Now Isaiah chapter 25, let's
read verse 9 together. In that day they will say, surely
this is our God. We trusted in Him and He saved
us. This is the Lord. We trusted
in Him. Let us rejoice and be glad in
His salvation. The religion of Jehovah, and
I use God's name here, because that is the religion you and
I observe. They call us Christians, and
that's a fine name, but Christ is Jehovah in human flesh. We
are worshippers of Jehovah, and the religion of Jehovah is a
forward-looking religion. And I don't mean by that it's
progressive in the sense that the world thinks we're always
doing things differently and trying to improve. No, in fact,
in those matters, we look backward, we look back to the cross of
the Lord Jesus Christ, we never move from there. We don't think
there's anywhere to go that's better than the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ. What I mean is that our eyes
are always on what lies ahead. It says here, In our translation, it says,
we trusted in Him. Strictly speaking, the word is
waited. But you wait on those in whom you trust, don't you?
If someone says, you know, if you need a ride, you're in the
middle of town and cars broke down and someone says, OK, I'll
be there to get you. Well, if you actually believe
their word, what do you do? Well, you wait right there where
you told them you are. And you wait for them to come.
And if it gets to be longer than you think, or longer than you
thought it was going to be, if you trust them, you still wait.
They said they would be there. And you count on it. So that's
how waiting and trusting are connected in the Old Testament.
It says, we waited on Him and He saved us. We trusted Him,
we waited on Him, let us rejoice. So we are waiting. It says in
the New Testament that we wait for God's Son from Heaven. So the business of the church
is waiting. And what are we waiting for?
Well, you wait for things that are yet to come. So our eyes
are always ahead. Paul says, I press on. It's things ahead that we're
looking for. Now, there is things for today. Even as our look is
to tomorrow, it says today if you hear His voice. Now, today
is for hearing His voice. Tomorrow is for seeing His face.
Today we hear His voice. And the promise is, today if
you hear His voice, or the exhortation is, today if you hear His voice,
don't harden your hearts. Brethren, if we hear God's voice
today, let us give thanks, let us rejoice. They who hear His
voice shall see His face. Today we hear His voice. And if God is gracious to us,
we heed His voice and we lay hold by faith. By faith in Christ,
we lay hold of all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places
that are in Christ. We hear His Word in the Gospel. And if the Spirit of God is pleased
to add His power to it, His Word becomes His voice. And we hear
it. And as the Lord Jesus Christ
says, He that has heard and has learned from the Father comes
unto Me. Today is a life of hearing, a
life of believing, waiting, and expectation. And what are we
waiting for? Well, the full revelation of
our God and the full possession of all the blessings which have
been purchased for us by the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we've
already had a revelation of God. Every believer has. And it's
not a revelation that any of our natural senses are capable
of perceiving. That's why it's written, unless
a man is born again, he cannot perceive the kingdom of God.
He can't understand God nor the things of God. But none of us
here would claim to have a full revelation of God. And one way
we know that is very simply this, we couldn't bear it. We are not
presently in a condition that could bear a full revelation
of God. Isaiah, in the book of Isaiah
chapter 6, He had a visionary revelation of God. And that was
enough to make him cry out, woe is me, I'm a man of unclean lips
and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. I am ruined, for
mine eyes have seen the King. He didn't think he was going
to survive even that revelation of God. But the time is coming
when God will reveal Himself to us in His full splendor. And
it will be such a revelation, or we, let me put it this way,
we will have been changed by then such that we can see His
face and live. And even now we have experienced
some of the blessings of God. For example, every believer right
now possesses eternal life. So I thought eternal life was
something we were going to get later. No. We have passed from
death unto life. The Lord Jesus says, He that
believes in me shall never die, and he that lives and believes
in me, even though he dies, yet shall he live. We already possess that life
that comes from God. Now it's wrapped in this flesh,
this natural existence that we were born with, And therefore
Paul says, who will deliver me from this body of death? But if you're in Christ, you
will never die. You have presently eternal life. Another blessing we have is this.
Sometimes blessings come in what we don't have. And there is therefore
now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Now those
outside of Christ, they are filled with condemnation. That's all
they have in relationship to God. How much condemnation does
a believer in Christ Jesus have? None. Not a whisper. I like the story there of the
three Hebrew children when they were thrown into the furnace.
And it says the king looked in there and he said, hey, there's
four people in there. Didn't we just throw in three? And they
said, yeah, we threw in three. He said, well, I see four. And
one of them is like unto the Son of Man or Son of God. I can't
remember whether he said Son of Man or Son of God, but actually
that's essentially the same title. Well, he looked like the Son
of God because that's who he was. And Christ was in there in the
furnace with them. And so the king says, well, get
them back out of there. And so the three came out. And
it says, they stood before him, and their hair had not been singed.
There was not even the smell of smoke on their clothes. Now, a fireman gets called to
a fire house. There's a lot of, I mean, it's
pretty involved. And he's brave and he's got on the gear, you
know, and he runs in there. And he finds someone still alive.
They're unconscious, but they're still alive. And he scoops them
up and he brings them out of there. And both he and the guy
come out alive. But what else? Well, the fireman's
probably pretty messy by then. And he's hot. And he might have
to go over somewhere and sit down for a little bit and regain
his composure and his strength. And the one he got out, well,
that guy's got charred marks on him. He may have some blisters
from the heat in his lungs. You know, some smoke inhalation
and the hair singed off or whatever. He looks like he's been in a
fire. But when the Son of God saves a person, he comes out
and it doesn't look like he was ever in trouble. No condemnation. These are blessings
we presently have. But brethren, there's more to
come. More to come. And that's the day spoken of
here when they said, surely this is our God. Now it's this hope
that gives us endurance for the present time. Look at Hebrews
chapter 6, Hebrews 6. This hope of what lies ahead,
this hope in Christ, is what gives us endurance and patience
in the present time. Verse 18 of Hebrews 6, God did
this, that is He confirmed His promise with an oath, so that
by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God
to lie, We who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us
may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor
for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary
behind the curtain where Jesus, who went before us, has entered
on our behalf. Now the hope of the believer
is to be with Christ and to be like Christ. And this hope, it
says, is an anchor that is in the holy place or
in the inner sanctuary. He's using the symbol of the
most holy place of the temple. Well, what did the most holy
place signify? Well, in there was the Ark of
the Covenant and the cherubim over that Ark. And it was said
that that space over top of the Ark of the Covenant with the
cherubim, that was the throne of God. He was enthroned between
the cherubim. But what else did that ark of
the covenant signify? Well, on the top of it is what
was called the atonement cover. Traditionally, they say mercy
seat, but the word is actually atonement cover. And it was there
that the high priest would go every year with blood on the
day of atonement, and he'd pour out blood on that atonement cover. And so what you have there in
that ark of the covenant, there in the most holy place, is a
symbol of the gospel that you and I believe. A gospel in blood. A gospel in the satisfying of
divine justice by the shedding of blood. And then, coupled with
that, the sovereignty of God as He reigns over all things,
including the atonement. represented right there at the
Ark of the Covenant and the blood poured out. And that is where
our hope is anchored. Now, I read, and it makes good
sense, that the kind of anchoring that's being spoken of here is
not where a ship is out in the water somewhere and just wants
to hold still, and so they just drop anchor to keep from drifting. Rather, they say that when large
ships would come to port, it would be difficult to steer them
in. They're not like today, where
you can use the power of the engine and stuff to force it. So they would stop somewhere
short of the port. Another smaller boat would come
out, and they'd put the anchor in that boat, and that boat would
take the anchor back to the port and drop it. And then the sailors
would get out there and haul on that rope. And that rope,
anchored in the port, pulled that boat safely in. Now, you see what's being pictured
there. We're kind of out to sea. And
we really don't want to just drop anchor and stay here. We
want to go to port. But we don't have that capacity.
We can't steer that. But the Lord Jesus Christ has
taken the anchor, as it were, of our souls, and He's dropped
it in port. And we just pull on that, make
a straight line, to the sovereign God, who's gracious,
a just God, and a Savior. And that hope, that hope, there
within the veil, is what gives us perseverance. Why, in the midst of the most
severe troubles, the most horrendous wrestlings in our mind, over
the fangs of God, over those questions and doubts, why do
believers persevere? Because of the hope set before
them. Hope gives us patience and that's
what we hope for. The revelation of our God and
the full possession of the blessings that he's promised. Now in the
now of today we are tried and tested because we have no present
evidence that the things we hope for actually exist at all. Isn't that true? That when I say we have no evidence,
I mean evidence in the scientific sense or in the normal sense
of the word. We're talking about things which
no man has seen. We're talking about God who no
man can see. Why do we believe these things? We have no scientific type proof
that Jesus Christ is a suitable foundation upon which to build
such magnificent hope as the hope of eternal life, the hope
of being made like Him, the hope of being joined to God in a perfect
and acceptable union. We experience resistance from
the world, unbelievers Well, they mock that we believe at
all. And they're getting more bold
about it in our day. You know, it used to be that those of an
outright skeptical, even atheistic persuasion kind of kept it to
themselves. They didn't care if we were religious so long
as we didn't bother them. And I can understand their point
on that. But now they've become almost,
for lack of a better way to put it, evangelistic. They're trying
to make atheists out of everybody. And they mock the faith, particularly
of Christianity. I think that's kind of strange.
They don't mock anybody else. They just mock Christians. Well, they mock what we believe,
and we probably would have to confess that sometimes their
mocking hits the mark. And we have a temptation to fall
to their skepticism. Because after all, we want to
be accepted, we don't want to be mocked. And the religious folk of this
world, well, they're upset at us because of our belief that
everything we receive comes to us by God's free and sovereign
grace. It's received by nothing other
than faith. I was talking to my son Nathan
on the phone yesterday. He was on his way, he's going
to be preaching to a little group of people this morning in Nixa,
Missouri. It's just a little above Branson.
A little group of people meeting together and hoping someday it'll
be a church. And several of them come from
the same background most of you all do. But he's going to preach
to them, and we were talking, and he mentioned a message he
listened to by Brother Tim James. And in that message, Brother
James had mentioned the pool at Bethesda. You remember the
man there who had laid there for 15 years, waiting for the
waters to be stirred, and hoped that he could get in the water,
because the thought was, the first one in the water got healed. And that water is... That pool
is a picture of the old covenant. Because there it was, and an
angel stirred it, but you had to get to it. There had to be
enough ability in you to put yourself in the water. And that pool of Bethesda looked
like the law in this, looked like the old covenant in this.
It was real good for people who weren't completely bad. The blind
could have hope there because they could walk. Maybe even the
guy who had to use a crutch, he could still get in. But for
somebody like that one our Lord came to, he couldn't move. What good was that pool to him?
Maybe he thought he could drag himself by his arms, you know,
but there's no way he's going to be able to win that race. And so the Lord came to him.
And the Lord bypassed everybody else. Everybody who had the ability
to get in that pool, He passed them up. He went to the one man
at the pool of Bethesda who had no hope in the pool of Bethesda.
and healed him. And he said to that man, now
roll up your mat and go home. And as just a little side issue,
it was a Sabbath day. Well, what happened? Well, some
of the religious leaders of the day saw that man carrying His
mat that he'd been laying on for 15 years. Saw him carrying
it home and they said, why in the world are you carrying that
mat on a Sabbath day? For 15 years he laid on that
mat and they didn't say a word to him. They had nothing for
him until he picked up the mat. Why didn't they like him? They didn't like him Because
he actually got healed and he did nothing, absolutely nothing
to get that healing. They didn't like him because
he didn't need them. And they said, why are you carrying
your mat on the Sabbath day? And he said, because the man
that healed me told me to pick up my mat and go home. They didn't
like Christ because he superseded them. There's two kinds of people
that natural man can't stand. They can't stand the absolutely
sinful. Because natural man always has
someone who's worse than him. And he justifies himself saying
I'm better than so-and-so. I'm not like this publican over
there. So they don't like the really bad and they don't like
the perfectly righteous. There's only been one of those,
but they didn't like Him, the Lord Jesus. And we bear that. And in our
flesh, we are tempted to say, well, maybe they're right. This
seems kind of foolish, doesn't it? To be believing in a God
we've never seen? To be trusting in Christ we've
never seen, whose voice we've never heard, and the only record
we have of Him is what other people we've never seen or heard
wrote down about Him 2,000 years ago? And they're making some
outlandish claims. They're saying He was crucified,
that He died and they buried Him three days later. He came
out of the tomb. And then 40 days later, He just
ascended up into the skies in a cloud of majesty. And He's
right now seated at the right hand of God. Is there anybody
here that's ever seen any of that? I haven't. And then among those who might
say that those events took place, Yet some of them will say, but
you cannot think that salvation and all the blessings that God
has in Christ Jesus are to be had in full simply as a gift
of grace received by faith. And they'll say things like,
and I'm summarizing what they say, they know they can't say
it plainly, but it comes out this way in the end. You can
get in the door of heaven entirely by grace, but if you want any
of the extra stuff up there, to say boldly, not proudly, but
boldly, plainly, I'm a son of God, an heir of God, and joint
heir with Christ Jesus. And they say, oh, wait a minute,
that's pretty bold. Yes, it is. Well, who are you
to lay claim of that? I'm nobody to lay claim of that.
But I nonetheless lay claim to it through Jesus Christ. And He's somebody. And I need
Him, but I don't need you. Just think how useless a priest
is nowadays. You know what a priest is, don't
you? That's somebody who helps you to God. That's somebody who stands between
you and God as a mediator because you can't quite get it done.
You need to go through them. Well, we have a high priest,
the Lord Jesus Christ. And He's done such a good job
of it, we don't need any other priests. And that's why those
who like to take to themselves the name priest don't like it
when you trust in Christ alone. You bypass them. You made them
useless. I guess I got to thank God for
this attitude on my part. It was talked to me early on
and I've always been among people of this attitude. I hope that
by the grace of God, I have been helpful to you over these years.
I hope that God has used me as an empty vessel and filled me
with that treasure of his gospel to be dispensed to you. But of
this I am absolutely certain, you don't need me. You don't. You need the one I talk about,
but you don't need me. Everything that I do could be
done by anybody whom God was pleased to gift them to do it. Salvation by grace alone. Hard
to believe that, isn't it? Scary. Scary. But that's our hope. My hope is built on nothing less,
and sometimes I think it would have been better if he had said
nothing more. My hope is built on nothing less
or more than Jesus' blood and righteousness. That's it. And
most of the religious world will say, that's not enough. And then we can boldly say that's
because you don't know our Lord and you don't know what He suffered.
I may be brought down so grievously by my sin, but I will not insult the Lord
by saying that my sin is greater than His grace. I will not insult the Lord Jesus
to say that I have sinned so much that His blood can't put
it away. Brethren, if we think that we're
such sinners, God can't save us, that is no honor to God. It is no honor to God. God glorifies
Himself in saving the very worst of men. And if you honestly think
you are the worst, well, There's salvation in Christ for
that kind of person. If you don't think you're the
worst, there's probably not any salvation for you. It seems like
the worst is the only kind he wants to save. Because in the
worst, he gains the most glory for himself in saving them. Now,
when shall we say, lo, this is our God? Let's go back to Isaiah
25 now. Surely this is our God. Our translation
says surely and I guess that's as good as anything because really
we don't have a word that we use in English that really translates
that well. We might say lo, remember the
Lord said lo I am with you always. It carries that sense or behold
this is our God. When shall we say that? Well,
we'll say it when God destroys all of His enemies. Look at chapter
24, verse 21. In that day, this is the same
day, remember it says in that day she'll say, Lo, this is our
God. Well, here's the same day. In
that day the Lord will punish the powers in the heavens above
and the kings on the earth below. They will be herded together
like prisoners bound in a dungeon. They will be shut up in prison
and be punished after many days. God will destroy all his enemies
and what we will discover is that his enemies and the enemies
of his people are one and the same. But he talks here about
the powers in the heavens and the kings on the earth below.
Wherever our enemies may come from, the Lord God's going to
destroy them. Paul said we wrestle not against
flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly
places, against the powers. Now I'm not going to speculate
as to what all that is. I think it's rather obvious that
what we see is not all there is to this universe. And there
are other forms, intelligent life forms in the universe, angels
and such, demons, and the devil himself and all that, but he's
going to destroy all of them. And even those on earth who are
simply pawns, as it were, in the hands of spiritually wicked
beings, they'll be destroyed. They'll be herded together like
prisoners, bound in a dungeon, and be shut up in prison to be
punished after many days. This reminds me so much of the
book of Revelation, when it talks about the beast that rises from
the earth, and the dragon, and the false prophet, and the great
prostitute, Babylon. And they're all thrown into the
lake of fire. Every last one of them. All those
forces opposed to Christ and His people. are gathered together
and dumped into the lake of fire and it says the smoke of their
torment goes up forever. And on that day we'll say, behold,
this is our God. This is our God. I must admit
I'd get irritated when I'd see people mock the God of the Bible. And they'd mock those that believed
in him and said, you know, you and your sky God, that's what
they call him, sky God. In that day, we who were mocked
will say, this is our God. This is who we were telling you
about. This is the one you mocked. This is the one you called a
sky god and compared him to the useless pagan gods who ruled
only over certain portions of the universe. This is the God,
and notice this, verse 23. The moon will be abashed, the
sun ashamed. This is Isaiah 24, 23. For the Lord Almighty will reign
from Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before its elders gloriously. I love that. Not just will reign,
will reign gloriously. Mount Zion, that place that represents
Christ and Him crucified. Jerusalem, representing the church
of the Lord Jesus, the city of peace. That's what the name means,
city of peace. And the church is the only place
you're ever going to find peace. I mean, it's in Christ, but the
church is in Christ. And before its elders, the people
of God. Once again, the book of Revelation
is brought to mind, for it says that when John saw this vision of God and Christ. It talked about the elders before
the throne. It talked about the brightness
of God's glory. When shall we say, behold, this
is our God. When God is seen by all. to rule
and reign gloriously in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. When
all of His chosen, redeemed, and called are gathered unto
Him, when all of them are with Him, gathered round the throne,
made glorious like Him, then will He be vindicated. He'll
vindicate us and we'll vindicate Him. That is, he shall say to
those who mocked, he shall say to those religionists who couldn't
believe that salvation was entirely by grace and sought to heap burdens
upon the people of God that were not theirs to bear. He will say
to them, this is my bride. I am God, I rule. That's to all
the outright atheists. And to the religionists, who
mocked the people of God, he said, this is my bride, this
is my chosen one. You trusted yourself, and you
see where it gets you. They trusted me, and now you
see where it got them. And we will in turn vindicate
Him to the world, and we'll say, this is our God. This is Him. We said Jesus is our God, and
you tried to present Him as some softy. This is Him. You tried to present Him as someone
who is trying to do something. He's not trying anything now,
is He? He's doing. This is Him. This is who we told
you about. This is our God. How is this God described? Chapter
25. Verse 1, O Lord, you are my God,
I will exalt you and praise your name for imperfect faithfulness.
You have done marvelous things, things planned long ago. You know, the religion I was
raised in, you know, free willism, free will fundamentalism, they
said God planned things, but we've been messing them up for
him, and he has to keep making new plans. He planned the Garden
of Eden and we messed that up. And then he planned human government,
we messed that up. And then he planned this, we
messed that up. And then they get to the Jews and they said,
well, God planned this and we messed that up. And finally,
he came up with this plan about his son coming and dying forth.
Brethren, the first plan of the Lord, plan A, was Jesus Christ. He's the lamb slain from the
foundation of the world. He is not God's plan B, C, or
D. It's not as though God was caught
off guard by our rebellion and had to come up with something
new and fresh, try a different tack. No, these are things, these
marvelous things that God has done, they were things He planned
long ago. Sovereign grace, when we talk about sovereign grace,
we need to be careful it doesn't just become a term to us and
devoid of its meaning. But sovereign grace is not just
some idle theological system. It's being declared right here.
God planned it. God executed. He did marvelous
things. We already know they're marvelous.
Imagine how marvelous they're going to appear when we see them
in fullness. That's our God. Who is this God? Verse four,
you have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy
in his distress, a shelter from the storm, and a shade from the
heat. For the breath of the ruthless
is like a storm driving against a wall and like the heat of the
desert. You silence the uproar of foreigners
as heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud. So the song of the
ruthless is stilled. You who have taken refuge in
Christ, you did so because you were poor
and you were needy. And you know, this I have noticed
about the people of God. They were poor and needy when
they came to Christ, and they continue to confess that they
are poor and needy. Say, how can a person in Christ
be poor and needy? Doesn't he have access to the
riches, the unsearchable riches of Christ? Yes, he does. But
they're still Christ's riches, they're not his. He's free to
use them, free to take them. We are like beggars living in
the king's house. That's what we are. It says he's
taken the beggar from the dung heap and seated him among the
princes. Well, he moved him, but he's
still a beggar. And in some sense, we're still
that poor and needy. And we take refuge in Him. Do you not, in the times of your
deepest distress, find a sweet refuge and relief in Christ? A shelter from the storm. There's that blasphemous poem
called Invictus. It ends with the words, I am
the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.
I just wish I could have been right there when the guy wrote
and said, well, that means if you're the master of your fate,
your fate is hell. If you're the captain of your
soul, you're sailing into an eternal torment. But throughout
that thing, he exalted himself and told himself how good he
was. That he braved the storm. God's people seek a shelter from
the storm and shade from the heat. The storm of divine wrath,
the shade or the heat of divine wrath. God is a refuge, a very present
help in time of need. God is our fortress. That's the
God to whom we point and say, behold, This is our God. You know, they probably, unbelievers,
enemies of the cross, probably wonder why we continue to cling
to the message of His grace, when it would be so much easier
on us in this life if we would just take another path. And they
wonder how those who proclaim themselves to be poor and needy
and weary and all those things, how can they just keep going?
When they see who our refuge is, then they'll know how it
is we endured the storm. And maybe that would be a good
thing for us to keep in mind. It's very easy for us to look
at the storm and become afraid. Better that we should look to
our refuge and see how strong it is and know there is no storm
from which he cannot hide us and protect us. And then it says
this, verse 6, what kind of God is this? On this mountain the
Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples
A banquet of aged wine, the best of meats and the finest of wines. Our Lord, the Lord Jesus and
His sacrifice is being pictured here, talking about that which
we eat and that which we drink. Our Lord said, unless a man eats
my flesh and drinks my blood, He will in no wise participate
in the grace of God, in the blessings of God. But it's a feast. People so often think of religion
as an experience of, well, like poverty. Brethren, natural life
is poverty. What God gives is a feast. And here it says aged wine, strictly
speaking. It says wine on the leaves, which
means wine that has set still long enough that all the dregs
have settled to the bottom. And then they would dip the wine
off the top. And so what it is, you're getting very good wine.
So that's why it says here, you know, like the best of, or the
finest of wines. And that represents the blood
of our Lord Jesus Christ. And He is the Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world. He's been there for a long time.
You can count on this, the blood of Christ given out to us as
that spiritual drink. There's nothing of dregs in it. He's the One. experience the
dregs of God's divine wrath, all we get is the sweet and heart-cheering
wine left behind. And then it says here, our translation
says, the best of meats, it talks about meats with fat and marrow. Now, you know, in our day and
age, they keep telling us this is bad for us and that's bad
for us, and I guess everything, you know, in moderation, that's
how we ought to deal with it. But the point is, the Bible always
speaks of God's good things in terms of fatness. You know, when
by famine men couldn't eat much, neither could the beast. And
therefore, you know, you may kill a goat, but he's a stringy
thing. You know, there wasn't much to him but tough old meat
to eat. But here's talk about a feast
of fat and cattle. And then this word marrow. Now,
the word marrow appears quite often in English translations,
but this time it's translated from a different word. And it's
the only time this particular word's ever translated marrow.
You know what it normally means? Wiped out, blotted out. Now how
that's connected to marrow, I'm not sure, except to get the marrow
out of the bone. They're talking about you break
up the bone and, you know, that's the only way you can get the
marrow out. So something's completely destroyed in getting the marrow.
I'm not sure. But I just know that in virtually every other
place this Hebrew word appears. It talks about being blotted
out. God said to Noah, I'm going to blot out mankind. I'm going
to destroy him. I'm going to eliminate him from
the world. It talks to the Lord in giving the law concerning
if any tribe disobeyed. He said, I'll blot out the tribe,
I'll blot out the person, blot out, blot out. What's this pointing
to? It's what I believe anyway. He was blotted out. Just like
God judged all people in blotting out humankind from the face of
the earth, Jesus Christ was blotted out. Wiped out. Destroyed. And that's what we feed on. That's
what gives our souls life. The cross of the Lord Jesus Christ,
we speak of it over and over, and yet we've never felt that
we've told out all of it. And the reason is, we cannot
understand the depths of our Lord's suffering. But He was so judged. He was like an animal, so thoroughly
consumed, even the marrow had been sucked out of the bones.
Nothing left. And this feast is for all types
of people from all over the world. It says on this mountain, the
Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples,
not just for Jews, Not just for Gentiles. What's
this pointing to? Our Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrificial work. And then, what is our God like? He's a God of distinguishing
grace. Verse 10, the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain.
What does he mean by that? Well, a warrior goes out and
he's got a sword in hand and he's defeating his enemies. But
on this mountain, the hand of the Lord will rest. God has no wrath against his
people. He doesn't take up his sword
against them. But Moab will be trampled under him as straw is
trampled down in the manure. They will spread out their hands
in it as a swimmer spreads out his hands to swim. God will bring
down their pride despite the cleverness of their hands. He
will bring down your high fortified walls and lay them low. He will
bring them down to the ground to the very dust. It's the God
who distinguishes between people. He preserved Jerusalem and destroyed
Moab. Why? Because Jerusalem's better?
Quite frankly, no. People of Jerusalem were wicked.
But he preserved them and destroyed Moab. So what do we say? Surely, this
is our God. The God of grace. The God of
sovereignty. The God of power. So good to
mention that scripture, the power of God unto salvation. This is
all about God's power, what He does. The God of mercy that's
a refuge for the poor. The God of abounding grace that
lays out not bare rations for survival, but a feast of His
Son. And a God who spares all of His
chosen ones, even as he destroys all who have rebelled against
him. This is our God. Let's keep in mind what he is.
Because if we keep him in mind, that will keep our minds.