so much to be thankful for. Okay turn back with me in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 35 if you will. Now I wanted to make a couple of opening statements is that the Lord has made this world and his people journey in this world in a way, the only way that he can bear witness to himself, bear witness to all of his name, to all of his attributes, bear witness to all of his glory, bear witness to his grace.

What's grace? Grace is for those who cannot earn anything. Grace is demerited favour. Grace is just God giving us, for Christ's sake, something that we don't seek, we don't earn, and something which we cannot lose because God bestows it. It's sovereign grace, it's saving grace. He does all this to display his mercy. Mercy is for those who don't deserve it. And he's done all this to display the wonders of his salvation. Isaiah's name means salvation is Jehovah. God is salvation. And it means just to be delivered. We have to be delivered. It's a deliverance for those who have no way to deliver themselves.

So let's begin where the Lord begins in this passage of scripture in Isaiah 35. The wilderness, the wilderness. If you have your Bibles open to Isaiah, you can turn back to chapter 14 and you'll see why this world is a wilderness and why it's such a wonderful place for Isaiah to begin. The wilderness and the solitary place. The wilderness and the dry and the place of drought it is. The wilderness began. before this world began. If we want to understand why this is a wilderness, why this world is a wilderness and why it's a place of drought, we need to know why. We need to know what God says about why. And listen to it in verse 12 of Isaiah 14.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer? Lucifer means one that brings light. What an extraordinary description of Satan and his work in this world. Son of the morning, how art thou cut down to the ground which did weaken the nations? For thou hast said in thine heart, Satan sinned in his heart before there was a word. What an extraordinary description of what sin is and the root of sin. It comes from inside our hearts. The wilderness is not only this world, the wilderness is us, isn't it? Thine heart, thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven. This is the root of all sin in this world. I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. Listen to it. I will be like the Most High. What comes out of someone whose iniquity has been found in his heart? I will, I will, I will, I will. But listen to what God goes on to say in judgment of Satan.

Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and consider thee saying, is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms, listen to this next verse, 17, that made the world as a wilderness. And that wilderness is a great picture of what's happened in the hearts of men.

When God, when Satan said, I will, that's exactly what he came to Eve with in the garden in that temptation in Genesis 3. He says, you will, you will be like God, knowing good and evil. And he who is the light bearer says the eyes of them both were opened. You will be like God, knowing good and evil. And what God said is, cursed, in verse 17 of Genesis 3, thou, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

This is a wilderness, and that's where Isaiah begins in this glorious picture. There's no point beginning and trying to build upon something that hasn't a foundation in a rock in the Word of God. But as we go on through this we'll see that what's happened as a result of that wilderness activity and the wilderness that's in us In verse three, we have weak hands, weak hands that cannot work.

We have feeble knees that cannot walk. We are lost, the end of verse four. We need salvation, we are fearful, we have a fearful heart. We are lost, verse five. We are blind. We are deaf. We are lame. We are dumb. We live in a parched land, and we are parched in a parched land. We are thirsty, and we don't have a way. We need a way, but all the ways of men, all the ways of religion are not the way. We are those, in verse 9, who need redemption. We need to be brought back, brought back to God. We need a ransom. We need to be ransomed, verse 10, by God. We need our sorrow and sighing to flee away.

We know that this world is a wilderness. We know that this world contains lots of wilderness. We live in a great big continent that the Lord has given the people of Australia, and nearly all of it's a wilderness. It's nearly all of a desert. Have you ever flown over? It's amazing how many hours you fly over, just empty, empty, empty, empty, with these tiny little places where there's a few people gathered.

But this world is a wilderness. But God's children in it are in that wilderness. And it's in that wilderness, as I said earlier, it's in the backdrop of that wilderness that's in this world, that is this world, that wilderness that we are in that world, that God's grace shines so brightly against all of that.

And he makes his people to know that that's what they are. that they are the ones with weak hands. They don't have the strength to lift themselves up and do things. They're the ones with the feeble knees. They're the ones with fearful hearts. But God comes to them and he sends his messenger to say, you strengthen those weak hands.

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, verse one. and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as a rose. What a remarkable promise from our God. Verse two, it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing. And the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it and the excellency of Carmel. Carmel is the greatest mountain in that region, that mountain in Lebanon with all of those magnificent cedars of Lebanon around it and the amazing climate there. And the plain Sharon.

And listen to this. They shall see the glory of the Lord. Those who know themselves like Isaiah, those who can pronounce the woe is me, they're the ones. They, I want to be a they, I want to be part of that they. But to be part of that way, they, we have to see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God. We have to know that our part and our place in the wilderness from which the Lord is going to send those showers of rain and cause that joy and singing to come.

I want to see the glory of the Lord. It's lovely, isn't it, while you're there in Isaiah 35, back in verse 17, on the same page, probably, in your Bibles, it says, Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty, and they shall behold the land that is very far off. Abraham saw a land that was very far off, and he rejoiced. not just in that land, but he rejoiced in the king of that land. They shall see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God. That word excellency means the majesty of our God, the beauty of our God, the honour of our God, the glory of our God. But this is a message, isn't it?

Isaiah sends his preachers, he says, you comfort my people, you comfort my people, Isaiah 40. You speak comfortably to Jerusalem, you cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, her iniquity is pardoned, she has received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. What shall he cry? What does the prophet cry?

Verse eight. All flesh is grass, and the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass. How weak. Has the Lord made you weak? Verse three. Strengthen ye the weak hands. Has the Lord made you to know the weakness of your hands? That you can do nothing. You can do nothing. In this matter of salvation, you can do nothing. You strengthen the weak hands.

You confirm the feeble knees. Feeble knees are knees that can't stand. Feeble knees also, if you've had feeble knees like I've had at times, there are two things you can't do very well. One is to stand and the other is to bow. The other is to kneel, isn't it? It hurts. It's that movement, isn't it? You confirm the feeble knees.

And you say to them that they were a fearful heart. Any here had a fearful heart? There are so many things that we, as the children of God, as we walk through what is a wilderness, and we know that the wilderness is in us as well as outside of us, there's so many of us that are fearful. Fearful. Fearful. We can't trust as we ought. We can't look to the Lord Jesus Christ as we ought. We hear the promises of God. And I love that picture in the men crossing the Sea of Galilee. The Lord said to his apostles, he said, let us go over the other side.

And he goes into the back of the ship and he lies down on a pillow and he falls asleep. And then there's a great storm comes on the ship and the ship's about to sink. And these experienced sailors are saying, don't you care about us? We're all going to drown. And they knew what it was to drown in that sea. They knew what the waves were. Why were they like that? They'd forgotten, just like us, they'd forgotten a promise.

We will go over the other side. Let us go over the other side. He's going over the other side and all that are in his little ship are going over the other side with him. And the storms are storms that he brings. The storms are storms that he uses to make his people know that they've got weak hands to make his people know that they've got their feeble knees, to make his people know that their fearful hearts can only be set at ease by God coming. Listen to what he goes on to say at the end of verse, halfway through verse four, it's lovely. Say to them that are of fearful heart, be strong, fear not.

Behold, Behold, your God will come. What an amazing word. Your God will come. That's what God's people are saying, aren't they? Your God will come. Your God. Your God. I love that your. There is a people in this world who can call God mine. And there are people in this world that God calls mine. Your God. Your God. Someone said, wrote, that in that one word, your, is concentrated the essence of every blessing in the new covenant.

He calls them mine, and he is the God of his people. But listen to what? He says fear not. He says you've got weak hands and you've got feeble knees and you've got a fearful heart. And then he says behold your God will come with vengeance and with a recompense. Where's the comfort in that? Where's the comfort in that?

Our God will come. Our God will come with vengeance. We don't often think of the God coming with vengeance and that coming, of him coming with vengeance, is a cause for weak hands to be strengthened, for feeble knees to be confirmed, to be strengthened, for them that are of a fearful heart to be told, be strong. Don't you love the fact that our God, when he comes, is going to come with absolute perfect justice? He's going to be a God who comes with vengeance on all of our enemies. What are our enemies? What's made us weak? What's made us feeble? What's made us of a fearful heart? We just read about it in Isaiah 14 in Genesis chapter 3.

There is just one word for it all, sin, isn't it? God must come with vengeance on all of our enemies. The enemies that are inside are much worse to me than all the enemies out there. The enemies out there just cause me to cling to the Lord Jesus Christ even more, but the enemies I've got within cause me to be fearful. God made man upright, but he has to exercise vengeance on all of our inventions, all of our ways. The carnal mind is enmity against God.

He's got to take vengeance, and that vengeance obviously is the vengeance that fell on our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. where God made him who knew no sin, 1 Corinthians 5.21, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us. all of the sins of all of God's children were laid on him and he bore them, he bore them in his own body on the tree.

Listen to how, turn with me to Isaiah chapter 61 and let's see why there is this glorious description of God. When you behold your God You're going to behold him as a God who comes with vengeance. You're going to behold him as a God who comes with recompense, a reward. There will be a due payment always for all things. And he will come and save you. But listen to what the Lord began. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because, Isaiah 61, verse one. Because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek.

He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted. What's a broken heart? It's not a sick heart. A broken heart's a heart that doesn't work. a heart that sees no beauty in the Lord Jesus Christ. To bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the law.

That's the year of jubilee when all the, everything is restored. Everything that we'd lost through our own sin and rebellion is restored. And listen to it, and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all that mourn. Have you mourned? The Lord will make us to mourn over our sin. Blessed are they who mourn. All my sin is all my fault, and all I do is sin. And the Lord Jesus Christ suffered the vengeance of God upon all of that sin when the holy wrath of God, the fire from heaven, fell on that altar, on that sacrifice, on that altar, and the altar and the sacrifice consumed the fire of God.

And listen to what he gives. Well, listen to what he appoints for his people, verse 3 of Isaiah 61. This is why he's saying, how do you strengthen the weak hands and the feeble knees? To appoint unto them that morn in Zion, listen to the transfer, listen to the glorious picture of substitution, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Have you had a spirit of heaviness? I've had a spirit of heaviness so much. I've had more of a spirit of heaviness in these last 25 or 30 years since the Lord began a work in me than I have in all the rest of my life put together.

And listen to what happens to these people. This is why he speaks of the desert rejoicing and blossoming as a rose and blossoming abundantly, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord. in this wilderness. He's causing this wilderness to blossom in such a way. Listen to what the end of this verse is, that he might be glorified. He is going to be glorified in what he does in the hearts of his people. He's coming. He's coming with vengeance. He's come with vengeance upon his son. He's come with vengeance upon all of our sins.

Don't you love the fact that our God must be just? He must be just and he must be holy. Thank God that he will have vengeance on all of the sins of all of his people, and he will have vengeance on all the sins that have ever been committed in this wilderness. And there will be a day of recompense, everything will be recompensed, it will be rewarded. And he will come on the basis of his vengeance, on the basis of his recompense, he will come and he will save you. What a glorious description of what happened on the cross of Calvary.

He will come. He will come to those who are weak. He'll come to those who have feeble knees. He'll come to those with fearful hearts. He'll come to those who are lost and He's going to save you. And He's not going to try and save you. He's not going to offer salvation to you. He's going to come and save you. He's going to come and He will save His people. In closing, let's just look at the promises that flow from the cross of Calvary.

Then He said, then The eyes of the blind shall be opened. There's a lovely picture, if you turn in your Bibles with me to Mark chapter eight, there's a lovely picture of what it is to have eyes, blind eyes open. I saw this, having spent so much time in Mark and preached through Mark, I saw this for the first time in the most glorious way the other day. in verse 22 of Mark chapter eight, and the Lord Jesus comes, he's gonna come, this is exactly what we've just read in Isaiah 35, he's gonna come and he's gonna open the blind eyes. He cometh to Bethsaida and they bring a blind man unto him. What is it to be blind? You can't get to Christ, you can't see where he is to come to him, you have to be brought to him.

What a glorious work of the Holy Spirit. And he led, and he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of town. And when he had spit on his eyes, he put his hands upon him and asked him if he saw ought. He looked up and said, I see men as trees walking. And it's hard for me to figure out what on earth that possibly means.

One possible thing is that the trees are the biggest things in this creation. They're the greatest. They're the heaviest and the biggest and the longest living of all this creation. Maybe that's got something to do with it. He sees men as trees walking. After that, listen to what the Lord Jesus Christ did. Just picture it in your mind. He put his hands again upon his eyes and made him look up, and he was restored. Don't you love that picture? He takes the face of his people, puts his hand upon their eyes, and he lifts up their eyes, so they see him. They look up. I don't know, it's just such a glorious picture of what he does.

He says, he says, behold your God and how are you going to behold your God? Then the eyes of the blind shall Every time you read a word shall, you ought to be just rejoicing when it comes from God. Every shall of God and every will of God will be fulfilled. Every I will of Satan and every I will of all of Satan's captives in this world, it'll never come to pass. The eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

They can't see him and they can't hear from him and he has to give eyes to see and he has to give ears to hear. And he does it. He says they will as a result of what happened on the cross. The result of our God coming with vengeance on his son on the cross of Calvary, him coming and he will save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

Then shall the lame man leap. He won't just walk a little bit anymore. He won't have feeble knees any longer. The lame man shall leap as a heart. He'll leap as a deer. And the tongue of the dumb sing. You ever been there, blind? Deaf? Lame? Can't walk to God, can't walk with God. Can't even cry out to God, the dumb. And they shall sing. For in the wilderness shall waters break out and streams in the desert. This is exactly what's happening in this wilderness world.

This is exactly what happens when the Gospel comes with power. When Christ preaches the Gospel, when the Holy Spirit comes with power and He works in the hearts of His people, all of a sudden you're going to see your God's come. Your God's come and He's come on the cross of Calvary. He really has come. Emmanuel, God with us, has come and God has exercised vengeance on all of our enemies that made us blind, that made us deaf, that made us lame, that made us dumb.

And out of all that, waters shall break out. Where did those waters break out from? On the cross at Calvary. That man, and I'm sure he didn't plunge that spear in with anything other than vengeance. into the Lord Jesus Christ hanging there, and out flowed water and blood, water to wash us, blood to cleanse us from our sins.

For in the wilderness shall waters break out I don't know about you, I spend a bunch of time in all the trials that are promised in this world, I find that so often there is a wilderness and I just love the fact that when the waters break out, I love the fact that when the waters break out and they break out upon the Lord Jesus Christ and I'm caused to not look at the wilderness but to behold your God and to find that the waters are broken out and there are streams in the desert. Where did the streams in the desert come from in those days of the exodus?

There was just one place, wasn't it? The most unlikely place you could ever find in all of a desert to find water was a rock. A rock? How's he going to a rock to find water? Moses spent 40 years there in that desert. He'd never gone to a rock for water. The rock, 1 Corinthians chapter 10, the rock is Christ Jesus. And that rock followed them through that desert.

You think about how much water flowed out of that rock. You can do the mathematics on it and it's quite remarkable. Your kids might do it at some stage, Jay. 2 million people at least, plus all of their animals. You mustn't think that this is a little pebble and a little stream. This is huge. In a desert, in a wilderness. And it flowed for 40 years. It followed them through that desert. The only water they ever drank in all of those years was water from that rock. And it sustained them all the way.

The Lord Jesus Christ is that rock that was smitten by the rod of Moses, the law of God, and outflows, outflows. the streams in the desert, and verse seven, and we'll close, and the parched ground shall become a pool. I told you before that one of the translations of that parched ground, one of the meanings in the original language was that it means burning sand, and you've been on the beach, and you've been on the roads, and you've seen mirages. It means a mirage. And what's the mirage do? It promises something, doesn't it? And it promises water.

And there's nothing there. Just like that lake that they named Lake Disappointment up in northwestern Australia. And the parched ground shall become a pool. It won't disappoint you when you come to these streams in the desert and the thirsty land springs of water. In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. Where the dragons lay, they remove all of the habitation, all of the vegetation. It just is a little patch of desert in a desert land. And it shall be grass with reeds and rushes.

Our God says, then shall. Then shall. Our God is still saying, then shall. If only he will give us those eyes to see and we might behold your God. Isaiah said his will comes. All the Old Testament said he's coming, he's coming, he's coming. The Gospel says he's here. The rest of the New Testament says he's coming again. And that's the cry of the church in Revelation, isn't it?

Come, Lord Jesus, come spiritually now and open our blind eyes, unstop our ears, strengthen our weak hands, confirm our feeble knees. Say to us who have fearful hearts, be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come. Amen. May the Lord bless his words to the hearts of his people.