'll have a brief members meeting at the end of it.

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That is on August 6 you'll be getting the agenda for that shortly and Secondly for all those who are involved in Sunday school or soon will be involved in Sunday school

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We're gonna have a brief meeting right after this service. So please stick around for that Call us to worship today with Isaiah 12

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Verse 4 and you will say in that day give thanks to the Lord call upon his name

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Make known his deeds among the peoples proclaim that his name is exalted Sing praises to the

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Lord for he has done gloriously Let this be made known in all the earth Shout and sing for joy

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Oh inhabitant of Zion for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel Amen, please turn in your hymnal to number

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Excuse me to number 587 like a river glorious You may remain seated as we sing number 587

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Like a river

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Glorious is God's perfect peace Perfect yet it flow

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For every day Perfect yet it grow with deeper all the way.

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Stood upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blessed.

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Finding as He promised perfect peace and rest.

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Hidden in the love of His blessed hand never foe can follow, never traitor stand.

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Not a surge of worry, not a shade of care, not a blast of hurry, touch the

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Spirit there. Stood upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blessed.

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Finding perfect peace and rest.

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Every joy or trial traced upon our dial, the

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Son of Love. We may trust

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Him wholly, all for us to do.

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They who trust Him wholly, find

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Him wholly true. Stood upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blessed.

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Finding as He promised perfect peace and rest.

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Amen. Well, turn in your Bible to Isaiah 26. We'll begin in verse 12 and we'll continue on to verse 15.

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Go ahead and read all of 7 to 15. When you have that, please stand for the reading of God's Word.

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Isaiah 26, beginning in verse 7. The path of the righteous is level. You make level the way of the righteous.

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In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you. Your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul.

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My soul yearns for you in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks you. When your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

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If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness. In the land of uprightness, he deals corruptly and does not see the majesty of the

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Lord. O Lord, your hand is lifted up, but they do not see it. Let them see your zeal for your people and be ashamed.

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Let fire for your adversaries consume them. O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for you have indeed done all our works.

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O Lord, our God, other lords besides you have rolled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance.

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They are dead, they will not live. They are shades, they will not arise. To that end you have visited them with destruction and wiped out all remembrance of them.

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But you have increased the nation, O Lord. You have increased the nation. You are glorified. You have enlarged all the borders of the land.

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You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.

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We thank you for the guidance it gives. We thank you for the hope that it gives. We thank you for its instruction.

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We ask that you would give us grace that we might follow that instruction. And Lord, I pray that you would bring to mind the remembrance of you, that we would remember you all our days.

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In Jesus' name, amen. Well, in this section, we've been seeing the

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Lord uphold his people. Isaiah's been talking about the Lord's upholding of his people.

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And we've been seeing God's sovereignty over man, God's sovereignty to save his people and the implications that has.

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For example, the wicked do not learn from what God does.

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They don't learn from his favor because they do not see the sovereignty of the Lord. However, the righteous do learn from God's favor because they see the sovereignty of the

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Lord. And so following that thinking, this passage, this second part of the section here, speaks specifically of remembering the

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Lord, that God's people are people who remember him. Why do we gather week by week to pray, to sing, to hear

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God's word? It's to remember who he is. We are a forgetful people. And apart from doing these things, there is no remembrance of God.

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And why is it that week after week, we celebrate the Lord's Supper? As Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me.

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The Lord is to be remembered. He is to be remembered because he is a good God, he's a holy

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God, and he has granted us a great salvation. And so this remembrance of him is indeed a duty, but it is also a great joy for us to participate in.

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I'd like us to think about this remembrance as we look here, that one,

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God is worth being remembered, and two, contenders, other gods, other kings, are not worth being remembered.

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Those two things, God is worth being remembered, others are not worth being remembered. We begin here in verse 12.

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O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for you have indeed done for us all our works.

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God has ordained for us peace. Peace. Particularly in the context of Israel, this spoke of physical peace.

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Nations, warring against nations, Israel, this small nation, Judah, this small half of a nation, being attacked by various enemies, never quite certain of its safety, but God has ordained peace that they might be secure in the land.

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And for us, God has ordained peace for all those who trust in Jesus Christ.

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There is a great peace to be had through Jesus Christ. If you are plagued by anxiety about your week, whatever it may be, you can always go to Jesus Christ and know that God has ordained peace for us through him.

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Now, just sit there and think for a second about what stresses you out. I imagine it's almost every single person here has stresses, serious stresses, through their week that distract them from Jesus Christ, that give them the anxiety.

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How do you deal with those? You take them to Christ. You take them to him. You take them to him in prayer. You take them to him by remembering who he is and the reading of his word.

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And the more you remember who God is, and the more you remember that he is in control over your situation, the less you are plagued by anxiety because he has ordained a perfect peace.

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The enemy has been destroyed. The enemy has been destroyed. If God has given his own son, how much more will he give us all things?

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We can have perfect peace. And moreover, he speaks of ordaining this peace.

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For you have indeed done for us all our works. This peace is not just something

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God tries to give us. It is something he has sovereignly ordained, that he has secured.

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In fact, he has done for us all our works. This follows from what has been said before.

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In verse eight, in the paths of your righteousness, O Lord, we wait for you. In verse seven, the path of the righteous is level.

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You make level the way of the righteous. God makes judgments for the righteous. He makes a level path for the righteous.

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He has accomplished everything that will go before them. He has plowed the path ahead. And in verse six, the foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy.

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Who are the poor that inherit the earth? It is the ones who come to Jesus Christ, looking to him for mercy, who recognize that the riches that they have amount to nothing, recognize that whatever they have, it cannot save them.

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They are the ones who come to Christ for mercy. And so who are the poor whose feet trample over God's enemies?

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It's God accomplishing his victory through his people. God has ordained all our works for us.

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It says this very clearly in Ephesians 2 .10, where it says that he has prepared works beforehand for us to walk in them.

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God has prepared the way for the believer. You know, it's pretty often that in speaking to someone about their situation, them recognizing what

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God has called them to, feeling overwhelmed that they are not capable of the task at hand.

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They make all kinds of excuses and they say, oh, but, you know, this won't work out or that won't work out.

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But if God has ordained that path, if God has prepared these works beforehand, then the right answer isn't just to throw up your hands and say, well, what can you do?

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No, the answer is to recognize that God has provided everything you need in order to follow his will.

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He has provided everything you need. He does not hand his children over to temptation that they cannot bear.

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This is what it says in 1 Corinthians 10 .13, that there is no temptation that can overtake you, that God will not bear you up against, that God will not supply you for.

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You have everything you need in order to resist every temptation.

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You have everything you need to follow every one of God's commands that he has given. So, that is all the more reason to not be anxious.

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If God has so richly provided for the flowers of the field, for the birds, how much more has he provided for his own children?

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And so, Isaiah says in verse 13,

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O Lord our God, other lords beside you have ruled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance.

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God is worth being remembered, because he has ordained peace, he is worthy of our remembrance of him.

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We should gather week after week. We should read his word. We should come to him in prayer. He is worthy to be remembered because he has ordained this peace.

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Other lords have ruled over us. Other nations have ruled over the people of Israel.

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Those nations and their gods along with them. You know, it's right to come to God and confess this truth.

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Others have ruled over us. We have gone to others for help, and they have failed us.

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We have gone to ourselves. We have gone to others that we've had a relationship with that we thought would give us peace and security.

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We have gone to political leaders, all sorts of things. Those things have ruled over us.

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We have gone to them for peace and found none. Confess your sin to the Lord, and then acknowledge that you alone we will bring to remembrance.

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You know, this is a prophetic passage. It talks about, in the very beginning of this chapter, in that day.

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You know, it speaks of this coming time of peace in reference to Isaiah's day.

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And we've spoken about how God has built the city of Zion in his church. Now, if that is the case, and if we are to bring remembrance to him, and we bring remembrance only to him, and if you think about the people of Israel who all throughout their history had served all kinds of different gods, never followed

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God, and it's speaking of bringing remembrance to God alone. What is that talking about?

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It's talking about God reforming his people so that they alone, so that they worship him alone.

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This is talking about what he has accomplished in the church. This is talking about the prophecy of Jeremiah 31.

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This is talking about what Hebrews 8 quotes. Hebrews 8, verse 10 says,

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For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws into their minds,

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I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach each one his neighbor, and to each one his brother, saying,

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Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.

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God has accomplished a salvation for his people so that it's not like in the land of Israel where you have all these people a part of this covenant, some of them having this eternal peace, others not having an eternal peace, others secretly serving other gods.

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The church, this new covenant people, is a people who have this in full.

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They shall not teach each one his neighbor, saying, Know the Lord. Why would the people in Israel have to teach each one

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Know the Lord? Because some of them don't. But God's new covenant people all know the Lord. If this isn't clicking with you, what

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I'm saying, consider this. This is why we're Baptists. This is why we baptize believers.

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Because the new covenant people are not a mixed people where some know the Lord and some don't know the

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Lord. The new covenant people, this people Isaiah's prophesying, Jeremiah's prophesying, are a people who know the

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Lord. Now, we may not perfectly discern who those people are.

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We may not, not every person we baptize is necessarily someone who does truly know the

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Lord. There's no guarantee that us as pastors or us as a people are going to perfectly discern these things.

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But given what the Bible says about the new covenant, given that as a people who ceases to serve other gods, this is why we include into membership those who have a credible testimony.

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This is part of the hope that the Old Testament gives. If you haven't seen that before, it's something worth considering, especially that prophecy in Jeremiah 31 that Hebrews 8 is quoting, that all throughout

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Israel's history, part of the problem is that there are mixed people. There are people who, while nationally very unified, in terms of their actual honoring of God versus honoring of idols, you have people who are going after other idols.

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And yet God forms for himself a people who now diverse nationally, now diverse ethnically, but serving one

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God alone. There's something else that's worth noting in this passage, and that is there's a subtle clue into the deity of Christ here.

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It says, your name alone we bring to remembrance. The Bible speaks often of the name of Jesus as being above every other name.

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If God's name alone is the one that we are to bring to remembrance, what does that say about the name that is above every name?

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What does that say about Jesus Christ? He is God. If his name alone we are to bring to remembrance, if God's name alone we are to bring to remembrance, how could

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Jesus have the name above every names unless he is himself God? This is establishing what this new covenant community will look like.

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It will not be mixed people anymore. It will be people who follow after God alone in his name, and who has that name?

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It is Jesus Christ. We keep our focus on him. The reason we have such a focus on Jesus Christ, and even as opposed to the

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Father, as opposed to the Spirit, why is it that we speak of Jesus Christ even more than the other persons of the

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Trinity, not because Jesus is higher than the other persons of the Trinity, but God has revealed himself through Jesus Christ that we may remember him.

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This focus of remembrance is found in him, that we are to remember him specifically, that he is the image of the invisible

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God, that we might know God, who is invisible. If you're wondering how you should remember

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God, know that he is to be remembered through Jesus Christ. This is one of the problem with many of modern worship songs, not that...

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Yeah, I mean, you see we sing hymns here, not opposed to modern worship songs just because they're...

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Yeah, just for modernity's sake. But a lot of modern worship, not all of it, but a lot of it, has nothing to do with truly remembering

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God, because it's not truly founded in remembering Jesus Christ. It just talks vaguely of God, says something that almost any religion could say about God.

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How can you remember God if you're just speaking abstractly of him in a way that any religion can?

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The way we are called to remember God is by remembering him through the image of the invisible

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God. We are to remember him through Jesus Christ. And our worship should have a focus on Jesus Christ.

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It should speak concretely of the salvation that we have experienced. It should have a focus on him.

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And just as one other thought on this, I don't know how many of you follow this sort of thing online or know who

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Jordan Peterson is, but there was a video that was very popular recently where he was, you know, he's a conservative thinker.

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He had a video that's called A Message to Churches, and he tells everyone that basically churches need to encourage young men to follow after tradition, follow after the traditions that they have in their culture, and this will give them stability as opposed to, you know, being unstable in a world that is unstable.

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There's a lot of truth to that. However, what is the problem with having a remembrance of a

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God without knowing who that God truly is?

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You can't, you can't, uh, you can't just have this religion of Pharisees where you, uh, through tradition remember who

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God is but don't know him as Savior. Why is it that God has to be remembered?

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Because he is the one that has saved them. You know, over and over it speaks of remembrance and his name in the context of salvation.

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Last week we looked at how God revealed his name to his people in the context of salvation, in the context of Exodus 3, where he's about to take the people out of the land of Egypt.

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You know, apart from a real salvation, there is no real remembrance of God.

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People might see a lot of stability in religion. They might think that that is a true remembrance of God, is going through the, the, uh, the various steps and ceremonies, but that is not a true remembrance of God.

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A true remembrance of him knows who he is, knows who he is through his son and through that salvation that the son provides.

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It continues on. They are dead. They will not live. They are shades.

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They will not arise. To that end you have visited them with destruction and wiped out all remembrance of them.

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Now this is speaking of the other lords that have ruled over them. This is speaking, uh, primarily of kings, but in association with the gods that are associated with those kings.

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Those kings have ruled over them, but now those kings are dead. Those kings are not worthy of honor.

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It is God who's worthy of honor. God is worthy of remembrance. Other kings are not worthy of remembrance.

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They're dead. There's nothing to them. You know, anything you have put your trust in that is not Jesus Christ, if it has not failed you now, yet, it will.

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And you will be, you will be ashamed that you had put your trust in that thing. It is only trusting in Jesus Christ that leads to anything.

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Uh, you know, I was thinking recently a lot about, uh, Roman Catholicism because I've been talking to a friend about Roman Catholicism and just consider what the applications here from this verse are in light of the practices of Rome.

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They are dead. They will not live. They are shades. They will not arise. You have visited them with destruction, wiped out all remembrance of them.

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Now, this is speaking of other lords, but what does that have to say, this contrast between death and the living

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God? What does that have to say about prayer to dead saints? Why would someone bring to remembrance the dead in such a way that contends with the

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Lord? We should pray alone to God. He is the only one who can help us. The dead cannot help us.

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In fact, and it still blows my mind that this goes unnoticed, Deuteronomy 18 speaks of, necromancy speaks of any attempt to communicate with the dead as being an abomination to the

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Lord. It is an abomination. It's not just oh, that's foolish, they can't hear you. It is an abomination.

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Look at the things that Scripture calls an abomination. They're pretty high -handed, horrendous things.

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Prayer to saints is not some cute little folly.

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It is instead, it is a high -handed offense against God. It is witchcraft. You know,

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I thought about trying to come up with some illustration where I tell you about someone who had been part of some war somewhere, and had lost the war, and I ask you if you know who he is, and then you say no, because you didn't, because you forget who the loser is.

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You only remember the winner, and God is the winner. But then I realized, well, I can't think of one because they don't get recorded.

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You know? The losers, the absolute losers, the ones who are not worth any kind of remembrance, they don't contribute anything, they're not even recorded in a book for me to go find them to give you that illustration of.

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There's no use following anything else, because on that last day, only

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God will be remembered. There's no use remembering anything else. There's no use giving honor to anything else, trusting in anything else, because only

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God and Jesus Christ who save. But you have increased the nation,

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O Lord. You have increased the nation, you are glorified. You have enlarged all the borders of the land.

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And so Isaiah here closes with the same thing that he had began with, speaking of God's peace for the nation, speaking of the fact that God has prospered the nation and grown it.

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You know, that's what peace represents. It doesn't just represent a lack of war, but it also represents a time of prosperity.

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When there's no peace, the people are able to develop, they are able to grow, they are able to expand, and so God increases the nation.

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This speaks of general prosperity, speaks of an increase in God's people themselves and the number of the people.

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Now how was this ever fulfilled? Did the nation of Israel ever expand in size?

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This is fulfilled through the Gentiles coming into the kingdom of God. This is a prophecy of the gospel.

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In saying that God has enlarged the borders of the land, has he not enlarged the borders of the land? Where can you draw boundaries around the kingdom of God?

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At this point, it's not a particular land, it's not a particular country.

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It is everywhere where people gather in his name and that has expanded all over the globe and it continues to expand.

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This is something that God has accomplished in a mighty, mighty measure. And that is something so worth remembering, so worth celebrating.

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You know, if someone gave you free land, don't you think you'd be very happy with that and you'd you know, occasionally thank them for this.

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God has given us more than, you know, one of these million dollar plots in this neighborhood.

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He has given us something of so much more value. This ever increasing kingdom, this family that is growing and growing, it is a wonderful, rich treasure.

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Turn your eyes to Jesus Christ. See him as the one who grants all these things.

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The one who is to be remembered. Forget everything else that you place your trust in.

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Forget everything else that you think is going to take care of your anxiety and turn to him.

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Remember him. It is only he who has provided all these things and as he has provided all these things, he is worth being remembered.

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And as you remember him more and more, you will find this peace more and more. As you realize that nothing else is a true contender.

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Nothing else offers peace. Nothing else is worth remembering. Let's pray.

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Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you for the wonderful salvation that you've provided in him.

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We thank you that you have grown the boundaries of your kingdom beyond a single nation to cover the nations of the world and that we are included in this as you have given us a great salvation.

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We pray that you would give us a great joy that we would remember you frequently, appreciating you and loving every moment of this remembrance.