than the deliverance of many
of the people of Judah out of the bondage of a heathen king,
and God was pleased to deliver his people. But there is a spiritual
lesson, of course, to be learned from this passage of Scripture,
and it is the salvation of a remnant, a blessed remnant by means of
the Lord Jesus. and his work of redemption. In fact, I would say the word
remnant is a vital word, especially in chapters 10 and 11. Go back with me. Let me read
you a few verses back in Isaiah chapter 10. Look with me in verse
20. It shall come to pass in that
day that the remnant of Israel and such as are escaped of the
house of Jacob, they shall no more again stay on this heathen king that smote
them, but they shall stay on Jehovah. that is the Holy One
of Israel in truth. And then the next verse, the
remnant they shall return, even the remnant of Jacob unto the
mighty God. For though thy people Israel
be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them they shall
return. consumption that God decreed
shall overflow with righteousness. And then we get into the 11th
chapter and you see in verse 11, and Brandon read this to
us, and it shall come to pass in that day, chapter 11, verse
11, it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall
set his shall set his hand again the second time to recover the
remnant of his people, and then drop down to the last verse of
chapter 11, and there shall be a highway, thank God, for the
remnant of his people. Now, if you'll go back up to
verse 11, you'll see my subject title. It shall come to pass
in that day that the Lord shall set his hand the second time
to recover the remnant of his people. And so this brings us
to our subject that is God recovering the remnant. Now, by remnant,
I'm sure you're familiar to a certain extent with the word remnant,
but by the word remnant, we're not to understand all of national
Judah. And now, you've got to understand
the heathen, the Assyrians, had taken Israel. They had taken
over Israel. You know, the kingdom of Israel,
the Jews, they had a northern kingdom, Israel, the southern
kingdom, Judah. Well, the Assyrians, they had
taken over the northern kingdom. And now, thereafter, Judah, that
is the southern kingdom, and of course, their king at this
time was King Hezekiah. and this heathen king of Assyria,
he purposed that he would just wipe out all the Jews, all of
the Jews. But God had a remnant within
Judah. These were his true people. You
see, the scripture says in Romans chapter nine, not all Israel
are of Israel. That is, not all of the natural
lineage of Abraham, not all of those are the true seed of God,
the true seed of Israel. God has a remnant, it's said
in Romans chapter 11, a remnant according to the election of
grace. And God has said, he says here
in chapters 10 and 11, that he's going to deliver the remnant
The remnant. Now the word remnant really means
those who escape or those who survive. The remnant are the
survivors. In fact, go back and look once
again in chapter 10 and verse 20, and you'll see the very definition
of remnant in the verse. And it shall come to pass in
that day that the remnant of Israel and such as are escaped. That's the meaning of the word
remnant. Those who have escaped. Those who survive. Those who last. Look again, let me give you another
couple of verses. Go over to chapter 37. And look at verse 31. And it's
very interesting as you read Isaiah's book, as you read his
prophecy, he is continually keeping before the reader that God has
a remnant. He has those who are going to
escape. He has those who are going to
survive, who are going to live with the Lord Jesus forever. They're survivors. Now they're
not survivors due to their own ability, due to their own strength,
due to their own knowledge, or due to their own intelligence. They've been rescued by God.
This is how they become the remnant. They're the escaped of God. God
brings them unto salvation, and he delivers them, having himself
chosen them in grace, and these will be certain to be survivors. There's coming a judgment at
the end, as we know, and a good many people speak about the judgment. That is the judgment seat of
our Lord Jesus. It's also called the great white
throne judgment. and the wicked are going to be
judged out of the things written in the books. And the Scripture
says, and I encourage you to read one of the articles that
I wrote for the Bulletin today that's based upon that passage
of Scripture there in Revelation chapter... Chapter 20, that those
whose names are not written in the Lamb's Book of Life, they're
going to perish. But those whose names are written
down in the Lamb's Book of Life, they're the survivors. They're
the ones who are going to escape. We're going to escape the wrath
of God, not because judgment hasn't been passed on our transgressions
and sins, but the reason we're going to escape at last is because
we had somebody who paid our debt. We had somebody who bought
us. We had somebody who saved us.
In fact, look again at chapter 11 and verse 11. I didn't read this here and let
me read this to you in chapter 37. Look at verse 31. And the
remnant that is escaped, that's the idea of remnant, those who
escape. The remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again
take root downward, rooted in Christ Jesus, and bear fruit
upward for the glory of God. For out of Jerusalem there shall
go forth a remnant, And here's the definition of it again. You'll
notice how these are so often grouped together, the word remnant
and escape. They're the ones who escaped.
We're going to escape the wrath of God. We're going to escape
the judgment of God. We're going to escape the vengeance
of God. Not that God will just arbitrarily
wipe out our debt of sin, but he has already had one to settle
the issue for us, even our substitute. And therefore we will survive.
You see, when all of the wicked have been cast into hell, There
will be no one left but these survivors. The remnant according
to the election of grace. Now go back to chapter 11 verse
11. Let me give you a definition
of another word. And it is the word recover. There in verse 11, it shall come
to pass in that day that the Lord shall set his hand again
the second time to recover the remnant. God's going to do something
for this remnant. These are going to escape. He's
going to recover them. The word recover means to redeem,
to possess, to purchase, This is what God does for the
remnant. In fact, the reason the remnant
will escape is because we have been recovered. Well, how were
we recovered? You know, by the blood of the
Lord Jesus. We have been purchased. We have
been bought. We're a possession that has been
acquired by the Son of God and by His death. You see, out of
all of the people who will live from Adam to the very last person
who shall ever be born, God has already determined that he will
save, he will rescue, he will make sure there are survivors
of the human race who have already been purchased by the blood of
the Lord Jesus. Now all have sinned, there's
no question about that. All are guilty of crimes against
God. But for the glory of God's grace,
before he ever made the world, he set aside a people for his
namesake. A people by whom he would be
magnified in their testimony that God saved them by sovereign
mercy. These people will be spared.
These people will be survivors. These people will escape. And
therefore, when all of these people who have been recovered,
who have been bought, when they all get to glory, they're all
gonna sing of the one who bought them. Worthy is the land that
was slaughtered, who has redeemed us unto God by his blood. We have been, we've been obtained
by Christ. We have been bought with the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're the rescued ones. That
is all who believe, all who rest in the Lord Jesus, all who've
been bought with the purchase price of his blood because his
blood was not shed in vain He has indeed saved us by his grace. Now let's consider the historical
setting that Isaiah lays out for us. And let's observe the
way God delivered the remnant of Judah. Now this heathen king
and his name is Sennacherib. He is out for blood. He's already overwhelmed Israel. And now he set his sights upon
Judah. And in his own mind, he sent
threatening letters to King Hezekiah of all that he was going to do.
He said to Hezekiah, it's vain to trust in the Lord. There's
no need to put your confidence in the Lord, your God, because
I'm coming after you. Just like I conquered Israel,
the Northern kingdom, I'm coming after you and I'm going to conquer
you as well. And what the Lord has said himself
to do is to spare a remnant. There will be those who escape.
There will be those who survive. Again, I quote that verse in
Romans 11 in verse five, even so at this present time, there's
also a remnant according to the election of grace. Now, in Isaiah chapter 10, Isaiah
speaks of, he predicts, the overthrow of most of the people of Judah. I say most of them because not
all because there's a remnant that's going to escape. This
overthrow is by King Sennacherib and the Assyrians. But here's
what King Sennacherib and the Assyrians would be. They'd be
a rod in God's hands. And this is what Isaiah says.
God's going to use this heathen king. He's going to use them
in order to punish the people of Judah who had fallen into
idolatry and whose hearts were cold toward the Lord. And the
Lord is going to draw unto himself this remnant that he set aside
for himself. But he's going to use this heathen,
wicked, vile king in order to shake them up. to get their attention,
and then he will so overwhelm their hearts that they'll flee
to the Lord for safety. Now, at the time of Isaiah's
ministry, Assyria was the greatest economic and greatest military
power in all the world. Every nation in that area, they
all feared Assyria, and they would all be taken into subjection
by the Assyrian Empire. And in the eyes of the world,
it was the nation that had to be obeyed or else. They were
that powerful and that threatening. And so no one dared to oppose
Assyria. No one dared to stir up the wrath
of this heathen king except for one man. And he's a preacher. And that's Isaiah. Now, Isaiah speaks in chapter
10 of what Sennacherib is going to do, but then he's going to
set before us, before all who read the word of God, that this
King Sennacherib, he's really just an instrument. He's just
a tool in the hand of God. That's all he is. God's going
to use him. God's going to use the Assyrian
empire. He's going to use the Assyrian
military might. He's going to use their riches.
And after he's finished with them, he's going to throw them
in the hell. That's what God's going to do. And this is what
Isaiah says. And Isaiah, he doesn't fear the
Assyrian empire. He trusts the Lord. He believes
the Lord. And he very confidently, he sets
forth in chapter 10 that there is a remnant within Judah that
God's going to spare. There will be survivors. And I tell you, though Adam has
fallen, and in his transgression, all of the human race has fallen.
Oh, bless the name of God, there will be survivors. There are
going to be those who escape. It's the remnant according to
the election of grace. Now let me read a few verses
to you here from chapter 10 and verse five. Now you notice how
God is going to use the Assyrians. And the word is spoken directly
unto King Sennacherib. Chapter 10 in verse five, are
you there? O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger. That's what God calls this Sennacherib
and the Assyrian empire. And the staff in their hand is
mine indignation. That's what God says. That intent
to destroy, I gave it to them. That's what God says. They're the rod. This king is
the rod in my hand. Look at verse six. I will send
him against a hypocritical nation. And against the people of my
wrath will I give him a charge to take the spoil, to take the
prey, to tread them down like the mire of the streets. How
be it or however, he meaneth not so, neither doth
his heart think so. Because it's in his heart to
destroy. In other words, he has no idea
that he's a rod in my hand. He's exercising his full intention
to destroy. To destroy and to cut off nations,
not a few. For he saith, are not my princes
altogether kings? And then he lists six different
royal cities that had been conquered either by previous kings of Assyria
or that he has conquered. He lists those in verse nine.
And he says, as my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols
and whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and Samaria,
shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols? What was
Samaria? The capital of the northern kingdom,
right? So here's what the king is saying.
He said, what I did to them, that's what I'm gonna do to Jerusalem
and her idols. Wherefore it shall come to pass
that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion
and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart
of the king of Assyria in the glory of his high looks. For
he saith, Here's what this heathen king says, by the strength of
my hand, I have done it. And by my wisdom, for I am prudent. And I have removed the bounds
of the people and have robbed their treasures. And I have put
down the inhabitants like a valiant man. You can just see him swelling
with pride. And my hand, he says in verse
14, hath found as a nest the riches of the people. As one
gathereth eggs that are left when the mother hen has fled,
have I gathered all the earth. And there was none that moved
the wing or opened the mouth or peeped. He's, you talk about
a braggamony statement. He just boasting of what he's
doing. This is all due to his own ingenuity
and his own power. But now watch what verse 15 says. Shall the axe boast itself against
him that heweth therewith? Or shall the saw magnify itself
against him that shaketh it, as if the rod should shake itself
against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift
up itself as if it were no wood. Thus, look at verse 16. Therefore shall the Lord, the
Lord of hosts, send among his fat ones leanness, he swollen
up with, He's fat with his own greatness. God's going to send
him leanness. And under his glory he shall
kindle a burning like the burning of a fire. And the light of Israel
shall be for a fire for Israel, but his holy one for a flame
to destroy. And it shall burn and devour
his thorns and his briars in one day and shall consume the
glory of his forest. What was the forest of King Sennacherib? It's his army. That's what the
imagery here is of a mighty army standing like so many tall, stately,
powerful trees. and of his fruitful field, both
soul and body. And they shall be as a standard
bearer of faith." Look at verse 19, and the rest of the trees
of his forest shall be few. In other words, God says, I'm
gonna cut them all down and all that's left, look at the last
verse of 19, last day, that a child may write them. All will be left,
a little kid could count them. It's just gonna be a few left. and it shall come to pass. And
when God says it shall come to pass, mark it down, it's going
to come to pass. In that day, that the remnant
of Israel and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, they shall
no more stay upon him that smote him. Now, I've waited till now
to define that word stay, means lean on. They've been leaning
on objects and people that they shouldn't have been trusting.
And the Lord, here's what the Lord is doing, He's tearing out
all the props. Everything they've leaned on.
And this is what the Lord has got to do. He's got to remove
from us all hope, all confidence, and all leanings on everything
in this world to where we lean only on Jesus Christ, the Lord. That's what God's doing. He knocks
all the props out. They won't stay upon him that
smote them. But look at the last statement
of verse 20, but shall stay or lean or rest on Jehovah who saves,
the Holy One of Israel in truth. And he says of this remnant,
they shall return. They shall return. We left the
Lord in Adam, but we shall return. God has purposed it. We shall return, even the remnant
of Jacob. Unto whom shall we return? Unto
the mighty God. The mighty God who draws us. The mighty God who effectually
woos us unto Himself. And he says in verse 22, for
though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them, they shall
return. And the consumption decreed. This is a consumption that God
decreed. What does consumption here mean?
A destruction that's not a total destruction, but a destruction
of many. but it's going to come to an
end. A bunch of Israelites, a bunch of people of Judah would be destroyed,
but not all of them. Some will escape, and that's
the remnant according to the election of grace. God will save his people from
their sins. And this is a picture of what
the Lord does for his people. And what I want us to see here
is the absolute sovereignty of God over all things. God raised
up a heathen king, King Sennacherib. He raised up the Assyrians to
go after Judah. He used them as a rod and as
an ax. But the axe is in the hand of
God. This is what he says. The axe
is in the hand of God. He's going to chop them down.
The saw, the saw is in the hand of the Lord. The rod is in God's
hand. The staff is in God's hand. Learn this, and this is what
Isaiah understood, and we need to understand this as well. Every
power in the world Every man, every woman in office, in our
country, throughout the world, they're all just so many tools
in the hand of God. That's what we've got to understand.
Be it our president, the head of the Congress, the head of
the Senate, our governor, our senators, whoever it may be,
there are only axes and rods and so many saws in the hands
of God to fulfill his purpose. See, that's what the virus is.
What is the virus? It's a tool in the hand of God
to accomplish his purpose. Now, what his purpose is in using
that tool, well, I'm not that intelligent, nor am I that foolish
to guess what his purpose is. But I do know this, as a result
of this, this particular ax that he is using, this particular
rod, more people are watching the gospel through the internet
than ever before. That's one of the reasons this
has happened. And as I spoke to a pastor just
this week, and I said, you know, God will bring a nation to its
knees to save even one of his elect. That's the reason I say
it's all good, because everything that's happening, the coronavirus,
our president, everybody who's doing anything in this nation
and in this world, there are only so many tools in God's hand. They're just instruments in His
hand that He's using to fulfill His purpose, which brings me
to say this, or to ask this, what is His purpose? It is to
glorify His only begotten Son and to save a people to the glory
of His free grace. That's God's purpose. That's
what He's doing. Now all the particulars of what
He's doing, well, Nobody can answer that. That saved the mind
of God, the infinite mind and purpose of God. But overall,
His purpose is the salvation of His elect unto the praise
of the glory of His grace. And everything and everybody,
they're just instruments that He uses. The instrument might
be sickness. Perhaps there's someone watching
this evening who's sick. So I don't know why, why have
I become sick? What did I do? People tend to
think that if they get some disease or get sick, what did I do to
deserve this? It's just an instrument that
God uses. And I will promise you this,
if you're one of the remnant, he's gonna bring you to rest
in Lean on the Lord Jesus Christ only. That's what he's going
to do. You see, God would use Assyria
as a rod to punish and purge Judah for their sinfulness. And notice this. Notice how chapter
10 winds up. Behold, verse 33. Behold, The Lord, and that's capital
L, little o-r-d, Master. The Lord of hosts, Jehovah who
saves. He shall lock the bow with terror. He's gonna cut off Sennacherib. and the high ones of statute,
they shall be hewn down, and the haughty, they shall be humbled. And he shall cut down the thickets
of the forest with iron." All those soldiers, he's gonna cut
them down in Lebanon. They stand like the trees of
Lebanon, the cedars of Lebanon. You remember reading of the cedars
of Lebanon? And he's likening all the soldiers
of the Assyrians to the cedars of Lebanon. They shall all fall,
watch this, by a mighty one. There's a mighty one who's going
to bring down every enemy of the people of God. Well, who
do you reckon that mighty one is? That mighty one who's our
savior. And let me show you how he brings
Assyria down. Go back to 2 Kings chapter 19.
And let's just see the fulfillment of this. The book of 2 Kings and chapter
19. Look at verse 30. And the remnant
that is escaped of the house of Judas shall yet again take
root downward and bear fruit upward. Does that look familiar?
That's familiar because we just read it a little bit ago. 2 Kings
chapter 19 in verse 30. Now look at verse 31. For out
of Jerusalem there shall go forth a remnant and they that escape. out of the Mount Zion and the
zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this." God is zealous for
his people. He has set himself to save this
remnant according to the election of grace. and they're saved through
the death of Christ Jesus. And they shall be drawn by the
Spirit of God effectually to the Savior to trust in him. Okay,
verse 32. Therefore, thus saith the Lord
concerning the king of Assyria, he shall not come into this city. I know he said he will, but he's
not coming in. nor shoot an arrow there, nor
come before it with a shield, nor cast a bank against it."
They would build up a bank and then enter into a city. The Lord
said, not gonna happen. But he said he's coming. God
says, not gonna happen. But he's got an army that's so
powerful. No, it's not gonna happen. It's
just not going to happen. Why not? God is watching over
his people here. Now watch verse 33, by the way
that he came, by the same shall he return, and he shall not come
into this city, saith the Lord. Why not? Verse 34, for I will
defend this city to save it, but Lord, They're an ungodly
people, why would you save them? For mine own sake, that's what
God says. For mine own sake and for my
servant David's sake, for Christ's sake. And it came to pass that
very night that the angel of the Lord, that mighty one that
we read about right there at the end of Isaiah chapter 10,
the angel of the Lord, the messenger of the covenant, Christ our savior. He went out and he smote in the
camp of the Assyrians 104 score and 5,000, 185,000 soldiers cut
down just like that. And the Jews never lifted a hand. They had nothing to do with this.
This is the doings of God. The Lord says, I'll fight your
battles for you. And they arose early in the morning
and behold, all they saw was dead corpses. And so Sennacherib, the king
of Assyria, he departed and he went and returned and dwelt in
Nineveh. In other words, the Lord said,
he'll go back the way he came in. He went back by himself. He came in with 185,000 soldiers
and he went back by himself. Verse 37, it came to pass as
he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch, his God. He went back to see if he could
make things right with his God. He's a heathen idolater. That
Adrammelech and Cherezer, his sons, they killed him with a
sword. And they escaped in the land
of Armenia. And Esarhaddon, his son, reigned
in his stead. God delivered his people. He
brought the enemy down. Now go back real quick to Isaiah
chapter 11. Now, so the Lord, he's disposed
of the enemy. Well, here's a question we need
to ask in the spiritual realm. How will God recover the remnant? He will recover the remnant.
This is Isaiah's promise by raising up a savior. And I'll just give
you four or five things here. Number one, in chapter 11, the
person who will save, it's chapter 11, verse one of Isaiah, there
shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse. A branch shall
grow out of his roots. And you'll notice that Isaiah,
he doesn't say that our Lord is of the root of David. because
to write of our Lord being the root of David as John does in
the book of Revelation would elevate the Son of God because
David, his very name brought forth thoughts of glory and wonder
and power. But before David was anointed
to be the next king by Samuel, whoever heard of the house of
Jesse, And our Lord is setting forth here through the pen of
Isaiah, the loneliness of the son of man. He's of the stump
of Jesse. This is his incarnation. And
you know, Isaiah has already dealt extensively with our Lord
being Emmanuel chapter seven and verse 14. Chapter 9, verses
6 and 7. He's the child that is born. He'll be the son that is given.
The government shall be upon his shoulders. Isaiah has already
set forth the incarnation of our Savior, and now he does so
in this way, that he will come forth, this rod. You see, God used King Sennacherib
has a rod in his hand. He used him to bring the enemy
to punish Judah and accomplish his purpose there. And here's
another rod in his hand, but this rod is Christ Jesus, our
Lord. and God sent him to use him as
an instrument, not of destruction, but of salvation. Did not our
Lord Jesus say that he didn't come to condemn the world, but
to save the world of his elect? He came with the rod to punish
the enemies of his people and release us from that captivity. Here's the person who will save.
It's the Son of God. Secondly, from verses two through
three, here's the performance of Messiah. Look at verse two,
and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. See, this is how
God's going to recover the remnant. He'll use this unusual person. The Spirit of the Lord shall
rest upon him. In other words, he will have
the spirit without measure, the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of
the fear of the Lord, and shall make him a quick understanding
in the fear of the Lord. And he shall not judge after
the sight of his eyes nor reprove after the hearing of his ears.
Here's the performance of Messiah. Here's His anointing. He is anointed
just like in the Old Testament, three offices for which men were
anointed by the Spirit of God, prophet, priest, and king. That's our Lord Jesus. The Spirit
of God anointed Him. When did He anoint Him? At His
baptism. At His baptism. This was when
the Father identified Him as being His Son. This is my beloved
Son in whom I'm well pleased. And this is when the Spirit of
God came and rested upon Him like a dove to anoint Him for
the work of the ministry that lay before Him. And this perfect
man, this God-man, did what He did as the humble servant of
Jehovah by the power of the Holy Spirit. And He performed the
work. that God gave him to do. The
work of living a life of perfection, and then of laying down his life
in the stead of his people. Thirdly, and quickly, here's
the promise of Messiah's success. Verses four and five. But with
righteousness shall he judge the poor. The word judge has
a twofold meaning. One is to deliver, to deliver,
to save. This one who is born under lowly
conditions and as the firstborn of a virgin, born into poverty,
of the stem or the stump of Jesse, with righteousness, he's going
to save the poor. He's going to save the poor in
a way that honors the righteous God and the demands of God. He'll reprove, keep going, he'll
reprove with equity the meek of the earth. And then he will
judge in this way, he will smite the earth with a rod of his mouth
and with the breath of his lips. Isn't it interesting how the
Lord leads Isaiah to use this word rod again? But again, it's
a rod in the hand of Christ Jesus and the rod of his own words. How does God strike us down?
How's the son of God bring us down? What is he used to whittle
us down and make us low before him? Is it not the rod of his
word? That's what he uses. And his
word causes us to fall before him. Somebody said he cuts us
down to size and he does it with the word of God. Oh, this is
the promise of his success. And he says in verse five, and
righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins and faithfulness,
the girdle of his reins. Righteousness and faithfulness.
Righteousness and faithfulness. And then very quickly, here's
the peace, peaceableness of Messiah's kingdom, verses six through nine.
People have struggled with this. People have said, well, this
is what's going to happen during the thousand years kingdom. The
wolf shall lie down with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down
with the kid, the calf and the young lion, the fatling together,
a little child shall lead them, the cow and the bear shall feed.
their young ones shall lie down together, the lion shall eat
straw like the ox, the sucking child shall play on the hole
of the asp, and the weaning child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's
den, and they shall not hurt nor destroy, and all my holy
mountain for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the
Lord as the waters cover the sea." What in the world is this
talking about? It's talking about Men who are
wild by nature, untamed, being tamed by sovereign grace, like
men like Saul of Tarsus. You're talking about a wolf. You're talking about somebody
who was going after the sheep, like a leopard. He was the enemy
of God's people, but look at, look what grace does to him.
There's Saul of Tarsus, and he sits down with Ananias, a preacher
of the gospel. And these two get along. There's a peacefulness about
the kingdom of God. Grace, you see, it tames us. It makes us love one another.
And though we have different temperaments and different personalities,
there are people who brought into the kingdom of God who were
vile and wretched, enemies of the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ, out to devour. But God, his grace tames them. It tamed you, hadn't it? and you get along with other
folks in the kingdom of God. And you know why? Because he
gives us a knowledge of the Lord. It covers all of us. And then lastly, here's the power
of Messiah. And this is actually going to
lead me into Wednesday night's message because from verses 10
through 16, Isaiah speaks of an ensign. You notice in verse number 10,
and in that day, there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall,
he shall stand for an ensign. What is an ensign? It's a banner.
A banner. He shall stand as an ensign of
the people. And to this banner shall the
Gentiles see. He's the banner who draws us. Christ is the banner who draws
us unto himself. This is how God recovers the
remnant by means of the ensign. Did not our Savior say, and think
of him now as the banner or a flag. That's really the meaning of
the banner, the banner of an ensign. Because you see, like
in Israel, every family had their own ensign. It's like every family
having their own family flag. Well, our Lord Jesus, he's our
family flag, put it that way. He's our banner. And the Lord
draws us unto him and he's been lifted up. He's lifted up to
die, wasn't he? I think I'm pretty patriotic. I'm
very much touched by the playing of the national anthem, the raising
of the flag. I see that banner hoisted up. I'm standing at attention with
my hand over my heart because there's something about that
banner. It's what that banner, that flag
represents. Well, even more so, I stand as
it were spiritually and put my hand over my heart when I think
about the banner of Christ Jesus. He's our incense. He said, and
I, if I be lifted up. God lifted up the banner. He
lifted him up to the cross. And we lift him up in our preaching. In our preaching. And you know
what happens? The people of God, they take
notice. And they'll come to the place
of worship and people say, well, how come you go there? because
every time he raises the banner, every time he runs the flag up
the pole, the ensign, that's how God recovers the remnant,
is through the ensign, the banner being lifted up. And now Wednesday
night, that's my subject, Christ our banner, Christ our ensign. And we'll work on that Wednesday
night. I hope that helped you. Hope that helps you some. Let's
close in prayer, and which one of you is playing? Marty's gonna
play, and as she plays a stanza of something, I'll walk back
to the vestibule. It's so good to see all of you
today, and appreciate you coming out. Be safe, and Lord bless
you. Pray for those who are sick.
Lord, it's been a good day of worship for us. We're grateful.
that you have brought us into this place of worship. And once
again, we have endeavored to lift up the banner, to lift up
our Lord Jesus Christ, the glory of his person, the wonders of
his grace and of his work of redemption, the work of bringing
in everlasting righteousness for your people. Oh, we thank
you that we stand perfect in the Lord, our righteousness,
who is the always faithful Christ of God. Lord, help us to remember
that all that goes on in the world, the leaders, the decisions
that they make, whether we like their decisions or not, help
us to remember, like Isaiah tells us, They're just instruments
in your hands. And Lord, there are many times
we don't have the foggiest idea of how these things are working
together to fulfill your purpose, but they are. All things are
fulfilling your purpose. Everything's a rod in your hand,
a tool in your hand, an ax in your hand, an ax here, a saw
there, a rod over there, all of these things. fulfilling your
purpose. And therefore, let the children
of God rest easy, knowing that the weight of the world is upon
the broad shoulders of the governor of the nations, even our Lord
Jesus Christ, to whom be glory, both now and forevermore. Amen.