Isaiah has been giving us this
series of burdens or prophecies about the nations around about,
speaking about the way God will, in his providence over the coming
years and sometimes centuries, accomplish his plan of lifting
nations up and bringing them down again. And there are three
burdens in this passage. The first one, although it's
not explicitly stated in the introduction at least, appears
to be a burden concerning Babylon, a repetition of what has in some
way gone before. We'll see that as this opening
burden goes on, that Isaiah puts himself in the place of the king
of Babylon and speaks, as it were, on his behalf. And then
we'll encounter another Burden in verse 11, the burden of Duma. That's just a very short one.
And then we will have in verse 13, the burden that is upon Arabia. So three burdens today for the
price of one, as it were. And we will read in Isaiah chapter
21 and verse 1. This is the word of the Lord. the burden of the desert of the
sea. As whirlwinds in the south pass
through, so it cometh from the desert, from a terrible land. A grievous vision is declared
unto me. The treacherous dealer dealeth
treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam! Besiege, O Media! All the sighing thereof have
I made to cease. Therefore are my loins filled
with pain. These are the words now of the
King of Babylon. Therefore are my loins filled
with pain. Pangs have taken hold upon me. As the pangs of a woman that
travaileth, I was bowed down at the hearing of it. I was dismayed
at the seeing of it. My heart panted. Fearfulness
affrighted me. The night of my pleasure hath
he turned into fear unto me. Prepare the table. Watch in the
watchtower. Eat, drink. Arise, ye princes,
and anoint the shield. For thus hath the Lord said unto
me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. And he
saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses,
and a chariot of camels, and he hearkened diligently with
much heed. And he cried, A lion! My lord,
I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and
I am set in my ward whole nights. And behold, here cometh a chariot
of men with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon
is fallen, is fallen. And all the graven images of
her gods he hath broken unto the ground. All my threshing
and the corn of my floor, that which I have heard of the Lord
of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you. The burden of Duma. He calleth
to me out of Seir. Watchman, what of the night?
Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, the morning
cometh, and also the night. If ye will inquire, inquire ye. Return, come. The burden upon Arabia. In the
forest in Arabia shall ye lodge, O ye travelling companies of
Dedanim. The inhabitants of the land of
Tima brought water to him that was thirsty. They prevented with
their bread him that fled. For they fled from the swords,
from the drawn sword, and from the bent bow, and from the grievousness
of war. For thus hath the Lord said unto
me, within a year according to the years of an hireling, and
all the glory of Cedar shall fail. And the residue of the
number of archers, the mighty men of the children of Cedar,
shall be diminished, for the Lord God of Israel hath spoken
it. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. It is a truth that is eternally
fixed in heaven and a truth that is graciously revealed on earth,
that salvation is of the Lord. And the fact that there is forgiveness
of sin and the divine provision of redemption by blood is a glorious
truth of God's revelation to men and women who are sinners. Now these things may not be generally
believed, they may be mocked They may be despised, they may
be ignored, they may be rejected by fallen sinful creatures and
repudiated with all the earthly wisdom known to man. But the fact that there is salvation
in the Lord Jesus Christ shall be proved true. and ultimately
God's sovereign grace will be universally confessed and either
in heaven or in hell it will be everlastingly acknowledged
to be true by all men and women. Peter says, neither is there
salvation in any other For there is none other name under heaven
given amongst men, whereby we must be saved. When Peter the Apostle declared
that truth, that fact to the religious Jews of his day, he
was ministering about a salvation, about a gospel truth that was
vested in the Lord Jesus Christ in his role as an apostle and
a preacher. Peter the apostle, Peter the
preacher was declaring that salvation comes from the Lord Jesus Christ
uniquely and completely. And Peter declared God's message
with authority, much indeed as the Old Testament prophets had
done in that previous dispensation. They, the prophets of the Old
Testament, pointed forward in types and in shadows and in dark
speeches to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we've
been thinking about that in the passage that we read about Aaron's
rod that buddied in the passage of the woman that speaks of her
beloved in the Song of Solomon. And here in the pictures that
we have from Isaiah, we see these dark speeches, these shadows
and types pointing forward to the coming Messiah, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And this is what the prophets
declared. Likewise, the apostles in the
New Testament testified of the same thing, but rather than testifying
about what would happen, they testified about what they had
seen at the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ and what they had
heard from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ. They spoke of a
personal witness of what they had seen and heard. And like
the prophets of old, they declared Christ. But there are also other roles
that gospel preachers fulfill. And here in this passage from
Isaiah, we encounter another role that gospel preachers have
as well as declaring the words and works of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is the role of watchmen. Like the apostles of old, Gospel
preachers in the Church of Jesus Christ fulfill the role of Watchmen. Now Watchmen is an Old Testament
name for those that stood guard upon the walls of the city and
watched for danger. Interestingly, we saw that the
watchmen were spoken of by the beloved in Song of Solomon, in
the chapter that we read of Song of Solomon, that she went out
into the streets in the nighttime and she encountered there the
watchmen. which suggests that these watchmen,
they watched over the streets of the city and they stood on
the walls of the city as guards. And so they watched for danger. Sometimes they walked the streets
of the city in the night, marking time in the hours of darkness,
reassuring the inhabitants in the night season. And they are
prefiguring a spiritual role that a preacher has in the church
of Jesus Christ in these days as well. As watchmen in Christ's
church, gospel preachers warn of danger from enemies without
the church who spread false doctrine and try to steal away believers
and they also bring comfort within the church by marking the passage
of time, watching and praying and declaring the soon return
of the Lord Jesus Christ, encouraging and comforting the Lord's people. They preach the gospel to comfort
and to reassure God's people of their security in Christ. They remind us, the church, of
the Lord Jesus Christ, that it is a holy city surrounded by
walls of salvation and upon the walls of Zion and in its streets
the watchmen serve God's people. and it is such a watchman that
Isaiah is alluding to in the verses before us today. We saw
the watchman in the context of the burden of Babylon, the so-called
burden of the desert of the sea, but it is to the verses that
are in verse 11 and 12 that I want to draw our particular attention
today. This is the burden of Duma and
it is really a very, very short burden. Nothing is said about
the terrible things that might happen here in the same way as
catastrophe and calamity are spoken in these other burdens
that we have been considering. Nothing more is said concerning
Duma. except we have this reference
to the watchman. And this watchman is a servant
of God. Maybe, indeed, it was Isaiah
himself, charged with warning of danger and reassuring the
people. And what I want to do today,
in the time that is available to me, is just make three little
applications as we spiritualise these two verses. And I'm going
to take them as three headings. I want us to think about an earnest
inquiry. Watchmen, war of the night. It
is an earnest inquiry. It comes with a sincerity. It comes with an earnestness. It is a question that is meant
to find an answer. And I want to take as my second
point, a humble honesty by the person who asks that question. And thirdly, we are going to
think about our great watchman, who is in fact the Lord Jesus
Christ, who watcheth over the flock of his people. So here's our three points, an
earnest inquiry, a humble honesty, and our great watchman. So let us take our first point
then, in the context of these few verses from Isaiah chapter
21. We have before us, in this little
phrase, watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the
night? An earnest inquiry. In this burden that Isaiah brings
to our attention, we learn of a question given to the watchman. The watchman is asked, what of
the night? And it's interesting for us to
note that this question originates from a man of seer. He is a Gentile. He is an Edomite. He is a stranger and a foreigner,
and yet one who is anxious to discover what the watchman knows
about the prevailing circumstances, about what is happening. If this
is a question asked personally to Isaiah, it is a question concerning
the ways of God, and it is a question concerning the meaning of God's
revelation. Here is a man of seer asking
the prophet Isaiah as God's watchman, what is happening? What is your
prophecy telling me? What is all of this about? And to that extent, it is an
important question and as important a question as any stranger can
ask. This is a question asked twice. Now either it is a question asked
by one person on two occasions with urgency, or it is asked
by two people in quick succession. Watchman, what of the night?
Watchman, what of the night? Let me paraphrase these questions
in a spiritual context. The questioner is asking, with
an earnest inquiry, what is happening? Why is this world so dark? What does all this mean? Is there a purpose to life? means this message from God? Is there a God? What happens
when we die? These are questions every faithful
watchman, every faithful preacher is glad to hear asked. Because it opens up the opportunity
to speak of the way of salvation and to speak of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Isaiah's message, of course,
was Christ. It was Christ that Isaiah was
speaking about. It was to tell the people of
his age and of successive ages that the Lord Jesus Christ was
coming, that they were not to be disheartened, that they were
not to be broken, Because while there would be much transpired
in the history of the nations, yet God would preserve himself
a remnant, the elect people of God would be preserved, and from
that people the Messiah would come to establish his kingdom. It was faith in that promise,
faith in the coming Messiah that characterised the Lord's spiritual
people and has characterised them in every age. And so here
is Isaiah speaking as a watchman of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
is speaking of the coming morning. That is a picture that the morning
or morning light, just as we had in our opening hymn there
today, the morning light or Christ the hind of the morning, Christ
the rising son of righteousness is a common picture of the saviours
coming into the world. Christ would come just as the
morning would come, just as the Son of Righteousness would rise.
And when the Messiah of Israel would be revealed, then that
One who was the Morning Star, that One who was the Lion of
Judah, would sit upon His throne. It's as if the gentile, the stranger,
the foreigner, the man of seer, cries to the prophet, what is
your message for me today? And Isaiah says, you ask, I'll
tell you. And so every faithful preacher
must be ready to answer an earnest enquirer with a reason for the
hope that is within us. What does he have to say? He
says that there is a night of sin. He says that there is a
night of death. He says, but there is a morning
of hope. in Jesus Christ to come. We have something to say to an
earnest inquirer after the things of the Lord. We have something
to say concerning the matter and the meaning of Christ's coming
into the world. We have something to say concerning
Christ the Saviour, the Hind of the Morning who comes to bless
poor sinners. We have a message of good news
for troubled hearts, of grace and salvation, of forgiveness
and pardon, of liberty and everlasting life. And our gospel is a person. It is the person of Jesus Christ,
God's Son, and His saving accomplishments on the cross. This is our message. We have a message of hope in
the power of Christ's blood to cleanse from sin. And our trust
is in the fitness of His righteousness. to cover and to clothe our nakedness
and prepare us for the presence of God. We believe grace to be
a completed work. We believe in an effectual redemption
that has been accomplished. We believe that it is founded
on divine love that overcomes every obstacle in order to bring
God's people to glory. and our faith is in Jesus Christ,
the only way of salvation. That is our message to the earnest
inquirer who says, watchman, what of the night? And what does a sinner say to
that message? Well, what did you say? What
did you say when you heard that answer? What did you say when
you heard the answer about Christ, the son of righteousness, rising
with healing in his wings? I don't know what the Edomite
from Seir replied to the prophet. but the prophet being willing
to engage in pointing to Christ invites further study. And so a gospel preacher happily
invites further inquiry and response. We can't give people everlasting
life, but we can point to one who can. If ye will inquire,
inquire ye, says the prophet, If you have a question, bring
your question. If you have an earnest desire,
if you have a felt need, if you have an awareness of sin, if
you see that there is an emptiness in your soul, then inquire. Return. Come. Some scoff. and turn away. No doubt, no doubt, that will
be the response when the Gospel is preached. But the Lord has
a remnant for whom such a message is joy and peace. He has a people
who delight to hear these things declared. And perhaps the Gentile
from Seir was one of those people. By this gospel, we discover evidence
of God's grace in the lives of his people. How do we know who
God's people are? They are the ones who hunger
and thirst after righteousness. And being taught of the Lord,
they come to faith in Jesus Christ. But the work of a watchman perhaps is mostly directed towards
God's people. He stands on the wall scanning
for dangers that might harm the inhabitants of the city. The
enemies without, such as these false teachers with their false
doctrine, such as temptation that will come to the little
ones and to the lambs and to the flock of the Lord, that watches
for sheep stealers and thieves who break in and steal a believer's
peace and joy. He watches for the enemies without
and he walks the streets in the night searching for the enemies
within such as doubt and unbelief and spiritual coldness and misplaced
fear. And it is not only the Gentile
from Seir that asks, but it is also the Lord's people themselves
who inquire. Watchmen, what of the night?
Watchmen, what of the night? And this takes us to our second
point. That there ought to be in the
thinking of every true believer, a humble honesty to ask such
a question. It is very appropriate in the
people of God to possess a humble honesty. We all encounter periods
of night in our soul and times of darkness in our spirit. The men and women whose life
is a continuous blessing have more to be anxious about with
respect to their spirits than they realize. The reason for
our trial is that God purposefully and intentionally brings trouble
and hardship into the lives of his people because it is by trial
as a means that he deepens our knowledge of our personal need
and proves the sufficiency of his grace towards us. It is divine
love that prompts chastening. But this chastening is discipline. It's not punishment. It is exercise
to strengthen and equip us for Christ's service. The Lord doesn't
send a load of infants and children onto the battlefield of this
world as far as spiritual matters are concerned. Nor does he want
those who have no strength, those who have no energy, those who
have no experience in the battalions that have to man the trenches
of this war. The Lord prepares His people
and He prepares us using trials. It is the trials of life that
equip us and give us the experience to know where our help is found. It is a mark of God's wisdom
that he deals with us so. It's a poor parent who spoils
a child through lack of discipline and God is no poor parent. And yet, for the Lord's people,
these trials are real and they are painful. We lose a loved
one. We lose a partner. We lose a
child. We encounter loneliness. We become ill and frail and aged. We suffer pain. We suffer poverty. We experience frustration. we thereby uncover all manner
of sin that still dwells in our hearts, which we had hoped that
long ago had been conquered. And I cannot begin to enumerate
or identify all the shades or flavours or the nature of the
troubles that we will face as the Lord's people. We read the
other night, there is no temptation taken as such as is common to
man. In all of these trials, we have
doubtless to encounter more than we think we are able to bear. More than
we think we have need of. and often for longer than we
would like. But this is God at work in our
lives and this is how we should interpret our trials. God is
working in our lives. Therefore these things, this
is the burn in the muscles of our soul. This is the hard path
that must be trodden. This is the challenge of our
life. How do we cope? How long will
the pain last? When will it end? We fear the
lingering darkness. We fear the emptiness of soul. We fear the long night of mourning. We shudder at the cold. We desire
after the warmth of the sun once again. Our soul cries out for
mercy and help. And the Lord seems to say, not
yet, not yet. And we cry, watchmen, what of
the night? Watchmen, what of the night?
How long does this go on? The Apostle says, once again,
there is no temptation taken you, but such as is common to
man. But God is faithful. He will
not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will
with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be
able to bear it. that ye may be able to bear it. You see what Paul is telling
us here? There is an endurance that will
be perfected because of the trials that we are experiencing. And
the Lord will strengthen us that we may be able to bear it. What
is the way of escape that is being spoken of in this verse?
Is it not that we learn to lean more heavily upon our Deliverer? Is it not that we learn more
intimately about our own weaknesses and about His strengths and resources
and provision? Is it not that He nurtures in
our souls patience and forbearance and sympathy and empathy for
others as He strips us of our self-confidence and our independence
and our pride? What is this way of escape that
the Lord will provide? It's not the removal of temptation. but it is the means of bearing
it. It is the strength to endure
it. It is the grace to persevere
in it. And again, we go back to Isaiah's
words in the burden of Duma. Isaiah's answer cheers us in
the midst of our trials and temptations. He tells us that This too will
pass. The morning will come, he says. The morning will come. But yet
remember, again the night will follow day. Just as sure as,
well, day follows night. And if the Lord will take a thorn
from our flesh, It is because our lesson has been learned for
the moment. But do not imagine that another
thorn won't arise. Our rest is not to be in this
world and in this flesh and in this life. Our rest lies beyond
the grave. Our rest lies in Christ and in
the glory that he is preparing for us. When the time comes for
us to lay down this body of flesh, we shall be grateful to relinquish
it. and to leave all our troubles
behind. And until then, the morning cometh
and also the night. Let these two dwell in tandem
in our mind. As we take our prayers to the
Lord, let us remember that yes, he will hear them and he will
answer them. A morning will come. but a night
will follow just as surely. This is no fatalism or defeatism
that we're speaking about here. Yes, we dwell in a body of death. But there is a positive dimension
to this structure in which the Lord has chosen to teach, to
tutor, to lead his people. Here we see the positive intervention
of God in our life to accomplish his ends, to bless his people
and to show us and reveal to us his glory. And here's the
key to that understanding. The Lord will be inquired of. Isaiah says, if ye will inquire,
inquire ye, return, come. You're going through a hard time
just now. You're experiencing trial just now. What is your
duty? What is your responsibility?
What is your privilege? in this moment, but to inquire
of the Lord to return and to come to his throne of grace and
mercy. The Lord will be inquired of. Let me tell you what that means. Ezekiel chapter 36 and verse
37 says this. Thus saith the Lord God, I will
yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it
for them. I will increase them. This is
what that verse means. The Lord promises that he will
bless his people. He promises to increase us. He promises to do us good. and
yet he ordains our blessings in such a way as to cause his
people to ask and to pray and to plead for what he has already
determined and ordained to do. He will be inquired of before
he gives us all the good that he has in store and The only
motivation we have to inquire of the Lord is the trials and
the temptations that he puts us through until these blessings
arrive. And this brings us to our third
point. This is brief. Our Lord Jesus
Christ is the great watchman. Isaiah served in the role of
watchman. The apostles were in the role
of watchmen. The Lord places pastors amongst
his sheep, ministers in the household of faith, teachers in his classrooms. But let us always remember it
is Christ himself who is the great shepherd, the good master
and the true light. And so too our Saviour is the
principal watchman. It is He who stood upon the walls
of Zion in the everlasting covenant of grace and identified all our
enemies. It is He who went to the cross
and battled our foes into submission and led them captive. It is He
who walks the streets of Zion, His holy city, marking the hours,
ordering the times and the seasons, managing our welfare and supplying
our every need. Christ watches over us like no
pastor ever could. He is the keeper of his people
who as the omniscient and omnipotent God knows all things that we
need and is able to supply them. He shall be quick to bring about
those blessings. He is the chief shepherd of his
people and he does for us what no mere pastor ever could. So when you next find yourself
crying out, as you must and as you will, Watchman, what of the
night? Watchman, what of the night? Remember to these words. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall
not want. He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures. He leadeth me beside the still
waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth
me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort
me. Thou preparest a table before
me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil,
my cup runneth over. Surely, goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord for ever. All hail, mighty watchman. What of the night? Amen.