“My Plans Are MY Plans?” – FBC Morning Light (7/8/2024)

Faith Baptist Church

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What a good Monday morning to you. We are starting off a new week. Hope you had a good day yesterday at God's house, worshiping with God's people.

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I trust you heard from God through His Word. And speaking of which, let's look into the

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Word today. We're reading today Isaiah chapters 8 through 10, as well as chapter 28.

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I want to focus on chapter 10 because in this chapter, God in His divine purposes gives us some insight into world affairs.

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Let me explain. He talks in Isaiah chapter 10 about the nation or the kingdom of Assyria that had been powerfully effective at destroying

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Israel, the northern tribes of Israel, taking them captive. And God tells us here that Israel was the rod of His anger, and the staff in whose hand was

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God's indignation. And the Lord says, I will send him against, that is,

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Assyria, against an ungodly nation, and against the people of my wrath.

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So what God is telling us, the insight that God is giving us here, is that He uses the nation of Assyria to bring judgment upon other nations, and particularly

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His own people Israel. Now, if God did not give us this perspective, there's no way we would know that.

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We would look at the, if we were living at the time, we would look at the affairs that are going on all around us, and just assume that this is the machination of, you know, military minds.

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The Assyrians say, we want to conquer. In fact, that's what they said later on, what the Lord tells us later on.

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It wasn't in Assyria's heart to be an instrument in God's hand, it was in his heart to destroy and cut off not a few nations.

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So what God's telling us is that, you know, from Assyria's standpoint, they just wanted to conquer territory.

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They had no clue that they were instruments in the hands of God to bring about judgment upon those whom

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God wanted to bring about judgment. Now, the reason I say that this passage gives us some great insight into world affairs is that we are limited, apart from this

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Bible, we're limited to look at what's going on in the world through the lens of the six o 'clock news, or whatever your news source, these days you get it 24 -7, but, you know, we're limited by those news outlets, you know, in the world.

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And, you know, we can read about the war in Ukraine, and what Russia's doing in Ukraine, what

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Ukraine's doing to Russia, we can read about the war in the Middle East with Israel against Hamas, and what's going on there, and so on and so forth.

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And the whole mess, if you will, is strictly interpreted through the lens of human ambition, what men are trying to accomplish, and what's happening to men because of what men are doing to men.

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But what this passage in Isaiah 10 does is it gives us some insight to realize that behind the machinations of military might there is a sovereign hand of God that uses those events, and uses those ambitions and machinations for his purposes.

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Sometimes he does so to bring judgment upon a nation or land, sometimes to bring chastening, sometimes to humble a people who were so proud, and so forth.

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The purposes are different, perhaps, but the point I want us to get today is not to wring our hands in despair over the seemingly destructive events in our world, in the conflicts that take place in our world.

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Should we be concerned about people who are hurt in those things? Absolutely, yes. Should we be concerned when those machinations are unjust?

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Yeah, absolutely. We should raise our voice against those things, and that can be one reason why

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God uses those things, to call out those who are crying for justice, to cry for justice and for righteousness.

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But the point is that I want us to see, who have God's Word, is that behind the events on the news, behind the machinations of military might, there is a sovereign hand of God who's using it all for his greater purposes.

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And you and I who know him, we can trust him, that he is doing it for good purposes, his good purposes, that maybe we'll see in the end, we may not see in our lifetime, but we can be confident that even as God says of the

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Assyrians, I will send him, he is the staff in my hand, he is the rod of my anger,

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I will give him charge and he will carry out my will and my purposes.

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And so shall the nations of the world today. So let's take comfort and encouragement in that today.

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Our Father and our God, we do thank you for this revelation of yourself and your working behind the scenes in human affairs.

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May we find confidence in it, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your