Isaiah chapter 50 and we're going
to just read and look at the last two verses. Isaiah 50 verses
10 and 11. Who is among you that fears the
Lord, that obeys the voice of his servant, that walks in darkness
and has no light? Let him trust in the name of
the Lord and stay upon his God. Behold, all ye that kindle a
fire, that compass yourself about with sparks, walk in the light
of your fire, and in the sparks that you have kindled, this shall
you have of mine hand, you shall lie down in sorrow." Now, what
we see here is an obvious contrast, verse 10 speaking to the believer
who is in a time of trouble or trial, that is in darkness, and
then those who like to walk by their own light, their own sparks. So we have two different contrasting
groups of people described in these last few verses here in
Isaiah 50. The first is we're going to talk about is verse
10. the believer and his troubles. Excuse me, the believer and his
troubles. Who is among you that fears the
Lord? So that person, the only way
anyone could fear the Lord or that is reverence him is a child
of God, a child of grace. Who is among you that fears the
Lord and that obeys the voice of his servant? by birth and
by nature and by practice we do not fear the Lord we fear
man we fear offending people we fear anyone and we reverence
anyone other than the Lord and we do not obey him so he says
those who fear the Lord those among you who fear the Lord and
obey the voice of his servant to fear the Lord is to to be
taught to reverence and surrender to God in Christ. That's to fear
the Lord are those who have been made and taught by free grace,
by inspiration of God, to reverence Him. It doesn't necessarily mean
a slavish fear at all, but He's addressing believers, those who
fear the Lord. who understand a little bit about
His holiness, His righteousness, His grace, and who have been
taught by the Spirit of grace to know a little bit about ourselves,
how unworthy and unrighteous and how vile we are, who have laid our sole interest
at the feet of the cross and trust Christ these are those
who are addressed in verse 10 and it also describes the children
of grace as those that obey the voice of their servant or excuse
me obey the voice of his servant our God obeys the voice Though
we cannot always see our Lord clearly, we will press on in
obedient love to our Master and our Savior. But here's the problem,
here's the trouble. He says, these are those who
fear the Lord and obey the voice of our servant, but walk in darkness
and hath no light. Now that's not meaning that we
don't We've never seen the light, because again, it doesn't fit
with the context of the verse. If we fear the Lord and obey
Him, we must have seen the light. We must have been given grace
to walk in the light. But here's the situation. Oftentimes, we are said to walk
in darkness, And again, it does not mean that we are without
hope or without grace, but rather it's a season of trial, trouble,
and heartache. And these times, these seasons,
are many in the life of God's children. So he says, you who
is among you that fears the Lord, that obeys the voice of His servant
that walks in darkness and has no light. We often think that
our Lord has abandoned us. We often think that He has left
us alone or perhaps forsaken us. But He will not allow one sheep
to perish for whom the Son has suffered so grievously. He won't allow that. Let me give
you some examples of those who feared the Lord and obeyed Him
and yet had many times of darkness and seasons of no light. David. You remember when David was pursued
by his own son Absalom? What a horrible season of darkness
that must have been for him. One from his own loins, one of
his own children, one to whom he would die for and love greatly,
desired to kill him and pursue after him. What a season of darkness
and trial. And when we studied the life
of David years ago, we saw the difficulty. He was up and down.
He was close to his God, and then he thought that God had
forsaken him. The struggles and the trials
that the believer goes through. Well, when we did our study in
the book of Acts years ago also, the New Testament church, they
were scattered every which way because of persecution. And if
you have times of great sickness, times of great persecution because
of the gospel, and times of hardship or trouble or heartache, whatever
they might be, After a while, that gets to you. I mean, it
wears on you. And you think, you begin to think
in your mind and begin to contemplate in your heart that perhaps God
has abandoned us. Perhaps He's left us alone. But He has not. He has not. Because as I said, He will not
allow one single solitary sheep to be lost. He just won't do
that. No. So then I ask the question,
which the answer is found in the latter part of the same verse,
verse 10. What are we then to do? Well,
our text has our answer. May we read it, learn it, and
live it. Look at the last part of this
verse, verse 10. Again, who is among you that
fears the Lord, that obeys the voice of his servant, that walks
in darkness and has no light? What are we to do? Let that person,
let that sheep, let that lowly lamb, that tried and troubled
believer, let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon
his God. That's the title of the message
this morning. Staying upon our God. What are we to do? Trust
in the name of the Lord. Turn to Psalms 123. Here's David's
attitude. In such a time of walking in darkness and seeming
to have no life, Psalms 123, and look at verse 2. Psalm 123, and verse 2. Behold, as the eyes of the servant
look unto the hand of their masters, And as the eyes of a maiden unto
the hand of her mistress, so our eyes wait upon the Lord our
God until that he have mercy upon us. We stay, trust in the Lord, we stay with
him. We stay. It's that the believer, though
we go through many, we get knocked down an awful lot, and we pull
ourselves down an awful lot, and we allow things to get a
hold of us more than we ought. The believer, because of the
grace of God within, the believer will fall, but he'll be raised
back up. He'll be brought back up because
the Spirit who is in you, the Spirit who is in me, is the Spirit
of Christ. And that's new life. And that's
grace within us. And we cannot be down for very
long. We cannot be down continually
or eternally. So what are we to do? We are
to trust. We are to stay. We are to watch.
We are to wait and look with eyes beholding our Master, beholding
our Savior, beholding our Redeemer. And trust in the name of the
Lord. Now, I just have three of his
names because it's significant. When Bruce has been teaching
Bible class, and when I'm up here preaching, we talk about
the name of Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and we talk about
grace. And Betty and I were talking last night about all these other
churches, and they agree. When you say something about
grace, they'll say, oh yeah, that's what we preach, that's
what we believe. And Betty and I were talking,
and the conclusion was, we both agreed that they're using the
same words, but a different dictionary. a different interpretation, a
different understanding, which is not grace at all. So we talk
about the believer who is going through difficult times to trust
in the name of the Lord. That means something to us that
we know who we believe. We know Christ, though we've
seen him not by the eyes of faith. We know him and we trust in the
name of the Lord because his name says something about him.
It's not the name that everybody else is preaching around here.
That's a weak Jesus. He's a doormat to be stepped
on and wiped on and anything they want to do. No, we trust
in the name of the Lord, the Lord, the sovereign, ruling,
reigning monarch. We're just going to look at three
names. His name is found in various places in the Old Testament.
Jehovah-Jireh, when we've studied these before. Jehovah-Shalom
and Jehovah-Sedkinu. Those three. Jehovah-Jireh. That
means the Lord will provide. When we can't see Him, when we're
walking in darkness and don't have any light, may He bring
these things back to remembrance that we trust in Him. And His
name is Jehovah Jireh. That means He will provide. Now,
that's pretty broad. But to the believer, it's okay
to be wide. A wide footing is good. It's
a narrow way, but to the believer, It's wide and it's secure and
it's stable. He's our provider. That's what
that means. He is our provision. And he's
the one who will provide all things necessary to get us to
glory. The Lord will provide. And also
above that, he provided the perfect sacrifice for our sins. The Lord Jesus Christ. He is
our provision. We feast on Him. We're clothed
with His righteousness. We're covered with His blood
atoning sacrifice. So Jehovah Jireh, we trust in
the name, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Lord of
glory. And His name, one of His names is Jehovah Jireh. He will
provide. He has provided. He shall provide.
Everything we need. I was talking to Scotty last
night. Talk about different things and
the flesh says one thing and the scripture says the other.
The world says this and the scripture says the other. Satan says don't
believe that. The scripture says believe him,
trust in him. But when have David said he's
never seen the righteous begging for bread. I know we take times that we're
not going to be taken care of, but we will be. We will be. I was talking to a customer or
listening to him, and he's in his late 50s, and by the time
I got done listening to him, talking to him, I was so anxious
and worried. We got talking about retirement
or something. I don't know how we got on the
subject, but he said, I need a million dollars right now.
to take care of me for the rest of my life. And he says, and
you should ask me how old I was. He says, well, you need a half
a million. And he kept on saying how we're not going to be able
to afford insurance, health insurance. We're not going to be able to
do this. We're not going to be able to do that. We don't have good retirement. He was a worrywart. He just kept
worrying and worrying and worrying. And then when I left there, I
was just like, huh, what am I going to do? Oh, I got to get more
customers. I got to make more money. And if I have a heart
attack tomorrow, what's going to happen? Trust in the name of the Lord. Jehovah Jireh. He will provide. As I said before,
He will not lose or forsake or leave even the weakest of His
sheep. Not in their... eternity because
of the things that he put his son through for us. So the believer, what are we
to do? Trust in the name of the Lord, Jehovah Jireh. And I left that guy and I thought,
I'd hate to have been him. He said he's going to have to
work to weigh in the 70s. He's scared to death to quit. And he said, I used to just hate
work. He said, now I don't like it anymore, but I've got to be
here. That's sad. It's just all he's
just trapped. He's trapped by his. And then
when it came down to it, one of the real problems is, he says,
because I like to spend money. He said, my wife's good with
it. He said, I just like to spend it. He doesn't have any hope. He's
not trusting in the name of the Lord. Secondly, The other name
that we saw and we talked about before is Jehovah Shalom, the
Lord our peace. The one Christ is our peace in the midst
of trouble and hardship. He is peace within and peace
with God through the pure and worshiping blood of the Lamb. He's our peace. When everything
about us is crumbling and falling apart, He's our peace. When we
seem to be having hard times and trouble or walking in darkness
and don't appear to have any life, He's our peace. He's Jehovah Shalom. He gives us peace because He's
made peace for us through the blood of His covenant. Thirdly, I said Jehovah Shedkenu,
that is He is the Lord our righteousness. He is the Lord who is our righteousness. He gives us a perfect and equal
righteousness that God will accept and also a righteousness that
honors the law and erases my sin debt. This guy I was telling
you about was worried about his debt. He's worried about how
to pay things and this and that. Well, we might have some of those
concerns, but not only legally, but spiritually and internally,
our sin debt is gone. We're as righteous as the Son
is right now because we're in Him. And that's all that matters. So whether we feel or sense His
presence, We might be walking in darkness and have no light.
We can say we're going to trust that He is my righteousness right
now and He is and shall be my righteousness tomorrow. Whether
I have anything in my pocket or not. Whether I have a place
to lay my head or not. He is our righteousness. Trust in Him. Put your whole
weight upon Him. Find in Him, as that song says,
your all in all. Now secondly, he says, not only
when we're going through these difficult times, to trust in
the name of the Lord, but to stay. Stay upon our God. That word stay, I look it up
in Hebrew, and that word, what it basically indicates, to rely
upon, to rest upon, or to be supported by. Stay upon your God, Jehovah Jireh,
Jehovah Shalom, Jehovah Satenu. Stay upon Him, rely upon Him,
rest upon Him, be supported by Him. Rest when your thoughts
say to run. Rely upon Him when the world
says forget Him and His Gospel and His Word. But you rely upon
Him. You stay upon Him. Rest upon
the finished work of Christ when the flesh says to lean just a
little upon the arm of self. No. Rest entirely upon Him. He's reliable. Trustworthy and
have salvation for to give freely by his unerring and unchanging
grace And I'll guarantee you You stay upon your God You trust
in the name of the Lord. I guarantee you that the light
of morning will soon appear and Communion will be restored and
your faith supported because God will be honored among us
and His grace will be magnified. That's just the type of loving
Father we have and the loving Son and the loving Spirit. That's just the way He is. That's
just the way He is. Now others say this God of sovereignty,
this God of absolute supremacy that you preach is harsh and
cruel and mean, but the believer does not see those things. The
believer knows, knows that he is altogether lovely to us. Now I have to close, and I don't
want to spend much time on this, but I have to close with verse
11. It's in our text. It's in our reading. It's in
our passage for this morning. Now you've got that other group
of people, and they're the reprobate. and they walk in their self-enlightenment
the last verse of the 50th chapter of Isaiah now you have the reprobate
and here's what characterizes them behold all ye that kindle
a fire that compass yourselves about
with sparks walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks
that you have kindled And this is what you'll have of my hand. You're going to lie down in sorrow. Here is the sure result of all
who trust in their foolish and puny works, which are called
sparks. It's not a real flame. It's not
a real fire. It's just sparks. But these little
sparks This little supposed light that they have is really no light,
spiritual light at all. Because it's full of self. Look at how this is worded in
verse 11. Behold all ye that kindle a fire. You're working
hard to kindle this fire. And you compass yourself about
with your own little sparks. Well go ahead and walk in your
own little sparks. Walk in your religion. Walk in your denominational
ties. Walk in your supposed free will.
Walk in your supposed easy believism. Walk in your supposed infant
baptisms, walking, all these things that you created, that
you think they're little lights of righteousness, they're little
lights of hell, but it's full of self, self-righteousness,
self-worth, self-taught, self-helped, self-promoted, which will promote
sure sorrow, death, eternal death. Eternal death. I close with remembering encounter I had with a man who
used to be a part of this years ago. He says, where is that in the
Bible that says God helps those that help themselves? You know
what that sounds like to me? That sounds like a little spark
that he kindled of his own self-worth and self-righteousness. This
book says we can't help ourselves. This book says there's none righteous,
no not one. This book says not only that,
but it says we hate God. We don't know Him, we don't seek
Him, we can't find Him. That's what our self helps will
get us to.