In the sermon 'The Lovingkindness of the Lord,' Scott Brown explores the book of Isaiah, focusing on its dual themes of God's wrath and lovingkindness. Isaiah uses vivid imagery from nature, history, and everyday life to illustrate God's love and power. The sermon emphasizes that God's wrath and love are interconnected, serving the same purpose of redemption and purification of His people. The imagery of Edom and Basra symbolizes God's enemies, and the sermon contrasts these with the lovingkindness shown to the house of Israel. Isaiah also highlights the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding and comforting believers, as well as the importance of genuine faith versus empty religious gestures akin to Esau's attitude. The sermon calls believers to reflect on their lives in light of God's overarching narrative of love and redemption, urging them to embrace the lovingkindness of God and avoid grieving the Holy Spirit.

Well, we are really moving through the book of Isaiah. It's a short, scant three chapters and we'll be finished. That may be great joy to some, but maybe sadness to others. But we have enjoyed the book of Isaiah, that's for sure. Please join me as we read Isaiah 63 verses 1 through 14.

Who is this who comes from Edom with dyed garments from Basra? This one who is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength. I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Why is your apparel red and your garments like one who treads in the winepress? I have trod in the winepress alone and from the peoples no one was with me.

For I have trod in them in my anger, and trampled them in my fury. Their blood is sprinkled upon my garments and I have stained all my robes. For the day of vengeance is in my heart and the year of my redeemed has come. I looked but there was no one to help, and I wondered that there was no one to uphold. Therefore, my own arm brought salvation for me, and my own fury, it sustained me.

I have trodden down the peoples in my anger, made them drunk in my fury, and brought down their strength to the earth. I will mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord and the praises of the Lord according to all that the Lord has bestowed on us and the great goodness toward the house of Israel which he has bestowed on them according to his mercies according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses for he said surely they are my people, children who will not lie. So he became their savior. In all their affliction, he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them and he bore them and carried them all the days of old.

But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit so he turned himself against them as an enemy and he fought against them. Then he remembered the days of old, Moses and his people saying, Where is he who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock? Where is he who put his Holy Spirit within them, who led them by the right hand of Moses, with his glorious arm dividing the water before them, to make for himself an everlasting name, who led them through the deep as a horse in the wilderness that they might not stumble. As a beast goes down into the valley and the Spirit of the Lord causes him to rest so you lead your people to make yourself a glorious name. Father, we're just so thankful that you have provided a Savior for your people.

Oh Lord, and as you do, you're making for yourself a glorious name. Oh Father, thank you for your kind mercies to us. Father, let us always be mindful that you are ordaining all our steps and that Lord we know that all things work together for good, for those who love you and are called according to your purposes. Thank you, Lord, for your kindness to us here. Amen.

As we Consider the place that we are right now in Isaiah. We ought to remember the whole testimony of the prophecy of Isaiah. The first 39 chapters focus upon the judgment that's falling upon God's people and the nations as well. God's people, because they're fake and because they don't want to do what God wants them to do, they don't love Him. And then in chapters 40 to the end is really a testimony of the power of the love of God and a prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And in this last section from Isaiah 40 to where we are in the present, Isaiah has been bringing before us literally hundreds of images to help us to understand the love of God and the power of the gospel and also the wrath of God as well. And Isaiah has been using illustrations from every imaginable source. He draws from the heavens. He comes down to the earth and he speaks of rivers and gardens and trees and all kinds of other things. He goes into the world of the animal kingdom to try to illustrate the love of God that's in Jesus Christ.

He doesn't hold anything back. He doesn't leave anything in the world unused. On the one hand, he'll turn to a reptile. On the other hand, he'll turn to a bird. Then he'll turn to a land animal, some large land animal, some small land animals.

He draws from the world of politics, from war, from relationships, from hearts that are broken. He doesn't leave any stone unturned to try to explain the power and the beauty and the majesty of the gospel of Jesus Christ and then now we have here before us further testimony of this and it's all in the context of a God who will not hold his peace and God a God who is going to can do it he's going to finish his work and that he is going to see to it that his people are not forsaken but rather that they'll know his delight, that they'll be very well aware of his loving kindnesses, actually the multitude of his loving kindnesses. And so this section here that we're in speaks so much of God's zeal. He will not hold his peace. He will not be quiet.

He will finish his work to rescue his people. And he is here to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the vengeance of God. And here in this chapter, God comes with vengeance because he delights in his church. And what we find in this section particularly is a great burden on the soul of Isaiah. Isaiah is under a heavy burden for the state of the church.

He wants the church to know something and he's declaring God's love for them. He wants them to see the various contours of God's love, and so he uses many different things to explain it to them. And he desires them, first of all, to know it so that they might rest in him. But also that if they're not resting in him, that their souls would be disturbed within them so that they would turn to him and find salvation in him. In this sense, Isaiah is doing what every good preacher ought to do, and that is to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted.

And Isaiah does that in this passage of Scripture. He desires to bring a great disturbance in the soul of those who are kind of like Esau who just can't relate to the love of God. And at the same time, to those who can relate, to those who have felt the love of God in their hearts, who desire to do His will and see themselves falling so short of it that they would be comforted, that they would be in a place to count again the loving kindnesses, the multitude of the loving kindnesses of God. So I pray that that would happen to us today. And you know a passage like this, like all other passages, should have a very practical effect on our lives.

And it should help us to think about our life. You know, it's coming to the end of the year now and most people begin to think about the year behind and the year ahead and you know to try to evaluate what has happened and what will happen in the future And what's the storyline? Where is this all going? Where am I headed in my life? And this passage I think is helpful because you'll see where God is going.

If you know where God is going, you know where you are going. And this passage declares it. Now, just to pick up sort of the chain of reasoning that Isaiah has been bringing us through, you know, all these previous weeks, most recently, in chapter 60, The Lord is declaring that He is light. He's using this imagery of light to explain one element of the gospel. And so you read there, arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

And then he says, if you have this light, your son will never go down. And then in chapter 61, he's a preacher, he's preaching and he's a preacher who heals. The preaching changes everything. The Son of God rises up to preach there in the synagogue, quoting these words in chapter 61, and he says that he's preaching to heal the brokenhearted and to proclaim liberty to the captives. And then in chapter 62, we have a whole other range of imagery that really surrounds this matter of marriage and delight.

And in chapter 62, he marries you because he delights in you and he puts you in a path of fruitfulness. And as a father delights in his children, so does a bridegroom and a bride delight in their wedding. And we learn there that he says he will not hold his peace. In other words, he will not stop proclaiming this until it is completed. And then in chapter 63 we find a whole other element of God's love, and that is his wrath with which he destroys his enemies and he reminds us of his power to save but his wrath is part of his saving grace and it all it all comes down to a final image in this section that we're in, in verse 14.

You begin with the stunning fury and wrath of God, and we end with an animal, a beast, and he's been led by the Holy Spirit into a valley and he has rest. This is the power of the love of God. He does this to his people. Now this is the Lord Jesus Christ's mission, to purify his church. And this is why we have been gathered here together, that we as a church would be purified, we would be centered upon him, that we would really understand the gospel.

So he's had us in a place where we have received hundreds of images of the gospel so that we would understand standard in all of its complexity and all of its beauty. So in the first six verses of our section here we see a disclosure of the wrath of a jealous husband in verses 1 through 6. So chapter 63 opens with a stunning personality in these remarkable garments and he's traveling across the face of the ground and he's coming from somewhere. He's been in a battle and he's bloody and his apparel is stunning in its appearance and it's really a display of God's unstoppable power to destroy all of his enemies and to destroy the imagery of the church. Now again, you should pause on this imagery to see it.

It's horrifying on the one hand. It's thrilling, but it's really designed to be consoling at the same time. Here, Isaiah brings all these things together in one image and this is this is the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now verse 1 presents us with a question and there are there are questions that and our answers that are in these first six verses who is this This who comes from Edom with dyed garments from Bozra This one who is glorious in his apparel Traveling in the greatness of his strength. I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.

You know, every child here should have now an image in their minds of the power of the wrath of God in the world and what it actually looks like. This is a vision of a lone Avenger. Edom means red. Basra means vintage. And these two words form the scope of his work.

And It's a work of redemption. He is saving. And here you have two things held right together. They're not separate at all. You cannot extract them in any way.

Redemption and vengeance at the same time. The loving kindness of God and the wrath and the fear of God, they're all one and the same. They're not different at all. They're both useful for the very same purpose. And of course, Basra was the capital city of Edom.

Edom is a symbol of the enemies of God. It's a symbol of hatred toward God and the malice against God. And of course the Edomites were the sons and the daughters of Esau. Who is Esau? Well Esau was an enemy of God.

But how did he express it at the beginning? He didn't care. He did not love the covenant of God. It didn't move him. He could not relate to the love of God, and that is what made him an enemy of God.

Sometimes people have compassionate feelings about this and that and they think that somehow that qualifies them for favor in God's sight but That's not true at all. What qualifies someone to have favor in God's sight is that they have been given a love for God, and as a result, they repent of their unrighteous deeds, and they begin to hate their sin unlike Esau and they begin to love God and And they recognize that Jesus Christ's righteousness is their sole qualification before God. But Esau was not that way. He did not see the promises of God. He was dead to them.

They were nothing to him. They did not make sense to him. And that's why it made sense to him to trade his birthright for a mess of potage, because the birthright didn't mean anything to him. And this is the condition of the unbeliever. It doesn't really mean anything, at least not enough to change your life and turn your heart.

And so here this warrior is coming out of Edom. He's coming, he has destroyed his enemies in Edom. He's destroyed those very nice people, those Urbane people who you see all the time who do not know God and do not love God and he has destroyed them. And whose blood is on his clothing? Well there are various options.

Is it the blood of Christ? Is it the blood of the saints? Or is it the blood of God's enemies? Well it's very clearly neither of the first two. It is the blood of God's enemies.

And this is Christ's vanquishing wrath against all of his enemies. And it's a promise that God will destroy his enemies. And the Lord Jesus Christ in this scene here is clothed in blood, but that blood is the blood of his enemies. And We read in Revelation chapter 19 a very similar image there. But when you get to Revelation 19, Christ is clothed in blood, but behind him, those who follow him, they're not clothed in blood.

They're clothed in white. And so in Revelation 19 you have this picture, heaven is opened and behold a white horse and he who sat on him was called faithful and true and in righteousness he judges and makes war. Verse 13, he was clothed with a robe dipped in blood and his name is called the word of God and the armies in heaven clothed in fine linen white and clean followed him on white horses. So there is this picture of Christ. He is treading in the wine press out of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God.

And we read in verse 16 in Revelation 19, and he has on his robe and on his thigh a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. And This lone warrior is traveling in the greatness of his strength. He is speaking in righteousness, mighty to save. His wrath, his righteousness, his salvation are all one package. They cannot be separated at all.

People like to separate the wrath of God from the love of God and it cannot be done if you read scripture the way it is presented to us and So what has happened what it what has happened in this is that is that he has crushed all those who are suppressing the knowledge of God and they despise the covenant of God like Esau and as a result he hated his brother. He hated the Church of Jesus Christ. Anyone who hates the Church of Jesus Christ will find themselves very disappointed at the outcome because the Lord Jesus has promised. In verse 3 We read, I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with me. For I have trodden them in my anger, and trampled them in my fury.

Their blood is sprinkled on my garments, and I have stained all my robes." Now notice he's speaking in the past tense. Now in Isaiah I think we've noticed that the past tense can be misleading because the past, he uses often the past to speak of a future event. But in later verses he begins to speak of the escape from Egypt and the destruction of Pharaoh and his armies, the whole matter of the Exodus. And it's quite likely that this entire chapter does look back to the Exodus and where God destroyed all of his enemies. And this is very much the case often in Isaiah.

He uses a contemporary or a past event in order to speak of a character of God that is always true for God does not change. But he also uses that to speak of a final judgment. And so often there are interim historical moments that speak to a final moment. And I believe that's true of this. My understanding of chapter 63 is that Isaiah is looking back to the destruction of Pharaoh's army and perhaps even the destruction of the Assyrian army that has just taken place in his own lifetime looks forward perhaps to the destruction of the Babylonians and even forward further to the final judgment where Jesus Christ will destroy all of his enemies.

But these things I believe are all somehow in play in this passage of scripture. But notice what he says about this. It's very interesting. He says, no one was with me. No one was with me.

And Isaiah has already declared this same concept in chapter 59 verses 16 and 17. But he's saying that It is a solitary work. No one is with him in his wrath. Notice his motivation is anger and fury. He hates the works of the wicked.

The devil has abused his sons and his daughters. Evil is dismantling the beauty. It's turning the cities into ruins. And it's changing the glory of his people into a despicable and degrading picture. And God will not be silent.

He is angry when his people are being destroyed and the devil is destroying his people through various forces that are at work in the world. And so his motivation is anger and fury. He does it out of love and compassion and mercy, But he's doing it alone. No one is with him. Not Assyria, not Babylon, not Persia.

They are only tools. Human beings are helpless to destroy the works of the devil. Only this traveling one coming out of Basra, this one who's clothed in the red blood of his enemies can do it. And he and he alone can do it. And it is out of the vengeance that is in his heart.

You see that in verse four. In verse five he says, I looked, but there was none to help, and I wondered that there was no one to uphold. Therefore my own arm brought salvation for me, and my own fury, it sustained me." Here the Lord Jesus Christ is declaring himself as the singular person of vengeance in the universe. And we learn why in chapter 41 of Isaiah. In Isaiah 41, 28, we find out why he determined to be the only one who could save.

And he says it there, he says, "'For I looked and there was no man they were all worthless they were worthless only God's wrath is worthwhile course he uses many many instruments of his wrath in verse 6 he says I have trodden down the people's in my anger and made them drunk in my fury and brought them down to their strength but brought down their strength to the earth." Now this is a very disturbing image. God is making them drunk by his fury and he's drowning them there in his fury. And this should be a disturbing picture for those who just don't care. For those like Esau who look at the Word of God and it just doesn't matter. They have no hunger for it.

They have no love in their heart for it and as a result they find themselves among the company of the Edomites. And however nice and polite any of those might be or how beneficial they are in this society and business or family life or anything, all of these things don't matter. What matters is are you of the tribe of Esau or are you of the tribe of Esau, or are you of the tribe of Judah? And he's speaking of this here. And this is one of the great questions.

Are you dwelling in Edom, or are you dwelling in Zion? I think another very important question that this section raises has to do with the wrath of God. And the question is, in your own mind, is God glorious and true and beautiful and loving in His wrath? Do you believe His wrath is an act of love? But this chapter makes it clear that his wrath is part of his love.

In fact, if you even look at the chapter divisions of Isaiah, you'll see how true it is. The chapter divisions between 61 and 62 and 63, they shouldn't really confuse you because they're all speaking of the same thing. They're speaking of God's delight to rescue his people. And all of these images should be seen together as one. They are various pictures scattered across sort of the landscape of your mind so that you can see how it all they all actually are connected and they fit together and how important it is that we begin to have a change in our minds about the wrath of God and of course the first 39 chapters made this very, very clear to us.

But His wrath is because of His delight. The other question is, do you really believe that God is going to deal with the wicked. Do you really believe that? Now you may have some wicked people in your life and do you really believe that God is going to deal with the wicked and that then therefore vengeance is his, not yours. That you really, you have no reason for bitterness, you have no reason for retaliation, because vengeance is God.

God is going to exercise his wrath. You know, often people live many years in bitterness and anger, disappointment with people because they do not understand this. They have not believed it in their heart that God is going to deal with all of his enemies. In Romans chapter 12, God says, Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.

He is the one who's going to do it. But often in our pride and our self-sufficiency, we lose a sense of this. I had a distinct image of this just this last week. I don't know if you saw the Republican candidates debate earlier in the week. And I was astonished at the debate for a number of reasons.

One was it was really all about ISIS. That was pretty much the only subject for, I think, over two hours. That was the only subject of the debate. I thought it was sort of a CNN puff piece on the news story they want to pump in the coming months. I think it was a marketing ploy.

But whatever it was, the whole debate was just about ISIS. And what you had was all the candidates were on the platform. And they really had one message. I will defeat ISIS. I will.

It's me. You elect me. And I am beating my chest now and you will see what it will do. I will defeat ISIS." It was so fraudulent. It was so boastful and proud.

I was embarrassed really for them to stand there and say that. You know, I've been reading Martin Luther's commentary on the book of Isaiah. You know, he was worried about ISIS, you know, back in the 16th century. You know, politicians are not going to put ISIS out. There is one though, and his robes are dipped in their blood, and he will do it in his own time.

But we should recognize that the wrath of God is executed by God and by God alone. And the question is do we trust God for that? And are we free in this world knowing that? It's so critical that we do. God has exalted Jesus Christ above every name that every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And these first six verses make that very clear. And then when you turn to verse seven, there's a change. Martin Luther says, This is the beginning of a song that doesn't stop until chapter 55. That's probably true. A prayer is launched in the middle of this chapter, and then it seems to continue on for quite some time.

But after we see in these vivid terms this wrath of a jealous husband then we see the praises of a very thankful prophet. They're right in the same context. They're inextricably connected and so in verse 7 Isaiah begins to praise God and notice you know in classic Isaiah form you know he's talking to God about God. There are all these conversations that go on in Isaiah. They're very fascinating to see how they work.

But notice the change. The change is to I in verse 7. I will mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord and the praises of the Lord according to all that the Lord has bestowed on us and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which he has bestowed on them according to his mercies, according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses. This is Isaiah's response to his vision of the vengeance of God. The vengeance of God in the mind of Isaiah conformed to the to the mind of God is the loving kindnesses of God.

Vengeance testifies to his loving kindness. We should really understand that as we go forward here and not be confused anymore about it if we are. Now he uses the word loving kindnesses. It's the Hebrew word Chesed, C-H-E-S-E-D, and it's translated in different ways as goodness and mercy and graciousness. Loving kindness is actually a word that a Protestant reformer sort of invented.

His name is Miles Coverdale and he Produced the Coverdale Bible one of the early English the first English translation of the Bible and then he also joined In Geneva with a number of other scholars and churchmen to produce the Geneva Bible. Miles Coverdale was one of the great scholars of the Geneva Bible and he was a literary genius, but he really grappled with these words that are in the Bible. But Chesed, loving kindness, is a word that is, it's just hard, it's hard to get your arms around you. One word doesn't really get it, and so that's why it's often translated in various other forms in the Bible. The New Testament equivalence of this word is mercy, goodness, kindness, brotherly love.

W.E. Vine, the writer of Vine's Expository Dictionary of the Old Testament, says this, in general one may identify three basic meanings of chesed. And these three meanings always interact, strength, steadfastness, and love. Any understanding of chesed that fails to suggest all three inevitably loses some of the richness. Love by itself easily becomes sentimentalized or universalized apart from the covenant, yet strength or steadfastness suggests only the fulfillment of a legal or similar obligation.

Chesed refers primarily to mutual and reciprocal rights and obligations between the parties of a relationship, especially Jehovah and Israel. But chesed is not only a matter of obligation but also of generosity. It is not only a matter of loyalty but also of mercy. Chesed implies personal involvement and commitment in a relationship beyond the rule of law. So in this word you have sort of a pile up of all kinds of other things that that should be in our minds when we read this word loving kindnesses and Miles Coverdale sort of created this word in order to try to explain its breadth.

Moses spoke of this in Exodus chapter 34 where he came down from the mountain he had been given two tablets of stone and he came back from the mountain and he declared the loving-kindness of God there in Exodus chapter 34. Jeremiah says that this is one of the ways God uses to draw his people to himself. It's by his loving-kindness. He says in Jeremiah 31 3, the Lord has appeared of old to me saying, yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore with loving kindness, I have drawn you.

Again, I will build you and you shall be rebuilt." David had a very personal and experiential knowledge of God's loving kindness when he said in Psalm 36 verse 7 how precious is your loving kindness oh God. In Psalm chapter 63 David makes it clear that it was loving kindness that drew him. He says in verse 2, So I have looked for you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory Because your loving kindness is better than life My lips shall praise you this is the the magnetic power of the love of God through his loving kindness. And Isaiah is assuring us of God's loving kindness here. You know, we learn through the prophet Jeremiah, the weeping prophet in Lamentations 3.22.

He says that the Lord's mercies are new every morning and this is the loving kindness of God and here Isaiah he feels it he sees it it's God's fatherly affection toward him and he sees it in everything even in the vengeance of God itself. In Ephesians chapter 2 verse 7, we learn that it was God's loving kindness that caused him to send his son. But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And why?

That he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Jesus Christ. And so these terms, kindness, loving kindness, mercy, all of these run together in the meaning that Isaiah is using here. And he's saying that his loving kindnesses will not fail. It's not a sentimental kindness. It's not a loving kindness, it's disconnected from true repentance and a heart turned toward Him.

The nearest equivalent of chesed in the New Testament is the Greek word charis or grace. It's sometimes translated mercy in the Greek Septuagint as well. But the evidence of God's loving kindness in Isaiah 63 is deliverance from Egypt. Now it's a very harsh thing in the soul of a Christian to somehow become distant to a sense of God's loving kindness. And this is why Jude 21 says, keep yourselves in the love of God.

That you would understand the love of God, the various contours of it. Isaiah's been giving us so many images of it, but here, how do you keep yourself in the love of God? Well, he itemizes ways. I've listed five here. The first is He made them His own.

Verse 8, for He said, surely they are My people, children who will not lie. So He became their Savior. He demonstrates his loving kindness by making his children his own. He owns them. They are his precious possessions and he promises to take care of them.

He calls them my people in verse 8. They are mine. One of the other prophets says they are my jewels. One of the New Testament writers, the Apostle Paul, says that we are God's treasure. This is what it means to be a chosen people.

But then he says that there are people who do not lie. Children who will not lie. So he became their Savior. Now what does this mean? What does it mean that they are children who do not lie?

Now most of the children of God that I have known have lied from time to time and even in their regenerate state they might lie. So does it mean that those who are saved never lie? Is that what he's talking about? And I believe that the answer to the question really is found in Psalm 78. I just bumped into this.

I was just in the mornings reading through the Psalms this last week. And I think we learned the meaning in Psalm 78. In verse 36 in Psalm 78, I believe we find the answer. Psalm 78 is about a people, fathers who did not teach their children and as a result terrible devastation took place among the people of God. It's the longest Psalm outside of Psalm 119 and so it tells this whole story most of it is focused on the Exodus but in verse thirty six of Psalm seventy eight here's what we read But then they would flatter him with their mouths.

Now he's talking about the unregenerate children of the fathers who would not preach the word of God to them like Moses told them to do. He says, they flatter him with their mouths, lying to him with their tongues. Their hearts were not loyal to him. They were not faithful to his covenant yet he was merciful and he forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them when he says there are children who did not who do not lie or did not lie he's He's talking about lying about who they are, about lying about their relationship. Flattering God, using a bunch of God words, going to church, acting like a Christian, but you're not a Christian at all.

That's the kind of lying that he's talking about. It's pretending to be a Christian, fitting in, but you're not. You have no hunger for him. And so he's declaring here that those he saves are those who will not lie. In other words, they are who they are.

They are genuine. They're real. They're not putting on airs. They're not trying to be religious people, but their hearts are toward Him. And they're genuine and as a result, he became their Savior.

The second way he demonstrates his loving kindness is he was afflicted with them. Verse 9, in all their affliction he was afflicted. So he is with us. Now you know what does this mean? Does this relate to the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, where he was afflicted for our transgressions?

Possibly. I'm not confident that's the primary meaning of this, but that he so identified with his people, particularly in Egypt, that it was as if he was afflicted with them. Now the Lord Jesus Christ was afflicted in his human nature. By the way, God is God. God is not afflicted like you and I are Jesus Christ was afflicted in his human nature only not in his divine nature you cannot afflict God and so because God is pure he is perfect And I rather think that verse 9 in all their affliction he was afflicted is more related to God's identification with his church in the same way that we discover in Acts chapter 9 where the apostle Paul who was going to become the apostle Paul fell to the ground while he was riding along the road on the road to Damascus and you heard a voice saying, Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me?

Jesus Christ was speaking to Saul and saying why are you persecuting me? Well? Saul was persecuting the church and so the Lord Jesus Christ Believes that you are persecuting him when you persecute his church because he so closely identifies with his church. In Zechariah 2 verse 8 we read, For he who touches you touches the apple of his eye. The Lord Jesus Christ in when he was speaking to the 70 that he sent out in Luke chapter 10 verse 16 he says he who hears you hears me he who rejects you rejects me he who rejects me rejects him who sent me So I believe he's talking about that kind of identification, that kind of affliction.

If you touch the church, you touch God himself in that sense. This is why the apostle Paul said, whoever destroys the temple of God, him I will destroy. These are all evidences of his loving kindness. And then another evidence in verse 9, and the angel of his presence saved them. Now he's talking about his personal involvement.

He has his angels. Now the Lord Jesus Christ manifests himself as an angel. The angel of the Lord, Jesus Christ is the commander of the angelic hosts. He is the ruler of the armies of heaven. But here it's the angel of his presence that saved them.

And Again, I do believe he's talking about a historical moment in the Exodus, but he's speaking more broadly than that. And who is that angel? The angel is the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And we could speak about the ministry of angels at length, but here this is a very personal visitation by the angel by the angel of his presence and this is how God shows his love toward his people is that he sends the angel of his presence We're often so unaware of the help that there is for us on this earth, and we're afraid, but we have no reason really to be afraid. And the fourth evidence is that he redeemed them, verse 9, In his love and in his pity, he redeemed them.

In other words, he bought them. He bought them. He paid the price for their slavery and set them free. And then the next evidence is he carried them. He bore them and carried them all the days of old.

This is a very common concept that's communicated particularly in the Pentateuch in the first five books of Moses. It begins right at the beginning of Deuteronomy 1 where the Lord says, when you were in the wilderness I carried you as a father, carries his son in all the way that you went, all the way. He carries his children all the way. In Exodus chapter 19 verse 4, he says, he says, you saw what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. And Deuteronomy 32, he says, as an eagle stirs up his nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings.

So the Lord alone led him, and there was no foreign God with him. He made him ride in the heights of the earth that he might eat the produce of the fields and this is this is the the whole matter of the love of God where he carries his children. You know, we've already read this and meditated on it and have meditated on it many times. From the time we were in Isaiah 40, in verse 11, it says, he will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arm and carry them in his bosom and gently lead those who are with young.

This is the way that God carries his children. But you might be here today and you might think you know I'm feeling kind of pushed around. I'm, you know, I think there's a bully that's shoving me around, and I'm not going to take it anymore. That might be your position this morning. You're thinking about it.

You thought you're being tossed about. You might have thought you're just drifting. You might have thought that you're just aimlessly wandering. If you love God and are the called according to His purpose, You're not drifting. You're not wandering.

You're not being pushed around. You're not being shoved. There's no aimless activity at all in your life. God is carrying you. He's bearing you up on his eagle's wings.

That's what he's told you. And the question is, do you really believe it or not? Like, does it hit your heart and change your whole orientation with the people in your life, the circumstances, the economy, the politics, the stuff. You know, does it change your life? And here God is bringing a message of loving kindness so that we understand that.

And so there are many evidences of God's loving kindness. He made them His own, verse 8. He was afflicted with them. He personally saved them through the angel of His presence. He redeemed them and he carried them.

But, but, verse 10, but they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he turned himself against them as an enemy, and he fought against them. And I take this as having a historical coordinate in the Exodus where God, he rescues his people and then they rebel. And they grieve his spirit. Now here we learn that the Holy Spirit is a person.

He can be offended. The Holy Spirit can be rebuffed. The Holy Spirit is not a force. It's not an it. It's not an it at all.

It's not a feeling. He is a person who ministers. He does things. And at any given time, the Christian is either doing this or this, either pushing back and wanting to go our own way or embracing his ministry to us. And of course, his primary ministry is through his word.

The word of God is the Spirit of God, a testimony of the Spirit of God. He is a person and he is holy. This is why the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians chapter 4, do not grieve the Holy Spirit. And in Isaiah chapter 63, Isaiah is saying, don't do what Israel did in the wilderness. Don't rebel against the presence of God.

In the progress of your heavenly journey to grieve the Spirit is not to lose your salvation. To grieve the Spirit is not to lose your salvation. To grieve the Spirit is not to love your salvation as you ought. To grieve the Spirit is to reject his guidance. You know, if you feel lack of guidance, if you feel unenlightened, if you sense that you have no help, you feel you're almost spiritually dead and you're unconvicted of your sin, It could be that you're just grieving the Holy Spirit.

Often people fall into worldliness because they've been grieving the Spirit for a long time. It looks like unbelief, but it might not be, however it could be. But we grieve him when we neglect him. We grieve him when we conform to the world. We grieve him when we feed our lusts.

We grieve him when we despise the fellowship of the saints. We grieve him when we are sour to the preaching, when we cut ourselves off from the body. We grieve him when we cultivate bitter thoughts against parents or children or pastors or church members who have been washed in the blood of Jesus Christ. We grieve him when we have an opportunity to speak for Jesus Christ and we chicken out and we shut up and we walk the other way. There are so many ways you can grieve the Spirit of God.

And it can happen in your heart and in your home and in your church. It can happen on the Sabbath day when everybody is so much trying to act like it's a day of delight. The Spirit of God can be grieved. The breaking of the Sabbath really begins in the heart. And it has to do with the grieving of the Holy Spirit.

But notice the consequences, the result of grieving the Holy Spirit. So he turned himself against an enemy and he fought against them. You know, if you grieve the spirit, God will fight against you. He will not hold his peace. He will go after you.

And he may plunge you into some tragedy. He may cause a calamity to come into your life, to wake you up. We've already seen a testimony of that, chapter after chapter after chapter, in chapters 1-39. God loves his people so much that he will bring calamity upon them so that they will turn to him. And that's why we should never be confused about The wrath and the loving kindnesses of God, they are one and the same for the very same purpose.

That God would glorify himself either in the destruction of the wicked or in the glorification of his people. And I don't know how you think about your life now. The things that are happening to you now. How are you interpreting it? Are you interpreting it all according to this grid of the loving kindnesses of God?

Or do you just have your own personal and private interpretation that causes you to think things that are wrong and lead you in wrong and destructive directions? But what's the story line? What's the picture? The story line of the universe is loving kindness. God is taking everything to that one end.

That everything would be summed up in Jesus Christ and in His love. The whole law is summed up by His love. And heaven itself is a world of love and we're here in this church and God has commissioned us for a purpose and that is to create a culture of loving kindnesses to cultivate love to spread it to resist the grieving of the Holy Spirit, not to push him back and not to think so highly of ourselves and our own opinions and our thoughts, but to suppress ourselves and to be impressed by the work of the Holy Spirit. And then Isaiah brings us to these great memories of salvation in verses 11 through 13. Then he remembered the days of old.

In other words, he was grieving the spirit but he remembered. In other words, all was not lost. He was grieving the spirit but it was not lost. He remembered the days of old. Moses and his people saying, Where is he who brought them out of the sea?

They're remembering how God brought them out of the sea They're remembering how he shepherded them with the shepherd of his flock He shepherded them through Moses then And where is he who put the Holy Spirit within them? As they were crossing the Red Sea, he put the Holy Spirit in them, and they crossed. Verse 12, who led them by the right hand of Moses with his glorious arm, dividing the water before them to make for himself an everlasting name. In other words, they're remembering the power of the loving kindness of God. Verse 13, "'Who led them through the deep as a horse in the wilderness, that they might not stumble.'" And here In verse 11, they remembered the days of old.

That's the whole thrust of this. You know, the way out of grieving the Spirit is to remember. It's to set your mind on the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. That's your only hope of getting out of your spiritual funk that you're in. It's to set your mind up on the great deeds of God.

And they recaptured a sense of God's loving-kindness. And then Isaiah, in the conclusion of this section, which continues on, it's very unfortunate to stop here because he does continue on the same line of thinking. But Isaiah does a really fascinating thing. He brings us back to where he's taken us many times, to the animals. He's taking us back to a picture of an animal.

Verse 14. As a beast goes down into the valley and the Spirit of the Lord causes him to rest so you lead your people to make yourself a glorious name. So a beast, now you have a beast. And so now you have this picture of this wrath and all these memories of the cataclysmic events of the Exodus and the wrath of God coming down on the Egyptian army and the people of God being snatched out and cared for and then their hearts are hard and then they repent. Now he takes us to an animal, a beast that goes down into the valley.

And Isaiah does what he's done before. He compares a beast with people. And the Hebrew word in verse 14 is the word Bahama. It's a four-footed animal Distinguished from birds and reptiles and fish. Bahama.

There's a little city called Bahama not too far from here. Next time you go through there, Think of this. Think of the beast. Think of what's happening to this beast. And it's often translated cattle.

So in my estimation, what this means is that you and I, We are cattle. We're just a bunch of cows. We're just a bunch of behemoth beasts. And we're given a picture of this beast. And You know, there are so many beautiful pictures that God gives us.

You have the picture of the demoniac clothed and in his right mind. He was destroying his life, ripping his flesh and terrorizing everyone. He is, he's clothed and in his right mind. You have a woman who lived in the fast lane, she had five husbands, and there she's at the well of water. And with Isaiah, you know, you get a vision of a jackal and a hyena and an arrow snake.

Well, that's you and I, and he saves people like that. They're in the midst of the ruins that get turned into a garden. But here the Spirit of the Lord leads this beast and we read and the Spirit of the Lord causes him to rest. And so there's this picture of a beast going down into the valley. And down in that valley, as it seems, there's grass, and he's eating there, and he's at rest.

He's found rest for his soul. This is the ultimate end of the wrath of God. Those who love Jesus Christ, those who can relate to his promises, who want to walk in his ways, they find rest. And they're led by the Spirit, by the Holy Spirit Himself. And he beautifies that beast in that valley.

And he spends his life down there eating this succulent grass. You know, David said, he leads me. He makes me to walk by green pastures. He leads me by the still waters. He restores my soul.

I think that's the picture here. And this is the love of God that's in Christ Jesus. He divides people according to those who cannot relate to him, the Esau's of this world, and the beasts, the cows, the snakes, the jackals who love him. And I think it all boils down to one thing as as fairly much everything in chapters 40 to 66 do behold what manner of love the Father has given us that we should be called the sons of God. Let's pray.

Lord Lord we are so struck by these images that you have provided out of your own wisdom. Help us to learn from them. Help us to be conformed to the knowledge of your will, to love your will, to be a people who are found in such a place as are meditating and embracing and saturating themselves on the loving kindnesses that you have extended to us. I pray that you would make us a picture of your loving kindness as a church. Amen.