Well, good morning. We're moving
on from Luke today. Finished that up last time. And
today we're going to be in Isaiah, the book of Isaiah, for one week. And then, Lord willing, the next
time we meet for Bible class, we'll be taking a stroll through
the book of Daniel. And our text today is found in
Isaiah chapter 44. And it's interesting. A lot of the
book of Isaiah is kind of like Ephesians. It's just hard to
leap into it willy-nilly in some particular place. And we find
in chapter 43, The Lord's kind of lamenting
the state of His people in their natural condition. And in verse
22 of Isaiah 43, He says, But thou hast not called upon Me,
O Jacob, thou hast been weary of Me, O Israel. And He goes
on to say, You've not brought Me any sacrifices in the meaning
in which they were supposed to be. addressed and they've kind of
taken things that were supposed to be representative of the gospel
and changed them into something they
were not. And yet, we have such a wonderful beginning of grace in chapter
44, where our text is today. We're just going to look at chapter
44, verses 1 through 5, and we'll read that first. Yet, in spite of all of the fall
and sin, He says, Yet now hear, O Jacob, my servant, and Israel,
whom I have chosen. Thus saith the Lord that made
thee and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee. Fear not, O Jacob, my servant,
and thou, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen, for I will pour water
upon him that is thirsty. and floods upon the dry ground.
I will pour my spirit upon thy seed and my blessing upon thine
offspring, and they shall spring up as among the grass as willows
by the water courses. One shall say, I am the Lord's,
and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another
shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord and surname himself
by the name of Israel. And so he goes on and describes himself
in his unchanging immutable attributes and whatnot. But we're just going
to look at these first five verses because there's just a lot of
wonderful things in them. And Grace is always such a wonderful
story to tell. Grace is a is so interesting
how the Lord brings things to bear. And in the wonder of grace
in our text, there's a, again, as we often find in the Bible,
the use of metaphors and types and shadows and figures and uses
things that we're familiar with and puts them in a kind of a
spiritual context for us to to make that connection, to recognize
those things. And so in our text, there's a
type of the world in its natural form, kind of represented by
the grass. They shall spring up as among
the grass. And this This grass is seemingly
the, represents the vast majority of the human race, the unregenerate
and without hope, and yet grass seems to like flourish for a
season, except at my house where it's been incinerated by the
100 degree heat for a couple weeks. Not flourishing too well
there right now. in the midst of that grass, this
sea of humanity, the Lord and infinite grace by his spirits
caused to sprout up the elect. And they're metaphorically portrayed
as the willows here. And willows are graceful looking
plants, trees, and they flourish where there's water. And that's,
we find that the water of life causes them to flourish. I remember up in Alaska we camped
in the midst of some willows one time and that was That was
cause for thinking over. Turns out that's where the beavers
go at night to feed and they would swim across the river and
then they would see our tent and our boat and everything and
then they would, oh, there's somebody there. And then they
would whack their tail in the water and go under and go back
to their lodge. And then our dogs would go berserk for about
half an hour. And then we'd just get them calmed
down. And the beavers say, let's try
that again. And all night long, they did that. But those willows, they grew
right up along the water course, right on the bank of the river.
They were just thick. And everything lived off of them,
the moose and everything. And so they spring up. in this midst of this water.
And when they're little, sometimes they're kind of obscured
by the grass. You don't see them. They're small. And until they grow up a little
ways and they're taller than the grass, you don't really notice
them that much. And when they're young, they
may even seem the same, the small insignificant plant that's mixed
in among the grass of humanity. What a wonderful picture of the
Lord. But they're always willows, but
they may be obscured for a time. And it's the Lord's doing where
and when they sprout, even as the grass and, you know, you
consider all the events that may have led to a willow seed
being deposited in many places in the world among the the grass. We have a ton of birds
up at our place, and people are always feeding them stuff. They've
got feeders out all over the neighborhood, and so we find
peanuts in our yard, and sunflowers, and all manner of seeds, and
then those things sprout up, and oh, I didn't plant a Sunflower
there or I didn't plant a peanut plant or whatever But they've
been deposited there by birds. We have cherry pits all over
our yard now from the crows Dropping them and among other things that
they deposit and So these seeds They get deposited in many places
according to the purpose and will of God. And in some places,
that's good ground that's prepared for the seed. Like it tells us
in Matthew 13, 8, some fell upon good ground, ground that was
prepared by the Holy Spirit, ground that was that was ready
to receive the seed, ground that had been visited by the Holy
Spirit and was prepared for the gospel, as the metaphor goes.
And so as we look at this, this magnificent five verses here
in Isaiah, and he calls them Jacob, my servant, and Israel,
whom I've chosen, Jezreel, whom I've chosen, Well, we think about
some things. To whom and about whom is this
gospel of Isaiah reported? And he's telling us right there.
He says, Hear now, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I have chosen. He
commands them to hear. And for what purpose was it written? What do we find here that is
declaring about God's sovereignty here? There's some key words
here that we'll look at that plainly declare the sovereignty
of God, and we find the word chosen occurs twice. There's
some interesting names, Jacob, Jezreel, Israel, and again, I
always love it when we look in the Old Testament and God is
speaking and He says, I will. I will do this and I will do
that. I will give you a new heart. I will cleanse you from all your
sins. I will, I will, I will. And we always like to underline,
if you had a paper Bible, underline all those things because that
tells what God says He will do and what He does do. And then
after those things, then we find the I have's and the they shall's. And so those are interesting
words that we're going to look at here in a minute. What do
the ones say once God has revealed himself to them? What do they
say? Whom God has chosen and whom
he's caused to spring up as a willow among the grass. And to whom
and about whom is this written? Well, it's written. This is written
to the chosen of God. That's what it says in the very
first verse. Yet here now, O Jacob, my servant
in Israel, whom I have chosen. I'm using my kerosene notes today,
paper notes. They're called Jacob. He draws
back on other Old Testament writings that tell us clear back in Genesis
about Jacob and who by natural birth have no inheritance. Jacob was the younger, and the
older brother would have been the one that inherited all the
stuff. But by a miracle in the power
of God, they have obtained an inheritance. and those who are
called Israel, those that have been redeemed by the power of
God, who rules in heaven and earth and does all things according
to His own will. Both of these are representatives
of grace, chosen of God, Sovereignly, and like Jacob, before they were
born. Before the children did any good,
whether good or evil, before they were born, Jacob have I
loved and Esau have I hated. And that's, of course, recorded
for us in many places in Micah and the New Testament and Romans
chapter 9. When he says, have I loved the
children being, when we think of that word being, that's an
important word. That's just not like he has a
crystal ball and sees who will do what at a future time. He's
identified them being before they were born. the children
being not yet born, they were his children before they were
physically born in this world, before they done any good or
evil that the purpose of God according to election might stand,
not of works, but of him that call, if it was said unto her,
the elder shall serve the younger. The elder who should have had
the inheritance, but whom God, he was not God's elect. He was, he said, Esau, I hate
it. Loved eternally with an everlasting
love. and drawn with lovingkindness."
So when did God choose these persons? Well, if we go back
to Ephesians and leap into the middle of Ephesians chapter 1,
he says, according as he hath chosen us, that's the same word
that we found there in our text here. Jacob, have
I chosen, am I chosen? same word as elected. We're about
to choose a president and senators and congressmen and so on. We elect them. God has done the same thing.
Sovereignly He elects whom He would according to His own purpose.
Will and so according as he hath chosen us in him in christ Before
the foundation of the world that we should be holy And without
blame before him in love and that's so we have his electing
love there in the beginning when he did it, and then the result
of the effects of that eternal electing love that we should
be holy, we would be rendered holy and without blame before
him in love having predestinated us according to the adoption
of children. not natural errors, but errors
by adoption. And what is the purpose? Well,
the purpose of creation itself and the elect in time are only
attributable to the will and pleasure of the sovereign God
Almighty, the eternalness of His nature being clearly expressed
in this text as Lord. When we see that, Norm, I don't
know how many times he's brought this out, capital L, capital
O, capital R, capital D, that's Jehovah. When you look that up,
it means the self-existent eternal one, that attribute of God and
His eternal nature. Before Abraham was, I am, and
that like. So when it says, the Lord, back
to our text here, Thus saith the Lord, the Jehovah,
the self-existent One, that made thee, informed thee from the
womb, which will help thee. Fear not, O Jacob, my servant,
and thou, Jezreel, whom I have chosen." And then he goes on
to say what he's going to do. I will do all these wonderful
things for you. In the previous chapter, God's
providence and purpose is brought out. That 43rd chapter is just pretty
powerful. Starting in verse 5 of chapter
43, it says, Fear not, for I am with thee. And I will bring thy
seed from the east, and gather thee from the west. And I will
say to the north, give up, and to the south, keep not back. Bring my sons from afar, and
my daughters from the ends of the earth. Even every one that
is called by my name, for I have created him for my glory, I have
formed him, I have made him. What a powerful verse. He's going
to gather his elect from every corner of the globe, every corner
of the world, and bring them. Each one of those will be connected,
intersected, we like to say, with the gospel at some point.
He's either going to send the gospel to them, or he's going
to bring them to a place where the gospel is. And we see example
after example of that in the Bible. We see that Ethiopian
eunuch that went up to Jerusalem and got a bunch of religious
stuff that he didn't understand. And God intersected him with
Philip in Gaza on the road back. And Philip says, where are you
reading? He says, I'm reading here in
Isaiah. And Philip said he began at the same spot and preached
unto him Christ. And then the miracle of grace
was effected. The gospel had been revealed
to him. So we see all of the purpose
of God in creation and everything was just to effect the redemption
of the church. Somehow all of his children end
up in all kinds of places, some far north. You know, we've been
all the way, I've been as far north as you can go without getting
wet in the Arctic Ocean. And I've been pretty far south
and pretty far east and pretty far west. And God has his people You know,
we had a sister that we were connected with from Japan there
for a while, clear across the ocean. And those from Europe
and South America. And we have our brother Lance
is preparing to go back to Papua New Guinea here in a bit and
help get the gospel out there some more. And the Lord has His people that
have been scattered. according to his purpose, wherever
they might go, but then he goes out and gets them wherever they
end up, wherever they are. Oh Lord, thou art worthy to receive
glory and honor and power, for thou has created all things,
and for thy pleasure they are and were created. And it wasn't
a random act. It wasn't an accident. We were just reading some things
the other day in a science article that just how exact is the placement
of the earth for the life that God willed into existence here. If it was just a little bit farther
out or a little bit closer in, it wouldn't be possible under
the conditions that we know. Everything is according to His
purpose and for His pleasure. Ephesians, we read a little bit
of Ephesians there. there in chapter 1 that He's
blessed us with all spiritual blessings and heavenly places
in Christ according as He has chosen us in Him before this
world was even built, before it was put together, before the
foundation of the world, that we should be to the end of being
holy and without blame before Him in love. having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself according
to the pleasure, the good pleasure of His will. So what does our
text declare about God's sovereignty? We talked about the purpose of
it and whom is being discussed, but we look at God's sovereignty
here because the term chosen is used twice in this text and
clearly states it. God sovereignly made a choice
before the foundation of the world. Among all the grass of
humanity and an eternal electing or choosing love, before they
were born in the world, and He predestined them to be blessed
by the outpouring of this water of the Word, And through that,
He causes them to thirst for that water, thirst for the gospel
of His dear Son, to cause them to have an interest in it and
to be drawn to it. He draws us with loving kindness. And even though we're like in
chapter 43 of Isaiah, where He said, yeah, you didn't want anything
to do with Me. You kind of ignored Me. scoffed at me, but he said, I'll
have my way. You know, there's a reference
there to Jacob and Jessarun. Neither one of them had any personal
merit in their natural condition. Jacob, there's just quite a bit
written about him. He was, they call him the supplanter,
the heel catcher. And he faked the hair on his
arm and did all kinds of unscrupulous things there, and then he kind
of tricked his brother, and then he was afraid of his brother
because of what he'd done. He thought, oh, my brother's
going to pound me now, because I jipped him out of his inheritance.
But it was all according to God's purpose. But no merit. He wasn't the kind
of guy that you'd say, yeah, there's a good representative
of Christian. He was kind of a stinker. The only thing that they had
in common was sovereign electing love. For the children not being
yet born, having done any good or evil, that the purpose of
God according to election might stand not of works, but of him
that calleth. It was said unto her, the elder
shall serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob have I loved
and Esau have I hated. You know, it talks about not
of works, not of works for righteousness there. And we're always making
that point in our lessons and things. And we always try to
point out that It's not wrong to do good works because they're
the right thing to do. They're things that should be
done, but not for the purpose of righteousness with God. Not for going to Him with a list
saying, here's all the stuff I did. We just do them because
we just go. When we were down in Yuma, I
was looking at my ring doorbell camera every day and just to
kind of keep an eye on our place. And one day, my neighbor's out
there mowing my lawn. He says, I thought, he said,
I knew you were coming back in a couple weeks and your lawn
was getting kind of tall. I went out and mowed it for you." Well,
how sweet. And in the wintertime, they got
out there and shoveled the snow off my walk and my driveway.
And they did that not in hope of reward. They just did it because
It was a nice thing to do. It was the right thing to do.
And of course, we've done a lot of things for them in the many
years that we've been there. But it was just pleasant to look
on my ring doorbell and see the neighbors doing something nice
just for the sake of doing it, because it was nice. And it was
very pleasant. As far as this goes, though,
according to election, it's really kind of a truth that's hated
in nature that the sovereign creator has power and right to
choose or not to choose, to be merciful or to not be merciful,
and to pass by the vast grass of humanity and choose for himself
the willows that he causes to spring up. People say, that's
not right, that's not fair. And of course, that's recorded
for us in the scripture when God says, you think my ways are
unequal. Well, if my ways were equal,
you'd all be charcoal. That's what would happen. Your ways are unequal, he says.
You don't treat everybody equal. where he says to Moses, I'll
have mercy on whom I'll have mercy, and I will have compassion
on whom I'll have compassion. Of course, he's quoting the Old
Testament there, quoting what God told Moses regarding Pharaoh
and those from Egypt. So then it is not of him that
willeth nor him that runneth, but God that showeth mercy. He is the source of that in the
soul. He has soul discretion in the
application of it. And I wanted to spend a few minutes
here looking at these names, because these names, what we
find a lot of times in scripture, people are not named just randomly
or by accident. Sometimes we're named after a
relative or some event or something. But in the Bible, when there's
a name given, usually it has some significance and sometimes
it's good just to look that name up and see what that has to do
with. And Jacob, again, we mentioned
earlier that he's the heel catcher. The twins, when they were born,
the one was going to come out first, but the younger grabbed
ahold of the heel and kind of drug him back and got out first
and got the blessing, as it were. And it kind of brings to mind
how God catches us up and out of the birthright and situation
that we're in by nature, which is not a good one. Darkness and
death. And externally, he pulls us into
the inheritance, which he has ordained. Inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from before the foundation of the world.
That's pretty swell. And we say, I don't know what I did to deserve
that. And it turns out nothing. It turns out we actually probably
did as many things as we could to the opposite of that. And
yet he just looks at Grace, sees us in his son. The name Israel,
he will rule as God, talks about it's a name that reflects how
God does things. He is the ruler. He is God Almighty. And that is the new name that
God gave to Jacob. If you recall back in, I think,
Genesis 32, where he wrestles with the angel or the man, till
dawn and wouldn't let go. And well, I thought, you know,
that's just exactly how God does things. He puts in us a new heart. He puts in us to know Him and
to love Him. And when we get that, we won't
let go. We latch onto Him, catch Him
by the heel, and we will just not let go. We can't let go. And that's the Israel the name
frequently used for the church in the scripture, in the Old
Testament and the New. We find that they are not all
Israel, which are of Israel, and references the body of the
church, the whole people of God. Jezreel, Jezreel my chosen. And that is one that's upright,
straight, to make right, pleasant and prosperous. And that is just
an effect of sovereign grace. We're not that way by nature.
But because of grace, we are upright. We are prosperous and
straight. And then we come to the I wills
and the I haves, the sovereign work of God in
those Two phrases. Thus saith the Lord that made
thee and formed thee from the womb. So he establishes where
we came from, who created us, for what purpose. Thus saith the Lord which will
help thee. And boy, do we need the help.
We're pretty needy. Fear not, O Jacob, my servant,
and thou, Jezreel, whom I have chosen. And you notice those
are past tense words. It's not whom I will choose.
Many, many in the religious Faulder all say, well, God can just look
in the future and see who's going to believe, and so He chooses
them. But that's kind of cart before the horse, kind of a backwards
theology there. You know, we find in verse 3
there of our text, the sovereign work of God in I will. For I
will pour water on him that is thirsty. and floods upon the
dry ground." Boy, what a description of how we are in our natural
condition. We're like that dry ground. It
looks kind of like my lawn out there, just parched and the grass
is all burned up and the ground is hard as a brick. I'll pour water on that. Pour
the water of the word. I'll pour my spirit upon thy
seed. I will pour my spirit upon thy
seed and my blessing upon thine offspring. The church through
the ages is going to be blessed according to his word. Our scriptures,
without hesitation, tell us over and over and over again about
the absolute sureness of his word. And we're always looking
at Ezekiel and those scriptures. I will do this and I will do
that. I will give you a new heart, and I will cleanse you from all
your iniquity and your filthiness. And then we have the result part
of, and then, then you'll look on your own ways which were not
good, and you'll loathe yourself. And then it goes on to tell us
about how in mercy, though, we recognize that that's been taken
care of. But the Scriptures just keep
telling us over and over and over again about the sureness
of His Word. When He says, I will, I will, I will, that's, you can just take that
to the bank. Numbers, from one of Norman's
messages in Numbers 23 in verse 19, we have this Scripture, God
is not a man that he should lie. Neither the son of man that he
should repent, hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath
he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" Well, that's a rhetorical
question, really. We know the answer to that. And
of course, that's amplified in Hebrews. He swore by two immutable
things in which it was impossible for him to lie. The effect of those, the effectual
result of those I wills and I haves, I have chosen, I will pour, I will pour my spirit, I will pour
water. The effectual result of those
is they shall. My people shall be willing in
the day of thy power. That's what the scripture says
in the Psalms. They are the results that God
has determined and effectually caused. And they, in our case,
in our text in Isaiah, they shall spring up as willows among the
grass, willows along the water course. And what do those ones
say? whom God has chosen and whom
he has caused to spring up as willows among the grass? Well,
in verse 5 it says, So these very names attest to the grace that they
attribute to their very being. Every one of those names in their
results talks about the power of God and how in our natural
condition we have no inheritance. And he brings us to it by effectual
grace, causes us to inherit according to his predestinating purpose
and will. One will say, I am the Lord's,
and we always have that, again, we always have that eternal,
self-existent attribute of God expressed in that name that represents
Jehovah here in our English capital L-O-R-D-S. Jehovah is an eternal
possession. In 1st Peter 2.9 it says, you
are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a
peculiar, or that word means purchased. It doesn't mean you're,
we always say, it doesn't mean you have three ears or extra
long nose or something growing out of your
forehead. It doesn't mean you're peculiar. It's a word that means
a purchased treasure. It's a valuable thing. You're a peculiar people that
you should show forth the praise of Him who has called you out
of darkness and into His marvelous light. And that's what these
do. One shall call himself Jacob.
You know, that's just the, as it says in Ezekiel, when we learn
about the grace that's been effectually applied to us, we say, oh, I
was just a stinker. I was the heel catcher. I was a sinner. God have mercy
on me, a poor sinner. And one who by nature had no
inheritance, yet by grace was caught up to an inheritance reserved
in heaven. One shall write down, and that
word means, in those days, usually they engraved something in a
tablet or clay, or sometimes they wrote on papyrus. It means to inscribe or record. What are they going to record
and inscribe? The Gospel of Jehovah. They shall engrave. One shall call himself or name
himself as God's, as a testimony, eulogizing God the Almighty who
rules as God. They're going to call themselves
Israel. He rules as God. And isn't that what we do? We
say God is sovereign in everything. As we looked at Isaiah 43 for
the before picture, we find the after picture in Isaiah 44. What a wonderful picture of grace
of willows springing up among the grass. So that's our lesson
for today, and thanks for attention, and as always, be free.