Isaiah chapter 27, and reading
from verse one. In that day, the Lord, with his
sore and great and strong sword, shall punish Leviathan, the piercing
serpent, even Leviathan, that crooked serpent, and he shall
slay the dragon that is in the sea. In that day sing ye unto
her a vineyard of red wine. I, the Lord, do keep it. I will
water it every moment, lest any hurt it. I will keep it night
and day. Fury is not in me. Who would
set the briars and thorns against me in battle? I would go through
them. I would burn them together. or
let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me,
and he shall make peace with me. He shall cause them that
come to Jacob to take root. Israel shall blossom and bud
and fill the face of the world with fruit. Hath he smitten him
as he smote those that smote him? Or is he slain according
to the slaughter of them that are slain by him? In measure
when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it. He stayeth
his rough wind in the day of the east wind. By this, therefore,
shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit
to take away his sin. When he maketh all the stones
of the altar as chalk stones that are beaten in sunder, the
groves and images shall not stand up Yet the defenced city shall
be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness. There shall the calf feed, and
there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof.
When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off. The women come, and set them
on fire, for it is a people of no understanding. Therefore he
that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed
them will show them no favour. And it shall come to pass in
that day that the Lord shall beat off from the channel of
the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered
one by one, O ye children of Israel. And it shall come to
pass in that day that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they
shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria,
and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the
Lord in the holy mount of Jerusalem. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word also. The title of our series The series
that we are embarked upon at the moment is Christ in Isaiah. And we have mentioned frequently
how much gospel is found in this prophecy. Sometimes the references
to the Messiah are explicit As when Isaiah declares in chapter
6 verse 1, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne high and
lifted up. Or in 7 verse 14, behold a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. or later in chapter nine, verse
six, for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the
government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall
be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting
Father, the Prince of Peace. Or again, and there is a lot,
but I'm not going to give them all by any means, in chapter
11, verses 1, where we read, And there shall come forth a
rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of
his roots. and the spirit of the Lord shall
rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the
spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of
the fear of the Lord. These all speak about the Lord
Jesus Christ explicitly. And yet sometimes the references
are a little bit less obvious. such as when Isaiah writes in
chapter 25 verse 7, and he will destroy in this mountain the
face of the covering cast over all people and the veil that
is spread over all nations. And that again is speaking about
the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, recognising in type that his
people are a mountain, and that this Mount Zion shall have the
veil that is over their eyes lifted in their conversion, in
their regeneration, in their quickening, so that the people
that is spread over all nations, the Gentiles, shall be gathered
in. Isaiah recognises the work of
the Messiah in this great act. And last week we saw another
example when the father says to the son, thy dead men shall
live. And Christ replies, together
with my dead body shall they arise. And we can see the clear
application there to both the death and burial of the Lord
Jesus Christ and his resurrection together with his people. We
are raised together with the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, whether obvious or veiled,
we note and we hear the Lord Himself declare how all the prophets,
including Isaiah, spoke of Him. And we may take this theme a step further and
agree with the old preacher, Mr. Hawker, Mr. Robert Hawker,
when he says, how truly blessed are the predictions of Isaiah
to the believer who has lived to see the whole fulfilled in
the Lord Jesus Christ. And he goes on to say, and by
the Holy Ghost is led to discover not only the correspondence between
them, these prophecies of Isaiah and the Lord Jesus Christ, but
his own personal interest therein. And this is the key point. I
want us not simply to look at these verses, these passages,
these studies, these sermons as in some way intriguing and
interesting and maybe even educational, but I want us to intimately understand
that what Isaiah was laying before the people of his age and successive
generations speaks to us personally and intimately. of the work of
the Lord Jesus Christ in the lives and in the hearts and in
the souls and in the experience of his people. So let us come
to these passages with a prayer. my prayer for you, yours for
me, and our prayers for each other and ourselves, that the
Lord will open our hearts to receive the good seed of the
gospel, whether that's the gospel in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
or the gospel in Isaiah, and that he will show us the Lord
Jesus Christ in these passages, and he will bless our hearts
in contemplating our Saviour. Isaiah is full of Christ. And
I trust that we have many more pictures yet to discover. And today is no exception. Because
here is another three times when the glory of Christ's attributes
and his accomplishments as our Lord and Saviour are displayed
in prophetic language. hundreds of years before Christ
ever came into this earth. Three ways in which the Saviour's
dealings with his church and his people reflect God's love,
God's grace and God's mercy to his elect. Here are three things
that I want to leave before you then today. In love we are guarded
people and we'll pick that up mostly from verses 1 & 2. By grace we are a grafted people,
we are grafted into the Lord Jesus Christ and we'll see that
in verses 5 & 6. And through mercy we are a gathered
people. and we'll pick that up mostly
from verses 12 and 13 at the end of the chapter. So these
are our three points today. We are a guarded people by the
love of God. By the Lord Jesus Christ's grace
towards us, we are grafted into him. And by the work of God the
Holy Spirit through the mercy of Jehovah, we are a gathered
people. First then, in love we are a
guarded people. people. One of the blessed discoveries
that a believer makes in coming to the Lord Jesus Christ is the
realisation that we have been loved with an everlasting love
and cherished by our Saviour long before we ever knew or loved
Him. In fact, John the Apostle tells
us in 1 John 4, verse 19, we love Him because He first loved
us, or because He loved us at the first. God's eternal love for His people
is His foreknowledge of us. And it is that love that is the
foundation, that everlasting love that is the ground upon
which all the blessings of covenant grace and our election by God,
our election to salvation and our election to glory are built. It is the love, the everlasting
love of Jehovah for his people. God the Father set his people
apart, or the word we use is sanctified them, in Christ, in
the covenant of grace before the world began, before time. This is our true sanctification. Some people speak about sanctification
as if it is something we do for ourselves to make ourselves more
holy or make ourselves more acceptable to God. Without realising that
our sanctification is God setting his people apart in Christ. making us holy in Christ. We read about that in first Corinthians
chapter one that Christ has made unto us justification and sanctification. It is in Christ that we are viewed. It is in Christ that we are accepted
by God and the protection of the church and the preservation
of his people under the terms of the covenant of mercy and
peace flow from God's everlasting love for us. Isaiah calls it
the everlasting covenant for that reason or Another phrase
that Isaiah gives is the sure mercies of David. It's the same
thing. It's the manifestation of the
mercy of God to his beloved people. David means beloved. And so it
is that everlasting love that is the foundation of God's covenant
and it is within the covenant in being sanctified in Christ
that we have all the blessings that flow to us from God's goodness
and grace. And here, Isaiah symbolically
describes God's church as a vineyard of red wine. A vineyard of red
wine. And it's such a lovely image
that the prophet sets before us here. It means, it's literal,
I suppose, in a sense, but it means a prized possession. It's
a fertile and a fruitful garden that gives pleasure to its owner. And it speaks of the church in
which God delights and the church whose well-being he carefully
protects and he closely guards. Solomon. in all his wisdom, understood
this. When he says in Song of Solomon,
chapter 4, verse 12, a garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse,
a spring shut up, that is protected, a fountain sealed, preserved,
a garden enclosed, a vineyard of red wine. This is the picture
that is set forth before us here by Isaiah. And see what the Lord
says concerning his vineyard of red wine. He says, I, the
Lord, do keep it. I will water it every moment,
lest any hurt it. I will keep it night and day. Fury is not in me, not towards
my vineyard. Who would set briars and thorns
against me in battle? I would go through them, I would
burn them together. Anybody who raises up even a
thorn or a briar against his garden, his vineyard, the Lord
promises to go through them and to burn them all together, both
the briars and those who set them up. You see, our Saviour
has always loved us, always protected and guarded us. Even when we
fell in Adam, even when we sinned and wandered far from Him, Christ
came to redeem us because He loved us. by which love we have
always been the flock of his pasture, the apple of his eye,
or here, his vineyard of red wine. Paul tells us in Ephesians
chapter two, verse four, God who is rich in mercy for his
great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in
sins hath quickened us together. Christ's love for his people
was when we were dead. It wasn't because we loved him. He loved us everlastingly. We are quickened together with
Christ. I wonder if we can trace God's
care for us. That preserving fence, that promise
that he would water and protect his vineyard. I wonder if we
can, that garden enclosed, I wonder if we can trace God's care in
our lives before we ever knew him. When someone else, when another
fell under his fury, Did He not show us compassion? When we ran
away from Him, did He not pursue us in love? Such is the Lord's
love for His bride, that He has cared for us every moment, lest
any hurt us. He has kept us night and day. The psalmist says, surely goodness
and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And if it's
true for David, it is for all who are brought by love to faith
in Christ. So that's our first point. In
love, we are a guarded people. And the second point is like
it. By grace, we are a grafted people. And we see this in verse six,
verse five and six. And the context is this vineyard,
this vineyard of red wine. God's love for his people is
active, it's protective, it's a redeeming love whereby all,
everything that is needful for our salvation is fully provided
and freely gifted to us in Christ. We're cherished as Christ's vineyard
of red wine. But there's more to it than that.
The vines in this vineyard are not independent individual plants. Their strength, their vitality,
Their usefulness, their fruitfulness is drawn from the true vine into
whom they are grafted and upon whom they grow. All nourishment
flows from Christ. John said in John, or the Lord
Jesus Christ said in John 15 verse 5, I am the vine, ye are
the branches. He that abideth in me and I in
him, the same bringeth forth much fruit. Well, this was the
end of the Lord looking after this vineyard of red wine, that
they might bring forth much fruit. For without me, says the Lord,
ye can do nothing. Without me you can do nothing.
Let's just hold that thought for a moment. It's true. It is as we come to Christ that
we take root. It is as we come to him that
we grow. It is as we are in him that we
blossom and bud and bring forth fruit. Let's notice that both in what
the Lord says in John and what Isaiah says here. Holy living
is no more the choice of man or a decision of a man's will
than is his personal salvation. It is God who causes salvation
and it is God who causes holiness in our life. fruitfulness in
our soul. I know, I know that we don't
feel like we are filling the face of the earth with fruit.
Sometimes the last thing we feel is that we're in any way profitable. That little phrase that we are
unprofitable servants, it resonates and reverberates in our thoughts
so much, we're just unprofitable servants. But listen, if the
Lord says that we are fruitful vines, and it is the Lord who
causes that fruitfulness by grafting us into Christ, then who are
we to disagree? If the Lord says that what he
is doing is making us fruitful, then we accept his word. What does it mean to take hold
of God's strength? It is to lay hold of Christ by
faith. It isn't about our strength,
it isn't about our doing, it isn't about our deeds, it isn't
about our accomplishments. It is about our faith in relying
on Christ and Christ's love for us. The great work of salvation
by Christ on the cross is a demonstration of Christ's power and strength. The God-man did what no mere
man could. In human flesh, Upheld by divine
power, the Lord Jesus Christ became our representative man
and our substitutionary man. And faith lays hold on that. All the blessings and benefits
of the inheritance of God's goodness and grace come by faith in Christ. So many preachers tell us what
we should be doing to honour God, what we should be doing
to serve His cause, what we should be doing to gain His blessing. That's all nonsense. The only
one who ever truly honoured God was the Lord Jesus Christ in
His death. The cross was Christ's one great
act of obedience. And I know that Christ was perfect
in all his ways and in all his doings, but that one act, because
it was so contrary to his nature, so different from anything that
the Lord Jesus Christ in his perfections, in his holiness,
would ever have been required to do, to die, What is it the
hymn writer says? "'Tis mystery all, the immortal
dies. Who can explain his strange design?"
That was the act of obedience. He was obedient unto death. And the only one who ever truly
served God was the Lord Jesus Christ. Because He, Christ, is
God's righteous servant. God's righteous servant. Isaiah 53 tells us that. That would be another explicit
reference to the Lord Jesus Christ when we get to chapter 53, God
willing. He shall see of the travail of
his soul and shall be satisfied by his knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify many and he shall bear their iniquities. All divine
blessing flows liberally from God's grace. But every good and
perfect gift, every good gift and every perfect gift is first
given to Christ and thereafter to men in and through the Lord
Jesus Christ. There is no common grace outside
of Christ. Outside of Christ we have nothing.
In Christ we have everything. This is what it means to be grafted
into Christ the true vine. We are everlastingly guarded
through Christ's love and we are graciously grafted into Christ's
death and by God's will and purpose so that we might be fruitful
in Christ in this world. That's the second point. And
here's the third point, and then we're done. We're guarded as the vineyard
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are grafted as branches into
the one who is the true vine. And through the mercy of God,
we are gathered as a people And we read about this in verse 12
and 13. What a great gathering is set before us here. Isaiah
concludes this section by returning to the great purpose of the gospel
day. Remember how we have said so
frequently, he says, in that day, in that great day, he is
speaking about the day which is the gospel day, the day of
Christ, the day of Christ's power. which began at the coming of
the Lord Jesus Christ and extends to the second coming of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And here we see this day spoken
of again. He returns to the great purpose
of the Gospel Age, the gathering of the elect. What David calls
the Great Congregation. And that is not to say that there
wasn't elect before the time of Christ's coming. Of course
there was. It is to this elect, this remnant
people, that Isaiah is writing this prophecy. 700 years before
the coming of Christ. But this people are all gathered
together in Christ because of the work and accomplishments
of Christ during this gospel age. And Isaiah likens that to
the beating of a tree branch to dislodge its fruit. You don't cut down a fruit tree
in order to gather its fruit. And it was a practice in Eastern
lands to take a long stick and to knock the branches of the
tree, to beat the tree, to beat its branches so that the fruit
would be dislodged and it might be dropped into a net or onto
a sheet that was laid below. That's still done today, I believe,
for olive trees. The trees are shaken or they're
beaten. in order for the olives to fall off. It's a picture that
we will come to often in scripture. But he likens it to this beating
of a tree. One by one, the fruit drops. One by one, the Lord's elect
drop into his hand. One by one, Christ's people will
be sought for through the preaching of the gospel and found by the
preaching of the gospel. not in one nation alone and that
is signified by the way in which in verse 12 Isaiah writes about
the boundaries of the land of Israel from Euphrates and the
river Euphrates in the north to the Nile in the south. That
the people are going to be gathered from beyond the boundaries of
Israel. This is the Gentiles that he's
speaking about. And gospel preaching is often
typified in the Bible by the blowing of a trumpet. And that's
the image that Isaiah uses here. He confirms that when that great
trumpet shall be blown, they shall come which are ready to
perish in the land of Assyria, that is beyond the Euphrates,
and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, that is south of the
river Nile and they shall worship the Lord in the holy Mount Jerusalem
or the church because that is the holy Mount that is being
referred to. This isn't talking about a migration
of people out of these countries into the land of Israel. There were fulfillments of prophecies
in which that did indeed happen. But this is talking about the
Gospel age and it is talking about the fact that the Lord
is gathering the Gentile peoples through the preaching of the
Gospel, the great trumpet, to come and worship Him in the Church,
the Bride of Christ. Trumpets were blown throughout
Israel's history for a number of reasons. The Jubilee Trump
is one that is often referred to. But this is called a Great
Trumpet and its greatness is in the greatness of the salvation
that it announces and the greatness of the saviour that it honours. and the greatness of the transformation
that it accomplishes. and the greatness of the joy
that it instigates. This is a great trumpet that
we have to blow. This gospel trumpet, this activity
upon which we are engaged right now, the preaching and the lifting
up of the Lord Jesus Christ is the gospel by which the Lord
calls his people to himself. And here is a promise of salvation
by preaching Jesus Christ crucified that the Lord gives to his church
and to his ministers. Ordinarily men and women, boys
and girls are saved by the preached word. Preaching is God's chosen
means to convict, to convince and to convert sinners. The spoken
word typified here by a trumpet blast for its clarity, for its
volume, for its coverage. Why did a trumpet get blown on
a battlefield and not just somebody shouting a command? Because you
could hear a trumpet when you couldn't hear a voice. And that's
the point of the gospel. It is clear, it is voluminous,
it has a carry, and it is heard in the ears of those who are
given ears to hear. This message speaks of sins forgiven. It speaks of peace with God.
It speaks of salvation by the blood of Jesus Christ. Isaiah's
words are an assurance to all gospel ministers that the certain
sound of free grace preaching will accomplish the end to which
it is sent. A people will be gathered. A
little later in the prophecy, Isaiah is going to write in chapter
55, verse 5, Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest
not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because
the Lord thy, because of the Lord thy God. So shall my word
be that goeth forth out of thy mouth. It shall not return unto
me void. but it shall accomplish that
which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto
I sent it. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to our hearts today.