Alright, brethren, let's turn
in our Bibles to Isaiah chapter 49. We'll ask the Lord's blessing
before we begin. Our God, our Father, to whom
all honor and praise is due, We truly desire to worship You. We desire to behold Your glory
in Your Son. And we ask You, Father, that
You'd clear our minds and our hearts and permit us truly to
worship You. Give us Your Spirit and make
us see our Redeemer and make us bow down in our hearts and
believe You and give You the glory. Forgive us our sins, Lord. In Christ's name we ask it. Amen. Now Christ is our husband. He's
the husband. His church is the bride. This
is what Paul was speaking about in Ephesians 5 when he said the
husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of
the church. And he's the savior of the body.
Now in Isaiah 49 we've heard how that God gave Christ for
the covenant of the people. And we heard all these promises
Christ has made to us as our shepherd, what he will do for
his people. Today we're going to hear Christ
our husband make promises to the church, his bride. Now he
made these promises and began fulfilling these promises to
his elect Israel, to his church in Israel, the bride. He began
on the day of Pentecost, and we see from that day forward
how he's fulfilled these promises. You and I, as elect Gentiles,
believe because he fulfilled these promises. But these are
also promises he makes to us as his bride, as his local assembly,
and what he will do for us here. Christ our husband makes seven
promises to his bride here. Now I don't want to alarm you,
I'm gonna just speak very briefly on each of these. But let's read
the text together. Verse 17, Isaiah 49, 17. Thy children shall make haste. Thy children. Thy destroyers
and they that may be waste shall go forth of thee. Lift up thine
eyes round about, and behold, all these gather themselves together
and come to thee. As I live, saith the Lord, thou
shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament,
and bind them on thee as a bride doeth. For thy waste and thy
desolate places in the land of thy destruction shall even now
be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallow
thee up shall be far away. The children which thou shalt
have after thou hast lost the other shall say again in thine
ears, the place is too straight for me. Give place to me that
I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine
heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children,
and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro? And who
hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone. These,
where had they been? Thus saith the Lord God. Behold,
I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard
to the people. And they shall bring thy sons
in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.
And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy
nursing mothers. They shall bow down to thee with
their face toward the earth, and look up the dust of thy feet,
and thou shalt know that I am the Lord. For they shall not
be ashamed that wait for me." Now, first of all, Christ our
husband promises his bride that our children shall come quickly.
They'll come quickly. He says, thy children shall make
haste. Verse 17, thy children shall
make haste. The children that are going to
make haste to unite with Christ and with his church are those
God chose from eternity. They're those God chose by divine
election. They're the ones that Christ
laid down his life for. The scripture says, for as the
children are protectors of flesh and blood, he also took part
of the same. And he came for the children.
He came, Christ came for God's elect. That's who he came for.
And he bore our sin. He bore our justice that we earned,
that we deserved. and he satisfied God and he redeemed
us and he has returned now to the glory as the God-man and
he's bringing these promises to pass through the preaching
of the gospel. That's why he established his
apostles and sent them forth to preach. Sent them forth first
to the children of Israel, but he said, I have another fold. And I'm going to call them, my
elect Gentiles, and there's going to be one foal and one shepherd.
And that's what Christ began doing on the day of Pentecost.
He came for the children. They're the children of promise.
That's what Paul meant in Hebrews 2 when he said he took on him
the seed of Abraham. That's the seed of promise. That's the children of promise.
Remember he said in Romans 9, just because they're the children
of Abraham, does not mean they're the children of God. The children
of the flesh are not counted for the seed. It's the children
of the promise. This was God's promise. At this
time shall I come and Sarah shall have a son. That's the promise
Christ is making to us here. I will cause my children to be
born and I will cause them to make haste to be united with
me and my people. This was a promise. I love this
verse in Psalm 2230. He said, a seed shall serve him. It shall be accounted to the
Lord for a generation. This is his race, his people
that he's called and assembled to preach his gospel. He said,
they shall come and shall declare his righteousness unto a people
that shall be born. that he hath done this. That's
our message. We're preaching his righteousness,
that he hath done this, and there are a people who are his people
that shall be born. They'll be born by him. Born
again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the living
word of God that abides forever. This is the word by which the
gospel is preached unto you. That's our purpose. And so, because
we have this promise, It doesn't matter how it appears to the
flesh they are. Paul tells us, he said, my beloved
brethren, be you steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work
of the Lord for as much as you know that your labor is not in
vain in the Lord. He promised my word will never
return void to me. He's going to make good on this
promise. Now secondly, Christ promises to keep us safe from
the enemy. He said in verse 17, thy destroyers
and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee. Now there
are obvious enemies that are destroyers, people who hate the
gospel and would destroy the Lord's people, but he even promises
to save us from those enemies that are not so obvious. Our
Lord Jesus said, false Christ and false prophets shall rise
and shall show signs and wonders to seduce, if it were possible,
even the elect. Now that's subtlety. That's somebody
being very subtle, claiming to worship Christ, claiming to trust
Christ, but they're leading men and women away from Christ, back
to the law of Moses, back to the flesh, back to the works
of their hands. But it's not possible God's gonna
send forth the destroyers and those that would make you waste,
those that would swallow you up. Christ said, my sheep hear
my voice. And he said, a stranger they
will not follow. They don't know the voice of a stranger and they
won't follow the voice of a stranger. He said, they're gonna follow
my voice and I'm gonna keep them. Thy destroyers and they that
made thee waste shall go forth of thee. That will be by the
Lord's hand. No matter what all the secondary
and tertiary causes are, the cause is going to be the Lord
did it. It's always the case. Now thirdly,
our faithful husband promises that our children shall come
from every kind of people. He says there in verse 18, lift
up thine eyes round about and behold, all these gather themselves
together and come to thee. Back there in Isaiah 43, let's
go back there just a minute. Remember he said, he said, you
look north, south, east, and west. You look to the rich, you
look to the poor, you look to the higher class, the middle
class, the lower class, you look all about you. Male, female,
educated, uneducated, he has a people from among all people. Look here, verse five, Isaiah
43, five. Fear not, for I am with thee.
I will bring thy seed from the east and gather thee from the
west. I will say to the north, give
up, and to the south, keep not back. Bring my sons from far
and my daughters from the ends of the earth. Even everyone that's
called by my name, for I have created him for my glory. I have
formed him, yea, I have made him. Scripture tells us Christ
was slain and he's redeemed us out of every kindred and tongue
and people and nation. Don't ever try to show a respect
of persons based on rich, poor, male, female, any of those things. We're all sinners. That's what
we are. No matter who we are, where we're
from, what our state is like, we're sinners. What makes the
difference is the grace of God. Who God chose, who Christ redeemed,
who he quickens and calls, and then we're one in Christ. There's
neither Jew nor Gentile, rich or poor, bond or free, male or
female, educated or uneducated, we're one in Christ. One in Christ. One in Christ. You think about
it. I was thinking about this the other day. All this talk
in the world about racism and sexism and classism and all these
different isms of separating people and everybody blaming
the other. All that is, is just an excuse,
ignoring the fact that we're all totally depraved. If you
can put a label on somebody and blame them for problems, then
it's their fault. That's why it's this way. Psychiatry
is renowned for that. If you put a label on somebody
and it was the environment and that's why you're like you are
and how you're treated and this and that and the other, then
that's why your problem is like it is. All that's just an excuse to
make us feel a little bit better and ignore the fact that we are
totally vile in ourselves. You know why you have to sign
in a passcode on everything you do on a computer? Because we
can't trust us. That's why. Because we're vile,
wretched sinners. That's why. So when He calls
you, He makes you one in Him, in His righteousness, in His
perfection. And that's what makes the difference.
Now, fourthly, the children that Christ produces shall be an ornament
to His bride. They'll be an ornament to His
bride. Verse 18, as I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt surely clothe
thee with them all as with an ornament, and bind them on thee
as a bride doeth. When he says, as I live, saith
the Lord, that's God's promise, that's his oath. God that cannot
lie. He said, this is coming to pass.
He's gonna bring it to pass. These babes that he's gonna birth
again, they're gonna adorn his church like a bride adorns herself
with her ornaments. There's nothing as beautiful
as when a mother has a newborn babe in her arms. That's beautiful,
and that's what God's saying. He said, these babes that I'm
gonna create, They're gonna adorn you. They're trophies of His
grace. They're His jewels. And so He's
gonna adorn His church with them, with these children that's born
again of God. And they won't depart. He said
He's gonna bind them to us. They're not gonna depart. When
He calls His child, they're not leaving. He's gonna bind them
together, unite them together. Here's the fourth thing. The
increase shall be greater than any loss that we suffer. Verse 20, he said, the children
which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall
say again in thine ears, the place is too straight for me,
give place to me that I may dwell. You know, there was a decrease
in Israel before there was an increase in Israel. Christ came
and he sent John the Baptist first preaching the gospel, then
Christ came and the Pharisees and the scribes and the Nicolaitans
and the Sadducees, they rejected him. They didn't have anything
to do with him. All these that were originally
natural sons of Abraham that made up the natural political
nation of Israel rejected him. Hung him on a tree, crucified
him, all according to the will and purpose of God. But there
was a great decrease, and so the church, you just think about
it, there was all that great multitude at Jerusalem that day
on the day of Pentecost, and there was 120 people. That seemed
like a lot of people to us, but not in comparison to how many
people was in Jerusalem worshiping a false god, using the things
of God to worship the works of their hands, and there was 120
people there that believed Christ by his grace. And he gave them
the ability to speak in tongues they had never learned, in languages
they had never learned, and the men and women there, it was all
these different nations he'd list. And they said, how is it
we hear them all preach the wonderful works of God? And Christ fulfilled
this promise. He blessed it to their hearts
and saved 3,000 people that day. And a little while later, another
2,000, he showed their how he's fulfilling this promise. Now
he doesn't normally save two or three thousand at one time
now, but he is still, over the course of time, he's still been
calling his children, calling them, adding them to the church.
But that decrease was because they wanted to work the works
themselves. Remember they came to our Lord
and they said, what works must we do that we might work the
works of God? He said, this is the work of
God, that you believe on him whom he hath sent. He said, except
you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.
What's that mean? That means except you trust Christ
and Him alone, apart from any goodness in you, any merit in
you, any works by you, you trust Christ alone. Except you do that,
you can't be saved. He's the way, the truth, and
the life, and there is no coming to the Father but by Him. And
they began to murmur when they heard that. Just whispering to
one another. There's got to be more to it
than that. He doesn't even know the law of Moses. They don't
even know what God taught us, what Moses taught us to do. He
is God. He gave that law to declare us
all guilty. They didn't hear the law. That's
the problem. And they said, this is a hard
saying. Who can hear it? And you know what he said to
them? He said, don't murmur amongst yourselves. He knew, Scripture
said, he knew who it was that should believe on him and who
it was that would betray him. He knew. And therefore he said
to them, except it be given of my father, and my father draw
you to me, you can't come to me. He told them that. And they
went away and walked no more with him. There was a decrease.
But there'll never be a decrease of his chosen, redeemed, regenerated
people, never. He turned to those others and
he said, will you go away too? And they said, Lord, to whom
shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we believe,
and we're sure you're that Christ, the Son of the living God. You're
our salvation. We can't go anywhere else. Aren't
you thankful? We need to be kept, and he's
gonna keep his people. And he said, but there's gonna
be this decrease, but then the increase is gonna be so great,
you're not even gonna have room for everybody. Why does the Lord
do it that way? I've seen the Lord do this in
a local church. I've seen him whittle a church
down and then do something great with it that the people couldn't
do when there was a multitude of them. Why does he do it that
way? So you know he did it. So you
know he did it. He'll make his people able to
buy a building when you can't afford to buy a building. That
happened. And the brethren are still meeting
in that building today. He whittled it down, whittled
it down, just like he did Gideon's army. Remember that? He told
Gideon, he said, you've got too many men with you. If you go
and defeat the enemy now, you're going to boast that you've got
something to do with it. And he kept whittling them down,
whittling them down, whittling them down. And you know how he
defeated that army? He said, you take a candle and
you put it in an earthen vessel. You take a light and put it in
an earthen vessel. And that's what, men will take
that and say, oh yeah, remember what Christ said, let your light
shine before men that they may see you and your works. You know
what the Lord told them to do, Nick? He said, now you break
that earthen vessel. You break it so that they don't
see the earthen vessel, they just see the light. See it's
not, if he sees, when they see your work, here's what it's gonna
be. I'm preaching my next message
already. When they see your work, here's what's gonna happen. You're
not gonna do anything to be seen by him. You're gonna preach the
light, because he made you see you're just a broken, earthen
vessel with no power, and he's the light, and he's gonna shine,
and he's gonna win the victory. He's gonna call his children.
That's what he's gonna do, and he's gonna make the increase
greater than the decrease. You know, well, let's look at the next
thing, number five. These children, they'll all be
born again of God. They must be born again of God.
Verse 21, then shalt thou say in thine heart, who hath forgotten
me these? Who's birthed these children,
seeing I've lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and
removing to and fro? Who has brought up these? Behold,
I was left alone. These, where have they been?
You know the answer, Christ did it all. Our triune God did it
all. John 1.13 says this, to those
that he's given the privilege to be the sons of God, This rare,
precious privilege to be the sons of God, to make you know
you're a child of God, those he gives it to, it says, which
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God. It's not who your mom and daddy
is. It's not any work you've done or any work somebody done
for you. It's being born of God. That's how we're begotten. Of
his own will begat he us through the word of truth. That we should
be a sort of first fruits of his creation. Born again of God. That's why he whittles his church
down and makes the increase so we know he did it. Christ, our
husband, produces his children. A woman can't produce children
by herself. The husband produces the children. And Christ, our
husband, produces his children through his bride, through his
church, using the incorruptible seed of the word, the gospel.
You know, it's real simple. The only thing the bride is to
do is exalt the husband. That's it. Just exalt the husband. Speak highly of the husband.
Declare Christ in his person and his works and what he's doing
and shall do and has done. Just exalt him. Speak highly
of him before the children and he'll produce the children and
he'll grow the children and he'll bring them up. and He'll keep
them. That's what we're to do. We're
to exalt Christ our husband. Preach Christ and Him crucified. Sixthly, that's what it tells
us next. He's the standard. He's the banner. He's the ensign. We're to set
up. We're to exalt Him. And it's
to Him that all His children will be drawn to. Verse 22, thus
saith the Lord God, now this is how he's saying he's gonna
begot these, he's gonna birth these children anew. He said,
thus saith the Lord God, behold, I will lift up mine hand to the
Gentiles and set up my standard. Let me help you understand what
that is. That's like raising a flag. That's a flag, a banner,
an ensign. You know, when they'd be out
on the battlefield, we used to, we lived in Franklin, Tennessee
and there was a lot of Civil War battles fought there and
they would be One army would be on one ridge and one army
would be on the other ridge and the men would go out and fight
and they'd get to skirmishing and it'd be so dusty and so just
a chaos of war going on, they wouldn't know which direction
was which. And the way they'd know which direction was their
direction, where their commander was, was they would look and
they'd see the flag. and that's where they were to
go to. If they rallied to a plate, they'd rally to that flag. That
was their flag. Well, Christ is the banner. He's
our banner. We lift him up, we exalt him
to the people, set up my standard to the people, and they shall
bring their sons in their arms, and our daughters shall be carried
upon their shoulders. You see, the powers of God's
hand. He said, I lift up my hand. I lift up my hand to the Gentile.
The standard, the banner, is Christ. I'll set up my standard
to the people. We can't even raise the flag.
We can't even lift the banner. Christ, God said, I'm gonna lift
up my hand to the Gentiles and I'll set up my standard to the
people. This whole thing's of him. The illustration in the
scripture is when the children of Israel were delivered out
of Egypt and they first started going through the wilderness,
Amalek came up from behind them and attacked them. And the children
of Israel was fighting Amalek, and Moses is up on the ridge,
and he held up that rod of God. And as long as he held up that
rod of God, a picture of exalting Christ to the preacher of the
gospel, as long as he held up that rod, the children of Israel
prevailed. But when that rod, his arms started
getting heavy, and his hands got heavy, and he started letting
the rod down. And when he let the rod down,
Amalek would prevail. You know what the lesson in that
is? The stronger and more boldly
and more clearly we preach Christ and exalt Christ, that's how
we're going. He's going to give the victory.
That's how he's going to birth these children. But you weaken
that gospel, you compromise that gospel, you let that banner down,
the enemy's going to prevail. The enemy's going to prevail.
So what happened? Aaron and her, they got on each
side of him and they lifted up his hands and they put a stone
under him to sit on. You know, that's like brethren
encouraging one another to keep looking to Christ, to keep preaching
Christ, and thanking one another for what the Lord's worked through
you to help us together to preach Christ and look to Christ. That's
what they did to keep Moses' hands steady so he could keep
preaching Christ. And he called the name of that
place, he built an altar there, and he called the name of that
place Jehovah Nisi. the Lord our banner, the Lord
our banner. God raised up Christ our banner
in eternity when he chose him and he chose his people in him
and he purposed to give him all preeminence. He raised up Christ
when he gave these scriptures from the garden when he declared
in Genesis 3 that he would crush the devil's head. He lifted him
up in all the law and the prophets, all through the scriptures. He
sent his prophets one after another exalting him. And then when Christ
came, he exalted him from heaven. He said, this is my beloved Son
in whom I'm well pleased. He exalted him upon the cross
of Calvary, and made him sin for his people, and he bore the
justice of God in place of his people, and made all his people
righteous. And then he sends forth his gospel,
and he exalts him through this gospel, declaring how he's exalted
into his right hand, and he's sat down at the right hand of
God, and as he's exalted him through the preaching of this
gospel, he exalts him in the hearts of his people. And that's
how we're born again. And that's how we're kept. That's
how we're kept. The only way you know which way
to go is the banner being lifted up before you and you just keep
walking by faith, looking to Christ, looking to the banner,
trusting Him. That's how we're saved. That's
His promise. That's His promise. He said in
Isaiah 11.10, And that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which
shall stand for an ensign of the people. To it shall the Gentiles
seek, and his rest shall be glorious. That's ensign is Christ. Now
listen, this is what the Scripture says we're to do. This is what
it says. It pleased God that Christ have
all preeminence, that all fullness dwell in him. And he pleased
him to save through the preaching of this word. So here's what
Psalm 60 verse four says. Thou hast given a banner to them
that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Selah. That banner that He's
given us to be displayed is His Son, the Lord Jesus, and the
full, accomplished redemption that He's accomplished for His
people. We're to preach Christ because He's the truth. And that's
how He's going to save His people. That's how He's going to save
His people. All right, seventhly, lastly. by making His church
triumph in this earth, calling out His people, not losing any
of His people, saving us day by day through the preaching
of this word. This is how God said, I will
make you know I am the Lord. I am the Lord. And He said, and
you'll never be ashamed for waiting on me. Look here, verse 23. And kings shall be thy nursing
fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers. They shall bow
down to thee with their face toward the earth, and look up
the dust of thy feet. And thou shalt know that I am
the Lord, for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me. Our Lord Jesus is the King of
kings, and he is the Lord of lords. And right now, he's using
the kings of this earth and the queens of this earth and everybody
in any powerful position of this earth, he's using them all to
provide for his church. Every little local assembly where
he's assembled his people. that the world doesn't even recognize
at all. The Lord is, He's moving whole
empires and doing things in this world just for His people, just
to provide for His people. That's what He's doing. And He's
going to call people from among the powerful. He'll use them,
He'll call them and bring them into subjection to Christ and
they'll unite with his people. But he's doing all of this for
this purpose. He's doing it all this way. Ways
that we could not do it. We could not make this happen
by anything we do. He's doing this way to show all
of his blood-bought sons and daughters that I'm the Lord. I'm the Lord. He declares what
he'll do, then he does it. And that's how you know he's
the Lord. He's going to do it just like he said he'll do it.
And here's what he promised now. He said, because they shall not
be ashamed that wait for me. Waiting on the Lord is believing
the Lord. Waiting on the Lord is trusting the Lord. Waiting
on the Lord sometimes involves standing still and not moving
a toe. Waiting on the Lord sometimes
involves going forward. Remember at the Red Sea, he told
them, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. And then
he told them, now go forward. But you do it trusting the Lord,
looking to the Lord, depending entirely upon the Lord, and you'll
never ever be ashamed for waiting on the Lord. Never. You believe
him and you'll never be ashamed. He didn't call his child and
give you faith and persuade you that he's able to save to the
uttermost. He did not do that to then betray your trust. He
didn't do it. He will not. You'll never be
ashamed. He said they'll never be confounded
well without end. You won't be ashamed for trusting
him. and you'll never be ashamed in
any regard whatsoever. Trust the Lord. These are the
promises he's given. The thing we're to do, and there
are a lot of do it by us grace, is we're to lift up this banner,
preach Christ, declare these promises. You notice here as
we've been going through this word, everything we've been declaring
since Isaiah 40 here is the word of the Lord, and every word of
it has been what the Lord says he will do, and how he'll save,
and he'll bring us to give him the glory, and I will know he's
the Lord. But everything in it is what
he said he'll do. And it's all been through him.
He's using Isaiah, and it's all been through him just having
Isaiah preach what God promised, what God is doing, what God shall
do, and give him all the glory. That's, we exalt the husband. That's what we're to do, and
that's what that as His faithful bride, we submit to Him and we
just praise Him and glory in Him and exalt Him and He's doing
all this for us. That's His promise. Let's go
to Him. Our Father, we thank You for this Word. What a blessing that You trusted
Your Son to be the head of Your house, to be the faithful husband
of Your bride and save all the children of Your house. Lord, we ask you to forgive us
for murmuring and all our complaining and our doubting and our worrying. We don't have a thing in the
world to worry about. Lord, make us see that, make
us know it, give us the faith to see that you're doing everything
exactly as you purposed, exactly on time as you purposed. And Lord, we ask you, you've
made these promises to us and you said you'll have us ask you
to fulfill them. And we ask you, Lord, add to
the church daily such as should be saved. We pray you'll do that. We trust you will. And Lord,
make us content, make us content to wait on you. And know that however many you
call, at whatever time is just the right amount, just what you
purpose, and make us content, and make us expectant, make us,
Lord, expect that you're gonna do these great things you've
promised. whether we see them in our lifetime or whether it's
in that day when you've assembled us all at your feet in glory
and we see every promise fulfilled in perfection, but make us content
to wait and trust you. Thank you, Lord. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you. In Christ's name,
we pray. Amen.