Isaiah chapter 20 and verse 1. In the year that Tartan came
unto Ashdod, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him, and
fought against Ashdod, and took it, at the same time spake the
Lord by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth
from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot.' And
he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said,
Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three
years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt, and upon Ethiopia, so
shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians' prisoners
and the Ethiopians' captives, young and old, naked and barefoot,
even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. And they
shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia, their expectation,
and of Egypt, their glory. And the inhabitants of this isle
shall say in that day, Behold, such is our expectation, whether
we flee for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria, and
how shall we escape? Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. The Jews were seeking deliverance
from their Assyrian enemies. They wondered, for they knew
that they were not strong enough by themselves to defend themselves
from Sargon's army. Who would shield them? Who would
defend them as this mighty Assyria bore down upon them? threatening the nation's annihilation
and extinction. Already the peoples to the north
of Judah had succumbed. Judah was just a little nation
now, isolated and alone. It was no match for Tartan's
army or for Sargon. But the Jews felt that they had
a hope. Perhaps Egypt and Ethiopia, the
nations to the south of Judah, in the land of Kush, in that
part of North East Africa, Perhaps Egypt and Ethiopia would prove
to be a suitable deliverer for Judah. Perhaps if they could
make an alliance, perhaps if they could form a confederacy
with these nations, then they would be able to withstand Assyria. If Judah could forge this alliance,
perhaps the people might be saved. But as we see from our reading
in this short chapter today, this was not to be. Isaiah was
instructed by the Lord to disabuse the people of this futile notion
and to strip them of their false hope. Egypt would not come to
Judah's aid because it would not be able to. In fact, Egypt
and Ethiopia would themselves be defeated by Assyria and their
people led captive, shamed, naked, broken. Isaiah was instructed
by the Lord to represent this humiliation by removing his clothes,
discarding his garments and so revealing his nakedness as a
sign of Egypt's shame and the stripping away and the peeling
back of Judah's vain confidence. when the Prophet's message was
seen and heard and understood because it wasn't only graphically
and symbolically presented, but he declared it by his words also,
which gave his actions meaning, his symbolism, a message. When the people understood what
it was that Isaiah was declaring to them by this object lesson
and its interpretation, they cried out. How shall we escape? They began to appreciate that
with Egypt and Ethiopia removed, they had nowhere to turn. The
writer to the Hebrews employs the same words when he writes
in Hebrews chapter two and verse three. How shall we escape? How shall we escape if we neglect
so great salvation? He goes on to speak of the Lord
Jesus Christ having spoken the message of salvation. He says,
How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation which at first
began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed unto us by
them that heard him? So the Lord had spoken his gospel
from the very first this message of salvation and a great salvation
was declared by the Lord Jesus Christ. For the Jews of Isaiah's
day, escape consisted in being delivered from their enemy Assyria. But there's a greater deliverance
in view when we come to the words of Hebrews and it speaks of a
great salvation. This is a salvation spoken of
by the Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, as we've already said,
spoken of him from the first or from the beginning, not only
from the beginning of his ministry, but from the beginning of the
world. the great salvation that was
anticipated by the sacrifice, the slaying of animals in Eden
after the fall and the covering of Adam and Eve's nakedness by
the skins of those animals and by the words of the Lord to the
serpent in the presence of the first parents saying, I will
put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and
her seed and it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise
his heel. So that as Adam and Eve watched
as the Lord slew the animals and clothed them and heard as
the message was given to the serpent that there would be a
bruising of his head and a wounding of the heel of the bruiser. So they too saw and understood
the symbolism of this message. that there would be a way of
escape granted. This deliverance, of course,
was the deliverance from death and from sin and from Satan and
the effects of the fall. First spoken of by the Alpha
and Omega, the eternal word, the everlasting word, and then
fulfilled by the same as the Lord Jesus Christ at the appointed
time came into the world and went to the cross and bore the
sins of his people and died in their place, thus providing a
true covering for their nakedness and for their sin and bruising
the serpent's head as his heel was bruised in his suffering.
So that there always has been, whether we're thinking about
the time of Isaiah when the hope for deliverance of the alliance
between Egypt, Ethiopia and Judah was removed. even to our very
own personal circumstances and need to know a way of salvation. How shall we escape from the
consequences of our sin? How shall we escape the judgment
that is coming? How shall we escape the condemnation
that's come upon us because of Adam's fall and because of our
own sinfulness? And today our question and the
question we ought to ask ourselves and encourage all men and women
to ask themselves is how shall we escape the judgment that is
coming? How shall we escape not the Assyrians
or whatever earthly temporal trial and trouble we face in
the moment, How shall we escape from the consequences and effects
of Adam's fall? Sadly, there are very few people
who are concerned about this. Because, as Paul once again has
said, the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which
believe not. A consequence of the fall is
that men and women are careless about their soul's eternal well-being. A consequence of the fall is
an innate rebellion and opposition and unbelief. against God as
we saw demonstrated by the children of Israel. No matter what great
evidences of God's glory and power and majesty might be revealed
to men and women, they have no thought of God and are in essence
opposed to him. Actually that very sentiment
was addressed in our opening hymn today when we were thinking
about John Fawcett's words in that hymn we read together. He
said, did he not, till late I saw no danger nigh. Completely oblivious
to the terrible state that his soul was in as he tottered, as
he teetered on the very lip of destruction and hell opened its
mouth wide before him, gaped before him. He says, till late
I saw no danger nigh. I lived at ease, nor feared to
die. Wrapped up in self-conceit and
pride, I shall have peace at last, I cried. Fawcett goes on,
he says, But when, great God, thy light divine Had shone on
this dark soul of mine, Then I beheld, with trembling awe,
The terrors of thy holy law. You see, it is when God comes
and illuminates the understanding of a sinner's spiritual insight,
removes the scales that blind our eyes and shows us our guilt
before a holy God and the terrors of hell and the terrors of the
law that condemn us. that he begins to see how great
is his need for a way of escape. So as I suggested in my little
note yesterday, which you're all welcome to receive
if you let me know and if you don't get it, I want to leave
three little lessons from this passage for us today. The first
one is the folly of trusting in the strength of man as a way
of escape. The second is to remark upon
God's wisdom in stripping us of all earthly fleshy hope. And thirdly, the spiritual significance
of God calling his elect an island as he does in this chapter that
we read in Isaiah chapter 20 verse 6. And the inhabitant of
this isle shall say in that day, how shall we escape? So the first point is this. the folly of trusting in the
strength of man. And perhaps this is the principal
lesson from Isaiah's stark message to us today. It taught the ancient
Jewish people the folly of trusting in Egypt and Ethiopia, but it's
application in a spiritual way is a warning to us all not to
lean on our own strength in spiritual matters. Now let me just pause
for a moment because I want to unpack this a little bit. Maybe
your reaction is to say well we don't lean on our own strength
but but I want to show you in what ways we do and in what ways
we are always constantly tempted to do. It is the very essence
indeed of the widespread religion of our world today. Much of the
religion of our age is preoccupied with an individual's own contribution
to their salvation and therefore to peace with God. It begins with a gospel that's
built not on divine mercy and sovereign grace, but on man's
free will and an earned atonement and an earned reconciliation
with God. That man himself in some way
enables his salvation and in some way deserves God's kindness
and deliverance in the way that he acts. Here's what I mean. Most churches teach that God
wishes or desires to save everyone but won't save anyone against
their will. We are told that God has made
salvation possible for everyone by punishing Christ for all sin
on the cross. and now he freely offers forgiveness
and pardon to whosoever will believe and open their hearts
to Christ. Everlasting life, it is said,
is available for anyone who will let God be master of their lives
and agree to become Christ's disciple. We're told that deliverance
from judgment and hell and Satan's grip is obtained and kept by
a man's own power to choose Christ, to submit to Christ, to follow
Christ. And there are undoubtedly very
many professing Christians who contentedly assume that they've
done all that they need to do in order to be saved. They've
ticked the box. they've got the assurance, they're
told by their ministers, they're told by their friends, they're
told by their fellow church members that everything's all right in
their lives. They live their life having that
reinforcement given to them week by week and then when they die,
why? They are shipped into eternity
with the very self same promises that they've done everything
necessary to escape and to obtain the Lord's salvation. And yet, this fallacious trusting
is merely faith in the strength of man. It doesn't stop there. even at
a wrong view of conversion. Because again, most churches
disciple their members with calls for personal obedience, for devoted
service, for holy living. And their preaching week by week
is a subtle blend of telling people what they should be doing
to gain God's pleasure and scolding them for not doing it properly. I urge you not to be deceived
by that carnal, man-centred message. It's a false gospel of work salvation,
in which men and women are taught to trust not in the sovereign
grace of God, not in the completed work of Christ, not in the precious
blood that cleanses, but in their own ability to please God by
their obedience. It's the spiritual equivalent
of Judah trusting in Egypt for deliverance. A sinner is encouraged
to trust in their own ability to please God by believing and
obeying. And it gives me no pleasure to
say there will be many on that day who will discover they have
no genuine hope because they've been trusting in the arm of flesh
They have no wedding garment. They have no robe of righteousness. They will be stripped of their
self-righteousness and ashamed in God's sight because they trusted
in the strength of man and not in the righteousness of God. God be merciful to us. So here is the first point then.
that we need to be aware of the folly of trusting in the strength
of man. The second is this. There is
a wisdom and a kindness and a goodness in God in stripping us of our
earthly hopes and sanctuaries before that time. And I want
to parallel that experience with what many of us encounter and
endure during our Christian pilgrimage. It is the Lord's goodness to
us to strip away all our sense of our own abilities and our
own strength and to show us and reinforce to us the needs that
we have to rely more and more upon him. There were many in
the day of Judah, many in Judah in the day of Isaiah who placed
their hope in Egypt and Ethiopia. And among them surely were God's
remnant people, His elect church there amongst the people of Judah. And it was to these saints that
were precious in the sight of God, this remnant people, his
elect church, that Isaiah was sent with this strange message. It was for the sake of the elect
that he bared more than his soul. They were just as tempted to
trust in man's strength as any. And we're all at heart, we're
all at heart, self-righteous free willers. But Isaiah's gospel
warned them that there was no deliverance in the land of Cush. And it was these quickened hearers
of Isaiah's truth, these spiritual witnesses to his humiliating
message, that this prophecy was sent and it was these, the remnant
people, the elect of God amongst the Jews and the people of Israel
who cried out, believingly, how then shall we escape? And it is faithful gospel preachers
who preach the true gospel of sovereign grace to gospel hearers
today into whose hearts the light divine has shone on this dark
soul of mine. It is just such who are brought
to trust wholly in Christ's death for redemption and Christ's obedience
for righteousness. Religion tries to nurture holiness
But it is not the righteousness of believers which grows, it
is their faith that grows. Faith grows as it is fed with
truth and watered with God's grace through trials. And sometimes we wonder why life
has to be so hard. Why our trials have to be so
rough. Why our path in this world is
so steep. It is because the Lord uses such
pain, such trial, to humble his people, to strip us of our self-reliance. to show us our weakness. It's
God's wisdom to strip us of every filthy rag of self-righteousness
and remove every fig leaf of self-covering and to bring us
to an end of ourselves and to seal us up to Christ. to close us up to those deceiving
whispers of those preachers who say peace, peace, when there
is no peace. Let me say it in one sentence
if I may. Our trials And many of us are
experiencing those trials right now. Our trials are God's wise
way of consoling us with heavenly peace and joy while stripping
us of earthly counterfeits that we might find all our consolation
in Him. So God is wise. in stripping
away these earthly sanctuaries from us, hard as it might be. And finally, here is another
thought, and I just want to draw your attention to this little
word, aios, here, this island's reference to the people of Judah. What is the spiritual significance
of God calling his people an island? It might kind of seem strange
that Judah is called an isle or an island. We think of an
island as being a piece of land surrounded by sea, which Judah,
Israel, certainly was not. So why then does God call his
people an isle? It's because God's elect are
a separated people. It's because the whole nature
of our state and condition and standing before God is as a people
sanctified in Christ and separated by the Holy Spirit from this
world. This aisle is the fact that we
are embraced in the covenant promises of God exclusively. That the blessings of God, that
the accomplishments of Christ, that the goodness and wisdom
of God flows to that people whom he has gathered and separated
to himself. God considers us differently. God sees us differently. It is true, of course, we are
in the world. But the scriptures tell us we
are not of it. He treats us differently, considers
us differently, deals with us differently, because he loves
his elect. Because Christ's blood has been
shed for his elect. because we are to be conformed
to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ when so many others will
not. We are set apart as his chosen
people, justified, pardoned, reconciled, glorified because
we are his sanctified people for whom all salvation has been
accomplished and to whom every goodness and mercy and blessing
shall be given. The Lord's elect are like an
island in a stormy, tumultuous sea. Look around you. Look around
you in the world. How many times do we find ourselves
lamenting the state of the world around about us? The Lord has
placed us on an island. We are an island in this tumultuous
sea, which is the world. This remnant people of Isaiah's
day were hounded and harried and persecuted and exiled and
slain. But their souls were Christ's
and their deaths were precious and the hairs of their heads
were numbered and everything about them was carefully managed
and perfectly fulfilled they were an island unto the Lord. He knew where every single one
was. He knew their needs. He knew
how to help them and he blessed them and he provided for them
even in the midst of their trials. Sometimes in Scripture we are
called a holy nation Sometimes we're called a kingdom of priests. Sometimes we're a little flock.
Sometimes we're a great congregation. Here God's remnant people, his
elect people, are called an isle. But the meaning is the same.
We're a separated people. This is the church of Jesus Christ. These are the people redeemed
by blood, clothed with righteousness, justified, sanctified, glorified
in Christ the beloved. Truly an island nation, if ever
there was one. Amen. May the Lord bless these
thoughts to our hearts today.