Isaiah chapter 13 and verse 1. The burden of Babylon which Isaiah
the son of Amoz did see. Lift ye up a banner upon the
high mountain. Exalt the voice unto them. Shake the hand that they may
go into the gates of the nobles. I have commanded my sanctified
ones, I have also called my mighty ones for mine anger, even them
that rejoice in my Highness. The noise of a multitude in the
mountains, like as of a great people, a tumultuous noise of
the kingdoms of nations gathered together. The Lord of hosts mustereth
the host of the battle. They come from a far country,
from the end of heaven, even the Lord, and the weapons of
His indignation, to destroy the whole land. Howl, ye, for the
day of the Lord is at hand. It shall come as a destruction
from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be
faint, and every man's heart shall melt. and they shall be
afraid. Pangs and sorrows shall take
hold of them. They shall be in pain as a woman
that travaileth. They shall be amazed one at another. Their faces shall be as flames. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh,
cruel, both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate,
and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars
of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their
light, the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon
shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the
world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity, and
I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will
lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a man more
precious than fine gold, even a man than the golden wedge of
Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens
and the earth shall remove out of her place in the wrath of
the Lord of hosts and in the day of his fierce anger. And
it shall be as the chaste roe and as a sheep that no man taketh
up They shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every
one into his own land. Every one that is found shall
be thrust through, and every one that is joined unto them
shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be
dashed to pieces before their eyes, their houses shall be spoiled,
and their wives ravished. Behold, I will stir up the meads
against them, which shall not regard silver, and as for gold,
they shall not delight in it. Their bows also shall dash the
young men to pieces, and they shall have no pity on the fruit
of the womb, their eyes shall not spare children. and Babylon,
the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency,
shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall
never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation
to generation, neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there,
neither shall the shepherds make their fold there, But wild beasts
of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full
of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs
shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the island
shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant
palaces. And her time is near to come,
and her days shall not be prolonged. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this solemn reading from his word. Our Lord Jesus Christ told his
disciples, and he told us, that all scripture speaks of him. And it is Our peculiar blessing, a blessing granted to the Lord's
people to discover the Saviour at times and in places unexpected. We should always be on the lookout
for the Saviour. in the Scriptures. It ought to
be a prayer of the Lord's elect that the Holy Spirit would all
the time be showing us more of the Lord Jesus Christ, more of
His glory, more of His love, more of His grace and His kindness
and His mercy. We shall spend eternity getting
to know and love our husband and we do well to begin that
process now. Let it be our prayer and the
desire of our heart that we should learn more of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now many people who read the
chapter before us today will see it in a harsh way. We'll see it as little more than
the brutal account of warfare and suffering and destruction. And many indeed may choose to
pass over such a passage as merely an ancient story from an age
long gone which bears little relevance to the Lord's New Testament
gospel of grace and mercy and forgiveness. And I've heard such
people say that they do not read these Old Testament passages
because there's too much of blood and there's too much of battles
and warfare. and they prefer the life of Christ
and they prefer the words of Christ and his miracles and the
gospels and the apostles. I hope that we have better judgment
than that. The people of God see Christ
in all the scripture and are themselves united as fellow citizens
with the sense of all ages these. to whom Isaiah was writing, are
our brothers and sisters in the Lord, just as much as you and
I are today who have the privilege of worshipping together in the
gospel of Jesus Christ. These are our brothers and sisters,
and we are united with them. These words were written to them,
and we have this union together in the Lord Jesus Christ that
transcends the centuries and the miles. We understand ourselves to be
of the household of God and we understand ourselves to be built
upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. That's what Paul
says in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 19. That as the household of
God we are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Jesus Christ himself being the
chief cornerstone. The point is that you can't admire
Paul and ignore Isaiah. We take this testimony as one
and we see the Lord Jesus Christ being revealed to us in so many
ways and manners according to his dealings with his people
through the ages. And today, I want us to notice
three things about what is written here in this chapter 13 of Isaiah. I want us to think about why
the Holy Spirit felt it necessary to record these burdens. Now I've spent a little bit of
time anticipating these chapters in the note that I wrote yesterday. So once again, I refer you to
that. It's explanatory of some of the
aspects of what these burdens are about. But these burdens,
just as surely as the Gospels and the Epistles, as they are
comprised in God's Word, are for our doctrine and reproof
and correction and instruction in righteousness. The prophecies
are called burdens and they take up the next 10 chapters of the
prophecy of Isaiah. their visions received by Isaiah
concerning the destruction of the nations and the peoples around
about him for the punishment of their sins. They're called
burdens because they're heavy. and their weighty sentences upon
the Lord's enemies and the enemies of his church. And the title
that Isaiah gives them of burdens suggests that the prophet himself
found them neither easy nor agreeable. Very often a preacher sent by
God must deliver a message which is neither easy nor agreeable
to him. And yet these are the things
of the Lord and the things that are to be stated before men and
women. These visions were given, these
prophecies were recorded centuries before the events contained in
them took place. These are prophecies. This is Isaiah foretelling what
is going to happen. In fact, there's probably several
centuries, it's about 200 years, by the time Isaiah gave these
prophecies, depending on what part of his life they were given
to him, and the fulfilment of them. And interestingly, even
the nations of which he speaks, had in some cases not even come
to the height of their glory. It was like little people's rather
insignificant nations that he was speaking about. And people
would have said, well, why are you speaking about these little
nations, Isaiah, when there are bigger nations around? For example, he speaks here about
Babylon first and foremost, when we would have thought that Assyria,
that had been the nation spoken of in earlier chapters, would
be foremost in his mind. But the reality is that by this
time Assyria had been destroyed and Babylon was in its ascendancy. When Isaiah is speaking of these
burdens. So the very first one, the first
one that we have is the burden of Babylon. And because we see
that this was a foretelling of events that were yet to take
place several hundred years hence, we see the explicit hand of God
in the delivery of these prophecies. There are more burdens, as I've
mentioned, that will follow. There is a burden of Assyria.
There is a burden of Philistia. There's one concerning Moab. There's one concerning Damascus
and Ethiopia and Egypt. There is another about Elam.
There is one about Media, the land of the Medes and the Persians.
There's one about Arabia. There is one about Tyre and Sidon,
the cities of the coast. And finally, Isaiah will speak
of the judgment of the world in the end times. So from this
we see that Isaiah is looking at all the kingdoms around about
Judah and Israel and declaring that God's judgment will fall
upon them for their sin and for their idolatry. while at the
same time the faithful prophet holds forth a grander purpose
of deliverance and redemption and glory by a child yet to be
born and a son yet to be given. You see, we don't read these
passages without putting them in the context of that which
Isaiah has already been speaking of in chapter 6 and chapter 7
and chapter 8 and chapter 9 where he has told us of the coming
Messiah and the deliverance that will follow and flow from him. Furthermore, As Isaiah speaks
about the destruction of the kingdoms of these nations, so
he elevates the kingdom and the governance and the glory and
the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ. So these are the two
things that are operating side by side in Isaiah writing these
passages as he does. He is declaiming against the
nations and he is lifting up the Lord before the people to
whom he writes. And that's an interesting point
as well because these burdens, these prophecies were not written
for the nations that are mentioned in them. They weren't written for the
Babylonians and the Assyrians and the Elamites and the Arabians
and the Medes and the Persians. They were written for principally
Judah and the house of Israel. And if we want to be even more
particular, they were essentially, as the whole of God's word is,
for the elect of God and for the remnant people that the kindness
of God and the goodness of God and the mercies of God are primarily
directed towards. So that by these prophecies,
it's the Lord's own people that would learn that there is no
world power, be it ever so great, that will stand before the glory
of God or will be allowed to oppose his people indefinitely. There would be an accountability
that would be laid at the feet of these nations and God would
charge them for their wickedness. This knowledge then delivered
to the remnant was designed by God through the prophet Isaiah
to comfort God's elect by showing them how precious they were to
him and how he would condemn and judge the nations who did
them harm. The knowledge would comfort God's
elect and they must not interpret the world around them in the
immediate moment in which they were living. but they must, on
the basis of what Isaiah is saying, step back to see the purposes
of God being worked out over centuries and indeed millennia. And there's lessons there for
us as well. The people of Isaiah's day would
be reminded that God is in control and His grace and His mercy is
for a particular people, the people of His choice, the people
of His covenant. So this brings us to the points
that I want to leave with you today. And I've just got three,
and I'm aware of the time, as usual, and I'll bring these points
to you quickly. But I think that we learn from
these chapters, or the people of God did in those days, and
we can draw these conclusions also. These three points, and
I think they will do our souls good just to dwell on them briefly. The first thing is this, that
we learn about the character of God from these verses. We learn, first of all, that
he is holy. Holiness is the motive and the
cause of God's judgment. And this chapter is all about
judgment. These burdens reflect punishment
for sin and are explicitly said to come as a destruction from
the Almighty. This is God at work here. Now
by this means Isaiah reminds us all that the God with whom
we have to do is holy, pure and perfect and he will by no means
clear the guilty. Now you might say, well did the
people of God, did the Jews, did the people of Israel, did
they not know that God was holy already? Did they not know that
fact? Did they not know that from their
history? Did they not know that from the
law? Sure they did, sure they did. Those who had eyes to see
would understand the nature of God from the sacrifices and from
the law that was given and from other prophets that had spoken,
from David's ministries and the way the Lord dealt with his servant. But there is no greater reinforcement
as to the holiness of God than in seeing judgment performed. Let me just point something out
to you here which I think is interesting. On the basis of
seeing judgment performed. Our Saviour did not ordain that
we remember and celebrate His resurrection. And that is what
the world is building up to do now in the coming week. They
are going to be celebrating Easter. They are going to be celebrating
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm not knocking
that. But I am saying this, that the Lord didn't say to his people,
remember my resurrection. He said, remember my death. The Lord would have us remember
his death in our communion regularly, frequently, the blood and the
body, because Christ's death showed both the holiness of God
and the love of Christ for his people. The punishment of the
wicked testifies to the holiness of God and it was our wickedness
that was placed on Christ, that was punished and judged in Christ
and therefore it bespeaks the holiness and the perfection of
God. The men of Beth Shemesh, we were
speaking a little bit about the Ark of the Covenant a little
while ago, and the men of Beth Shemesh took the Ark of the Covenant
when it came back from the land of the Philistines after it had
been taken in battle. And those men opened the lid
They opened the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, and they peeked
inside, and the Lord slew many of them. And here's what the
men of Bethshemesh said when the Lord slew many of them, having
transgressed that holy artifact, that holy instrument of the tabernacle. They said this, Who is able to
stand before this holy Lord God? When judgment comes, the reaction
of men will be, who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? So the fact of this passage shows
the holiness of God. It also shows that God is sovereign.
Now we're going to come back to this in another sermon because,
another sermon on another day, because Isaiah makes a lot of
it the sovereignty of God. Preaching the sovereignty of
God isn't a new thing. Isaiah was doing it many, many
years ago. But we note the frequency in
this chapter of Isaiah using I and me as the Lord speaks and
confirms his direct involvement in the accomplishment of these
events. It's the Lord who determines
who shall rise and who shall fall, who shall live and who
shall die. He raises kings and he removes
them according to his will. He lifts up empires and he brings
empires down. Proverbs chapter 21 verse 1 says,
The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord as the rivers of
water. He turneth it whithersoever he
will. Men think that they're able to act with authority, act
with free will, act as free agents and do the things that they want.
But the Lord is in control and that's what this passage teaches.
The Lord here speaks of sanctified ones. Men and nations set apart
to do his will, to do his bidding. And that doesn't impugn God's
holiness in any way. The brutality that the Medes
and the Persians would enact upon the Babylonians, as it is
described here in this chapter, rose out of their own wicked
hearts and their own corrupt desires. But to the extent that the Lord
enabled it and did not prevent it, we see the employment here,
the use being made of one nation to judge another as God accomplished
his purpose amongst them. So that reading Isaiah's prophecy
left the elect remnant of his day in no doubt of God's strength
and power and sovereign will. So they could see his holiness,
they could see his sovereignty. And here too was also displayed
the love of God and the mercy of God. Because all who understood
these matters, all to whom these things were written, knew that
they were sinners too. that God should condemn and punish
Babylon and Assyria and Egypt and Ethiopia and spare the men
and women of Judah was not because Judah didn't have any idols,
was not because Judah was righteous or that Judah deserved in some
way deliverance. Isaiah's words had already made
clear that that was not the case. but rather it showed covenant
grace. It showed the power of God's
promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. It showed that there
was a love of God that was particular and was specific to a certain
people that caused him to deal differently with one nation than
another. that caused him to distinguish
between people and revealed to the elect remnant the nature
of particular grace. Jacob have I loved, Esau have
I hated. The Lord said to Moses, I will
have mercy on whom I will have mercy. I will have compassion
on whom I will have compassion. And here was an object lesson
in that statement. The people, the remnant, the
Jews, they could see these very things before their eyes as the
Lord had mercy upon them and had compassion upon them while
judging these nations by these burdens that are expressed. And
thus here, the Lord's elect learned about God's love and grace as
a comfort for the remnant people. And by providing Isaiah with
this vision, God gave Israel and God gave Judah grounds for
comfort during their exile by giving them hope and promising
that a remnant would be delivered from that exile and would be
able to return to the land of promise. So that these chapters
reveal the character and the nature of God. That he is holy,
that he is sovereign, that he is selectively gracious according
to his covenant will. That's my first point. Here's
the second one. There's another lesson here too
for these Old Testament believers and for us with them. We learn
to interpret world events properly. we learn to interpret world events
properly. And I say this modestly, because
none of us can rightly interpret the signs of the times. But the
lesson is, surely, the lesson is not to be anxious about what
the future holds, but to realise that the rise and fall of nations
is in the will and according to the purpose of God, as He
accomplishes His judgment and redeems His elect, because that's
what it's about. It's about accomplishing His
judgment and redeeming His elect. So let me make this clear for
us. Let us apply it to ourselves. Were we to change the names in
these burdens, to read America rather than Assyria, Britain
rather than Babylon, China rather than media, or replace Egypt
with North Korea, what would these prophecies, what would
these burdens be saying then to the Lord's elect? Exactly
the same. Exactly the same. That God commands
his sanctified ones, his tools, his weapons of war. He calls
to his mighty ones to do his bidding. He whistles to stir
up the meats. He shakes the earth to bring
judgment upon the wicked and deliverance for his elect. So that when we look around about
us in the world today, that is what is happening in world events. This is the unfolding of perhaps
decades, centuries, millennia of God accomplishing his purpose
amongst the nations. These things were written to
men and women to give them perspective over a long period of time of
the fact that God, who is holy, was sovereignly accomplishing
his will, but did so with the love and grace and mercy of his
people at heart. And that's the same message for
you and me today. Let the Lord's people recognise
this. Don't be afraid. Don't be anxious. This world is not our home. Whether we're British or American
or what we might be, this world is not our home. Hebrews 13,
14 tells us, for here we have no continuing city, but we seek
one to come. Let me press that just a little
bit more, and I speak to myself here, I speak to my own heart,
as I trust I speak to yours. If the big things in this world,
if the nations and the levers of governance in this world are
in the Lord's hands and we are under His safekeeping, why do
we become so anxious for the little things or the big things? Christ keeps the sparrows flying. He bedecks the lilies and keeps
them blooming. He keeps the world turning until
his purposes are complete. He knows how to feed his people
and he knows how to bring us to himself. That might be on
bended knee or that might be on the back of a chariot. but
he will bring his elect to himself. And we who are the Lord's people
need not worry about intrusive government, or fret about viruses,
or be bothered about town planners. If God brings about World War
3, it will be in order to judge his enemies and bless his church. and you and I who trust in him,
we will be safe. To the Lord's people, these prophecies
revealed God's blessed character and they comforted them in the
crazy, topsy-turvy, Iron Age world in which they lived. And
we might live in the age of nuclear, and of AI, artificial intelligence. But God is wiser than AI, and
God is more powerful than nuclear, and we don't have to worry. Faith
ought to give us peace. And our final point today is
that Isaiah also pointed these dear folk the people of his age
and the ages following to the Lord Jesus Christ. We see Christ,
thirdly, we see Christ, we see the Saviour foreshadowed and
framed in a blessed light in these chapters. You see, Christ
is precious to the souls of his people because we see our interest
in him as our bridegroom and as our head. He has become to
us more desirable than all the riches of this world. More desirable is Christ than
all the riches of this world. People have ambitions, people
have aspirations, people want to get rich, they want to be
famous, they want to be celebrities, they want whatever it is that
they want out of this life, out of this world. You know what?
The elect aren't bothered about that. The elect long for Christ. He has become to us more desirable
than all the riches of this world. And here, as the Lord unfolded
to his people details of the coming judgment for sin, he doesn't
forget our weakness. It's as if the Lord is saying
in this chapter to Isaiah to say to his people, in the midst
of wrath, I will remember mercy. And he says in verse 12, I will
make a man more precious than fine gold, even a man than the
golden wedge of Ophir. The reality is that God's judgment
and the exercise of God's judgment, the exercise of God's wrath,
frightens sin-sensitive spirits far more than the hardened souls
of the reprobate. And as a result, when the Lord
announces judgment against sin, invariably it's the righteous
that are most afraid. And therefore the Lord never
speaks of judgment without pointing to Christ, because he's always
speaking to his elect. So, speaking of the dreadful
punishment that should take place for sin, the Lord points his
dear people to look to his Son, to look to the child who would
be born, to the Son that would be given. and he reminds us that
our redemption draweth nigh. Isaiah did it then to the people
that he was writing to and the Lord Jesus Christ in his own
ministry when he did come repeated this self-same thing when he
was anticipating amongst the men and women of his own age
the imminent Roman destruction of Jerusalem he says to them
And I say it to you today, brothers and sisters, when these things
begin to come to pass, then look up, lift up your heads, for your
redemption draweth nigh. The Lord's people, when we begin
to see judgment, and surely there are so many evidences of the
judgment of God in this world today, when we begin to see these
things come to pass, the Lord's elect, don't become preoccupied
with them, but lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh. God has made the Lord Jesus Christ
more precious to his people than fine gold. Therefore I choose
to see Christ here in this reference. Other commentators speak differently
about this verse. I'm going to side with Robert
Hawker on this matter. He also gives this interpretation
that this is Christ that can be seen and if he can be seen,
then he should be seen in this 12th verse of Isaiah 13. Robert Hawker says this, Then
shall my people look unto him whom they have pierced, and mourn. And then shall the man Christ,
my fellow, be more precious than fine gold, even this one identical
man, the Lord our righteousness, than the golden wedge of Ophir. was a region famed in the ancient
world for the quality of its gold. We don't actually know
where it was. But regardless of that, the Lord
Jesus Christ is more precious to us than a wedge of the finest
gold of Ophir. Such is the man, God's fellow,
whom he sends forth to be the redeemer of his people. When
judgment for sin is all around, the elect of God have but one
place to hide, one hope to hold, one comfort to rest on and enjoy. And we look to the precious man
with the precious blood who hung on the cross. Yes, we lament
that it was our sin that nailed him there. but we praise the
love that kept him there. The church says of Christ in
Song of Solomon, chapter 5, verse 11, his head is as the most fine
gold, such is our admiration of him. We look to the finest
things to describe our Lord, but he is worth more to us than
the finest gold. Men desire gold for its value. Christ's value to the sinner
is life and not death. Men admire gold for its shine. Christ's value to a sinner is
eternal glory. Men seek gold to become rich.
Christ's sheep delight in the richness of God's grace, and
in Christ who came to seek and to save that which is lost. And some men give all that they
have for gold, and Christ gave all that he had for us. Brothers and sisters, though
we have little of this world's wealth, Yet having Christ, we
possess all things. God has made his fellow a man
more precious than fine gold. He has made him unto us wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. That according
as it is written, he that glorious Let him glory in the Lord. Amen.