In Scott Brown's sermon 'How His Own Arm Brought Salvation,' the focus is on Isaiah 59, discussing God's intervention in the absence of a human intercessor, leading to His own arm bringing salvation. The sermon explores the symbolism of God's armor—righteousness as a breastplate, salvation as a helmet, garments of vengeance, and zeal as a cloak—emphasizing God's role as a warrior and intercessor through Jesus Christ. The sermon calls for revival, highlighting the barriers posed by sin and the need for repentance to experience God's blessings. It underscores the importance of God's Word, which is to be declared from generation to generation, and the role of Jesus as the ultimate intercessor whose power is unmatched. The message concludes with a call to recognize the futility of turning away from God and the unending power of His Word to transform lives.

Texas morning is Isaiah 59, starting in verse 16 to the end of the chapter. He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor. Therefore, his own arm brought salvation for him, and his own righteousness it sustained him. For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head. He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak.

According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay. Fury to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies. The coastlands he will fully repay. So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy comes in like a flood, The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.

The Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob, says the Lord. Ask for me, says the Lord, This is my covenant with them, my spirit who is upon you, and my word which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants' descendants, says the Lord from this time and forevermore let's bow and pray we thank you Lord your word never returns void always accomplishes the purpose for which you sent it thank you God for today you ever day not today we would hear this passage and hear it taught and preached and we thank you for that Lord. I thank you Lord this morning as I read this passage again that you reminded me that I have deserved your fury and your wrath and you have saved me Lord and Lord how little I appreciate that day today God open my eyes open all our eyes We deserve your fury and your wrath and here we are God standing with peace, joy, your blessings, your grace, your mercy. God bring worshipful hearts as we hear your word this morning.

Please bless our brother and pastor Scott and leading guide in Lord. We pray in Jesus name. Amen Every single line of the text that was just written declares the absolute madness of anyone who would determine to turn away from God. It declares how silly it is to allow coldness before God to continue in a person's life. This chapter is describing the details of man's hardness of heart and what happens to him when he turns away from God.

So it declares man's greatest problem and it gives detail to the sins that come out of the heart of man, but it also gives us the remedy, the greatest remedy, the only remedy, and that is the man sent from God, the intercessor, the God man, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And it's a call to revival, really. It speaks of all of the means of revival and what holds it back. What holds revival back is sin. What holds back the blessing of God is the holding on to anything of this world.

So God's agents of revival are revealed in this passage. In the first two verses, we see two of those agents, but in our text today, there are many of them. The first three are the Lord's hand in verse 1, the Lord's ear in verse 1, and the Lord's face in verse 2. But then in verse 16, it's His intercessor. In 17, it's His armor.

In 18, it's His fury. In 19, it's His Holy Spirit. In verse 20, it's His Redeemer. In verse 21 it's his covenant in his word. The word iniquity appears 14 times in the first 14 verses And when we get to verse 15, there's the beginning of a change that we see here.

But all of it really speaks of God's zeal to save sinners, to rescue them from the things that have happened to them, so that they would find the blessing that he has for them. But the whole context of this chapter really began in chapter 58. Please look there with me. Because Isaiah is still talking about the same thing that he began to speak about in 58.1, but actually even earlier than that, but I think the most the most critical matter is stated in 58.1, which begins this context where we read, cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet tell my people their Transgression and the house of Jacob their sins and so God desires for there to be a trumpet call To declare the reality of the sin to actually name the sins and he begins in chapter 58 to name the sins, and he begins with fasting. It's fake fasting for personal prosperity.

And then the Sabbath, you know, entering into the Sabbath, but yet with no delight, it's just a thing that you do. So he identifies these first two great sins, and then in chapter 59 he describes man's moral condition. So he's really itemizing these various things. He begins with the heart in 58, and then he moves on to very specific things that affect every part of the whole body, everything, all of your relationships and everything, and he defines those in the first 15 verses. And so in the first 15 verses of 59 is a description of man's moral condition without God.

And what you find is there's justice and righteousness and the character of the people, honesty, everything has collapsed. That's the picture in verses 1 through 15. It's a complete collapse of mankind, of the destruction of a human being because of sin. And then in our text today, we see that God sends an intercessor and a warrior, and he comes and he is going to win. Nothing is going to hold him back.

And he will see to it that his word is declared forevermore, from one generation to the next, that he will always have people that have his word in their hearts in every generation and they will declare his beauty and his glory and his power forevermore. God wins. That's what's being declared here. And so in that sense he's declaring how insane it is to turn away from God. How crazy it is to maintain a hard heart toward God.

What does it get you? Will it get you into all these things that he defines? But you can't win. The hard hearted will not win. God will win.

His Word will win. And so the central matter of this section in 59 is that there is a warrior and he will win. And so let's begin here in verse 15. I'd like to begin there because of the context that it continues to carry forth. And what we see here are the ways that God wins.

And I've itemized them here before you. There are six of them. And we'll just take them one by one as we go through these verses. And the first matter of God's victory, his vanquishing power, is that he sees. He sees everything.

Of course, he sees that truth has fallen in the street and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey, but then the Lord saw it and it displeased him that there was no justice. The first matter of all renewal of the soul is to recognize that God sees and man is too dull to see But God is able to see into the heart and to rescue a person from what he does not know. And so the greatest prayer I think that any of us should have who trusts the Lord and follow him is that God would help his people to see, that he would help the blind to see, because he does see and it displeases him. And what we've seen here is what he sees and what he sees is declared in this whole chapter. And these are the tragedies of separation from God.

In verse 3, we see that he sees the whole body defiled, he sees hands defiled with blood. He sees the aversion to justice and truth in verse 4. He sees the tragedies of death by viper's eggs and the poisons of this world. He sees the tragedy of being left unclothed that you see in verse 6. You weave the spider's web but it doesn't clothe you, it's just nothing but a web.

There's nothing to it. You have no clothing from heaven. You have no protection. He itemizes all these tragedies of what he sees. You know, the feet that run toward evil in verse 7.

The ways of peace not being known, the disorderly life in verse 8. And then as we saw last week, Isaiah acknowledges these sins and what has happened to them and he speaks of what happens to us when we turn from him. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes. We stumble at noonday as at twilight, and we are as dead men in the desolate places. So he is acknowledging all these things that have displeased God.

And all of them are designed to pierce our hearts, to help us to recognize the dangers that we are in when our hearts are hard toward God. And we live in a world of so much danger in that sense. But our greatest danger is really the danger of sin. And God, He sees it all. And so, he reminds us of what it looks like so that we can examine our own hearts and really to see the insanity of it.

But what's the remedy for such a sad state? The solution is declared beginning in verse 16, and it is the gift of the intercessor. Even though truth is fallen in the streets, as we find at the end of verse 15, God sends the way, the truth, and the life. He sends the embodiment of truth, the Lord Jesus Christ. And he calls him an intercessor in verse 16 Here's how it reads.

He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor Therefore his own arm brought salvation for him, and his own righteousness it sustained him." So here we find God is musing, he's revealing to us his analysis of the situation, And he says that there was no intercessor. And the idea is that he is sending an intercessor, one who would intervene. Literally the word means to cover a breach with his body. And this is what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. He's taken what's broken down and he's placed himself there in the breach in the wall to be the one who would begin the healing of the breach.

He himself lays his body there as an intercessor, and God will send a man. Now, this intercessor that he sends is one who stands between God and man to help him. You know, what is an intercessor? An intercessor is a helper. Someone who has been placed before you to help you.

Now, we live in a world where there's so many ways that you can help yourself. And there's so many places we turn for help, it's not even funny. You know, we have an entire industry, the whole counseling industry. We have entire industries that are built up in order to help man in the way that he wants help. Whether it might be medicine, whether it might be food, whether it might be a personal friend to give you counsel, whatever it is, man is going to turn somewhere for help.

That's our nature. We know that we need help and so we turn. But often we turn to the place where there really is not all that much help. But the Lord Jesus Christ is the intercessor, the true helper, the one who can really help you. He can help you better than anyone who's ever been born into this world.

He can help you better than any book that's ever been written. He can help you better than anyone Who's ever been born into this world? He can help you better than any book that's ever been written. He can help you better than anything that's out there He is an intercessor and There's so much in the Bible about the Lord Jesus Christ as our intercessor. He's the one that we need.

He's the one that you need this morning, right now. Whatever problem that is on your mind, He is the answer. He's the one you can turn to. Turn to Him. Turn to Him alone.

Turn to His Word. In Hebrews chapter 7 verse 25, we learn that His intercession is so powerful. It's unstoppable. It's an unchangeable intercession. In Hebrews 7 verse 24, But he, because he continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood.

Therefore he is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. He always lives. The Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, and as long as He lives, His help is there. In Romans chapter 826 we learn that His intercession helps us in our weaknesses. Likewise, the Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses, for we do not know how to pray as we ought.

But the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God." And here we find that the Lord Jesus Christ has sent his spirit. The Lord said, the Lord Jesus said, I will send you another comforter. I will send you another comforter just like me is what he was saying in John chapter 14. And he helps us in our weaknesses.

You know you think about how the Lord Jesus Christ was always helping the weak. He was always helping the sick and the weak and the downtrodden, those who are trapped in their sins, he always went to the weak. And his intercession is designed to help us in our weaknesses. In Romans chapter 8, 34 and 35, we learn that he makes intercession from the right hand of God himself. And that as he intercedes, he is ensuring that his children will never be separated from the love of God.

This is the beauty and the power of his intercession. Verse 34 in chapter 8 of Romans, who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril?

This is the intercession of Jesus Christ. This is His help toward the weak of the world, those who are struggling with their sins. So the whole idea here is to turn to the intercessor, turn to the one who can help you. This is why the Lord Jesus Christ said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

He is the intercessor. He is the advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the one who's pleading for us and so the Lord has given us this victory in giving us an intercessor. And then Isaiah in verse 16, he describes this intercessor. And first of all, he speaks of his arm.

And then he speaks of his righteousness. Therefore his own arm brought salvation for him. This is the arm of God. And this is the arm of God protecting his son. I'm confident that's what he's saying.

That God is the agent in salvation in sending His own Son. And in order to be saved, you need a strong arm. An arm stronger than the grip of the devil. You need something quick, something mighty, in order to save you. And here we come across this vision of the arm, the strong arm of God to save.

This is His intercessory power. And we need a strong arm every day of this intercessory savior of ours. You know, many years ago when my son David was a little boy, he was with me and a friend and a little boy on our deck and there was a bench on the deck that, you know, would put you up close to the edge of the rail of the deck. And my son David and his friend came up with these sort of fishing pole-like things with ropes on them, but they had a block tied on the other end of them. And they walked up to us.

We were standing there on the deck and they got up on the bench. And they were standing there with these fishing poles and these blocks. And David, you know, he held his pole out there and he pushed the block over the deck. It was about a 10 foot drop. And so he started going over the edge.

The block was pulling him over and he wouldn't let go of the fishing pole. And so it was so amazing. He flipped right over the edge of that railing, and his feet were facing, his feet were up, and he was headed straight down, ten feet below. My friend, who was standing next to me, he reached out his arm, and he went like this, and he grabbed his ankle. I couldn't believe it.

He was the most remarkable, quick, mighty, and he had a strong arm. My friend was a strong man, and he had an arm that could grab a heavy object heading downward. This is God. He's a strong arm. He grabs you while you're headed downward.

You know, how many times has God saved people when they were on the way down, when they're headed for absolute destruction? You know, you see someone headed for destruction, you may be seeing someone who's being rescued by God as he grabs them by the ankle and rescues them. How many of you were rescued like that? You were going astray. You were in the path of destruction.

You were wrecking your life. You were wrecking everybody's life around you. And you were filling your heart with all this poison that you know, you were eating the eggs of the serpents, just like it was described before. And God, He rescued you. This is the power of an intercessor.

And then he not only provides an intercessor, he provides a warrior. Verse 17. For he put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head. He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing and was clad with zeal as a cloak. So God provides a warrior as a Savior and he goes to war for his people to save them and also to destroy the works of the devil.

Notice that there is clothing here, armament, four things. First of all, there is righteousness as a breastplate in verse 17. And then there is salvation which is signified by a helmet and a helmet of salvation on his head. And then there's vengeance. He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing.

And then zeal, finally. He was clad with zeal as a cloak. So you have this, you have the breastplate and the helmet and the garments and the cloak, and all of them, all of them are the clothing of armament. You know one of the commentaries that I read, Alec Mautier speaks of this verse in this way. He says, clothing is always a metaphor for character, commitment and endowment for the task.

Righteousness, salvation, vengeance, and zeal are all aspects of the divine nature. When the Lord dons his clothing, he is publicly revealing what he is. But he is also declaring what he intends to do and what he is able to do. It is a work which will display and satisfy his righteousness, save his people, repay his foes, and be carried through the completion by the driving motivation of divine zeal. So his clothing has meaning.

And this is just another one of the places that you go where you do find clothing has meaning. And clothing, all of our clothing has meaning. And it should have meaning. Our clothing should declare something. The righteousness and the glory and the beauty and the power of God.

When you look at yourself in the mirror and think, what should I put on? Somehow your clothing should be like the clothing of Jesus Christ. But here you see this clothing, and the Son of God is manifested in his clothing in the way that he will destroy the works of the devil. Now, this is the essence of Christianity. This is the message of the whole Bible.

That God wages war against the works of the devil and he saves sinners who are trapped in the jaws of the devil. That Christ is a great warrior, that he came to disarm the strongman. This is the whole message of the Bible, that Jesus Christ has come to save from your greatest enemy and that he masters the kingdom of darkness by casting out the demons that in Colossians chapter 2 we learn that he's disarmed the principalities and the powers and he's made a public spectacle of them by triumphing over them. In Hebrews chapter 2 14 we learn that he that that that by death he would destroy death who all their lifetime people were caught in the in the arms of death. He is disarmed, the strong man.

In John chapter 12 verse 31 we see how he casts out the prince of this world where we read, now is the judgment of this world. Now the ruler of this world will be cast out and if I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all peoples to myself. This is the sending of the Lord Jesus Christ and the destruction of the power of the devil. The devil was disarmed at the resurrection of Jesus Christ and he no longer has dominion over the children who turned to him in repentance and faith. In Revelation chapter 12 verses 9 through 10 we see the devil is cast out as a result of Christ's work on the cross.

So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world. He was cast to the earth and all his angels were cast out with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, Now salvation and strength in the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ have come. For the accuser of our brethren who accused them before our God day and night has been cast down and they overcame him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony and they did not love their lives unto death." You can see that there's no passivity in Jesus Christ. He is the hound of heaven.

He does go after the works of the devil. He is looking. He is looking and he sees those who are being hurt, those who are going down, headed down, head down to their destruction and he grabs them because He's a warrior and an intercessor. You can give thanks to God today for His zeal to save. You think about for a minute the various things that God and his zeal did to save you, and then how he rescued you.

How did he pursue you? How did he expose the unprofitability and the ugliness of the enemy of your soul. How did he do that? Because whenever a person is saved, their eyes open, and he rescues them because he's a warrior. You know, this passage of scripture is quoted by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 6.

And what we learn in Ephesians chapter 6 is that the Christian puts on the whole armor of Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 59, the Lord Jesus Christ wears this armor, and In Ephesians 6, he gives you his armor, that very same armor, only he speaks far more about it in Ephesians chapter 6 and gives far, far more detail. But his garments become our garments, his breastplate becomes our breastplate, his righteousness is our righteousness, his helmet is our helmet, his salvation is our salvation. We were raised up with him by the power of the resurrection. We died and we were hidden with Christ and God, and he resurrected us with him.

And this is the whole matter of his saving grace and the power of His warrior hand. And then he repays his adversaries with fury. Verse 18, God will destroy all the works of the devil. It's madness to allow your heart to remain cold. It's madness not to turn to Him.

Don't think for a minute that there's anything good waiting for you by delaying your salvation, by delaying your repentance. You know, young people often think, oh, I'm waiting so that I can experience these really good things. Here's the truth, they're not good, and they'll just destroy you. They will break your heart, and they will defile your soul. And you know, though the Lord Jesus Christ can save you, you may never ever be the same.

Because no one beats the system. That's the message of Isaiah 59. No one beats the system. God will rule. His word will never be put to shame.

So he repays his adversaries with fury. This is another way that he declares his power over sin. Verse 18, according to their deeds, accordingly he will repay. Fury to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies, the coastlands he will fully repay. Now notice there's some Very important things to recognize here.

According to their deeds, accordingly, He will repay. This doesn't mean that you're saved by your deeds, but it means that by your deeds you will be known to be children of God. Faith without works is dead. And so by your deeds you will be repaid. Fury to his adversaries recompense to his enemies.

And then he speaks of the coastlands. We've encountered this matter of the coastlands many times in the prophecy of Isaiah. And it's imagery for those who live far off, in different contexts it's used for different principles. In some contexts he speaks of the coastlands to speak of how God's salvation will go to the farthest ends of the earth that you're never too far from God's arm to save you. But In this case, I believe he's speaking of the coastlands to describe that you cannot hide, that God cannot be excluded, that God will judge the wicked in every place, every single corner of the earth.

No one can hide from the fury of God. No one. You can't move to the country. You can't move to a different nation and escape the wrath of God. Because his wrath, his fury will go to the coastlands.

In Romans chapter 12 says, "'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, ' says the Lord." This is God reaching out personally to deal with those who are hard-hearted toward Him. They can never run far enough because He will see and He will be there to exercise his fury against all those who rebel against him. And then his spirit, the fifth thing that he does, his spirit lifts up a standard against his enemies. Now notice the language here because there's this, There's this irresistibility of God's intervention. And in verse 19 we read, so they shall fear the name of the Lord from the west and his glory from the rising of the sun.

When The enemy comes in like a flood. The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. Now we encounter here in verse 19 the fear of the Lord as we have many times in Isaiah, the prophet. And now this is the kind of terror of the vanquishing judgment of God. They fear the name of the Lord from the west, notice that, and His glory from the rising of the Sun his name and his glory are feared What is his name?

His name is everything that he represents That's what a name signifies in the Bible. And what is his glory? Well, it's it's it's it's everything that his name brings forth, his glory. And so you have this from the West and from the rising of the sun, from the East. And this is the fear that comes out of the hearts of his enemies.

There's the fear and the glory of the Lord. Now he says here that this takes place in a particular historical context. There are things happening when the fear of the glory of the Lord takes place. And it's this time when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. This is about evil times.

When the times are the most evil, when the enemies of God are bursting forth like a flood, that's this time. When that happens, that's not the end of the story. Their wickedness, their power, their ascendancy, it's contradicted, it's stopped. He says it happens like a flood. There's a picture of a pent-up body of water, which is just suddenly and cataclysmically released.

And then it's like whipped up by a storm. There's this flood of evil over the society. And this pent-up power, it just seems so irresistible. It seems so unstoppable. The powers of darkness seem like they will never go away because they're so firmly entrenched.

They're so mighty. They're so fast. And it's possible we live in times like that, where the evils of the world just seem to be overflowing like a flood and you can't stop them. They're just too intricately intertwined into the fabric of everyone's thinking and the laws and everything. And he says when it's like that, when it's like that, something will happen.

The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. In other words, the flood will be stopped. All of a sudden it will be put to an end. That what seemed to be so unmovable, what seemed to be so unstoppable, was not unstoppable at all. Because God's Holy Spirit was poured out.

And his spirit stops the flood that seemed irresistible in that society. Now, let's be very clear about something. God is not passive. God is not a gentleman. I don't know if you've heard people speak of God standing as a gentleman knocking at the door of a sinner's heart.

That there's God, he's a gentleman. He doesn't impose Himself. That's not the picture that we have here. God does impose Himself. His Spirit will lift up a standard.

His spirit will overcome the flood. He will wreck the work of the devil. He will impinge upon your will. He will change it. He will by His Holy Spirit turn around.

He will do it by the power of his own might. And if you go back and read this, you'll see that God is the agent in all of these things. It is God who does all these things. He is an imposing person in the world. And so the enemy is furious, and he's rampant like a flood.

But then God will cause the flood to subside. It will go away. It's a description of his vast and dreadful power, the fury that he has against the works of the devil. Don't ever think for a minute that it's over for the culture. It's not over.

Because God, by His Spirit, will come. And he lifts up a banner. The adversary comes in like a flood and the Spirit turns to meet the attack with his banner and he comes and he brings sinners into submission. This was spoken of in Isaiah 11, that great prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 11, 10, we learn that there shall be a root of Jesse who will stand as a banner to the people for the Gentiles shall seek him and his resting place shall be glorious." Who is the banner?

It's the same person as the warrior. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the banner lifted up in this passage of scripture. Verse 12 and Isaiah 11, "'He will set up a banner for the nations and will assemble the outcasts of Israel and gather the disperseds of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The Lord Jesus Christ spoke of this in Matthew chapter 8 when he said, And I say to you that many will come from east and west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Here the Lord Jesus Christ speaks of the East and the West, those who see His glory, those who see His name, and something will happen to them and He will bring them in from the East and the West and they'll sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven but he will also distinguish between those who love him and are called according to his purpose between those who hate him and he will destroy them from the east to the west. Nothing is hidden from his sight. No one can hide. No one can really wait because God is going to do his work.

And then we read that he sends a Redeemer, not only does he send his spirit, but he sends a Redeemer for the repentant. Now, verse 20, the Redeemer will come to Zion. Now notice the language, the Redeemer is going to come to Zion and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob. So the Redeemer comes to this heavenly glory, the church, which is Zion, and to those who have turned. He only comes as a Savior to those who turn.

He is a Redeemer. He's one who buys back off the slave block. He redeems. He pays in order to redeem. But he only redeems those who turn from transgression.

The salvation comes and turning comes, and you cannot separate the two. There is no salvation without turning. And if, you know, you who are listening just recognize, have you turned? If you have not turned, you are not saved. That's it.

If your heart has not turned toward the Lord and the inclination of your heart and life is toward him, recognize that is the mark of a Christian. It's the life turned toward. The life of the non-christian is turned the other way. That's why Isaiah began with, if you turn away your foot from doing your own thing on my holy day, this is a whole matter of what you do with your feet. The turning of your feet is the hinge point upon which everything rests.

And it's so important that we, as a church, recognize this matter of turning. I think those who have been with us for a while have a pretty clear understanding of the fact of sheep and goats in a local church. Whenever you have a local church, you always have both. You're always dealing with the mixed multitude. As long as you're having children, you're having children grow up, and there they are sitting, and they're hearing the declarations of the Kingdom of God.

But you always have sheep and goats in a church. One of my friends, John Snyder, has a church probably very much like our church. And he had a friend of his come to preach. And he did something very interesting. The man was there for two weeks.

And the first week, they invited only those to come, those young people in the church to come who knew that they were converted, who knew that their hearts had turned and they had confidence. So they invited the young people in the church, you know, from fairly young, you know, to the days of their twenties, to just come. And so this man spoke to those who believed that they had been saved. And then the next week they asked that only those young people who knew that they were not converted would come. Now It was a church where people, because of the preaching, they knew.

They knew what it meant to be a Christian. They hadn't accepted this false gospel, accept Jesus Christ, and it doesn't really matter how you think live or where your foot is turned. They didn't accept that kind of gospel. Nobody in the church really understood the gospel that way. They understood that that the gospel changes your life.

So, you know in that church it was it was it was very plain to people that because they understood the doctrine of salvation and so the next week they invited those who were who were confident that they had not been saved and he said that amazingly the exact opposite group came that night. Like they knew who they were. And in our church, you know who you are. Most likely. It would be hard for me to believe that you really don't know who you are.

At the same time, assurance of salvation is sometimes hard won for some because of different matters. We've talked about that before. I won't go into it now, but you know, this is the question here. He, who are you? Which group are you in?

And one of the things that my friend said is that when they gathered them together, He said it was a very good thing. He told me this last week that they might do it again, just to continue to minister to both groups. He said one thing was interesting about it is that the ones who knew they weren't saved, they kind of regarded themselves as kind of a different class of non-Christian, you know, kind of a superior class, because they knew they weren't faking, they knew they weren't faking, they weren't putting on airs, you know. But they just sort of thought that they were just a little bit better, a little bit of a cut above your basic unbeliever in the church, which just bears witness to a great misunderstanding of sin and righteousness and judgment that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But this, he sends a Redeemer For those who turn from transgression, who turn from anything that contradicts the glory and the beauty of God, that's a description of a Christian, a person who has turned to the beauty of the Lord, and that is what consumes his life.

And if that is not the center of your life, you should really consider whether you're a Christian or not. Have you turned away from the world and to the name of God and to the glory of God from the east to the west. And then he will keep his covenant to spread his word. Here's just another reason why it's it's it's insane To maintain hardness toward God because God will keep his covenant verse 21 as for me Says the Lord. This is my covenant with them now.

I want to break verse 21 and down in detail here First of all, I want us to notice these three words, as for me, because these first words emphasize the power of God. It is He who does it. His zeal is the reason for salvation. As for me, this is the whole matter. And if there are any who know they do not love the Lord and there's something in your heart to say I want to, I want to turn to Him.

Then turn to God because he says as for me God is responsible cry out to God that He would exert His power, that He would change your heart, that your foot would turn away and turn toward His glory, that He would give you a love for His glory and a hatred for this world so that you might be saved from this wicked and perverse generation. But the burning issue, or really the motivating factor of this as for me, is this is my covenant. This is my covenant with them. Now who is the them? It's the repentant.

It's those who turn from transgression. But then look at the next phrase and you've got to look at this very carefully. He says, my spirit who is upon you, my spirit who is upon you. Now we might naturally think that he's speaking about these same redeemed people, these people who are referred to just previously. And also by the way, and we'll get to this next week the same people that are referred to in chapter 61 verse 1 but is he talking about the same people I want to suggest he's probably not talking about the same people here.

Because in Hebrew, unlike English, the second person pronouns have gender. And the U in 5921 is masculine, while the you in 60, verse 1, is feminine. And why is the you in 60, verse 1, feminine? It's because he's speaking of the church. The church is feminine.

Zion, the city of God, is feminine. And you can see this throughout Isaiah. So who is he speaking to? I want to suggest that God, the Father, is speaking to God, the Son. In other words, God says, I will put my spirit upon you.

And we may be overhearing a conversation between God and his son. And one commentator said, we're overhearing God promising to give someone his word and his spirit forever for the benefit of the repented people. And so that person is the Lord Jesus Christ, the servant of the Lord. The Father is pledging to bless his son, and in blessing his son, he blesses the sons and the daughters of his son. And what do we see here?

He says, as for me, says the Lord, this is my covenant with them, with the repentant, My spirit who is upon you, you Lord Jesus Christ, my words which I have put in your mouth." These are the words that the Father put in his Son's mouth. These words shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants, descendants says the Lord from this time for and forevermore." Now it could be the other way, but and I think the end point meaning is probably the same anyway. The end result is the same is that that the words of God are in the mouths of his children and they declare the word of God forevermore. That's sort of the end point. But just consider the sequence.

God puts his words in the mouth of his Son. He is the Word made flesh. He speaks only what his Father speaks. In Isaiah chapter 50 verse 4 we learned that daily his ear was the ear of the learner. Jesus Christ's ear was opened to his Father morning by morning.

The Lord has given me the tongue of the learned, Isaiah 50, verse 4, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary. He awakens me morning by morning. He awakens my ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious, nor did I turn away." This is a picture of Jesus Christ with his open ear before his Father, morning by morning, so that he gets a word from his Father for the weary, for those who are lost, for those who are broken, for those who are being worn out by this world. But the key to it all is His Word.

It's His Word that revives them. The Son of God receives the Word of His Father, and then the Son of God speaks that word to his children. And they take that word and they repeat it. And it is repeated from this time and forevermore. From the mouth of the descendants to their descendants and their descendants and their descendants.

Now whether this interpretation is correct, Here's what's absolutely true about this, whether or not you accept that. The power of God in the world is the Word of God. It is the only hope in the world that God, through His children, would speak his word. That his children would have the ear of a ready learner just like the Lord Jesus Christ had. And they would hear his word and it would change their hearts.

And then their hearts would turn toward the weary to bring comfort to the weary. This is the power of the Word of God in the world. And this is why it's madness to maintain a hard heart toward God. Because His Word is going to be proclaimed. Nothing is going to stop it.

No government, no law. Nothing is going to stop it. He has an unstoppable power of His Word, and His Word will bring everything into submission. And no one should think for a moment that some kind of delay has any rationality. It's madness to delay repentance.

It's madness to maintain hardness. It's madness not to hear his voice in the morning and cry out to him for your life so that you would have a word for the weary. You know God would have it that we would not speak our own words, that we would honor Him, not doing our own ways, nor finding our own pleasure, nor speaking our own words. But to speak the words of God, this is the most life-giving thing a church can ever do is to speak the words of God to one another from one generation to the next. And here Isaiah is bringing us down to what is perhaps one of the most pivotal matters in the spreading of the glory of God in the world, and that is the communication of the Word of God to the next generation.

That's what he's speaking of here in this last thing. He's bringing forth that great command of Moses, who said, teach your children when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. He says, these words shall be in your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children." This is one of the most pivotal matters for the spread of the Gospel in the world. Is that this would happen beginning in a home So that the word of the Lord Jesus Christ would continue in the world from one generation to the next So that there are tongues that make confession of the beauty of the Lord and his word You know I was thinking this week about people who have God's Word on their lips, and it occurred to me, as it has occurred to me many times, the Friends that are the most helpful to me are the ones who speak the word of God to me. You know why they do it?

It's in their heart. And they cannot keep it in. It burns in their hearts with the burnings of love. And then it just comes out. It just comes out.

It's not forced. It just comes out. Now, as we turn the page to chapter 60, the theme continues. And you see the power of the Word of God in the church, in the enlightenment of the church. Arise, shine, for your light has come.

We'll get into that next week, but just recognize Isaiah is continuing to speak of this same matter, to put his finger on the sin and to call us out to recognize the sin, to realize how unprofitable and insane it is to keep a hard heart and yet how good He is to send His word. Why? For the weary. That would be you and me. This is the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for these testimonies of your power, your wrath, your fury, your greatness, your love, your sustaining beauty that will be sustained in the world which no one will be able to stomp out. We praise you, O Lord, for your everlasting kingdom. And Lord, that you would give us in our church such a love for these words that they would come out everywhere Amen.